d off the wildcats
and kept the coyotes out, so the rabbits and quail multiplied till there
were thousands of them. We raised corn and fruit, and stored what we
didn't use. Mother Jane taught me to read and write with the soft red
stone that marked well on the walls.

"The years passed. We kept track of time pretty well. Uncle Jim's hair
turned white and Mother Jane grew gray. Every day was like the one
before. Mother Jane cried sometimes and Uncle Jim was sad because they
could never be able to get me out of the valley. It was long before they
stopped looking and listening for some one. Venters would come back,
Uncle Jim always said. But Mother Jane did not think so.

"I loved Surprise Valley. I wanted to stay there always. I remembered
Cottonwoods, how the children there hated me, and I didn't want to go
back. The only unhappy times I ever had in the valley were when Ring and
Whitie, my dogs, grew old and died. I roamed the valley. I climbed to
every nook upon the mossy ledges. I learned to run up the steep cliffs.
I could almost stick on the straight walls. Mother Jane called me a wild
girl. We had put away the clothes we wore when we got there, to save
them, and we made clothes of skins. I always laughed when I thought of
my little dress--how I grew out of it. I think Uncle Jim and Mother Jane
talked less as the years went by. And after I'd learned all she could
teach me we didn't talk much. I used to scream into the caves just to
hear my voice, and the echoes would frighten me.

"The older I grew the more I was alone. I was always running round the
valley. I would climb to a high place and sit there for hours,
doing nothing. I just watched and listened. I used to stay in the
cliff-dwellers' caves and wonder about them. I loved to be out in the
wind. And my happiest time was in the summer storms with the thunder
echoes under the walls. At evening it was such a quiet place--after
the night bird's cry, no sound. The quiet made me sad but I loved it. I
loved to watch the stars as I lay awake.

"So it was beautiful and happy for me there till--till...

"Two years or more ago there was a bad storm, and one of the great walls
caved. The walls were always weathering, slipping. Many and many a time
have I heard the rumble of an avalanche, but most of them were in other
canyon. This slide in the valley made it possible, Uncle Jim said,
for men to get down into the valley. But we could not climb out unless
helped from ab