“Maybe this is the sanctuary that priest was talking about,” I suggested.  “He said the walls were old as hate and strong as love, with a crooked street beside it somewhere.”

“Oh, you sponge!  Soaking up everything you see and hear.  I wonder you sleep nights for fear the wind will tell the pine trees something you’ll miss,” Beverly declared.  “I can tell a horse’s age by its teeth, but churches don’t have teeth.  Go and ask Mat about it.  She knows when the De Sotos and Corteses and all the other Spanish grandaddees came to Mexico.”

I had just turned back alongside of Mat’s wagon—­she was always our book of ready reference—­when a little girl suddenly dashed out of a walled lane opening into the street behind us.  She stopped in the middle of the road, almost under my pony’s feet, then with a shout of laughter she dashed into the deep doorway of the church and stood there, peering out at me with eyes brimful of mischief.

I brought my pony back on its haunches suddenly.  I had seen this girl before.  The big dark eyes, the straight little nose, the curve of the pink cheek, the china-smooth chin and neck, and, crowning all, the cloud of golden hair shading her forehead and falling in tangled curls behind.

I did not notice all these features now.  It was only the eyes, dark eyes, somewhere this side of misty mountain peaks, and maybe the halo of hair that had been in my vision on that day when Beverly and Mat Nivers and I sat on the parade-ground facing a sudden turn in our life trail.

I stared at the eyes now, only half conscious that the girl was laughing at me.

“You big brown bob-cat!  You look like you had slept in the Hondo ’royo all your life,” she cried, and turned to run away again.

As she did so a dark face peered round the corner of the church from the crooked street beside it.  A sudden gleam of white teeth and glistening eyes, a sudden leap and grip, and a boy, larger than Beverly, caught the little girl by the shoulders and shook her viciously.

She screamed and struggled.  Then, with a wild shriek as he clutched at her curls, she wrenched herself away and plunged inside the church.  The boy dived in after her.  Another scream, and I had dropped from my pony and leaped across the road.  I pushed open the door against the two struggling together.  With one grip at his coat-collar I broke his hold on the little girl and flung him outside.

I have a faint recollection of a priest hurrying down the aisle toward the fighting children, as the little girl, freed from her assailant, dashed out of the door.

“He jumped at her first, and shook her and pulled her hair,” I cried, as the priest caught me by the shoulder.  “I’m not going to see anybody pitched into, not a little girl, anyhow.”

I jerked myself free from his grasp and ran out to my pony.  At the corner of the church stood the girl, her cheeks flushed, her eyes blazing defiance, her rumpled curls in a tangle about her face.