The man she spoke to looked keenly at her.
"The officers feel pretty sure he'll make his way down the lake side," he explained, "eventually landing among his own people."
A flash of the brown eyes and a quick stiffening of the supple body under the red curls expressed the girl's resentment at the slur implied in the speaker's statement.
"Among us squatters, I s'pose ye mean?" demanded Tess, belligerently.
"Yes," nodded the elder, with a contemptuous smile at the angry young face.
Tess hated that tone in people's voices when they talked about squatters.
"And I was wondering if you wouldn't like to earn the reward offered for Bishop's capture," Waldstricker finished abruptly.
Tessibel's foresight had discounted the effect of this announcement. To save Andy, she must deceive Waldstricker and persuade him to leave the search of the Silent City in her hands. Her brown eyes were bright with her purpose; she smiled slowly up at him showing every white tooth.
"You bet I would!" she exclaimed, shaking her curls as she tossed her head. "How much air it, huh?"
"Five thousand dollars," replied Waldstricker.
"Jeedy!" gasped Tess. "That air a pile of money. I bet I earn it!... What'd ye bet?"
She turned impetuously to Deforrest Young, and he laughed.
"I hope you may!" was all he said.
Tess was all eagerness now, her cheeks flaming and her eyes dancing.
"But I wouldn't know the man if I seen 'im in any of the squatter's huts, huh?"
She flung this at Waldstricker, more of a question than a statement.
"He's a dwarf," he answered immediately, "and very small--like this. Sandy Letts knows him and is looking for him, too."
At his statement, Tessibel's quick imagination pictured Sandy's brutal face and greedy eyes, and for a moment her flaming courage almost faltered.
"If a dwarf sneaks down here," she observed with a sweep of her hand toward the door, "I'd get 'im easy. I know everybody."
"But would I have to halve up with Sandy, eh?" she continued, as though struck with a new thought.
"Not unless Sandy helped you find him," Ebenezer replied genially. "You could do as you pleased about that."
"Oh, Sandy couldn't help me, not a bit," Tess argued earnestly. "Sandy ain't liked any too well 'round here."
"Well, manage it as you choose."
Waldstricker smiled at his success with the girl. "I don't care for Sandy myself," he continued. "All I want is to get Andy Bishop." His face hardened with hate as he pronounced the dwarf's name.
Tess put her hands under the curls over each shoulder and drew them together beneath her chin.