"I think it is for me," he answered. "The promise was mine. I know none of the people, but the names are written. It is eighty miles."

"Three days."

"More, double that," he said thoughtfully, and the eyes of Tula met his in disapproval. It was the merest hint of a frown, but it served. She could do the errand better than she could guard the rest of the gold. If her little belt was lost it was little, but if his store should be found it would be enough to start a new revolution in Sonora;—the men of Rotil and the suspicious padre would unite on the treasure trail. It was the padre who gave him most uneasiness, because the padre was guessing correctly! The dream of a mighty church of the desert to commemorate all the ruined missions of the wilderness, was a great dream for the priest of a little pueblo, and the eyes of the Padre Andreas were alight with keen,—too keen, anticipation.

"I go," stated Tula again. "No other one is knowing my people."

"That is a true word," decided Padre Andreas, "a major-domo of evil mind at Linda Vista could take the gold and send north whatever unruly vagabonds he had wished to be free from. Let the maid go, and I can arrange to see her there safe."

This kind offer did not receive the approval deserved. Kit wished no man on the trail with Tula who knew of the gold, and Tula herself was not eager to journey into unknown regions with a man of religion, who had already learned from Valencia of the elaborate ceremony planned for a "Judas day!" Little though Tula knew of churchly observances, she had an instinctive fear that she would be detained in the south too long to officiate in this special ceremony on which she had set her heart.

"Not with a priest will I go," she announced. "He would shut me in a school, and in that place I would die. Clodomiro can go, or Isidro, who is so good and knowing all our people."

"That is a good thought," agreed Dona Jocasta, who had no desire that Padre Andreas meet the family of Terain and recount details of the Perez marriage,—not at least until she had worn her official title a little longer and tested the authority it gave her. "That is a good thought, for I have no wish that my house be left without a priest. Senor Rhodes, which man is best?"

But before Kit could answer Ramon Rotil stood in the door, and his eyes went to the papers on the table. Tula had recovered her belt, and fastened it under the manta she wore.

"So! you are working in council, eh?" he asked. "And have arrived at plans? First your own safety, senora?"

"No, senor,—first the bringing back of the people driven off by the slavers. The letter is written; this child is to take it because the people are her people, but a safe man is wanted, and these two I cannot let go. You know Jose Perez, and his wife must not be without a man of religion as guard, yet he alone would not save me from others, hence the American senor——"

"Sure, that is a safe thought," and he took the seat offered by Kit. But he shook his head after listening to their suggestions.

"No. Isidro is too old, and Clodomiro with his flying ribbands of a would-be lover, is too young for that trail. You want—you want——"

He paused as his mind evidently went searching among his men for one dependable. Then he smiled at Kit.

"You saved me the right man, senor! Who would be better than the foreman of Soledad? Would it not be expected that Senora Perez would send the most important of the ranchmen? Very well then. Marto is safe, he will go."

"But Marto—" began Padre Andreas, when Rotil faced about, staring him into silence.

"Marto will return here to Soledad today," he said, and the face of the priest went pale. It was as if he had said that the task of Marto on the east trail would be ended.

"Yes, Marto Cavayso has been at Hermosillo," assented Dona Jocasta. "He will know all the ways to arrive quickly."

"That will be attended to. Will you, senor, see to it that horse and provision are made ready for the trail? And you, senora? Soledad in the wilderness is no good place for a lady. When this matter of the slaves is arranged, will it please you to ride south, or north? Troops of the south will be coming this way;—it will be a land of soldiers and foraging."

"How shall I answer that?" murmured Dona Jocasta miserably. "In the south Jose Perez may make life a not possible thing for me,—and in the north I would be a stranger."

"Jose Perez will not make trouble; yet trouble might be made,—at first," said Rotil avoiding her eyes, and turning again to Kit. "Senor, by the time Marto gets back from the south, the pack mules will be here again. Until they are gone from Soledad I trust you in charge of Senora Perez. She must have a manager, and there is none so near as you."

"At her service," said Kit promptly, "but this place——"

"Ai, that is it," agreed Rotil. "North is the safer place for women alone, and you—did you not say that on Granados there were friends?"

"Why, yes, General," replied Kit. "My friend, Captain Pike, is somewhere near, and the owner of Granados is a lady, and among us we'll do our best. But it's a hard trip, and I've only one gun."

"You will take your choice of guns, horses, or men," decided Rotil. "That is your work. Also you will take with you the evidence of Senora Perez on that matter of the murder. The padre can also come in on that,—so it will be service all around."

Chappo came to the door to report that all was ready for the trail, and Rotil stood up, and handed to Dona Jocasta the marriage contract.

"Consider the best way of protecting this until you reach an alcalde and have a copy made and witnessed," he said warningly. "It protects your future. The fortunes of war may take all the rest of us, but the wife of Perez needs the record of our names; see to it!"

She looked up at him as if to speak, but no words came. He gazed curiously at her bent head, and the slender hands over the papers. In his life of turmoil and bloodshed he had halted to secure for her the right to a principality. In setting his face to the east, and the battle line, he knew the chance was faint that he would ever see her again, and his smile had in it a touch of self-derision at the thought,—for after all he was nothing to her!

"So—that is all," he said, turning away. "You come with me a little ways, senor, and to you, senora, adios!"

"Go with God, Ramon Rotil," she murmured, "and if ever a friend is of need to you, remember the woman to whom you gave justice and a name!"

"Adios," he repeated, and his spurs tinkled as he strode through the patio to the portal where the saddle horses were waiting. The pack mules were already below the mesa, and reached in a long line over the range towards the canon of the eastern trail.

"You have your work cut out," he said to Kit. "For one thing, Marto Cavayso will carry out orders, but you must not have him enter a room where Dona Jocasta may be. It would be to offend her and frighten him. He swears to the saints that he was bewitched. That is as may be, but it is an easy way out! When the pack mules come back, and Marto is here, it is for you two to do again the thing we did last night. I may need Soledad on another day, and would keep all its secrets. After you have loaded the last of the guns it is best for you to go quickly. Here is a permit in case you cross any land held by our men;—it is for you, your family, and all your baggage without molestation. Senora Perez has the same. This means you can take over the border any of the furnishings of Soledad required by the lady for a home elsewhere. The wagons sent north by Perez will serve well for that, and they are hers."

"But if he should send men of his own to interfere——"

"He won't," stated Rotil. "You are capitan, and Soledad is under military rule. There is only one soul here over which your word is not law. I have given the German Judas to your girl, and the women can have their way with him. He is as a dead man; call her."

There was no need, for Tula had followed at a discreet distance, and from beside a pillar gazed regretfully after her hero, the Deliverer, whom she felt every man should follow.

"Oija, muchacha!" he said as Kit beckoned her forward, "go to Fidelio. He is over there filling the cantins at the well. Tell him to give you the key to the quarters of El Aleman, and hearken you!—I wash my hands of him from this day. If you keep him, well, but if he escapes, the loss is to you. I go, and not again will Ramon Rotil trap a Judas for your hellishness."

Tula sped to Fidelio, secured the key and was back to hold the stirrup of Rotil as he was helped to the saddle.

"If God had made me a man instead of a maid, I would ride the world as your soldier, my General," she said, holding the key to her breast as an amulet.

"Send your lovers instead," he said, and laughed, "for you will have them when you get more beef on your bones. Adios, soldier girl!"

She peered up at him under her mane of black hair.

"Myself,—I think that is true," she stated gravely, "also my lovers, when they come, must follow you! When I see my own people safe in Palomitas it may be that I, Tula, will also follow you,—and the help of the child of Miguel may not be a little help, my General."

Kit Rhodes alone knew what she meant. Her intense admiration for the rebel leader of the wilderness had brought the glimmer of a dream to her;—the need of gold was great as the need of guns, and for the deliverer of the tribes what gift too great?

But the others of the guard laughed at the crazy saying of the brown wisp of a girl. They had seen women of beauty give him smiles, and more than one girl follow his trail for his lightest word, but to none of them did it occur that this one called by him the young crane, or the possessor of many devils, could bring more power to his hand than a regiment of the women who were comrades of a light hour.

But her solemnity amused Rotil, and he swept off his hat with exaggerated courtesy.

"I await the day, Tulita. Sure, bring your lovers,—and later your sons to the fight! While you wait for them tell Marto Cavayso he is to have a care of you as if you were the only child of Ramon Rotil! I too will have a word with him of that. See to it, Capitan of the roads, and adios!"

He grinned at the play upon the name of Rhodes, and whirled his horse, joining his men, who sat their mounts and watched at a little distance.

Within the portal was gathered all those left of the household of Soledad to whom the coming and the going of the revolutionary leader was the great event of their lives, and all took note of the title of "Capitan" and the fact that the Americano and the Indian girl had his last spoken words.

They had gone scarce a mile when Fidelio spurred his horse back and with Mexican dash drew him back on his haunches as Kit emerged from the corridor.

"General Rotil's compliments," he said with a grin, "and Marto will report to you any event requiring written record,—and silence!"

