ert 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!

"God 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 assistant 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