“How did the Indians get her—did he say?” asked Mr. Gray in a gentle, quiet tone.
“Yes, it seems as though he did—let me think! Yes. He said that he took her all through the mountains all right, and he thought he would get a reward for saving her when the bandits attacked the mine. I recollect that real plain. Then——”
He had to stop often to bring up the memories, but one thought led to the next and soon he was in the midst of his narrative.
“The bandits were hot on his trail, and that is why he didn’t have time to stop and claim a reward or to return the little girl. She had golden hair, and was right pretty, he said. But he had to take her to the coast, with what money he could bring in the sack of dust.”
“Gold dust!” commented Bill. “And the rest is still there, maybe!”
“Maybe!” agreed Jack. “Anyway, he said he and the little girl went at last to the coast and wanted to get a ship to take them to America, but there wasn’t any sailing right then, and the bandit chief was in the town, in disguise, and Mort was so scared he’d be shot that he took the little girl and went on a coasting boat bound for different ports. He dyed the little girl’s hair and made himself look different and kept her in the stateroom of the little ship he said.”
In that way, as Mort had related and as Jack recollected, bit by bit, the two had gone slowly down the coast. Always he was oppressed by terror, first of being discovered with the little girl, second, of being caught by the bandits he had fooled.
“One day he told me, the steward come to him, said the little girl was crying and said she wasn’t his little girl and she wanted to go home. That scared Mort so much that when the ship hove-to right near the San Blas country, which is all islands where the San Blas Indians live, he got a sailor to lower a boat in the night and set him and the little girl onto shore.”
“Toosa told us to seek him among the San Blas Indians,” said Tom, under his breath. Nicky and Cliff nodded and bent forward even more eagerly.
“Seems, from what I recall, he said they were landed on a right small island where some families of the Indians lived, and for a time they was all right, because the little girl was real smart and had a lot of pity for the sickly Indians and told them what to do to be better and they did, even young as she was to tell them how to behave, and they got better from washing more and living decenter, and anyhow, she got to be real well-liked; but Mort hated the idle place and no fun or anything to spend money on—you know what I mean?”