"If Kaolin can right your
wrongs, let him." And she adds, making to move off, "I suppose you
haven't any more need for me, or my services."

"If she haven't I have," cries Gaspar, springing out from the place of
concealment and seizing hold of the hag, while at the same instant
Cypriano flings his arms around the Indian girl.

"Come, Mam Shebotha!" continues the gaucho, "it's my turn to have a talk
with you."

She makes an effort to escape, and would cry out; but cannot, with his
sinewy fingers around her throat.

"Stop your struggling!" he commands, giving her a shake till her old
bones crackle at every joint. "A cry, a word from you above a whisper,
and I'll close your windpipe so that you'll never grunt through it
again. Come, _muchachos_! Let's to the other side! One of you bring
on the girl. _Vamos_!"

Raising the hag in his arms he bears her off, with no more care for her
comfort than if she were a trapped wolf. Nacena is borne more tenderly
in Ludwig's arms, into which she has been transferred, by a sort of
tacit understanding between him and his cousin--the latter walking
alongside. No threat hears the girl, nor needs it to enforce silence.
For she is no more apprehensive of injury, now knowing him who carries
her as her brother's old playfellow. Above all, does she feel
reassured, on hearing whispered in her ear--

"Have no fear, Nacena! Am not I the bosom friend of your brother? _I
will not deceive you_."

Does she note the earnestness of his words, and the significant emphasis
given to those last pronounced? Whether or not, she refrains making
rejoinder: but suffers herself to be borne on through the scaffold tombs
without resistance, and silent as the forms reposing upon them.

CHAPTER FIFTY TWO.

A FRIEND UNEXPECTED.

Straight across the cemetery goes Gaspar, with Shebotha in his arms, nor
stops he till back on the spot where the path leads down to the outer
plain. Arriving there, he deposits his living burden upon the earth;
not gently, but dumping her down with a rude violence, as though it were
a bunch of faggots. Still he does not let her out of his arms
altogether; but with a threat, once more warning her to be silent,
retains fast hold of her, till Cypriano has brought him a _lazo_ from
the saddle of one of the horses near by. Looping this round the body of
the sorceress, and taking a few turns of it about her arms and ankles,
he spreads his poncho over her head, then