nd far beyond this league-wide open rose vermilion-colored
cliffs. A mile below the river disappeared in a dark, boxlike passage
from which came a rumble that made Shefford's flesh creep.

The Mormon flung high his arms and let out the stentorian yell that had
rolled down to the fugitives as they waited at the mouth of Nonnezoshe
Boco. But now it had a wilder, more exultant note. Strange how he
shifted his gaze to Fay Larkin!

"Girl! Get up and look!" he called. "The Ferry! The Ferry!"

Then he bent his brawny back over the steering-oar, and the clumsy craft
slowly turned toward the left-hand shore, where a long, low bank of
green willows and cottonwoods gave welcome relief to the eyes. Upon the
opposite side of the river Shefford saw a boat, similar to the one he
was in, moored to the bank.

"Shore, if I ain't losin' my eyes, I seen an Injun with a red blanket,"
said Lassiter.

"Yes, Lassiter," cried Shefford. "Look, Fay! Look, Jane! See!
Indians--hogans--mustangs--there above the green bank!"

The boat glided slowly shoreward. And the deep, hungry, terrible rumble
of the remorseless river became something no more to dread.

XX. WILLOW SPRINGS

Two days' travel from the river, along the saw-toothed range of Echo
Cliffs, stood Presbrey's trading-post, a little red-stone square house
in a green and pretty valley called Willow Springs.

It was nearing the time of sunset--that gorgeous hour of color in the
Painted Desert--when Shefford and his party rode down upon the post.

The scene lacked the wildness characteristic of Kayenta or Red Lake.
There were wagons and teams, white men and Indians, burros, sheep,
lambs, mustangs saddled and unsaddled, dogs, and chickens. A young,
sweet-faced woman stood in the door of the post and she it was who first
sighted the fugitives. Presbrey was weighing bags of wool on a scale,
and when she called he lazily turned, as if to wonder at her eagerness.

Then he flung up his head, with its shock of heavy hair, in a start of
surprise, and his florid face lost its lazy indolence to become wreathed
in a huge smile.

"Haven't seen a white person in six months!" was his extraordinary
greeting.

An hour later Shefford, clean-shaven, comfortably clothed once more,
found himself a different man; and when he saw Fay in white again, with
a new and indefinable light shining through that old, haunting shadow in
her eyes, then the world changed and he embraced perfect happiness.