"On that point," remarked Dick, "we can give you a little information. He is not dead—at least he wasn't last fall."
CHAPTER X The Padron
"What do you mean?" cried Antonio. "How do you know? I thought you said you had never heard of him."
"We hadn't," replied Dick, "until you mentioned his name, but from your description we have no doubt we saw him some months ago up here at the head of the valley."
With this by way of preface, my companion related to our new acquaintance the particulars of our "interview" with the "little giant," as he called him.
"It must be the same man," said Antonio. "I wonder what he was doing so far away from his own mountain. You say he shot the wolf with a copper-headed arrow? That's something I should like to investigate, if only the padron were not so dead set against my going up into the mountain. Where does he get his copper? In fact——" He paused to consider, and then went on: "Yes; I don't see why I shouldn't tell you—my uncle won't go himself, and he won't let me go, so I may as well tell you. The truth is that the reason why I was so anxious to make an excursion up there was just that—to find out where El Tejon gets his copper. And not only he, but the villagers down here. Every house in Hermanos has its copper bowl and dipper. They are hammered out of lumps of native copper; some of them must weigh five or six pounds. Where did they come from? Lumps of copper of that size were not washed down the streams—they were dug up. But by whom, and where?"
I felt a great inclination to tell him. He had been so friendly and communicative that I began to feel rather uncomfortable at the thought that we were drawing all this information from him under what might be regarded as false pretences.
I was pretty sure that Dick would be feeling much the same—for among boys, as I have many a time noticed, there is nothing more catching than open-heartedness—and I was right; for, glancing at him to see what he thought, I caught his eye, when he immediately raised his eyebrows a trifle, as much as to say, "Shall I tell him?"