none came.

"That is better," she said. "No one wishes to do you harm, but you
need a lesson very badly. Now Marto Cavayso,--if that be your
name!--why did you carry me away? Was it your own doing, or were you
under orders of your General Rotil?"

"I should have let the men have you," he muttered. "I was a bewitched
man, or you never would have traveled alive to see Soledad. Rotil? Do
not the handsome women everywhere offer him love and comradeship?
Would he risk a good man to steal a woman of whom Jose Perez is
tired?"

"You are not the one to give judgment," said a strange voice outside
the barred window.--"That I did not send you to steal women is very
true, and the task I did send you for has been better done by other
men in your absence."

Cavayso swore, and sat on the bed, his head in his hands. Outside the
window there were voices in friendly speech, that of Clodomiro very
clear as he told his grandfather the dogs did not bark but once,
because some of the Mesa Blanca boys were with the general, who was
wounded.

Kit closed and bolted again the door of Cavayso, feeling that the
guardianship of beauty in Sonora involved a man in many awkward and
entangling situations. If it was indeed Rotil----

But a curious choking moan in the corridor caused him to turn quickly,
but not quickly enough.

Dona Jocasta, who had been as a reed of steel against other dangers,
had risen to her feet as if for flight at sound of the voice, and she
crumpled down on the floor and lay, white as a dead woman, in a faint
so deep that even her heartbeat seemed stilled.

Kit gathered her up, limp as a branch of willow, and preceded by Tula
with the torch, bore her back to the chamber prepared for her.
Valencia swept back the covers of the bed, and with many mutterings of
fear and ejaculations to the saints, proceeded to the work of
resuscitation.

"To think that she came over that black road and held fast to a heart
of bravery,--and now at a word from the Deliverer, she falls dead in
fear! So it is with many who hear his name; yet he is not bad to his
friends. Every Indian in Sonora is knowing that," stated Valencia.

CHAPTER XIV

THE HAWK OF THE SIERRAS

"That is what we get, Tula, by gathering beauty in distress into our
outfit," sighed Kit. "She seems good foundation for a civil war here.
Helen of Troy,--a lady of an eastern clan!--started a war on less, and
the cards are stacked against us if they start scrapping