These two women, old beyond love and life, doggedly loyal, passionately affectionate, made the bodyguard of Anastasie Lockhart, educated and dead-broke orphan, setting out into the world at twenty-two on one of the most impossible adventures any woman ever knew.
Just now Anastasie Lockhart, trousered, booted, gloved and hatted like some slim, curiously eye-arresting young man, rode alone on her crossbar, Blancocito. Her mass of heavy hair was down her back, burned tawnier beyond the shade of the sombrero. Her eye moody, she gazed on ahead at the procession that held every friend she had on earth and every dollar that she owned.
She dropped back and rode alongside the leading cart.
“Anita,” she said, “if I only had my stolen trunk, I’d not be leaving a single thing on earth behind me!”
Anita vouchsafed nothing for a time. She understood English.
“Tronk?” said she presently. “What-a tronk, _señorita_?”
“The one that was stolen from my parlor—you know very well what one.”
“That-a-tronk? He is not stole. He’s back. I setta on heem now.”
“_Si, Seguro._ I gotta heem under seat, serape on top. Sanchez, my man, he bring. Las’ night he got heem back.”
“The lost trunk? Where? Where did he find it?”
“Sanchez, he look in waggone, he look in corral. In one waggone, come from Gonzales, he find-a thees-a tronk. Sanchez, he tak-a heem and put-a heem in here. You like-a heem, dose tronk?”
The hand of Anastasie Lockhart fell lax at her saddle horn.
“Anita, tell me, was it in his wagon—Mr. McMasters’, the Gonzales wagon that went back yesterday? Was it in the wagon of Señor McMasters, the sheriff of Gonzales?”
“_Vamenos!_” exclaimed Anastasie Lockhart after a long time. She looked straight forward, not turning, as one who left a used-out world behind.
“WE got ’em going!” called Jim Nabours, riding back to his men. “Keep ’em moving! Push ’em hard for the first day, so’s they’ll be tired and sleep good. Look at them long shanks walk! I’ll bet that old dun coaster that’s done elected hisself head leader has got horns six feet acrost, and ef he’s ten year old he’s a hunderd. Well, anyhow, he’s on his way north. _And-a-lay_, old Alamo!”
“He knows about as much where he’s going as we do,” said Del Williams, whom he had addressed.