ng on them. So Billie was riding Pardner,--and Billie had a camp
ready for him,--and Billie couldn't savvy even a little Indian girl in
his outfit--_say!_

He was smiling at that with a very warm glow in his heart for the
resentment of Billie. He could just imagine Pike's monkey and parrot
time trying to make Billie understand accidents of the trail in
Sonora. He would make that all clear when he got back to God's
country! And the little heiress of Granados ranches was only an owner
of debt-laden acres,--couldn't raise a peso to ransom even the little
burro! Well, he was glad she rode Pardner instead of another horse;
that showed----

Then he smiled again, and drifted into dreams. He would let Bunting
travel light to the Rio Seco, and then load him for her as no burro
ever was loaded to cross the border! He wondered if she'd tell him
again he couldn't hold a foreman's job? He wondered----

And then he felt a light touch on his arm, and turned to see the
starlike beauty of Dona Jocasta beside him. Truly the companionship of
Dona Jocasta might be a more difficult thing to explain than that of
the Indian girl of a slave raid!

Her face was blanched with fear, and her touch brought him back from
his vision of God's country to the tom-tom, and the weird chant, and
the thunder of storm coming nearer and nearer in the twilight.

"Senor!" she breathed in terror, "even on my knees in prayer it is not
for anyone to shut out this music of demons. Look! Yesterday she was a
child of courage and right, but what is she today?"

She pointed to Tula and clung to him, for in all the wild chorus Tula
was the leader,--she who had the words of ancient days from the dead
Miguel. She sat there as one enthroned draped in that gorgeous thing,
fit, as Marto said, for a king's daughter, while the others sat in the
plaza or rested on straw and blankets in the corridor looking up at
her and shrilling savage echoes to the words she chanted.

"And that animal,--I saw it!" moaned Dona Jocasta. "Mother of God!
that I should deny a priest who would only offer prayers for that
wicked one who is to be tortured on it! Senor, for the love of God
give me a horse and let me go into the desert to that storm, any
place,--any place out of sight and sound of this most desolate house!
The merciful God himself has forsaken Soledad!"

As she spoke he realized that time had passed while he read and
re-read and dreamed a dream because of the letter. The sun w