ong, loose
trousers of the same material. There was fanciful embroidery of bead
and thread about the throat. There was something un-Indian about the
cut and fashion of the garments that suggested civilized and feminine
supervision. The very way she wore her hair, parted and rolling back,
instead of tumbling in thick, barbaric "bang" into her eyes, spoke of
other than savage teaching; and the dainty make of her moccasins; the
soft, pliant folds of the leggins that fell, Apache fashion, about her
ankles, all told, with their beadwork and finish, that this was no
unsought girl of the tribespeople. Even the sudden gesture with which,
never looking back, she cautioned some follower to keep down, spoke
significantly of rank and authority. It was a chief's daughter that
knelt peering intently over the ledge of rocks toward the black
shadows of the opposite slope. It was Natzie, child of a warrior
leader revered among his people, though no longer spared to guide
them--Natzie, who eagerly, anxiously searched the length of the dark
gorge for sign or signal, and warned her companion to come no further.

Over the gloomy depths, a mile away about a jutting point, three or
four buzzards were slowly circling, disturbed, yet determined. Over
the broad valley that extended for miles toward the westward range of
heights, the mantle of twilight was slowly creeping, as in his
expressive sign language the Indian spreads his extended hands, palms
down, drawing and smoothing imaginary blanket, the robe of night, over
the face of nature. Far to the northward, from some point along the
face of the heights, a fringe of smoke was drifting in the soft breeze
sweeping down the valley from the farther Sierras. Wild, untrodden,
undesired of man, the wilderness lay outspread--miles and miles of
gloom and desolation, save where some lofty scarp of glistening rock,
jutting from among the scattered growth of dark-hued pine and cedar,
caught the brilliant rays of the declining sun.

Behind the spot where Natzie knelt, the general slope was broken by a
narrow ledge or platform, bowlder-strewn--from which, almost
vertically, rose the rocky scarp again. Among the sturdy, stunted fir
trees, bearding the rugged face, frowned a deep fissure, dark as a
wolf den, and, just in front of it, wide-eyed, open-mouthed, crouched
Lola--Natzie's shadow. Rarely in reservation days, until after Blakely
came as agent, were they ever seen apart, and now, in these days of
ex