rown man's God."

They talked on of many things, chiefly of the wonder of their love--that
each should actually be each and the two have come together--until a
full yellow moon came up, seemingly from the farther side of the hill in
front of them. When at last its light flooded the road so that it lay
off to the north like a broad, gray ribbon flung over the black land,
they set out again, galloping side by side mile after mile, scanning
sharply the road ahead and its near sides.

Down out of Pine Valley they went, and over more miles of gray alkali
desert toward a line of hills low and black in the north.

They came to these, followed the road out of the desert through a narrow
gap, and passed into the Mountain Meadows, reining in their horses as
they did so.

Before them the Meadows stretched between two ranges of low, rocky
hills, narrow at first but widening gradually from the gap through
which they had come. But the ground where the long, rich grass had once
grown was now barren, gray and ugly in the moonlight, cut into deep
gullies and naked of all but a scant growth of sage-brush which the moon
was silvering, and a few clumps of shadowy scrub-oak along the base of
the hills on either side.

Instinctively they stopped, speaking in low tones. And then there came
to them out of the night's silence a strange, weird beating; hollow,
muffled, slow, and rhythmic, but penetrating and curiously exciting,
like another pulse cunningly playing upon their own to make them beat
more rapidly. The girl pulled her horse close in by his, but he
reassured her.

"It's Indians--they must be holding the funeral of some chief. But no
matter--these Indians aren't any more account than prairie-dogs."

They rode on slowly, the funeral-drum sounding nearer as they went.

Then far up the meadow by the roadside they could see the hard, square
lines of the cross in the moonlight. Slower still they went, while the
drumbeats became louder, until they seemed to fall upon their own
ear-drums.

"Could he have come to this dreadful place?" she asked, almost in a
whisper.

"We haven't passed him, that's sure; and I've got a notion he did. I've
heard him talk about this cross off and on--it's been a good deal in his
mind--and maybe he was a little out of his head. But we'll soon see."

They walked their horses up a little ascent, and the cross stood out
more clearly against the sky. They approached it slowly, leaning forward
to peer all