The Mexican appeared presently, leading two splendid ponies from the corrals which he presented to Dorothy with a white-toothed, cheerful grin.
“Fastest ponies we got,” he assured her, and Dorothy recognized him as one of the lads who had been on the ranch during the eventful vacation she and her chum had spent there. “Nice ones, too. No bite, no kick. Gentle like kittens.”
Dorothy thanked him with a smile and swung herself to the back of the little mustang, leading the other toward the house.
“I can send some of the boys over to the Knapp ranch with you, if you say so, Miss Dale,” Hank Ledger called after her. In surprise Dorothy checked the pony and looked around at him. His voice had sounded anxious and his face, now that she saw it, matched his voice.
But anxious about what?
She asked this question aloud, and Hank Ledger’s frown relaxed into a sheepish grin.
“Folks say that those as look for trouble generally git it,” he answered enigmatically. “There ain’t no reason for me orderin’ a bodyguard for you, Miss Dale. Only I’d be mighty glad if you would let one of the boys go along with you. Your father not bein’ here, I feel sort of responsible-like.”
Still puzzled, Dorothy thanked him, but refused the bodyguard.
She wondered still more as she approached the house why the phlegmatic foreman had thought it necessary even to suggest such a thing.
Surely, bandits did not roam the roads in broad daylight!