With the lithe spring of a cat Bim put himself between Grant and the advancing Indian. His face had gone dead white and his eyes were coals blown upon by the wind of anger.

“None of that! Get back there—you!” Bim’s voice was scarcely audible but his pose of furious battling on the hair-trigger of release was sufficiently vocal to awe the Papago giant into a backward stumble. Then to Benicia:

“Young woman, you’re making the mistake of your life. I’m a’mighty sorry for you, an’ you are going to be right regretful yourself when you have time to think.” Grant made a step forward to lay a checking hand on his friend’s arm. He would have spoken but the girl interrupted.

“My father’s blood on this man’s hands!—the dagger from the wall of his chamber—” Of a sudden the last shred of restraint she had battled to impose upon herself gave way and a flood came under propulsion of hysteria. Out fluttered her hands to point the object of her execration.

“You—I do not know you! Just a chance meeting between us and we part. Then fate brings you to this house wounded—snatched from death. An escaped convict from a chain gang—you yourself admitted as much just last night. With good reason my cousin, Colonel Urgo, must have caused your arrest. Why should I not believe you capable of killing my father? Why not when the signs of his very blood cry out against you!”

“SeÑorita O’Donoju—” Grant’s effort to check her was fruitless, for she had whirled upon Bagley: “And you! Unknown to my father—unknown to me. He brought you here on your own representation. You said you were hunting for your friend to whom we had offered our hospitality. Can you deny that both of you discovered opportunity here to kill—and then to rob?”

The storm that had swept the girl through this welter of imaginings, illogical, frenetic, took heavy toll of her physical reserves. Now she stood trembling, white-faced in the spreading dawn, pitiful. Her small hands were clenched into fists across her breast. Flutterings of uncontrolled nerves made the flesh of her temples pulsate. Grant, for all the crushing horror of these moments, felt pity pushing through the numbness Benicia’s accusation had wrought. Never had he seen a woman so tortured by the devils of hysteria; he was appalled. He spoke to her gently:

“If you will permit me to go to my room while you make further investigations I will answer any questions they may suggest. It must be plain to you, SeÑorita O’Donoju, that I cannot escape from this place.”

The girl gave him a dazed look as if she hardly comprehended what he said, then she slowly nodded and, beckoning the Indians to follow, she turned and disappeared beyond the patio’s green. Bim threw an arm over his pal’s shoulder and accompanied him to his room. At the door he whirled Grant about with a strong grip of both his hands and gave him a grin more eloquent than any sermon on fortitude.

“When the she-ones get to stampedin’, old pal, they sure have us helpless men winging. Now go in there and get a sleep while I take a look round below your window and elsewheres.”

Bim’s easy injunction to sleep was not so easily followed by the man who was a self-appointed prisoner. On his bed Grant tossed in a fever of mingled blind speculation and outraged pride. Strive though he might to palliate Benicia’s charge against him on the score of the girl’s complete prostration through the night’s tragedy, the quick and fiery blood in her that was inheritance from Spanish forebears, yet always he came against the same ugly fact: one whom he loved with all the passion in him and whose return of love he had dared hope to win had accused him of murder out of hand.

Yet how could he prove his innocence? Of a sudden that thought plumped down on him with the burst of a high explosive shell.

Benicia’s accusation had appeared monstrous, yes. But, look upon the facts through her eyes—so a curiously impersonal phase of mind prompted; what were those facts as they appeared to the girl? A man who was first a chance acquaintance in a train and then, by a trick of fate, a guest in the house, rouses the household at three o’clock in the morning by sounding an alarm in the patio. He calls “Murder!” though he does not say who has been murdered, he has not apparently discovered the body of Don Padraic in his chamber.

This man—this waif brought in from the desert—prevents the daughter’s going in to the room of death until first he has entered that room and locked the door behind him. He leaves the marks of his fingers in blood upon the outside of that door. Then he and his friend—“call him confederate” was Grant’s cynical amendment—organize a hue and cry outside of the house. While this is in progress a servant finds in the guest’s room a dagger; instead of being in its usual place amid the rack of weapons on the wall this dagger lies on the floor as if hastily thrown there by one who had no proper time for its concealment. The dagger is blood stained and on its haft are the same finger prints as those on the door of the dead don’s chamber.

There was the record. How refute it?

Say that while lying awake he saw a hand appear at the bars of his window and heard the tinkle of a knife dropped within? Why, if he was so vigilant at three o’clock in the morning, had he not seen that hand of a murderer steal in to abstract the weapon before the deed? And whose hand was it? Did not the burden of proof that it was not his own which took the dagger from the wall rest solely upon Grant Hickman?

Another’s finger prints on that bloodied haft besides his own? Perhaps. But it needed the instruments of precision of a detective central office to juggle with such minutiÆ as the whorls and spirals in a finger print, and they most certainly were lacking at the Casa O’Donoju. Graver difficulty still, there were a hundred and more Indians in the oasis; how gather them all together and take the prints of their fingers?

