"TRY to hear me! TRY!" There was fierce agony in the cry. "Where is Rosa? ... Rosa? ... You're safe now; you can tell me. ... You're safe with O'Reilly. ... I came back ... I came back for you and Rosa. ... Where is she? ... Is she--dead?"
Other men were assembling now. The column was ready to move, but Judson signaled to Colonel Lopez and made known the identity of the sick stranger. The colonel came forward swiftly and laid a hand upon O'Reilly's shoulder, saying: "So! You were right, after all. Esteban Varona didn't die. God must have sent us to San Antonio to deliver him."
"He's sick, SICK!" O'Reilly said, huskily. "Those Spaniards! Look what they've done to him." His voice changed. He cried, fiercely: "Well, I'm late again. I'm always just a little bit too late. He'll die before he can tell me--"
"Wait! Take hold of yourself. We'll do all that can be done to save him. Now come, we must be going, or all San Antonio will be upon us."
O'Reilly roused. "Put him in my arms," he ordered. "I'll carry him to camp myself."
But Lopez shook his head, saying, gently: "It's a long march, and the litter would be better for him. Thank Heaven we have an angel of mercy awaiting us, and she will know how to make him well."
When the troop resumed its retreat Esteban Varona lay suspended upon a swinging bed between O'Reilly's and Judson's horses. Although they carried him as carefully as they could throughout that long hot journey, he never ceased his babbling and never awoke to his surroundings.