t her story.

"Here we are." He turned to us. "Stolen from her people by the Mexicans,
probably the same ones we passed in Council Grove; traded to the Kiowas
out here somewhere, beaten, and starved, and held for ransom, or trade
to some other tribe. They are over there behind Pawnee Rock. They got
sight of us somehow, but they don't intend to bother us. They are on the
lookout for a bigger train. She has slipped away while they sleep. If we
send her back she will be beaten and made a slave. If we keep her, they
will follow us for a fight. They are fifty to our six. What shall we
do?"

"We don't need any Indians to help us get into trouble. We are sure
enough of it without that," Bill Banney declared. "And what's one
Indian, anyhow? She's just--"

"Just a little orphan girl like Mat," Rex Krane finished his sentence.

Bill frowned, but made no reply.

The Indian girl was standing outside the corral, listening to all that
was said, her face giving no sign of the struggle between hope and
despair that must have striven within her.

"Uncle Esmond, let's take her, and take our chances." Beverly's boyish
voice had a defiant tone, for the spirit of adventure was strong within
him. The girl turned quickly and a great light leaped into her eyes at
the boy's words.

"Save a life and lose ours. It's not the rule of the plains,
but--there's a higher law like that somewhere, Clarenden," Jondo said,
earnestly.

The girl came swiftly toward Uncle Esmond and stood upright before him.

"I will not hide the truth. I go back to Kiowas. They sell me for big
treasure. They will not harm you," she said. "I stay with you, they say
you steal me, and they come at the first bird's song and kill you every
one. They are so many."

She stood motionless before him, the seal of grim despair on her young
face.

"What's your name?" Esmond Clarenden asked. "Po-a-be. In your words,
'Little Blue Flower,'" the girl said.

"Then, Little Blue Flower, you must stay with us."

She pointed toward the eastern sky where a faint light was beginning to
show above the horizon. "See, the day comes!"

"Then we will break camp now," my uncle said.

"Not in the face of this storm, Clarenden," Jondo declared. "You can
fight an Indian. You can't do a thing but 'hold fast' in one of these
hurricanes."

The air was still and hot. The black cloud swept swiftly onward, with
the weird yellow glow before it. In the solitude of the plains the trail
showed