"Say that again and say it slow," suggested Kit.

"That is the word as he said it, Capitan, 'requiring the writing of records, and—silence!'"

"I get you," said Kit, and with a flourish and a clatter, Fidelio was soon lost in the dust.

Kit was by no means certain that he did "get" him. He felt that he had quite enough trouble without addition of records and secrecy for acts of the Deliverer.



CHAPTER XIX

THE RETURN OF TULA

The sentinel palms of Soledad were sending long lines of shadows toward the blue range of the Sierras, and gnarled old orange trees in the ancient mission garden drenched the air with fragrance from many petals.

There had been a sand storm the day before, followed by rain, and all the land was refreshed and sparkling. The pepper trees swung tassels of bloom and the flaming coral of the occotilla glowed like tropic birds poised on wide-reaching wands of green. Meadow larks echoed each other in the tender calls of nesting time, and from the jagged peaks on the east, to far low hills rising out of a golden haze in the west, there was a great quiet and peace brooding over the old mission grounds of the wilderness.

Dona Jocasta paced the outer corridor, watched somberly by Padre Andreas on whom the beauty of the hour was lost.

"Is your heart turned stone that you lift no hand, or speak no word for the soul of a mortal?" he demanded. "Already the terrible women of Palomitas are coming to wait for their Judas, and this is the morning of the day!"

"It is no work of mine, Padre," she answered wearily. "I am sick,—here!—that the beast has been all these days and nights under a roof near me. I know how the women feel, though I think I would not wait, as they have waited,—for Good Friday."

"It is murder in your heart to harbor such wickedness of thought," he insisted. "Your soul is in jeopardy that you do not contemplate forgiveness. Even though a man be a heretic, a priest must do his office when it comes to a sentence of death. After all—he is a human."

"I do not know that," replied Dona Jocasta thoughtfully, and she sank into a rawhide chair in the shade of a pillar. "Listen, Padre. I am not learned in books, but I have had new thoughts with me these days. Don Pajarito is telling me of los Alemanos all over the world;—souls they have not, and serpents and toads are their mothers! Here in Mexico we have our flag from old Indian days with the eagle and the snake. Once I heard scholars in Hermosillo talk about that; they said it was from ancient times of sky worship, and the bird was a bird of stars,—also the serpent."

Padre Andreas lifted his brows in derision at the childishness of Indian astrology.

"Myself, I think the Indian sky knowers had the prophet sight," went on Dona Jocasta. "They make their eagle on the standard and they put the serpent there of the reason that some day a thing of poison would crawl to the nest of the eagle of Mexico to comrade there. It has crawled over the seas for that, Padre, and the beak and claws and wing of the eagle must all do battle to kill the head and the heart of it;—for the heart of a serpent dies hard, and they breed and hatch their eggs everywhere in the soil of Mexico. Senor Padre, the Indian women of Palomitas are right!—the girl Tula is a child of the eagle, and her stroke at the heart of the German snake will be a true stroke. I will not be one to give the weak word for mercy."

Her gaze, through half-closed lids, was directed towards the far trail of the canon where moving dots of dark marked the coming of the Palomitas women. A ray of reflected light touched the jewel green of her eyes like shadowed emeralds in their dusky casket, and the priest, constantly proclaiming the probable loss of her soul, could not but bring his glance again and again to the wondrous beauty of her. She had bloomed like a royal rose in the days of serene rest at Soledad.

"If the heretic Americano gives you these thoughts which are not Christian, it will be a day of good luck when you see the last of him," was his cold statement as he watched her. "My mind is not well satisfied as to his knowledge of secret things here in Sonora. The Indians say he is an enchanter or Ramon Rotil would never have left him here as capitan with you,—and that belt of gold——"

"But it was not the belt of the Americano!"

"No, but he knows! I tell you that gold is of the gold lost before we were born,—the red gold of the padres' mine!"

"But the old women are telling me that the gold was Indian gold long before Spanish priests saw the land! Does the Indian girl then not have first right?"

"None has right ahead of the church, since all those pagans are under the rule of church! They are benighted heathen who must come under instruction and authority, else are they as beasts of the field."

"Still,—if the girl makes use of her little heritage for a pious purpose——"

"Her intent has nothing to do with that secret knowledge of the Americano!" he insisted. "Has he bewitched you also that you have so little interest in a mine of gold in anyone of the arroyas of your land?"

She smiled at that without turning her head.

"If a mountain of gold should be uncovered at Soledad, of what difference to me? Would he let a woman make traffic with it? Surely not."

"He?"

"Jose Perez,—who else?"

Padre Andreas closed his eyes a moment and arose, but did not answer. He paced the length of the corridor and back before he spoke.

"It is for you to ask the Americano that the prisoner be given a priest if he wants prayer," he said returning to their original subject of communication. "It is a duty that I tell you this; it is your own house."

"Senor Rhodes is capitan," she returned indifferently. "It is his task to give me rest here to prepare for that long north journey. I do not rest in my mind or my soul when you talk to me of the German snake, so I will ask that you speak with Capitan Rhodes. He has the knowing of Spanish."

"Too much for safety of us," commented the priest darkly. "Who is to say how he uses it with the Indians? It is well known that the American government would win all this land, and work with the Indians that they help win it."

"So everyone is saying in Hermosillo," agreed Dona Jocasta, "but the American capitan has not told me lies of any other thing, and he is saying that is a lie made by foreign people. Also—" and she looked at him doubtfully, "the man Conrad cursed your name yesterday as a damned Austrian whose country had cost his country much."

"My mother was not Austrian!" retorted Padre Andreas, "and all my childhood was in Mexico. But how did Conrad know?"

"He told Elena it was his business to know such things. The Germans help send many Mexican priests north over the border. He had the thought that you are to go with me for some reason political of which I knew nothing!"

"I? Did I come in willingness to this wilderness? From the beginning to the end I am as a prisoner here;—as much a prisoner as is El Aleman behind the bars! No horse is mine;—if I walk abroad for my own health a vaquero ever is after me that I ride back with no fatigue to myself! It is the work of the heretic Americano who will have his own curse for it!"

He fumed nervously over the unexpected thrust of Austrian ancestry, and the beautiful eyes of Dona Jocasta regarded him with awakened interest. She had never thought of his politics, or possible affiliations, but after all it was true that he had been stationed at a pueblo where everything on wheels must pass coming north towards the border, also that was a very small pueblo to support a padre, and perhaps——

"Padre," she said after a moment, "but for the Americano you would be a dead man. Think you what Ramon would have done to a priest who let a vaquero carry me to the ranges! Also I came back to Soledad because the Americano told me it was only duty and justice that I come for your sake as Ramon has no liking for priests. You see, senor, our American capitan of Soledad is not so bad;—he had a care of you."

"Too much a care of me!" retorted the priest. "Know you not that the door of my sleeping room is bolted each night, and unbolted at dawn? He laughs with a light heart, and sings foolishly,—your new Americano; but under that cloak of the simple his plotting is not idle!"

"As to that, I think his light heart is not so light these days," said Dona Jocasta. "Two days now the Indian girl and Marto Cavayso could have been back in Soledad, and he is looking, looking ever over that empty trail. Before the sun was above the sierra today he was far there coming across the mesa."

"A man does not go in the dark to look for a trail," said Padre Andreas meaningly. "He unbolted my door on his return, and to me he looked as a man who has done work that was heavy. What work is there for him to do alone in the hills?"

"Who knows? A horse herd is somewhere in a canon beyond. There are colts, and the storm of yesterday might make trouble. The old father of Elena says that storm has not gone far and will come back! And while the Americano rides to learn of colts, and strays, he also picks the best mules for our journey to the border."

"Does he find the best mules with packs already on their backs in the canons?" demanded the padre skeptically. "From my window I saw them return."

"I also," confessed Dona Jocasta amused at the persistence of suspicion, "and the load was the water bags and serape! Does any but a fool go into the wilderness without water?"

"You cover him well, senora, but I think it was not horses he went in the night to count," said the priest sarcastically. "Gold in the land is to him who finds it,—and I tell you the church will hear of that red gold belt from me! Also there will be a new search for it! If it is here the church will see that it does not go with American renegades across the border!"

"Padre, all the land speaks peace today, yet you are as a threatening cloud over Soledad!"

"I speak in warning, not threat,—and I am not the only cloud in the sky. The women of vengeance are coming beyond there where the willows are green."

Dona Jocasta looked the way he pointed, and stood up with an exclamation of alarm.

"Clodomiro! Call Clodomiro!" she said hurriedly, and as the priest only stared at her, she sped past him to the portal and called the boy who came running from the patio.

She pointed as the priest had pointed.

"They are strangers, they do not know," she said. "Kill a horse, but meet them!"

His horse was in the plaza, and he was in the saddle before she finished speaking, digging in his heels and yelling as though leading a charge while the frightened animal ran like a wild thing.

Dona Jocasta stood gazing after him intently, shading her eyes with her hand. Women came running out of the patio and Padre Andreas stared at her.

