His legs seemed to give way beneath him, at that, and Yaqui Juan half led, half dragged him out of the room. Mrs. King wept again but Honor's eyes were dry. Carter started to speak to her but she stopped him. "Please, Carter ... I can't ... talk. I think I'd like to be alone." "Oh, my dear, please come up with me," Mrs. King begged, "it's so cold here, and----" "I have to be alone," said Honor in her worn voice. "Then you must have this," said the older woman, finding comfort in wrapping her in her own _serape_. It was a gay thing, striped in red and white and green, the Mexican colors; it looked as if it had been made to wear in happy days. They went away and left her alone in the _sala_. She didn't know how long she had sat there when she saw a muffled figure crawling across the veranda. She opened the door and stepped out, nodding to the _peon_ on guard there, leaning on his gun. "Juan?" she called softly. The crouching, cringing figure hesitated. "Si," came the soft whisper. He kept his head shrouded. She knew that he was sick with shame for the lad he had worshiped; he did not want to meet her gaze. She could understand that. It did not seem to her that she could ever meet any one's eyes again--kind Mrs. King's, Carter's--her dear Stepper's. Suddenly it came to her with a positive sense of relief and escape that perhaps there would be no need for facing any one after to-night.... Perhaps this was to be the last night of all nights. It might well be, when Jimsy King slept in a drunken stupor and a Yaqui Indian slave went out with his life in his hands to help them. She crossed the veranda and leaned down and laid her hand on the covered head. Her throat was so swollen now that she could hardly make herself heard. "_Tu es amigo leal, Juan_," she said. "Good friend; good friend!" Then in her careful Spanish--"Go with God!" He had been always an impassive creature, Yaqui Juan, his own personal sufferings added to the native stoicism of his race, but he made an odd, smothered sound now, and caught up the trailing end of her bright _serape_ and pressed his face against it for an instant. Then he crept away into the soft blackness of the tropic night and Honor went back into the empty _sala_. She wished that she had seen his face; she was mournfully sure she would never see it again. It did not seem humanly possible for any one to go into the very midst of their besiegers encamped about the well, fill the canteens and return alive, but it was a gallant and splendid try, and she would have liked a memory of his grave face. It would have blotted out the look of Jimsy King's face, singing his tipsy song. She thought she would keep on seeing that as long as she lived, and that made it less terrible to think that she might not live many more hours. CHAPTER XV