“Jondo said last night that the battle was on and he would fight it out in Santa Fe 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 Fe, 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 canon 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.