Mark where she stands! Around her form I draw The awful circle of our solemn church! Set but a foot within that holy ground, And on thy head--yea, though it wore a crown--launch the curse of Rome. --"RICHELIEU."
The faint rose hue of early dawn was touching the highest peaks of the Sandia and Jemez mountain ranges, while the valley of the Rio Grande still lay asleep under dull night shadows, when five ponies and their riders left the door of San Miguel church and rode southward in the slowly paling gloom. In the stillness of the hour the ponies' feet, muffled in the sand of the way, seemed to clatter noisily, and their trappings creaked loudly in the dead silence of the place. Little Blue Flower, no longer in her Mexican dress, led the line. Behind her Beverly and the white-faced nun of St. Ann's rode side by side; and behind these came Eloise St. Vrain and myself. From the church door Jondo had watched us until we melted into the misty shadows of the trail.
"Go carefully and fearlessly and ride hard if you must. But the struggle will be here with me to-day, not where you are," he assured us, when we started away.
As he turned to leave the church, an Indian rose from the shadows beyond it and stepped before him.
"You remember me, Santan, the Apache, at Fort Bent?" he questioned.
Jondo looked keenly to be sure that his memory fitted the man before him.
"Yes, you are Santan. You brought me a message from Father Josef once."
The Indian's face did not change by the twitch of an eyelash as he replied.
"I would bring another message from him. He would see you an hour later than you planned. The young riders, where shall I tell him they have gone?"
"To the old ranch-house on the San Christobal Arroyo," Jondo replied.
The Indian smiled, and turning quickly, he disappeared up the dark street. A sudden thrill shook Jondo.
"Father Josef said I could trust that boy entirely. Surely old Dick Verra, part Indian himself, couldn't be mistaken. But that Apache lied to me. I know it now; and I told him where our boys are taking Eloise. I never made a blunder like that before. Damned fool that I am!"
He ground his teeth in anger and disgust, as he sat down in the doorway of the church to await the coming of Ferdinand Ramero and his son, Marcos.
Out on the trail our ponies beat off the miles with steady gait. As the way narrowed, we struck into single file, moving silently forward under the guidance of Little Blue Flower, now plunging into dark cañons, where the trail was rocky and perilous, now climbing the steep sidling paths above the open plain. Morning came swiftly over the Gloriettas. Darkness turned to gray; shapeless masses took on distinctness; the night chill softened to the crisp breeze of dawn. Then came the rare June day in whose bright opening hour the crystal skies of New Mexico hung above us, and about us lay a landscape with radiant lights on the rich green of the mesa slopes, and gray levels atint with mother-of-pearl and gold.
The Indian pueblos were astir. Mexican faces showed now and then at the doorways of far-scattered groups of adobe huts. Outside of these all was silence--a motionless land full of wild, rugged beauty, and thrilling with the spell of mystery and glamour of romance. And overbrooding all, the spirit of the past, that made each winding trail a footpath of the centuries; each sheer cliff a watch-tower of the ages; each wide sandy plain, a rallying-ground for the tribes long ago gone to dust; each narrow valley a battle-field for the death-struggle between the dusky sovereigns of a wilderness kingdom and the pale-faced conquerors of the coat of mail and the dominant soul. The sense of danger lessened with distance and no knight of old Spain ever rode more proudly in the days of chivalry than Beverly Clarenden and I rode that morning, fearing nothing, sure of our power to protect the golden-haired girl, thrilled by this strange flight through a land of strange scenes fraught with the charm of daring and danger. Beverly rode forward now with Little Blue Flower. I did not wonder at her spell over him, for she was in her own land now, and she matched its picturesque phases with her own picturesque racial charm.
I rode beside Eloise, forgetting, in the sweet air and glorious June sunlight, that we were following an uncertain trail away from certain trouble.
The white-faced nun in her somber dress, rode between, with serious countenance and downcast eyes.
"What happened to you, Little Lees, after I left you?" I asked, as we trotted forward toward the San Christobal valley.
"Everything, Gail," she replied, looking up at me with shy, sad eyes. "First Ferdinand Ramero came to me with the command that I should consent to be married this morning. By this time I would have been Marcos' wife." She shivered as she spoke. "I can't tell you the way of it, it was so final, so cruel, so impossible to oppose. Ferdinand's eyes cut like steel when they look at you, and you know he will do more than he threatens. He said the Church demanded one-half of my little fortune and that he could give it the other half if he chose. He is as imperious as a tyrant in his pleasanter moods; in his anger he is a maniac. I believe he would murder Marcos if the boy got in his way, and his threats of disgracing me were terrible."
"But what else happened?" I wanted to turn her away from her wretched memory.
"I have not seen anybody else except Little Blue Flower. She has an Indian admirer who is Ferdinand's tool and spy. He let her come in to see me late last night or I should not have been here now. I had almost given up when she brought me word that you and Beverly would meet me at the church at daylight. I have not slept since. What will be the end of this day's work? Isn't there safety for me somewhere?" The sight of the fair, sad face with the hunted look in the dark eyes cut me to the soul.
