e,
which had been lived largely among unruly passions. He spoke quietly to
Luis and knelt to see if the man lived. The senora took comfort from his
calm presence and with dumb misery watched his deft movements while he
felt for heartbeats and for the wound.

"But is he then dead, my son?" she wailed in Spanish, when Starr gently
laid down upon Estan's breast the hand he had been holding. "But so
little while ago he lived and to me he talked. Ah, my son!"

Starr looked at her quietingly. "How, then, did it happen? Tell me,
senora, that I may assist," he said, speaking easily the Spanish which
she spoke.

"Ah, the good friend that thou art! Ah, my son that I loved! How can I
tell what is mystery? Who would harm my son--my little Estan that was so
good? Yet a voice called softly from the dark--and me, I heard, though to
my bed I had but gone. 'Estan!' called the voice, so low. And my son--ah,
my son!--to the door he went swiftly, the _lampara_ in his hand, holding
it high--so--that the light may shine into the dark.

"'Who calls?' Me, I heard my son ask--ah, never again will I hear his
voice! Out of the door he went--to see the man who called. To the
porch-end he came--I heard his steps. Ah, my son! Never again thy dear
footsteps will I hear!" And she fell to weeping over him.

"And then? Tell me, senora. What happened next?"

"Ah--the shot that took from me my son! Then feet running away--then I
came out--Ah, _querido mio_, that thou shouldst be torn from thy
mother thus!"

"And you don't know--?"

"No, no--no--ah, that my heart should break with sorrow--"

"Hush, mother! 'Twas Apodaca! He is powerful--and Estan would not come
into the Alliance. I told him it would be--" Luis, kneeling there,
beating his hands together in the dark, spoke with the heedless
passion of youth.

"Which Apodaca? Juan?" Starr's voice was low, with the sympathetic tone
that pulls open the floodgates of speech when one is stricken hard.

"Not Juan; Juan is a fool. Elfigo Apodaca it was--or some one obeying his
order. Estan they feared--Estan would not come in, and the time was
coming so close--and Estan held out and talked against it. I told him his
life would pay for his holding out. I _told_ him! And now I shall kill
Apodaca--and my life also will pay--"

"What is this thou sayest?" The mother, roused from her lamentations by
the boy's vehemence, plucked at his sleeve. "But thou must not kill, my
little son. Thou art--"

"Why no