Anastacio regarded his boots. They showed a recent wetting, and one end of his serape--from which a small, bright square had been torn--hung as heavy as if it had been trailed in a stream. “Do you _walk_ to Albuquerque?” inquired Father José, eyeing him narrowly. The vaquero tried to smile, but it was only a drawing back of his lips from over his white teeth. “Sometimes I walk,” he answered evasively. “Then the Rio Grande is plainly like a sea for you,” declared the father. “For you are the tint of an unripe lemon.” With that, he walked away. Instead of searching for the lost Miguel, Señor John rode to Albuquerque that afternoon, that being Father José’s wish. When he returned at sunset, it was with the expected news. Anastacio had not been seen in the town the evening previous. And neither could venison be purchased at a certain little Spanish shop, though the young painter had first winked across a piece of silver and then asked for a cut of the deer brought from Los Morales. But the day following the hunt began. As many as three Indians reluctantly consented to help, and led by Señor John and the girl on the spotted mustang, made off to the marshes north of the town. Late rains had deepened the ooze of the marshes, and even the road which crossed them was a channel for running water. The two on horseback floundered from one muddy pool to another, while the Pueblos, wound in bright blankets, stationed themselves on a dry eminence and solemnly rotated. Paloma watched the searchers from the roof of her home, and when they returned, gave herself over to tears of rage and desolation. Fortunately, Anastacio came to talk with her at suppertime, and to declare his guiltlessness solemnly. So her unhappiness found a vent. She berated him. She cried that never, _never_ would she marry him. And in the end, when she had said all her say, she stuffed her fingers into her pretty ears and bade him begone. After that, seven days passed without incident. The morning of the ninth day following Miguel’s disappearance, Señor John chanced to be painting by the river. At Los Morales the Rio Grande is wide, and the colour of the crumbling dirt banks between which it runs; the colour, too, of the high, crumbling dirt-cliffs that stand back of the pueblo on the west, and the colour of the low, square, flat-roofed adobe houses of the Indian village. Two high, white crosses marked its ford--one being set on the farther shore and one on the near. At the base of the latter the young painter had his easel, and over him, made fast to the cross so as to shade him from the sun, was a huge umbrella, yellower than the river.