"You bet we're Americano, Tula, and so will you be when we get you over the border," stated Rhodes recklessly. "I don't know how we are going to do it, Cap, but I swear I'm not going to let a plucky little girl like that go adrift to be lifted by the next gang of raiders. We need a mascot anyway, and she is going to be it."

"You're a nice sort of seasoned veteran, Bub," admitted Pike dryly, "but in adopting a family it might be as well to begin with a he mascot instead of what you've picked. A young filly like that might turn hoodoo."

"I reckon I'd have halted for a sober second thought if it hadn't been for that other girl under the stones down there," agreed Rhodes. "But shucks!—with all the refugees we're feeding across the line where's the obstacle to this one?"

The old prospector was busy with the wounded head for the Indian and had no reply ready, but shook his head ominously. Rhodes scowled and began uncoiling a reata in case it would be needed to tie Miguel in the saddle.

"We've got to get some hustle to this outfit," he observed glancing at the sun. "It's too far to take them back to Whitely's, and water has to be had. We are really nearer to Soledad!"

The Indian girl came closer to him, speaking in a low, level manner, strange and secretive, yet not a whisper.

"He does know—and water is there at that place," she said. "In the night I am hearing him speak all what the ancients hide. He no can walk to that place, maybe I no can walk, but go you for the gold in the hidden canon. You are Americano,—strong,—is it not? A brave heart and much of gold of rose would bring safe again the mother of me and my sister! All this I listen to in the night. For them the gold of rose by the hidden water is to be uncovered again. But see, his hands are weak, his head is like the nino in the reed basket. A stronger heart must find the way—it is you."

Lowly, haltingly, she kept on that level-voiced decision. It was evident that the ravings of her father through the long hours of the dreadful night had filled her mind with his one desire: to dare the very gods that the red gold might be uncovered again, and purchase freedom for the Indians on the exile road to the coast.

So low were her words that even Cap Pike, a rod away, only heard the voice, but not the subject. It was further evident that she meant but the one man to hear. Pike had white hair and to her mind was, like her father, to be protected from responsibilities, but Rhodes loomed strong and kind, and braced by youth for any task.

Rhodes looked at her pityingly, and patted her head.

"I reckon we're all a little loco, kid," he observed. "You're so paralyzed with the hell you saw, and his ravings that you think his dope of the gold is all gospel, but it's only a dream, sister,—a sick man's fancy, though you sure had me going for a minute, plum hypnotized by the picture."

"It is to hide always," she said. "No man must know. No other eyes must see, only you!"

"Sure," he agreed.

"You promising all?"

"Sure again! Just to comfort you I promise that when I find the gold of El Alisal I will use it to help get your people."

"Half," she decided. "Half to you."

"Half it is! You're a great little planner for your size, kid. Too bad it's only a dream."

Cap Pike rose to his feet, and gave a hand to Miguel, who reeled, and then steadied himself gradually.

"Most thanks, senor," he whispered, "and when we reach the water——"

They helped him into the saddle, and Rhodes walked beside, holding him as he swayed.

They passed the new-made grave in the sand, and Rhodes turned to the girl. "Sister," he said, "lift two stones and add to that pile there, one for you and one for your father. Also look around and remember this place."

"I am no forgetting it," she said as she lifted a stone and placed it as he told her. "It is here the exile trail. I mark the place where you take for me the Americano road, and not the south road of the lost. So it is,—these stone make witness."

"I'll be shot if I don't believe you are old Cajames stock," said Cap Pike staring at her, and then meeting the gaze of Rhodes in wonder at her clear-cut summing up of the situation. "But he was a handful for the government in his day, Bub, and I'm hornswaggled if I'd pick out his breed for a kindergarten."

The girl heard and understood at least the jocular tenor of his meaning, but no glance in his direction indicated it. She placed the second stone, and then in obedience to Rhodes she looked back the way she had come where the desert growth crisped in the waves of heat. On one side lay the low, cactus-dotted hillocks, and on the other the sage green and dull yellow faded into the blue mists of the eastern range.

"I am no forgetting it, this place ever," she said and then lifted her water bottle and trudged on beside Rhodes. "It is where my trail begins, with you."

Cape Pike grinned at the joke on the boy, for it looked as if the Yaqui girl were adopting him!



CHAPTER IX

A MEETING AT YAQUI WELL

Good luck was with them, for the water hole in Yaqui canon had not been either muddied or exhausted, evidence that the raiders had not ranged that way. The sorry looking quartette fairly staggered into the little canon, and the animals were frantic with desire to drink their fill.

"I was so near fried that the first gallon fairly sizzled down my gullet," confessed Cap Pike after a long glorious hour of rest under the alamos with saturated handkerchief over his burning eyes. "That last three mile stretch was hell's back yard for me. How you reckon the little trick over there ever stood it?"

The Indian girl was resting near her father, and every little while putting water on his face and hands. When she heard the voice of Pike she sat up, and then started quietly to pick up dry yucca stalks and bits of brushwood for a fire.

"Look at that, would you, Bub," commented Pike, "the minute she sees you commence to open the cook kit she is rustling for firewood. That little devil is made of whalebone for toughness. Why, even the burros are played out, but she is fresh as a daisy after a half hour's rest!"

Rhodes noted that the excitement by which she had been swayed to confidence in the morning had apparently burned out on the trail, for she spoke no more, only served silently as generations of her mothers of the desert had done, and waited, crouched back of her father, while the men ate the slender meal of carne seco, atole, and coffee.

Cap Pike suggested that she join them, but it was her adopted guardian who protested.

"We won't change their ways of women," he decided. "I notice that when white folks try to they are seldom understood. How do we know whether that attitude is an humble effacement, or whether the rank of that martyred ancester exalts her too greatly to allow equality with white stragglers of the range?"

Cap Pike snorted disdain.

"You'll be making a Pocahontas of her if you keep on that 'noble Injun' strain," he remarked.

"Far be it from me! Pocahontas was a gay little hanger-on of the camps,—not like this silent owl! Her mind seems older than her years, and just notice her care of him, will you? I reckon he'd have wandered away and died but for her grip on him through the night."

Miguel sank into sleep almost at once after eating, and the girl waved over him an alamo branch as a fan with one hand, and ate with the other, while Rhodes looked over the scant commissary outfit, reckoning mouths to feed and distance to supplies. The moon was at full, and night travel would save the stock considerably. By the following noon they could reach ranches either west or north. He was conscious of the eyes of the girl ever on his face in mute question, and while Pike bathed the backs of the animals, and led each to stand in the oozy drainage of the meager well, she came close to Kit and spoke.

"You say it is a dream, senor, and you laugh, but the red gold of El Alisal is no dream. He, my father has said it, and after that, I, Tula, may show it to you. Even my mother does not know, but I know. I am of the blood to know. You will take him there, for it is a medicine place, much medicine! He has said it to you, senor, and that gift is great. You will come, alone,—with us, senor?"

Kit smiled at her entreaty, patted her hair, and dug out a worn deck of cards and shuffled them, slowly regarding the sleeping Indian the while.

"What's on your mind?" demanded Cap Pike, returning with his white locks dripping from a skimpy bath. "Our grub stake is about gone, and you've doubled the outfit. What's the next move?"

"I'm playing a game in futures with Miguel," stated Kit, shuffling the cards industriously.

"Sounds loco to me, Bub," observed the veteran. "Present indications are not encouraging as to futures there. Can't you see that he's got a jar from which his mind isn't likely to recover? Not crazy, you know, not a lunatic or dangerous, but just jarred from Pima man back to Yaqui child. That's about the way I reckon it."

"You reckon right, and it's the Yaqui child mind I'm throwing the cards for. Best two out of three wins."

"What the——"

"Highest cards for K. Rhodes, and I hike across the border with our outfit; highest cards for Miguel and my trail is blazed for the red gold of Alisal. This is Miguel's hand—ace high for Miguel!"

Again he shuffled and cut.

"A saucy queen, and red at that! Oh, you charmer!"

"You got to hustle to beat that, Bub. Go on, don't be stingy."

Rhodes cut the third time, then stared and whistled.

"The cards are stacked by the Indian! All three covered with war paint. What's the use in a poor stray white bucking against that?"

He picked out the cards and placed them side by side, ace, king and queen of hearts.

"Three aces could beat them," suggested Pike. "Go on Bub, shuffle them up, don't be a piker."

Rhodes did, and cut ten of clubs.

"Not even the right color," he lamented. "Nothing less than two aces for salvation, and I—don't—get—them!"

A lonely deuce fell on the sand, and Rhodes eyed it sulkily as he rolled a cigarette.

"You poor little runt," he apostrophized the harmless two-spot. "You've kicked me out of the frying pan into the fire, and a good likely blaze at that!"

"Don't reckon I care to go any deeper into trouble than what we've found," decided Pike. "Ordinary Indian scraps are all in the day's work—same with a Mexican outfit—but, Bub, this slave-hunting graft game with the state soldiery doing the raiding is too strong a combine for two lone rangers to buck against. Me for the old U. S. border, and get some of this devilish word to the peace advocates at home."

"They wouldn't believe you, and only about two papers along the border would dare print it," observed Rhodes. "Every time a band of sunny Mexicans loot a ranch or steal women, the word goes north that again the bloodthirsty Yaquis are on the warpath! Those poor devils never leave their fields of their own will, and don't know why the Americans have a holy dread of them. Yet the Yaqui is the best worker south of the line."

"If he wasn't the price wouldn't be worth the slave trader's valuable time," commented Pike.

The Indian girl made a quick gesture of warning, just a sweep outward of her hand along the ground. She didn't even look at them, but down the arroya, the trail they had come.

"Caballos, hombres!" she muttered in her throat.

"The kid's right,—hear them!" said Rhodes, and then he looked at him, and made a strange movement of eyes and head to direct the attention back of her in the thicket of cactus and squat greasewood. He did not look at once, but finally with a circular sweep of the locality, he saw the light glint on a gun barrel along the edge of a little mesa above them.

