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,--above _me_! 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,--_I_ am the one first to see it! Senor, 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 XX

EAGLE AND SERPENT

Marto Cavayso gave to Kit Rhodes the burro-skin belt and a letter from Dona Dolores Terain to the wife of Jose 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 h.e.l.l."

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. "Dona 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 G.o.d! 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. "That _manta_ must 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 her _manta_ and 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. A _reata_ fastened 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!

"G.o.d 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 a.s.sistant 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 Senor 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 shadowy _sala_.

The letter was from Cap Pike, and in the midst of all the acc.u.mulated 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 the _cantina_ here at La Partida today. He asked a h.e.l.l'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 with _her_ name 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 G.o.d'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----