“Eels couldn’t have done that slicker!” commented Ephraim, in surprise. For, behold! his arms were empty and the flash of twinkling legs along the garden path pointed whither his charges had fled. “Here they were and here they aren’t, and whatever scared them that way is more than I can see.”

Indeed, though he shaded his eyes with his hand and made a prolonged examination of the outlook, nothing different from ordinary was visible; and, after a moment’s reflection, he sought Aunt Sally and reported:

“Well, Mrs. Benton, I ’low I’m doomed to that dose of picra, for I––I––– You see–––”

“Ephraim Ma’sh, where’s them children?”

“That’s just exactly what I’d like to know myself, neighbor.”

“Huh! You needn’t go ‘neighborin’’ me, if that’s all you’re worth. Tryin’ fool capers like a boy, ain’t you? Think it was terr’ble clever to cut strings that I’d took the trouble to tie and then settin’ them youngsters free. Well, all I have to say is that you’ve done more harm than you can undo in a hurry, and that’s the true word,” retorted the indignant matron, beating a bowlful of eggs as she would have enjoyed beating him just then.

Ephraim crossed the kitchen and laid one hand on her shoulder, saying:

“Come, Sally, let’s quit chasing about the bush. There’s something more in this nonsense than appears, and if you’re a true and loyal friend to this family I’m another as good. Two heads are better than one, you know–––”

“Even if one belongs to a silly old feller like you? H’m Ephraim, you’re right! There is somethin’ more’n shows outside. That candy was a bait, a trap, a lure, a––anything you choose; and I do hope the little fellers are safer’n I fear they be. If I catch ’em again, for their good–––My suz! Here they’re comin’ back of their own free will and wonder ain’t ceased!”

Indeed, as swiftly as they had scampered away, the lads were returning and burst into the kitchen, crying with what little breath they had left:

“Aunt Sally, lock me up! Lock us up tight! Quick––quick! I seen him! He’ll do it! My mother says Antonio always does do things, he does! Quick, quick!”

“Lock up, quick!”

Ned and the echo swung round behind the matron’s capacious person and rolled themselves in the folds of her full skirt, which performance hid them from the view of anyone outside and as effectually interfered with her movements.

But she had now caught something of their excitement, and their appeal to her protection had promptly banished her last trace of anger against them.

“So I will, lambies, so I will. You just keep on a steppin’ backwards and I’ll do it, too, and first we 133 know we’ll get to that nice pantry where we stayed last night. I’ve got the key to that, even if ’tis rusty from not bein’ often used, and I’ll defy anybody to get it away from me.”

Still beating her eggs as if nothing uncommon were happening, the housewife retreated toward the door in question, and slipping one hand behind her opened it without turning her head. She was instantly relieved of the drag upon her skirts, and quietly shut the door again upon her self-imprisoned charges. Then she drew a long breath, and exclaimed:

“Well, sharpshooter, what do you think of that?”

“Looks as if you couldn’t have been so very hard on them, else they’d never come back.”

“I ain’t a-flatterin’ myself. That was a ‘Hobson’s choice.’ But–––”

“But they must have been badly frightened to have done it.”

“Yes, Ephraim, they are, and I am. I’m so stirred up I don’t know whether I’ve beat these eggs all one way, like I ought, or forty-’leven different ones, like I ought not. I’m flustered. I’m completely flustered, and that ain’t often my case.”

“Picra!” sympathetically suggested the old man.

Aunt Sally’s eyes snapped, and she smiled grimly, as she retorted:

“Picra’s good for them ’at need it. That’s you, not me. It ain’t a medicine for in’ards so much as ’tis for out’ards. I mean, it’s better for the body than ’tis for the mind, and it’s my mind that’s ailin’ me! Besides, doctors never take their own doses.”

“You know it yourself! I thought your mind was failing you, but–––”

“No such thing. I said, or I meant to say, I was troubled in it. That’s all; and if you’re a mite of a man you’ll try and help me unravel this tangle and quit foolin’. Just step into that closet with me and maybe the tackers’ll tell you themselves. I’d rather you heard it first hand, anyway.”