"Nice friendly attention," he observed. "Someone sizing us up. Time to hit the trail anyway, Cap;—to get through on the grub we have to travel tonight."

He rose and handed the water bottles to the girl to fill, while he tightened cinches.

"It's a long day's trip, Cap," he stated thoughtfully, "a long day out to Carrizal, and a long one back to Mesa Blanca. I'll divide the dust and the grub fifty-fifty, and you get out to some base of supplies. I'd rather you'd take Pardner, and keep on going across the line. The trail is clear from here for you, and enough water holes and settlements for you to get through. I don't think Pardner would last for the back trip, but you can save him by riding at night; the burro and mule are best for us. Here's the dust."

While Pike had been talking of crossing the border, Kit had been rapidly readjusting the provision so that the old chap had enough to carry him to the first settlement, and the gold dust would more than pay for provision the rest of the way.

"Why—say, Bub!" remonstrated Pike. "You're so sudden! I don't allow to leave you by your lonesomes like this. Why, I had planned——"

"There's nothing else to do," decided Rhodes crisply. "If you don't beat it with Pardner, we'll lose him, sure! I'm going to take these Indians back, and you can help most by waiting north of the line till you hear from me. I'll get word to you at Granados. So, if there should be any trouble with these visitors of ours, your trail is clear;—savvy?"

Two men rode into view in the bend of the arroya. A cartridge belt across each shoulder, and one around each waist, was the most important part of their equipment.

"Buenos dias, senors," said one politely, while his little black eyes roved quickly over the group. "Is there still water to be found in the well here? Dios! it is the heat of hell down there in the valley."

"At your service, senor, is water fresh drawn," said Rhodes, and turned to the girl, "Oija, Tulita!—water for the gentlemen. You ride far, senor?"

"From Soledad wells."

"Yes, I know the brand," remarked Rhodes.

"This is a good season in which to avoid too much knowledge, or too good a memory, senor," observed the man who had not spoken. "Many herds will change hands without markets before tranquility is over in Mexico."

"I believe you, senor, and we who have nothing will be the lucky ones," agreed Rhodes, regarding the man with a new interest. He was not handsome, but there was a something quick and untamed in his keen, black eyes, and though the mouth had cruel hard lines, his tone was certainly friendly, yet dominating.

"What have you here?" he asked with a gesture toward Miguel.

"My Indian who tried to save his women from slavers, and was left for dead," stated Rhodes frankly.

"And this?"

He pointed to the girl filling again the water bottles.

"She is mine, senor. We go to our own homes."

"Hum! you should be enlisted in the fights and become capitan, but these would drop by the trail if you left them. Well, another time perhaps, senor! For the water many thanks. Adios!" and with wave of the hand they clattered down the arroya.

"Queer," muttered Rhodes, "did you catch that second chap signal to the gun man in the cactus? He craw-fished back over the mesa and faded away."

"They didn't come for water alone—some scouten' party trailin' every sign found," decided Pike. "I'll bet they had us circled before the two showed themselves. Wonder who they are after?"

"Anyway they didn't think us worth while gathering in, which is a comfort. That second fellow looks like someone I've crossed trails with, but I can't place him."

"They'll place you all right, all right!" prophesied Pike darkly, "you and your interesting family won't need a brand."

Rhodes stared at him a moment and then grinned.

"Right you are, Cap. Wouldn't it be pie for the gossips to slice up for home consumption?"

He kept on grinning as he looked at the poor bit of human flotsam whom he had dubbed "the owl" because of her silence and her eyes. She aroused Miguel without words, watching him keenly for faintest sign of recovery. The food and sleep had refreshed him in body, but the mind was far away. To the girl he gave no notice, and after a long bewildered stare at Rhodes he smiled in a deprecating way.

"Your pardon, Don Jose, that I outsleep the camp," he muttered haltingly. "It is a much sickness of the head to me."

"For that reason must you ride slowly today," stated Rhodes with quick comprehension of the groping mind, though the "Don Jose" puzzled him, and at first chance he loitered behind with the girl and questioned her.

"How makes itself that I must know all the people in the world before I was here on earth?" she asked morosely? "Me he does not know, Don Jose is of Soledad and is of your tallness, so——"

"Know you the man who came for water at the canon well?" he asked, and she looked at him quickly and away.

"The name of the man was not spoke by him, also he said a true word of brands on herds—these days."

"In these days?" reflected Rhodes, amazed at the ungirlish logic. "You know what he meant when he said that?"

"We try that we know—all we, for the Deliverer is he named, and by that name only he is spoke in the prayers we make."

Rhodes stared at her, incredulous, yet wondering if the dusty vaquero looking rider of brief words could be the man who was called outlaw, heathen, and bandit by Calendria, and "Deliverer" by these people of bondage.

"You think that is true;—he will be the deliverer?"

"I not so much think, I am only remembering what the fathers say and the mothers. Their word is that he will be the man, if—if——"

"Well, if what?" he asked as she crossed herself, and dropped her head.

"I am not wanting to say that thing. It is a scare on the heart when it is said."

"I'd rather be prepared for the scare if it strikes me," he announced, and after a thoughtful silence while she padded along beside him, she lowered her voice as though to hide her words from the evil fates.

"Then will I tell it you:—a knife in the back is what they fear for him, or poison in his cup. He is hated by strong haters, also he makes them know fear. I hearing all that in the patio at Palomitas, and old Tio Polonio is often saying all saviors are crucified. How you think?"

Rhodes replied vaguely as to the wisdom of Tio Polonio, for the girl was giving him the point of view of the peon, longing for freedom, yet fatalistic as the desert born ever are. And she had known the rebel leader, Ramon Rotil, all the time!

He had no doubt but that she was right. Her statement explained the familiar appearance of the man he had not met before, though he had seen pictures in newspapers or magazines. Then he fell to wondering what Ramon Rotil was doing in a territory so far from the troops, and——

"Don Jose is one of the strong men who are hating him much," confided the child. "Also Don Jose comes not north alone ever anymore, always the soldiers are his guard. Tio Polonio tells things of these soldiers."

"What kind of things?"

"They are killing boys like rabbits in Canannea,—pacifico boys who could grow to Calendrista soldiers. Such is done by the guard of Don Jose and all the friends of the Deliverer are killed with a quickness. That is how the men of Don Jose Perez please him most, and in the south there are great generals who work also with him, and his hand is made strong, also heavy, and that is what Tio Polonio is telling us often."

When they reached the mouth of the little canon of the Yaqui well where the trails divide, Pike shook hands and climbed into the saddle of Pardner.

"It's the first time I ever took the easy way out, and left the fight alone to a chum,—but I'll do it, Bub, because you could not make a quick get-away with me tagging along. Things look murkier in this territory every minute. You'll either have the time of your life, or a headstone early in the game. Billie and I will put it up though we won't know where you're planted. I don't like it, but the minutes and water for the trail are both precious. Come out quick as you can. So long!"

Pardner, refreshed by cooling drink and an hour's standing in wet mud of the well drainage, stepped off briskly toward the north, while Rhodes lifted Tula to the back of the pack mule, and Miguel unheeding all plans or changes, drooped with closed eyes on the back of the little burro. The manager of the reorganized gold-search syndicate strode along in the blinding glare of the high sun, herding them ahead of him, and as Pike turned for a last look backward at a bend of the trail, the words of the old darkey chant came to him on the desert air:

Oh, there was a frog lived in the spring!



CHAPTER X

A MEXICAN EAGLET

The silver wheel of the moon was rolling into the west when the Indian girl urged the mule forward, and caught the bridle of the burro.

"What is it, Tula?" asked Rhodes, "we are doing well on the trail to Mesa Blanca; why stop here?"

"Look," she said. "See you anything? Know you this place in the road?"

He looked over the sand dunes and scrubby desert growths stretching far and misty under the moon, and, then to the rugged gray range of the mountain spur rising to the south. They were skirting the very edge of it where it rose abruptly from the plain; a very great gray upthrust of granite wall beside them was like a gray blade slanted out of the plain. He had noticed it as one of the landmarks on the road to Mesa Blanca, and on its face were a few curious scratchings or peckings, one a rude sun symbol, and others of stars and waves of water. He recalled remarking to Pike that it must have been a prayer place for some of the old tribes.

"Yes, I know the place, when we reach this big rock it means that we are nearing the border of the ranch, this rock wall tells me that. We can be at Palomitas before noon."

"No," she said, and got down from the mule, "not to Palomitas now. Here we carry the food, and here we hide the saddles, and the mule go free. The burro we take, nothing else."

"Where is a place to hide saddles here?" and he made gesture toward the great granite plane glistening in the moonlight.

"A place is found," she returned, "it is better we ride off the trail at this place."

She did so, circling back the way they had come until they were opposite a more broken part of the mountain side, then she began deftly to help unsaddle.

"Break no brush and make all tracks like an Apache on the trail," she said.

Miguel sat silent on the burro as if asleep. He had never once roused to give heed to the words or the trail through the long ride. At times where the way was rough he would mutter thanks at the help of Kit and sink again into stupor.

"I can't spare that mule," protested Kit, but she nodded her head as if that had been all thought out.

"He will maybe not go far, there is grass and a very little spring below. Come now, I show you that hidden trail."

She picked up one of the packs and led the burro.

"But we can't pack all this at once," decided Kit, who was beginning to feel like the working partner in a nightmare.

"Two times," said Tula, holding up her fingers, "I show you."

She led the way, nervous, silent and in haste, as though in fear of unseen enemies. Rhodes looked after her irritably. He was fagged and worn out by one of the hardest trails he had ever covered, and was in no condition to solve the curious problems of the Indian mind, but the girl had proven a good soldier of the desert, and was, for the first time, betraying anxiety, so as the burro disappeared in the blue mist, and only the faint patter of his hoofs told the way he had gone, Kit picked up the saddle and followed.

The way was rough and there was no trail, simply stumbling between great jagged slabs hewn and tossed recklessly by some convulsion of nature. Occasionally dwarfed and stunted brush, odorous with the faint dew of night, reached out and touched his face as he followed up and up with ever the forbidding lances of granite sharp edged against the sky. From the plain below there was not even an indication that progress would be possible for any human being over the range of shattered rock, and he was surprised to turn a corner and find Tula helping Miguel from the saddle in a little nook where scant herbage grew.

