The muleteer disappears, and Uraga continues to pace the floor, apparently yet busied with a mental measurement of time and distance. At intervals he stops before the portrait on the wall, and for a second or two gazes at it. This seems to increase his impatience for the man’s reappearance.
He has not a great while to wait. The scrip and staff of a New Mexican traveller of Pedrillo’s kind is of no great bulk or complexity. It takes but a short time to prepare it. A few tortillas and frijoles, a head or two of chile Colorado, half a dozen onions, and a bunch of tasojo—jerked beef. Having collected these comestibles, and filled his xuaje, or water gourd, Pedrillo reports himself ready for the road, or trail, or whatever sort of path, and on whatever errand, it may please his master to despatch him.
“You will go straight to the Tenawa town—Horned Lizard’s—on the south branch of the Goo-al-pah. You can find your way to the place, Pedrillo. You’ve been there before?”
The Indian nods an affirmative.
“Take this.” Here Uraga hands him the sealed paper. “See you show it to no one you may chance to meet passing out from the settlements. Give it to Barbato, or hand it to the Horned Lizard himself. He’ll know who it’s for. You are to ride night and day, as fast as the animals can carry you. When you’ve delivered it you needn’t wait, but come back—not here, but to the Alamo. You know the place—where we met the Tenawas some weeks ago. You will find me there. Vaya!”
On receiving these instructions Pedrillo vanishes from, the room; a strange sinister glance in his oblique Indian eyes telling that he knows himself to be once more—what he has often been—an emissary of evil.
Uraga takes another turn across the floor, then, seating himself by the table, seeks rest for his passion-tossed soul by drinking deep of the mescal of Tequila.