"_Por le Capitan despues le Gobernador_," he whispered. "_p.r.o.nto!_"

The captain's anger and suspicion at so unceremonious an entry slowly faded, but he did not lower the sword. The Delaware slid forward, abject and fearful, his eyes riveted on the clumsy blade, the paper held out at arm's length. "_Por le Capitan_," he muttered. "_p.r.o.nto!_"

"You son of swine!" growled Salezar. "You sc.u.m! Is this the way you enter an officer's house? How did you pa.s.s the sentry? A score of lashes on both your backs will teach you manners and him his duty. Give me that message and stand aside till I call the guard!"

"_Perdon, Capitan! Perdon, perdon!_" begged the Delaware. "_Le Gobernador_--" his hands streaked out, one gripping the sword wrist of the captain, the other fastening inexorably on the greasy, swarthy throat well up under the chin. As the grips clamped down the Delaware's knee rose and smashed into the Mexican's stomach. The sword clattered against a wall and the two men fell and rolled and thrashed across the floor.

"Where _is_ she?" grated the Indian as he writhed and rolled, now underneath and now uppermost. "Where _is_ she, you murdering dog?"

They smashed against the flimsy table and overturned it, candle, liquor and all. The candle flickered out and the struggle went on in the darkness.

"Where _is_ she, Salezar? Yore in th' hands of a _Texan_, you taker of ears! Where _is_ she?"

Salezar was no weakling and although he had no more real courage than a rat, like a rat he was cornered and fighting for his life; but Captain Salezar had lived well and lazily, as his pampered body was now showing evidence. Try as he might he could not escape those steel-like fingers for more than a moment. With desperate strength he broke their hold time and again as he writhed and bridged and rolled, clawed and bit; but they clamped back again as often. His shouts for help were choked gasps and the strength he had put forth in the beginning of the struggle was waning.

The table was now a wreck and they rolled in and over the debris.

Salezar made use of his great spurs at every chance and his opponent's clothing was ripped and torn to shreds wet with blood. His fingers searched for his enemy's eyes and missed them, but left their marks on the painted face. They rolled against one wall and then back to the other; they slammed again at the door and back into the wreckage of the table.

"Where _is_ she?" panted the Delaware. "Tell me, Salezar, _where is she_?"

The captain wriggled desperately and almost gained the top, and thought he sensed a weakened opposition. "Where she will remain!" he choked.

"Mistress of the _palacio_--until he tires--of her. You--cursed _Tejano_ dog!" He drove a spur at his enemy's side, missed, and it became entangled in the rags.

The Delaware, blind with fury, smashed his knee into the soft abdomen and snarled at the answering gasp of pain. "Remember th' prisoners? Near Valencia--Ernest died in the--night. You cut off his ears--and threw his body in a--ditch!" He got the throat hold again in spite of nails and teeth, blows and spurs. "McAllister was shot because he--could not walk.

You stole his clothes--cut off his ears and left--his body at th' side of th'--road for the wolves!" He felt the spurs graze his leg and he threw it across the body of the Mexican. "Golpin was shot--other side of Dead Man's Lake. You took--_his_ ears _too_!" He hauled and tugged and managed to roll his enemy onto his other leg. "On th' Dead Man's Journey--Griffin's brains were knocked out with a--gun b.u.t.t. _His_ ears were cut off, _too_!" Hooking his feet together he clamped his powerful thighs in a viselike grip on his enemy. "Gates died in a wagon near--El Paso, of starvation, sickness--an' fright. You got _his_--ears!"

"As--I'll get--_yours_!" hoa.r.s.ely moaned Salezar, again missing with the spurs. "The senorita will be happy--in Armijo's arms. After that--the soldiers--can have her!"

The Delaware loosened his leg grip, jerked them up toward the captain's stomach as he hauled his victim down toward them, and clamped them tight again over the soft stomach.

"Yore lies stick--in yore throat--Salezar!" he panted. "An' those murders cry--to heaven; but you'll only--hear th' echoes ringin' through h.e.l.l--for all eternity. _You_ called th' roll of th' livin'--on that d.a.m.nable march; _I_'m--callin' th' roll of th' _dead_! Yore name comes last! There's many a Texan would give his--chance of heaven to change places--with me, _now_!" He raised his head in the darkness. "Oh, Ernest, old pardner; I'm payin' yore debt, _in full_!"

The spurs stabbed in vain, for the Delaware was now well above their flaying range; the nails scoring his face were growing feeble. He shifted the leg hold again and managed to imprison one of Salezar's arms in their grip. Lifting himself from the hips, he released the throat hold and grabbed the Mexican's other arm, thrust it under him and fell back on it as his two hands, free now to work their worst, leaped back under the swarthy chin. The relentless thumbs pressed up and in.

The Blackfoot on guard at the end of the driveway thought he heard the door open and close, but there was no doubt about the labored breathing which wheezed along the dark wall. Stumbling steps faltered and dragged and then the Delaware b.u.mped into him and held to him for a moment.

"Git th' hosses, Hank!" came a mumbled command.

"Thar with Jim an' Zeb," whispered the hunter in surprise. "How'd ye get so wet? Is that blood?"

