The storm wore itself to a final sibilant whisper among the tortured palms and the two continued to sit in the room of shadows with the complexities of the daring plan of kidnapping still bulking large. ’Cepcion tip-toed in to announce to Bim in an awed whisper, “El Doctor Coyote Belly from Babinioqui has come through the storm. Shall I disturb the mistress?”
Bim translated to Grant with a questioning tilt of the eyebrows. Grant started at the name of the medicine man who had been his rescuer and to whom he owed his life. What could have brought this old Indian away across the expanse of Altar to drop out of the storm upon the house of mourning?
“Tell her we will see him first,” Grant directed, moved as he was by some half-sensed instinct of protection for Benicia; evil tidings—if such the Indian bore—must be kept from her. The two rose and followed the waddling Indian woman through the halls to the servants’ quarters in the rear. Under a pepper tree in the fading dusk they found the squat figure of Coyote Belly. The Indian doffed his hat at the approach of the white men and stood smiling; there was in his pose something of quiet dignity which bent little before the centuries-old convention of the white man’s superiority. His beady eyes, well larded in creasy folds, possessed intelligence beyond the ordinary.
Grant impulsively took El Doctor’s hand in a strong grip carrying the thanks he could not speak. El Doctor’s eyes mirrored recognition and he bobbed his head with a broadening smile.
“Tell him, Bim, I could not thank him for all he did for me. He is the chap that found me on the Hermosillo road, you know, and pulled me through.” Bim put the words in Spanish and El Doctor bobbed his head again. Then the Indian began haltingly in the same tongue. Bim’s eyes narrowed to a quizzical pucker as he progressed. Grant could read a spreading wonder in his friend’s features.
“The old bird says he came here because he knew Don Padraic had been killed,” Bim repeated. “Says he knew it the night of the murder because a star fell in the west and he saw the picture of the old Don with a knife in his heart—saw it in the water of his medicine olla. So he’s been on the trail ever since because he’s got to tell Señorita Benicia something.”
“But,” Grant began incredulously. Bim caught him up with, “Sure, I know it sounds phoney. But I know, too, the old boy’s telling the truth. These desert people have a way of seeing across space—reading signs and such—which leaves us white folks gasping— How’s that?” He turned an ear to El Doctor, who had begun to speak again.
“Standing-White-in-the-Sun was my father and my brother,” the medicine man gravely intoned. “He gave me pinole when I was starving. He came to my house at the festival of the sahuaro wine and drank with me as a brother. His child, Lightning Hair, is as my own child.”
Depth of feeling was sweeping El Doctor like a storm. His grey head trembled and drops of moisture stood in his eyes. Bim gently checked him with, “The señorita is oppressed with grief. If we could take your message to her—” But El Doctor shook his head.
“She will see me. She will hear what El Doctor Coyote Belly has come through the storm to tell.”