They tried brokenly to tell of their long fear and despair in the strangers’ land,––and of sickness and deaths there. Then the miracle of Tula walking by the exalted excellencia of that great place, and naming one by one the Palomitas names, forgetting none;––until all who lived were led out from that great planting place of sugar cane and maize, and their feet set on the northern way.
When they reached this joyous part of the recital words failed, and they wept as they smiled at him and touched the head of Tula tenderly. Even a gorgeous and strange manta she now wore was pressed to the lips of women who were soon to see their children or their desolate mothers.
His eyes grew misty as they thronged about her,––the slender dark child of the breed of a leader. The new manta was of yellow wool and cotton, bordered with dull green and little squares of flaming scarlet woven in it by patient Indian hands of the far south coast. It made her look a bit royal in the midst of the drab-colored, weary band.
She seemed scarcely to hear their praise, or their sobs and prayers. Her face was still and her gaze far off and brooding as her fingers stroked the curved blade over and over.
“An Indian stole that knife from the German after his face was cut with it by her sister,” said Marto Cavayso quietly while the vaqueros were helping the weaker refugees to mount, two to each animal. “That man gives it to her at the place where Marta, her mother, died in the night. So after that she does not sleep or eat or talk. It is as you see.”
“I see! Take you the others, and Tula will ride on my saddle,” said Kit in the same tone. Then he pointed to the beautifully worked manta, “Did she squander wealth of hers on that?”
Marto regarded him with an impatient frown––it seemed to him an ill moment for the American joke.
“Tula had no wealth,” he stated, “we lived as we could on the fine gold you gave to me for myself.”
“Oh yes, I had forgotten that,” declared Kit in some wonder at this information, “but mantas like that do not grow on trees in Sonora.”
“That is a gift from the very grand daughter of the General Terain,” said Marto. “Also if you had seen affairs as they moved there at Linda Vista you would have said as does Ramon Rotil, that this one is daughter of the devil! I was there, and with my eyes I saw it, but if I had not,––an angel from heaven would not make me believe!”