“You can’t get around it.  You know it as well as I do,” she reiterated.  “Cannibals are worth saving, but before they are saved they are liable to eat the missionary.  And it’s the same thing with your Mexicans.  You want to educate them and raise them to your standards, and that’s all right as far as it goes.  But in the meantime they’re bad.  And if Miss Stevenson wasn’t such a good shot, I wouldn’t be able to sleep nights, thinking of her living up here alone, with just a boy for protection.”

“Why, I never heard of such a thing as any danger from Mexicans!” Helen May looked inquiringly from plump sister to cynical brother.

“Well, you needn’t wonder at Holly not telling you,” said the plump sister,—­her name was Maggie.  “Holly’s a fool about some things.  Holly is trying the Uplift, and he shuts his eyes to things that don’t fit in with his theories.  If you’ve copied much of that stuff he’s been writing, you ought to know how impractical he is.  Holly’s got his head in the clouds, and he won’t look at what’s right under his feet.”  Again she looked reproof at Holly, and again Holly’s lips quirked around the stem end of his pipe.

“You just keep your eyes open, Miss Stevenson,” she admonished, in a purring, comfortable voice.  “I ain’t afraid, myself, because I’ve got Holly and my cousin Todd, when he’s at home.  And besides, Holly’s always doing missionary stunts, and the Mexicans like him because he’ll let them rob him right and left and come back and take what they forgot the first time, and Holly won’t do a thing to them.  But you don’t want to take any chances, away off here like you are.  You lock your door good at night, and you sleep with a gun under your pillow.  And don’t go off anywhere alone.  My, even with a gun you ain’t any too safe!”

Helen May gave a gasp.  But Holman Sommers laughed outright—­an easy, chuckling laugh that partly reassured her.  “Danger is Maggie’s favorite joke,” he said tolerantly.  “As a matter of fact, and speaking from a close, personal knowledge of the people hereabouts, I can assure you, Miss Stevenson, that you are in no danger whatever from the source my sister indicates.”

“Well, but Holly, I’ve said it, and I’ll say it again; you can’t tell what may come up out of Mexico.”  Plump Maggie rolled up her lace and jabbed the ball decisively with the crochet hook, “We’ll have to go now, or the chickens will be wondering where their supper is coming from.  You do what I say, and lock your doors at night, and have your gun handy, Miss Stevenson.  Things may look calm enough on the surface, but they ain’t, I can tell you that!”

“Woman, cease!” cried Holly banteringly, while he dusted his baggy trousers with his palms.  “Miss Stevenson will be haunted by nightmares if you keep on.”

Once they were gone, Helen May surrendered weakly to one fear, to the extent that she let Vic take the carbine and the pinto and ride over to where she had left Pat and the goats, for the simple reason that she dreaded to face alone that much maligned dog.  Vic, to be sure, would have quarreled with her if necessary, to get a ride on the pinto, and he was a good deal astonished at Helen May’s sweet consideration of a boy’s hunger for a horse.  But she tempered his joy a bit by urging him to keep an eye on Pat, who had been acting very queer.