ster Anita lay with wide-open eyes, her hands moving feebly as she
clutched at her crucifix. Her hour was almost spent.

Santan stood motionless before her, as Beverly with a grip on his arm
said, firmly:

"Tell her you did not aim at her, and ask her to forgive you. It will
help to save your own soul sometime, maybe."

Santan looked at Little Blue Flower. But she gave no heed to him as she
put the dropped crucifix into the weakening fingers. Murder, as such, is
as horrifying to the gentle Hopi tribe as it is sport for the cruel
Apache.

Beverly loosed his hold now.

"I did not want to hurt you. Forgive me!" Santan said, slowly, as though
each word were plucked from him by red-hot pincers.

Sister Anita heard and turned her eyes.

"Kneel down and tell her again," Beverly said, more gently.

The Apache dropped on his knees beside the dying woman and repeated his
words. Sister Anita smiled sweetly.

"Heaven will forgive you even as I do," she murmured, and closed her
eyes.

"Go softly. This is sacred ground," my cousin said.

The Indian rose and passed silently down the trail, leaving Little Blue
Flower and Beverly Clarenden together with the dead. At the stream he
paused and pulled his knife from the sands beneath the trickling waters,
and then went on his way.

But an Indian never forgets.

Rex Krane, who had hurried hither from the chapel, closed the eyes and
folded the thin hands of the martyred woman, and sent Beverly forward
for help to dispose of the garment of clay that had been Sister Anita.
From that day something manly and serious came into Beverly Clarenden's
face to stay, but his sense of humor and his fearlessness were
unchanged.

That was a solemn hour in the shadow of the rock down in that yellow
valley, but beautiful in its forgiving triumph. We who had gathered in
the dimly lighted chapel had an hour more solemn for that it was made up
of such dramatic minutes as change the trend of life-trails for all the
years to come.

The chapel was very old. They tell me that only a broken portion of the
circular wall about the altar stands there to-day, a lonely monument to
some holy padre's faith and courage and sacrifice in the forgotten
years when, in far Hesperia, men dreamed of a Quivera and found only a
Calvary.

It may be that I, Gail Clarenden, was also changed as I listened to the
deliberations of that day; that something of youth gave place for the
stronger manhood that should stay m