"What new thing has given you fear?" he asked in wonder.

"No new thing,—a very old thing of which Elena told me! That green strip of willow is the edge of a quicksand where no one knows the depth. The women are thinking to make a short path across, and the one who leads will surely go down."

The priest stared incredulous.

"How a quicksand and no water?" he asked doubtfully.

"There is water,—hidden water! It comes under the ground from the hills. In the old, old days it was a wide well boiling like a kettle over a fire, also it was warm! Then sand storms filled that valley and filled the well. It is crusted over, but the boiling goes on far below. Elena said not even a coyote will touch that canoncita though the dogs are on his trail. The Indians say an evil spirit lives under there, but the women of Mesa Blanca and Palomitas do not know the place."

"It should have a fence,—a place like that."

"It had, but the wind took it, and, as you see, Soledad is a forgotten place."

They watched Clodomiro circle over the mesa trail and follow the women down the slope of the little valley. It was fully three miles away, yet the women could be seen running in fear to the top of the mesa where they cast themselves on the ground resting from fright and exertion.

Quite enjoying his spectacular dash of rescue, Clodomiro cantered back along the trail, and when he reached the highest point, turned looking to the southeast where, beyond the range, the old Yaqui trail led to the land of despair.

He halted there, throwing up his hand as if in answer to some signal, and then darted away, straight across the mesa instead of toward the buildings.

"Tula has come!" said Dona Jocasta in a hushed voice of dread. "She has come, and Senor Rhodes is needed here. That coming of Tula may bring an end to quiet days,—like this!"

She sighed as she spoke, for the week had been as a space of restful paradise after the mental and physical horrors she had lived through.

In a half hour Clodomiro came in sight again just as Kit rode in from the west.

"Get horses out of the corrals," he called, "all of them. That trail has been long even from the railroad."

It was done quickly, and the vaqueros rode out as Clodomiro reached the plaza.

"Tula?" asked Kit.

"Tula is as the living whose mind is with the dead," said the boy. "Many are sick, some are dead,—the mother of Tula died on the trail last night."

"Good God!" whispered Kit. "After all that hell of a trail, to save no one for herself! Where is Marto?"

"Marto walks, and sick ones are on his horse. I go back now that Tula has this horse."

"No, I will go. Stay you here to give help to the women. Bring out beds in every corridor. Bring straw and blankets when the beds are done."

Dona Jocasta put out her hand as he was about to mount.

"And I? What task is mine to help?" she asked, and Kit looked down at her gravely.

"Senora, you have only to be yourself, gracious and kind of heart. Also remember this is the first chance in the lands of Soledad to show the natives they have not alone a padrona, but a protecting friend. In days to come it may be a memory of comfort to you."

Then he mounted, and led the string of horses out to meet the exiles. While she looked after him murmuring, "In days to come?"

And to the padre she said, "I had ceased to think of days to come, for the days of my life had reached the end of all I could see or think. He gives hope even in the midst of sadness,—does the Americano."

Kit met the band where the trail forked to Palomitas and Mesa Blanca. Some wanted to go direct to their own homes and people, while Marto argued that food and rest and a priest awaited them at Soledad, and because of their dead, they should have prayers.

Tula said nothing. She sat on the sand, and caressed a knife with a slightly curved blade,—a knife not Mexican, yet familiar to Kit, and like a flash he recalled seeing one like it in the hand of Conrad at Granados.

She did not even look up when he halted beside her though the others welcomed with joy the sight of the horses for the rest of the trail.

"Tula!" he said bending over her, "Tula, we come to welcome you,—my horse is for your riding."

She looked up when he touched her.

"Friend of me," she murmured wistfully, "you made me put a mark at that place after we met in the first dawn,—so I was knowing it well. Also my mother was knowing,—and it was where she died last night under the moon. See, this is the knife on which Anita died in that place. It is ended for us—the people of Miguel, and the people of Cajame!"

"Tula, you have done wonderful things, many deeds to make the spirit of Miguel proud. Is that not so, my friends?" and he turned to the others, travel-stained, sick and weary, yet one in their cries of the gratitude they owed to Tula and to him, by which he perceived that Tula had, for her own reasons, credited him with the plan of ransom.

They tried brokenly to tell of their long fear and despair in the strangers' land,—and of sickness and deaths there. Then the miracle of Tula walking by the exalted excellencia of that great place, and naming one by one the Palomitas names, forgetting none;—until all who lived were led out from that great planting place of sugar cane and maize, and their feet set on the northern way.

When they reached this joyous part of the recital words failed, and they wept as they smiled at him and touched the head of Tula tenderly. Even a gorgeous and strange manta she now wore was pressed to the lips of women who were soon to see their children or their desolate mothers.

His eyes grew misty as they thronged about her,—the slender dark child of the breed of a leader. The new manta was of yellow wool and cotton, bordered with dull green and little squares of flaming scarlet woven in it by patient Indian hands of the far south coast. It made her look a bit royal in the midst of the drab-colored, weary band.

She seemed scarcely to hear their praise, or their sobs and prayers. Her face was still and her gaze far off and brooding as her fingers stroked the curved blade over and over.

"An Indian stole that knife from the German after his face was cut with it by her sister," said Marto Cavayso quietly while the vaqueros were helping the weaker refugees to mount, two to each animal. "That man gives it to her at the place where Marta, her mother, died in the night. So after that she does not sleep or eat or talk. It is as you see."

"I see! Take you the others, and Tula will ride on my saddle," said Kit in the same tone. Then he pointed to the beautifully worked manta, "Did she squander wealth of hers on that?"

Marto regarded him with an impatient frown—it seemed to him an ill moment for the American joke.

"Tula had no wealth," he stated, "we lived as we could on the fine gold you gave to me for myself."

"Oh yes, I had forgotten that," declared Kit in some wonder at this information, "but mantas like that do not grow on trees in Sonora."

"That is a gift from the very grand daughter of the General Terain," said Marto. "Also if you had seen affairs as they moved there at Linda Vista you would have said as does Ramon Rotil, that this one is daughter of the devil! I was there, and with my eyes I saw it, but if I had not,—an angel from heaven would not make me believe!"

"What happened?"

"The Virgin alone knows! for women are in her care, and no man could see. As ordered, I went to the gates of that hacienda very grand. Sangre de Christo! if they had known they would have strung me to a tree and filled me with lead! But I was the very responsible vaquero of Rancho Soledad in Altar—and the lizards of guards at the gate had no moment of suspicion. I told them the Indian girl carried a letter for the eyes of their mistress and the sender was Dona Jocasta Perez. At that they sent some messenger on the run, for they say the Dona Dolores is fire and a sword to any servant of theirs who is slow in her tasks."

"I heard she was a wonder of pride and beauty," said Kit. "Did you see her?"

"That came later. She sent for Tula who would give the letter to no one,—not even to me. The guard divided their dinner with me while I waited; if they were doing work for their general I was doing work for mine and learned many things in that hour! At last Tula came walking down that great stair made from one garden to another where laurel trees grow, and with her walked a woman out of the sun. There is no other word, senor, for that woman! Truly she is of gold and rose; her mother's family were of old Spain and she is a glory to any day!"

"Did you feel yourself under witchcraft—once more?" queried Kit.

"Sangre de Christo! Never again! But Jose Perez had a good eye for making choice of women,—that is a true word! So Dona Dolores walked down to the drive with that manta over her arm, also a belt in her hand,—a belt of gold, senor, see!"

To the astonished gaze of Kit Rhodes he drew from under his coat the burro-skin belt he had directed the making of up there in the hidden canon of El Alisal. Marto balanced it in his hand appreciatively.

"And there was more of it than this!" he exulted, "for the way on the railroad was paid out of it for all the Indians. That is why we lost two days,—our car was put on a side track, and for the sick it was worse than to walk the desert."

"Yes; well?"

"Dona Dolores got in a fine carriage there. Madre de Dios! what horses! White as snow on the sierras, and gold on all the harness! Me, I am dreaming of them since that hour! They got in, Tula also in her poor dress, and a guard told me to follow the carriage. It was as if San Gabriel made me invitation to enter heaven! Twenty miles we went through that plantation, a deep sea of cane, senor, and maize of a tree size,—the richness there is riches of a king. Guards were everywhere and peons rode ahead to inform the major-domo, and he came riding like devils to meet Dona Dolores Terain. I am not a clever man, senor, but even I could see that never before had the lady of Linda Vista made herself fatigue by a plantation ride there, and I think myself he had a scare that she see too much! At the first when Dona Dolores had speech with him, it was easy to see he blamed me, and his eyes looked once as if to scorch me with fire. Then she pointed to the child beside her, and gave some orders, and he sent a guard with Tula through another gate into a great corral where men and women were packed like cattle. Senor, I have been in battles, but I never heard screams of wounded like the screams of joy I heard in that corral! Some of these Indians dropped like dead and were carried out of the gate that way as Tula stood inside and named the names.