"No, not in this place we camp," she said. "It is good only to hide saddles and rest for my father. Dawn is on the trail, and the other packs must come."

He would have remonstrated about a return trip, but she held up her hand.

"It must be, if you would live," she said. "The eyes of you have not yet seen what they are to see, it is not to be told. All hiding must be with care, or——"

She made swift pantomime of sighting along a gun barrel at him, and even in the shadows he could fancy the deadly half closing of her ungirlish eyes. Tula did not play gaily.

Tired as he was, Kit grinned.

"You win," he said. "Let's hit what would be the breeze if this fried land could stir one up."

They plodded back without further converse, secured the packs, and this time it was Rhodes who led, as there appeared no possible way but the one they had covered. Only once did he make a wrong turn and a sharp "s-st" from the girl warned him of the mistake.

They found Miguel asleep, and Kit Rhodes would willingly have sunk down beside him and achingly striven for the same forgetfulness, but Tula relentlessly shook Miguel awake, got him on the burro, unerringly designated the food bag in the dark, and started again in the lead.

"I reckon you're some sort of Indian devil," decided Kit, shouldering the bag. "No mere mortal ever made this trail or kept it open."

Several times the towering walls suggested the bottom of a well, and as another and another loomed up ahead, he gloomily prophesied an ultimate wall, and the need of wings.

Then, just as the first faint light began in the eastern heavens, he was aware that the uneven trail was going down and down, zig-zagging into a ravine like a great gray bowl, and the bottom of it filled with shadows of night.

The girl was staggering now with exhaustion though she would not confess it. Once she fell, and he lifted her thinking she was hurt, but she clung to him, shaking from weakness, but whispering, "Pronto, pronto!"

"Sure!" he agreed, "all the swiftness the outfit can muster."

Curious odors came to him from the shadowy bowl, not exactly a pleasing fragrance, yet he knew it—But his mind refused to work. As the trail grew wider, and earth was under his feet instead of rock slivers and round boulders, he discovered that he was leading the burro, the grub sack over his shoulder, and with the other arm was supporting the girl, who was evidently walking with closed eyes, able to progress but not to guide herself.

Then there was the swish-swish of grasses about their feet and poor Bunting snatched mouthfuls as all three staggered downward. The light began to grow, and somewhere in the shadowy bowl there was the most blest sound known in the desert, the gurgle of running water!

"We hear it—but we can't believe it—old Buntin'," muttered Kit holding the burro from steady and stubborn attempts to break away, "and you are just loco enough to think you smell it."

Then suddenly their feet struck rock again, not jagged or slippery fragments, but solid paving, and a whiff of faint mist drifted across his face in the gray of the first dawn, and the burro craned his neck forward at the very edge of a black rock basin where warm vapor struck the nostrils like a soporific.

The girl roused herself at a wordless exclamation from Rhodes, and began automatically helping Miguel from the saddle, and stripping him to the breechcloth.

Kit's amazement startled him out of his lethargy of exhaustion. It was light enough now to see that her eyes were bloodshot, and her movements quick with a final desperation.

"There!" she said and motioned towards a shelving place in the rock, "there—medicine—all quick!"

She half lifted the staggering, unconscious Indian, and Kit, perceiving her intention, helped her with Miguel to the shallow edge of the basin where she rolled him over until he was submerged to the shoulder in the shallow bath, cupping her hands she scooped water and drenched his face.

"Why,—it's warm!" muttered Kit.

"Medicine," said Tula, and staggered away.

How Rhodes shed his own garments and slipped into the basin beside Miguel he never knew, only he knew he had found an early substitute for heaven. It was warm sulphur water,—tonic, refreshing and infinitely soothing to every sore muscle and every frazzled nerve. He ducked his head in it, tossed some more over the head and shoulders of the sleeping Indian, and then, submerged to his arms, he promptly drifted into slumber himself.

He wakened to the sound of Baby Bunting pawing around the grub pack. Hunger was his next conviction, for the heavenly rest in the medicine bath had taken every vestige of weariness away. He felt lethargic from the sulphur fumes, and more sleep was an enticing thought, yet he put it from him and got into his clothes after the use of a handkerchief as a bath towel. Miguel still slept and Kit bent over him in some concern, for the sleep appeared curiously deep and still, the breath coming lightly, yet he did not waken when lifted out of the water and covered with a poncho in the shade of a great yucca.

"I reckon it's some dope in these hot springs," decided Kit. "I feel top heavy myself, and won't trouble him till I've rustled some grub and have something to offer. Well, Buntin', we are all here but the daughter of the Glen," he said, rescuing the grub sack, "and if she was a dream and you inveigled me here by your own diabolical powers, I've a hunch this is our graveyard; we'll never see the world and its vanities again!"

A bit of the blue and scarlet on a bush above caught his eye. It was the belt of Tula, and he went upwards vaguely disturbed that he had drifted into ease without question of her welfare.

He found her emerging from a smaller rock basin, her one garment dripping a wet trail as she came towards him. There was no smile in her greeting, but a look of content, of achievement.

"My father," she said, "he is——"

"Sleeping beyond belief! good medicine sleep, I hope."

She nodded her head comprehendingly, for she had done the impossible and had triumphed. She looked at the sack of food he held.

"There is one place for fire, and other water is there. Come, it is to you."

She struck off across the sun-bathed little grass plot to a jumble of rock where a cool spring emerged, ran only a few rods, and sank again out of sight. The shattered rock was as a sponge, so completely was the water sucked downward again. Marks of burro's hoofs were there.

"Baby Buntin' been prospecting while we wallowed in the dope bath," said Kit.

"Maybe so, maybe not," uttered the Indian child, if such she could be called after the super-woman initiative of that forbidding trail. She was down on her knees peering at the tracks in the one little wet spot below the spring.

"Two," she said enigmatically. "That is good, much good. It will be meat."

Then she saw him pulling dry grasses and breaking branches of scrub growth for a fire, and she stood up and motioned him to follow. They were in a narrow, deep ravine separated from the main one by the miniature plain of lush grass, a green cradle of rest in the heart of the gray hills. She went as directly upward as the broken rock would permit, and suddenly he followed her into a blackened cave formed by a great granite slab thrusting itself upwards and enduring through the ages when the broken rock had shattered down to form an opposite wall. And the cloud bursts of the desert had swept through, and washed the sands clear, leaving a high black roof slanting upwards to the summit.

Tula moved ahead into the far shadows. He could see that beyond her somewhere a ray of light filtered blue, but he halted at the entrance, puzzled at the black roof where all the rock of the mountain was gray and white except where mineral streaks were of reds and russets and moldy greens. Then he put his hand up and touched the roof and understood. Soot from ancient fires was discernible on his hand, flakes of it fell to the floor, dry and black, scaling off under pressure. The scales were thick and very old, like blackened moss. He had seen blackened rock like that in other volcanic regions, but this was different.

"It is here," said Tula, and he followed the voice through a darker shadowed bit of the way, then through the ray of light, and then——

The first thing he saw was the raised hearth of a rather pretentious fireplace, or place of fire, for it resembled not at all the tiny little cooking hearth of desert Indians. A stone hatchet lay beside it, and, what was much more surprising, two iron instruments of white man's manufacturing, a wedge and a long chisel.

He picked up the chisel, weighed it in his hand, and looked at the girl. He was now becoming accustomed to the dim light and could see her eyes following his every movement with curious questioning. There was a tiny frowning wrinkle between her brows as if serious matters were being decided there.

"It is here," she said again. "Maybe someone dies when a white friend is shown the way—maybe I die, who knows?—but it is here—El Alisal of the gold of the rose!"

She made a little gesture and moved aside, and the chisel fell to the stone floor with a clang as Kit shouted and dropped on his knees before an incredible thing in the gray wall.

That upthrust of the rock wall had strange variety of color, and between the granite and the gray limestone there was a ragged rusty band of iron as a note of contrast to the sprinkling of glittering quartz catching the ray of light, but the quartz was sprinkled on a six inch band of yellow—not the usual quartz formation with dots of color, but a deep definite yellow held together by white crystals.

"The red gold! it's the red gold!" he said feeling the yellow surface instinctively.

"Yes, senor, it is the red gold of El Alisal, and it is to you," but her eyes were watching him hungrily as she spoke. And something of that pathetic fear penetrated his amazed mind, and he remembered.

"No, Tula, only my share to me. I do the work, but the great share is to you, that it may buy back your mother from the slavers of the south."

"Also my sister," said the girl, and for the first time she wept.

"Come, come! This is the time for joy. The danger is gone, and we are at rest beside this—why, it's a dream come true, the golden dream! Come, help me cook that we may be strong for the work."

She helped silently, fetching water and more sticks for the fire.

There were many things to ask, but he asked no questions, only gazed between bites and sups at the amazing facts facing him.

"I've seen ores and ores in my time, but nothing like this!" he exulted. "Why, I can 'high grade' mule loads of this and take it out without smelting," and then he grinned at his little partner. "We just struck it in time,—meat is mighty near done."

"Plenty meat!" she said nodding her head wisely. "Burro, big burro, wild burro! I see track."

"Wild burro? Sure, that makes it simple till we rest up. You are one great little commissary sergeant."

He noted that the pitch of the roof towards the face of the mountain carried the smoke in a sort of funnel to be sifted through high unseen crannies of shattered rock above. All was dark in the end of the gallery, but a perceptible draught from the portal bore the smoke upward.

"It's too good to be true," he decided, looking it over. "I'm chewing bacon and it tastes natural, but I'm betting with myself that this is a dream, and I'll wake up in the dope pond with my mouth full of sulphur water."

The girl watched him gravely, and ate sparingly, though parched corn had been her only sustenance through the trail of the dreadful night. Her poor sandals were almost cut from her feet, and even while jesting at the unreality of it all, Kit was making mental note of her needs—the wild burro would at least provide green hide sandals for her until better could be found, and she had earned the best.

