vel.

"Got any water you c'ud spare?" asked the girl. Sandy handed her his
canteen.

"Use it all," he said. "Soon's it's dark, it'll cool off. We'll git
through all right."

He picked up the tools and moved toward Sam as the bay collapsed to the
merciful bullet. The girl washed away as best she could the stains of
blood and travel from the dead face while Sandy sounded with the pick
for soil deep enough for a temporary grave.

The body would have to lie on the ledge over night, nothing but burial
could save it from marauding coyotes, though the wagon might have
baffled the buzzards. The two set to work digging a shallow trench down
to bedrock, rolling up loose boulders for a cairn. The whirring chorus
of the cicadas drummed an elfin requiem. Now and then there came the
chink of bit, or hoof on rock, from the waiting horses in the broken
road. The sun was low, horizontal rays piercing the flood of violet haze
in the canyon. Across the gorge the cliff, above the wash of shadow,
glowed saffron; a light wind wailed down the bore. Lizards flirted in
and out of the crevices as the miner was laid in his temporary grave,
the girl dry-eyed again.

She had brought a little work box from the wagon, of mahogany studded
with disks of pearl in brass mountings. Out of this she produced a
handkerchief of soft China silk brocade, its white turned yellow with
age. This she spread over her father's features, showing strangely
distinct in the failing light.

"I don't want the dirt pressin' on his face," she said.

From the dead man's clothes Sandy and Sam had taken the few personal
belongings, from the inner pocket of the vest some papers that Sandy
knew for location claims.

"Want to take some duds erlong to the ranch?" he asked Molly. "We can
bring in the rest of the stuff later. Got to shack erlong, it's gittin'
dark. Brought an extry hawss with us. Can you ride?"

"Some. I ain't had much chance."

"Don't know how the mare'll stand yore skirt. If she won't Pinto'll pack
you."

"I'll fix that." She clambered into the wagon. Before she came out with
her bundle they piled the cairn, a mask of broken rim-rock heavy enough
to foil the scratching of coyotes.

It looked to Sandy as if the girl had changed into a boy. The slender
figure, silhouetted against the afterglow, softly pulsing masses of
fiery cloud above the top of the mesa, was dressed in jean overalls, a
wide-rimmed hat hiding length of hair.

"I reckon I can fool