“Indeed! That’s a comfortable chum to have around––not! And have you no fear?”
“Not so much. I am very good,” stated Clodomiro virtuously. “Some day maybe I take her for my woman;––her clan talks about it now. She has almost enough age, and––you see!”
He directed the attention of Rhodes to the strips of red and green and pink calico banding his arms, their fluttering ends very decorative when he moved swiftly.
“Oh, yes, I’ve been admiring them. Very pretty,” said Kit amicably, not knowing the significance of it, but conscious of the wide range one might cover in a few minutes of simple Sonora ranch life. From the tragic and weird to the childishly inane was but a step.
Clodomiro passed on to the kitchen, and Kit smoked his cigarette and paced the outer corridor, striving for plans to move forward with his own interests, and employ the same time and the same trail for the task set by Ramon Rotil.
Rotil had stated that the escort of Doña Jocasta must be as complete as could be arranged. This meant a dueña and a maid at least, and as he had bidden Tula have her way with her “Judas,” it surely meant that Tula must go to Soledad. Very well so far, and as Rotil would certainly not question the extent of the outfit taken along, why not include any trifles Tula and he chanced to care for? He remembered also that there were some scattered belongings of the Whitely’s left behind in the haste of departure. Well, a few mule loads would be a neighborly gift to take north when he crossed the border, and Soledad was nearer the border!
It arranged itself very well indeed, and as Tula emerged from the patio smoothing out an old newspaper fragment discarded by Fidelio, and chewing chica given her by Clodomiro, he hailed her with joy.
“Blessed Indian Angel,” he remarked appreciatively, “you greased the toboggan for several kinds of hell for us this day of our salvation, but your jinx was on the job, and turned the trick our way! Do you know you are the greatest little mascot ever held in captivity?”
But Tula didn’t know what “mascot” meant, and was very much occupied with the advertisement of a suit and cloak house in the old Nogales paper in which some trader at the railroad had wrapped Fidelio’s tobacco. It had the picture of an alluring lady in a dress of much material slipping from the shoulders and dragging around the feet. To the aboriginal mind that seemed a very great waste, for woven material was hard to come by in the desert.
She attempted an inquiry concerning that wastefulness of Americanas, but got no satisfactory reply. Kit took the tattered old paper from her hand, and turned it over because of the face of Singleton staring at him from the other side of the page. It was the account of the inquest, and in the endeavor to add interest the local reporters had written up a column concerning Singleton’s quarrel with the range boss, Rhodes,––and the mysterious disappearance of the latter across the border!