shaky, eh?
Can you walk? Give me a hold--there.... Mescal, come." The slender girl
obeyed, gliding noiselessly like a shadow. "Take his arm." Between them
they led Hare to a jumble of stones on the outer edge of the circle of
light.

"It wouldn't do to hide," continued Naab, lowering his voice to a swift
whisper, "that might be fatal. You're in sight from the camp-fire, but
indistinct. By-and-by the outlaws will get here, and if any of them
prowl around close, you and Mescal must pretend to be sweethearts.
Understand? They'll pass by Mormon love-making without a second look.
Now, lad, courage... Mescal, it may save his life."

Naab returned to the fire, his shadow looming in gigantic proportions
on the white canopy of a covered wagon. Fitful gusts of wind fretted the
blaze; it roared and crackled and sputtered, now illuminating the still
forms, then enveloping them in fantastic obscurity. Hare shivered,
perhaps from the cold air, perhaps from growing dread. Westward lay the
desert, an impenetrable black void; in front, the gloomy mountain wall
lifted jagged peaks close to the stars; to the right rose the ridge,
the rocks and stunted cedars of its summit standing in weird relief.
Suddenly Hare's fugitive glance descried a dark object; he watched
intently as it moved and rose from behind the summit of the ridge to
make a bold black figure silhouetted against the cold clearness of sky.
He saw it distinctly, realized it was close, and breathed hard as the
wind-swept mane and tail, the lean, wild shape and single plume resolved
themselves into the unmistakable outline of an Indian mustang and rider.

"Look!" he whispered to the girl. "See, a mounted Indian, there on the
ridge--there, he's gone--no, I see him again. But that's another. Look!
there are more." He ceased in breathless suspense and stared fearfully
at a line of mounted Indians moving in single file over the ridge to
become lost to view in the intervening blackness. A faint rattling of
gravel and the peculiar crack of unshod hoof on stone gave reality to
that shadowy train.

"Navajos," said Mescal.

"Navajos!" he echoed. "I heard of them at Lund; 'desert hawks' the men
called them, worse than Piutes. Must we not alarm the men?--You--aren't
you afraid?

"No."

"But they are hostile."

"Not to him." She pointed at the stalwart figure standing against the
firelight.

"Ah! I remember. The man Cole spoke of friendly Navajos. They must be
close by. What doe