He sensed this without analysis, for his was not the analytical mind. What brain Kit had was fairly well occupied by the fact that his own devoted partner was the moving spirit of that damnable pagan Come, all ye––drifting back to him from the glorified mesa, flushed golden now by the full sun.
Clodomiro came wearily up from the corral. The boy had gone without sleep or rest until his eyes were heavy and his movements listless. Like the women of Palomitas he also had worked overtime at the call of Tula, and Kit wondered at the concerted activity––no one had held back or blundered.
“Clodomiro,” he said passing the lad a cigarette and rolling one for himself from good new tobacco secured from Fidelio, “how comes it that even the women of years come in the night for prayers when you ride for them? Do they give heed to any boy who calls?”
Clodomiro gave thanks for the cigarette, but was too well bred to light it in the presence of an elder or a superior. He smelled it with pleasure, thrust it over his ear and regarded Rhodes with perfectly friendly and apparently sleepy black eyes.
“Not always, señor, but when Tula sends the call of Miguel, all are surely coming, and also making the prayer.”
“The call of Miguel? Why––Miguel is dead.”
“That is true, señor, but he was head man, and he had words of power, also the old Indians listened. Now Tula has the words, and as you see,––the words are still alive! I am not knowing what they mean,––the words,––but when Tula tells me, I take them.”
“O Tippecanoe, and Tyler too!” hummed Kit studying the boy. “What’s in a word? Do you mean that you take a trail to carry words you don’t understand, because a girl younger than you tells you to?”
The boy nodded indifferently.
“Yes, señor, it is my work when it is words of old prayer, and Tula is sending them. It would be bad not to go, a quicksand would surely catch my horse, or I might die from the bite of a sorrilla rabioso, or evil ghosts might lure me into wide medanos where I would seek trails forever, and find only my own! Words can do that on a man! and Tula has the words now.”