“Where’re the horses we’re to ride?” Peggy asked curiously after looking about on all sides. “Or are we going to ride in that oxcart over there?”
“No, that won’t be necessary. I left the horses on up the road about twelve miles,” Mr. Eldridge answered. “I’ve had the road repaired so you can drive the car to the foot of the mountain.”
“Why, that’s grand!” exclaimed both girls together. “Not that we don’t like to ride horseback,” added Jo Ann, “but we can travel so much faster in Jitters.”
After many words of farewell Florence and her father drove off down the highway which led to the town farther into the interior where they lived.
In a few more minutes, Jo Ann was steering Jitters out of the village and into the road which led to the mine. She had only two other passengers now, as Carlitos insisted on riding on the horse with Pepito.
Just as she was about to pass a little shack on the outskirts of the village, she caught sight of an empty old Ford parked under a mesquite tree just off the road. She stared at it incredulously, then cried out a sharp, “Oh, there’s that same car we——” She checked her words suddenly, swerving the car dangerously near an irrigation ditch at the side of the road.
“Mercy!” gasped Miss Prudence from the back seat. “What are you trying to do—turn us over?”
Jo Ann’s face flamed with excitement and embarrassment.
“No’m,” she said meekly as she drove on slowly. “I—I—really—I don’t—see why I did such a silly trick.”
Under cover of the car’s noise, a little later, Peggy asked curiously, “What on earth made you so excited over seeing that old car?”
Jo Ann’s voice was barely audible as she replied, “Because it was the car Florence and I saw hidden up in that gully in the desert. Smugglers.”
“O-oh! Are you absolutely sure?”
Jo Ann nodded. “It had the same license number, and the radiator was bumped in exactly the same places.”
When they neared the foot of the lofty mountains and the end of the automobile road, Jo Ann parked the car in front of a small thatched adobe house. “This is the jumping-off place,” she smiled. “Here’s where we leave Jitters and get our horses.”
Miss Prudence eyed the house curiously. “This must be where Ed told me we were to change into our riding clothes. He said for us to be ready by the time he and the boys got here. I don’t fancy going into a strange house in a strange——” She stopped abruptly as a fat, smiling-faced Mexican woman appeared at the open door and began beaming her welcome and punctuating her Spanish with gestures for them to come inside.
Summoning her limited Spanish, Jo Ann replied with a “Gracias,” then turned and translated the woman’s welcoming words to Miss Prudence.
After a moment’s hesitation Miss Prudence followed the girls into the house. Her keen eyes quickly took in the room, which had a neat, well-kept appearance in spite of its dirt floor and primitive furniture.
The woman disappeared into the other room, evidently the kitchen, as they could hear her rattling dishes and beating vigorously with some utensil.
“I hope she’s making us somechocolaté,” Jo Ann whispered to Peggy as they slipped into their khaki riding trousers.
“I hope so too. I’m hungry as a bear. Mountain air always gives me a ravenous appetite.”
“Here, too. I could wrap myself around a substantial meal right now, and it’ll probably be two hours yet till we reach the mine—and supper.”
As Jo Ann’s thoughts turned on the distance to the mine, she wondered how she would be able to get back to the city and find the mystery man. Now that she had seen the car of those suspected smugglers in the village so close by, she felt it was more imperative than ever for her to tell the mystery man about them and their whereabouts. “I’ve simply got to get in touch with him some way,” she told herself.
So intent was she upon these thoughts that she did not heed Peggy’s nudging her till she squealed out, “Can’t you put on your boots, Peg, without poking me in the side?”
“Oh, I most humbly beg your pardon,” Peggy replied, her twinkling eyes showing that her apology was anything but abject.
Catching her gesture, a nod of the head in Miss Prudence’s direction, Jo Ann looked over at Miss Prudence. The next moment her eyes opened in astonishment. That long, full, navy skirt Miss Prudence had on—how on earth was she ever going to ride in that thing? That must be one of those old-fashioned side-saddle riding skirts she’d heard her grandmother talk about. It’d be absolutely dangerous to ride side saddle in this mountainous country. She’d often heard how easily such a saddle was tipped out of balance and the rider thrown off. The next moment she relaxed as the thought occurred to her that there were no side saddles in this part of the country. Perhaps she’d better tell her that.
