d vicinity. Shefford wondered why a
lonely six months there had not made the trader old in experience.
Probably the desert did not readily give up its secrets. Moreover, this
Red Lake house was only an occasionally used branch of Presbrey's main
trading-post, which was situated at Willow Springs, fifty miles westward
over the mesa.

"I'm closing up here soon for a spell," said Presbrey, and now his
face lost its set hardness and seemed singularly changed. It was a
difference, of light and softness. "Won't be so lonesome over at Willow
Springs.... I'm being married soon."

"That's fine," replied Shefford, warmly. He was glad for the sake of
this lonely desert man. What good a wife would bring into a trader's
life!

Presbrey's naive admission, however, appeared to detach him from his
present surroundings, and with his massive head enveloped by a cloud of
smoke he lived in dreams.

Shefford respected his host's serene abstraction. Indeed, he was
grateful for silence. Not for many nights had the past impinged so
closely upon the present. The wound in his soul had not healed, and to
speak of himself made it bleed anew. Memory was too poignant; the past
was too close; he wanted to forget until he had toiled into the heart of
this forbidding wilderness--until time had gone by and he dared to face
his unquiet soul. Then he listened to the steadily rising roar of the
wind. How strange and hollow! That wind was freighted with heavy sand,
and he heard it sweep, sweep, sweep by in gusts, and then blow with
dull, steady blast against the walls. The sound was provocative of
thought. This moan and rush of wind was no dream--this presence of his
in a night-enshrouded and sand-besieged house of the lonely desert was
reality--this adventure was not one of fancy. True indeed, then, must
be the wild, strange story that had led him hither. He was going on to
seek, to strive, to find. Somewhere northward in the broken fastnesses
lay hidden a valley walled in from the world. Would they be there, those
lost fugitives whose story had thrilled him? After twelve years would
she be alive, a child grown to womanhood in the solitude of a beautiful
canyon? Incredible! Yet he believed his friend's story and he indeed
knew how strange and tragic life was. He fancied he heard her voice
on the sweeping wind. She called to him, haunted him. He admitted the
improbability of her existence, but lost nothing of the persistent
intangible hope that drove h