Dawn brought revelation and the beginning of that cycle of tragedy and dreadful pursuit of Nemesis which was to overwhelm the clan O’Donoju. Padre Felice murdered at the altar of the Virgin, where he had tried to stay the hand of impiety. The green pearls of the Virgin gone. A daughter of the house of O’Donoju flown with a thief and a murderer. One word more and this mirage of years long dead fades. The curse that all Papagueria saw descend on the clan O’Donoju spared not even the sanctuary of the Four Evangelists. A year to the night of the Virgin’s despoliation the Apaches came again to this frontier post of the Church, and after a spiteful siege they slew the white priests, burned the mission and carried the Indian converts over the mountains into slavery. The Franciscans dared not rebuild on such accursed ground. Winds of the desert, which move sand mountains in their eternal sweep, played upon the ruined mission year on year to blot even a vestige of it from the eyes of man. God’s hand--so the Indians had it--shook the mountains behind the little oasis so that the source of the tiny life-giving stream was blocked. The green vanished like a mist, and scabrous desert cacti crept in on prickly feet. The Mission de los Cuatros Evangelistas became legend. CHAPTER I WHAT HAPPENED ON THE LIMITED The Golden Sunset Limited, Pacific Coast bound, snaked its way through a cleft in mountains and came sighing to a stop at the man’s town, El Paso. A patchwork crowd spilled out from the station platform to push around the ladders of the car icers to the train steps. Swarthy Mexicans under sombreros, with their black-shawled women and their little tin trunks, scrambled and clogged at the approaches to the oven-like day coaches forward. Pullman passengers sauntered over frogs and switches to plush and rosewood at the train’s end.