of a miracle.

Every man dropped what he was about and stared with hanging jaw.
Others came running out of the teepees and stopped dead at the door.
For a moment or two there was no movement whatever in the square.

But they knew Gaviller's daughter by repute, of course, and the word
was passed around that it was she. The tension relaxed. They slowly
gathered around, looking at her with no friendly eye.

Colina searched rapidly among them for one that might answer to the
description of Nesis. There was no girl that by any stretch of the
imagination could have been called beautiful. Not wishing to give them
time to spirit her away, Colina suddenly raised her voice and cried:
"Nesis!"

There was no answer, but several heads in the crowd turned
involuntarily toward a certain teepee. Colina, perceiving the
movement, wheeled her horse and loped across the square in that
direction.

Cora followed, leading the pack-horse. The Indians sidled after.
Approaching the teepee she had marked, Colina heard sounds of a muffled
struggle inside. Flinging herself off her horse and throwing up the
flap, she saw a figure on the ground, held down by several old crones.

"Hands off!" cried Colina in a voice so sudden and peremptory that the
old women, though the words meant nothing to them, obeyed.

Nesis, lithe and swift as a lynx, wriggled out of their grasp, sprang
to her feet, and darted outside, all in a single movement, it seemed.

The two girls faced each other, Nesis panting and trembling. The same
look of bitter curiosity was in each pair of eyes. Each acknowledged
the other's beauty with a jealous twinge. But in the red girl's sad
eyes there was no hope of rivalry. She soon cast down her lids.

Colina thought her eyes the saddest she had ever seen in a human face.
She saw that there was little resemblance between her and her Kakisa
sisters.

Nesis was as slender as a young aspen and her cheeks showed a clear
olive pallor. Her lips were like the petals of a Jacqueminot rose.
Colina, remembering that Ambrose had kissed them, turned a little hard.

"You are Nesis?" she asked, though she knew it well.

The girl nodded without looking up.

"You know Ambrose Doane?"

Again the mute nod.

"Will you come with me to testify for him?"

Nesis looked up blankly.

"I mean," explained Colina, "will you come and tell his judges that he
did not lead the Kakisas into trouble?"

Nesis, by vivid signs, informed Colin