to you."

"Half it is! You're a great little planner for your size, kid. Too bad
it's only a dream."

Cap Pike rose to his feet, and gave a hand to Miguel, who reeled, and
then steadied himself gradually.

"Most thanks, senor," he whispered, "and when we reach the water----"

They helped him into the saddle, and Rhodes walked beside, holding him
as he swayed.

They passed the new-made grave in the sand, and Rhodes turned to the
girl. "Sister," he said, "lift two stones and add to that pile there,
one for you and one for your father. Also look around and remember
this place."

"I am no forgetting it," she said as she lifted a stone and placed it
as he told her. "It is here the exile trail. I mark the place where
you take for me the Americano road, and not the south road of the
lost. So it is,--these stone make witness."

"I'll be shot if I don't believe you _are_ old Cajames stock," said
Cap Pike staring at her, and then meeting the gaze of Rhodes in wonder
at her clear-cut summing up of the situation. "But he was a handful
for the government in his day, Bub, and I'm hornswaggled if I'd pick
out his breed for a kindergarten."

The girl heard and understood at least the jocular tenor of his
meaning, but no glance in his direction indicated it. She placed the
second stone, and then in obedience to Rhodes she looked back the way
she had come where the desert growth crisped in the waves of heat. On
one side lay the low, cactus-dotted hillocks, and on the other the
sage green and dull yellow faded into the blue mists of the eastern
range.

"I am no forgetting it, this place ever," she said and then lifted her
water bottle and trudged on beside Rhodes. "It is where my trail
begins, with you."

Cape Pike grinned at the joke on the boy, for it looked as if the
Yaqui girl were adopting _him_!

CHAPTER IX

A MEETING AT YAQUI WELL

Good luck was with them, for the water hole in Yaqui canon had not
been either muddied or exhausted, evidence that the raiders had not
ranged that way. The sorry looking quartette fairly staggered into the
little canon, and the animals were frantic with desire to drink their
fill.

"I was so near fried that the first gallon fairly sizzled down my
gullet," confessed Cap Pike after a long glorious hour of rest under
the alamos with saturated handkerchief over his burning eyes. "That
last three mile stretch was hell's back yard for me. How you reckon
the little trick over there