Georgie led Paintbrush and his pony up to a corral on the mountainside, and gave them grain. Then he returned to sit near the house, and to talk with the men and women. Great tales they told, squatted there on their haunches against the wall--how bandits had come a few days before, and held up the engineer and the manager of the mine, and gone away over the mountains threatening to return in a week and kill all _Americanos_. They had shot a man because he would not hand them an orange, or allow his granddaughter to kiss them all around. “How far is it to Moctezuma?” Georgie asked again. About twenty _leguas_ they agreed, and a _legua_ was a bit more than a mile. Raquel was awakened by the crackling of the iron roof, cooling after sundown. It sounded like a bombardment of rifle bullets. She was weak; never had she felt this way before. Strange! Acting up like a little, old baby! But after supper she was able to sit and listen to the conversation of the group that passed stories there under the stars. Her thoughts were on her own problems, however, and she was miserable at the situation. She was not only further away than ever from getting any cattle into the States--but here they were fleeing bandits. “No doubt but that we’ll get out safe all right,” she reflected gloomily. “We can hide here as long as necessary. I suppose they’d send out for us eventually. But Mom! She’ll be crazy by this time. Let’s see. It was ten, eleven days yesterday, since we left. “She’ll think of the Columbus raid and all the stories she ever heard, about Americans being held up and killed. And the truth of it is,” she confessed to herself, “_anything_ is likely to happen.” Georgie leaned over and whispered. “There are lots of cattle in these mountains. Suppose it’s too far to drive them up to the border?” “I’m thinking of getting ourselves up to the border just now,” Raquel answered in a low voice. “Whatever happens, Georgie, stick by me close, and should we get separated, we’ll both make for El Escondido. Remember now.” “Trust me. But we’re safe here. These _gente_ are as friendly as can be. Gee, this is exciting. Why, it’s worse than the Indian days and the cattle country wars, when Dad was a kid. You wouldn’t believe it if you heard it--people hiding and all like this in the mountains.” “I should think people would believe anything these days, with all the world at war, when no one ever expected it,” Raquel replied bitterly. The talk of the Mexicans burst upon their attention. “And it was a lad just like this one, a young _gringo_ about the age of this boy.” The Mexican _minero_ nodded toward Raquel. “They stood him up against a sand bank and shot him because he defied them. They thought to hold him for ransom, but when the American troops came over the border they grew frightened, and so killed the poor young one to get rid of him.”