He was amazed at her keenness. She did not seem to think, but instinctively to feel her way to required knowledge, caring for herself in the desert as a fledgling bird tossed by some storm from the home nest. He remembered there were wild burros in the Sonora hills, but that she should have already located one on this most barren of mountains was but another unbelievable touch to the trail of enchantment, and after a century of lost lives and treasure in the search for the Indian mine, to think that this Indian stray, picked up on a desolate trail, should have been the one to know that secret and lead him to it!

"Other times you have been here?" he asked as he poured coffee in a tin for Miguel, and dug out the last box of crackers from the grub pack.

"Once I come, one time, and it was to make prayer here. It is mine to know, but not my mother, not other peoples, only the father of me and me. If I die then he show the trail to other one, not if I live. That is how."

"He surely picked the right member of his honorable family," decided Kit. "Only once over the trail, once?"

"I knowing it long before I see it," she explained gravely. "The father of me make that trail in the sand for my eyes when I am only little. I make the same for him in a game to play. When I make every turn right, and name the place, and never forget—then he bring me, for it is mine to know."

"Sufferin' cats!" muttered Rhodes, eyeing her in wonder. "The next time I see an Indian kid playing in the sand, I'll linger on the trail and absorb wisdom!"

"Come," she said, "you not seeing the one enchant look, the—how you say?—the not believe look."

"Well, take it from me, Cinderella, I'm seeing not believe things this very now," announced Kit, giving a fond look towards that comforting gleam of yellow metal bedding flecks of quartz. "I see it, but will have to sleep, and wake up to find it in the same place before I can believe what I think I see."

With the food and drink for Miguel in his hands he had followed the girl through the shadowed gallery of the slanting smoke-stained roof. His eyes were mainly directed to the rock floor lest he stumble and spill the precious coffee; thus he gave slight thought to the little ravine up which she had led him to the cave which was also a mine.

But as he stepped out into the sunlight she stood looking up into his face with almost a smile, the first he had seen in her wistful tragic eyes. Then she lifted her hand and pointed straight out, and the "enchant look," the "not believe" look was there! He stared as at a mirage for an incredulous moment, and then whispered, "Great God of the Desert!"

For a little space, a few rods only, the mountain dipped steeply, and trickling water from above fell in little cascades to lower levels, where a great jagged wall of impregnable granite arose as a barrier along the foot of the mountain.

But he was above the sharp outline of the huge saw with the jagged granite teeth, and between the serrated edges he could look far across the yellow-gray reaches of sand and desert growths. Far and wide was the "not believe" look, to the blue phantom-like peaks on the horizon, but between the two ranges was a white line with curious dots drifting and whirling like flies along it, and smoke curling up, and——

Then it was he uttered the incredulous cry, for he was indeed viewing the thing scarce to be believed.

He was looking across the great Rancho Soledad, and the white line against the sand was the wall of the old mission where the vaqueros were herding a band of horses into the great quadrangle of the one-time patio turned into a corral since the buildings on three sides had melted down again into mother earth.

He remembered riding around these lines of the old arches seeking trace of that door of the legend,—the door from which the aliso tree of the mine could be seen,—and there was nowhere a trace of a door.

"Queer that every other part of the prospect developed according to specifications and not the door," he grumbled whimsically. "Cinderella, why have you hid the door in the wall from me?"

She looked around uncertainly, not understanding.

"No portal but it," she said with a movement of her head towards the great slab forming a pointed arch against the mountain and shielding the unbelievable richness there, "also El Alisal, the great tree, is gone. This was the place of it; the old ones tell my father it was as chief of the trees and stand high to be seen. The sky fire took it, and took the padres that time they make an altar in this place."

"Um," assented Kit, noting traces of ancient charcoal where the aliso tree had grown great in the moisture of the spring before lightning had decided its tragic finish, "a great storm it must have been to send sky fire enough to kill them all."

"Yes," said Tula quietly,—"also there was already another shrine at this place, and the gods near."

He glanced at her quickly and away.

"Sure," he agreed, "sure, that's how it must have been. They destroyed the aliso and there was no other landmark to steer by. White men might find a thousand other dimples in the range but never this one, the saw-tooth range below us has the best of them buffaloed. Come along, Senorita Aladdin, and help me with the guardian of the treasure. We've got to look after Miguel, and then start in where the padres left off. And you might do a prayer stunt or two at the shrine you mentioned. We need all the good medicine help you can evoke."

As they approached the pool where the faintest mist drifted above the water warm from hidden fires of the mountain, Kit halted before he quite reached the still form beside the yucca, and, handing the food and drink to the girl, he went forward alone.

He was puzzled afterward as to why he had done that, for no fold of the garment was disturbed, nothing visible to occasion doubt, yet he bent over and lifted the cover very gently. The face of Miguel was strangely gray and there was no longer sign of breath. The medicine of the sacred pool had given him rest, but not life.

He replaced the blanket and turned to the girl;—the last of the guardians of the shrine of the red gold.

"Little sister," he said, "Miguel grew tired of the trails of a hard land. He has made his choice to go asleep here in the place where you tell me the gods are near. He does not want us to have sad hearts, for he was very sad and very tired, and he will not need food, Tula."

Her eyes filled with tears, but she made no reply, only unbound her hair as she had seen mourning women do, and seated herself apart, her face hidden in her arms.

"No one is left to mourn but me, and I mourn!" she half chanted. "I say it for the mother of me, and for my sister, that the ghosts may listen. Happily he is going now from hard trails! He has chosen at this place! Happily he has chosen, and only we are sad. No debt is ours to pay at this place; he has chosen—and a life is paid at El Alisal! Happily he will find the trail of the birds from this place, and the trail of the clouds over the high mountain. No one is left to mourn but me; and I mourn!"

Rhodes understood no word of her lamentations, chanted now loudly, now lowly, at intervals hour after hour that day. He set grimly to work digging a grave in the lower part of the ravine, gathering dry grass for lining as best he could to make clear to the girl that no lack of care or honor was shown the last man of Cajame's stock.

The work took most of the day, for he carried stone and built a wall around the grave and covered it with slatelike slabs gathered from a shattered upheaval of long ago.

Tula watched all this gravely, and with approval, for she drew with her finger the mark of the sun symbol on one of the slabs.

"It is well to make that mark," she said, "for the sons of Cajame were priests of the sun. The sign is on the great rock of the trail, and it is theirs."

With the chisel he carved the symbol as she suggested, glad to do anything for the one mourner for the dead man who had offered the treasure of the desert to him.

"That is how he made choice," she said when it was marked plainly. "Me, I think he was leading us on the night trail to this place—I think so. He is here to guard the gold of El Alisal for you. That is how it will be. He has made choice."

Kit got away by himself to think over the unexpected situation. The girl climbed to a higher point, seated herself, and continued her chant of mourning. He knew she was following, as best she knew, the traditional formalities of a woman for the death of a chief. He found himself more affected by that brave fatalistic recital, now loud and brave, now weirdly slow and tender, than if she had given way to tempests of tears. A man could comfort and console a weeping stray of the desert, but not a girl who sat with unbound hair under the yucca and called messages to the ghosts until the sun,—a flaming ball of fire,—sank beyond the far purple hills.

And that was the first day of many days at the hidden treasure place of the red gold.



CHAPTER XI

GLOOM OF BILLIE

The return of Captain Pike on Kit's horse was a matter of considerable conjecture at Granados, but the old prospector was so fagged that at first he said little, and after listening to the things Billie had to tell him—he said less.

"That explains the curious ways of the Mexicans as I reached the border," he decided. "They'd look first at the horse, then at me, but asked no questions, and told me nothing. Queer that no word reached us about Singleton! No, it isn't either. We never crossed trails with any from up here. There's so much devilment of various sorts going on down there that a harmless chap like Singleton wouldn't be remembered."

"Conrad's down at Magdalena now, but we seldom know how far he ranges. Sometimes he stays at the lower ranch a week at a time, and he might go on to Sinaloa for all we know. He seems always busy and is extremely polite, but I gave him the adobe house across the arroya after Papa Phil—went. I know he has the Mexicans thinking Kit Rhodes came back for that murder; half of them believe it!"

"Well, I reckon I can prove him an alibi if it's needed. I'll go see the old judge."

"He'll tell you not to travel at night, or alone, if you know anything," she prophesied. "That's what he tells me. To think of old Rancho Granados coming to that pass! We never did have trouble here except a little when Apaches went on the warpath before my time, and now the whole border is simmering and ready to boil over if anyone struck a match to it. The judge hints that Conrad is probably only one cog in the big border wheel, and they are after the engineer who turns that wheel, and do you know you haven't told me one word of Kit Rhodes, or whether he's alive or dead!"

"Nothing to tell! We didn't find it, and he took the back trail with an Indian girl and her daddy, and——"

"An—Indian girl?"

"Yes, a queer little kid who was in a lot of trouble. Her father was wounded in one of the fracases they have down there every little while. Nary one of us could give an address when we took different trails, for we didn't know how far we'd be allowed to travel—the warring factions are swarming and troublesome over the line."

"Well, if a girl could stand the trail, it doesn't look dangerous."

"Looks are deceptive, child,—and this isn't just any old girl! It's a rare bird, it's tougher than whalebone and possessed of a wise little devil. She froze to Kit as a compadre at first chance. He headed back to Mesa Blanca. I reckon they'd make it,—barring accidents."

"Mesa Blanca? That's the Whitely outfit?"

"Um!" assented Pike, "but I reckon Whitely's hit the trail by now. There's no real profit in raising stock for the warriors down there; each band confiscates what he needs, and gives a promissory note on an empty treasury."

"Well, the attraction must be pretty strong to hold him down there in spite of conditions," said Billie gloomily.

"Attraction? Sure. Kit's gone loco on that attraction," agreed the old prospector, and then with a reminiscent light in his tired old eyes he added, "I reckon there's no other thing so likely to snare a man on a desert trail. You see, Billie-child, it's just as if the great God had hid a treasure in the beginning of the world to stay hid till the right lad ambled along the trail, and lifted the cover, and when a fellow has youth, and health and not a care in the world, the search alone is a great game—And when he finds it!—why, Billie, the dictionary hasn't words enough to tell the story!"

