With sullen, shamed, disappointed faces, they obeyed. A white man who is a stranger they dared attack, if enough of them were together, but not a priest--a priest who could hit hard enough to knock a bull down.
"That was a close shave, padre," observed the American, with a breath of relief. "They had this poor old wretch almost pulled in two--will you take her?"
The priest made a step forward, and then halted and smiled, as in vague perplexity.
"I have not the pleasure of understanding English," he said, gently.
Ana arose and came forward; she was still very pale and still trembling; she looked at the priest and tried to speak, but the words were smothered in a half sob.
"My daughter," he said, quietly, "take courage." Then he glanced at the pistol still in her hand. "It was you who fired? That was right. I was on the hill in the edge of the wood, and it is well you sent that warning. Your American friend said--?"
"Oh, I speak a little Spanish too," remarked Bryton, in that tongue; "it is the woman with the tied hands I wanted you to take."
The padre did so, untying the rope deftly, and steadying her wavering figure, while Bryton slipped from the saddle, and spoke to Juanita, who had the one welcoming face he had seen.
"I know you," she said, eagerly. "Did I not see you at San Juan Capistrano, at Alvara's and at the Mission? I was sure of it. This is my cousin Doña Ana and Father--"
"Libertad," the padre interrupted, briefly, and spoke directly to Bryton, "from Mexico."
"You will think us all savages to allow this, father," and she pointed to the huddled Indians and the leaping flames; "but it was all so quick--like that--no one could think! My mother is in hiding from it, and--"
"Father," said Ana, speaking for the first time, "a priest is needed in the house. We have a woman who may be dying. Will you come quickly?"
She was eager to separate the priest from the others, and, her speech was nervous and eager.
"Dying?" he repeated, "is that what they meant when they said the Indian had killed a woman?"
"Yes, father," broke in the quavering tones of old Altagrazia, "here it is--the devil she made!" and she held up the clay image, from which the head had been broken in the _mêlée_. "One day ago the lady is well and rides like a caballero, and this day the sun goes down and she dies. The Indian from Mexico put on the curse!"