"Now," said Roldan, as Rafael and Hill trudged into the perspective of the canon, "we must sleep, but by turns. That priest will surely go to the cave to-day, and when he finds us gone he'll come straight for the mountains; and not through the tunnel either; he'll come on that big brown horse of his. You sleep first, for two hours, and I'll watch--"
"You first, my friend--" Suppressing a mighty yawn.
"It is easier for me to keep awake. Lie down on that horrible bed. I do not so much mind waiting a little longer."
Adan lifted his nose at the bunk covered with a bearskin, then flung himself upon it, and was asleep in three minutes. Roldan sat with his eyes applied to a rift between the hide-door and the wall. It commanded a view of the opposite wall of the canon, over which wound a zig-zag horse trail.
The sun, which had hung directly above the canon when Hill and Rafael departed, had slid toward the west, leaving the canon cold and dark again, and Roldan was about to call Adan, when he sprang to his feet, and stood rigid, cold with fear.
On the brow of the wall opposite, three hundred feet above his head, stood a powerful brown horse. On him was a huge figure clad in a brown cassock, the hood drawn well over the face. It was impossible to distinguish features at that distance, but Roldan fancied that those terrible eyes were holding his own. He recovered himself and dragged Adan out of bed.
"The priest!" he said. "Help me to wash these dishes--quick. It will take him some time to get down."
Adan stumbled across the room, plunged the dishes into a pail of drinking water, then handed them to Roldan, who dried them hastily and piled them on the shelf. Then he flung the water across the clay floor of the hut.
"Get up the ladder," he commanded. Adan scrambled up. Roldan followed, and pulled the ladder after him. The garret was very low, and half full of skins. They could not stand upright. It was also bitterly cold. Each hastily wrapped a skin about his body, and lay full length, Roldan on his face, his eyes applied to a chink in the rough floor.
A few moments later the door was flung aside and the priest strode in.
Roldan shuddered, but not with personal fear. The priest looked like a man who had just left the rack of his native Spain. His hair--the hood had fallen back--stood on end, his face and tightened lips were livid, his eyes rolled wildly.
"Jim!" he said hoarsely. "Jim!"
He left the hut as abruptly as he had entered it.
"He has gone to look at the mouth of the tunnel," whispered Roldan.
"What fools we were not to cover it up again. Then he would have walked its length to find us, and the horses might have come before he returned. Well, he cannot get us until he pulls the roof down."
"He could do it," whispered Adan, grimly. "Those hands! Dios de mi alma!"
"He will think we have gone somewhere with Don Jim."
The priest returned in less than half an hour. His face, if anything, was still more terrible to look upon. There was a touch of foam on his lips. His great hands were clinched. He strode over to the bunk and lifted the heaped-up bearskin. Suddenly he pressed his face into the fur.
"Perfume--Dona Martina's," he exclaimed. "They have been here."
He raised his face to the ceiling, and the boys held their mouths open that their teeth might not clack together. They closed their eyes: instinct bade them give heed to visual magnetism. Roldan immediately wanted to cough, Adan to scratch his nose. The next few moments were the most agonised of their lives. They felt the priest lift his hands and pass them slowly along the ceiling, they felt those eyes searching every crevice. Then they felt him grip the edge of the aperture and lift himself until his eyes were above the garret floor. But it was pitch dark. He could not even see the ladder, much less the boys under the bear skins.
The priest dropped to the floor and seated himself upon a box, dropping his face into his hands. There he sat, motionless, for hours. The boys buried their heads in the skins and went to sleep.
They were awakened by the sound of voices. A candle flared below. Hill had entered. He and the priest were alone.
"They were here, sir, that's true enough. I've just taken them to the Sennor Carriller's and pointed them fur home. They seemed in a hurry to vamos these parts."
The priest groaned and struck his fist on the table. "Then they are leagues away by this."
"They be, for a fact. Their horses was fresh and they was powerful keen.
They was just sweaten' to git home."
"And Rafael Carillo? Did he go with them?"