The more his mind roved amid hypotheses the closer about him seemed drawn the meshes of circumstance. As the sun of a new day painted a glory beyond the bars of his window Grant Hickman felt himself as helpless as that Tomlinson of the Kipling story who plunged headlong through the space between all the suns of infinity.

He must have slipped into the sleep of exhaustion, for it was near noon when a knock on his door roused him. At his bidding ’Cepcion opened to illustrate a command in Spanish with a backward jerk of her head. Grant arose and followed her through a corridor to the patio. Benicia was standing there in an attitude of awaiting him, a little beyond her was Bim, his face wreathed with a heartening smile.

The girl received him with bleak eyes. “You will please follow me, seÑor,” was all she said. Then she led the way, the two men a step behind her, out of the still house and down the avenue of palms towards the Papago village. From time to time a turn in the path gave Grant a glimpse of Benicia’s face. It was a changed woman he saw.

Gone was the vital spirit of joy of living which always gave the girl her character of Eurydice in khaki; gone, too, that softness of grain born of happiness undisturbed, of life amid the elemental things of nature. This Benicia was a cold fury moving to judgment. The call of her Spanish blood from centuries past—call for vengeance and blood-sacrifice—had possessed her. It was as if some mocking cartoonist had run a brush over the features of Innocence in portraiture, giving an upward twist of cruelty to lips, the glint of blood lust in eyes.

They came to the Indian village, all hushed in anticipation of some prodigy. Only the frog-croaking of the water drums and the dry clicking of the rasping sticks betokened a continuance of the mourning ritual. All the retainers of the Casa O’Donoju, farmers, cattle handlers, house servants, men, squaws and half-naked children, were assembled in the rudely-defined street that led between rows of reed and mud-capped huts. Two only were seated apart: the man who bobbled the drumming sticks over the turtle-back halves of the gourds and an ancient who manipulated the rasping sticks. On every bronze-black face showed the strain of awaiting an untoward event.

When Benicia appeared some elderly squaws started afresh the lugubrious death howl, but a gesture from the girl silenced them. She beckoned Quelele to her and spoke some rapid words in the Papago tongue. He in turn passed the orders to two men, who ran into one of the nearby huts to reappear staggering under the weight of a great metal kettle, such as might be used for soap boiling, carried between them. Quelele laid two heavy flat stones in the middle of the street; the kettle carriers deposited their burden, rim down on the rocks. A space of two inches or more showed between the kettle rim and the hard adobe.

Still the hollow bum-bum-bum of the water-drum, whisper and cluck of the notched sticks. A very old man, the skin of whose naked legs was grey and tough as elephant hide, had attached ceremonial circlets of dried yucca pods about his ankles in a cuff extending almost to the knees. He took his stand by the instrumentalists and his feet moved in a shuffle in time to the drum beats. The pods emitted dry whispers. The rapt look of a seer was on his leathern features.

The kettle in place, Quelele himself went to a small pen of ocatilla sticks on the outskirts of the village and brought therefrom a young rooster. The fowl’s head bobbed nervously and his small eyes glinted as he was carried on the big Indian’s arm through the throng. Two helpers lifted the edge of the soap kettle while Quelele thrust the cock underneath. A faint clucking came muffled from the iron prison. The bird thrust his head out here and there from beneath the rim, seeking egress.

Now Benicia took from ’Cepcion something she had carried wrapped about in a handkerchief and carried it to the kettle top. She let fall the handkerchief and with a slight gesture focused the eyes of all upon the stained dagger. A sigh like the swish of a scythe in long grass swept through the crowd as the girl balanced the knife on the exact top of the dome of fire-smudged metal. The ancient with the yucca rattles did a sacrificial step which caused a sharp alarm like that of the desert sidewinder’s warning.

Grant and Bim, still unaware of the significance of all this preparation, sensed the growing tensity of emotions all about them. The Papagoes, like all their kind, more than ready to invest with ritual any untoward incident of life, saw in the white girl’s preparations—particularly in the offering of the knife upon this rude altar—formulÆ of an appeal to decision of powers beyond human comprehension. Perhaps the elders, remembering tales of ancient custom, recognized the preliminaries and welcomed a revival among the unregenerate younger men of a direct appeal to Elder Brother. If big Quelele knew better he had kept his tongue still.

Benicia’s features had never relaxed their cold intentness during the preparations. There was even, to Grant’s troubled scrutiny, some element of the barbaric there. A look like that on the stone visage of an Aztec goddess, implacable, without mortal instincts. She took her stand by the kettle and spoke rapidly to the Papagoes, pointing to the knife, then lifting her finger to mark the place of the sun in the white sky.

Abruptly she finished, stooped and touched one finger to the bottom of the kettle. It came away blackened by soot. Then she turned to Grant. “It is the test of God,” she said in a dulled voice. “My people have used it in times past when they were perplexed as I am. All here including you, SeÑor Hickman, and you, SeÑor Bagley, will endure this test even as I just have done. Put your fingers to the kettle and show them to all, blackened. God will speak through the mouth of the imprisoned cock when the guilty man touches the iron.”