Somewhat embarrassed, Jo Ann stammered, “Er—Miss Prudence—er—they don’t have any—side saddles down here.”
Miss Prudence looked puzzled as she replied Yankee-fashion with a question, “Well, who wants one?” Seeing the girls’ eyes fastened on her skirt, she smiled, “This isn’t one of those old side-saddle riding skirts. It’s a divided skirt.” There was a note of pride in her voice as she added, “I was the first woman in my part of the country to begin riding astride. I shocked the older people dreadfully.”
“I think you were a good sport, Miss Prudence, to start that style,” Peggy remarked.
Miss Prudence received this praise with a pleased smile.
Just then the Mexican woman entered with a tray of food which she set on a little table near by. Gesturing and talking rapidly to Jo Ann, she explained, “I think you have much hunger, and I make you somechocolaté.”
Though Jo Ann’s reply was made in broken Spanish, it was straight from her heart. “Gracias.You are most kind. We have hunger after the long ride. Andchocolaté—I love it.” She raised the cup to her lips and drank a little of the rich, frothy liquid. “This is very delicious.”
Peggy and Miss Prudence nodded a smiling approval to the woman, and her black eyes glowed with happiness at the praise, both spoken and unspoken.
A few minutes after they had finished eating, Mr. Eldridge and the two boys rode up.
On going outside Jo Ann saw that there were three other horses saddled and waiting for them. She noticed, too, that José, Pepito’s father, was standing near by, his arms caressingly about Carlitos, whom he loved almost as dearly as he did his own son. Carlitos’s face was aglow with happiness at being reunited with his Mexican friends.
After she and Peggy had mounted, they watched with curious eyes to see how Miss Prudence manipulated that queer skirt. When they saw her unbutton the front panel and fold it back and refasten it on another set of buttons, they saw that it was a divided skirt after all.
Peggy leaned over from her horse to murmur to Jo Ann, “It looks like a pair of floppy-legged pajamas now.”
Jo Ann nodded, then added, grinning, “I prefer to sleep in pajamas and ride in trousers. It’s so much more modest.”
Peggy suppressed a giggle with difficulty at the thought of the proper Miss Prudence’s ever wearing anything but the most correct clothes.
Notwithstanding the queer skirt, they found that Miss Prudence rode unusually well, handling her horse with the ease of an experienced horsewoman.
Up the steep mountain trail they began climbing in single file, José in the lead. The sheer precipice at the edge looked so dangerous to Jo Ann that she tried to keep from looking over. One good thing, they had an excellent guide in José. He had led her and Florence over worse places than this.
On nearing the mine a strange feeling of tenseness filled the girls and Carlitos; and yet that was not surprising, as the mine had been the scene of the most thrilling adventures they had ever experienced. It was here that they had been rescued from the treacherous mine foreman who had stolen the mine from Carlitos’s father.
On their arrival at the great stone house that this foreman had so proudly built for his own use, they found José’s wife, Maria, the nurse who had reared Carlitos as one of her family. Though she was only a poor ignorant woman of the peon class, the girls as well as Carlitos loved her.
“Maria has a heart of gold,” Jo Ann told Miss Prudence as they watched her enfold Carlitos in her arms and kiss him on each cheek. “She loves him as she does her own Pepito and her girls.”
A few minutes later Maria proudly showed Carlitos to his room, into which she had put the best of everything, then took Miss Prudence and the girls to adjoining rooms, which looked bare and forbidding with their concrete floors, scant furniture, and curtainless, iron-barred windows.
“Looks like a soldiers’ barracks,” Miss Prudence said crisply after a swift glance about.
Jo Ann laughed, then said, “You should have seen this house as it was the first time I saw it. There was a grand piano in every room with a game rooster tied to one of the piano legs.”
