be until
the dawn came. With the coming of the sun, came also a sand storm of
great stress, and all trace of their steps were covered, and the
medicine maid saw in that a mystic meaning.

"To Turk and Spaniard the refugee might be only Teo the Greek, a
fugitive from all high courts. But to the Indian he was a lost God of
the Great Star for whom even the desert winds did duty. When with
moistened yucca root he rubbed his hands that the white skin showed,
she bent her head to the sand, and was his slave until ... the end!"

"It moves well, and beautifully smooth:--this tale of the outlaw,"
agreed Don Ruy--"but it is that end we are eager for--and the how it
was compassed--that she turned slave--or mistress--or both in one, as
alas!--has chanced to men ere our day!--was the doom expected from the
earliest mention of the pitiful and most devout lady--devout to her
devils! But of the end--the end?"

"The end came to him long after they parted, and for one winter and
one summer were their wanderings to the west. Of the Firebrand river
deep between rock walls he had heard, and of the ocean far beyond, and
of Mexico to the south. To reach the river they crossed dry leagues of
desert and lived as other wild things lived. But the river was not a
thing for boats or journeys, and they went on beyond it seeking the
sea. Strange things and strange lives they passed on the way. His skin
had been stained many times and his beard was plucked out as it grew.
Enough of Indian words he learned to echo her own tale to the brown
savages, and the tale was, that they were medicine people of Te-hua in
the land of P[=o]-s[=o]n-ge, and that they travelled to the shores of
the sea for dances and prayers to the gods there. And sometimes food
was given them--and some times prayers were sent in their keeping.
Thus was their journey, until in the south, in the heart of a desert
they found the place of the palms where the fruit was ripe, and the
water comes from warm springs, and looks a paradise--but is as a hell
when the sand storms come:--and human devils live to the South and by
the Sea of Cortez.

"They knew nothing of that, it was a place for rest, and a place of
food, and they rested there because of that, and gathered food for the
further journey.

[Illustration: THE PLACE OF THE PALMS _Page 94_]

"All medicine people of the tribes carry on their neck or in a pouch
at the belt, some sacred things of their magic practices, and under
the