"All right, boss," said Juarez, cheerfully.
"How much reward, captain, for the first glimpse of the lost child?" inquired Jo.
Jim paid no attention to this sally, but kept his eye on the trail ahead. The trees were quite thick on either side of the trail and as dusk was coming on, it was difficult to make out any object clearly.
Just as Jim rode around a turn in the trail, Caliente reared and leaped to one side and a less skillful rider would have been thrown.
"Easy, old boy," said the rider, patting his horse's neck. Caliente stood trembling and snorting and watching a curious object that was struggling up the bank towards the trail.
It was hard to tell what it was, whether man or beast and the dusk only served to make it more obscure. Then the object scrambled up on to the trail and Jim at once recognized the dwarf Mexican with his high-crowned sombrero and his velvet suit richly slashed. With his crooked back and one eye, he was anything but a prepossessing-looking creature. Caliente, when he, too, recognized who it was, put back his ears and rushed with bared teeth for the Mexican.
Spitting out a curse, the greaser jumped to one side with a marked agility, and Jim succeeded after a struggle in bringing his furious steed to terms, but he had his hands full and there were not very many men who could manage Caliente when he got into one of his rages.
"Hi! Manuel," (every Mexican was Manuel to the boys), cried Jim, "look out for my Tiger, he wants to eat that velvet suit of yours."
"Si, Senor," called Manuel from a safe station on a granite rock. "He is a tiger as your Honor says."
One would have expected to hear the crooked little greaser speak in a harsh croaking voice, but instead it had a rich sonorous quality.