Tula sat as before, but with the knife held in her open hand on the arm of the chair. She followed with a grim smile the careering of the bull, then nodded her head curtly to the priest and turned her gaze slowly round the corridor until she saw Rhodes, and tilted back her head in a little gesture of summons.
“Well, little sister,” he said, “what’s on your mind?”
“The padre asks to pray with El Aleman. I say yes, for the padre has good thoughts in his heart,––maybe so! You have the key?”
“Sure I have the key, but I fetch it back to you when visitors start going in, and––oh yes––there’s your belt for your people.”
“No; you be the one to give,” she said with a glance of sorrow towards a girl who was youngest of the slaves brought back. “You, amigo, keep all but the key.”
“As you say,” he agreed. “Come along, padre, you are to get the privilege you’ve been begging for, and I don’t envy you the task.”
Padre Andreas made no reply. In his heart he blamed Rhodes that the prisoner had not been let escape during the absence of the girl, and also resented the offhand manner of the young American concerning the duty of a priest.
The sun was at the very edge of the world, and all shadows spreading for the night when they went to the door of Conrad’s quarters. Kit unlocked the door and looked in before opening wide. The one window faced the corral, and Conrad turned from it in shaking horror.
“What is it they say out there?” he shouted in fury. “They call words of blasphemy, that the bull is Germany, and ‘Judas’ will ride it to the death! They are wild barbarians, they are–––”
“Never mind what they are,” suggested Kit, “here is a priest who thinks you may have a soul worth praying for, and the Indians have let him come––once!”