“Senors, for these two who live here I am afraid!  It is as I told you; that Manuel was speaking threats against the big senor, last night; and he had drunk much wine, so that he walked not steady.  And with Carlos and perhaps one or two others—­of that I am not sure—­he rode away soon after dark.  Dolt, that I did not tell thee at the time!  But I was dancing much,” he confessed, “and the fiesta dance makes drunken the feet, that they must dance—­”

“Well, tie up that mustang and never mind.”  Dade was walking aimlessly about, looking for something—­what, he did not know.  “There’s tracks all around, and—­” he disappeared behind the cabin.

In a minute he was calling them, and his tone brought them on the run.  “Now, what do you make of that?” he wanted to know, and pointed.

Two fresh mounds of earth, narrow, long—­graves, if size and shape meant anything at all.  The form of a “T” they made there in the grass; for one was short and extended across, near one end of the larger one.

“What do you make of that?” Dade repeated, much lower than before.

“Senors, evil has been done here.  Me, I think—­”

“Don’t think!  Bring that shovel, over there—­see it, by the tree?—­and dig.  There’s one way to find out what it means.”

Valencia did not want to dig into those mounds, but the voice was that of his majordomo, whom he had for a month obeyed implicitly.  He got the shovel and he dug.  And since it seemed too bad to make him do all the work, Jack and Dade each took their turn in opening the grave.

And in that grave they found Mrs. Jerry, wrapped in her faded patchwork quilt, her hands folded at peace, her wistful brown eyes closed softly—­There was no need to speculate long upon the cause of her death.  Her shapeless brown dress was stained dark from throat to waist.  Dade, shuddering a little, very gently lifted the hands that were folded; beneath was the hole where the bullet had struck.

“Dios!” said Valencia, in a whisper.

They were three white-faced young men who stood there, abashed before the tragedy they had uncovered.  After a little, they filled the grave again and stood back, trying to think the thing out and to think it out calmly.  They drew away from the spot, Dade leading.

“We don’t need to open the other one,” he said.  “That holds Tige, of course.  I wonder—­”

“Let’s look around out there in the bushes,” Jack suggested.  “I can see how the thing must have happened; somebody came and started shooting—­and that rifle he called Jemina, and the two pistols—­don’t you reckon they did some good for themselves?”

“Probably—­if Jerry was here.”

“Man, he must have been here!  Who else—­” he tilted his head towards the graves.  Surely, no one but Jerry would have buried them so, with Tige lying at the feet of his mistress.  And, as Jack presently pointed out, if the shooting had taken place in Jerry’s absence, he would certainly have notified them at the ranch.  And Jack had a swift mental picture of Jerry galloping furiously up to the patio on one of his mules, brandishing his rifle, while he shouted to all around him the news of this terrible, unbelievable thing that had befallen him.