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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"h.e.l.lo, Isidro!"

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

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

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

"So General Rotil makes a divide of the cattle,--of Whitely's cattle?

How is that?" he asked.

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

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

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

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

"Four days, senor."

"Seen any stragglers of cattle left behind?"

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

Dinner was announced for the senor, and the women showed him welcome by placing before him the most beautiful repast they could arrange quickly, _chile con carne_, _frijoles_, _tortillas_, and a decanter of Sonora wine--a feast for a king!

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

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

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

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

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

"I reckon you are dreaming the lock and chain part of it, Isidro,"

returned Kit. "Only murderers travel like that."

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

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

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

"Jocasta, eh? Dona Jocasta!" repeated Kit in wondering meditation.

"Doesn't seem possible--but reckon it is, and there are no real surprises in Sonora. Anything could, and does happen here."

He remembered Pike telling the story of Jocasta one morning by their camp fire in the desert. She was called by courtesy Senora Perez. He had not heard her father's name, but he was a Spanish priest and her mother an Indian half-breed girl--some little village in the sierras.

There were two daughters, and the younger was blond as a child of Old Spain, Jocasta was the elder and raven dark of hair, a skin of deep cream, and jewel-green eyes. Kit had heard three men, including Isidro, speak of Dona Jocasta, and each had mentioned the wonderful green eyes--no one ever seemed to forget them!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"It will soon be Easter," said Isidro.

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

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

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

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

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