“Let me be the one,” begged Doña Jocasta,––“I should do penance! I was not gentle in my words to the padre, yet he is a man of God, and devoted. Let me be the one!”
The Indian girl looked up at that, and drew back the key. Then some memory, perhaps that kneeling of Doña Jocasta with the women of Palomitas, influenced her to trust, and after a glance at Kit she nodded her head and put the key in her hand.
“You, señor, have the horses,” implored Doña Jocasta, “and I will at once come with Padre Andreas.”
“Pronto!” agreed Kit, “but I must get you a serape. Rain may fall from that cloud.”
She seemed scarcely to hear him as she sped along the patio towards the locked door. Kit entered his own room for a blanket just as she fitted the key in the lock, and spoke the padre’s name.
The next instant he heard her screams, and a door slam shut, and as he came out with the blanket, he saw the priest dash toward the portal leading from the patio to the plaza.
He ran to her, lifting her from the tiles where she had been thrown.
“Conrad!” she cried pointing after the flying figure. “There! Quickly, señor, quickly!”
He jerked open the door and looked within, a still figure with the face hidden, crouched by a bench against the wall. In two strides Kit crossed from the door and grasped the shoulder, and the figure propped there fell back on the tiles. It was the dead priest dressed in the clothes of Conrad, and the horror of that which had been a face showed he had died by strangulation under the hands of the man for whom he had gone to pray.
Doña Jocasta ran wildly screaming through the patio, but the Indian voices and the drum prevented her from being heard until she burst among them just as Conrad leaped to the back of the nearest horse.