Miss Prudence gasped. “A rooster in every room! Heavens! You mean to say this whole house was a chicken coop?”
“Not exactly. It was just that Mexican foreman’s idea of the luxurious life. He loved music and cock fighting, so he wanted the pianos and roosters handy.”
“Heavens!” gasped Miss Prudence again. “Why, I must fumigate this whole house, clean it with Old Dutch Cleanser, Lysol——”
“Oh, Maria cleaned it long ago—thoroughly,” broke in Jo Ann quickly, seeing that the anxious-eyed Maria was watching Miss Prudence’s frown of evident disapproval and was worried. She turned now to Maria and said in Spanish, “The house is very clean. You have worked hard.”
Maria’s grave eyes brightened. “Yes, the little girls and I work hard.” She gestured to the window and the corners of the room. “See, I clean it good like Carlitos’s mamá show me.”
Though Miss Prudence had caught from these gestures that Maria was showing how thoroughly she had cleaned the house, she was far from being convinced that it was fit for human habitation. Again she broke into a list of the different kinds of cleansing materials and things that she would need.
“We’ll have to go to the city to get all those things,” put in Peggy. “They won’t have them in the little store in the village.”
Jo Ann’s eyes suddenly began to shine. Here was her chance to get back to the city to find the mystery man. She could stop in the village and find out what those smugglers were doing there. Maybe they were buying baskets and pottery from the villagers. She’d soon find out now.
The first moment she and Peggy were alone she told her of her plans.
Peggy laughed. “I knew that’s what you were planning. You can’t resist a mystery, can you?”
“And you’re almost as eager as I am to have a finger in my mystery pie. You know you’re crazy to go to the city with me.”
“Of course I am.”
Before dropping to sleep that night Jo Ann decided that as soon as she got up in the morning she would urge Miss Prudence to let her and Peggy go to the city. “I’ll tell her what this house needs worse than another cleaning is some pretty cretonne for curtains and pillows, and some of the lovely Mexican pottery and bright-colored blankets. I could stop at the village and buy the pottery and blankets. There were some pieces of pottery outside that shack near where the smugglers’ car was parked. That’d give me a grand chance to find out from the family in the shack about the smugglers. Then I’d have more to tell the mystery man—if I can find him. Finding him—that’ll be the hard part.”
Still visioning ways and plans for this trip to the city, she finally drifted off to sleep.
She was roused early the next morning by a cold hand upon her bare shoulder. Horrors! One of those smugglers had grabbed her—she’d jerk away from him! She sprang out of bed with a leap that sent her into the middle of the room, then stood staring dazedly at an amazed Miss Prudence.
“Why, I didn’t mean to frighten you, Jo Ann,” she said apologetically. “I just meant to wake you early so——”
“O-oh, it’s just you!” gasped Jo Ann, feeling very foolish at seeing it was only Miss Prudence. “I must’ve been dreaming. I thought one of those——” She stopped abruptly. She must not say a word about having seen those smugglers. No use to get Miss Prudence stirred up and excited over them.
“I’m sorry I scared you,” Miss Prudence began again, “but I thought we ought to get an early start to——”
“But we’re at the end of our journey,” broke in Peggy, who was sitting up in bed now, rubbing her eyes sleepily. “We don’t have any place to start early to.”
“What I began to say was that we ought to get an early start at giving this house a thorough cleaning,” Miss Prudence went on, undisturbed by Peggy’s interruption.
“The house looks clean to me—very clean,” Jo Ann remarked.
“Maria may have gone through the motions of cleaning, but”—Miss Prudence raised her eyebrows skeptically—“a peon housekeeper’s ideas of cleaning and an American’s are two different things.”
“Don’t you want us to go to the city to get some—some fumigating stuff—formaldehyde, isn’t that what you call it?” Jo Ann asked eagerly.
