struggle on the precarious slope, and stood bending over Don Geronimo, shielding him with his body from the fire. It was only a gust; in a moment it had stripped the leaves from the miserable shrubs and roared on like a little whirlwind on a summer day. They passed through this without much damage, and went on down among the black, smoking sticks of laurel and gnarled sage and grey-green clumps of spiked yucca, which looked little worse for the passing of the quick-leaping line of fire.
Juan found the spring in the pass called Cahuenga, where they had spread their dinner the day he rode as guard to Gertrudis Sinova. There he bathed Don Geronimo's wounds, grateful to find him breathing strongly, testimony of the strength of the indomitable race to which he belonged. Juan feared the mayordomo might die without surgical attention, such as Padre Ignacio could give him, if left there by the roadside long. He considered going on with him, cruel as it would be to Don Geronimo to bind him to the horse again, his excoriated back to the sun.
Juan himself was in poor case for traveling. Although he had closed his eyes against the fire in his long dash through it on the ridge, all but a little crevice to give himself a dim guidance, his blistered forehead and cheeks were puffing out of all human semblance, threatening soon to eclipse his sight entirely, A blind man and an unconscious man would be but a poor pair of traveling companions for the
