“In the cupboard––look, quick!” he whispered, pointing to a set of shelves built upon the wall and behind whose locked doors Pedro had been accustomed to store his baskets.
Jessica tried the little door, which refused to open, and to her inquiry for the key, Antonio pointed to his own pillow. After a slight hesitation she approached and secured the key from beneath it; but when she had opened the cupboard found that all the Indian’s exquisite weaving had been removed. In its place was the metal-pointed staff, with its shank broken in half, and she exclaimed, indignantly:
“Oh! how could you do that, Antonio? And how could you be so mean as to take it from two children?”
“Ha! Once it was all mine––this land. The copper in the canyon, mine, also. Si. The padres’ secret which the shepherd kept was mine–––No, no; not yet!” he broke off, with a sudden, delirious scream, fancying he saw the head of a man appearing without the door.
His outcry set Jessica shivering with fear at being alone in that isolated spot with a possible madman; but a second glance into his pallid face restored her natural courage and assured her that he was powerless to injure her, even had he wished to do so. Just then, too, Buster whinnied and she felt that he was company. It sounded as if he had seen some stable companion of his own and had welcomed it; yet this could not be, of course, since nobody knew of her whereabouts or would be likely to come to the mesa now. Therefore, she did not follow Antonio’s glance doorward, but sought at once to relieve his distress.
“Won’t you drink another cup of coffee, Antonio? Or shall I make you a bit of porridge? There’s hot water still in the kettle and I know how. I’ve made it for my mother, often, when she was ill; and the little boys always have it. Oh, I can do it quite well!”
She was so eager to serve him, and the pain had once more so greatly lessened for the time being, that the late manager graciously consented, and with such an absurd assumption of his old “top-lofty” manner that Jessica laughed even while she hastened to put on the tiny porringer and seek the meal. The little oil stove blazed merrily, and so deft was she that, in a very few minutes more, she had a dish of the steaming mush beside the cot and had thinned a cup of condensed milk with which to make it the more palatable. Sugar there was in 195 plenty, for Pedro had loved sweets; so that nothing was wanted, save appetite, to render the repast all that was desirable; yet when it was quite ready Antonio could not take it.
The pain had returned and with added intensity; and it was due to that fact that he no longer delayed the confession he had sent for her to hear.
“Hark! Behold! I talk.”