“No, I’ve decided it isn’t necessary to have the place fumigated. I’ve decided there’s enough laundry soap here to begin with. Ed says he’s ordered more, and a lot of supplies that should have come to the village yesterday. He thinks they’ll come today surely. I’ll make plenty of strong suds, and we can begin scrubbing this morning. When we get through, this place’ll be as bright as a new penny.”
“It’ll still be dreadfully bare, though,” Jo Ann remarked tentatively. “As you said last night, it looks as bare as a barracks. What it needs is gay cretonne draperies and pillows, bright-colored blankets to throw over the chests and couches, and some of the lovely Mexicanollas. As soon as we get the house clean, let’s go to the city to get the draperies. We can probably find some pottery and blankets at the village.”
“Well, we’ll think about that later.”
“The sooner we get this house fixed up, the longer we’ll have to enjoy it,” spoke up Peggy, coming to Jo Ann’s aid. She knew how Jo Ann’s heart was set on getting back to the city. “Let’s try to have it all done by the time Florence comes.”
“Well, we’ll see.”
The girls had to content themselves with that vague promise.
After Miss Prudence had left the room and the girls were dressing, Jo Ann remarked, “I haven’t given up hope yet of going to the city soon. I’m going to try to persuade Miss Prudence to let us go to the village this afternoon for the supplies that Mr. Eldridge is expecting.”
“I’ll help persuade her.” Peggy changed the subject abruptly by saying, “I hate to have her hurt Maria’s feelings by doing all this cleaning, don’t you?”
Jo Ann nodded. “I’ll try to smooth it over to Maria, but she’ll never be able to understand such extreme ideas about sanitation.”
As soon as they had finished eating breakfast, the girls entered industriously into Miss Prudence’s “cleaning spree,” as Jo Ann called it. While Peggy poured the soapy water over the concrete floors, Jo Ann scrubbed vigorously enough to satisfy even Miss Prudence.
“It’s really fun,” Jo Ann declared as she swished the foamy suds about with her broom.
Miss Prudence, a towel over her head and her long skirts tucked up and pinned in the back, bustled about superintending the girls, Maria and her oldest daughters, and the two boys.
Maria was horrified that Miss Prudence should set Carlitos, the chief owner of the silver mine and the house, to doing such menial tasks as carrying water from the stream back of the house. Miss Prudence, however, believed with St. Paul that he who would not work should not eat and soon had everybody in the household stepping lively.
“I wish that soap and other supplies’d come today,” she said, frowning as she took out the last bar of soap. “The supplies are very low. I can’t plan a decent meal in this house without those things.”
“Peggy and I’ll go to the village for them this afternoon,” Jo Ann offered eagerly. “We can drive the car and make better time than José can in the oxcart.”
Miss Prudence hesitated a moment, then replied, “Well, if José can go with you, I believe you’d better go.”
“Fine! I’m sure Mr. Eldridge’ll let José go. He sends him there frequently for the mail—every other day, I believe.”
Jo Ann was right in this surmise. Mr. Eldridge promptly agreed to let José accompany the girls to the village. “José can take two burros along to carry the supplies,” he added, “and he won’t need the oxcart at all.”
So it was that shortly after lunch the two girls and José started on horseback but changed into the automobile when they reached the foot of the mountain.
On reaching the village they drove straight to Pedro’s store to see if the supplies had come. On finding that they had arrived, José set to work to load them into the car. While he was busy at that task, Jo Ann and Peggy walked back to the adobe shack where Jo Ann had seen the smugglers’ car.
To Jo Ann’s relief, the battered old car was not in sight.
“I’ll have a far better chance to find out about the smugglers without their being on the scene,” she remarked to Peggy.
As soon as they neared the shack, a thin, undernourished woman with a blackrebosaabout her shoulders and a baby in her arms appeared at the door. Peeping from behind her skirts were several other small, half-clad, hungry-looking children. As quickly as she could in her broken Spanish, Jo Ann explained that she wanted to buy some of the pottery jars piled up at the side of the house.
The woman shook her head and replied, “I have much sorrow that I cannot sell them to you. Two men in an automobile told me they take all myollas.”
“Was that their automobile I saw here near your house yesterday?”
