"You will think us all savages to allow this, father," and she pointed to the huddled Indians and the leaping flames; "but it was all so quick—like that—no one could think! My mother is in hiding from it, and—"
"Father," said Ana, speaking for the first time, "a priest is needed in the house. We have a woman who may be dying. Will you come quickly?"
She was eager to separate the priest from the others, and, her speech was nervous and eager.
"Dying?" he repeated, "is that what they meant when they said the Indian had killed a woman?"
"Yes, father," broke in the quavering tones of old Altagrazia, "here it is—the devil she made!" and she held up the clay image, from which the head had been broken in the mêlée. "One day ago the lady is well and rides like a caballero, and this day the sun goes down and she dies. The Indian from Mexico put on the curse!"
Old Polonia understood, and screamed denials in her native tongue, and then turned to the padre and pointed to the American.
"It is that man!" she cried, shrilly, "he is a devil! He does not die—not for anything! And while he lives he breaks the heart of my mistress. It is he; that is the man! Put on him the curse of the Church, father! Put on him the curse to send him to a desert where he never can find a road again!"
The padre smiled grimly. "That is all they use their religion for after a century of Christianity," he observed. "They still stick to their devil-worship, and call on the Church only when they want maledictions or absolution. Woman, you talk like a fool. Did you do this?"
He took the headless clay pin-cushion and held it before him. Polonia flashed one vindictive glance at him and then nodded her head sullenly. It was bad luck to lie to a padre.
"It was to save her," she muttered, "but the Americano is a devil, and nothing kills him."