e truth? Fay was indeed like that white and fragile lily
which bloomed in the silent, lonely canyon, but the same nature that
had created it had created her. Would she droop as the lily would in a
furnace blast? More than that, he feared a sudden flashing into life of
strength, power, passion, hate. She did not hate yet because she did not
yet realize love. She was utterly innocent of any wrong having been done
her. More and more he began to fear, and a foreboding grew upon him.
He made up his mind to broach the subject of Surprise Valley and of
escaping with Lassiter and Jane; still, every time he was with Fay the
girl and her beauty and her love were so wonderful that he put off the
ordeal till the next night. As time flew by he excused his vacillation
on the score that winter was not a good time to try to cross the desert.
There was no grass for the mustangs, except in well-known valleys, and
these he must shun. Spring would soon come. So the days passed, and he
loved Fay more all the time, desperately living out to its limit the
sweetness of every moment with her, and paying for his bliss in the
increasing trouble that beset him when once away from her charm.

. . . . . . . . . . .

One starry night, about ten o'clock, he went, as was his custom, to
drink at the spring. Upon his return to the cedars Nas Ta Bega, who
slept under the same tree with him, had arisen, with his blanket hanging
half off his shoulder.

"Listen," said the Indian.

Shefford took one glance at the dark, somber face, with its inscrutable
eyes, now so strange and piercing, and then, with a kind of cold
excitement, he faced the way the Indian looked, and listened. But he
heard only the soft moan of the night wind in the cedars.

Nas Ta Bega kept the rigidity of his position for a moment, and then
he relaxed, and stood at ease. Shefford knew the Indian had made a
certainty of what must have been a doubtful sound. And Shefford leaned
his ear to the wind and strained his hearing.

Then the soft night breeze brought a faint patter--the slow trot of
horses on a hard trail. Some one was coming into the village at a late
hour. Shefford thought of Joe Lake. But Joe lay right behind him, asleep
in his blankets. It could not be Withers, for the trader was in Durango
at that time. Shefford thought of Willetts and Shadd.

"Who's coming?" he asked low of the Indian.

Nas Ta Bega pointed down the trail without speaking.

Shefford peered through the w