tenderly up the steep wooded slope and out into
the sweet sunlight of its crest, where we laid them down beside that
wondrous rift with its shimmering mist and velvet shadows, and colorings
of splendor, folded all in the magnificence of its immensity and its
eternal silence.

We knew that Jondo's wound was mortal, and Father Josef and Eloise and
Rex Krane sat beside him, as the brave eyes looked out across the
sublimity of earthly beauty toward the far land no eye hath seen,
facing, unafraid, the outward-leading trail.

But Beverly was in the prime of young manhood, and we felt sure of him,
as Esmond Clarenden and Sister Gloria; and I ministered to his wants.

"It's no use, Gail." My cousin lifted a pleading face to mine a moment,
as on that day, years ago on the parade-ground at Fort Leavenworth. Then
the bright smile came back to stay.

"Why, Bev, you have a life before you, and you aren't the only
Eighteenth Kansas man who deserted. We can pull you through somehow--and
people will forget. Even General Sheridan was willing to send a squad
with us, on the possibility of a mistake somewhere."

"Deserted!" Beverly's voice was too strong for a dying man's. "Uncle
Esmond, Jondo, Eloise--all of you--Gail calls me a deserter. Me! Knock
him over that precipice, won't some of you?"

We listened eagerly as he went on:

"Why, don't you know that Charlie Bent and his renegade dogs crawled
into camp like snakes and carried me out by force. They had a time of
it, too, but never mind. Bent told me he left a note for you. I supposed
he would say I was dead. And when Gail stirred, half awake, he went
pacing around the camp, looking so near like me I thought it was myself
and I was Charlie Bent. I was roped and gagged then, but I could see.
Deserter! I'm glad I got that white horse of his on the Prairie Dog
Creek, anyhow."

Beverly's face paled suddenly and he lay still a little while.

"I'd better hurry." The smile was winsome. "They didn't give me a ghost
of a chance to escape, but they didn't harm a hair. They kept me for a
meaner purpose, and, well, I was landed, finally, at Santan's door-step
in the Apache-land. Santan offered to let me go free if I'd persuade
Little Blue Flower--dead down there--to marry him. He had her come to me
on pretense of my sending for her. She hated the brute, and she was a
woman, if she was an Indian. I told him I'd see him in hell first, and I
told her never to give in. Poor girl! It was a cr