"No—I—I reckon not," said his listener in a small voice, and when he looked around to speak to her again she had disappeared, and across the patio Dona Luz was coming towards him in no good humor.

"How is it that poor little one weeps now when you are returned, and not at other times?" she demanded. "Me, I have my troubles since that day they find the Don Filipe shot dead,—Jesusita give him rest! That child is watching the Sonora trail and waiting since that day, but no tears until you are come. I ask you how is the way of that?"

Captain Pike stared at her reflectively.

"You are a bringer of news, likewise a faithful warden," he observed. "I'm peaceably disposed, and not wise to your lingo. Billie and me were talking as man to man, free and confidential, and no argument. There were no weeps that I noticed. What's the reason why?"

"The saints alone know, and not me!" she returned miserably. "I think she is scared that it was the Senor Rhodes who shooting Don Filipe, the vaqueros thinking that! But she tells no one, and she is unhappy. Also there is reason. That poor little one has the ranchos, but have you hear how the debts are so high all the herds can never pay? That is how they are saying now about Granados and La Partida, and at the last our senorita will have no herds, and no ranchos, and no people but me. Madre de Dios! I try to think of her in a little adobe by the river with only frijoles in the dinner pot, and I no see it that way. And I not seeing it other way. How you think?"

"I don't, it's too new," confessed Pike. "Who says this?"

"The Senor Henderson. I hear him talk with Senor Conrad, who has much sorrow because the Don Filipe made bad contracts and losing the money little and little, and then the counting comes, and it is big, very big!"

"Ah! the Senor Conrad has much sorrow, has he?" queried Pike, "and Billie is getting her face to the wall and crying? That's queer. Billie always unloaded her troubles on me, and you say there was none of this weeping till I came back?"

"That is so, senor."

"Cause why?"

"Quien sabe? She was making a long letter to Senor Rhodes in Sonora,—that I know. He sends no word, so—I leave it to you, senor, it takes faith and more faith when a man is silent, and the word of a killing is against him."

"Great Godfrey, woman! He never got a letter, he knows nothing of a killing. How in hell—" Then the captain checked himself as he saw the uselessness of protesting to Dona Luz. "Where's Billie?"

Billie was perched on a window seat in the sala, her eyes were more than a trifle red, and she appeared deeply engrossed in the pages of a week-old country paper.

"I see here that Don Jose Perez of Hermosillo is to marry Dona Dolores Terain, the daughter of the general," she observed impersonally. "He owns Rancho Soledad, and promises the Sonora people he will drive the rebel Rotil into the sea, and it was but yesterday Tia Luz was telling me of his beautiful wife, Jocasta, who was only a little mountain girl when he rode through her village and saw her first. She is still alive, and it looks to me as if all men are alike!"

"More or less," agreed Pike amicably, "some of us more, some of us less. Dona Dolores probably spells politics, but Dona Jocasta is a wildcat of the sierras, and I can't figure out any harmonious days for a man who picks two like that."

"He doesn't deserve harmony; no man does who isn't true—isn't true," finished Billie rather lamely.

"Look here, honey child," observed Pike, "you'll turn man hater if you keep on working your imagination. Luz tells me you are cranky against Kit, and that the ranches are tied up in business knots tighter than I had any notion of, so you had better unload the worst you can think of on me; that's what I'm here for. What difference do the Perez favorites make to our young lives? Neither Dolores nor Jocasta will help play the cards in our fortunes."

Wherein Captain Pike was not of the prophets. The wells of Sonora are not so many but that he who pitches his tent near one has a view and greetings of all drifting things of the desert, and the shadowed star of Dona Jocasta of the south was leading her into the Soledad wilderness forsaken of all white men but one.



CHAPTER XII

COVERING THE TRAIL

Each minute of the long days, Rhodes worked steadily and gaily, picking out the high grade ore from the old Indian mine, and every possible night he and the burro and Tula made a trip out to the foot of the range, where they buried their treasure against the happy day when they could go out of the silent desert content for the time with what gold they could carry in secret to the border.

For two days he had watched the Soledad ranch house rather closely through the field glass, for there was more activity there than before; men in groups rode in who were not herding. He wondered if it meant a military occupation, in which case he would need to be doubly cautious when emerging from the hidden trail.

The girl worked as he worked. Twice he had made new sandals for her, and also for himself in order to save his boots so that they might at least be wearable when he got among people. All plans had been thought out and discussed until no words would be needed between them when they separated. She was to appear alone at Palomitas with a tale of escape from the slavers, and he was carefully crushing and mashing enough color to partly fill a buckskin bag to show as the usual fruits of a prospect trip from which he was returning to Mesa Blanca after exhausting grub stake and shoe leather.

The things of the world had stood still for him during that hidden time of feverish work. He scarcely dared try to estimate the value of the ore he had dug as honey from a hollow tree, but it was rich—rich! There were nuggets of pure gold, assorted as to their various sizes, while he milled and ground the quartz roughly, and cradled it in the water of the brook.

By the innocent aid of Baby Bunting, two wild burros of the sierra had been enticed within reach for slaughter, and, aside from the food values, they furnished green hide which under Kit's direction, Tula deftly made into bags for carrying the gold.

All activities during the day were carefully confined within a certain radius, low enough in the little canon to run no risk in case any inquisitive resident of Soledad should study the ranges with a field glass, though Kit had not seen one aside from his own since he entered Sonora. And he used his own very carefully every morning and evening on the wide valley of Soledad.

"Something doing down there, sister," he decided, as they were preparing for the last trail out. "Riders who look like cavalry, mules, and some wagons—mighty queer!"

Tula came over and stood beside him expectantly. He had learned that a look through the magic glasses was the most coveted gift the camp could grant to her, and it had become part of the regular routine that she stood waiting her turn for the wide look, the "enchant look," as she had called it that first morning. It had become a game to try to see more than he, and this time she mentioned as he had, the wagons, and mules, and riders. And then she looked long and uttered a brief Indian word of surprise.

"Beat me again, have you?" queried Kit good humoredly. "What do you find?"

"A woman is there, in that wagon,—sick maybe. Also one man is a padre; see you!"

Kit took the glasses and saw she was right. A man who looked like a priest was helping a woman from a wagon, she stumbled forward and then was half carried by two men towards the house.

"Not an Indian woman?" asked Kit, and again her unchildlike mind worked quickly.

"A padre does not bow his head to help Indian woman. Caballeros do not lift them up."

"Well I reckon Don Jose Perez is home on a visit, and brought his family. A queer time! Other ranch folks are getting their women north over the border for safety."

"Don Jose not bring woman to Soledad—ever. He take them away. His men take them away."

It was the first reference she had made to the slavers since they had entered the canon, though she knew that each pile of nuggets was part of the redemption money for those exiles of whom she did not speak.

But she worked tirelessly until Kit would stop her, or suggest some restful task to vary the steady grind of carrying, pounding, or washing the quartz. He had ordered her to make two belts, that each of them might carry some of the gold hidden under their garments. She had a nugget tied in a corner of her manta, and other small ones fastened in her girdle, while in the belt next her body she carried all he deemed safe to weight her with, probably five pounds. At any hint of danger she would hide the belt and walk free.

His own belt would carry ten pounds without undue bulkiness. And over three hundred pounds of high grade gold was already safely hidden near the great rock with the symbols of sun and rain marking its weathered surface.

"A fair hundred thousand, and the vein only scratched!" he exulted. "I was sore over losing the job on Billie's ranch,—but gee! this looks as if I was knocked out in the cold world to reach my good luck!"

In a blue dusk of evening they left the camp behind and started over the trail, after Tula had carefully left fragments of food on the tomb of Miguel, placed there for the ghosts who are drawn to a comrade.

Kit asked no questions concerning any of her tribal customs, since to do so would emphasize the fact that they were peculiar and strange to him, and the Indian mind, wistfully alert, would sense that strangeness and lose its unconsciousness in the presence of an alien. So, when she went, after meals, to offer dregs of the soup kettle or bones of the burro, she often found a bunch of desert blossoms wilting there in the heat, and these tributes left by Kit went far to strengthen her confidence. It was as if Miguel was a live partner in their activities, never forgotten by either. So they left him on guard, and turned their faces toward the outer world of people.

Knowing more than he dare tell the girl his mind was considerably occupied with that woman at Soledad, for military control changed over night in many a province of Mexico in revolutionary days, and the time at the hidden mine might have served for many changes.

Starlight and good luck was on the trail for them, and at earliest streak of dawn they buried their treasure, divided their dried burro meat, and with every precaution to hide the trail where they emerged from the gray sierra, they struck the road to Mesa Blanca.

Until full day came Tula rode the burro, and slipped off at a ravine where she could walk hidden, on the way to Palomitas.

"Buntin'," said Kit, watching her go, "we'll have pardners and pardners in our time, but we'll never find one more of a thoroughbred than that raggedy Indian witch-child of ours."

He took the slanting cattle trail up over the mesa, avoiding the wagon road below, and at the far edge of it halted to look down over the wide spreading leagues of the Mesa Blanca ranch.

It looked very sleepy, drowsing in the silence of the noon sun. An old Indian limped slowly from the corral over to the ranch house, and a child tumbled in the dust with a puppy, but there was no other sign of ranch activity. As he descended the mesa and drew nearer the corrals they had a deserted look, not merely empty but deserted.

The puppy barked him a welcome, but the child gave one frightened look at Kit, and with a howl of fear, raced to the shelter of the portal where he disappeared in the shadows.

"I had a hunch, Babe, that we needed smoothing down with a currycomb before we made social calls," confessed Kit to the burro, "but I didn't reckon on scaring the natives in any such fashion as this."

He was conscious of peering eyes at a barred window, and then the old Indian appeared.

"Hello, Isidro!"

"At your service, senor," mumbled the old man, and then he stared at the burro, and at the bearded and rather desert-worn stranger, and uttered a cry of glad recognition.

