y would begin a search for her. Perhaps they might
not even wait till then. 'Mona lay there in despair while one might have
counted a hundred. During that time she gave herself up for lost. She
could neither move nor think. But presently there flowed back into her
heart a faint hope. Perhaps she had not yet been seen. There was a
little arroyo farther to the left. If she could reach it, still
unnoticed, at least she could then run for her life.

She crept through the rushes on hands and knees, sinking sometimes
wrist-deep in water. There was one stretch of perhaps thirty yards at
the end of the rushes that had to be taken without cover. She flew
across the open, a miracle of supple lightness, reached the safety of
the little gulch, and ran as she had never run before. Every moment she
expected to hear the crash of the pursuers breaking through the brush.

On the ranch she had lived largely an outdoor life, and in spite of her
slenderness was lithe and agile. Beneath her soft flesh hard muscles
flowed, for she had known the sting of sleet and the splash of sun. But
the rapid climb had set her heart pumping fast. Her speed began to
slacken.

Near the summit was a long, uptilted stratum of rock which led to the
left and dipped over the ridge. She followed this because no tracks
would here betray where she had escaped. For almost a quarter of a mile
she descended on the outcropping quartz, flying in an ecstasy of terror
from the deadly danger that might at any instant appear on the crest of
the divide behind her.

Ramona came to a cleft in the huge boulder, a deep, narrow gash that
looked as if it might have been made by a sword stroke of the gods. She
peered into the shadowy gulf, but could not see the bottom of the
fissure. A pebble dropped by her took so long to strike that she knew
the chasm must be deep.

If she could get down into it, perhaps she might hide from the savages.
It was her one possible chance of escape. The girl moved along the edge
of the precipice trying to find a way down that was not sheer. An
arrowweed thicket had struggled up from a jutting spar of rock. Below
this was a ridge where her foot might find a support. Beyond was a rock
wall that disappeared into empty space. But 'Mona could not choose. She
must take this or nothing.

By means of the arrowweed she lowered herself over the edge while her
foot groped for the spar of quartz. Her last look up the hill showed
Indians pouring across the