"When it was over that woman of white beauty told that manager to have them all well fed, and given meat for the journey, for he would answer to the general if any stroke of harm came to anyone of them on the plantation of Linda Vista. Then she gave to my hand the belt of gold to care for the poor people on the trail;—also she said the people were a free gift to Dona Jocasta Perez, and there was no ransom to pay. Myself I think the Dona Dolores had happiness to tell the general, her father, that Jose Perez had a wife, for that plan of marriage was but for politics. Sangre de Christo! what a woman! When all was done she held out the manta to Tula, and her smile was as honey of the mesquite, and she said, "In my house you would not take the gift I offered you, but now that you have your mother, and your friends safe, will you yet be so proud?" and Tula with her arms around her mother, stood up and let the thing be put over her head as you see, and that, Senor Capitan, is the way of the strange manta of Tula."

"And that?" queried Kit, indicating the belt. Marto smiled a bit sheepishly and lowered his voice because the last of the horses were being loaded with the homesick human freight, and the chatter, and clatter of hoofs had ceased about them.

"Maybe it is the manta, and maybe I am a fool," he confessed, "but she told me to spend not one ounce beyond what was needed, for it was to use only for these sick and poor people of hers. There was a good game going on in that train,—and fools playing! I could have won every peso if I had put up only a little handful of the nuggets. That is why I think my general knew when he said she was the devil, for she stood up in that straight rich garment of honor and looked at me—only looked, not one spoken word, senor!—and on my soul and the soul of my mother, the wish to play in that game went away from me in that minute, and did not come back! How does a man account for a thing like that; I ask you?"

Kit thought of that first night on the treasure trail in the mountain above them, and smiled.

"I can't account for it, though I do recognize the fact," he answered. "It is not the first time Tula has ruled an outfit, and it is not the manta!"

Then he walked over and lifted her from the ground as he would lift a child, she weighed so little more!

"Little sister," he said kindly, "now that you are rested, you will ride my horse to Soledad. Your big work is done for your people. All is finished."

"No, senor,—not yet is the finish," she said shaking her head, "not yet!"

Kit felt uncomfortably the weight in his pocket of the key of Conrad's room. He had made most solemn promise it would be guarded till she came. He had studied up some logical arguments to present to her attention for herding the German across the border as a murderer the United States government would deal justice to, but after the report of Marto concerning her long trail, and the death of her mother in the desert, he did not feel so much like either airing ideas or asking questions. He was rather overwhelmed by the knowledge that she had not allowed even Marto to guess that the bag of gold was her very own!

He took her on the saddle in front of him because she drooped so wearily there alone, and her head sank against his shoulder as if momentarily she was glad to be thus supported.

"Poor little eaglet!" he said affectionately, "I will take you north to Cap Pike, and someone else who will love you when she hears all this; and in other years, quieter years, we will ride again into Sonora, and——"

She shook her head against his shoulder, and he stopped short.

"Why, Tula!" he began in remonstrance, but she lifted her hand with a curious gesture of finality.

"Friend of me," she said in a small voice with an undertone of sad fatefulness, "words do not come today. They told you I am not sleeping on this home trail, and it is true. I kept my mother alive long after the death birds of the night were calling for her—it is so! Also today at the dawn the same birds called above me,—above me! and look!"

They had reached the summit of the valley's wall and for a half mile ahead the others were to be seen on the trail to Soledad, but it was not there she pointed, but to the northeast where a dark cloud hung over the mountains. Its darkness was cleft by one lance of lightning, but it was too far away for sound of thunder to reach them.

"See you not that the cloud in the sky is like a bird,—a dark angry bird? Also it is over the trail to the north, but it is not for you,—I am the one first to see it! Senor, I will tell you, but I telling no other—I think my people are calling me all the time, in every way I look now. I no knowing how I go to them, but—I think I go!"



CHAPTER XX

EAGLE AND SERPENT

Marto Cavayso gave to Kit Rhodes the burro-skin belt and a letter from Dona Dolores Terain to the wife of Jose Perez.

"My work is ended at the hacienda until the mules come back for more guns, and I will take myself to the adobe beyond the corrals for what rest there may be. You are capitan under my general, so this goes to you for the people of the girl he had a heart for. Myself,—I like little their coyote whines and yells. It may be a giving of thanks, or it may be a mourning for dead,—but it sounds to me like an anthem made in hell."

He referred to the greeting songs of the returned exiles, and the wails for the dead left behind on the trail. The women newly come from Palomitas sat circled on the plaza, and as food or drink was offered each, a portion was poured on the sand as a libation to the ghosts of the lately dead, and the name of each departed was included in the wailing chant sung over and over.

It was a weird, hypnotic thing, made more so by the curious light, yellow and green in the sky, preceding that dark cloud coming slowly with sound of cannonading from the north. Though the sun had not set, half the sky was dark over the eastern sierras.

"The combination is enough to give even a sober man the jim-jams," agreed Kit. "Dona Jocasta is sick with fear of them, and has gone in to pray as far from the sound as possible. The letter will go to her, and the belt will go to Tula who may thank you another day. This day of the coming back she is not herself."

"Mother of God! that is a true word. No girl or woman is like that!"

The priest, who had talked with the sick and weary, and listened to their sobs of the degradation of the slave trail, had striven to speak with Tula, who with head slightly drooped looked at him under her straight brows as though listening to childish things.

"See you!" muttered Marto. "That manta must have been garb of some king's daughter, and no common maid. It makes her a different thing. Would you not think the padre some underling, and she a ruler giving laws?"

For, seated as she was, in a chair with arms, her robe of honor reached straight from her chin to her feet, giving her appearance of greater height than she was possessed of, and the slender banda holding her hair was of the same scarlet of the broideries. Kit remembered calling her a young Cleopatra even in her rags, and now he knew she looked it!

He was not near enough to hear the words of the priest, but with all his energy he was striving to win her to some view of his. She listened in long silence until he ceased.

Then her hand went under her manta and drew out the curved knife.

She spoke one brief sentence, and lifted the blade over her head. It caught the light of the hovering sun, and the Indians near enough to hear her words set up a scream of such unearthly emotion that the priest turned ashen, and made the sign to ward off evil.

It was merely coincidence that a near flash of lightning flamed from the heavens as she lifted the knife,—but it inspired every Indian to a crashing cry of exultation.

And it did not end there, for a Palomitas woman had carried across the desert a small drum of dried skin stretched over a hollow log, and at the words of Tula she began a soft tum-tum-tum-tum on the hidden instrument. The sound was at first as a far echo of the thunder back of the dark cloud, and the voices of the women shrilled their emphasis as the drum beat louder, or the thunder came nearer.

Kit Rhodes decided Marto was entirely correct as to the inspiration back of that anthem.

"Sangre de Christo! look at that!" muttered Marto, who meant to turn his back on the entire group, yet was held by the fascination of the unexpected.

Four Indian youths with a huge and furious bull came charging down the mesa towards the corral. A reata fastened to each horn and hind foot of the animal was about the saddle horn of a boy, and the raging bellowing creature was held thus at safe distance from all. The boys, shouting with their joy of victory, galloped past the plaza to where four great stakes had already been driven deep in the hard ground. To those stakes the bull would be tied until the burden was ready for his back—and his burden would be what was left of "Judas" when the women of the slave trail got through with him!

"God the father knows I am a man of no white virtues," muttered Marto eyeing the red-eyed maddened brute, "but here is my vow to covet no comradeship of aught in the shape of woman in the district of Altar—bred of the devil are they!"

He followed after to the corral to watch the tying of the creature, around which the Indian men were gathered at a respectful distance.

But Rhodes, after one glance at the bellowing assistant of Indian vengeance, found himself turning again to Tula and the padre. That wild wail and the undertone of the drum was getting horribly on his nerves,—yet he could not desert, as had Marto.

Tula sat as before, but with the knife held in her open hand on the arm of the chair. She followed with a grim smile the careering of the bull, then nodded her head curtly to the priest and turned her gaze slowly round the corridor until she saw Rhodes, and tilted back her head in a little gesture of summons.

"Well, little sister," he said, "what's on your mind?"

"The padre asks to pray with El Aleman. I say yes, for the padre has good thoughts in his heart,—maybe so! You have the key?"

"Sure I have the key, but I fetch it back to you when visitors start going in, and—oh yes—there's your belt for your people."

"No; you be the one to give," she said with a glance of sorrow towards a girl who was youngest of the slaves brought back. "You, amigo, keep all but the key."

"As you say," he agreed. "Come along, padre, you are to get the privilege you've been begging for, and I don't envy you the task."

Padre Andreas made no reply. In his heart he blamed Rhodes that the prisoner had not been let escape during the absence of the girl, and also resented the offhand manner of the young American concerning the duty of a priest.

The sun was at the very edge of the world, and all shadows spreading for the night when they went to the door of Conrad's quarters. Kit unlocked the door and looked in before opening wide. The one window faced the corral, and Conrad turned from it in shaking horror.

