‘We’re not going there,’ said Elbert, leaping down. ‘God, how you’ve sat it out! You can fall now--I’m underneath!’ ‘I’m not goin’ to fall--’ Bart mumbled, but his hand relaxed on the pommel. Elbert looked forward and back; not a sign of life either way, but the face at the dobe gate was strangely before his inner eyes. Something queerly to do with the song of the corn-dust maiden in that far doorway, it seemed to have for him. His face lifted to the cold gray of the dawn-lit sky. Rurales still following possibly ... ‘mere formality’ ... blank wall ... oval beauty. Now he was carrying Bart back, leading both horses. ‘I’m taking a chance to get you a berth,’ he gasped, coming in sight of the dobe gateway, now empty. An aperture in a dobe wall for a gate--face gone. Over the gate as he led the horses into the yard, his eye caught the letters formed of faded tile, ‘El Relicario.’ He fancied the movement of a dress through a low arbor ahead. Still with his burden, he moved toward it. She was there--in the doorway of a broad low dobe ruin. He seemed at first to see only her wide eyes. And then his Spanish came to him and words inspired by another’s need--pressure he had never felt back of an effort before. ‘Look, Señorita--he must have shelter and care--my companion! Will you not give help to him? I will pay a great price!’ The girl made no sound, her eyes fixed on Bart’s back, where Elbert’s hands pressed a dark saturation. ‘May I take him into your house for shelter, Señorita?’ he panted. She led the way indoors, halting in a large, all but empty room. ‘There are those who want his life,’ Elbert said unsteadily under his burden. ‘May I not take him farther in?’ She turned instantly toward an inner door. XXIII FENCELESS FOOTHILLS OF SONORA THERE was a room in which he saw a full-sized harp in its shroud; there was a trellised patio, two great ollas standing on the heaved tiles and jasmine vines very thick and ancient. At the far corner, in the gray morning light, stood an elderly man with bared head. To him, the señorita gave the signal of silence with her finger touching her lips, and also to an old woman in the latticed kitchen.... Ruin of an old plantation house, very large, some of the windows unglazed; El Relicario--the name ran through Elbert’s brain which throbbed from the stress of his burden--all this a matter of seconds only. Then a corridor and a little room to the left--queer warmth rising in Elbert’s heart, as he placed Bart upon a cot that had recently been slept in. The sense came to him that this was a kind of sanctuary--a cross upon the wall, a white flower beneath, the girl standing against the wall, her arms slightly lifted, her hands toward the long booted figure on her own cot. Elbert bent over Bart now--a rush of memories of the day he had brought his father to the cabin and set him down like this. The eyes were looking up to him; the lips moved with hardly audible words.