ell that you
persuaded her to leave her home. Quick!"

Willetts raised a shaking hand and then Shefford relaxed the paralyzing
grip and let his head come forward. The half-strangled man gasped out a
few incoherent words that his livid, guilty face made unnecessary.

Shefford gave him a shove and he fell into the dust at the feet of the
Navajo.

"Gentlemen, I leave him to Nas Ta Bega," said Shefford, with a strange
change from passion to calmness.

Late that night, when the roystering visitors had gone or were deep
in drunken slumber, a melancholy and strange procession filed out of
Stonebridge. Joe Lake and his armed comrades were escorting the Mormon
women back to the hidden valley. They were mounted on burros and
mustangs, and in all that dark and somber line there was only one figure
which shone white under the pale moon.

At the starting, until that white-clad figure had appeared, Shefford's
heart had seemed to be in his throat; and thereafter its beat was
muffled and painful in his breast. Yet there was some sad sweetness in
the knowledge that he could see her now, be near her, watch over her.

By and by the overcast clouds drifted and the moon shone bright. The
night was still; the great dark mountain loomed to the stars; the
numberless waves of rounded rock that must be crossed and circled lay
deep in shadow. There was only a steady pattering of light hoofs.

Shefford's place was near the end of the line, and he kept well back,
riding close to one woman and then another. No word was spoken. These
sealed wives rode where their mounts were led or driven, as blind in
their hoods as veiled Arab women in palanquins. And their heads drooped
wearily and their shoulders bent, as if under a burden. It took an hour
of steady riding to reach the ascent to the plateau, and here, with the
beginning of rough and smooth and shadowed trail, the work of the escort
began. The line lengthened out and each man kept to the several women
assigned to him. Shefford had three, and one of them was the girl he
loved. She rode as if the world and time and life were naught to her.
As soon as he dared trust his voice and his control he meant to let her
know the man whom perhaps she had not forgotten was there with her, a
friend. Six months! It had been a lifetime to him. Surely eternity to
her! Had she forgotten? He felt like a coward who had basely deserted
her. Oh--had he only known!

She rode a burro that was slow, continually blo