She picked up one of the packs and led the burro.
“But we can’t pack all this at once,” decided Kit, who was beginning to feel like the working partner in a nightmare.
“Two times,” said Tula, holding up her fingers, “I show you.”
She led the way, nervous, silent and in haste, as though in fear of unseen enemies. Rhodes looked after her irritably. He was fagged and worn out by one of the hardest trails he had ever covered, and was in no condition to solve the curious problems of the Indian mind, but the girl had proven a good soldier of the desert, and was, for the first time, betraying anxiety, so as the burro disappeared in the blue mist, and only the faint patter of his hoofs told the way he had gone, Kit picked up the saddle and followed.
The way was rough and there was no trail, simply stumbling between great jagged slabs hewn and tossed recklessly by some convulsion of nature. Occasionally dwarfed and stunted brush, odorous with the faint dew of night, reached out and touched his face as he followed up and up with ever the forbidding lances of granite sharp edged against the sky. From the plain below there was not even an indication that progress would be possible for any human being over the range of shattered rock, and he was surprised to turn a corner and find Tula helping Miguel from the saddle in a little nook where scant herbage grew.
“No, not in this place we camp,” she said. “It is good only to hide saddles and rest for my father. Dawn is on the trail, and the other packs must come.”
He would have remonstrated about a return trip, but she held up her hand.
“It must be, if you would live,” she said. “The eyes of you have not yet seen what they are to see, it is not to be told. All hiding must be with care, or–––”
She made swift pantomime of sighting along a gun barrel at him, and even in the shadows he could fancy the deadly half closing of her ungirlish eyes. Tula did not play gaily.
Tired as he was, Kit grinned.