id come to life again. This time on Jondo's side of the camp.
Something creeping near, and nearer.

The air was motionless and hot above us, the upper heavens were
beginning to be threshed across by clouds, and the silence hung like a
weight upon us. Then suddenly, just beyond the camp, a form rose from
the ground, stood upright, and stretched out both arms toward us. And a
low cry, "Take me. I die," reached our ears.

Still Jondo commanded silence. Indians are shrewd to decoy their foes
out of the security of the camp. The form came nearer--a little girl, no
larger than our Mat--and again came the low call. The voice was Indian,
the accent Spanish, but the words were English.

"Come to us!" Esmond Clarenden answered back in a clear, low tone; and
slowly and noiselessly the girl approached the camp.

I can feel it all now, although that was many years ago: the soft
starlight on the plains; the hot, still air holding its breath against
the oncoming tornado; the group of wagons making a deeper shadow in the
dull light; beyond us the bold front of old Pawnee Rock, huge and gray
in the gloom; our little company standing close together, ready to hurl
a shower of bullets if this proved but the decoy of a hidden foe; and
the girl with light step drawing nearer. Clad in the picturesque garb of
the Southwest Indian, her hair hanging in a great braid over each
shoulder, her dark eyes fixed on us, she made a picture in that dusky
setting that an artist might not have given to his brush twice in a
lifetime on the plains.

A few feet from us she halted.

"Throw up your hands!" Jondo commanded.

The slim brown arms were flung above the girl's head, and I caught the
glint of quaintly hammered silver bracelets, as she stepped forward with
that ease of motion that generations of moccasined feet on sand and sod
and stone can give.

"Take me," she cried, pleadingly. "The Mexicans steal me from my people
and bring me far away. They meet Kiowa. Kiowa beat me; make me slave."

She held up her hands. They were lacerated and bleeding. She slipped the
bright blanket from her brown shoulder. It was bruised and swollen.

"You go to Santa Fe? Take me. I do you good, not bad."

"What would these Kiowas do to us, then?"

It was Bill Banney who spoke.

"They follow you--kill you."

"Oh, cheerful! I wish you were twins," Rex Krane said, softly.

Jondo lifted his hand.

"Let me talk to her," he said.

Then in her own language he go