When he'd stuffed him as much as was needed, Wood told him--Santa Fé having fixed it that way--there was a Mexican church about a thousand years old over in the Cañada that was worth looking at; and he told him he'd take him across on his buck-board to see it if he cared to go. He bit at that, just as Santa Fé counted on; and about four o'clock off they went--it was only three mile or so down to the Cañada--in good time to get him back and give him what more was coming to him before he started off North again on the night train. Wood said the ride was real enjoyable--the little man showing up as sensible as anybody when he got to the church and struck things he knowed about; and it turned out he could talk French, and that pleased the padre--he was that French one I've spoke about, who was as white as they make 'em--and so things went along well. * * * * * The wind had set in to blow down the valley cool and pleasant as they was getting along home; and coming down on it, when they got about half a mile from Palomitas, they begun to hear shooting--and it kept on, and more of it, the closer they come to town. Knowing what Santa Fé had set the boys up to, Wood said he pretty near laughed out when he heard it; but he held in, he said--and told the little man, when he asked what it meant, that it didn't mean nothing in particular: being only some sort of a shooting-scrape, like enough--the same as often happened along about that time in the afternoon. He said the little man looked queerish, and wanted to know if the men in the town was shooting at a target; and when Wood said he guessed they was targetting at each other, and likely there'd be some occurrences, he said he looked queerisher--and said such savagery was too horrible to be true. But he wasn't worried a bit about himself, Wood said--he was as nervy a little man, Wood said, as he'd ever got up to--and all he wanted was to have Wood whip the mules up, so he'd get there quick and see what was going on. Wood whipped up, right enough, and the mules took 'em a-kiting--going at a full run the last half-mile or so, and not coming down to a walk till they'd crossed the bridge over the Rio Grande and was most to the top of the hill. At the top of the hill they stopped--and that was a good place to stop at, for the circus was a-going on right there.