“Not yet, my treasure, that fighting cock of Clodomiro crows only because of a temper, and not for day. It is I will make the fire and set Maria to the grinding. Go you to your sleep.”
Which Valencia was glad to do, while her holiday wardrobe, a purple skirt bordered with green, and a deeply fringed black shawl, was confiscated for the stranger within their gates.
Thrusting the bundle back of an olla in the corridor he touched Tula on the shoulder.
“The señor waits you in the kitchen,” he muttered in the Indian tongue, and she arose without a word, and went silent as a snake along the shadowy way.
It took courage for Isidro to enter alone the room of Doña Jocasta, as that was the business of a woman. But Kit had planned that, if discovered, the girl should apparently have no accomplices. This would protect Tula and Valencia should Rotil suspect treachery if an occupant of the house should disappear. It would seem most natural that a stolen woman would seek to escape homeward when not guarded, and that was to serve as a reasonable theory.
She slept with occasional shuddering sighs, as a child after sobbing itself to sleep. That sad little sound gave the old Indian confidence in his errand. It might mean trouble, but she had dared trouble ere now. And there could not be continual sorrow for one so beautiful, and this might be the way out!
She woke with a startled cry as he shook her bed, but it was quickly smothered as he whispered her name.
“It is best you go to pray in the chapel room, and meet there the women of Palomitas. Others will go to pray for a Judas; among many you may be hidden.”
She patted his arm, and arose in the dark, slipping on her clothes. He gave her the skirt and she donned that over her own dress. Her teeth were chattering with nervous excitement, and when she had covered herself with the great shawl, her hand went out gropingly to him to lead her.
As they did not pass the door of the sala, no notice was given them by Rotil’s guard. Mexican women were ever at early prayers, or at the metate grinding meal for breakfast, and that last possibility was ever welcome to men on a trail.