"Anyway they didn't think us worth while gathering in, which is a comfort. That second fellow looks like someone I've crossed trails with, but I can't place him."
"They'll place you all right, all right!" prophesied Pike darkly, "you and your interesting family won't need a brand."
Rhodes stared at him a moment and then grinned.
"Right you are, Cap. Wouldn't it be pie for the gossips to slice up for home consumption?"
He kept on grinning as he looked at the poor bit of human flotsam whom he had dubbed "the owl" because of her silence and her eyes. She aroused Miguel without words, watching him keenly for faintest sign of recovery. The food and sleep had refreshed him in body, but the mind was far away. To the girl he gave no notice, and after a long bewildered stare at Rhodes he smiled in a deprecating way.
"Your pardon, Don José, that I outsleep the camp," he muttered haltingly. "It is a much sickness of the head to me."
"For that reason must you ride slowly today," stated Rhodes with quick comprehension of the groping mind, though the "Don José" puzzled him, and at first chance he loitered behind with the girl and questioned her.
"How makes itself that I must know all the people in the world before I was here on earth?" she asked morosely? "Me he does not know, Don José is of Soledad and is of your tallness, so----"
"Know you the man who came for water at the cañon well?" he asked, and she looked at him quickly and away.
"The name of the man was not spoke by him, also he said a true word of brands on herds--these days."
"In these days?" reflected Rhodes, amazed at the ungirlish logic. "You know what he meant when he said that?"
"We try that we know--all we, for the Deliverer is he named, and by that name only he is spoke in the prayers we make."
Rhodes stared at her, incredulous, yet wondering if the dusty vaquero looking rider of brief words could be the man who was called outlaw, heathen, and bandit by Calendria, and "Deliverer" by these people of bondage.
"You think that is true;--he will be the deliverer?"
"I not so much think, I am only remembering what the fathers say and the mothers. Their word is that he will be the man, if--if----"
"Well, if what?" he asked as she crossed herself, and dropped her head.