“They’ve what? ’Deed, it’s muddled I am.”
“It’s like what my father told about people who did wrong in the big towns and cities. Other people take the wrong-doing people and put them in a prison. Well, they have put my Carlos, my own sweetest, innocentest brother, in a sort of prison here. The woman told me and that I should see him very soon. They’re going to have his ‘trial’ this morning and you must get well right off. Think of it! Can’t you hurry up? But, of course, soon as he tells them it will be all right. He has done nothing he should be punished for.”
Dennis drew himself up and bolstered his back against an angle of the next roof. The sun was getting high and the shadow he thus obtained soothed his still aching head. But Carlota was native to that land and unclouded sunshine never disturbed her. It merely set her golden hair a-glitter while she unblinkingly studied the details of this mud-built pueblo. In the adoring gaze of the Irishman she seemed herself to radiate sunshine and he winked fast, as if the vision blinded him; or to hide a tell-tale tear, forced from him by weakness and dismay. But she saw the betraying drop and taxed him with it:
“Crying? You, Dennis? When you should be so thankful? Or does your arm pain you? Of course it must, yet wasn’t it a good way the oldest ‘medicine man’ fixed it? Adobe mud, or something, outside the sticks, which are not to be touched, he says, for ‘a moon and a moon.’ That’s their queer kind of clock. By then it will be better than the other arm, which you might break to match, if you like!”
She leaned back, laughing at her own conceit, and, since he had the happy faculty of making fun at his own expense, he joined in her mirth. Yet he felt that their situation was graver than she realized, and begged:
“Begin at the very start o’ the matter, if ye please, Miss Carlota, an’ tell it me body an’ bones, from when ye rode off with the Injun an’ left me to carry the truck.”
“That wasn’t my fault, poor Dennis. I’d have stayed to help you if I could but even I was a little afraid—then. I’m not now. I’m so happy because Carlos is here. He is well. No centipede stung him, and nothing hurt him. We’ll see him soon and we’ll tell them that— But I’m getting to be as great a talker as you, Dennis, dear. Do you wish another drink?”
He nodded, and now was fully able to hold the bowl for himself with his uninjured arm.
“We rode from you clear to the pueblo without a word said, though I saw the man often look at my clothes. Then up to my hair, and down to the ground. All the time I was longing to ask—”
“Sure, ’twas hard for ye not!”