The slow tolling of a bell came billowing out through the silence.  The girl sat up.  It was the Captain.  Never, it seemed to her, had she heard anything so mournful.  Ignacio had informed himself concerning all details and had returned to the garden at the Mission.  The man was dead, then.  There could be no doubt as one listened to the measured sorrowing of the big bell.

She got to her feet and, walking swiftly, moved on, still farther from San Juan.  The act was without premeditation; her whole being was insistent upon it.  She wondered if it was the sheepman from Las Palmas; if he had, perhaps, a wife and children.  Then she stopped suddenly; a new thought had come to her.  Strange, inexplicable even, it had not suggested itself before.  She wondered who the other man was, the man who had done the killing.  And what had happened to him?  Had he fled?  Had other men grappled with him, disarmed him, made of him a prisoner to answer for what he had done?  What had been his motive, what passion had actuated him Surely not just the greed for gold which the bell-ringer had suggested!  What sort of creature was he who, in cold, calculating blood could murder a man for a handful of money?

There was nothing to answer unless she could catch the thought of Ignacio Chavez in the ringing of his bell.  She moved on again, hurrying.

Following the arroyo, she had come to the first of the little, smooth hills, the lomas as the men on the stage had named them.  Through them the dry watercourse wriggled, carrying its green pennons along its marge.  She went up gentle slopes mantled with bleached grass which directly under her eyes was white in the glare of the sun.  But the sun was very low now, very fierce and red, an angry god going down in temporary defeat, but defiant to the last, filled with threat for to-morrow; at a little distance he tinged the world with his own fiery hue.  The far western uplands cut the great disk squarely in two; down slipped the half wafer until it seemed that just a bright signal-fire was kindled upon the ridge.  And as that faded from her eyes the slow sobbing of the swinging bell was like a wail for the death of the day.

She had removed her hat, fancying that already the earth was throwing off its heat, that a little coolness and freshness was coming down to meet her from the mountains.  She turned her eyes toward them and it was then, just after the sunset, that she saw a man riding toward her.  He was still far off when she first glimpsed him, just cresting one of the higher hills, so that for him the sun had not yet set.  For she caught the glint of light flaming back from the silver chasings of his bridle and from the barrel of the gun across the hollow of his left arm.  She did not believe that he had seen her in the shadow of the cottonwoods.

If she went on she must meet him presently.  She glanced back over her shoulder, noting how far she had come from the town.  It was very still again; the bell had ceased its complaint; the hoofs of the approaching horse seemed shod with felt, falling upon felt.  She swung about and walked back toward San Juan.