V
They started bravely toward the south and had not gone far when they struck a rough road. Tonio stooped down and found the fresh prints of Pinto’s hoofs in the mud.
“This is the way,” he cried joyfully. “I’m sure of it.”
They walked on and on, but they were too hungry to go very fast. By and by they sat down on a stone to rest. They had been there only a short time when they heard the beat of horses’ hoofs, and galloping down a hill they saw two people on horseback. One was a lady. The other was a man.
[p 152]
The children watched them eagerly, and in a moment Tita sprang up and began to run towards them, shouting joyfully, “It’s the Señorita Carmen!”
Then Tonio ran too. When Carmen saw the two wild little figures she shouted and waved her hand to them, and she and the mozo,[24] or servant, who was on the other horse, galloped as fast as they could up the hill to meet them.
When they reached the children, Carmen sprang down from her horse and threw her bridle-rein to the mozo. Then she quickly opened a little bundle which he handed her, and gave the children each a drink of milk, and some food, and all the while she murmured comforting things to them.
“Poor little ones—poor little souls!” she said, patting them. “We have been looking for you, the mozo and I, since daybreak! Where have you been, my poor pigeons? Your mother is nearly wild with grief! Tell me, have you seen anything of [p 153] your father or Pedro? They have not been home either. We thought perhaps they might be searching for you too.”
Tonio and Tita both had their hungry [p 154] mouths so full they could not answer just then, but when the mozo had lifted Tita up on the horse behind Carmen, and had taken Tonio up on his own horse, and they were on their way home, they told Carmen and the mozo just how they got lost, only neither one said a single word about their father or Pedro, or the Tall Man, or the group they had seen around the fire.
They remembered what the Tall Man had said about coming back to punish any one who should tell of the secret meeting, and they remembered how fierce his voice sounded as he said it.
When at last they rode into the gate of the hacienda every one was so glad to see them that the Twins felt like heroes.
José waved his hat and shouted when he saw them coming, and Jasmin came tearing out to meet them with his tongue hanging out and his tail stuck straight out behind him like the smoke behind a fast locomotive.
The news spread quickly through the village, and all the boys and girls and the [p 155] mothers came swarming out of their huts to greet them and to ask a thousand questions about where they had been.
The first one to reach them was Doña Teresa. She came running out of the chapel, with her rebozo flying out behind her almost like Jasmin’s tail, and she clasped them in her arms and kissed them again and again and called them her lambs, her angels, her precious doves.
[p 156]
She kissed the hands of Carmen and thanked her, and then she ran back with the Twins to the chapel and made them say a prayer of thankfulness with her before the image of the Virgin.