"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 princ.i.p.ality. 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 G.o.d, 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 h.e.l.lishness."

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

"If G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 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 ta.s.sels 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?"