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. "He kept ruining up his back and showing his teeth at Mr. Sommers," she explained nervously. "If he does it when you go, Vic, and if he foams at the mouth, you'd better shoot him before he bites something. If a mad dog bites you, you'll get hydrophobia, and bark and growl like a dog, and have fits and die." "G-oo-d _night_!" Vic ejaculated fervently, and went loping awkwardly down the trail past the spring. That left Helen May alone and free to think about the horrors that might come up out of Mexico, and about the ignorant Mexicans who, until they are uplifted, are bad. It seemed strange that, if this were true, Starr had never mentioned the danger. And yet-- "I'll bet anything that's just what Starr-of-the-Desert did mean!" she exclaimed aloud, her eyes fixed intently on the toes of her scuffed boots. "He just didn't want to scare me too much and make me suspicious of everybody that came along, and so he talked mad coyotes at me. But it was Mexicans he meant; I'll bet anything it was!"