"What is it they say out there?" he shouted in fury. "They call words of blasphemy, that the bull is Germany, and 'Judas' will ride it to the death! They are wild barbarians, they are——"

"Never mind what they are," suggested Kit, "here is a priest who thinks you may have a soul worth praying for, and the Indians have let him come—once!"

Then he let the priest in and locked the door, going back to Tula with the key. She sat where he had left her, and was crooning again the weird tuneless dirge at which Marto had been appalled.

But she handed him a letter.

"Marto forgot. It was with the Chinaman trader at the railroad," she said and went placidly on fondling the key as she had fondled the knife, and pitching her voice in that curious falsetto dear to Indian ceremonial.

He could scarce credit the letter as intended for himself, as it was addressed in a straggling hand filling all the envelope, to Capitan Christofero Rhodes, Manager of Rancho Soledad, District of Altar, Sonora, Mexico, and in one corner was written, "By courtesy of Senor Fidelio Lopez," and the date within a week. He opened it, and walked out to the western end of the corridor where the light was yet good, though through the barred windows he could see candles already lit in the shadowy sala.

The letter was from Cap Pike, and in the midst of all the accumulated horror about him, Kit was conscious of a great homesick leap of the heart as he skimmed the page and found her name—"Billie is all right!"

How are you, Capitan? (began the letter). That fellow Fidelio rode into the cantina here at La Partida today. He asked a hell's slew of questions about you, and Billie and me nearly had fits, for we thought you were sure dead or held for ransom, and I give it to you straight, Kit, there isn't a peso left on the two ranches to ransom even Baby Buntin' if the little rat is still alive, and that ain't all Kit: it don't seem possible that Conrad and Singleton mortgaged both ranches clear up to the hilt, but it sure has happened, every acre is plastered with ten per cent paper and the compound interest strips it from Billie just as sure as if it was droppin' through to China. When Conrad was on the job he had it all blanketed, but now saltpeter can't save it without cash. Billie is all right, but some peaked with worry. So am I. But you cheer up, for I got plans for a hike up into Pinal County for us three on a search for the Lost Dutchman Mine, lost fifty years and I have a hunch we can find it, got the dope from an old half breed who knew the Dutchman. So don't you worry about trailing home broke. The Fidelio hombre said to look for you in six days after Easter, and meet you with water at the Rio Seco, so we'll do that. He called you capitan and said the Deliverer had made you an officer; how about it? He let loose a line of talk about your two women in the outfit, but I sort of stalled him on that, so Billie wouldn't get it, for I reckon that's a greaser lie, Kit, and you ain't hitched up to no gay Juanita down there. I had a monkey and parrot time to explain even that Tula squaw to Billie, for she didn't savvy—not a copper cent's worth! She is right here now instructin' me, but I won't let her read this, so don't you worry. She says to tell you it looks at last like our old eagle bird will have a chance to flop its wings in France. The pair of us is near about cross-eyed from watchin' the south trail into Altar, and the east trail where the troops will go! She says even if we are broke there is an adobe for you at Vijil's, and a range for Buntin' and Pardner. Billie rides Pardner now instead of Pat.

I reckon that's all Kit, and I've worked up a cramp on this anyway. I figured that maybe you laid low down there till the Singleton murder was cleared up, but I can alibi you on that O. K., when Johnny comes marchin' home! So don't you worry.

Yours truly, Pike.

He read it over twice, seeking out the lines with her name and dwelling on them. So Billie was riding Pardner,—and Billie had a camp ready for him,—and Billie couldn't savvy even a little Indian girl in his outfit—say!

He was smiling at that with a very warm glow in his heart for the resentment of Billie. He could just imagine Pike's monkey and parrot time trying to make Billie understand accidents of the trail in Sonora. He would make that all clear when he got back to God's country! And the little heiress of Granados ranches was only an owner of debt-laden acres,—couldn't raise a peso to ransom even the little burro! Well, he was glad she rode Pardner instead of another horse; that showed——

Then he smiled again, and drifted into dreams. He would let Bunting travel light to the Rio Seco, and then load him for her as no burro ever was loaded to cross the border! He wondered if she'd tell him again he couldn't hold a foreman's job? He wondered——

And then he felt a light touch on his arm, and turned to see the starlike beauty of Dona Jocasta beside him. Truly the companionship of Dona Jocasta might be a more difficult thing to explain than that of the Indian girl of a slave raid!

Her face was blanched with fear, and her touch brought him back from his vision of God's country to the tom-tom, and the weird chant, and the thunder of storm coming nearer and nearer in the twilight.

"Senor!" she breathed in terror, "even on my knees in prayer it is not for anyone to shut out this music of demons. Look! Yesterday she was a child of courage and right, but what is she today?"

She pointed to Tula and clung to him, for in all the wild chorus Tula was the leader,—she who had the words of ancient days from the dead Miguel. She sat there as one enthroned draped in that gorgeous thing, fit, as Marto said, for a king's daughter, while the others sat in the plaza or rested on straw and blankets in the corridor looking up at her and shrilling savage echoes to the words she chanted.

"And that animal,—I saw it!" moaned Dona Jocasta. "Mother of God! that I should deny a priest who would only offer prayers for that wicked one who is to be tortured on it! Senor, for the love of God give me a horse and let me go into the desert to that storm, any place,—any place out of sight and sound of this most desolate house! The merciful God himself has forsaken Soledad!"

As she spoke he realized that time had passed while he read and re-read and dreamed a dream because of the letter. The sun was far out of sight, only low hues of yellow and blue melting into green to show the illumined path it had taken. By refraction rays of copper light reached the zenith and gave momentarily an unearthly glow to the mesa and far desert, but it was only as a belated flash, for the dusk of night touched the edge of it.

And the priest locked in with Conrad had been forgotten by him! At any moment that girl with the key might give some signal for the ceremony, whatever it was, of the death of the German beast!

"Sure, senora, I promise you," he said soothingly, patting her hand clinging to him. "There is my horse in the plaza, and there is Marto's. We will get the padre, and both of you can ride to the little adobe down the valley where Elena's old father lives. He is Mexican, not Indian. It is better even to kneel in prayer there all the night than to try to rest in Soledad while this lasts. At the dawn I will surely go for you. Come,—we will ask for the key."

Together they approached Tula, whose eyes stared straight out seeing none of the dark faces lifted to hers, she seemed not to see Kit who stopped beside her.

"Little sister," he said, touching her shoulder, "the padre waits to be let out of the room of El Aleman, and the key is needed."

She nodded her head, and held up the key.

"Let me be the one," begged Dona Jocasta,—"I should do penance! I was not gentle in my words to the padre, yet he is a man of God, and devoted. Let me be the one!"

The Indian girl looked up at that, and drew back the key. Then some memory, perhaps that kneeling of Dona Jocasta with the women of Palomitas, influenced her to trust, and after a glance at Kit she nodded her head and put the key in her hand.

"You, senor, have the horses," implored Dona Jocasta, "and I will at once come with Padre Andreas."

"Pronto!" agreed Kit, "but I must get you a serape. Rain may fall from that cloud."

She seemed scarcely to hear him as she sped along the patio towards the locked door. Kit entered his own room for a blanket just as she fitted the key in the lock, and spoke the padre's name.

The next instant he heard her screams, and a door slam shut, and as he came out with the blanket, he saw the priest dash toward the portal leading from the patio to the plaza.

He ran to her, lifting her from the tiles where she had been thrown.

"Conrad!" she cried pointing after the flying figure. "There! Quickly, senor, quickly!"

He jerked open the door and looked within, a still figure with the face hidden, crouched by a bench against the wall. In two strides Kit crossed from the door and grasped the shoulder, and the figure propped there fell back on the tiles. It was the dead priest dressed in the clothes of Conrad, and the horror of that which had been a face showed he had died by strangulation under the hands of the man for whom he had gone to pray.

Dona Jocasta ran wildly screaming through the patio, but the Indian voices and the drum prevented her from being heard until she burst among them just as Conrad leaped to the back of the nearest horse.

"El Aleman! El Aleman!" she screamed pointing to him in horror. "He has murdered the padre and taken his robe. It is El Aleman! Your Judas has killed your priest!"

Kit ran for his own horse, but with the quickness of a cat Tula was before him in the saddle, and whirling the animal, leaning low, and her gorgeous manta streaming behind like a banner she sped after the German screaming, "Judas! Judas! Judas of Palomitas!"

And, as in the other chants led by her, the Indian women took up this one in frenzied yells of rage.

The men of the corral heard and leaped to saddles to follow the flying figures, but Kit was ahead,—not much, but enough to be nearest the girl.

Straight as an arrow the fugitive headed for Mesa Blanca, the nearest ranch where a fresh horse could be found, and Dona Jocasta and some of the women without horses stood in the plaza peering after that wild race in the gray of the coming night.



A flash of lightning outlined the three ahead, and a wail of utter terror went up from them all.

"Mother of God, the canon of the quicksand!" cried Dona Jocasta.

"Tula! Tula! Tula!" shrilled the Indian women.

