ay, but something always kept pointing me toward the northwest. I
feel as though the climax of our lives is yet to come; that we are on
the verge of something great; that our work in life may begin with
them."

"Perhaps it may be so!" interrupted Jose, no longer able to conceal the
agitation her words aroused in him. "That is, if the vision of the White
Cloud prove to be true. At any rate, my people await your coming," he
added. At the mention of the White Cloud, Chiquita sat bolt upright,
regarding Jose intently the while--then rose to her feet.

"The White Cloud? Your people?" she repeated excitedly. "Then you are a
Tewana?" Jose also had risen from his sitting posture, and dropping on
one knee with face downward and both arms extended straight out before
him with the palms of the hands turned downward, he exclaimed in the
Tewana tongue: "Princess, Flaming Star--I greet you! I am Onakipo, the
Pine Tree, son of Ixlao, the Swan!" Jose's attitude and manner of speech
formed a most striking picture. He had not even revealed his true
identity to the Captain.

Chiquita had noticed the furtive, stolen glances he had cast at her from
time to time during the journey, a thing strange in an Indian, and it
caused her some uneasiness, but now she understood. He had just
acknowledged her by his attitude of submission and the salute common to
his people, as their tribal head.

"You and I, Princess, were the sole survivors of that last battle in
which your father's band was annihilated," continued Jose in Spanish,
seating himself once more on the ground on the other side of the fire
opposite Chiquita who again had taken her place beside the Captain.

"I do not wonder that you did not recognize me," he went on after a
pause, during which he rolled and lit a fresh _cigarillo_. "I was a mere
boy at the time. The battle, you will remember, took place just before
sunset, and when the enemy charged our camp, I was struck on the head,
as you see by the scar over my left eye. I fell over a ledge of rock
into a gully below, alighting in a thick clump of bushes, breaking my
fall and saving my life. Fortunately the bushes concealed me from view,
causing the enemy to overlook me, else they certainly had finished me
before departing. I lay unconscious all that night until noon of the
following day, when I awoke. For a long time after awakening I was too
weak to rise, but finally I managed to crawl to the little stream that
ran at the bottom