This last alarm was too much for Manuelita. Her nerves were still quivering from the terrors of her own captivity, and now fears for her deliverer overwhelmed her. She knew the American was at the store,—he was surely killed; the blow that had threatened them had fallen at last, not on the family but on their friend. She tried to run, but her trembling limbs refused to bear her, and she sank to the ground in a passion of sobs; brave she could be for her own danger, but not for him, not for the man who had just left her, whose eyes had told her a secret she hardly let herself guess.
She raised her head and heard the shuffling of feet, and the sound of subdued voices came nearer to her. In the doorway appeared her father, anxious and flurried. "Hasten, sister," he called in a loud half-whisper to her aunt, "hasten and make a bed in the room across the patio for a wounded man. The Navajos are on the war-path, and an American has been hurt."
"Who is it?" asked his sister, answering him in the same excited half-whisper, as the ominous shuffling steps of Rocky's bearers reached the outside of the door and paused. "Is he dying? Quick there, Juana, run and bring bedding; fly!"
Manuelita's heart seemed to stop beating as she listened for the answer.
"I know not who he is. They say he is a friend of Don Estevan's. He had but just arrived from Santa Fé. There is a doctor of the American soldiers with him. Mahletonkwa stabbed him in the lung."
Manuelita tried to ask, "And what of Don Estevan?" but her dry lips refused to speak the words. Her father answered the unspoken question.
"Don Estevan is like a raging lion. He has killed Mahletonkwa and half his band already, and he is chasing the rest. Ah, what a fighter! They say he fired off his pistol like lightning, and left the savages lying all around like dead dogs in a heap as if a thunderbolt from heaven had struck them. Ah, what a fighter! The young men are all galloping after to help him."
"He is not wounded himself?" They were already in the room across the patio preparing it for the wounded man, and it was the voice of Manuelita that asked this question. Her tongue had found speech at last.
"Well, it is not known precisely," said Don Nepomuceno. "He started off after them like fury, and so did the two young Sandovals, and then there was more firing out on the plain, but it is not certain as yet what happened there. The doctor of the American soldiers wished to place the wounded Americano with us at once, and I did not wait. Ah, here they are, bringing him through the court. This way, Señor el Doctor. Here is the room for him. Is he much hurt?"
"Pretty bad," replied the doctor in Spanish, which he knew that Rocky, who was still conscious, did not understand. "But we shall see. With proper nursing there should be a good chance for him yet."