"Jondo said last night that the battle was on and he would fight it out in Santa Fé to-day. It is our work to go where the Hopi blossom leads us, and Bev Clarenden and I will not let anything happen to you."
I meant what I said, and my heart is always young when I recall that morning ride toward the San Christobal Arroyo and my abounding vigor and confidence in my courage and my powers.
Our trail ran into a narrow plain now where a yellow band marked the way of the San Christobal River toward the Rio Grande. On either hand tall cliffs, huge weather-worn points of rock, and steep slopes, spotted with evergreen shrubs, bordered the river's course. The silent bigness of every feature of the landscape and the beauty of the June day in the June time of our lives, and our sense of security in having escaped the shadows and strife in Santa Fé, all combined to make us free-spirited. Only Sister Anita rode, alert and sorrowful-faced, between Beverly and the gaily-robed Indian girl, and myself with Eloise, the beautiful.
As we rounded a bend in the narrow valley, Little Blue Flower halted us, and pointing to an old half-ruined rock structure beside the stream, she said:
"See, yonder is the chapel where Father Josef comes sometimes to pray for the souls of the Hopi people. The house we go to find is farther up a cañon over there."
"I remember the place," Eloise declared. "Father Josef brought me here once and left me awhile. I wasn't afraid, although I was alone, for he told me I was always safe in a church. But I was never allowed to come back again."
Sister Anita crossed herself and, glancing over her shoulder, gave a sharp cry of alarm. We turned about to see a group, of horsemen dashing madly up the trail behind us. The wind in their faces blew back the great cloud of dust made by their horses hoofs, hiding their number and the way behind them. Their steeds were wet with foam, but their riders spurred them on with merciless fury. In the forefront Ferdinand Ramero's tall form, towering above the small statured evil-faced Mexican band he was leading, was outlined against the dust-cloud following them, and I caught the glint of light on his drawn revolver.
"Ride! Ride like the devil!" Beverly shouted.
At the same time he and the Hopi girl whirled out and, letting us pass, fell in as a rear guard between us and our pursuers. And the race was on.
Jondo had said the lonely ranch-house whither we were tending was as strong as a fort. Surely it could not be far away, and our ponies were not spent with hard riding. Before us the valley narrowed slightly, and on its rim jagged rock cliffs rose through three hundred feet of earthquake-burst, volcanic-tossed confusion to the high tableland beyond.
As we strained forward, half a dozen Mexican horsemen suddenly appeared on the trail before us to cut off our advance. Down between us and the new enemy stood the old stone chapel, like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land, where for two hundred long years it had set up an altar to the Most High on this lonely savage plain.
"The chapel! The chapel! We must run to that now," cried Sister Anita.
Her long veil was streaming back in the wind, and her rosary and crucifix beating about her shoulders with the hard riding, but her white face was brave with a divine trust. Yet even as she urged us I saw how imposible was her plea, for the men in front were already nearer to the place than we were. At the same time a pony dashed up beside me, and Little Blue Flower's voice rang in my ears.
"The rocks! Climb up and hide in the rocks!" She dropped back on one side of Beverly, with Sister Anita on the other, guarding our rear. As I turned our flight toward the cliff, I caught sight of an Indian in a wedge of rock just across the river, and I heard the singing flight of an arrow behind me, followed almost instantly by another arrow. I looked back to see Sister Anita's pony staggering and rearing in agony, with Little Blue Flower trying vainly to catch its bridle-rein, and Sister Anita, clutching wildly at her rosary, a great stream of blood flowing from an arrow wound in her neck.
Men think swiftly in moments like these. The impulse to halt, and the duty to press on for the protection of the girl beside me, holding me in doubt. Instantly I saw the dark crew, with Ferdinand Ramero leading fiercely forward, almost upon us, and I heard Beverly Clarenden's voice filling the valley--"Run, Gail, run! You can beat 'em up there."
It was a cry of insistences and assurances and power, and withal there was that minor tone of sympathy which had sounded in the boy's defiant voice long ago in the gray-black shadows below Pawnee Rock, when his chivalric soul had been stirred by the cruel wrongs of Little Blue Flower and he had cried:
"Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances."
I knew in a flash that the three behind us were cut off, and Eloise St. Vrain and I pressed on alone. We crossed the narrow strip of rising ground to where the first rocks lay as they had fallen from the cliff above, split off by some titanic agony of nature. Up and up we went, our ponies stumbling now and then, but almost as surefooted as men, as they climbed the narrow way. Now the rocks hid us from the plain as we crept sturdily through narrow crevices, and now we clambered up an open path where nothing concealed our way. But higher still and higher, foot, by foot we pressed, while with oath and growl behind us came our pursuers.
At last we could ride no farther, and the miracle was that our ponies could have climbed so far. Above us huge slabs of stone, by some internal cataclysm hurled into fragments of unguessed tons of weight, seemed poised in air, about to topple down upon the plain below. Between these wild, irregular masses a narrow footing zigzagged upward to still other wild, irregular masses, a footing of long leaps in cramped spaces between sharp edges of upright clefts, all gigantic, unbending, now shielding by their immense angles, now standing sheer and stark before us, casting no shadows to cover us from the great white glare of the New-Mexican day.
