,
and seemed going farther and farther from life and all she loved. Once
she ventured to ask the Indian what time he expected to meet her
friends, the missionaries, but he only shook his head and murmured
something unintelligible about "Keams" and pointed to the sun. She
dropped behind again, vaguely uneasy, she could not tell why. There
seemed something so altogether sly and wary and unfriendly in the faces
of the two that she almost wished she had not come. Yet the way was
beautiful enough and nothing very unpleasant was happening to her. Once
she dropped the envelope of her mother's letter and was about to
dismount and recover it. Then some strange impulse made her leave it on
the sand of the desert. What if they should be lost and that paper
should guide them back? The notion stayed by her, and once in a while
she dropped other bits of paper by the way.

About noon the trail dropped off into a canon, with high, yellow-rock
walls on either side, and stifling heat, so that she felt as if she
could scarcely stand it. She was glad when they emerged once more and
climbed to higher ground. The noon camp was a hasty affair, for the
Indian seemed in a hurry. He scanned the horizon far and wide and
seemed searching keenly for some one or something. Once they met a
lonely Indian, and he held a muttered conversation with him, pointing
off ahead and gesticulating angrily. But the words were unintelligible
to Margaret. Her feeling of uneasiness was growing, and yet she could
not for the life of her tell why, and laid it down to her tired nerves.
She was beginning to think she had been very foolish to start on such a
long trip before she had had a chance to get rested from her last days
of school. She longed to lie down under a tree and sleep for days.

Toward night they sighted a great blue mesa about fifty miles south, and
at sunset they could just see the San Francisco peaks more than a
hundred and twenty-five miles away. Margaret, as she stopped her horse
and gazed, felt a choking in her heart and throat and a great desire to
cry. The glory and awe of the mountains, mingled with her own weariness
and nervous fear, were almost too much for her. She was glad to get down
and eat a little supper and go to sleep again. As she fell asleep she
comforted herself with repeating over a few precious words from her
Bible:

"The angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that fear Him and
delivereth them. Thou wilt keep him