been asking this hour back. He said at high sun he’d be here sure, more than likely he’s been – ”
“Hark!” Nan whispered, putting a protecting arm about the boy. “Hide, quick, Tirol, here he comes.”
But only one horseman appeared, galloping through the dusk, and that one was Vestor, who had ridden away with the Romany rye that morning. His dark face told them nothing and yet they knew that he had much to tell. They gathered about him, but before he could speak, the old queen pushed her way to the front. “Where’s my son?” she demanded.
“In jail for tryin’ to steal a rich gorigo’s horse.” Then Vestor added mysteriously. “But he’ll join us afore dawn, I’m tellin’ you! Break camp at once,” he commanded. “We’re to wait for Spico in a mountain canyon on t’other side of town. I know where ’tis. I’ll ride the leader.”
The supper was hastily eaten, the fire beaten out, the mules and horses watered and hitched. Just as the moon rose over the sea, the gypsy caravan began moving slowly down the coast highway.
Nan, riding on her mottled pony, sincerely wished that Anselo Spico would not escape, but he always did, as she knew only too well.
Two hours later the caravan stopped on a lonely mountain road and drew to one side. Half an hour later everyone was asleep, but in the middle of the night Nan was awakened by a familiar voice.
Anselo Spico had returned.
Long before daybreak the gypsy caravan was once more under way. The jolting of the wagon of Manna Lou roused the girl. She climbed from her berth and looked in the one lower to see if all was well with little Tirol. Two big black eyes gazed out at her and one of the claw-like hands reached toward her. Nan took it lovingly.
“Little Tirol,” she said, “you aren’t feeling well.” The goblin-like boy shook his head as he replied: “A crooked back hurts, Sister Nan. It hurts all the time.”
“I know – I know dearie!” the girl said tenderly gathering the little fellow close in her arms. “Wait, Nan will bring you some breakfast.” But the boy turned away and wearily closed his eyes.
The caravan had stopped long enough to make a fire and prepare the morning coffee. Soon Manna Lou entered the wagon. “Go out, Nan darling,” she said. “Don’t fear Spico. He only thinks of getting across the border in safety.”
The girl beckoned to the gypsy woman and said in a low voice, “Little Tirol’s not so well. We’d ought to stop at the next town and fetch a doctor.”
“Poor little Tirol,” the gypsy woman said kindly. “You’ll be lonely, Nan, to have him go, but if the gorigo is right, if there is a heaven, then little Tirol’ll be happier, for there’s been no harm in him here. And there can’t be anyone so cruel as Anselo Spico’s been.”
Nan clenched her hands and frowned. Manna Lou continued. “Perhaps his own mother Zitha will be there waiting, and she’ll take care of him. Before she died, she gave me little Tirol and begged me to keep watch over him and I’ve done my best.”
Impulsively Nan put her arms about the gypsy woman as she said, “Manna Lou, how good, how kind you are! You’ve been just like a mother to little Tirol and me, too. Some day you’re going to tell me who my own mother was, aren’t you, Manna Lou?”
“Yes, leicheen Nan. When you’re eighteen, then I’m going to tell you. I promised faithful I wouldn’t tell before that.”
As the morning wore on, it was plain to the watchers that little Tirol was very ill and when at noon the caravan stopped, Nan, leaping from the wagon of Manna Lou confronted Anselo Spico as she said courageously: “Little Tirol is like to die. We’ve got to stop at that town down there into the valley and fetch a doctor.”
“Got to?” sneered the dark handsome man, then he smiled wickedly. “Since when is leicheen Nan the queen of this tribe that she gives commands? What we’ve got to do is cross over the border into Mexico before the gorigo police gets track of us.”
He turned away and Nan with indignation and pity in her heart, went back to the wagon. As she sat by the berth, holding Tirol’s hot hand, she determined that as soon as the village was reached she herself would ride ahead and find a doctor.
Manna Lou had tried all of the herbs, but nothing of which the gypsies knew could help the goblin-like boy or quiet his cruel pain.
It was mid-afternoon when Nan saw that the winding downward road was leading into a valley town. It would take the slow moving caravan at least an hour to reach the village, while Nan, on her pony, could gallop there very quickly. Not far below was a dense grouping of live oak trees. She would slip among them on Binnie and then, out of sight of the caravan, she would gallop across the fields to the town. “Manna Lou,” the girl said softly that she need not awaken the sleeping Tirol, “I’m going for a little ride.”
“That’s nice, dearie,” the kind gypsy woman replied. “It will do you good. The sunshine is warm and cheery.”
It was a rough road and the caravan was moving slowly. Many of the fox-like gypsy children were running alongside, and Nan joined them.
She wanted to be sure where Anselo Spico was riding. As she had hoped, he was on the driver’s seat of Queen Mizella’s wagon which was always in the lead.
Running back, she was about to mount her pony when she heard her name called softly. Turning, she saw Manna Lou beckoning to her. Springing to the home wagon, she went inside.
“What is it, Manna Lou?” she asked. “You look so strange.”
“We thought little Tirol was asleep all this time, and so he was, but it’s the kind of sleep that you don’t waken from. Maybe he’s in the gorigo heaven now with Zitha, his mother.”
The girl felt awed. “Why, Manna Lou,” she whispered, “little Tirol looks happier than I ever saw him before. See how sweetly he’s smiling.”
“Yes, dearie, he is happier, for his poor, crooked back was always hurting him, but he was a brave little fellow, cheerful and uncomplaining.”
The caravan stopped and Manna Lou went out to tell the others what had happened. The gypsy girl, alone with the boy who had so loved her, knelt by his side and kissing him tenderly, she said: “Little Tirol, darling, Nan has staid here and put up with the cruelty of Angelo Spico, just to be taking care of you, but now that you aren’t needing Nan any more, she’s going far away. Good-bye, dearie.”
That night while the caravan was moving at a slow pace over the moonlit road and all save the drivers were asleep, Nan, slipped out of Manna Lou’s wagon, leaped to the back of Binnie and galloped back by the way they had come.
CHAPTER IV.
NAN ESCAPES
All night long Gypsy Nan, on the back of her small horse Binnie climbed the steep mountain road, a full moon far over her head transforming everything about her to shimmering silver.
A bundle tied in a beautiful shawl of scarlet and gold contained all that belonged to her and food enough to last for several days.
Nan was on the ridge of a mountain road when the sun rose, and to her joy saw the village of San Seritos lying in the valley below, and beyond was the gleaming blue sea.
She drew rein and gazed ahead wondering where she should go, when her ears, trained to notice all of nature’s sounds, heard the startled cry of some little ground animal. Dismounting, she bent over the place from which the sound had come and saw an evil-eyed rattle-snake about to spring upon a squirrel that seemed powerless to get away.
Nan, whose heart was always filled with pity for creatures that were weak and helpless, threw a rock at the snake which glided into the underbrush. Then she lifted the squirrel, feeling its heart pounding against her hand. She carried the little thing across the road and placed it on an overhanging limb of a live oak tree.
“There now! Nan’s given you a chance to get away from the snake. That’s what Anselo Spico is, a rattle-snake, an’ I’m trying