barracks they were less welcome, Don Jesu and Robideau, both
subordinates of Salezar, scarcely tolerating them; while Salezar,
himself, kicked them from in front of the door and threatened to cut off
their ears if he caught them hanging around the building. They accepted
the kicks as a matter of course and thenceforth shrunk from his
approach; and he sneered as he thought of their degradation from once
proud and vengeful warriors of free and warlike tribes, to fawning
beggars with no backbone. But even he, when the need arose, made use of
them to fetch and carry for him and to do menial tasks about the mud
house he called his home. He had seen many of their kind and wasted no
thought on them.

He was the same cruel and brutal tyrant who had herded almost two
hundred half-starved and nearly exhausted men over that terrible trail
down the valley of the Rio Grande, and his soldiers stood in mortal
terror of him and meekly accepted treatment that in any other race would
have swiftly resulted in his death. He had played a prominent part in
the capture and herding of the Texan prisoners and loved to boast of it
at every opportunity, using some of the incidents as threats to his
unfortunate soldiers. Tom and his friends witnessed scenes that made
their blood boil more than it boiled over the indignities they elected
to suffer, and sometimes it was all they could do to refrain from
killing him in his tracks. At the barracks he was a roaring lion, but at
the _palacio_, in the sight and hearing of the chief jackal, he reminded
them of a whipped cur.

CHAPTER XX

TOM RENEGES

As the days passed while waiting for the return of the caravan to
Missouri, Patience rode abroad with either her uncle or her father,
sometimes in the Dearborn, but more often in the saddle. She explored
the ruins of the old church at Pecos, where the Texan prisoners had
spent a miserable night; the squalid hamlets of San Miguel, which she
had passed through on her way to Santa Fe, and Anton Chico had been
visited; the miserable little sheep ranchos had been investigated and
other rides had taken her to other outlying districts; but the one she
loved best was the trail up over the mountain behind Santa Fe. The
almost hidden pack mules and their towering loads of faggots, _hoja_,
hay and other commodities were sights she never tired of, although the
scars on some of the meek beasts once in awhile brought tears to her
eyes. The muleteers, benefici