k. "Will you also trust me?"

"Will I trust you, Jack? Trust you who gave up your inheritance?"
exclaimed the Doge. "I would trust you on a mission to the stars or to
lead a regiment; and the wish of the others is mine."

Jack had turned to go, but he looked back at Mary.

"And you, Mary? I have your good wishes?"

He could not resist that question; and though it was clear that nothing
could stay him--as clear as it had been in the _arroyo_ that he would
keep his word and face Leddy--he was hanging on her word and he was
seeing her eyes moist, with a bright fire like that of sunshine on still
water. She was swaying slightly as a young pine might in a wind. Her eyes
darkened as with fear, then her cheeks went crimson with the stir of her
blood; and suddenly, her eyes were sparkling in their moisture like water
when it ripples under sunshine.

"Yes, Jack," she said quietly, with the tense eagerness of a good cause
that sends a man away to the wars.

"That is everything!" he answered.

So it was! Everything that he could ask now, with his story and hers so
fresh in mind! He started up the path, but stopped at the turn to look
back and wave his hand to the two figures in a confident gesture.

"Luck with you, Sir Chaps!" called the Doge, with all the far-carrying
force of his oldtime sonorousness.

"Luck! luck!" Mary called, on her part; and her voice had a flute note
that seemed to go singing on its own ether waves through the tender
green foliage, through all the gardens of Little Rivers, and even away
to the pass.

"Mary! Mary!" he answered, with a ring of cheeriness. "Luck for me will
always come at your command!"

A moment later Galway and the others saw him smiling with a hope that ran
as high as his purpose, as he passed through the gateway of the hedge.

"It will all be right!" he told them.

With P.D. keeping his muzzle close to the middle of Jack's back, the
party started toward his house, which took them almost the length of the
main street.

"Prather went by the range trail, of course?" Jack asked Galway.

"No, straight out across the desert," said Galway.

"Straight out across the desert!" exclaimed Jack, mystified.

For one had a choice of two routes to Agua Fria, which was well over the
border in Mexico. Not a drop of water was to be had on the way across the
trackless plateau, but halfway on the range trail was a camping-place,
Las Cascadas, where a spring which spouted in a tiny cascade w