Luis hesitated, staring down at the dead body of Estan.  “I will go,” he said, breaking in upon the sound of the peona’s reasonless weeping.  “I will do that.  The sheriff is not Mexican, or—­” He checked himself abruptly and peered across at Starr.  “I go,” he repeated hastily.

He stood up, and Starr rose also and assisted the old lady to her feet.  She seemed inclined to cling to him.  Her Estan had liked Starr, and for that her faith in him never faltered now.  He laid his arm protectively around her shaking shoulders.

“Senora, go you in and rest,” he commanded gently, in Spanish.  “Have the girl bring a blanket to cover Estan—­for here he must remain until he is viewed by the coroner—­you understand?  Your son would be grieved if you do not rest.  You still have Luis, your little son.  You must be brave and help Luis to be a man.  Then will Estan be proud of you both.”  So he suited his speech to the gentle ways of the old senora, and led her back to the shelter of the porch as tenderly as Estan could have done.

He sent the peona for a lamp to replace the one that had broken when Estan fell with it in his hand.  He settled the senora upon the cowhide-covered couch where her frail body could be comfortable and she still could feel that she was watching beside her son.  He placed a pillow under her head, and spread a gay-striped serape over her, and tucked it carefully around her slippered feet.  The senora wept more quietly, and called him the son of her heart, and brokenly thanked God for the tenderness of all good men.

He explained to her briefly that he had been riding to town by a short-cut over the ridge when he heard the shot and hurried down; and that, having left his horse up there, he must go up after it and bring it around to the corral.  He would not be gone longer than was absolutely necessary, he told her, and he promised to come back and stay with her while the officers were there.  Then he hurried away, the senora’s broken thanks lingering painfully in his memory.

At the top of the bluff, where he had climbed as fast as he could, he stood for a minute to get his breath back.  He heard the muffled pluckety-pluck of a horse galloping down the sandy trail, and he knew that there went Luis on his bitter mission to San Bonito.  His eyes turned involuntarily toward Sunlight Basin.  There twinkled still the light from Helen May’s window, though it was well past midnight.  Starr wondered at that, and hoped she was not sick.  Then immediately his face grew lowering.  For between him and the clear, twinkling light of her window he saw a faint glow that moved swiftly across the darkness; an automobile running that way with dimmed headlights.