Narcisco gasped audibly, and Rhodes laughed. He had uncovered a couple of dozen empty whiskey bottles, and a tin pan with some broken glass.
"What you trying to start up here in the cañon, Buddy?" he asked. "Playing saloon-keeper with only the gophers for customers?"
He selected a corked bottle evidently clean, rinsed and drank from it.
"Yes--señor--I am here playing--that is all," affirmed Narcisco. "At the house Tia Mariana puts us out because there is a new _niño_--my mother and the new one sleep--and there is no place to make a noise."
"Oh," commented Rhodes, "well, let the black have a little water, and lead him out of the way of mine. This gully isn't wide enough to turn around in."
Obediently the boy led the black to the sunken barrel catching seepage from the barrel under the drip. Rhodes tossed the sack back to the flat rock and noted an old canvas water bottle beside the heap, it was half full of something--not water, for it was uncorked and the mouth of it a-glitter with shimmering particles like diamond dust, and the same powder was over a white spot on the rock--the lad evidently was playing miller and pounding broken glass into a semblance of meal.
"Funny stunt, that!" he pondered, and, smiling, watched the frightened boy. "Herrara certainly is doing a bit of collecting _vino_ to have a stock of bottles that size, and the poor kid's nothing else to play with."
He mounted and rode on, leaving Narcisco to lead the black to his mistress. He could not get out of his mind the fright in the eyes of the boy. Was Herrara a brute to his family, and had Narcisco taken to flight to hide his simple playthings under the mistaken idea that the horseman was his father returned early from the ranges?
That was the only solution Rhodes could find to the problem, though he milled it around in his mind quite a bit. Unless the boy was curiously weak-minded and frightened at the face of a stranger it was the only explanation he could find, yet the boys of Herrara had always struck him as rather bright. In fact Conrad had promoted Juanito to the position of special messenger; he could ride like the wind and never forget a word.
The shadows lengthened as he circled the little cañon of the Ojo Verde and noted the water dripping from the full tanks, ideal for the colt range for three months. He took note that Herrara was not neglecting anything, despite that collection of bottles. There was no wastage and the pipes connecting the tanks were in good condition.