I have said no man knows where his mind will run in moments of peril. As we left our ponies and clambered up and up in hope of safety somewhere, the face of the rocks cut and carved by the rude stone tools of a race long perished, seemed to hold groups of living things staring at us and pointing the way. And there was no end to these crude pictographs. Over and over and over--the human hand, the track of the little road-runner bird, the plumed serpent coiled or in waving line, the human form with the square body and round head, with staring circles for eyes and mouth, and straight-line limbs.
We were fleeing for safety through the sacred aisles of a people God had made; and when they served His purpose no longer, they had perished. I did not think of them so that morning. I thought only of some hiding-place, some inaccessible point where nothing could reach the girl I must protect. But these crawling serpents, cut in the rock surfaces, crawled on and on. These human hands, poor detached hands, were lifted up in mute token of what had gone before. These two-eyed, one-mouthed circles on heads fast to body-boxes, from which waved tentacle limbs, jigged by us, to give place to other coiled or crawling serpents and their companion carvings, with the track of the swift road-runner skipping by us everywhere.
At last, with bleeding hands and torn clothing, we stood on a level rock like a tiny mesa set out from the high summit of the cliff.
Eloise sat down at my feet as I looked back eagerly over the precipitous way we had come, and watched the band of Mexicans less rapidly swarming up the same steep, devious trail.
Three hundred feet below us lay the plain with the thin current of the San Christobal River sparkling here and there in the sunlight. The black spot on the trail that scarcely moved must be Beverly and Little Blue Flower with Sister Anita. No, there was only the Indian girl there, and something moving in and out of the shadow near them. I could not see for the intervening rocks.
"Gail! Gail! You will not let them take you. You will not leave me," Eloise moaned.
And I was one against a dozen. I stooped to where she sat and gently lifted her limp white hand, saying:
"Eloise, I was on a rock like this a night and a day alone on the prairie. I could not move nor cry out. But something inside told me to 'hold fast'--the old law of the trail. You must do that with me now."
A shout broke over the valley and the rocks about us seemed suddenly to grow men, as if every pictograph of the old stone age had become a sentient thing, a being with a Mexican dress, and the soul of a devil. Just across a narrow chasm, a little below us, Ferdinand Ramero stood in all the insolence of a conqueror, with a smile that showed his white teeth, and in his steely eyes was the glitter of a snake about to spring.
"You have given us a hard race. By Jove, you rode magnificently and climbed heroically. I admire you for it. It is fine to bring down game like you, Clarenden. You have your uncle's spirit, and a six-foot body that dwarfs his short stature. And we come as gentlemen only, if we can deal with a gentleman. It wasn't our men who struck your nun down there. But if you, young man, dare to show one ounce of fighting spirit now, behind you on the rocks--don't look--as I lift my hand are my good friends who will put a bullet into the brain beneath that golden hair, and you will follow. Being a game-cock cannot help you now. It will only hasten things. Deliver that girl to me at once, or my men will close in upon you and no power on earth can save you."
Eloise had sprung to her feet and stood beside me, and both of us knew the helplessness of our plight. A startling picture it must have been, and one the cliffs above the San Christobal will hardly see again: the blue June sky arched overhead, unscarred by a single cloud-fleck, the yellow plain winding between the high picturesque cliffs, where silence broods all through the long hours of the sunny day; the pictured rocks with their furnace-blackened faces white--outlined with the story of the dim beginnings of human strivings. And standing alone and defenseless on the little table of stone, as if for sacrifice, the tall, stalwart young plainsman and the beautiful girl with her golden hair in waving masses about her uncovered head, her sweet face white as the face of the dying nun beside the sandy arroyo below us, her big dark eyes full of a strange fire.
"I order you to close in and take these two at once." The imperious command rang out, and the rocks across the valley must have echoed its haughty tone.
"And I order you to halt."
The voice of Father Josef, clear and rich and powerful, burst upon the silence like cathedral music on the still midnight air. The priest's tall form rose up on a great mass of rock across the cleft before us--Father Josef with bared head and flashing eyes and a physique of power.
Ferdinand Ramero turned like a lion at bay. "You are one man. My force number a full dozen. Move on," he ordered.
Again the voice of Father Josef ruled the listening ears.
"Since the days of old the Church has had the power to guard all that come within the shelter of the holy sanctuary. And to the Church of God was given also long ago the might to protect, by sanctuary privilege, the needy and the defenseless. Ferdinand Ramero, note that little table of rock where those two stand helpless in your grasp. Around them now I throw, as I have power to throw, the sacred circle of our Holy Church in sanctuary shelter. Who dares to step inside it will be accursed in the sight of God."
Never, never will I live through another moment like to that, nor see the power of the Unseen rule things that are seen with such unbreakable strength.
The Mexicans dropped to their knees in humble prayer, and Ferdinand Ramero seemed turned to a man of stone. A hand was gently laid upon my arm and Jondo and Rex Krane stood beside us. A voice far off was sounding in my ears.
"Go back to your homes and meet me at the church to-morrow night. You, Ferdinand Ramero, go now to the chapel yonder and wait until I come."
What happened next is lost in misty waves of forgetfulness.