In time he stopped at the end of the patio and shaded his eyes with his hands to look toward the cañon. A chorus of shrieks and cries came from the distance. They heard Rojerio Rocha laugh, and then he grasped the reins of his horse, jerked the animal around and vaulted into the saddle to gallop away. Clasped in each other’s arms, silent, fearful, the two women remained standing before the window. An hour passed that seemed like an age. And then they heard the cries and shrieks again, doubled now, seemingly coming nearer--cries and shrieks that the older woman translated as easily as if they had been spoken words. Even the girl seemed to recognise a new note in the bedlam, for she looked up into the older woman’s face wonderingly, questioningly, and she felt Señora Vallejo’s arms tighten about her. “What is it?” she asked. “The blood cry--I know it well.” “And it means----” “It means that the fiends have had blood, that there has been murder done.” “Ah, yes! The overseers.” “I did not mean the overseers,” Señora Vallejo said, turning her face away and looking out of the window. “You mean that Señor Lopez--the soldiers--Señor Rocha----” “Some of them, perhaps all. We shall know soon.” The girl moaned and hid her face against the older woman’s shoulder and tried to shut out the cries by putting fingers in her ears. But she could not shut them out, and in time ceased to try. “They are approaching,” Señora Vallejo said. “Coming here?” “Here or else to the adobe buildings. And we have not a weapon in the room, nor any man to protect us. The door is locked--we cannot escape and attempt to hide.” “Oh, why did he lock it?” the girl cried. The end of the building shut off the view as they looked from the window. But they knew the horde was approaching, and rapidly, and with the blood shrieks were mingled other cries the meaning of which Señora Vallejo could not understand at first. “They are acclaiming someone,” she said, finally. “Some chief who has performed a murderous assault, I suppose. May the saints curse the man whose treason agitated them!” Then she grasped the girl and drew back from the window quickly, letting the draperies that hung there fall back into place. An Indian had appeared at the end of the patio--a tall, young Indian streaked with war paint and with a musket in his hand. They watched as he glanced around the enclosure, then slipped like a snake past the fountain to the door to listen there. Finally he whirled around and ran to the end of the patio again, to wave his musket and shriek at the others. Then, like a wave breaking on a rocky beach, the horde poured into the patio--dancing, shrieking, screeching--charging across the veranda, splashing through the water of the fountain, tearing at the palms old Señor Fernandez himself had planted and tended until they were grown.