“I should have let the men have you,” he muttered. “I was a bewitched man, or you never would have traveled alive to see Soledad. Rotil? Do not the handsome women everywhere offer him love and comradeship? Would he risk a good man to steal a woman of whom José Perez is tired?”
“You are not the one to give judgment,” said a strange voice outside the barred window.––“That I did not send you to steal women is very true, and the task I did send you for has been better done by other men in your absence.”
Cavayso swore, and sat on the bed, his head in his hands. Outside the window there were voices in friendly speech, that of Clodomiro very clear as he told his grandfather the dogs did not bark but once, because some of the Mesa Blanca boys were with the general, who was wounded.
Kit closed and bolted again the door of Cavayso, feeling that the guardianship of beauty in Sonora involved a man in many awkward and entangling situations. If it was indeed Rotil–––
But a curious choking moan in the corridor caused him to turn quickly, but not quickly enough.
Doña Jocasta, who had been as a reed of steel against other dangers, had risen to her feet as if for flight at sound of the voice, and she crumpled down on the floor and lay, white as a dead woman, in a faint so deep that even her heartbeat seemed stilled.
Kit gathered her up, limp as a branch of willow, and preceded by Tula with the torch, bore her back to the chamber prepared for her. Valencia swept back the covers of the bed, and with many mutterings of fear and ejaculations to the saints, proceeded to the work of resuscitation.
“To think that she came over that black road and held fast to a heart of bravery,––and now at a word from the Deliverer, she falls dead in fear! So it is with many who hear his name; yet he is not bad to his friends. Every Indian in Sonora is knowing that,” stated Valencia.