“Very strange!” she continued, still muttering the words to herself. “He it was I saw in the chapparal glade! Yes, it must have been! And the woman—this Mexican—Isidora? Ah! There is some deep mystery in all this—some dark design! Who can unravel it?”
“Tell me, dear Zeb,” she asked, stepping closer to the old hunter, and speaking with a cartain degree of hesitancy. “That woman—the Mexican lady I mean—who—who was out there. Do you know if she has often visited him?”
“Him! Which him, Miss Lewaze?”
“Mr Gerald, I mean.”
“She mout, an she moutn’t—’ithout my knowin’ eyther one or the tother. I ain’t often thur myself. The place air out o’ my usooal huntin’ ground, an I only go now an then for the sake o’ a change. The crik’s fust rate for both deer an gobbler. If ye ask my opeenyun, I’d say that thet ere gurl heven’t never been thur afore. Leestwise, I hain’t heern o’ it; an eft hed been so, I reckun Irish Pheelum ud a hed somethin’ to say abeout it. Besides, I hev other reezuns for thinkin’ so. I’ve only heern o’ one o’ the shemale sex bein’ on a visit to thet shanty.”
“Who?” quickly interrogated the Creole, the instant after regretting that she had asked the question—the colour coming to her cheeks, as she noticed the significant glance with which Zeb had accompanied his concluding remark.
“No matter,” she continued, without waiting for the answer.
“So, Zeb,” she went on, giving a quick turn to the conversation, “you think that these men have had to do with that which is causing sorrow to all of us,—these Mexicans?”
“To tell ye the truth, Miss Lewaze, I don’t know zackly what to think. It air the most musteeriousest consarn as iver kim to pass on these hyur purayras. Sometimes I hev the idea that the Mexikins must a did it; while at others, I’m in the opposite way o’ thinkin’, an thet some’dy else hev hed a han’ in the black bizness. I won’t say who.”
“Not him, Zeb; not him!”