s brisk enough with help when Miguel
slid to the ground, ashen gray, and senseless.

"Now we are up against trouble, with an old cripple and a petticoat to
tote, and water the other side of the range."

But he poured a little of the precious fluid down the throat of the
Indian, who recovered, but stared about vacantly.

"Yes, senor," he said nodding his head when his eyes rested on Rhodes,
"as you say--it is for the water--as you say--it is the end--for the
Yaqui. Dead is Cajame--die all we by the Mexican! To you, senor, my
child, and El Alisal of the gold of the rose. So it will be, senor. It
is the end--the water is there, senor. It is to you."

"That's funny," remarked Pike, "he's gone loony and talking of old
chief Cajame of the Yaquis. He was hanged by the Mexican government
for protesting against loot by the officials. A big man he was,
nothing trifling about Cajame! That old Indian had eighty thousand in
gold in a government bank. Naturally the Christian rulers couldn't
stand for that sort of shiftlessness in a heathen! Years ago it was
they burned him out, destroyed his house and family;--the whole thing
was hellish."

The girl squatting in the sand, never took her eyes off Pike's face.
It was not so much the words, but the tone and expression she gave
note to, and then she arose and moved over beside her father.

"No," she said stolidly, "it is his families here, Yaqui me--no Pima!
Hiding he was when young, hiding with Pima men all safe. The padre of
me is son to Cajame,--only to you it is told, you Americano!"

Her eyes were pitiful in their strained eagerness, striving with all
her shocked troubled soul to read the faces of the two men, and
staking all her hopes of safety in her trust.

"You bet we're Americano, Tula, and so will you be when we get you
over the border," stated Rhodes recklessly. "I don't know how we are
going to do it, Cap, but I swear I'm not going to let a plucky little
girl like that go adrift to be lifted by the next gang of raiders. We
need a mascot anyway, and she is going to be it."

"You're a nice sort of seasoned veteran, Bub," admitted Pike dryly,
"but in adopting a family it might be as well to begin with a he
mascot instead of what you've picked. A young filly like that might
turn hoodoo."

"I reckon I'd have halted for a sober second thought if it hadn't been
for that other girl under the stones down there," agreed Rhodes. "But
shucks!--with all the refugees we're fee