Tula was steadily gaining on the German, and Kit was only a few rods behind as they dashed down the slight incline to that too green belt in the floor of the brown desert.

He heard someone, Marto he thought, shouting his name and calling "Sumidero! Sumidero!" He did not understand, and kept right on. Others were shouting at Tula with as little result, the clatter of the horses and the rumble of the breaking storm made all a formless chaos of sound.

The frenzied scream of a horse came to him, and another lightning flash showed Conrad, ghastly and staring, leap from the saddle—in the middle of the little valley—and Tula ride down on top of him!

Then a rope fell around Kit's shoulders, pinioning his arms and he was jerked from the horse with a thud that for a space stunned him into semi-unconsciousness, but through it he heard again the pitiful scream of a dumb animal, and shouts of Marto to the frenzied Indians.

"Ha! Clodomiro, the reata! Wait for the lightning, then over her shoulders! Only the horse is caught;—steady and a true hand, boy! Ai-yi! You are master, and the Mother of God is your help! Run your horse back,—run, curse you! or she will sink as he sinks! Sangre de Christo! she cuts the reata!"

Kit struggled out of the rope, and got to his feet in time to see the flash of her knife as she whirled to her victim. Again and again it descended as the man, now submerged to the waist, caught her. His screams of fear were curdling to the blood, but high above the German voice of fear sounded the Indian voice of triumph, and from the vengeful cry of "Judas! Judas! Judas of the world!" her voice turned sharply to the high clear chant Kit had heard in the hidden canon of the red gold. It was as she said—there would be none of her caste and clan to sing her death song to the waiting ghosts, and she was singing it.

As those weird triumphant calls went out from the place of death every Indian answered them with shouts as of fealty, and in the darkness Kit felt as if among a circle of wolves giving tongue in some signal not to be understood by men.

He could hear the sobs of men and boys about him, but not a measure of that wild wail failed to bring the ever recurring response from the brown throats.

Marto, wet and trembling, cursed and prayed at the horror of it, and moved close to Kit in the darkness.

"Jesus, Maria, and Jose!" he muttered in a choked whisper, "one would think the fathers of these devils had never been christened! Sangre de Christo! look at that!"

For in a vivid sheet of lightning they saw a terrible thing.

Tula, on the shoulders of the man, stood up for one wavering instant and with both hands raised high, she flung something far out from her where the sands were firm for all but things of weight. Then her high triumphant call ended sharply in the darkness as she cast herself forward. She died as her sister had died, and on the same knife.

Dona Jocasta stumbled from a horse, and clung to Kit in terror. "Mother of God!" she sobbed. "It is as I said! She is the Eagle of Mexico, and she died clean—with the Serpent under her feet!"

* * * * *

In a dawn all silver and gold and rose after the storm, there was only a trace at the edge of the sand where two horses had carried riders to the treacherous smiling arroya over which a coyote would not cross.

And one of the Indian women of Palomitas tied a reata around the body of her baby son, and sent him to creep out as a turtle creeps to that thing cast by Tula to the women cheated of their Judas.

The slender naked boy went gleefully to the task as to a new game, and spit in the dead face as he dragged it with him to his mother who had pride in him.

It was kicked before the women back over the desert to Soledad, and the boys used it for football that day, and tied what was left of it between the horns of the roped wild bull at the corral. The bellowing of the bull when cut loose came as music to the again placid Indian women of Palomitas. They were ready for the home trail with their exiles. It had been a good ending, and their great holiday at Soledad was over.



CHAPTER XXI

EACH TO HIS OWN

A straggling train of pack mules followed by a six-mule wagon, trailed past Yaqui Springs ten days later, and was met there by the faithful Chappo and two villainous looking comrades, who had cleaned out the water holes and stood guard over them until arrival of the ammunition train.

"For beyond is a dry hell for us, and on the other side the Deliverer is circled by enemy fighters who would trap him in his own land. He lies hid like a fox in the hills waiting for this you bring. Water must not fail, and mules must not fail; for that am I here to give the word for haste."

"But even forty mule loads will not serve him long," said Kit doubtfully.

"Like a fox in the hills I tell you, Senor Capitan,—and only one way into the den! Beyond the enemy he has other supplies safe—this is to fight his way to it. After that he will go like a blaze through dry meadows of zacatan."

Kit would have made camp there for the night, but Chappo protested.

"No, senor! Every drop in the sand here is for the mules of the army. It is not my word, it is the word of my general. Four hours north you will find Little Coyote well. One day more and at the crossing of Rio Seco, water will be waiting from the cold wells of La Partida. It is so arrange, senor, and the safe trail is made for you and for excellencia, the senora. In God's name, take all your own, and go in peace!"

"But the senora is weary to death, and——"

"That is true, Capitan," spoke Dona Jocasta, who drooped in the saddle like a wilted flower. "But the senora will not die, and if she does it is not so much loss as the smallest of the soldiers of El Gavilan. We will go on, and go quickly, see!—there is yet water in the cantin, and four hours of trail is soon over."

Ugly Chappo came shyly forward and, uncovered, touched the hem of her skirt to his lips.

"The high heart of the excellencia gives life to the men who fight," he said and thrust his hand in a pocket fastened to his belt. "This is to you from the Deliverer, senora. His message is that it brought to him the lucky trail, and he would wish the same to the Dona Jocasta Perez."

It was the little cross, once sent back to her by a peon in bitterness of soul, and now sent by a general of Mexico with the blessing of a soldier.

"Tell him Jocasta takes it as a gift of God, and his name is in her prayers," she said and turned away.

Clodomiro pushed forward,—a very different Clodomiro, for the fluttering bands of color were gone from his arms and his hair—the heart of the would-be bridegroom was no longer his. He was stripped as for the trail or for war, and fastened to his saddle was the gun and ammunition he had won from Cavayso who had gone quickly onward with his detachment of the pack.

But Clodomiro halted beside Chappo, regardless of need for haste on the trail, and asked him things in that subdued Indian tone without light, shade, or accent, in which the brown brothers of the desert veil their intimate discourse.

"There, beyond!" said Chappo, "two looks on the trail," and he pointed west. "Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys."

"I am not now a boy," said Clodomiro, "and when the safety trail of the senora is over——"

But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.

Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,—who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,—sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Dona Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,—not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!

"If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked," Rhodes had stated. "But one is needed to make camp for the senora on the trail,—and to me the work of the packs and the animals."

"That I can do," Clodomiro offered. "My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American. That far I go."

Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.

This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,—need of haste, and conserving of water,—left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnishings deemed of use to Senora Perez in her removal to the north.

Dona Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of Jose Perez;—and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.

At dusk they reached the Little Coyote well, and had joy to find water for night and morning, and greasewood and dead mesquite wood for a fire. The night had turned chill and Clodomiro spread the serape of Dona Jocasta over a heap of flowering greasewood branches. It was very quiet compared with the other camps on the trail, and had a restful air of comfort, and of that Jocasta spoke.

"Always the fear is here, senor," she said touching her breast. "All the men and guns of Ramon Rotil did not make that fear go quiet. Every canon we crossed I was holding my breath for fear of hidden men of Jose Perez! You did not see him in the land where he is strong; but men of power are bound to him there in the south, and—against one woman——"

"Senora, I do not think you have read the papers given to you by Padre Andreas to put with the others given by General Rotil," was Kit's quiet comment. He glanced toward the well where the boy was dipping water into a wicker bottle. "Have you?"

"No, senor, it is my permit to be passed safely by all the men of Ramon Rotil," she said. "That I have not had need of. Also there is the record that the American murder at Granados was the crime of Conrad."

"But, senora, there is one other paper among them.—I would have told you yesterday if I had known your fear. I meant to wait until the trail was ended, but——"

"Senor!" she breathed leaning toward him, her great eyes glowing with dreadful question, "Senor!"

"I know the paper, for I signed it," said Kit staring in the leaping blaze. "So did the padre. It is the certificate of the burial of Jose Perez."

"Senor! Madre de Dios!" she whispered.

"Death reached him on his own land, senora. We passed the grave the first day of the trail."

Her face went very white as she made the sign of the cross.

"Then he—Ramon——?"

"No,—the general did not see Perez on the trail. He tried to escape from Cavayso and the man sent a bullet to stop him. It was the end."

She shuddered and covered her eyes.

Kit got up and walked away. He looked back from where he tethered the mules for the night, but she had not moved. The little crucifix was in her hand, he thought she was praying. There were no more words to be said, and he did not go near her again that night. He sent Clodomiro with her serape and pillow, and when the fire died down to glowing ash, she arose and went to the couch prepared. She went without glance to right or left—the great fear had taken itself away!

Clodomiro rolled himself in a serape not far from her place of rest, but Kit Rhodes slept with the packs and with two guns beside him. From the start on the trail no man had touched his outfit but himself. He grinned sometimes at thought of the favorable report the men of Rotil would deliver to their chief,—for the Americano had taken all personal care of the packs and chests of Dona Jocasta! He was as an owl and had no human need of sleep, and let no man help him.

