"You, señor, have the horses," implored Doña Jocasta, "and I will at once come with Padre Andreas."
"_Pronto!_" agreed Kit, "but I must get you a _serape_. Rain may fall from that cloud."
She seemed scarcely to hear him as she sped along the patio towards the locked door. Kit entered his own room for a blanket just as she fitted the key in the lock, and spoke the padre's name.
The next instant he heard her screams, and a door slam shut, and as he came out with the blanket, he saw the priest dash toward the portal leading from the patio to the plaza.
He ran to her, lifting her from the tiles where she had been thrown.
"Conrad!" she cried pointing after the flying figure. "There! Quickly, señor, quickly!"
He jerked open the door and looked within, a still figure with the face hidden, crouched by a bench against the wall. In two strides Kit crossed from the door and grasped the shoulder, and the figure propped there fell back on the tiles. It was the dead priest dressed in the clothes of Conrad, and the horror of that which had been a face showed he had died by strangulation under the hands of the man for whom he had gone to pray.
Doña Jocasta ran wildly screaming through the patio, but the Indian voices and the drum prevented her from being heard until she burst among them just as Conrad leaped to the back of the nearest horse.
"El Aleman! El Aleman!" she screamed pointing to him in horror. "He has murdered the padre and taken his robe. It is El Aleman! Your Judas has killed your priest!"
Kit ran for his own horse, but with the quickness of a cat Tula was before him in the saddle, and whirling the animal, leaning low, and her gorgeous _manta_ streaming behind like a banner she sped after the German screaming, "Judas! Judas! Judas of Palomitas!"
And, as in the other chants led by her, the Indian women took up this one in frenzied yells of rage.
The men of the corral heard and leaped to saddles to follow the flying figures, but Kit was ahead,--not much, but enough to be nearest the girl.
Straight as an arrow the fugitive headed for Mesa Blanca, the nearest ranch where a fresh horse could be found, and Doña Jocasta and some of the women without horses stood in the plaza peering after that wild race in the gray of the coming night.