him to want to let Nell know the state of
his mind. Words crowded his brain seeking utterance. Who and what he
was, how he loved her, the work he expected to take up soon, his
longings, hopes, and plans--there was all this and more. But something
checked him. And the repression made him so thoughtful and quiet, even
melancholy, that he went outdoors to try to throw off the mood. The sun
was yet high, and a dazzling white light enveloped valleys and peaks.
He felt that the wonderful sunshine was the dominant feature of that
arid region. It was like white gold. It had burned its color in a
face he knew. It was going to warm his blood and brown his skin. A
hot, languid breeze, so dry that he felt his lips shrink with its
contact, came from the desert; and it seemed to smell of wide-open,
untainted places where sand blew and strange, pungent plants gave a
bitter-sweet tang to the air.

When he returned to the house, some hours later, his room had been put
in order. In the middle of the white coverlet on his table lay a fresh
red rose. Nell had dropped it there. Dick picked it up, feeling a
throb in his breast. It was a bud just beginning to open, to show
between its petals a dark-red, unfolding heart. How fragrant it was,
how exquisitely delicate, how beautiful its inner hue of red, deep and
dark, the crimson of life blood!

Had Nell left it there by accident or by intent? Was it merely
kindness or a girl's subtlety? Was it a message couched elusively, a
symbol, a hope in a half-blown desert rose?

VI

THE YAQUI

TOWARD evening of a lowering December day, some fifty miles west of
Forlorn River, a horseman rode along an old, dimly defined trail. From
time to time he halted to study the lay of the land ahead. It was bare,
somber, ridgy desert, covered with dun-colored greasewood and stunted
prickly pear. Distant mountains hemmed in the valley, raising black
spurs above the round lomas and the square-walled mesas.

This lonely horseman bestrode a steed of magnificent build, perfectly
white except for a dark bar of color running down the noble head from
ears to nose. Sweatcaked dust stained the long flanks. The horse had
been running. His mane and tail were laced and knotted to keep their
length out of reach of grasping cactus and brush. Clumsy home-made
leather shields covered the front of his forelegs and ran up well to
his wide breast. What otherwise would have been muscular symmetry of
limb w