death-cries of the Yosemites; saw
the meadow bathed in blood; saw the end of the Yosemites; and crept
down with a few survivors late that night to the valley and escaped to
the whites. "'Bloody meadow,' white man call it. Him good name. Wish
Mono come now--I kill! I kill!" and, with dramatic gesture that almost
startled Job, the old man waved his arms and was silent.

Somehow after that the conversation drifted to religion. Bill talked
of the Great Spirit, Job talked of God. The old story of the
Incarnation--how this Great One came down to live among men and love
us all--Job told as best he could, till the hard heart of the child
of nature was touched, and he wanted to know if Job thought He loved
poor Indian Bill. It was very late, when Job came back to the awful
massacre, and tried to show Bill that the manly thing was not to cry,
"I kill, I kill," but "I forgive."

The old man listened in silence. He walked out under the stars, then
came back and sat down by Job's side and said, "Bill heap bad. Bill
hate Mono Indian." Again and again he paced back and forth.

Job was almost asleep, weary with watching the heart-struggles of the
wronged old man, when at last he came and said, "Boy, ask Great Spirit
forgive Bill. Bill forgive Mono Indian." And there, at midnight, the
love that transfigured Hebrew Peter, German Luther, English Wesley,
that had changed Job Malden, transformed Indian Bill.

It was fully two weeks after the old trapper had borne him into his
humble tent that one afternoon Job walked off, strong and brave, to
finish his journey home. Bill saw him down to the river, where you
swing across on a board hung on a cable, helped pull the return ropes
that carry the novel car across, shouted as Job clambered up the other
bank, "Bill heap glad! Love Mono! Love Job! Good-by!" and was off out
of sight through the woods as swift and lithe as a deer, bound on
another of his hunting trips far back of El Capitan.

Job saw him vanish; and, turning with a light heart and a merry song,
climbed the ridge that separates the North Fork from the South Fork,
fairly ran down past the old tunnels of the Cove Mine, skipped over
the iron bridge, and began the steady climb of six miles home.

[Illustration: (decoration)]

CHAPTER XXIV.

"GETHSEMANE."

It was evening and Tony was carrying the milk from the barn to the
milk-house, when Job tripped down the trail from Lookout Point, and
Shot and Carlo ran barking to m