I may yet come to this." Hare's laugh echoed Mescal's as
he pointed to the enclosure under the wall, where the graves showed bare
and rough.

Her warm color fled, but it flooded back, rich, mantling brow and cheek
and neck.

"Snap Naab will never kill you," she said impulsively.

"Mescal."

She swiftly turned her face away as his hand closed on hers.

"Mescal, do you love me?"

The trembling of her fingers and the heaving of her bosom lent his hope
conviction. "Mescal," he went on, "these past months have been years,
years of toiling, thinking, changing, but always loving. I'm not the man
you knew. I'm wild-- I'm starved for a sight of you. I love you! Mescal,
my desert flower!"

She raised her free hand to his shoulder and swayed toward him. He held
her a moment, clasped tight, and then released her.

"I'm quite mad!" he exclaimed, in a passion of self-reproach. "What
a risk I'm putting on you! But I couldn't help it. Look at me-- Just
once--please-- Mescal, just one look.... Now go."

The drama of the succeeding days was of absorbing interest. Hare
had liberty; there was little work for him to do save to care for
Silvermane. He tried to hunt foxes in the caves and clefts; he rode up
and down the broad space under the walls; he sought the open desert only
to be driven in by the bitter, biting winds. Then he would return to
the big living-room of the Naabs and sit before the burning logs. This
spacious room was warm, light, pleasant, and was used by every one in
leisure hours. Mescal spent most of her time there. She was engaged
upon a new frock of buckskin, and over this she bent with her needle
and beads. When there was a chance Hare talked with her, speaking one
language with his tongue, a far different one with his eyes. When she
was not present he looked into the glowing red fire and dreamed of her.

In the evenings when Snap came in to his wooing and drew Mescal into
a corner, Hare watched with covert glance and smouldering jealousy.
Somehow he had come to see all things and all people in the desert
glass, and his symbol for Snap Naab was the desert-hawk. Snap's eyes
were as wild and piercing as those of a hawk; his nose and mouth were
as the beak of a hawk; his hands resembled the claws of a hawk; and
the spurs he wore, always bloody, were still more significant of his
ruthless nature. Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance,
the unhastening ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and th