The woman nodded.
“I must find out when they will be back,” Jo Ann thought quickly. “Can you not get more jars for these men by the time they come back, and sell me some of these you have now?” she asked tentatively.
“No, that is impossible. It takes much time to make theollas, and the men say they come back in three or four days.”
“Three or four days,” Jo Ann thought. “I hope Florence comes on one of those days, so we’ll have an excuse to come down here to meet her.”
Peggy broke into her thoughts with, “Ask her the price of these jars. They’re lovely.” She picked up two jars, each attractively decorated with a design of cactus and Spanish dagger.
Jo Ann relayed this question to the woman. “How much do you sell these for?”
The woman went on to tell the price of each—an absurdly small amount, not a third as much as they were worth.
“Is that what those men pay you for them?” Jo Ann asked incredulously.
“Sí.” The woman nodded.
Jo Ann repeated the price to Peggy, adding, “Those men are robbers, as well as——”
She left her sentence unfinished and turned back to the woman, saying, “They do not pay you enough. I will give you twice that much for these twoollas.”
The woman’s eyes opened wide. “Ah—that is good. I have much need of money to buy food for my children.” She hesitated a moment, then added, “Bien, I will let you have these two. The men will be angry, but then——” She shrugged her shoulders expressively.
Jo Ann’s mind was working rapidly. Perhaps she could help this poor woman to market more of her pottery. Florence had a friend who purchased Mexican curios for a firm in the States. She would tell Florence about this woman’s pottery. “I’ll take these twoollas. Don’t let those men have all your pottery after this. I will sell it for you at this price.”
After Jo Ann had paid for the jars and had promised the woman again to help sell more of the pottery for her, Peggy remarked as they were starting away, “I’m glad you paid that woman more for theollas, but I’m afraid those men’ll be furious when they find out you’re buying her pottery at double the price they pay. You’re heading for trouble.”
Jo Ann’s face grew grave. “I shouldn’t be surprised, but I’m glad just the same that I could help that family. Those poor little children look half starved to me.”
“They surely do,” Peggy agreed.
As soon as Jo Ann woke the third morning after their trip to the village, she reminded Peggy that they must go back without fail today. “You know Florence said she’d either be there by noon, or that there’d be a letter telling exactly when to expect her. It all depended, she said, on which day her father had to go to the city.”
Peggy half smiled. “That’s not the only reason you want to go to the village. You want to get another look at those smugglers and get some information about them; now, don’t you?”
“Yes. I want to be able to give the straight facts to the mystery man—if I ever see him again. I want to find out how often those men come to the village—where they go on their trips farther into the interior—what it is they’re smuggling—exactly what route they take on their way back to the border, and——”
“What do you think you are—a glorified kind of Sherlock or a whole detective agency?”
“Neither. Only I think we’ve bumped into a fascinating mystery that’s daring us to solve it. I want to play safe, but if we can get any information that’ll aid in catching that band of smugglers and maybe help keep the mystery man from losing his life, I certainly want to get it.”
“Well, don’t get too venturesome. I’ve known you to get too enthusiastic about your mystery-solving. One good thing, José will go with us to the village. He’ll be our bodyguard without knowing it.”
To the girls’ relief Miss Prudence gave her permission for them to accompany José to the village again. They were ready and waiting impatiently for him several minutes before he appeared with the horses and an extra pack burro.
“I’m afraid those smugglers’ll have come for the pottery and gone before we get to the village, at this rate,” Jo Ann fumed while she was waiting.
Peggy grinned. “So much the better for us. I, for one, never want to see them.”
“I’ve got to find out their plans some way or other.”
As before, they rode down the mountain, then left their horses and the burro at the rough thatched shed where their car was stored.
“Let’s give this shed a name,” Peggy suggested as they climbed into the car.
“All right,” Jo Ann agreed. “How about calling it Jitters’ House? That’s what it is now. It’s the first time the garage was so far away that I had to ride horseback to get to it.”
Peggy smiled. “Hereafter, then, this is Jitters’ House.”
