"You cover him well, señora, but I think it was not horses he went in the night to count," said the priest sarcastically. "Gold in the land is to him who finds it,--and I tell you the church will hear of that red gold belt from me! Also there will be a new search for it! If it is here the church will see that it does not go with American renegades across the border!"
"Padre, all the land speaks peace today, yet you are as a threatening cloud over Soledad!"
"I speak in warning, not threat,--and I am not the only cloud in the sky. The women of vengeance are coming beyond there where the willows are green."
Doña Jocasta looked the way he pointed, and stood up with an exclamation of alarm.
"Clodomiro! Call Clodomiro!" she said hurriedly, and as the priest only stared at her, she sped past him to the portal and called the boy who came running from the patio.
"They are strangers, they do not know," she said. "Kill a horse, but meet them!"
His horse was in the plaza, and he was in the saddle before she finished speaking, digging in his heels and yelling as though leading a charge while the frightened animal ran like a wild thing.
Doña Jocasta stood gazing after him intently, shading her eyes with her hand. Women came running out of the patio and Padre Andreas stared at her.
"What new thing has given you fear?" he asked in wonder.
"No new thing,--a very old thing of which Elena told me! That green strip of willow is the edge of a quicksand where no one knows the depth. The women are thinking to make a short path across, and the one who leads will surely go down."
"How a quicksand and no water?" he asked doubtfully.
"There _is_ water,--hidden water! It comes under the ground from the hills. In the old, old days it was a wide well boiling like a kettle over a fire, also it was warm! Then sand storms filled that valley and filled the well. It is crusted over, but the boiling goes on far below. Elena said not even a coyote will touch that cañoncita though the dogs are on his trail. The Indians say an evil spirit lives under there, but the women of Mesa Blanca and Palomitas do not know the place."
"It should have a fence,--a place like that."
"It had, but the wind took it, and, as you see, Soledad is a forgotten place."