CHAPTER XIXTHE 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.
Doña 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 Doña 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 Doña 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. Señor 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 cañon 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 heknows! 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?”
“José 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.”
“Señor 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 Doña 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? DidIcome 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 Doña 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, señor, 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 Doña 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 cañon 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 cañons?” demanded the padre skeptically. “From my window I saw them return.”
“I also,” confessed Doña Jocasta amused at the persistence of suspicion, “and the load was the water bags andserape! Does any but a fool go into the wilderness without water?”
“You cover him well, señora, 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.”
Doña 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.
Doña 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.
“Thereiswater,––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 cañoncita 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 Doña Jocasta in a hushed voice of dread. “She has come, and Señor 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.”
Doña 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.
“Señora, 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 strangemantashe 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 newmantawas 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 workedmanta, “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, “butmantaslike 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 Doña Jocasta Perez. At that they sent some messenger on the run, for they say the Doña 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, señor, 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 José Perez had a good eye for making choice of women,––that is a true word! So Doña Dolores walked down to the drive with thatmantaover her arm, also a belt in her hand,––a belt of gold, señor, 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 cañon 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?”
“Doña 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, señor, 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 Doña Dolores Terain. I am not a clever man, señor, 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 Doña 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. Señor, 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 Doña Jocasta Perez, and there was no ransom to pay. Myself I think the Doña Dolores had happiness to tell the general, her father, that José 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 themantato 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, Señor Capitan, is the way of the strangemantaof 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 themanta, 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, señor!––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 themanta!”
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, señor,––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,––aboveme! 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,––Iam the one first to see it! Señor, 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 XXEAGLE AND SERPENT
Marto Cavayso gave to Kit Rhodes the burro-skin belt and a letter from Doña Dolores Terain to the wife of José 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. “Doña 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. “Thatmantamust 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 hermantaand 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. Areatafastened 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 Señor 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 shadowysala.
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 thecantinahere 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.
How are you, Capitan? (began the letter). That fellow Fidelio rode into thecantinahere 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 withhername 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 Doña Jocasta beside him. Truly the companionship of Doña 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.
“Señor!” 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 Doña 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! Señor, 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, señora, 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 Doña 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 Doña 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, señor, have the horses,” implored Doña Jocasta, “and I will at once come with Padre Andreas.”
“Pronto!” agreed Kit, “but I must get you aserape. 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, señor, 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.
Doña 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 gorgeousmantastreaming 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 Doña Jocasta and some of the women without horses stood in the plaza peering after that wild race in the gray of the coming night.