On nearing the Mexican woman’s shack Jo Ann began looking eagerly to see if the pottery were still piled up beside it.
“Good!” she exclaimed. “The pottery’s still there. That means the men haven’t——” She stopped in the middle of her sentence. José was beginning to understand English much better now that he was staying at Mr. Eldridge’s home, and so might be able to get an inkling of what she was talking about.
As it was, Peggy understood, since Jo Ann had been worrying all the way down the mountain lest the pottery and the men should be gone.
Jo Ann drove straight to Pedro’s store, the scheduled meeting place again, as it had been the day they had all driven from the city. There was no sign of Florence’s small trim figure to be seen outside the store or inside.
“Maybe we’re too early,” Peggy suggested.
“We have to wait for the mail, anyway—it hasn’t come yet, Pedro said,” Jo Ann replied. “If there isn’t a letter from her, we’ll know she’s coming and will wait till she appears. This delay suits me to a T.”
“Don’t I know it! You’re just aching for those old smugglers to appear while we’re here. I hope they don’t.”
Undisturbed, Jo Ann went on, “While we’re waiting, let’s you and me go back to that shack and find out if any of the family knows exactly when the men are coming after the pottery.”
“We-ell, I s’pose there couldn’t be any danger about asking a few questions.”
Peggy climbed back into the car with Jo Ann, leaving José squatting on the sidewalk smoking his corn-shuck cigarette and chatting with a group of his peon friends.
When they stopped in front of the shack, they noticed a little dark-eyed girl, the tallest of the stair-step children she had seen previously, standing close to the piles of pottery. Jo Ann promptly leaped out of the car and walked over and began admiring the pottery.
“Theollasare very beautiful,” she said in her slow Spanish. “Did you help to decorate them?”
“Sí, I fix this one.” She picked up a small, brightly colored jar.
“It is lovely,” admired Jo Ann. “You are very artistic.”
The girl’s black eyes shone, and two dimples twinkled in her olive-tinted cheeks at this praise.
After she had looked at the pottery a few minutes longer, Jo Ann asked haltingly, “Do you know when the men are coming for yourollas?”
“Sí,” the girl nodded, her long black braids swaying with the motion. “They tell my papa they comemañana.”
“Mañana,” Jo repeated to herself discouragedly. That was the most indefinite word in the Spanish language. It might mean tomorrow, and it might mean any time in months to come. “Do you mean Friday?” she asked.
“Sí, Friday.”
“What time?”
The girl shrugged her shoulders. “Maybe in the morning; maybe in the afternoon—I do not know.”
“What time did they come last time they bought your pottery?”
The child shook her head. “I do not remember.”
Just then the girl’s mother appeared in the doorway and smiled broadly on recognizing Jo Ann and Peggy.
Jo Ann walked over to the door and, after exchanging greetings with her, asked if she knew exactly when the men were coming after the pottery, ending, “Maybe they will sell me some more of your beautifulollaswhen they come.”
The woman answered with the same gesture as had her daughter—a shrug of her shoulders and, “I do not know.”
“When do they usually come?” Jo Ann persisted.
“Last time they come about this hour. They stop at Pedro’s store first; then they come here.”
Jo Ann’s eyes brightened. At last she had secured a bit of information.
As it turned out, this was the only piece forthcoming. Question after question brought forth only the inevitable but expressive shrug of the shoulders.
Though she could see Jo Ann was discouraged, Peggy could not help smiling and asking teasingly, “Have you learned yet what this means?” She raised her eyebrows and shrugged her shoulders in true Mexican style.
“Silly!” Jo Ann exploded. The next moment she grinned and replied, “It means anything and everything. I’m going to cultivate that gesture myself and use it when anyone tries to quiz me.”
When they reached the store, the mail had arrived and in it a letter from Florence.
Jo Ann tore open the envelope quickly, glanced over the short note, and handed it to Peggy, saying, “She’ll be here tomorrow afternoon—and so’ll we be here.” To herself she added that there might be two others who probably would not be very comfortable persons to have near.
