cut on his head. Can you find anything clean to tie it up
with?"

Without reply the girl stooped, turned back her short khaki skirt and
tore a wide strip from a snowy petticoat. Then with a basin of water
dipped from the bucket upon a bench beside them she bathed and bandaged
the wound deftly. The old crone had lighted a flaring oil lamp and by
its leaping glow Thode saw to his surprise that the shack although old
and ramshackle was scrupulously, incredibly clean, and its chatelaine
bore herself not without a certain dignity, despite her agitation.

She was tall and stiffly angular with piercing black eyes deep-set in
her wrinkled face, and there was a peculiar wild grace in the rapid
gestures of her withered claw-like hands. She hovered anxiously about
as between them Thode and the girl ministered to the stricken lad, and
dropped to her knees as his eyes opened at length.

For a moment his startled gaze roved over them and then settled upon
the face of the girl.

"Senorita!" His voice was a mere convulsive whisper. "Senorita! It
was the Americano, Senor Wiley! He cursed me and laughed! I heard him
when he struck me!"

"Never mind, Jose. You must rest and get well quickly and then we will
attend to Senor Wiley. I will come to you to-morrow. Tia Juana--" she
laid her hand gently on the old woman's bowed shoulder--"I will send
Margarita--"

The rest was lost in a rapid patter of Spanish, but its purport was
unmistakable, for the woman seized her hand and kissed it, and even the
boy flashed a worshiping smile.

As they turned to the door, Thode jingled some coins in his pocket
tentatively, but the girl stopped him with a decisive gesture, and when
the door closed behind them and they stood out in the starlit darkness,
she gave a little, soft, low gurgle of laughter.

"Reckon you're new to these parts!" she exclaimed. "Let her see one
wink o' gold, and you'd have been knifed good and proper. Tia Juana's
no beggar, to be insulted with alms. She's proud; some of the
half-breeds are, when the strain is strong enough."

"I didn't know," Thode responded humbly. "I'd like to do something for
the kid. Shall I send a doctor out, if I can find one?"

The girl shook her head.

"He'll do, all right. It was a wicked thing to run him down like that,
but Wiley hasn't got the decency of a coyote, and he had it in for
Jose." She broke off suddenly, and held her hand out to the young
engineer. "Adios, stra