“Don Padraic’s compliments, and he awaits the pleasure of his guests’ company in the music room if the sick seÑor feels able.” It was ’Cepcion’s soft patois that interrupted Bim Bagley’s explosion of pained surprise in mid-flight. Grant gave him a smile which interpreted the diversion as something to his friend’s advantage and, leaning on Bim’s shoulder, followed the servant to the great room in the centre of the house.

A fire burned in the cavernous fireplace, for spring nights in Altar have a chill; candles in dull silver wall sconces tempered the red light. The vast room was so peopled with dancing shadows from the antique furnishings that the tall man in white and the girl who advanced to greet the guests appeared to be moving in a company of hooded monks.

“’Nicia, SeÑor Bagley, the friend of our friend.” Don Padraic bowed to Bim, who crooked his lank body with surprising grace.

“And I am a friend of you two,” came Bim’s forthright answer, “since you have treated Grant Hickman so kindly. He is the salt of the earth.”

Don Padraic indicated seats before the andirons. Benicia chose a low settle by the side of the great winged chair where her father seated himself. Grant saw shadows beneath her eyes where the firelight played upon her features, almost waxen in uncertain light. The glint of copper in the piled-up mass of her hair was like summer lightning in clouds. Their eyes met, and Grant was disappointed in the hope he might still find the soul of the girl revealed there as it had been that afternoon in the unguarded moment when Benicia gave him wordless thanks. He guessed she had told Don Padraic of the incident in the patio and that what had passed between father and daughter thereafter had been a drain on the emotions of both.

Don Padraic turned to Grant with more than perfunctory concern in speech and glance. “Your health, seÑor? I fear that certain events of the day, of which my daughter has told me—”

“Please!” Grant was quick to interrupt. “I am feeling fit as I could be, thanks to the careful nursing I have had in your house.”

The thing that had been left unspoken by both weighed like an unlaid spirit on the silence that followed. Each of the four before the fire had little thought save for the chapter of circumstance left unconcluded by one who had departed the Garden a few hours before, swollen with the venom of outraged pride. It was Don Padraic who brushed aside reserve:

“SeÑor Hickman, I may speak before your friend, who must share your confidence. He will pardon my bringing personal affairs before him. I can not postpone my thanks—my very sincere thanks—for what you did this afternoon. My daughter was defenceless.”

“And I—” Benicia began, but Grant quickly put in:

“Will you not consider that I was really serving my own private ends—a score to be evened between Colonel Urgo and myself?”

Bim covered a reminiscent grin with a broad palm as Grant hurried on, eager to withhold from the girl opportunity to speak her thanks.

“When I was brought here I thought it best to keep silent on the matter of my own private grudge against this man. But now that it appears we all have common cause against him I think I may speak. Urgo himself was responsible for my being shot.”

He saw Benicia’s eyes grow wide, read the surprise that parted her lips in a breathed exclamation. He thought he saw, too, just the flash of something no eyes but his own could understand, and he was glad. Briefly he sketched the incident of the gambling palace in Sonizona, his encounter with Urgo in the office of the jail, the march with the chain gang.

“And so,” Grant concluded, “Colonel Urgo found a dead man come to life when he saw me in the patio to-day. When SeÑorita O’Donoju was out of hearing for a moment I could not resist a shot which left our friend guessing whether or not I had told you, seÑor, how I came by my wound.”

“Ah, yes,” from Benicia in a hushed voice. “I knew the minute I returned there had been something between you. Urgo was like a cornered animal.”

“And so he turned on you,” Grant could not help saying. “If only I could have guessed beforehand his attack—”

Again silence fell. Grant was alive to the play of unspoken thought between father and daughter; these two alone in the immensity of the desert and facing unsupported the craft of an implacable enemy. He sensed the battle between their pride and their desperate need for an ally: the one impulse dictating that what was the secret affair of the House of O’Donoju must remain strictly its own secret, the other moving them to confide in him, who unwittingly had been drawn into the struggle. Gladly would he have offered himself as a champion; but he must await their initiative. Suddenly Grant recalled what Bim had told him of Urgo’s threat at the meeting with Don Padraic on the desert road: how the head of the Casa O’Donoju would be held responsible for harbouring an escaped convict. There was no blinking his duty in this direction.

“My friend tells me, Don Padraic, that Colonel Urgo threatens your arrest as well as my own; that you will be held responsible for concealing a fugitive from justice. That cannot be, of course. To-morrow, if Quelele can take Bagley and myself in the car—”

“No!” Benicia’s denial came peremptorily and with a hint of passion which gave Grant a sting of surprise. “No, seÑor, we do not turn wounded men into the desert—particularly a friend who has served us as you have done.”

