us from the priest if he came here?"

"I would. And I ain't the one to ask questions. If you don't want to
see the priest, it's not Jim Hill that will assist him to find you.
Been there myself."

"Couldn't you get us three horses from my father's corral--the Rancho
Encarnacion?" asked Rafael.

"I could, if you'd go with me; but horse-stealing is just the one thing
I agreed not to do."

"You might go with him, Rafael," said Roldan. "You would get there
after dark if you started now; and even if the vaqueros were not asleep
they would not call your father."

"And I could send a message to my parents," said Rafael, eagerly. "Then
they would not worry. Yes, I will go. The priest would not dare to harm
me while I was with the Senor Hill."

"Oh, the two of us would be a match for even him, if it came to that,"
said Hill. "Well, we'll start right now, there bein' no call for delay.
We'll have to foot it, as my mustang's laid up. If the priest should
turn up here--which ain't likely--jest run up that ladder inter the
garret and pull it after yer. Well, hasta luego, as they say in these
parts. Make yourselves ter home."

XX

"Now," said Roldan, as Rafael and Hill trudged into the perspective of
the canon, "we must sleep, but by turns. That priest will surely go to
the cave to-day, and when he finds us gone he'll come straight for the
mountains; and not through the tunnel either; he'll come on that big
brown horse of his. You sleep first, for two hours, and I'll watch--"

"You first, my friend--" Suppressing a mighty yawn.

"It is easier for me to keep awake. Lie down on that horrible bed. I do
not so much mind waiting a little longer."

Adan lifted his nose at the bunk covered with a bearskin, then flung
himself upon it, and was asleep in three minutes. Roldan sat with his
eyes applied to a rift between the hide-door and the wall. It commanded
a view of the opposite wall of the canon, over which wound a zig-zag
horse trail.

The sun, which had hung directly above the canon when Hill and Rafael
departed, had slid toward the west, leaving the canon cold and dark
again, and Roldan was about to call Adan, when he sprang to his feet,
and stood rigid, cold with fear.

On the brow of the wall opposite, three hundred feet above his head,
stood a powerful brown horse. On him was a huge figure clad in a brown
cassock, the hood drawn well over the face. It was impossible to
distinguish features at that distance, but R