“Let me try,” Alaire begged, and spurred her horse up to the group.  She smiled down at the country people, saying:  “We have traveled a long way, and we’re tired and hungry.  Won’t you give us something to eat?  We’ll pay you well for your trouble.”

The man demurred sullenly, and began a refusal; but his wife, after a wondering scrutiny, interrupted him with a cry.  Rushing forward, she took the edge of Alaire’s skirt in her hands and kissed it.

“God be praised!  A miracle!” she exclaimed.  “Juan, don’t you see?  It is the beautiful senora for whom we pray every night of our lives.  On your knees, shameless one!  It is she who delivered you from the prison.”

Juan stared unbelievingly, then his face changed; his teeth flashed in a smile, and, sweeping his hat from his head, he, too, approached Alaire.

“It is! senora, I am Juan Garcia, whom you saved, and this is Inez,” he declared.  “Heaven bless you and forgive me.”

“Now I know you,” Alaire laughed, and slipped down from her saddle.  “This is a happy meeting.  So!  You live here, and that was little Juan who ran away as if we were going to eat him.  Well, we are hungry, but not hungry enough to devour Juanito.”

Turning to her companions, she explained the circumstances of her first meeting with these good people, and as she talked the Garcias broke in joyfully, adding their own account of her goodness.

“We’ve fallen among friends,” Alaire told Dave and Father O’Malley.  “They will let us rest here, I am sure.”

Husband and wife agreed in one voice.  In fact, they were overjoyed at an opportunity of serving her; and little Juan, his suspicions partially allayed, issued from hiding and waddled forward to take part in the welcome.

Shamefacedly the elder Garcia explained his inhospitable reception of the travelers.  “We hear the gringos are coming to kill us and take our farms.  Everybody is badly frightened.  We are driving our herds away and hiding what we can.  Yesterday at the big Obispo ranch our people shot two Americans and burned some of their houses.  They intend to kill all the Americans they find, so you’d better be careful.  Just now a fellow rode up shouting that you were coming, but of course I didn’t know—­”

“Yes, of course.  We’re trying to reach the border,” Father O’Malley told him.  “Will you hide us here until we can go on?”

Juan courtesied respectfully to the priest.  “My house is yours, Father.”

“Can you take care of our horses, too, and—­give us a place to sleep?” Dave asked.  His eyes were heavy; he had been almost constantly in the saddle since leaving Jonesville, and now could barely keep himself awake.

“Trust me,” the Mexican assured them, confidently.  “If somebody comes I’ll send them away.  Oh, I can lie with the best of them.”

The Garcias were not ordinary people, and they lived in rather good circumstances for country folk.  There were three rooms to their little house, all of which were reasonably clean.  The food that Inez set before her guests, too, was excellent if scanty.