Grant gave the girl a steady look, then without a word he stepped to the blackened dome, swept the fingers of his right hand across it and held them aloft. Benicia was looking away when Grant stepped back beside her; he saw a convulsive movement of her throat—no other sign. Then big Bim dared the oracle with an easy grace. A shuddering intake of breath from the Indians as each man underwent trial.

Quelele now gave an order which brought all the men of the village and great-house into line of which he was the head. Even the musicians were replaced by squaws who did not permit the drubbing and squeaking to diminish. The faces of all wore the set look of hypnosis—eyes white and staring, muscles twittering in cheeks, tongues licking out over dried lips.

Thrut-t-t-t-t! An extra flourish of the rasping sticks and a thunder of the water drums as Quelele started the line forward toward the kettle. The big Indian moved with a mincing sidewise step reminiscent of some deer-dance of his people at the festival of sahuaro. His arms were held rigidly crooked at elbows and fingers splayed. The great moon face was contorted into a lolling mask. He sweat with fear.

Twice the lightning-like bobbing out and back of the imprisoned cock’s head as Quelele approached. “Ai-ie!” a squaw screamed in a frenzy.

The leader touched the kettle, held up his blackened finger for those in line behind him to see, then broke from line and stood at a little distance from Benicia and the two white men.

Second in line was the ancient with the yucca rattles on his legs. Coming to the kettle, he stood rigid, tilted his old eyes to the blinding sun. A shiver ran down his body which caused every dry pod of his anklets to emit a whisper. He whirled once, dipped and swept a finger through the soot. “Njo oovik (Bird speaking),” he cried, and there was foam on his lips.

But the bird did not speak, and the line came slowly on. The spell of the weird had Grant bound. The rational in him tried to prompt that all this was but a shrewd application of the new psychological method of crime detection as utilized by primitive peoples before ever the science of the mind was thought of; but his imagination strained to hear the crowing of the cock when the finger of guilt was laid upon the iron shell. Mutter of the drums, shuffle of dancing feet, guttural calls and imprecations: these things had swept away all prim gauds and dressings of a mind counting itself superior and he was swept back to kinship with the wild, its children. Again the desert moved to bring him under its subjection.

“Lookit that fellah!” It was Bim who gripped Grant’s arm and pointed to the advancing line. One of the younger bucks had dodged out of his place and fallen back three numbers.

On came the men facing trial by ordeal. Now and again the imprisoned cock thrust his head out with snake-like darting, and the individual who was poised over the kettle hiccoughed fear. The young man who had dodged back tried the trick again when he was near the kettle; but the one behind him held him by the shoulders and forced him on.

The dodger came to the place of test, hesitated, made a downward sweep of his hand and stumbled past. Big Quelele suddenly leaped at him and gripped his right hand. No smudge of soot on the fingers.

“Hai—ee!” Quelele called, and the line stood still. He wrenched the young man’s hand high above his head and showed the fingers clean. “Hai—ee!” chorused fifty voices. Quelele started to drag the wretch back to the kettle.

Then his victim went to his knees—to his face in the dust. He rolled and kicked, screaming. Still Quelele dragged him nearer the kettle, his right hand firmly gripped in the vise of his own two, forefinger extended to take the print of soot and draw the cock’s crow.

“I did it! I did it!” the wretched creature blubbered. Quelele dropped him as if he were a poisonous lizard. The crowd pushed forward menacingly. The murderer fumbled in his trousers pocket and brought out a shining silver peso, which he threw from him with a gesture of horror. Quelele picked it up and turned it over in his palm, his brow heavily knotted. He passed it to Benicia.

The girl turned the coin over to the reverse, whereon the spread eagle grips a snake and a cactus branch in his talons. A deep knife cut was scored through the neck of the eagle.

The wretch in the dust saw she had noted the mutilation and cried out to her in pleading, “The sign, mistress! The sign! The soldier-seÑor Urgo tells me many months ago when I receive the sign I shall kill or my brother, who is in his prison, will be shot!”

“And he gave you this—” the girl began.

“Yesterday, mistress. He passes me in his thunder-wagon and tosses me this peso. ‘Find the knife in the room of the wounded gringo seÑor,’ he commands. ‘Use no other.’”

Benicia nodded to Quelele, who made a sign to others. They brought a hair rope and trussed the murderer hands to feet. His lips were mute. Stamp of fate was on his grey features. He knew his punishment: to be taken to the burning lava fields of Pinacate, where the dead volcanoes are, there to be left without gun or canteen; no man would see him again. Such was the Papago custom decreed for murderers from beforetime.

She who had ordained this trial by ordeal had turned away, once the wretch’s confession had been heard. The soul of the girl now stood its own trial in turn; faced by the guilt of false suspicion, by the wounds wrought of bitter accusation, it must needs purge itself. Yes, even though the spirit of Benicia O’Donoju was not one easily to humble itself. A long minute she fought with herself and finally turned gropingly to make her hard penance before Grant.

Then she saw the figure of the man whose debtor in honour she was striding with his companion towards the avenue of palms leading to the house. The distance between them seemed suddenly the breadth of the world.