Even as the worthy Doc Stooder in his shabby office at Arizora had a never-ending messenger service from all the Border and the lands beyond, carrying scraps of oblique news, another far distant in the Garden of Solitude enjoyed the same intelligence. This was Don Padraic O’Donoju, last of the line of masters over the once-great principality of El Rancho del Refugio. Though a hundred years of revolution, of uproar and the teetering of political balances in the more populous Mexico to south and east of him had left to the last don of the O’Donojus little more territory than that comprised in the oasis of the Garden, still he had cattle enough to be counted a rich man and six generations of custom gave him unbroken sway over the Papagoes. From the Sand People of the Gulf away up to the San Xavier rancheria at Tucson extended the secret kingdom of Don Padraic’s influence. His only tithes were those of loyalty and the bringing of report. What the Papagoes thought Don Padraic should know, that he knew as speedily as word could be passed. So, a week after Benicia had returned to the Casa O’Donoju, came a runner from the eastward--one sent by El Doctor Coyote Belly, whose winter house was at Babinioqui near the railroad. The runner had big news. El Doctor, known all over the Desert of Altar because of his reputed skill at curing hydrophobia and the bite of the sidewinder, had a sick white man--a seriously wounded white man who might be an American--in his house at Babinioqui and he asked Don Padraic what he should do with this man. El Doctor was returning from the Medicine Cave of Pinacate--this was the runner’s tale--when on the road that runs from Sonizona to Hermosillo he found seven dead men; dead men with the marks of fetters on their left wrists. A little beyond he found still another; this one, lying in an arroyo, had been shot through the shoulder from behind and he still lived. El Doctor had tied the living man to his burro and taken him to his winter house at Babinioqui, where he had treated him with the most powerful herbs and had massaged the wound with the lizard image. The wounded white man would live. Coyote Belly did not wish to turn him over to the Mexicans, for he was a victim of _ley de fuga_ and the Mexicans undoubtedly would shoot him again. Don Padraic, whose charity was wider than his acres, made his decision instantly. He ordered Quelele to go, with the runner to guide him to El Doctor’s house, in the little desert car and to fetch the white man to the Garden of Solitude as soon as he was able to be moved. It was best, the master instructed, that Quelele travel in the night, returning with the wounded man, and tell no one of the object of his mission.