"Spurred me--I'll be all right--soon's I git breath. He--fought like a--fiend."

"Git his ears?" eagerly demanded the Blackfoot.

"Thar's been ears enough took--already. Come on; _she's_ in th'

_palacio_--with _Armijo_!"

"Jest what we figgered, _d.a.m.n him_!" growled the Blackfoot, leading the way.

In the stable at the rear of the courtyard a decrepit dog, white with age, had barked feebly when its breath permitted, while the fight had raged in the house. The Blackfoot had considered stopping the wheezy warnings, but they did not have power enough to lure him from his watch.

He had accepted the lesser of the two evils and remained on guard. As the two Indians crept from the courtyard the aged animal burst into a paroxysm of barking, which exhausted it. To those who knew the captain's dog, its barking long since had lost all meaning, for, as the soldiers said, it barked over nothing. They did not know that the animal dreamed day and night of the days of its youth and strength and now, in its dotage, in imagination was living over again stirring incidents of hunts and fights long past. Gradually it recovered its strength from sounding its barked warnings in vain, and pantingly sniffed the air. Its actions became frantic and the decrepit old dog struggled to its feet, swaying on its feeble legs, its grizzled muzzle pointing toward its master's house. The composite body odor it had known for so many years had changed, and ceased abruptly. Whining and whimpering, the dog searched the air currents, but in vain; the scent came no more. Then, sinking back on its haunches, it raised its gray nose to the sky and poured out its grief in one long, quavering howl of surprising volume.

The sleeping square sprang to life, superst.i.tious terror dominated the barracks. Lights gleamed suddenly and the barracks door opened slowly, grudgingly as frightened soldiers hurriedly crossed themselves. Don Jesu and Robideau pushed hesitatingly to the portal and peered fearsomely into the night. They suddenly cried out, drew their ancient pistols, and fired at two vague figures slinking hurriedly along the side of the house opposite. From the darkness there came quick replies. A coruscating poniard of spiteful flame stabbed into the night. Don Jesu whirled on buckling legs and pitched sidewise to the street. A second stab of sparky flame split the darkness and Robideau reeled back into the arms of his panicky soldiers. As the heavy reports rolled through the town they seemed to be a signal, for on the southern outskirts of Santa Fe gun after gun crashed in a rippling, spasmodic volley. A few stragglers in the all but deserted streets raised a dreaded cry and fled to the nearest shelter. The cry was taken up and sent rioting through the city; doors were doubly barred and the soldiers in the barracks, safer behind the thick mud walls than they would be out in the dark open against such an enemy, slammed shut the ponderous door and frantically built barricades of everything movable.

"_Los Tejanos!_" rolled the panicky cries. "_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_"

The wailing warning of the coming of a plague could not have held more terror. Gone were the vaunted boastings and the sneers; gone was the swaggering bravado of the dashing _caballeros_, who had said what they would do to any Texan force that dared to brave the wrath of the defenders of San Francisco de la Santa Fe. Gone was all faith, never too sincere, in ancient _escopeta_ and rusty blunderbuss, now that the occasion was close at hand to measure them against the devil weapons of hardy Texan fighting men, of the breed that had stood off, b.l.o.o.d.y day after b.l.o.o.d.y day, four thousand Mexican regulars before a little adobe church, now glorified for all the ages yet to come. To panicky minds came magic words of evil portent; the Alamo and San Jacinto. To evil consciences, bowed with guilt, came burning memories of that sick and starved Texan band that had walked through winter days and shivered through winter nights from Santa Fe to the capital, two thousand miles of suffering, and every step a torture. Texan ears had swung from a piece of rusty wire to feed the cruel conceit of a swarthy tyrant.

"_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_"

At the _palacio_ a human brute recoiled before a barred door between him and a desperate captive, his honeyed cajolings turning to acid on his lying tongue. No longer did he hear the measured tread of the palace guards, who secretly exulted as they fled and left him defenseless.

"_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_"

He dashed through a door to grab his weapons and flee, and in through the open, undefended portal from the square leaped a blood-covered Delaware, an epic of rags and rage, a man so maddened that all thought of weapons save Nature's, had gone from his burning brain. Behind him leaped a Blackfoot, dynamic and deadly as a panther, a Colt pistol in one eager, upraised hand, in the other the cold length of a keen skinning knife. Behind them from a wagon deserted in the square came the sharp crashes of Hawken and Colt, and a shouted battlecry: "Remember th'

Alamo! Remember th' Alamo! Texans to th' fore!"

As the Delaware dashed past an open door he caught a flurry of movement, the flare of a pistol and his laughter pealed out in one mad shout as he stopped like a cat and leaped in through the opening. Another flash, another roar, and a burning welt across a shoulder spurred the b.l.o.o.d.y Nemesis to a greater speed. The wavering sword he knocked aside and near two hundred pounds of fighting, mountain sinew hurled itself behind a driving fist. The hurtling bulk of Armijo crashed against a wall and dropped like a bag of grain as the plunging Delaware whirled to pounce upon it. As he turned, a scream rang out somewhere behind him, through the door he had just entered, a scream vibrant with desperate hope, and he bellowed a triumphant answer. Here was his mission; Armijo was a side issue. The governor, helpless before him, was forgotten and the Delaware whirled through the door bellowing one name over and over again.

