The plan seemed a good one and was carried out. The boy, fair-haired and about nine years old, cried out when he saw the old man and running to him, threw himself down beside the lounge and sobbed, “Granddad! Granddad! Oh, do wake up. I’m so glad you found me. I thought this time they’d make away with me for sure.”
Slowly a smile spread over the wan features. The sunken eyes opened and looked directly at the tear-wet face of the boy. “Jackie,” the old man said, and there was infinite love in his voice. “Thank God you’re safe! They’ve ruined me. They mustn’t ruin you. Go to Sister Theresa. Hide there.” For a long moment he breathed heavily, his gaze on the face of the boy he so loved. Then he made another effort to speak. “I’m dying, Jackie. I give you to Sister Theresa. Goodbye. Be—a—good boy.”
The girls, unable to keep back their tears, turned away, but Mary, hearing the child’s pitiful sobs, went over to him and, kneeling at his side, put a comforting arm about him. Trustingly he leaned his head against her shoulder and clung to her as though he knew she must be a friend.
Later, when the boy’s grief had been quieted, the young people, at the doctor’s suggestion, took him into another room and questioned him.
“How had he happened to be with the robber band?”
“Who was his grandfather?”
“Where would they find Sister Theresa that they might take him there as his granddad had requested?”
Still in the loving shelter of Mary’s arm, the boy, at first chokingly, then more clearly, told all that he knew. His grandfather, he said, had been a marked man by that robber band. He had done something years ago to turn them against him, Jackie didn’t know what. They had robbed him. They had destroyed his ranch and his cattle. They had stolen Jackie once before, but he had gotten away that time, but this time they had watched him too closely. Granddad had been hunting for him.
Sister Theresa? She was a nun and lived in a convent on the Papago reservation up to the north, quite far to the north, Jackie thought.
Deputy Sheriff Goode came in and listened to what Jerry had to tell him of the child’s story. He nodded solemnly. “I know that good woman,” he said; “she is one of the world’s best. I reckon the kid’s telling the truth. If you have the time, Jerry, I wish you’d take him over there right away.”