Boxes ain't none too comfortable, but it's the best I've got."

"Oh, this box is most comfortable," Roldan hastened to a.s.sure him. "And we are very thankful to have anything to sit on at all, senor. You could not guess the many terrible adventures we have had in the last few weeks."

"Indeed! Adventures? I want ter know! You look as if hammocks was more to your taste. Oh, no offence," as Roldan's eyes flashed. "But you are fine looking birds, and no mistake. Howsomever, we'll hear all about them presently. It's polite to answer questions first. You was asking me a while back how I come here. I come over those mountains, young man, and I don't put in the adjectives I applied to them in the process outer respect to your youth. But they'd make a man swear if he'd spent his life psalm singin' before."

"We know," said Roldan, grimly. "We've been in them. What did you eat?

And did you get lost?"

"I ate red ants mor' 'n once, and I usually was lost. When I arrived at that Mission down yonder the amount of flesh I had between my bones and my skin wouldn't have filled a thimble. But that priest--he's a great man if ever there was one--soon fixed me up. I lived like a prince for a month, and I could be there yet if I liked, but I'd kinder got used to livin' alone and I liked it, so I come here. Besides, I found so much prayin' and bell ringin' wearin' on the nerves, to say nothin' of too many Indians. I ain't got no earthly use for Indians. Why priests or anybody else run after Indians beats me. Where I was brought up 't was the other way. They're after us with a scalpin' knife, and if we're after them at all it's with all the lead we kin git. If the murderin'

dirty beasts is willin' to stay where they belong, well, I for one believe in lettin' 'em."

"Do you--ah--like the priest, Don Jim?"

"What? Well, that's better than 'Don Himy,' as they call me down there.

You bet I like the priest. He's a gentleman, and as square as they make 'em, that is, with a poor devil like me; I guess he's one too much for your dons when he feels that way. But he's a man every inch of him, afraid of nothin' under G.o.d's heaven, and as kind and generous as a--as some women. What he rots in this G.o.d-forsaken place for I can't make out."

"What did you come to California for?"

"Well, that ain't bad. I come here, my son, because I was lookin' for a cold climate. My own was warm, accordin' to my taste, and somehow Californy seemed as if it ought to be fur enough away to be cool and nice."

"It's very hot in the valleys."

"So it is. So it is. But as you see, I prefer the mountains."

"Do you often go to the Mission?"

"Every month or so I go down and have a chin with Padre Osuna. It keeps my Spanish in, and I shouldn't like to lose sight of him. I got word from him the other day that he wanted to see me mighty particular, and I'm wonderin' what's in the wind. Maybe you heard him say."

"No," said Roldan; but he guessed.

"Now," said Hill, "spin your yarn. I'm just pinin' to hear those adventures."

Roldan appreciated the sarcasm, but was too secure in the wealth of the past month to resent it. He began at the beginning and told the story with his curious combination of reserve and dramatic fire. As he had already told it several times it ran glibly off his tongue and had several inevitable embellishments. The man, whose cold blue eyes had wandered at first, finally fixed themselves on Roldan; and his whole face gradually softened. When Roldan finished with his and Adan's rescue by Don Tiburcio's vaquero, he held out his hand and said solemnly,--

"Shake."

Roldan allowed his hand to be gripped by that hairy paw; he was too elated to resent it as a familiarity.

"You've got pluck," continued Hill, "and I respect pluck mor' 'n anything else on earth. You're a man and a gentleman, and Californy'll be proud of you yet. Got any more?"

Roldan related the tale of Rafael's prowess with the bull, his own encounter with the bear, and Adan's timely interference. Hill then shook the hands of the two other boys, and told them that as long as he had a roof above his head they could share it, and that he'd do anything to help them but steal horses, so help him Bob. Roldan then told the tale of the earthquake and stampede.

