something new, something that stung her blood, that left her flushed and
tingling with her first experience of sex relations.

A week ago she had not yet emerged fully from the chrysalis of
childhood. But in the Southland flowers ripen fast. Adolescence steals
hard upon the heels of infancy. Nature was pushing her relentlessly
toward a womanhood for which her splendid vitality and unschooled
impulses but scantily safeguarded her. The lank, shy innocence of the
fawn still wrapped her, but in the heart of this frank daughter of the
desert had been born a poignant shyness, a vague, delightful trembling
that marked a change. A quality which had lain banked in her nature like
a fire since childhood now threw forth its first flame of heat. At
sunset she had been still treading the primrose path of youth; at
sunrise she had entered upon the world-old heritage of her sex.

CHAPTER VII

A SHOT FROM AMBUSH

From the valley there drifted up a breeze-swept sound. The rider on the
rock-rim trail above, shifting in his saddle to one of the easy,
careless attitudes of the habitual horseman, recognized it as a rifle
shot.

Presently, from a hidden wash rose little balloon-like puffs of smoke,
followed by a faint, far popping, as if somebody had touched off a bunch
of firecrackers. Men on horseback, dwarfed by distance to pygmy size,
clambered to the bank--now one and then another firing into the mesquite
that ran like a broad tongue from the roll of hills into the valley.

"Looks like something's broke loose," the young man drawled aloud. "The
band's sure playing a right lively tune this glad mo'ning."

Save for one or two farewell shots, the firing ceased. The riders had
disappeared into the chaparral.

The rider did not need to be told that this was a man hunt, destined
perhaps to be one of a hundred unwritten desert tragedies. Some subtle
instinct in him differentiated between these hurried shots and those
born of the casual exuberance of the cow-puncher at play. He had a
reason for taking an interest in it--an interest that was more than
casual.

Skirting the rim of the saucer-shaped valley, he rode forward warily,
came at length to a canon that ran like a sword cleft into the hills,
and descended cautiously by a cattle trail, its scarred slope.

Through the defile ran a mountain stream, splashing over and round
boulders in its swift fall.

"I reckon we'll slide down, Keno, and work out close to the fire zone