The trail to the canon of the Rio Seco was a hard trail, and a long day, and night caught them ere they reached the rim of the dry wash where, at long intervals, rain from the hills swept down its age-old channel for a brief hour.

Dona Jocasta, for the first time, had left the saddle and crept to the rude couch afforded by the piled-up blankets in the wagon; Clodomiro drove; and Kit, with the mules, led the way.

A little water still swished about in their water bottles, but not enough for the mules. He was more anxious than he dared betray, for it was twenty miles to the lower well of La Partida, and if by any stroke of fortune Cap Pike had failed to make good—Cap was old, and liable to——

Then through the dusk of night he heard, quite near in the trail ahead, a curious thing, the call of a bird—and not a night bird!

It was a tremulous little call, and sent a thrill of such wild joy through his heart that he drew back the mule with a sharp cruel jerk, and held his breath to listen. Was he going loco from lack of sleep,—lack of water,—and dreams of——

It came again, and he answered it as he plunged forward down a barranca and up the other side where a girl sat on a roan horse under the stars:—his horse! also his girl!

If he had entertained any doubts concerning the last—but he knew now he never had; a rather surprising fact considering that no word had ever been spoken of such ownership!—they would have been dispelled by the way she slipped from the saddle into his arms.

"Oh, and you didn't forget! you didn't forget!" she whimpered with her head hidden against his breast. "I—I'm mighty glad of that. Neither did I!"

"Why, Lark-child, you've been right alongside wherever I heard that call ever since I rode away," he said patting her head and holding her close. He had a horrible suspicion that she was crying,—girls were mysterious! "Now, now, now," he went on with a comforting pat to each word, "don't worry about anything. I'm back safe, though in big need of a drink,—and luck will come your way, and——"

She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.

"But it has come my way!" she exulted. "O Kit, I can't keep it a minute, Kit—we did find that sheepskin!"

"What? A sheepskin?" He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.

"Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy's! We're all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here—!" her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.

"Sure, now that I'm here," he assented amicably, "we'll stop all that moving business—pronto. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?"

"Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and——"

"Sure," he assented again. "Into the saddle with you and we'll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses——"

A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.

Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.

"Look who's here?" he called waving his hat in salute. "The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you've bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-class army mules. And say, you're just in time, and you don't know it! We're in at last, by Je-rusalem, we're in!"

Kit grinned at him appreciatively, but was too busy getting water to ask questions. The wagon was rattling through the dry river bed and would arrive in a few minutes, and the first mules had to be got out of the way.

"You don't get it," said Billie alongside of him. "He means war. We're in!"

"With Mexico? Again?" smiled Kit skeptically.

"No—something real—helping France!"

"No!" he protested with radiant eyes. "Me for it! Say, children, this is some homecoming!"

The three shook hands, all talking at once, and Kit and Billie forgot to let go.

"Of course you know Cap swore an alibi for you against that suspicion Conrad tried to head your way," she stated a bit anxiously. "You stayed away so long!"

"Yes, yes, Lark-child," he said reassuringly, "I know all that, and a lot more. I've brought letters of introduction for the government to some of Conrad's useful pacifist friends along the border. Don't you fret, Billie boy; the spoke we put in their wheel will overturn their applecart! The only thing worrying me just now,—beautifullest!—is whether you'll wait for me till I enlist, get to France, do my stunt to help clean out the brown rats of the world, and come back home to marry you."

"Yip-pee!" shrilled Pike who was slicing bacon into a skillet. "I'm getting a line now on how you made your other collections!"

Billie laughed and looked up at him a bit shyly.

"I waited for you before without asking, and I reckon I can do it again! I'm—I'm wonderfully happy—for I didn't want you to worry over coming home broke—and——"

"Whisper, Lark-child. I'm not!"

"What?"

"Whisper, I said," and he put one hand over her mouth and led her over to the little gray burro. "Now, not even to Pike until we get home, Billie,—but I've come out alive with the goods, while every other soul who knew went 'over the range'! Buntin' carries your share. I knew you were sure to find the sheepskin map sooner or later," he lied glibly, "but luck didn't favor me hanging around for it. I had to get it while the getting was good, but we three are partners for keeps, Buntin' is yours, and I'll divide with Pike out of the rest."

Billie touched the pack, tried to lift it, and stared.

"You're crazy, Kit Rhodes!"

"Too bad you've picked a crazy man to marry!" he laughed, and took off the pack. "Seventy-five pounds in that. I've over three hundred. Lark-child, if you remember the worth of gold per ounce, I reckon you'll see that there won't need to be any delay in clearing off the ranch debts,—not such as you would notice! and maybe I might qualify as a ranch hand when I come back,—even if I couldn't hold the job the first time."

"O Kit! O Cap! O me!" she whispered chantingly. "Don't you dare wake me up, for I'm having the dream of my life!"

But he caught her, drew her close and kissed her hair rumpled in the desert wind.

And as the wagon drew into the circle of light, that was the picture Dona Jocasta saw from the shadows of the covered wagon:—young love, radiant and unashamed!

She stared at them a moment strangely in a sudden mist of tears, as Clodomiro jumped down and arranged for her to alight. Cap Pike looking up, all but dropped the coffeepot.

"Some little collector—that boy!" he muttered, and then aloud, "You Kit!"

Kit turned and came forward leading Billie, who suddenly developed panic at vision of the most beautiful, tragic face she had ever seen.

"Some collector!" murmured Cap Pike forgetting culinary operations to stare. "Shades of Sheba's queen!"

But Kit, whose days and nights of Mesa Blanca and Soledad had rather unfitted him for hasty adjustments to conventions, or standardized suspicion regarding the predatory male, held the little hand of Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to assist Dona Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme of many a Mexic ballad.

For these were the first Americanos she had ever met, and it was said in the south that Americanos might be wild barbaros,—though the senor of the songs——

The senor of the songs reached his hand and made his best bow as he noted her sudden shrinking.

"Here, Dona Jocasta, are friends of good heart. We are now on the edge of the lands of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Senora Perez who has escaped from hell by help of the guns of El Gavilan."

"Dona Jocasta!" repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all change his mental attitude as to the probable social situation. "Some collector, Brother, but hell in Sonora isn't the only hell you can blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!"

Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.

"Dona Jocasta, oh!" she breathed as if one of her fairy tales of beauty had come true, and then in Spanish she added the sweet gracious old Castillian welcome, "Be at home with us on your own estate, Senora Perez."

Jocasta laid her hands on the shoulder of the girl, and looked in the clear gray eyes.

"You are Spanish, Senorita?"

"My grandmother was."

"Thanks to the Mother of God that you are not a strange Americana!" sighed Jocasta in sudden relief. Then she turned to her American courier and guard and salvation over the desert trails.

"I saw," she said briefly. "She is as the young sister of me who—who is gone to God! Make yourself her guard forever, Don Pajarito. May you sing many songs together, and have no sorrows."

After the substantial supper, Kit heard at first hand all the veiled suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper wrapped around Fidelio's tobacco, and he and Dona Jocasta spread out the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the others, as witness of how Philip Singleton met death in the arroya of the cottonwoods.

"It is all here in this paper," said Jocasta, "and that is best. I can tell the alcalde, yes, but if an—an accident had come to me on the trail, the words on the paper would be the safer thing."

"But fear on the trail is gone for you now," said Kit smiling at her across the camp fire. Neither of them had said any word of life at Mesa Blanca or Soledad, or of the work of Tula at the death.

The German had strangled a priest, and escaped, and in ignorance of trails had ridden into a quicksand, and that was all the outer world need know of his end!

The fascinated eyes of Billie dwelt on Jocasta with endless wonder.

"And you came north with the guns and soldiers of Ramon Rotil,—how wonderful!" she breathed. "And if the newspapers tell the truth I reckon he needs the guns all right! Cap dear, where is that one Jose Ortego rode in with from the railroad as we were leaving La Partida?"

"In my coat, Honey. You go get it—you are younger than this old-timer."

Jocasta followed Billie with her eyes, though she had not understood the English words between them. It was not until the paper was unfolded with an old and very bad photograph of Ramon Rotil staring from the front page that she whispered a prayer and reached out her hand. The headline to the article was only three words in heavy type across the page: "Trapped at last!"

But the words escaped her, and that picture of him in the old days with the sombrero of a peon on his head and his audacious eyes smiling at the world held her. No picture of him had ever before come her way; strange that it should be waiting for her there at the border!

The Indian boy at sight of it, stepped nearer, and stood a few paces from her, looking down.

"It calls," he said.

It was the first time he had spoken except to make reply since entering the American camp. Dona Jocasta frowned at him and he moved a little apart, leaning,—a slender dark, semi-nude figure, against the green and yellow mist of a palo verde tree,—listening with downcast eyes.

Dona Jocasta looked from the pictured face to the big black letters above.

"Is it a victorious battle, for him?" she asked and Kit hesitated to make reply, but Billie, not knowing reason for silence, blurted out the truth even while her eyes were occupied by another column.