Again Grant saw in the firelit pools of her eyes just an instant’s revelation of depths he yearned to plumb—the aspect of a beginning love hardly knowing itself as such. He scarcely heard the voice of Don Padraic seconding his daughter’s protest.

“The hospitality of the Casa O’Donoju,” he was saying, “can hardly recognize such silly threats. Colonel Urgo’s hope was that we would send you back over the Road of the Dead Men to Caborca or Magdalena where, naturally, you would be made a prisoner. Please dismiss from your mind any idea of our permitting ourselves to play into this man’s hands.”

Bim Bagley ventured to break his silence: “Grant here and I have important business together up over the Line. We ought to be moving soon’s we can.” The white-haired don turned to Bim with a gracious spreading of the hands.

“When SeÑor Hickman feels able to make the journey Quelele will take him and yourself, SeÑor Bagley, to westward. There is a way through El Infiernillo up to the Arizona town of Cuprico. By so going you will avoid any trap Urgo might lay. But you will not hurry SeÑor Hickman’s going”—Don Padraic interjected reservation—“and you, SeÑor Bagley, surely can remain with us until then.”

The direct Bagley, finding himself thwarted by the don’s suavity, sent a sheepish grin Grant’s way in token of his defeat and maintained silence. Don Padraic, to dismiss the subject his reticence had reluctantly introduced, struck a gong to summon a servant. Soon a decanter of sherry was glowing golden in the firelight and cigarettes were burning. The master of the Casa O’Donoju artfully led Bim into talk of cattle, always currency of conversation in the Southwest. Grant drew his chair closer to Benicia’s.

“You startled me with that ‘No’ of yours to my proposal to leave the Garden of Solitude at once,” he said with a boldness he did not wholly feel. “Being a little deaf, I am not sure I heard all the reasons you gave why I should not go.”

“What you failed to hear me say my father supplied,” the girl quickly parried, giving him her steady gaze. He was not to be so easily side-tracked. What had begun in boldness swept him on in passionate sincerity:

“There are many excellent reasons why I should be somewhere else than here this time to-morrow night; but there is one very compelling reason why I welcome every added hour here in the Garden. May I tell you that reason?”

“If you think I should know.” The words came simply. He, looking down into the hint of features the firelight grudgingly gave him, saw there the frank camaraderie of a candid spirit: the soul that was Benicia O’Donoju, unsullied of artifice or the vain trickeries of the woman desired. “If you think I should know”—call of comrade to comrade. The desert girl scorning subtleties and inventions; knowing what her words would prompt yet wishing them to be said.

“It is that I love you, Benicia, and that I cannot leave you, loving you so, when I know you are in danger.” Grant gave her his heart’s pledge in simple directness. Though the girl was not unprepared for his avowal, the call in his words, elemental as the sweep of precious rain over the thirsting desert, set quivering chords of her being never before stirred. He saw the trembling of her lips; her curving lashes trembled and were jewelled with little drops. She turned her gaze into the fire for a long minute. Grant heard vaguely the voice of Bim Bagley expounding some theme of cattle ticks. His heart was on the rack.

“Grant—good friend—” Her voice broke, then valiantly found itself. “You heard from Urgo the story of our house—of the Red One and his crime against God—”

“The hound!” he muttered. Benicia groped on:

“My father—no one ever told me that story because—because—” Grant saw one hand steal up to touch with a gesture almost abhorrent the low wave of red over her brow—“I bear the sign, you see.”

He put out his hand to stay her, for the dregs of suffering were working a slow torture upon her; the face of the girl he loved had become like some sculptor’s study of the spirit of fatalism. He could not check her.

“My father when he returned to-day and I told him—my father said the story was true as Urgo told it. Once in every second generation—this sign of El Rojo, murderer and violator of the sanctuary—”

“But, Benicia, surely you don’t believe this fairy story!” Grant packed into his low words all the willing of a spirit fighting for precious possession. He felt that every word the girl spoke was pushing her farther from him.

“Ah, Grant, we desert people believe easily because the truth is not hidden. It is true; my good grey father knew that I knew it to be true and did not seek to deceive me when I asked him. The O’Donoju with this”—again the shrinking touch of fingers to the dull-burning stripe on her forehead—“cannot give love, for with love goes unhappiness—and death.”

She broke off suddenly, rose and hurried into the shadows beyond the range of firelight. Grant heard a door latch at the far end of the room click to.