ds of La Partida, and this little lady is its padrona
waiting to give you welcome at the border. Folks, this is Senora Perez
who has escaped from hell by help of the guns of El Gavilan."

"Dona Jocasta!" repeated Cap Pike standing in amazed incredulity with
the forgotten skillet at an awkward angle dripping grease into the
camp fire, but his amazement regarding personality did not at all
change his mental attitude as to the probable social situation. "Some
collector, Brother, but hell in Sonora isn't the only hell you can
blaze the trail to with the wrong combination!"

Kit turned a silencing frown on the philosopher of the skillet, but
Billie went toward the guest with outstretching hands.

"Dona Jocasta, oh!" she breathed as if one of her fairy tales of
beauty had come true, and then in Spanish she added the sweet gracious
old Castillian welcome, "Be at home with us on your own estate, Senora
Perez."

Jocasta laid her hands on the shoulder of the girl, and looked in the
clear gray eyes.

"You are Spanish, Senorita?"

"My grandmother was."

"Thanks to the Mother of God that you are not a strange Americana!"
sighed Jocasta in sudden relief. Then she turned to her American
courier and guard and salvation over the desert trails.

"I saw," she said briefly. "She is as the young sister of me who--who
is gone to God! Make yourself her guard forever, Don Pajarito. May you
sing many songs together, and have no sorrows."

After the substantial supper, Kit heard at first hand all the veiled
suspicion against himself as voiced in the fragment of old newspaper
wrapped around Fidelio's tobacco, and he and Dona Jocasta spread out
the records written by the padre, and signed by Jocasta and the
others, as witness of how Philip Singleton met death in the arroya of
the cottonwoods.

"It is all here in this paper," said Jocasta, "and that is best. I can
tell the alcalde, yes, but if an--an accident had come to me on the
trail, the words on the paper would be the safer thing."

"But fear on the trail is gone for you now," said Kit smiling at her
across the camp fire. Neither of them had said any word of life at
Mesa Blanca or Soledad, or of the work of Tula at the death.

The German had strangled a priest, and escaped, and in ignorance of
trails had ridden into a quicksand, and that was all the outer world
need know of his end!

The fascinated eyes of Billie dwelt on Jocasta with endless wonder.

"And you came north with