"Ai-ji! It is El Pajarito coming again to Mesa Blanca, but coming with dust in your mouth and no song! Enter, senor, and take your rest in your own house. None are left to do you honor but me,—all gone like that!" and his skinny black hands made a gesture as if wafting the personnel of Mesa Blanca on its way. "The General Rotil has need the cattle, and makes a divide with Senor Whitely and all go,—all the herds," and he pointed east.

Kit bathed his face in the cool water brought out by Valencia, Isidro's wife, then unloaded the burro of the outfit, and stretched himself in the shade while the women busied themselves preparing food.

"So General Rotil makes a divide of the cattle,—of Whitely's cattle? How is that?" he asked.

And the old Indian proceeded to tell him that it was true. The Deliverer must feed his army. He needed half, and promised Whitely to furnish a guard for the rest of the herd and help Whitely save them by driving them to Imuris, where the railroad is.

"He said enemy troops would come from the south and take them all in one week or one month. He, Rotil, would pay a price. Thus it was, and Senor Whitely, and enough vaqueros, rode with the herds, and General Rotil took the rest of the ranchmen to be his soldiers. Of course it might be Senor Whitely would some day return, who knows? And he left a letter for the senor of the songs."

The letter corroborated Isidro's statements—it was the only way to save any of the stock. Whitely thought there was a hundred or two still ranging in the far corners, but time was short, and he was saving what he could. The men were joining the revolutionists and he would be left without help anyway. If Rhodes came back he was to use the place as his own. If he could round up any more horses or cattle on the range and get them to safety Isidro would find some Indians to help him, and Whitely would divide the profits with him.

"Fine!—divides first with the Deliverer, and next with me! Can't see where that hombre gets off when it comes to staking his own family to a living. But it's a bargain, and this is my headquarters until I can get out. How long has Whitely and his new friends been gone?"

"Four days, senor."

"Seen any stragglers of cattle left behind?"

Isidro's grandson, Clodomiro, had found both horses and cattle and herded them into far canons; a man might ride in a circle for five miles around the ranch house and see never a fresh track. Clodomiro was a good boy, and of much craft.

Dinner was announced for the senor, and the women showed him welcome by placing before him the most beautiful repast they could arrange quickly, chile con carne, frijoles, tortillas, and a decanter of Sonora wine—a feast for a king!

After he had eaten, tobacco was brought him from some little hidden store, and Isidro gave him the details of the slave raid of Palomitas, and Sonora affairs in general. Kit was careful to state that he has been prospecting in the mountains and out of touch with ranch people, and it must be understood that all Isidro could tell would be news to a miner from the desert mountains. And he asked if General Rotil also collected stock from the ranch of Soledad.

Whereupon Isidro told him many things, and among them the wonder that Soledad had been left alone—the saints only knew why! And Juan Gonsalvo, the foreman at Soledad, had helped with the slave raid, and was known in Palomitas where they took girls and women and men as well, even men not young! Miguel, the major-domo, was taken with his wife and two daughters, the other men were young. The curse of God seemed striking Sonora. A new foreman was now at Soledad, Marto Cavayso, a hard man and,—it was said, a soldier, but he evidently got tired of fighting and was taking his rest by managing the horse herds of Soledad.

"Doesn't look like rest to me," observed Kit. "The Soledad trail looks pretty well kicked into holes, with wagons, mules, and horsemen."

Isidro volunteered his opinion that work of the devil was going forward over there.

"Juan Gonsalvo and El Aleman were stealing women in Sonora, and driving them the south trail for a price," he stated. "But what think you would be the price for a woman of emerald eyes and white skin carried up from the south under chains, and a lock to the chain?"

"I reckon you are dreaming the lock and chain part of it, Isidro," returned Kit. "Only murderers travel like that."

"Si, it is so. There at Soledad it is heard. A killing was done in the south and Soledad is her prison. But she is beautiful, and the men are casting lots as to whose she shall be when the guard is gone south again to Don Jose Perez."

"Ah! they are Don Jose's men, are they? Then the prisoner is guarded by his orders?"

"Who knows? They tell that she is a lost soul, and fought for a knife to kill herself, and the padre makes prayers and says hell will be hers if she does. Elena, who is cook, heard him say that word, and Elena was once wife to my brother, and she is telling that to Clodomiro who makes an errand to take her deer meat, and hear of the strangers. He saw the woman, her bracelets are gold, and her eyes are green. The padre calls her Dona Jocasta. I go now and give drink to that burro and make him happy."

"Jocasta, eh? Dona Jocasta!" repeated Kit in wondering meditation. "Doesn't seem possible—but reckon it is, and there are no real surprises in Sonora. Anything could, and does happen here."

He remembered Pike telling the story of Jocasta one morning by their camp fire in the desert. She was called by courtesy Senora Perez. He had not heard her father's name, but he was a Spanish priest and her mother an Indian half-breed girl—some little village in the sierras. There were two daughters, and the younger was blond as a child of Old Spain, Jocasta was the elder and raven dark of hair, a skin of deep cream, and jewel-green eyes. Kit had heard three men, including Isidro, speak of Dona Jocasta, and each had mentioned the wonderful green eyes—no one ever seemed to forget them!

Their magnetism had caught the attention of Don Jose,—a distinguished and illustrious person in the eyes of the barefoot mountaineers. No one knew what Jocasta thought of the exalted padrone of the wide lands, whose very spurs were of gold, but she knew there was scarce wealth enough in all the village to keep a candle burning on the Virgin's shrine, and her feet had never known a shoe. The padre died suddenly just as Don Jose was making a bargain with him for the girl, so he swept Jocasta to his saddle with no bargain whatever except that she might send back for Lucita, her little sister, and other men envied Perez his good luck when they looked at Jocasta. For three years she had been mistress of his house in Hermosillo, but never had he taken her into the wilderness of Soledad,—it was a crude casket for so rich a treasure.

Kit steeped in the luxury of a square meal, fell asleep, thinking of the green-eyed Dona Jocasta whom no man forgot. He would not connect a brilliant bird of the mountain with that drooping figure he and Tula had seen stumbling towards the portal of Soledad. And the statement of Isidro that there had been a killing, and Dona Jocasta was a lost soul, was most puzzling of all. In a queer confused dream the killing was done by Tula, and Billie wore the belt of gold, and had green eyes. And he wakened himself with the apparently hopeless effort of convincing Billie he had never forgotten her despite the feminine witcheries of Sonora.

The shadows were growing long, and some Indian boys were jogging across the far flats. He reached for his field glass and saw that one of them had a deer across his saddle. Isidro explained that the boys were planting corn in a far field, and often brought a deer when they came in for more seed or provisions. They had a hut and ramada at the edge of the planted land six miles away. They were good boys, Benito and Mariano Bravo, and seldom both left the fields at the same time. He called to Valencia that there would be deer for supper, then watched the two riders as they approached, and smiled as they perceptibly slowed up their broncos at sight of the bearded stranger on the rawhide cot against the wall.

"See you!" he pointed out to Kit. "These are the days of changes. Each day we looking for another enemy, maybe that army of the south, and the boys they think that way too."

The boys, on being hailed, came to the house with their offering, and bunkered down in the shadow with a certain shy stolidity, until Kit spoke, when they at once beamed recognition, and made jokes of his beard as a blanket.

But they had news to tell, great news, for a child of Miguel had broken away from the slavers and had hidden in the mountains, and at last had found her way back to Palomitas. She was very tired and very poor in raiment, and the people were weeping over her. Miguel, her father, was dead from a wound, and was under the ground, and of the others who went on she could tell nothing, only that Conrad, the German friend of Don Jose, was the man who covered his face and helped take the women. Her sister Anita had recognized him, calling out his name, and he had struck her with a quirt.

The women left their work to listen to this, and to add the memories of some of their friends who had hidden and luckily escaped.

"That white man should be crucified and left for the vultures," said the boy Benito.

"No," said the soft voice of Valencia, "God was sacrificed, but this man is a white Judas; the death of God is too good for that man. It has been talked about. He will be found some place,—and the Judas death will be his. The women are making prayers."

"It will soon be Easter," said Isidro.

Kit did not know what was meant by a "Judas" death, though he did know many of the church legends had been turned by the Indians into strange and lurid caricatures. He thought it would be interesting to see how they could enlarge on the drama of Judas, but he made no comment, as a direct question would turn the Indians thoughtful, and silence them.

They all appeared alert for the return of Rotil. No one believed he had retired utterly from the region without demanding tribute from Soledad. It was generally suspected that Perez received and held munitions for use against the revolutionists though no one knew where they were hidden. There were Indian tales of underground tunnels of Soledad Mission for retreat in the old days in case of hostile attacks, and the Soledad ranch house was built over part of that foundation. No one at Soledad knew the entrance except Perez himself, though it was surmised that Juan Gonsalvo had known, and had been the one to store the mule loads and wagon loads of freight shipped over the border before Miguel Herrara was caught at the work from the American side. Perez was a careful man, and not more than one man was trusted at one time. That man seemed marked by the angels for accident, for something had always ended him, and it was no good fortune to be a favorite of Don Jose—Dona Jocasta was learning that!

Thus the gossip and surmise went on around Rhodes for his brief hour of rest and readjustment. He encouraged the expression of opinion from every source, for he had the job ahead of him to get three hundred pounds of gold across the border and through a region where every burro was liable to examination by some of the warring factions. It behooved him to consider every tendency of the genus homo with which he came in contact. Also the bonds between them,—especially the bonds, since the various groups were much of a sameness, and only "good" or "bad" according to their affiliations. Simple Benito and his brother, and soft-voiced motherly Valencia who could conceive a worse death for the German Judas than crucifixion, were typical of the primitive people of desert and sierra.

"How many head of stock think you still ranges Mesa Blanca?" he asked Isidro, who confessed that he no longer rode abroad or kept tally, but Clodomiro would know, and would be in to supper. Benito and Mariano told of one stallion and a dozen mares beyond the hills, and a spring near their fields had been muddied the day before by a bunch of cows and calves, they thought perhaps twenty, and they had seen three mules with the Mesa Blanca brand when they were getting wood.

