Her voice was low and musically clear, but it bore a ring of authority
as well as of impatience at the obviousness of his question, and Thode
meekly obeyed.

The prostrate figure was that of a boy, dark-skinned and thin to the
point of emaciation. He was clad only in a ragged shirt and trousers,
with a battered straw hat lying torn and crushed beside him.

"Stand aside, please. I can carry him," Thode directed, and as he
slung the inert form gently over his shoulder he saw that the boy's
shoulders were pathetically humped.

In spite of his assertion, he found it no easy matter to struggle up
from the steep ditch, cumbered by his helpless burden, but the girl
steadied it with a capable hand and leaped lightly up beside him.

"Put him across your galapago, I'll walk on the other side and hold him
up. It's only to that shack there, where the light is."

Again Thode obeyed, but he could not forbear a further query.

"You are not hurt yourself, are you? It was that maniac in the car who
ran him down?"

"I came on him just now, lying that-a-way in the ditch. Poor little
Jose! I know who did it, though; he passed me a minute before, going
like hell. It was Wiley."

Thode started as the forceful comparison fell artlessly from her lips,
but at the final word a hot wave as of rage swept through his veins and
receded, leaving him tense and cold. So his vision had not tricked
him, after all. The man in the car had been no stranger.

"I know. He almost ran me down, too." Thode set his jaw firmly. "Is
this where we turn off?"

"This" was a narrow rutted lane, half-obliterated in the encroaching
underbrush, at the end of which a weather-beaten shack squatted in a
clump of zapote trees. As they drew up in the little cleared space
before it the door opened and a shriveled, white-haired woman peered
out, a light held high in her trembling hand.

"Madre de Dios!" she cried. "Jose!"

The girl turned to her with a rapid flow of soft liquid Spanish and the
old crone, weeping and muttering, stood aside to let them enter. Thode
was forced to stoop under the low, sagging doorway and he stumbled as
he made his way to a rickety bed in the corner and laid his burden down.

The girl took the light from the old shaking hands and together they
bent above the injured lad.

"I don't think there are any bones broken," Thode announced at last.
"But he's had a pretty bad shaking up for a cripple and that is rather
a nasty