alone. How could he meet her without her
reading in his eyes the secret he must not reveal? And yet he was
possessed with a mad desire to see her--to see her and hear her sing.
All her scales and roulades, her runs and trills, had passed by him like
so much smoke; but when the mood had come and she had sung her
song-of-songs he had lost his heart to her instantly. But if, in her
presence, he revealed this new love she would confer her hand upon
another!

He stood on the edge of Apache Leap and gazed down at the valley below,
then he looked far away where peak piled on peak and the desert sloped
away to the horizon. It was hot, barren land, every ridge spiked with
giant cactus, every gulch a bruising tangle of brush and rocks; but
Pinal lay sleeping in the cool shadow of the Leap, and Drusilla slept
there too. But who would think to look for her in a place like that, or
for the treasures of silver and gold? The finger of destiny had pointed
him plain, for he stood on the Place of Death. It was lifeless yet, save
for the uneasy eagles who watched him from a splintered crag; and the
clean, black shadow that lapped out over the plain held the woman and
the treasures in its compass.

A sense of awe, of religious exaltation, came over Denver as he
considered the prophecy, and from somewhere within him there came a new
strength which stilled the fierce tumult in his breast. Since the stars
had willed it that he should have this woman if he veiled his love from
her eyes he would be brave then, and constant, and steel his boy's heart
to resist her matchless charms. He would watch over her from afar,
feeding his love in secret, and when the time came he would reap his
reward and the prophecy would be fulfilled. And while he stood aloof,
stealing a glimpse of her at night or listening to the magic of her
songs; he must win the two treasures, both the silver and the gold, to
lay as an offering at her feet.

The shadow of the Leap drew back from the town, leaving the houses
sun-struck and bare, and as his mind went back to the choice between the
treasures he watched the moving objects below. He saw a steer wandering
down the empty street, and Old Bunk going across to the store; and then
in the walled garden that lay behind the house he beheld a woman's form.
It was draped in white and it moved about rhythmically, bending slowly
from side to side; and then with the graceful ethereal lightness it
leapt and whirled in a dance. In t