Page:The Valley of Adventure (1926).pdf/125

 leaves, dumb on its neckstrap as any common metal that never had known the vibration of a clapper or the thrilling of sweet sounds. Padre Mateo himself was oppressed by forty fears. His sandalled feet did not flare out so gallantly from his mule's sides, his shoulders drooped under the burden of the sun. He turned his eyes this way and that, in constant watching, thinking to see Sebastian Alvitre spring from the bushes, red-eyed from a long vigil by the roadside.

In that way Padre Mateo traveled with his fear, Juan Molinero on the bandit's horse beside him. There was no assurance in pistols, nor the rifle in the cart where Juan could lean and reach it. A man with twenty bullets in him could not stand to a defense of the helpless. But if it came to the point where he must do it, Padre Mateo was determined that he would show the bandit crew that, although prohibited by the king's commands from bearing arms of his own, he was under no interdiction that bound his hands from applying the weapons of another man to the defense of a helpless one in his care. There was comfort in this simmering down of his perturbation; Padre Mateo calculated the effectiveness of a barricade of the boxes in the cart.

"Tula," said he, giving her the affectionate diminutive of her name, "can you fire a pistol?"

"As well as almost any man," she replied, but with sidelong look at Juan, as if she made her exception there.

"Then I am going to ask Juan to give you one