By the time Sliver and Jake returned the sun hung like a red-hot ball in the smoke of the horizon. Even if the horses had not been tired, it was too late to start that night. Accordingly, after loading the raiders’ provisions, they rode on down into the ravine and used the glowing embers of the fonda for their camp-fire.
To them, sitting there, by ones and twos and threes the refugees came straggling in to gather for the night around their own fires. Going from one to another, Lee and Gordon dealt comfort and advice. They were to reap the standing corn and sow again for their own use in the secret places of the mountains. The hacienda cattle they could herd in the cañons of the lower hills. Thus, with plenty of milk for butter and cheese, corn, and beans, their own chickens, goats, and pigs, they would be able to live in rude comfort till the coming of peace permitted Lee’s return.
“The knowledge that they will not suffer makes it easier to bear.”
Lee spoke, looking back at the brown faces enlivened by the ruddy glare of the fires. But when, next morning, they crowded around her, old men, women, young girls, and little children, mixing prayers, blessings, and lamentations with their good-bys, she was less philosophical. She was still weeping when she looked back at those that had followed her as far as the mouth of the ravine.
“Oh, if our government could only see them! Surely they would help.”
Gordon looked for another outburst when, later, they sighted ruined Arboles from the very spot he and Mary Mills had overlooked it. How well he remembered it! The walls and courts, patio, rainbow adobes, a small city of gold magnificently blazoned by the red brush of the sinking sun; the cottonwoods flaming a deep apricot under a sky that spread a canopy of saffron and cinnabar, purple and umber and gold, down to the far horizon; the soft smoke pennons trailing violet plumes off and away into the smoldering dusk of the east; the cooing of woman voices broken by laughter, low, sweet, infinitely wild. Now, roofless, windowless, its blackened walls upreared in the midst of a wide, blurred smudge. Yet though the contrast brought stinging tears to her eyes, Lee took it calmly.
“What does it matter? It can be rebuilt. But there are other things”—her voice lowered and trailed away—“that can never be replaced.”
They were both sad and sick at heart. Yet youth may not permanently be cast down. When, riding on, they left the smoke-blacked ruin behind them and passed from the dreary waste of burned pasture into golden plains she began restoration. A native carpenter could replace every loved beam; rebuild the massive old furniture just as it was. The peones would lime-wash the exterior in its usual rainbow color! Also, restoration would give opportunity for remodeling and improvement.
As she ran on Gordon sensed another motive; perceived that she was striving to draw Bull out of his sorrow. Not a plan that did not include him! A great fireplace, for use during the rains, was to have a comfortable settle at one side, on which the Three could lounge and smoke while basking in the blaze. Each was to have his own room. Thus and so! Nor was her prattle without effect. Always sensitive where she was concerned, Bull divined her motive, and, albeit with an effort great as a physical strain, he responded, listened, and nodded acquiescence, occasionally forced a smile.
Only Sliver was fooled. “Say,” he remarked to Jake, who rode with him in the rear, “did you allow she’d have taken it so light?”