"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 grat.i.tude 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----"