"I have thought long on this," he said softly, "and I know my heart. I
desire to be a blood brother to all these, my people. And to you--I give
you my word as a Delcasar that I will serve you well, that I will be as a
brother to you."

There was a silence during which Alfego stared with profound gravity at
the ash on the end of his cigar.

"Have you heard," Ramon went on, in the same soft and emotional tone of
voice, "that the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad is going to build a line
through the San Antonio Valley?"

Alfego, without altering his look of rapt meditation, nodded his head
slowly.

"Do you suppose that you will gain anything by that, if this gringo gets
these lands?" Ramon went on. "You know that you will not. But I will make
you my partner. And I will give you the option on any of my mountain land
that you may wish to rent for sheep range. More than that, I will make you
a written agreement to do these things. In all ways we will be as
brothers."

"You are a worthy and pious young man!" exclaimed Solomon Alfego, rolling
his eyes upward, his voice vibrant with emotion. "You shall be my brother
in the blood of Christ."

CHAPTER XXIII

Ramon went to the _Morada_, the chapter house of the _penitentes_, alone
and late at night, for all of the whippings and initiations of the order,
except those of Holy Week, are carried on in the utmost secrecy.

The _Morada_ stood halfway up the slope north of the little town, at the
elevation where the tall yellow pines of the mountains begin to replace
the scrubby juniper and _pinon_ of the _mesas_ and foothills. It was a
cool moonlit night of late summer. A light west wind breathed through the
trees, making the massive black shadows of the juniper bushes faintly
alive. As he toiled up the rocky path Ramon heard the faraway yap and
yodel of a coyote, and the still more distant answer of another one. From
the valley below came the intermittent bay of a cur, inspired by the moon
and his wild kin, and now and then the tiny silver tinkle of a goat bell.

The _Morada_ stood in an open space. It was an oblong block of _adobe_,
and gave forth neither light nor sound. Ramon stopped a little way from it
in the shadow of a tree and lit a cigarette to steady his nerves. He felt
now for the first time something of the mystery and terribleness of this
barbaric order which he proposed to use for his purpose. All his life the
_penitentes_