ild. "Where
could he be?"

There were gunshots. Down the hills like mad came the white men for
their wives and children.

Then the Indians turned back toward the plain. They rode past her house.

There, where she had left him, stood the child, dazed with surprise. She
held out her arms tied together and called to him to come.

"Fool! fool!" Here the woman in black struck her temples with her hands.
"Fool!" Why had she not galloped by and never noticed him?

But she begged, caught at the horse's head, struggled to get to him; and
the Indian stopped for a moment in his flight and caught up the child
and went on.

Then the thought came to her of the end of that ride--what was to
come--after. And she tried to drop the boy, to let him slide gently to
the ground; but the Indian held them fast.

Behind, nearer, came the following men, louder the guns. The horse she
was on snorted, staggered under the weight of the three, and as they
reached the plain the child was torn from her, she was pushed away. But
she rose and staggered after them amid the blinding dust. They must take
her too. Sobbing, she called to them as she stumbled on. Many times she
fell. Then she could go no more.

That was all. Her story ended there, with the thundering of horses'
hoofs and the taste of dust in her mouth. They found her there
unconscious. Her friends tended her. When she came back to life she
asked no questions but left her neighbor's house and came to her door,
where she was standing now, and gazed away over the sand where _he_ had
gone, down toward Mexico.

The years went by, and she was still alone in the house where _two_
should have been. And now far off she saw the dust blowing in a long,
rolling, pinkish line. But the dust blew so often, and nothing came of
it--not even the Indians.

The boy she knew was dead, but they--his murderers--remained, somewhere.

If she could have one now in her power!

The woman in black pondered, as she had so many times, how she should
torture him. No pain could be too horrible. She looked at the fire in
the stove, and piled on the logs--the logs that were brought with such
trouble from the mountains where the trees grew. She could not make it
hot enough. She dropped on her knees and watched the iron grow red. And
the letters of the maker's name stamped on it grew distinct, and the
word "Congress," half defaced, and the figures "64." Ah, those letters!
she could have kissed the spot, for her ch