"Ugh!" exclaimed Hill, with a shudder. "That's one thing I can't abide--your earthquakes. I tell you it's enough to take the grit outen a grizzly to hear the land sliden on the mountain and the big redwoods that has got their roots about the bed-rock come roarin' down. When an earthquake comes I go and stand in the middle of the creek so as I can see what's comin' all round. Once I was on the side of the mountain when one of those shakes come and I slid down twenty feet before I could stop myself. It's just the one thing that has happened to me that I can't help thinkin' about. Well, what kin I do for you? You're welcome to stay here, but this hut ain't no great shakes for such as you. Be you goin' home, now that the conscription's over?"

"No!" said Roldan, emphatically, "we are not. There are other reasons why we must go to Los Angeles as quickly as we can. Could you get us three horses?"

"I could get them from the priest--"

"No! no!"

"Why, what's the row with the priest? Got in his black books? I shouldn't like to do that myself."

"You said just now that you would do anything for us. Would you even hide us from the priest if he came here?"

"I would. And I ain't the one to ask questions. If you don't want to see the priest, it's not Jim Hill that will a.s.sist him to find you.

Been there myself."

"Couldn't you get us three horses from my father's corral--the Rancho Encarnacion?" asked Rafael.

"I could, if you'd go with me; but horse-stealing is just the one thing I agreed not to do."

"You might go with him, Rafael," said Roldan. "You would get there after dark if you started now; and even if the vaqueros were not asleep they would not call your father."

"And I could send a message to my parents," said Rafael, eagerly. "Then they would not worry. Yes, I will go. The priest would not dare to harm me while I was with the Senor Hill."

"Oh, the two of us would be a match for even him, if it came to that,"

said Hill. "Well, we'll start right now, there bein' no call for delay.

We'll have to foot it, as my mustang's laid up. If the priest should turn up here--which ain't likely--jest run up that ladder inter the garret and pull it after yer. Well, hasta luego, as they say in these parts. Make yourselves ter home."

XX

"Now," said Roldan, as Rafael and Hill trudged into the perspective of the canon, "we must sleep, but by turns. That priest will surely go to the cave to-day, and when he finds us gone he'll come straight for the mountains; and not through the tunnel either; he'll come on that big brown horse of his. You sleep first, for two hours, and I'll watch--"

"You first, my friend--" Suppressing a mighty yawn.

"It is easier for me to keep awake. Lie down on that horrible bed. I do not so much mind waiting a little longer."

Adan lifted his nose at the bunk covered with a bearskin, then flung himself upon it, and was asleep in three minutes. Roldan sat with his eyes applied to a rift between the hide-door and the wall. It commanded a view of the opposite wall of the canon, over which wound a zig-zag horse trail.

The sun, which had hung directly above the canon when Hill and Rafael departed, had slid toward the west, leaving the canon cold and dark again, and Roldan was about to call Adan, when he sprang to his feet, and stood rigid, cold with fear.

On the brow of the wall opposite, three hundred feet above his head, stood a powerful brown horse. On him was a huge figure clad in a brown ca.s.sock, the hood drawn well over the face. It was impossible to distinguish features at that distance, but Roldan fancied that those terrible eyes were holding his own. He recovered himself and dragged Adan out of bed.

"The priest!" he said. "Help me to wash these dishes--quick. It will take him some time to get down."

Adan stumbled across the room, plunged the dishes into a pail of drinking water, then handed them to Roldan, who dried them hastily and piled them on the shelf. Then he flung the water across the clay floor of the hut.

"Get up the ladder," he commanded. Adan scrambled up. Roldan followed, and pulled the ladder after him. The garret was very low, and half full of skins. They could not stand upright. It was also bitterly cold. Each hastily wrapped a skin about his body, and lay full length, Roldan on his face, his eyes applied to a c.h.i.n.k in the rough floor.

A few moments later the door was flung aside and the priest strode in.

Roldan shuddered, but not with personal fear. The priest looked like a man who had just left the rack of his native Spain. His hair--the hood had fallen back--stood on end, his face and tightened lips were livid, his eyes rolled wildly.

"Jim!" he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Jim!"

He left the hut as abruptly as he had entered it.