It was a tremulous little call, and sent a thrill of such wild joy through his heart that he drew back the mule with a sharp cruel jerk, and held his breath to listen. Was he going _loco_ from lack of sleep,--lack of water,--and dreams of----

It came again, and he answered it as he plunged forward down a barranca and up the other side where a girl sat on a roan horse under the stars:--his horse! also his girl!

If he had entertained any doubts concerning the last--but he knew now he never had; a rather surprising fact considering that no word had ever been spoken of such ownership!--they would have been dispelled by the way she slipped from the saddle into his arms.

"Oh, and you didn't forget! you didn't forget!" she whimpered with her head hidden against his breast. "I--I'm mighty glad of that. Neither did I!"

"Why, Lark-child, you've been right alongside wherever I heard that call ever since I rode away," he said patting her head and holding her close. He had a horrible suspicion that she was crying,--girls were mysterious! "Now, now, now," he went on with a comforting pat to each word, "don't worry about anything. I'm back safe, though in big need of a drink,--and luck will come your way, and----"

She tilted her cantin to him, and began to laugh.

"But it has come my way!" she exulted. "O Kit, I can't keep it a minute, Kit--we did find that sheepskin!"

"What? A sheepskin?" He had no recollection of a lost sheepskin.

"Yes, Cap Pike and I! In the bottom of an old chest of daddy's! We're all but crazy because it came just when we were planning to give up the ranch if we had to, and now that you are here--!" her sentence ended in a happy sigh of utter content.

"Sure, now that I'm here," he a.s.sented amicably, "we'll stop all that moving business--_p.r.o.nto_. That is if we live to get to water. What do you know about any?"

"Two barrels waiting for you, and Cap rustling firewood, but I heard the wagon, and----"

"Sure," he a.s.sented again. "Into the saddle with you and we'll get there. The folks are all right, but the cayuses----"

A light began to blaze on the level above, and the mules, smelling water, broke into a momentary trot and were herded ahead of the two who followed more slowly, and very close together.

Cap Pike left the fire to stand guard over the water barrels and shoo the mules away.

"Look who's here?" he called waving his hat in salute. "The patriots of Sonora have nothing on you when it comes to making collections on their native heath! I left you a poor devil with a runt of a burro, a cripple, and an Indian kid, and you've bloomed out into a bloated aristocrat with a batch of high-cla.s.s army mules. And say, you're just in time, and you don't know it! We're in at last, by Je-rusalem, we're _in_!"

Kit grinned at him appreciatively, but was too busy getting water to ask questions. The wagon was rattling through the dry river bed and would arrive in a few minutes, and the first mules had to be got out of the way.

"You don't get it," said Billie alongside of him. "He means war. We're in!"

"With Mexico? _Again?_" smiled Kit skeptically.

"No--something real--helping France!"

"No!" he protested with radiant eyes. "Me for it! Say, children, this is some homecoming!"

The three shook hands, all talking at once, and Kit and Billie forgot to let go.

"Of course you know Cap swore an alibi for you against that suspicion Conrad tried to head your way," she stated a bit anxiously. "You stayed away so long!"

"Yes, yes, Lark-child," he said rea.s.suringly, "I know all that, and a lot more. I've brought letters of introduction for the government to some of Conrad's useful pacifist friends along the border. Don't you fret, Billie boy; the spoke we put in their wheel will overturn their applecart! The only thing worrying me just now,--beautifullest!--is whether you'll wait for me till I enlist, get to France, do my stunt to help clean out the brown rats of the world, and come back home to marry you."

"Yip-pee!" shrilled Pike who was slicing bacon into a skillet. "I'm getting a line now on how you made your other collections!"

Billie laughed and looked up at him a bit shyly.

"I waited for you before without asking, and I reckon I can do it again! I'm--I'm wonderfully happy--for I didn't want you to worry over coming home broke--and----"

"Whisper, Lark-child. _I'm not!_"

"What?"

"Whisper, I said," and he put one hand over her mouth and led her over to the little gray burro. "Now, not even to Pike until we get home, Billie,--but I've come out alive with the goods, while every other soul who knew went 'over the range'! Buntin' carries your share. I knew you were sure to find the sheepskin map sooner or later," he lied glibly, "but luck didn't favor me hanging around for it. I had to get it while the getting was good, but we three are partners for keeps, Buntin' is yours, and I'll divide with Pike out of the rest."

Billie touched the pack, tried to lift it, and stared.

"You're crazy, Kit Rhodes!"

"Too bad you've picked a crazy man to marry!" he laughed, and took off the pack. "Seventy-five pounds in that. I've over three hundred.

Lark-child, if you remember the worth of gold per ounce, I reckon you'll see that there won't need to be any delay in clearing off the ranch debts,--not such as you would notice! and maybe I might qualify as a ranch hand when I come back,--even if I couldn't hold the job the first time."

"O Kit! O Cap! O me!" she whispered chantingly. "Don't you dare wake me up, for I'm having the dream of my life!"

But he caught her, drew her close and kissed her hair rumpled in the desert wind.

And as the wagon drew into the circle of light, that was the picture Dona Jocasta saw from the shadows of the covered wagon:--young love, radiant and unashamed!

She stared at them a moment strangely in a sudden mist of tears, as Clodomiro jumped down and arranged for her to alight. Cap Pike looking up, all but dropped the coffeepot.

"Some little collector--that boy!" he muttered, and then aloud, "You _Kit_!"

Kit turned and came forward leading Billie, who suddenly developed panic at vision of the most beautiful, tragic face she had ever seen.

"Some collector!" murmured Cap Pike forgetting culinary operations to stare. "Shades of Sheba's queen!"

But Kit, whose days and nights of Mesa Blanca and Soledad had rather unfitted him for hasty adjustments to conventions, or standardized suspicion regarding the predatory male, held the little hand of Billie very tightly, and did not notice her gasp of amazement. He went forward to a.s.sist Dona Jocasta, whose hesitating half glance about her only enhanced the wonder of jewel-green eyes whose beauty had been theme of many a Mexic ballad.

For these were the first Americanos she had ever met, and it was said in the south that Americanos might be wild barbaros,--though the senor of the songs----

The senor of the songs reached his hand and made his best bow as he noted her sudden shrinking.

"Here, Dona Jocasta, are friends of good heart. We are now on the edge of the lands of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Senora Perez who has escaped from h.e.l.l by help of the guns of El Gavilan."

"Dona Jocasta!" repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all change his mental att.i.tude as to the probable social situation. "Some collector, Brother, but h.e.l.l in Sonora isn't the only h.e.l.l you can blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!"

Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.

"Dona Jocasta, oh!" she breathed as if one of her fairy tales of beauty had come true, and then in Spanish she added the sweet gracious old Castillian welcome, "Be at home with us on your own estate, Senora Perez."

Jocasta laid her hands on the shoulder of the girl, and looked in the clear gray eyes.

"You are Spanish, Senorita?"

"My grandmother was."

"Thanks to the Mother of G.o.d that you are not a strange Americana!"