"Three mules, eh? Well, I may need those mules and the favor will be to me if you keep them in sight," he said addressing the boys. "I am to round up what I can and remove them after Senor Whitely, together with other belongings."

"Others, senor?" asked Isidro.

Rhodes took the letter from his pocket, and perused it as if to refresh his memory.

"The old Spanish chest is to go if possible, and other things of Mrs. Whitely's," he said. "I will speak of these to your wife if the plan can carry, but there is chance of troops from the south and—who knows?—we may be caught between the two armies and ground as meal on a metate."

He thus avoided all detail as to the loads the pack animals were to carry, and the written word was a safe mystery to the Indian. He was making no definite plans, but was learning all possibilities with a mind prepared to take advantage of the most promising.

Thus the late afternoon wore on in apparent restful idleness after the hard trail. The boys secured their little allowance of beans and salt, and corn for planting, but lingered after the good supper of Valencia, a holiday feast compared with their own sketchy culinary performance in the jacal of the far fields. They scanned the trail towards Palomitas, and then the way down the far western valley, evidently loath to leave until their friend Clodomiro should arrive, and Isidro expected him before sunset.

But he came later from towards Soledad, a tall lad with fluttering ribbands of pink and green from his banda and his elbows, and a girdle of yellow fluttering fringed ends to the breeze,—all the frank insignia of a youth in the market for marriage. He suggested a gay graceful bird as he rode rapidly in the long lope of the range. His boy friends of the planted fields went out to meet him at the corral, and look after his horse while he went in to supper. He halted to greet them, and then walked soberly across the plaza where pepper trees and great white alisos trailed dusk shadows in the early starlight.

"What reata held you?" asked Isidro. "Has Soledad grown a place for comradeship?"

"No, senor," said the lad passing into the dining room where two candles gave him light in the old adobe room, "it is comradeship we do not need, but it is coming to us."

He seated himself on the wooden bench and his grandmother helped him from a smoking plate of venison. He looked tired and troubled, and he had not even taken note that a stranger was beside Isidro in the shadows.

"What nettle stings you, boy?" asked his grandfather sarcastically, and at that he looked up and rose to his feet at sight of Rhodes.

"Your pardon, senor, I stumbled past like a bat blind in the light," he muttered, and as he met Kit's eyes and recognized him his face lit up and his white teeth gleamed in a smile.

"The saints are in it that you are here again, senor!" he exclaimed, "and you came on this day when most needed."

"Eat and then tell your meaning," said Isidro, but Clodomiro glanced toward the kitchen, and then listened for the other boys. They were laughing down at the corral. Clodomiro's horse had thrown one of them.

"With your permission, grandfather, talk first," he said and the two men moved to the bench opposite, leaning over towards him as his voice was lowered.

"Today Marto Cavayso sent for me, he is foreman over there, and strange things are going forward. He has heard that General Rotil stripped Mesa Blanca and that all white people are gone from it. He wants this house and will pay us well to open the door. It is for the woman. They have played a game for her, and he has won, but she is a wild woman when he goes near her, and his plan is to steal her out at night and hide her from the others. So he wants this house. He offered me a good gun. He offers us the protection of Don Jose Perez."

"But—why—that is not credible," protested Kit. "He could not count on protection from Perez if he stole the woman whom many call Senora Perez, for that is what they did call Dona Jocasta in Hermosillo."

"Maybe so," assented Clodomiro stolidly, "but now he is to be the esposo of a Dona Dolores who is the child of General Terain, so Marto says. Well, this Dona Jocasta has done some killing, and Don Jose does not give her to prison. He sends her to the desert that she brings him no disgrace; and if another man takes her or sinks her in the quicksands then that man will be helping Don Jose. That is how it is. Marto says the woman has bewitched him, and he is crazy about her. Some of the other men, will take her, if not him."

Kit exchanged a long look with the old Indian.

"The house is yours, senor," said Isidro. "By the word of Senor Whitely, you are manager of Mesa Blanca."

"Many thanks," replied Kit, and sat with his elbows on the table and his hands over his eyes, thinking—thinking of the task he had set himself in Sonora, and the new turn of the wheel of fortune.

"You say the lady is a prisoner?" he asked.

"Sure," returned Clodomiro promptly. "She broke loose coming through a little pueblo and ran to the church. She found the priest and told him things, so they also take that priest! If they let him go he will talk, and Don Jose wanting no talk now of this woman. That priest is well cared for, but not let go away. After awhile, maybe so."

"She is bright, and her father was a priest," mused Kit. "So there is three chances out of four that she can read and write,—a little anyway. Could you get a letter to her?"

"Elena could."

Kit got up, took one of the candles from the table and walked through the rooms surrounding the patio. Some of them had wooden bars in the windows, but others had iron grating, and he examined these carefully.

"There are two rooms fit for perfectly good jails," he decided, "so I vote we give this bewitched Don Marto the open door. How many guns can we muster?"

"He promised to give me one, and ammunition."

"Well, you get it! Get two if you can, but at least get plenty of ammunition. Isidro, will your wife be brave and willing to help?"

The old Indian nodded his head vigorously and smiled. Evidently only a stranger would ask if his Valencia could be brave!

The two brothers came in, and conversation was more guarded until Clodomiro had finished his supper, and gone a little ways home with them to repay them the long wait for comradeship.

When he came back Kit had his plans fairly settled, and had a brief note written to Senora Jocasta Perez, as follows:

HONORED SENORA:

One chance of safety is yours. Let yourself be persuaded to leave Soledad with Marto. You will be rescued from him by

AN AMERICAN.

"I reckon that will do the trick," decided Kit. "I feel like a blooming Robin Hood without the merry men,—but the Indians will play safe, even if they are not merry. When can you get this to Elena?"

"In time of breakfast," said Clodomiro promptly. "I go tonight, and tomorrow night he steals that woman. Maybe Elena helps."

"You take Elena a present from me to encourage that help," suggested Kit, and he poured a little of the gold from his belt on the paper. "Also there is the same for you when the lady comes safe. It is best that you make willing offer of your service in all ways so that he calls on none of his own men for help."

"As you say, senor," assented Clodomiro, "and that will march well with his desires, for to keep the others from knowing is the principal thing. She has beauty like a lily in the shade."

"He tells you that?" asked Kit quizzically, but the boy shook his head.

"My own eyes looked on her. She is truly of the beauty of the holy pictures of the saints in the chapel, but Marto says she is a witch, and has him enchanted;—also that evil is very strong in her. I do not know."

"Well, cross your fingers and tackle the job," suggested Kit. "Get what sleep you can, for you may not get much tomorrow night. It is the work of a brave man you are going to do, and your pay will be a man's pay."

The eyes of the Indian boy glowed with pleasure.

"At your service, senor. I will do this thing or I will not see Mesa Blanca again."

Kit looked after Clodomiro and rolled another cigarette before turning in to sleep.

"When all's said and done, I may be the chief goat of this dame adventure," he told himself in derision. "Maybe my own fingers need crossing."



CHAPTER XIII

A WOMAN OF EMERALD EYES

At the first break of dawn, Rhodes was up, and without waiting for breakfast walked over to the rancherias of Palomitas to see Tula.

She was with some little girls and old women carrying water from the well as stolidly as though adventure had never stalked across her path. A whole garment had been given her instead of the tatter of rags in which she had returned to the little Indian pueblo. She replied briefly to his queries regarding her welfare, and when he asked where she was living, she accompanied him to an old adobe where there were two other motherless children—victims of the raiders.

An old, half-blind woman stirred meal into a kettle of porridge, and to her Kit addressed himself.

"A blessing will be on your house, but you have too many to feed here," he said "and the child of Miguel should go to the ranch house of Mesa Blanca. The wife of Isidro is a good woman and will give her care."

"Yes, senor, she is a good woman," agreed the old Indian. "Also it may be a safe house for a maiden, who knows? Here it is not safe; other raiders may come."

"That is true. Send her after she has eaten."

He then sought out one of the older men to learn who could be counted on to round up the stray cattle of the ranges. After that he went at once back to the ranch house, and did not even speak to Tula again. There was nothing to indicate that she was the principal object of his visit, or that she had acquired a guardian who was taking his job seriously.

Later in the day she was brought to Mesa Blanca by an elderly Indian woman of her mother's clan, and settled in the quiet Indian manner in the new dwelling place. Valencia was full of pity for the girl of few years who had yet known the hard trail, and had mourned alone for her dead.

There was a sort of suppressed bustle about la casa de Mesa Blanca that day, dainties of cookery prepared with difficulty from the diminished stores, and the rooms of the iron bars sprinkled and swept, and pillows of wondrous drawnwork decorated the more pretentious bed. To Tula it was more of magnificence than she had ever seen in her brief life, and the many rooms in one dwelling was a wonder. She would stand staring across the patio and into the various doorways through which she hesitated to pass. She for whom the wide silences of the desert held few terrors, hesitated to linger alone in the shadows of the circling walls. Kit noted that when each little task was finished for Valencia, she would go outside in the sunlight where she had the familiar ranges and far blue mountains in sight.

"Here it makes much trouble only to live in a house," she said pointing to the needlework on a table cover. "The bowls of food will make that dirty in one eating, and then what? Women in fine houses are only as mares in time of thrashing the grain—no end and no beginning to the work,—they only tread their circle."

"Right you are, sister," agreed Kit, "they do make a lot of whirligig work for themselves, all the same as your grandmothers painting pottery that smash like eggshells. But life here isn't all play at that, and there may be something doing before sleep time tonight. I went after you so I would have a comrade I knew would stick."

She only gazed at him without question.

"You remember, Tula, the woman led by the padre at Soledad?"

She nodded silently.

"It may be that woman is captive to the same men who took your people," he said slowly watching her, "and it may be we can save her."

"May it also be that we can catch the man?" she asked, and her eyes half closed, peered up at him in curious intensity. "Can that be, O friend?"

