. Early that morning,
Miguel Torreno while beating his mule, had been kicked half way across
his corral by that stubborn though sensible animal, breaking Miguel's
right arm and fracturing three of his ribs. But no sooner had it been
ascertained that old Miguel would not die as he obstinately insisted
that he would, calling frantically upon the Saints the while as the
vision of purgatorial fires which he knew awaited him loomed before his
distracted imagination, than the wives of Pedro Torlone and Jose
Alvarez, neighbors and friends, quarreled over a cheap blue and white
striped _ribosa_, embroiling their husbands who, without the Padre's
intercession, would have come to blows.

Then the last sacrament had been administered to Don Juan Otero, one of
Santa Fe's oldest and most respected citizens.

In a vain effort to banish the unpleasant recollections of the day from
his thoughts, Padre Antonio turned with a sigh from the glories of the
sunset which he had been contemplating, and was on the point of entering
the garden when his quick ear caught the sound of horse's hoofs on the
road, causing him to pause with his hand on the latch of the gate.

His house being situated in an unfrequented quarter of the town, he
decided to await the coming of the animal; the bearer perchance of some
friend or acquaintance. He had not long to wait. The sounds drew nearer
and nearer, and presently, greatly to his astonishment, a tall, gaunt,
half-starved gray horse with a _riata_ fastened to his lower jaw, and
upon whose back sat an equally gaunt and haggard Indian woman with
disheveled hair and clothes tattered and dust begrimed, came into view
around the sharp angle of the wall and stopped directly before him.

Never in all his long and varied experience had he witnessed such a
pitiable spectacle as the woman presented. The wild, hollow eyes and
wasted, emaciated form and features gave her more the appearance of some
wild beast than a human being. She did not appear to be conscious of his
presence; and before he had time to recover from his surprise or utter a
word, she stretched both arms out before her as if toward the sun, and
uttering a wild, harsh, inarticulate cry, dropped unconscious from the
horse's back into his arms.

Experience had taught Padre Antonio to act quickly in cases of
emergency, and with the assistance of his gardener and Manuela, his old
Indian housekeeper, he carried her into the house and laid her upon his
ow