se--just a hint in the air.
All was still in a moment. Then it came again. We listened. Something,
an indefinite something, somewhere, was astir. The surprise became
unrest, anxiety, fear, among the mules.

"Wait here, Gail. I'll see what's up," Uncle Esmond said, in a low
voice.

He hurried away toward the corral and I slipped back in the shadow of a
rock and leaned against it to wait.

In the dim beams of a starlit New Mexican sky I could see clearly out
toward the valley, but behind the camp all was darkness. As I waited,
hidden by the shadows, suddenly the flap of the family-wagon cover
lifted and Little Blue Flower slid out as softly as a cat walks in the
dust. She was dressed in her own Indian garb now, with her bright
blanket drawn picturesquely about her head and shoulders. Silently she
moved about the camp, peering toward the shadows hiding me. Then with
noiseless step she slipped toward where Beverly Clarenden lay, his
boyish face upturned to the stars, sleeping the dreamless sleep of
youth and health. I leaned forward and stared hard as the girl
approached him. I saw her drop down on one knee beside him, and, bending
over him, she gently kissed his forehead. She rose and gave one hurried
look around the place and then, like a bird lifting its wings for
flight, she threw up her arms, and in another moment she sprang to the
edge of the ridge and slipped from view. I followed, only to see her
gliding swiftly away, farther and farther, along the dim trail, until
the shadows swallowed her from my sight.

A low whinny from the corral caught my ear, followed by a rush of
horses' feet. As I slipped into my place again to wait for my uncle to
return, the smoldering logs blazed out suddenly, lighting up the form of
a man who appeared just beyond the fire, so that I saw the face
distinctly. Then he, too, was gone, following the way the Indian girl
had taken, until he lost himself in the misty dullness of the plains.

Presently Esmond Clarenden came back to the camp-fire.

"Gail, the pony we lost in that storm at Pawnee Rock has come back to
us. It was standing outside the corral, waiting to get in, just as if it
had lost us for a couple of hours. It is in good condition, too."

"How could it ever get here?" I exclaimed.

"Any one of a dozen ways," my uncle replied. "It may have run far that
stormy morning when it broke out of the corral, and possibly some party
coming over the Cimarron Trail picked it up and ro