But Clodomiro halted beside Chappo, regardless of need for haste on the trail, and asked him things in that subdued Indian tone without light, shade, or accent, in which the brown brothers of the desert veil their intimate discourse.
"There, beyond!" said Chappo, "two looks on the trail," and he pointed west. "Two looks and one water hole, and if wind moves the sand no one can find the way where we go. It is not a trail for boys."
"I am not now a boy," said Clodomiro, "and when the safety trail of the señora is over----"
But Chappo waved him onward, for the wagon and the pack mules, and even little gray Bunting had turned reluctant feet north.
Clodomiro had come from Soledad because Elena,--who never had been out of sight of the old adobe walls,--sat on the ground wailing at thought of leaving her old sick father and going to war, for despite all the persuasions of Doña Jocasta, Elena knew what she knew, and did not at all believe that any of them would see the lands of the Americano,--not with pack mules of Ramon Rotil laden with guns!
"If Tula had lived, no other would have been asked," Rhodes had stated. "But one is needed to make camp for the señora on the trail,--and to me the work of the packs and the animals."
"That I can do," Clodomiro offered. "My thought was to go where Tula said lovers of hers must go, and that was to El Gavilan. But this different thing can also be my work to the safe wells of the American. That far I go."
Thus the three turned north from the war trail, and Clodomiro followed, after making a prayer that the desert wind would hear, and be very still, and fill no track made by the mules with the ammunition.
This slight discussion at the parting of the ways concerning two definite things,--need of haste, and conserving of water,--left no moment for thought or query of the packs of furnishings deemed of use to Señora Perez in her removal to the north.
Doña Jocasta herself had asked no question and taken no interest in them. Stripped of all sign of wealth and in chains, she had ridden into Soledad, and in comfort and much courtesy she was being conducted elsewhere. How long it might endure she did not know, and no power of hers could change the fact that she had been made wife of José Perez;--and at any turn of any road luck might again be with his wishes, and her estate fall to any level he choose to enforce.