en love between these two,
and she had been unfaithful. Love and Dona Jocasta were fruitful
themes for the imagination of any man.

Valencia was having the great adventure of her life in her journey to
Soledad, and she chattered to Tula as a maiden going to a marriage.
Three people illustrious in her small world were at once to be
centered on the stage of war before her eyes. She told Tula it was a
thing to make songs of,--the two men and the most beautiful woman!

When they emerged from the canon into the wide spreading plain, with
the sierras looming high and blue beyond, the eyes of Kit and Tula
met, and then turned toward their own little camp in the lap of the
mother range. All was flat blue against the sky there, and no
indications of canon or gulch or pocket discernible. Even as they drew
nearer to the hacienda, and Kit surreptitiously used the precious
field glasses, thus far concealed from all new friends of the desert,
he found difficulty in locating their hill of the treasure, and
realized that their fears of discovery in the little canon had been
groundless. In the far-away time when the giant aliso had flourished
there by the canon stream, its height might have served to mark the
special ravine where it grew, but the lightning sent by pagan gods had
annihilated that landmark forever, and there was no other.

The glint of tears shone in the eyes of Tula, and she rode with
downcast eyes, crooning a vagrant Indian air in which there were bird
calls, and a whimpering long-drawn tremulo of a baby coyote caught in
a trap, a weird ungodly improvisation to hear even with the shining
sun warming the world.

Kit concluded she was sending her brand of harmony to Miguel and the
ghosts on guard over the hidden trail.--And he rather wished she would
stop it!

Even the chatter of Valencia grew silent under the spell of the girl's
gruesome intonings,--ill music for her entrance to a new portal of
adventure.

"It sounds of death," murmured Dona Jocasta, and made the sign of the
cross. "The saints send that the soul to go next has made peace with
God! See, senor, we are truly crossing a place of death as she sings.
That beautiful valley of the green border is the _sumidero_,--the
quicksands from hidden springs somewhere above," and she pointed to
the blue sierras. "I think that is the grave Jose meant for me at
Soledad."

"Nice cheerful end of the trail--not!" gloomed Kit strictly to
himself. "That little imp is wh