wn somewhere on this side the Potreros
and it has not been seen since. Ask the kids if they saw something
that looked like a big bird flying." This from the unseen one, who had
raised his voice as impatience seized him. These Mexicans were so
slow-witted!

Johnny heard Mateo's voice, speaking at length. He saw Rosa take her
finger from her mouth, catch up a corner of her ragged, apron and twist
it in an agony of confusion, and then as if suddenly comprehending what
it was these senores wished to know, she pointed jerkily toward the
north. Perhaps the others also pointed to the north, for the
lean-jawed soldier tilted his head backward and stared up that way, and
Mateo spoke in very fair English.

"The kids, she's see. No, I dunno. I'm busy I don' make attenshions.
I'm fine out when--"

"We know when," the efficient looking soldier interrupted. "You keep
watch. If you see it fly back, see just where it comes from and where
it goes, and ride like hell down to camp and tell us. You will get
more money than you can make here in a year. You sabe that?"

"Yo se, senor--me, I'm onderstan'."

"You know where our camp is?"

"Si, senor capitan. Me, I'm go lak hell."

"Well, there's nothing more to be got here. Let's get along." And as
they moved off Johnny caught a fragmentary phrase "from Riverside."

The children had taken up their industrious play again, and their
mother had turned from the open doorway to hush the crying of Mateo's
youngest in the cabin. Mateo called the children to him and patted
them on the head, and the senora, their mother, brought candy and gave
it to them. They ran off, sucking the sweets, gabbling gleefully to
one another. Cliff Lowell had been right, nothing is so disarming as a
woman and children about a place where secrets are kept.

There had been no suspicion of Mateo's cabin and the family that lived
there in squalid content. The incident was closed.

But Johnny slumped down in the seat again and glowered through the
little, curved windshield at the crisply wavering leaves beyond the
Thunder Bird's nose. He was not a fool, any more than he was a crook.
He was young and too confiding, too apt to take things for granted and
let the other fellow do the worrying, so long as things were fairly
pleasant for Johnny Jewel. But right now his eyes were open in more
senses than one, and they were very wide open at that.

There was something very radically wrong with this job