The girls had thought that as usual José would accompany them to the village the next day. As it happened, however, there was some extra work for him to do about the mine, and Mr. Eldridge decided to send Carlitos and Pepito as escorts for them in place of José. “Each boy can ride a horse, and then on the way back they can ride double, as they did the first day, and let Florence have the extra horse,” he said.
“Fine!” Jo Ann exclaimed.
Peggy was silent. The thought had darted into her mind that if those smugglers should chance to be in the village at the same time that they were, it would be more comfortable to have José along instead of the boys.
When they reached Jitters’ House, the boys suddenly decided to stay there and wait for the girls. “Pepito and I are going to build a dam in this stream,” Carlitos explained, gesturing toward the small stream near by.
When a half hour later the girls passed the pottery woman’s shack without seeing any sign of the smugglers’ car, Peggy breathed a little more freely. “We’ll probably leave before they get here,” she thought.
As if in answer to her thoughts, Jo Ann spoke up briskly, “I see where we’ll have to wait around the village till those men come. Since the pottery’s still there, I know they haven’t come yet.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t do that,” Peggy answered quickly. “We might have to stay so long it’d be dark before we’d get back to the mine.”
“Of course we can’t wait that long. I’m in hopes they’ll come soon, but I want to see them if I possibly can.”
When they came in sight of Pedro’s store, they saw Florence standing out in front, looking up the narrow street.
“Attaboy! There she is!” cried Jo Ann.
“She sees us now!” Peggy waved both arms vigorously, a gesture that was answered equally enthusiastically by Florence.
As soon as the three girls had exchanged the warmest of greetings and Florence and her baggage were settled in the car, Jo Ann broke into an account of having seen the smugglers’ car, and all the other details.
Florence was indignant over the ridiculously low price the men were paying the villagers for their pottery. “You’re right, Jo. Those men are thieves,” she said. “They’re making three or four hundred per cent profit on the pottery, to say nothing of what they’re getting out of their smuggling. I believe I can pay that woman and the other villagers more than you did for theirollas, and ship them to the States, and still break even. When I see these poverty-stricken women with their big families to feed and clothe, I feel I’ve got to help them every chance I get.”
“I do, too,” agreed Jo Ann.
“And I,” added Peggy. “But I don’t want to get those smugglers angry at us. They’ll be furious when they find out you’re planning to buy all the pottery.”
Both Jo Ann and Florence were silent a moment; then Jo Ann remarked, “Maybe we hadn’t better buy all the pottery, because if we do, the men’ll stop coming here altogether, and I won’t get a chance to find out more about them to tell the mystery man. I want to help him—his life’s at stake.”
Florence nodded. “That’s so.” She turned to Peggy then with, “You’re right. We’d better buy only a few pieces of pottery.”
“Let’s drive past the shack now and see if the smugglers’ car is there,” Jo Ann suggested, starting the car even as she spoke.
“That’s all right with me if you’ll keep on driving and not stop,” Peggy spoke up.
Jo Ann drove very slowly past the pottery woman’s house, but there was no sign of any kind of car to be seen. As the pottery was still there, she knew the men were yet to come. She drove on a short distance, then turned into a rough road circling into the village. To Peggy’s disapproval she turned again a few minutes later into the side road leading past the woman’s house.
Almost simultaneously Jo Ann and Florence caught sight of the old car parked beside the house. “The smugglers’ car!” they both gasped.
“Turn as fast as you can and get away from here,” ordered Peggy.
Instead of obeying her command Jo Ann drew the car to the side of the road and stopped. “You stay in the car, Peggy, while Florence and I see if we can find out anything.”
“Oh, do be careful!”
With Peggy’s last words in their minds Jo Ann and Florence approached the shack cautiously, coming up close to the back of the house, where they halted. Though they could not see the smugglers and the woman except by peeping around the corner of the shack, they could hear them talking.
“They’re trying to make her come down on the price, aren’t they?” Jo Ann whispered.