"Patience! Patience! _Patience!_"

"_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_" came from the public square.

"_Los Tejanos! Los Tejanos!_" quavered the despairing echo throughout the quaking town, while from the south there came the steady crash of alien rifles, firing harmlessly into the air.

Before him a Blackfoot methodically battered at a door, taking a few quick steps backward and a plunging dive forward. The Delaware shouted again and added the power of his driving weight. There came a splintering crash and the door went in. The Blackfoot whirled and darted to the great portal leading to the square, bouncing on the b.a.l.l.s of his feet like a cougar expecting danger at every point. The Delaware scrambled to his feet and gathered a whitefaced woman in his arms, crushing her to his b.l.o.o.d.y chest. He felt her go suddenly limp and, throwing her across a bare and bleeding shoulder, he drew a Colt repeating pistol and sprang after his Indian ally, not feeling the weight of his precious burden.

Lurid, stabbing rapiers of fire still sprang from the wagon barricade, making death certain to any man who opened the barracks' door. Between their heavy roars the woodwork of the wagon smacked sharply in time to bursts of fire from the barracks' few windows. The Delaware darted from the _palacio_ door and held close to the wall, hidden by the portico and the darkness. As he reached the end of the column-supported roof the Blackfoot bulked out of the night on his horse, and leading four others.

The lost-soul call of a loon sounded and changed the deadly wagon into a vehicle of peace and quiet as its Arapahoe defenders slipped away from it. The sudden creaking of saddle leather was followed by the rolling thunder of flying hoofs as the first three horses left the square. A moment's pause and then two more horses galloped through the darkness after the others, the Arapahoe rear guard sitting almost sidewise in their saddles, their long, hot rifles pointing backward to send hotter greetings to whoever might follow.

They raced like gambling fools through the dark night, the Blackfoot leading the way with the instinct of a homing bird. Mile after mile strung out behind them, pastures, gullies, knolls rolling past. While they climbed and dipped and circled they gradually sensed a steady rising of the ground. Suddenly the Blackfoot shouted for them to halt, and the laboring horses welcomed the moment's breathing s.p.a.ce. The guide threw himself on the ground and pressed his ear against it. In a moment he was back in the saddle and gave the word to go on again. He had heard no sounds of pursuit and he chuckled as he leaned over close to the Delaware who rode at his flank.

"Nothin' stirrin' behind us, fur's I could make out," he said. "They can only track us by sound in th' dark, at any speed, an' I'm gamblin' they wait fer daylight. Thar scared ter stick thar noses out o' doors _this_ night. How's yore gal?"

Tom's rumbling reply could mean anything and they kept on through the night without further words. The trail had been growing steadily rougher and steeper and the horses were permitted to fall into a swinging lope.

Another hour pa.s.sed and then Hank signalled for a stop. From his lips whistled the crowded, hurried, repeated call of a whip-poor-will. Three times the insistent demand rang out, clear and piercing. At the count of ten an echoing whistle sounded and a light flickered on the trail ahead.

"J'get her?" bawled a voice, tremulous with fear and anxiety, and only a breath ahead of another.

"h.e.l.l yes!" roared Hank. "Got Salezar, Don Jesu and Robideau, too; only we left _them_ behind--with thar ears!"

In another moment Uncle Joe and Adam Cooper took the precious burden from the Delaware's numbed arms, someone uncovered the lighted candle lantern, and saddles were thrown on fresh mounts. The Pueblo pushed forward and peered into Patience's face, and his own face broke into smiles. His torrent of mixed Spanish and Indian brought a grin to Hank's painted countenance.

"This hyar sh.o.r.e is good beaver," he chuckled, clapping the Pueblo on the shoulder, "but thar's more good news fer _you_." He put his mouth close to the Pueblo's ear and whispered: "Yer friend Salezar will be leadin' a percession ter th' buryin' ground. That Delaware thar killed him with his bare hands!"

The Pueblo touched Tom's arm, his hand pa.s.sing down it caressingly, to be seized in a grip which made him wince; and when Adam Cooper offered him a handful of gold coins the Indian drew himself up proudly and pushed them away.

"For his friends Pablo do what he can," he said in Spanish. "I now take these horses back on the trail to make a puzzle in the sand that will take time to read. Pablo does not forget. _Adios!_" He vaulted onto his horse, took the lead ropes of the tired mounts, and was lost in the darkness, eager to weave a pattern of hoof marks to mock pursuing eyes.

The little cavalcade pushed on, following a trail that wound along the sides of the mountains, pa.s.sing many places where a handful of resolute men could check scores. The cold mountain air bit shrewdly, and occasional gusts of wind bl.u.s.tered along the timbered slopes and set the pines and cedars whispering. Higher and higher went the narrow trail, skirting sheer walls of rock on one side, and dizzy precipices on the other; higher and higher plodded the little caravan in single file, following the unhesitant leader.