Very gentle, quiet, and amiable was Nadi, and bound up in her child and noble husband. I say “noble” advisedly; for all the time we knew him he was always the “prince,” generous, kind to his wife and child, brave and unselfish in the extreme. And yet they told me that he had in his time done some terrible deeds, and had even with his own hand slain the cousin of his wife Nadi. When I looked at Jeeka, I could not find it in my heart to believe this.
Nadi used to sing. It was more a wail than anything else; though while doing so she used to nod her head, and smiles would steal over her dark but pretty face, while her eyes sparkled with excitement and fun. Her husband would join in the chorus, as if he, too, enjoyed it. Perhaps Castizo and Pedro knew what it was all about; I am sure none of the rest of us ever did.
Sometimes Jill, or Peter, and I used to go over to the toldos of the Indians. We always took with us a bit of tobacco, and sometimes a little bag of flour. We generally found them lazing in groups, smoking and playing cards or dice. But as soon as ever their own cacique, Jeeka, gave the word, all playing was almost instantly stopped, and soon after they had rolled their mantles more tightly round them, and gone off to sleep.
In the morning before the start, Jeeka invariably helped his wife into the saddle; then she, with her child and the other two women, rode leisurely on.
To be alone in the desert, is to be alone with God; and every one of us soon came to follow the habit of Castizo, and retire nightly a little way from the camp, there to commune with our Father above. Like as in the old, old times, Jill and I invariably went together, knelt together, and returned together.
Jeeka was a strange being. He was clever, for he could not only speak Spanish but tolerably good English, and he could think.
“What you go out for,” he said to me one morning, “last night?”
“To speak with the Great Good Spirit,” I replied. “He who made all things, and who keeps us in life and free from danger. Do you not speak with the Great Good Spirit?”
“Hum-m-m. Sometime. I think there is one, two, Great Spirit.”
“Yes, a Spirit of Evil, and a Great Good Spirit.”