n an anxious frown.

"And the board-money?" she exclaimed, with instant eagerness.

"I guess it'll be all right. Mr. Keene said he'd send it every month."

The senora's eyes narrowed. "He said so! Ay, but who can say he shall
remember? There are eight chickens to eat of our meal already. No, Mees
Combs! The _muchacha_ was left to you. It is a charge very sacred. Ave
Maria! yes!"

Jane had closed the gate. "I can't force her," she repeated.

Senora Vigil, watching her go, fell a prey to lively dissatisfaction.
"_Santo cielo!_" she thought. "What will my Pablo say to this? I must
run to the mine for a word with him. It is most serious, this
business!" And casting her apron over the whip-cord braids of her
coarse hair, she started hastily down toward the bridge.

Lola, crouching on the ground, watched her go. It was very quiet in the
grassless yard. The Vigil children were playing in the _arroyo_ bed.
Their voices came with a stifled sound. There was nothing else to hear
save the far-off moaning of a wild dove somewhere up Gonzales canyon.
The echo was like a soft, sad voice. It sounded like the mournful cry
of one who, looking out of heaven, saw her hapless little daughter
bereaved and abandoned, and was moved, even among the blessed, to a
sobbing utterance.

Lola sat up to listen. Her father had spoken of going through that
canyon from which the low call came. Even now he was traveling through
the green hills, regretting that he had left his child behind him at
the instance of a strange woman! Even now he was doubtless deploring
that he should have been moved to consider another's loneliness before
his own.

"Wicked woman," thought the girl, angrily, "to ask him to leave me
here--my poor papa!" She sprang to her feet, filled with an impetuous
idea. She might follow her father!

There was the road, and no one by to hinder her. Even the hideous
wooden house of the short-haired woman looked deserted. Lola, with an
Indian's stealth of tread, crossed the bridge, and walked without
suspicious haste up the empty street.

At the mouth of the canyon, taking heart of the utter wilderness all
about, she began to run. Before her the great Spanish Peaks heaved
their blue pyramids against the desert sky. Shadows were falling over
the rough, winding road, and as she rushed on and on, many a gully and
stone and tree-root took her foot unaware in the growing gray of
twilight. Presently a star came out, a strange-faced star. O