"Not exactly, senora. But here is something of real interest to you, something of Soledad—oh, I am sorry!"

"What does it say,—Soledad?"

"See!—I forgot you don't know the English!"

* * * * *

Troops from the south to rescue Don Jose Perez from El Gavilan at Soledad turn guns on that survival of old mission days, and level it to the ground. Soledad was suspected as an ammunition magazine for the bandit chief, and it is feared Senor Perez is held in the mountains for ransom, as no trace of him has been found.

* * * * *

"Now you've done it," remarked Kit, and Billie turned beseeching eyes on the owner of Soledad, and repeated miserably—"I am so sorry!"

But Dona Jocasta only lifted her head with a certain disdain, and veiled the emerald eyes slightly.

"So!" she murmured with a shrug of the shoulder. "It is then a bandit he is called in the words of the American newspaper?"

Cap Pike not comprehending the rapid musical Spanish, leaned forward fishing for a coal to light his pipe, noting her voice and watching her eyes.

"There you have it already!" he muttered to Kit. "All velvet, and mad as hell!"

Billie, much bewildered, turned to Kit as for help, but the slender hand of Dona Jocasta reached out pointing to the headlines.

"And—this?" she said coldly. "It is, you say, not victorious for Ramon Rotil, that—bandit?"

"It says, senora," hesitated Billie, "that he is hid in the hills, and——"

"That we know," stated Dona Jocasta, "what other thing?"

"'He has a wound and was carried by his men to one of his retreats, a hidden place,'" read Billie slowly, translating into Spanish as she went on. "That is all except that the Federals had to retreat temporarily because a storm caused trouble and washed out a bridge over which their ammunition train has to go. The place of the accident is very bad. Timber and construction engineers are being rushed to service there, but for a few days luck is with the Hawk."

"So!—For a few days!" repeated Dona Jocasta in the cool sweet voice. "In a few days Ramon Rotil could cross Mexico. He is El Gavilan!"

Things were coming too fast for Billie. She regarded the serenity of Dona Jocasta with amazement, and tried to imagine how she would feel if enemy guns battered down the old walls of Granados, or—thought of terror—if Kit should be held in the hills and tortured for ransom!

"Speaking of floods," remarked Pike in amiable desire to bridge over an awkward pause, "we've used half the water we brought, and need to make a bright and early start tomorrow. Rio Seco is no garden spot to get caught in short of water. Our La Partida mules are fresh as daisies right off a month of range, but yours sure look as if they had made the trip."

"What does he say,—the old senor?" asked Dona Jocasta.

Billie translated for her, whereupon she arose and summoned Clodomiro by a gesture.

"My bed," she said briefly, "over there," and she indicated a thicket of greasewood the wagon had passed on their arrival. "Also this first night of safety you will be the sentinel to keep guard that Senor Rhodes may at last have sleep. All the danger trail he had none."

Cap Pike protested that he do guard duty, but the smile of Dona Jocasta won her way.

"He is younger and not weary, senor. It is good for him, and it pleases me," she said.

"The camp is yours," he agreed weakly, and against his better judgment. He did not like Indians who were like "sulky slim brown dumb snakes"; that was what he muttered when he looked at Clodomiro. In his irritation at the Indian's silence it didn't even occur to him that he never had known any snakes but dumb ones.

But if the voice of Clodomiro was uncannily silent, his eyes spoke for him as they followed Dona Jocasta. Kit could only think of a lost, homesick dog begging for the scent of the trail to his own kennel. He said so to Billie as he made her bed in the camp wagon.

"Cap and I will be right here at the hind wheels," he promised. "Yes,—sure, I'll let the Indian ride herd for the night. Dona Jocasta is right, it's his turn, and we seem to have passed the danger line."

"Knock wood!" cautioned Billie.

So he rapped his head with his knuckles, and they laughed together as young happy things do at trifles. Then he stretched himself for sleep under the stars and almost within arm's reach of the girl—the girl who had ridden to meet him in the night, the wonderful girl who had promised to wait until he came back from France ... of course he could get into the army now! They would need men too badly to turn him down again. If there was a trifle of discrepancy in sight of his eyes—which he didn't at all believe—he had the dust now, also the nuggets, to buy any and all treatment to adjust that little matter. He had nearly four hundred pounds, aside from giving all he dared give at once as Tula's gift to those women of the slave raid. After the war was over he would find ways of again crossing over to the great treasure chest in the hidden canon. The little information Pike had managed to convey to him about that sheepskin map told him that the most important indications had been destroyed during those years it had been buried for safe-keeping. The only true map in existence was the one in his own memory,—no use to tell Pike and Billie that! He could leave them in comfort and content, and when he got back from France—He wondered how long it would last—the war. Hadn't the greatest of Americans tried three years ago to hammer the fact into the alleged brain pans of the practical politicians that the sooner the little old United States made guns, and ships, and flying machines for herself, the sooner she could help end that upheaval of hell in Europe?... and they wouldn't listen! Listen?—They brought every ounce of influence they could round up to silence those facts,—the eternally condemned ostriches sticking their own heads in the sand to blind the world to the situation! Now they were in, and he wondered if they had even ten rounds of ammunition for the cartridge belts of the few trained soldiers in service? They had not had even three rounds for the showy grand review attempted in Texas not long since; also the transportation had been a joke, some of the National Guards started, but never did arrive—and France was a longer trail than Texas. God! they should be ready to fight as the French were ready, in twelve hours—and it would have to be months—a long unequal hell for a time over there, but only one finish, and the brown rats driven back to their den! After that the most wonderful girl would—would—would——

Then all the sleep due him on the sleepless trail settled over him like a net weighted, yet very caressing, and the world war and the wonderful girl drifted far away!

Beyond, on the other side of the fire, and out of the circle of light, Clodomiro bore the serape of Dona Jocasta, and made clear the place for her couch. She had returned to the light of the fire and was scanning again the annoying paper of the Americanos. Especially that remembered face of the audacious eyes. They were different eyes in these latter days, level and cynical, and sometimes cruel.

"He calls," said Clodomiro again beside her. She had not heard him, and turned in anger that he dare startle her.

"Who does he call?" she asked irritably tossing aside the paper.

"All Mexico, I think. All Mexico's heart," and he touched his breast. "Me, I do not sleep. I do your work and when the end of the trail is yours, I ask, Excellencia, that you send me back that I find him again,—the Deliverer!"

"What did Ramon Rotil ever do for you that you fret like a chained coyote because his enemies are strong?"

"Not anything, Excellencia. Me, he would not know if I told him my name, but—he is the Deliverer who will help the clans. Also, she would go,—Tula. Sangre de Christo! there would be no chain strong enough to hold her back if his wounds cried for help."

"If—his wounds cried for help!" repeated Dona Jocasta mechanically.

"It is true, Excellencia, El Gavilan was giving help to many people in the lands he crossed. Now the many will forget, and like a hawk with the weight of an arrow in his breast he will fly alone to a high nest of the hills. Death will nest with him there some night or some day, Excellencia. And the many will forget."

"Quiet you!" ordered Dona Jocasta angrily.

Abashed, Clodomiro went silent, and with a murmured apology took himself into the shadows.

She lifted the pictured face barely discernible now in the diminished light.

"And—the many will forget!" she repeated irritably. "The boy has the truth of it, but if she had lived, so terribly wicked,—so lost of God, I wonder if——"

She lifted her face looking up at the still stars as if for light on a thought, then flung her hands out despairingly and turned away to the couch by the green bush of fragrant yellow bloom.

But not to sleep. Long after the Americanos were wrapped in slumber a little blaze sent glimmer of light through the undergrowth, and she saw Clodomiro stretched beside the fire. He had tossed a bit of greasewood on the coals that he might again study the face of El Gavilan.

She had heard him say that if no desert wind lifted the sand he could follow to that hidden nest of the Hawk. It was very dark now except for glimmer of stars through lacy, slow-drifting clouds,—there was no wind. Later there would be a waning moon! Much of every waking life is a dream, and her dreams were of the No Man's Land of the desert,—the waterless trail from which she had been rescued for peace!

Twice during the night Kit roused from the depths sufficiently to realize that sleep is one of the greatest gifts to man. Once Clodomiro was stretched by the little fire inspecting the paper he could not read, the second time he thought Baby Bunting was nosing around trying to get close to human things. Both times he reached out his hands to the precious packs beside which he slept on the trail. All were safe, and he drifted again into a great ocean of slumber.

He was wakened at dawn by the voice of Cap Pike, keyed high for an ultra display of profanity.

"By the jumping Je-hosophat, I knew it!" he shrilled. "That's your latest collection, begod! I hoped he wouldn't, and knew he would! The all-firedest finest pair of mules on Granados, and every water bag in the outfit! Can you beat it?"

At the first shout Kit jumped to his feet, his eyes running rapidly over his pack saddle outfit. All was safe there, and as Billie lifted her head and looked at him drowsily over the edge of the wagon bed he realized that in the vital things of life all was well with his world.