there that week. A single strange Indian had come down the trail above
the day before, stayed awhile, picked a quarrel with some men who were
there, and then ridden back up the steep trail again. He might have had
a party with him up on the mesa, waiting. He had said something about
his squaw. The trader admitted that he might have been drunk, but he
frowned as he spoke of him. He called him a "bad Indian." Something
unpleasant had evidently happened.

The trader gave them a good, hot dinner, of which they stood sorely in
need, and because they realized that they must keep up their strength
they took the time to eat it. Then, procuring fresh horses, they climbed
the steep trail in the direction the trader said the Indian had taken.
It was a slender clue, but it was all they had, and they must follow it.
And now the travelers were very silent, as if they felt they were
drawing near to some knowledge that would settle the question for them
one way or the other. As they reached the top at last, where they could
see out across the plain, each drew a long breath like a gasp and
looked about, half fearing what he might see.

Yes, there was the sign of a recent camp-fire, and a few tin cans and
bits of refuse, nothing more. Gardley got down and searched carefully.
Bud even crept about upon his hands and knees, but a single tiny blue
bead like a grain of sand was all that rewarded his efforts. Some Indian
had doubtless camped here. That was all the evidence. Standing thus in
hopeless uncertainty what to do next, they suddenly heard voices.
Something familiar once or twice made Gardley lift his whistle and blow
a blast. Instantly a silvery answer came ringing from the mesa a mile or
so away and woke the echoes in the canon. Jasper Kemp and his party had
taken the longer way around instead of going down the canon, and were
just arriving at the spot where Margaret and the squaw had waited two
days before for their drunken guide. But Jasper Kemp's whistle rang out
again, and he shot three times into the air, their signal to wait for
some important news.

Breathlessly and in silence the two waited till the coming of the rest
of the party, and cast themselves down on the ground, feeling the sudden
need of support. Now that there was a possibility of some news, they
felt hardly able to bear it, and the waiting for it was intolerable, to
such a point of anxious tension were they strained.

But when the party from Ganado came in si