“Yes; trying to force her down to a mere fraction of what theollasare worth.” An angry glint came into Florence’s blue eyes. “I feel like marching right out and telling her not to——” She stopped whispering to listen to the woman’s plaintive reply that she needed the money for food for her children.
Jo Ann caught the woman’s words and their meaning. “Come on, let’s see if we can’t persuade or bluff them into giving more money.”
Without hesitating, Florence stepped out, and together the two marched on around to where the men and the woman were standing.
At their approach the two swarthy-skinned men looked up in surprise. The taller one, who was a little squint-eyed and had a scar on his chin, drew his brows together into a deep frown as he peered from under his sombrero at Jo Ann.
Involuntarily Jo Ann caught her breath as the thought darted into her mind that he looked as if he recognized her. “Perhaps he saw me there in the gully,” she thought.
By that time Florence was talking to the woman in rapid Spanish, offering to buy all her pottery at almost three times more than the men had offered.
The taller man whirled about to stare at Florence and to scowl more fiercely than ever. “It is impossible for you to buy theollas. She promise us all—everything.”
Florence ignored this remark and asked the woman, “How much did they say in the first place that they would pay you?”
Between sobs the woman replied and added, “Now they say they will give me only half of that.”
“Since they won’t pay you what they had promised, then sell your pottery to me.”
Both men broke into a torrent of protests, waving their arms and shaking their heads violently.
While they were absorbed in arguing with Florence, Jo Ann gradually edged over and looked into the back of the car, the bottom of which was filled with pottery packed in straw. After one hasty glance over her shoulder at the men, she reached over and pulled out a largeollafrom the middle.
How heavy it was! She peered into it, then thrust her hand inside. There was a package—a heavy one—at the bottom.
Just then a furious voice rang out, “Put thatollaback in the car!”
She wheeled about to see the shorter one of the men rushing angrily toward her.
In another moment the man had grabbed theollaout of Jo Ann’s hand and had placed it back in its nest of straw in the car. “What are you doing?” he demanded sharply, edging between her and the car. “Leave these alone!”
Jo Ann detected a note of alarm in his voice. “He’s afraid I’ve discovered the contents of thatolla,” she thought. Determined to conceal her nervousness, she replied in as cool and controlled a voice as she could muster, “How much will you take for thatolla?”
The man shook his head. “No—no. It is not for sale.”
“I will give you fiftycentavosfor it.”
“No—no. I cannot sell it.”
“Well, how about seventy-fivecentavos, then?”
The merest shadow of a smile began to spread over the man’s dark, unshaven face. Perhaps here was a chance for him to make a few extracentavos, and no one would be the wiser. He reached down in the car and after rummaging about for a few moments drew up anotherollasimilar to the one Jo Ann had picked up. “Here—I let you have it,” he said, offering it to her.
Jo Ann shook her head. “No, that is not the one I want. It is this one.” She started to lean over the car, but the man stopped her.
“No, this is the only one I have to sell,” he insisted. “See, it is beautiful! Seventy-fivecentavosis very cheap. I do not make anything.”
“Cheap!” Jo Ann flung back at him, her eyes blazing. In her anger she had forgotten to be cautious. “I heard what you’re paying for theseollas. You are a thief. Pay them more money, or I’ll buy them all myself.”
He scowled menacingly at her. “Ah, it was you who put evil things into that woman’s head—demanding more money! They are lucky to get that much. Do not interfere with my business again.Sabe?”
Before she could reply, the other man stepped up, an angry glint snapping in his eyes along with that same half-puzzled expression, as if he were still undecided about her identity. The two men exchanged a few whispered sentences so rapidly that she could not make out a single word. Every now and then they glanced in her direction.
“They’re furious at me,” she thought. “I don’t want them to stop coming to the village. I’d better not say another word.” She glanced over at Florence, who was motioning to her to leave. “Florence has come to the same conclusion. Time we’re leaving this place.”
She walked over to Florence, and after both had bade the woman and her children “Adios,” they started off down the road toward their car.