“With your permission, grandfather, talk first,” he said and the two men moved to the bench opposite, leaning over towards him as his voice was lowered.
“Today Marto Cavayso sent for me, he is foreman over there, and strange things are going forward. He has heard that General Rotil stripped Mesa Blanca and that all white people are gone from it. He wants this house and will pay us well to open the door. It is for the woman. They have played a game for her, and he has won, but she is a wild woman when he goes near her, and his plan is to steal her out at night and hide her from the others. So he wants this house. He offered me a good gun. He offers us the protection of Don José Perez.”
“But––why––that is not credible,” protested Kit. “He could not count on protection from Perez if he stole the woman whom many call Señora Perez, for that is what they did call Doña Jocasta in Hermosillo.”
“Maybe so,” assented Clodomiro stolidly, “but now he is to be the esposo of a Doña Dolores who is the child of General Terain, so Marto says. Well, this Doña Jocasta has done some killing, and Don José does not give her to prison. He sends her to the desert that she brings him no disgrace; and if another man takes her or sinks her in the quicksands then that man will be helping Don José. That is how it is. Marto says the woman has bewitched him, and he is crazy about her. Some of the other men, will take her, if not him.”
Kit exchanged a long look with the old Indian.
“The house is yours, señor,” said Isidro. “By the word of Señor Whitely, you are manager of Mesa Blanca.”
“Many thanks,” replied Kit, and sat with his elbows on the table and his hands over his eyes, thinking––thinking of the task he had set himself in Sonora, and the new turn of the wheel of fortune.
“You say the lady is a prisoner?” he asked.
“Sure,” returned Clodomiro promptly. “She broke loose coming through a little pueblo and ran to the church. She found the priest and told him things, so they also take that priest! If they let him go he will talk, and Don José wanting no talk now of this woman. That priest is well cared for, but not let go away. After awhile, maybe so.”
“She is bright, and her father was a priest,” mused Kit. “So there is three chances out of four that she can read and write,––a little anyway. Could you get a letter to her?”