by.
The other women went back to their houses to work. The children played
in the dust; clouds rose as they shouted and ran. A day's freedom lay
before them.

But the woman in black still stood by her door, like a spectre in the
sunshine, her thin hands clasped together as she gazed away over the
plain toward Mexico.

Her face was parched and drawn, as if the sun from the sand had burned
into the bone. Her eyes alone seemed to live; they were hard and bright.

Her house was a little away from the rest, on the crest of a hill facing
the desert plain.

She had heard the words of the bearded man: "Small harm the Indians
did." Had he forgotten her boy? How could he forget, while she was there
to remind them of the dead? Near her house was a small rock roughly
marked. The rude letters "Will, gone, '69," she had cut on it with
her own hands. It marked the last place where her boy had played. She
remembered how she went away softly--so he should not cry to follow
her--without a word, without a kiss.

Here her hands beat the side of the house.

"Oh, to have that kiss now and die!" But she had gone, unthinking, up
the road where the pale woman lived, then a rosy-cheeked happy bride,
not a widow like herself. They laughed and discussed the newcomers at
the settlement. It was a holiday, for the men were away over the hills,
cutting down trees to build their houses with.

As they talked there idly, they heard what they thought was the shrill
bark of dogs running up the hill. Startled, they went to the window.
Round the curve of the road came horses wildly galloping, and upon their
backs--Here the pale woman shrieked and fled. They were Indians, beating
their horses with their bare legs, their black hair streaming in the
wind.

Like a flash, she had bolted the door and barred the shutters as they
galloped up. She turned then. Through the open back door she saw the
women run screaming up the hill, their children in their arms.

Their children! Where was hers? She stopped as if turned to stone, then
undid the door.

They dragged her out by the wrists, by the hair. She fought with them
stronger than ten men. But there were twenty; she was alone. The little
street was empty. They strangled her, beat down her face, dragged her
upon a horse, and, with her crosswise on the saddle, galloped up and
down, as they fired the cabins and the sheds. Her hands were shackled,
and her eyes blind with blood, but she thought only of her ch