"Some day it must surely be, Tula."

"One day it must be,—one day, and prayers are making all the times for that day," she insisted stolidly. "The old women are talking, and for that day they want him."

"What day, Tula?"

"The Judas day."

Kit Rhodes felt a curious creepy sensation of being near an unseen danger, some sleeping serpent basking in the sun, harmless until aroused for attack. He thought of the gentle domestic Valencia, and now this child, both centered on one thought—to sacrifice a traitor on the day of Judas!

"Little girls should make helpful prayers," he ventured rather lamely, "not vengeance prayers."

"I was the one to make cry of a woman, when my father went under the earth," she said. It was her only expression of the fact that she had borne a woman's share of all their joint toil in the desert,—and he caught her by the shoulder, as she turned away.

"Why, Kid Cleopatra, it isn't a woman's work you've done at all. It's a man's job you've held down and held level," he declared heartily. "That's why I am counting on you now. I need eyes to watch when I have to be in other places."

"I watch," she agreed, "I watch for you, but maybe I make my own prayers also;—all the time prayers."

"Make one for a straight trail to the border, and all sentries asleep!" he suggested. "We have a pile of yellow rock to get across, to say nothing of our latest puzzling prospect."

As the day wore on the latest "prospect" presented many complications to the imagination, and he tramped the corridors of Mesa Blanca wondering why he had seen but one side of the question the night before, for in the broad light of day there seemed a dozen, and all leading to trouble! That emerald-eyed daughter of a renegade priest had proven a host in herself when it came to breeding trouble. She certainly had been unlucky.

"Well, it might be worse," he confided to Bunting out in the corral. "Cap Pike might have tagged along to discourse on the general tomfoolery of a partner who picks up a damsel in distress at every fork of the trail. Not that he'd be far wrong at that, Baby. If any hombre wanted to catch me in a bear trap he'd only need to bait it with a skirt."

Baby Bunting nodded sagaciously, and nuzzled after Kit who was cleaning up the best looking saddle horse brought in from the Indian herd. It was a scraggy sorrel with twitchy ears and wicked eyes, but it looked tough as a mountain buck. Kit knew he should need two like that for the northern trail, and had hopes that the bewitched Marto Cavayso, whoever he was, would furnish another.

He went steadily about his preparations for the border trail, just as if the addition of an enchantress with green-jewel eyes was an every day bit of good fortune expected in every outfit, but as the desert ranges flamed rose and mauve in the lowering sun there was a restless expectancy at the ranch house, bolts and locks and firearms were given final inspection. Even at the best it was a scantily manned fort for defense in case Mario's companions at dice should question his winning and endeavor to capture the stake.

"I shall go part way on the Soledad trail and wait what happens," he told Isidro. "I will remain at a distance unless Clodomiro needs me. There is no telling what tricks this Cavayso may have up his sleeve."

"I was thinking that same thought," said the old Indian. "The men of Perez are not trusted long, even by Perez. When it is a woman, they are not trusted even in sight! Go with God on the trail."

The ugly young sorrel ran tirelessly the first half of the way, just enough to prove his wind. Then they entered a canon where scrub cottonwoods and greasebush gathered moisture enough for scant growth among the boulders worn out of the cliffs by erosion. It was the safest place to wait, as it was also the most likely place for treachery if any was intended to Clodomiro. At either end of the pass lay open range and brown desert, with only far patches of oasis where a well was found, or a sunken river marked a green pasture in some valley.

When he wrote the note he had not thought of danger to Clodomiro, regarding him only as a fearless messenger, but if the boy should prove an incumbrance to Cavayso after they were free of Soledad, that might prove another matter, and as old Isidro had stated, no one trusted a Perez man when a woman was in question!

He dismounted to listen and seek safe shadow, for the dusk had come, and desert stars swung like brilliant lamps in the night sky, and the white rocks served as clear background for any moving body.

The plan was, if possible, to get the woman out with Clodomiro while the men were at supper. The manta of Elena could cover her, and if she could walk with a water jar to the far well as any Indian woman would walk, and a horse hid in the willows there——!

It had been well thought out, and if nothing had interfered they should have reached the canon an hour earlier. If Clodomiro had failed it might be a serious matter, and Kit Rhodes had some anxious moments for the stolen woman while dusk descended on the canon.

He listened for the beat of horse hoofs, but what he heard first was a shot, and a woman's scream, and then the walls of the canon echoed the tumult of horses racing towards him in flight.

He recognized Clodomiro by the bare head and banda, and a woman bent low beside him, her manta flapping like the wings of a great bird as her horse leaped forward beside the Indian boy.

Back of them galloped a man who slowed up and shot backward at the foremost of a pursuing band.

He missed, and the fire was returned, evidently with some effect, for the first marksman grunted and cursed, and Kit heard the clatter of his gun as it fell from his hand. He leaned forward and spurred his horse to outrun the pursuers. He was evidently Marto.

Kit had a mental vision of fighting Marto alone for the woman at Mesa Blanca, or fighting with the entire band and decided to halt the leader of the pursuers and gain that much time at least for the woman and Clodomiro.

He had mounted at the first sound of the runaways, and crouching low in the saddle, hid back of the thick green of a dwarfed mesquite, and as the leader came into range against the white rock well he aimed low and touched the trigger.

The horse leaped up and the rider slid off as the animal sunk to the ground. Kit guided his mount carefully along shadowed places into the road expecting each instant a shot from the man on the ground.

But it did not come, and he gained the trail before the other pursuers rounded the bend of the canon. The sound of their hoofs would deafen them to his, and once on the trail he gave the sorrel the rein, and the wild thing went down the gully like an arrow from a bow.

He was more than a little puzzled at the silence back of him. The going down of the one man and horse had evidently checked all pursuit. Relieved though he was at the fact, he realized it was not a natural condition of affairs, and called for explanation.

The other three riders were a half mile ahead and he had no idea of joining them on the trail. It occurred to him there was a possible chance of taking a short cut over the point of the mesa and beating them to the home ranch. There was an even chance that the rougher trail would offer difficulties in the dark, but that was up to the sorrel and was worth the trial.

The bronco took the mesa walls like a cat, climbed and staggered up, slid and tumbled down and crossed the level intervening space to the corral as the first sound of the others came beating across the sands.

A dark little figure arose by the corral bars and reached for the horse as he slipped from the saddle.

"Quickly, Tulita!" he said, stripping saddle and bridle from its back, "one instant only to make ourselves as still as shadows under the walls of the house."

Fast as he ran, she kept pace with him to the corridor where Isidro waited.

"All is well," he said briefly to the old man. "Clodomiro comes safe with the senora, and the man who would steal her was shot and lost his gun. All has gone very well."

"Thanks to God!" said the old Indian. "The stealing of women has ever been a danger near, but luck comes well to you, senor, and it is good to be under the protection of you."

"Open the door and show a light of welcome," said Kit. "Call your wife and let all be as planned by us. I will be in the shadows, and a good gun for safety of the woman if needed, but all will work well, as you will see."

The three riders came up to the portal before dismounting, and Valencia went forward, while Isidro held high a blazing torch, and Clodomiro dismounted quickly, and offered help to the woman.

"My grandmother has all for your comfort, senora," he said, "will it please you to descend?"

The man swung from the saddle, awkwardly nursing his right arm.

"Yes this is a safe place, Dona Jocasta," he declared. "It is all well arranged. With your permission I may assist you."

He offered his left hand, but she looked from him to Valencia, and then to Clodomiro.

"You are young to be a stealer of women;—the saints send you a whiter road!" she said. "And you may help me, for my shoulder has a hurt from that first shot of the comrade of this man."

"No, senora," stated her captor, "the evil shot came from no comrade of mine. They did not follow us, those bandits—accursed be their names! They were hid in the canoncita and jumped our trail. But have no fear, Dona Jocasta, they are left behind, and it will be my pleasure to nurse the wounds they have made."

"Be occupied with your own," she suggested pointing to his hand from which blood still dripped, "and you, mother, can show me the new prison. It can be no worse than the others."

"Better, much better, little dove," said Marto, who followed after the two women, and glanced over their shoulders into the guest chamber of the iron bars, "it is a bird cage of the finest, and a nest for harmonies."

Then to Valencia he turned with authority, "When you have made the senorita comfortable, bring the key of the door to me."

"Si, senor," said Valencia bending low, and even as the prisoner entered the room, she changed the key to the outside of the door. Marto nodded his approval and turned away.

"Now this shirt off, and a basin of water and a bandage," he ordered Isidro. "It is not much, and it still bleeds."

"True, it does, senor, and the room ordered for you has already the water and a clean shirt on the pillow. Clodomiro, go you for a bandage, and fetch wine to take dust out of the throat! This way, senor,—and may you be at home in your own house!"

Unsuspecting, the amorous Marto followed the old man into the room prepared. He grunted contemptuous satisfaction at evidences of comfort extending to lace curtains hanging white and full over the one window.

"It is the time for a shirt of such cleanness," he observed, with a grin. "Jesusita! but the sleeve sticks to me! Cut it off, and be quick to make me over into a bridegroom."

The old man did as he was bidden, and when Clodomiro brought in a woven tray covered with a napkin from which a bottle of wine was discernible, Marto grinned at him.

"It is a soft nest you found for me, boy," he said appreciatively, "and when I am capitan I will make you lieutenant."

"Thanks to you, senor, and hasten the day!"

Clodomiro assisted his grandfather, and stood aside at the door respectfully as the old man passed out with his primitive supply of salves and antiseptics, and only when all need of caution was ended the boy smiled at the would-be Lothario, and the smile held a subtle mockery as he murmured, "The saints send you a good night's sleep, senor, and a waking to health—and clearer sight!"

"Hell and its blazes to you! why do you grin?" demanded the other setting down the bottle from which he had taken a long and grateful drink, but quick as a cat the boy pulled the door shut, and slipped the bolt on the outside, and laughed aloud.

"Not this night will you be bridegroom for another man's wife, senor!" he called. "Also it is better that you put curb on your curses,—for the lady has a mind for a quiet night of sleep."