Wun Lung, sifting flour in one part of the kitchen, and Pasqual scrubbing a kneading board at the sink, both paused and eyed the strange proceedings with curiosity if not displeasure; for not only had the children been bestowed within the “cold closet,” but Aunt Sally and Ephraim had, also, followed and locked themselves out of sight and hearing.

The pantry was absolutely dark, until Mrs. Benton found a candle and lighted it; then she pointed to the chair she had occupied during the night, mutely inviting “Forty-niner” to be seated. He declined the proffered courtesy, so she sat down herself, and it amused him that she had not once stopped that monotonous whisking of the eggs, though by this time the dish was heaped with their frothy substance.

“The cake you make of them should be light enough,” he remarked, with a smile.

“You’re right. There’s such a thing as overbeatin’––everything. Well, laddies, we’re all back in here together again, and auntie wants you to tell Mr. Ma’sh where you got that candy; who give it to you; what for; where you saw that sneaky snake, Antonio Bernal; what you’ve done with the staff wand; and all the rest of it? ‘Forty-niner’ is a man and a gentleman–––”

“Here the sharpshooter bowed profoundly, acknowledging the compliment with a humorous expression; 135 but the matron continued as if she had not observed him:

“You see, I know all about it, even if you wouldn’t tell. I’m one has eyes on the back of my head and on its top, too, I tell you, so you needn’t try to think I don’t see what’s going on, for I do.”

The faces of her small listeners showed utter amazement; then with one of his flashlike movements Ned sprang to the back of her chair and passed his hand rapidly all over her gray curls.

“Where are they, Aunt Sally? I can’t find ’em. I never saw ’em in all my life, and do––do, please, show them to me!” he implored.

Luis scrambled up the other side, and echoed:

“Never show ’em in m’life!”

“That’s all right. I don’t keep ’em in exhibition, but they’re there all the same.”

“Sally Benton!” expostulated Ephraim. “Don’t tell them wrong stories.”

“But it isn’t a wrong story; it’s a right one. If they’re not real, actual eyes, there’s something in my head takes their place. Might as well say ‘eyes’ as ‘brains,’ I judge. But, be you going to answer, Edward Trent? I’ve got a prime lot of cookin’ to do again, and no time to waste. ’Cause if you ain’t I’ll just take Mr. Ma’sh with me and lock you shavers in here alone, where you’ll be safe, but sort of homesick. I shan’t leave no candle burnin’, for you to set the house afire with. So you best tell, right away, and then be let out to have a good time.”

Luis began to whisper, and beg:

“Tell her, Ned. Tell her. I hate the dark––I do, I do!”

Ned hesitated but a moment longer. He loved his playmate as his own soul, and it altered nothing of this childish David-and-Jonathan friendship that it was as full of fight as of affection. Patting Luis’ shoulder, he cried:

“’Course I’ll tell, though if she knows it all a’ready–––”

“But I don’t know it, Ned. She wants you to tell me. I’m one of us, you see––just we four,” interposed the sharpshooter, hastily.

“Well––well––well, ’tisn’t anyhow. Only I saw––I––saw–––”

Here the child paused and peered cautiously about.

Mr. Marsh promptly sat down upon the boards and motioned the lads to come to him, and when they had done so, closed his arms around them, with a comforting pressure, saying:

“There now! We’re as snug as bugs in a rug, and nobody in the wide world dare harm you. Hurry up and talk fast, or you and I will never get a taste of that fine poundcake Aunt Sally wants to make.”

Another moment of hesitation, and then came Ned’s triumphant statement:

“’Twasn’t no ghost, anyhow.”

“Of course it wasn’t,” answered “Forty-niner,” promptly agreeing, but considerably puzzled. He had not, as yet, heard from any of the others about the “vision” which Mrs. Benton had seen beside the window.

“’Twasn’t nobody but ’Tonio himself.”

“That’s exactly what I thought,” he again agreed, and encouragingly patted the boy’s hand.

