about and drove whistling
back to his own road.

Amada's spirits rose as she looked down into the Rio Grande valley and
saw the thread of glowing yellow foliage which marked the course of
the _acequia_ and the long, straggling procession of gray dots which
she knew was the town of Las Plumas. She had been there twice with her
father and mother when they had gone to join in the fiesta of Santa
Guadaloupe. They had a "_primo_" there, one of those distant relatives
of whom the Mexicans keep track so faithfully, but she meant to stay
far away from his house and to be seen neither by him nor any of his
family. She was sure she could reach the town by nightfall. She began
to wonder if the train on which she meant to go away would come after
that and what she should do with herself all night if it did not. The
two visits she had made to Las Plumas had been the only times in her
life when she had seen a railroad train, and she asked herself if she
would be afraid when she should get into the car and it should go
tearing across the country so fast. Ah, it would not go fast enough
for her, not nearly fast enough! And unconsciously she quickened her
steps to keep pace with her thoughts.

Presently mighty pains began to rack her body. She groaned and
clenched her fists until the blood stained her palms. But still she
hurried on, urging herself with thoughts of her journey's end, which
began to loom distant and impossible through the haze of her
suffering. The road wound over the rounded foothills, across the crest
of one, down the hillside, and over another, and another, and another,
until Amada thought their end would never come. She longed to lie down
there in the dusty road and give herself up to the agony that held her
body in its grip. But she so feared that she might yield to the
temptation, and never rise again, that she ran down the hills and
hurried her aching feet up the slopes until she panted for breath. An
awful fear had come to terrify her soul. In its absorbing clutch she
scarcely thought again of her wish to reach the railroad, and the love
letter that had brought her comfort and sustained her strength was
almost forgotten. If she should die there alone, with no priest to
listen to the story of the sins that oppressed her soul, to give her
the sacrament and whisper the holy names in her ear--ah, she could
not--any suffering could be endured better than so terrible a fate. So
she gathered up her strength and strov