A WOMAN OF EMERALD EYES

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

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

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

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

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

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

He then sought out one of the older men to learn who could be counted on to round up the stray cattle of the ranges. After that he went at once back to the ranch house, and did not even speak to Tula again.

There was nothing to indicate that she was the princ.i.p.al object of his visit, or that she had acquired a guardian who was taking his job seriously.

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

There was a sort of suppressed bustle about _la casa de Mesa Blanca_ that day, dainties of cookery prepared with difficulty from the diminished stores, and the rooms of the iron bars sprinkled and swept, and pillows of wondrous drawnwork decorated the more pretentious bed.

To Tula it was more of magnificence than she had ever seen in her brief life, and the many rooms in one dwelling was a wonder. She would stand staring across the patio and into the various doorways through which she hesitated to pa.s.s. She for whom the wide silences of the desert held few terrors, hesitated to linger alone in the shadows of the circling walls. Kit noted that when each little task was finished for Valencia, she would go outside in the sunlight where she had the familiar ranges and far blue mountains in sight.

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

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

She only gazed at him without question.

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

She nodded silently.

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

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

"Some day it must surely be, Tula."

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

"What day, Tula?"

"The Judas day."

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

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

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

"Why, Kid Cleopatra, it isn't a woman's work you've done at all. It's a man's job you've held down and held level," he declared heartily.

"That's why I am counting on you now. I need eyes to watch when I have to be in other places."

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

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

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

"Well, it might be worse," he confided to Bunting out in the corral.

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

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

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

"I shall go part way on the Soledad trail and wait what happens," he told Isidro. "I will remain at a distance unless Clodomiro needs me.

There is no telling what tricks this Cavayso may have up his sleeve."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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