heeks. Jack took off her sweater, carrying it under her arm,
the wind blew back her hair, which had the colors of the sun in it, her
lips were open and full and a deep crimson. If ever any of the old-time
pagan goddesses that one reads of in mythology sheds her influence over
the modern girl, Jack had drawn some of her spirit from Diana. She
looked as you might imagine Diana to have looked after she had spent the
night hunting with her maidens in some lonely forest--fresh, brilliant
and gay.

When Jack stopped to rest from her run she saw, near the rocky gorges
and in many of the waste places, red cacti blooming against the gray
buttes, like splashes of flame. Gathering a little she stuck it in her
belt, but Jack hoped to discover a cactus plant of a different kind. Her
father and Jim had taught her all they knew of the plants and flowers
that grow in the American desert, for they wished her to be prepared for
just such an emergency as had now befallen her. At first Jack kept close
to the path at the side of the gorge, retracing the steps she had
wrongly taken the night before. When she came beyond the thicket through
which the cougar had followed her, a stretch of arid country spread
away to her right on this side the gorge. Standing in the desert with
nothing about it but sand and sage brush, Jack spied the cactus she
sought. It rose like a tree, with thick, bunchy leaves at its base, and
dozens of clusters of small mustard-colored flowers on separate branches
sticking out from its summit like the ribs of an umbrella.

The American aloe has been the salvation of many a traveler in the
desert country of the West. Hurrying to it, Jack cut away some of the
thick leaves and then settling herself comfortably in the sand she
sucked the sap from the leaves until her throat was no longer parched
and her hunger and thirst were both appeased.

She was resting, trying to make up her mind to go back to the ravine,
where Jim would surely find her, when she heard a well-known whistle. It
was not like the note of a bird, and yet it did not seem to come from a
human throat, yet Jack recognized it at once. It was the odd sound
Carlos made when calling to the birds in the woods or fields. The call
had traveled a great distance in the clear morning air.

Jack clapped her hands loudly. "I am coming, Carlos, I am coming," she
cried; "wait for me." Then she ran back toward the edge of the cliff.
She would have liked to cry out with plea