arroyas of your
land?"

She smiled at that without turning her head.

"If a mountain of gold should be uncovered at Soledad, of what
difference to me? Would he let a woman make traffic with it? Surely
not."

"He?"

"Jose Perez,--who else?"

Padre Andreas closed his eyes a moment and arose, but did not answer.
He paced the length of the corridor and back before he spoke.

"It is for you to ask the Americano that the prisoner be given a
priest if he wants prayer," he said returning to their original
subject of communication. "It is a duty that I tell you this; it is
your own house."

"Senor Rhodes is capitan," she returned indifferently. "It is his task
to give me rest here to prepare for that long north journey. I do not
rest in my mind or my soul when you talk to me of the German snake, so
I will ask that you speak with Capitan Rhodes. He has the knowing of
Spanish."

"Too much for safety of us," commented the priest darkly. "Who is to
say how he uses it with the Indians? It is well known that the
American government would win all this land, and work with the Indians
that they help win it."

"So everyone is saying in Hermosillo," agreed Dona Jocasta, "but the
American capitan has not told me lies of any other thing, and he is
saying that is a lie made by foreign people. Also--" and she looked at
him doubtfully, "the man Conrad cursed your name yesterday as a damned
Austrian whose country had cost his country much."

"My mother was not Austrian!" retorted Padre Andreas, "and all my
childhood was in Mexico. But how did Conrad know?"

"He told Elena it was his business to know such things. The Germans
help send many Mexican priests north over the border. He had the
thought that you are to go with me for some reason political of which
I knew nothing!"

"I? Did _I_ come in willingness to this wilderness? From the beginning
to the end I am as a prisoner here;--as much a prisoner as is El
Aleman behind the bars! No horse is mine;--if I walk abroad for my own
health a vaquero ever is after me that I ride back with no fatigue to
myself! It is the work of the heretic Americano who will have his own
curse for it!"

He fumed nervously over the unexpected thrust of Austrian ancestry,
and the beautiful eyes of Dona Jocasta regarded him with awakened
interest. She had never thought of his politics, or possible
affiliations, but after all it was true that he had been stationed at
a pueblo where everything on wheels