“And he come––and he come––and he gave us one––two boxes of that nice, nice candy; and all we gave him was Pedro’s old stick!”

Aunt Sally’s egg beater fell to the floor unheeded, this time she really put her spectacles in their proper place and stared through them at the narrator.

Ned warmed to his task and Luis cuddled beside him, complacently adding his affirmative “Yep,” at fitting intervals.

“And so he said it wasn’t nothin’. And so––and so––I fell offen the bookcase and made a noise; and my mother didn’t hear it ’cause she was asleep. Me and Luis was asleep, wasn’t we, Luis?”

“Yep. Sleep.”

“And he waked us up through the window–––”

“Waked froo winder, yep.”

“And said: ‘Go get that pointed stick, Ned Trent, and I’ll give you a dollar.’ Didn’t he?”

“Gimme dollar. Didn’t gimme dollar. What’s a dollar?” asked the echo.

Ned went on, unheeding:

“And I said no. ’Twasn’t my stick; ’twas my mother’s.”

“Oh! Neddy, Neddy! if you’d only stuck to that!” groaned Mrs. Benton, wiping her face with her apron.

But being now fairly launched upon his narrative, and also feeling wholly secure within the shelter of “Forty-niner’s” arms, Ned paused no more till he had completed it:

“And then he gave us the candy, ’cause I didn’t want dollars. You can’t eat dollars, can you? And the candy was like the kind my mother never gives, and just for an old stick was older than Pedro. Huh! And then he––he––he made me put my hand on the top of my head–––”

“Hands on tops of heads!” cried the echo, dramatically.

“And swore a swore I’d never, never, honest Injun, tell a single tell, else he’d––he’d kill me! Kill me right straight down dead! And now I have and he will, and I forgot and you made me! I hate you, I hate you! And won’t you feel bad when I’m all deaded and you you done it, ’stead of him––and––and–––”

The sense of security had fled instantly, and completely. The memory of Antonio’s dark face as he had stood threateningly before the little fellow, at midnight by the window, returned with all its vivid, terrorizing power. Springing to the farthest reach of the room Ned crouched there, wide-eyed and trembling, and, of course, Luis followed his example.

To “Forty-niner’s” reassuring words, and to Mrs. Benton’s cajoling ones, neither child paid any further heed. They had been trained to believe that their promised word was the most sacred of all things, and now they had not only been induced to break that, but to break it in the face of Antonio Bernal’s terrible threat.

The elders left them to themselves and regarded one another with regretful eyes. Then Aunt Sally repeated in detail all that there was to tell concerning the curious wand which had pointed the way to wealth; and now Ephraim listened in vast respect. 139 On the first recital, so hurriedly given by Jessica, and when she had run to get the staff, he had thought of the matter as one of the shepherd’s “pious mummeries.” It now assumed a graver aspect. The lost staff might possess some magnetic quality which was invaluable, as Old Century believed; but beyond all that was the uncomfortable reflection that Antonio Bernal was somewhere in hiding about Sobrante, and that doubtless it had been he, or his emissary, who had tampered with the mail pouch and caused Marty’s disaster.

“Well, a man that hides must have somethin’ to be ashamed of. And I believe every single word that child has told,” said Aunt Sally, in conclusion of her long harangue.

“H’m! I thought that ‘snake’ had had his fang extracted down there at Los Angeles; but it seems he’s the sort can grow a new one, when needed. Well, I’m powerful glad I’m home again. It takes a lot of honest men to keep watch of one thief, and I’ll prove handy. I’m off. I leave the lads with you. I’m going to find out three things: How Ferd, the dwarf, managed to break jail that night and leave no sign; who robbed that mail pouch; and where Antonio Bernal is at this precious minute.”

“Here, at your service, amigo!” cried a mocking voice, outside the shuttered window. A voice that all recognized at once as belonging to the late manager; yet, when Ephraim had hastily run out and around to that side of the house, there was nobody within sight; and nothing to be heard save the series of terrified shrieks which issued from the room he had left.