ted."

"You don't look distressed, and I've an idea you could run away from
your escort if you took a notion," he returned. "But it is my lucky
day that I had a hunch for this canon trail and the Green Springs, and
I am happy to tag along."

They had reached Herrara's corral and Rhodes glanced up the little
gulch to the well. The flat rock there was stripped of the odd
collection, and Narcisco stood at the corner of the adobe watching
them somberly.

"_Buenos tardes!_" called the girl. "Take care of the _nino_ as the
very treasure of your heart!"

"Sure!" agreed the lad, "_Adios_, senorita."

"Why the special guard over the treasure?" asked Rhodes as their
horses fell into the long easy lope side by side. "The house seems
full and running over, and _ninitas_ to spare."

"There are never any to spare," she reminded him, "and this one is
doubly precious for it is named for me--together its saint and its two
grandmothers! Benicia promised me long ago that whether it was a boy
or a girl it would be Billie Bernard Herrara. I was just taking the
extra clothes I had Tia Luz make for him--and he is a little
black-eyed darling! Soon as he is weaned I'm going to adopt him; I
always did want a piccaninny for my own."

Rhodes guided his horse carefully around a barranca edge, honeycombed
by gophers, and then let his eyes rest again on the lustrous confiding
eyes, and the rose-leaf lips.

Afterward he told himself that was the moment he began to be bewitched
by Billie Bernard.

But what he really said was--"Shoo, child, you're only a piccaninny
yourself!" and they both laughed.

It was quite wonderful how old Captain Pike had managed to serve as a
family foundation for their knowledge of each other. There was not a
doubt or a barrier between them, they were "home folks" riding from
different ways and meeting in the desert, and silently claiming
kindred.

The shadows grew long and long under the sun of the old Mexic land,
and the high heavens blazed above in yellows and pinks fading into
veiled blues and far misty lavenders in the hollows of the hills.

The girl drew a great breath of sheer delight as she waved her hands
towards the fire flame in the west where the desert was a trail of
golden glory.

"Oh, I am glad--glad I got away!" she said in a hushed half-awed
voice. "It never--never could be like this twice and we are seeing it!
Look at the moon!"

The white circle in the east was showing through a net of so