loved him, and that together they must go through life until the last
round-up.

Echo and her father, who was looking after his own cattle on the
round-up, rode up to the chuck-wagon, after Parenthesis and Sage-brush
crossed the valley to mete out justice to Peruna and fight out any
attempts at a rescue.

Dismounting, Echo walked wearily to the fire and sat down on a box.
Bravely though she tried to conceal it, the strain was beginning to
tell upon her. The tears would come at times, despite her efforts to
fight them off. The burden was so heavy for her young shoulders to
bear.

A note from Slim, written at Fort Grant, with a lead-pencil, on a sheet
of manila paper, told her briefly that he was going into the Lava Beds
with the troops--as the Apaches were out. Dick and Jack, he wrote,
were somewhere in the Lava Beds, and he would bring them back with him.
She dared not let herself think of the Apaches and the horrors of their
cruelties.

"Better let me get you somethin' to eat," said her father, returning
from picketing the horses.

Echo smiled wanly at her father's solicitude. "I am not hungry, Dad."

Jim seated himself by the fire. He recognized his helplessness in this
trouble. There was nothing he could do. If one of the boys was what
Allen would have called it, "down on his luck," he would have asked him
to have a drink, but with Josephine and the girls he was at his wit's
end. The sufferings of his loved daughter cut deeply into his big
heart.

"You been in the saddle since sunup," he said. "You hain't had nuthin'
to eat since breakfast--I don't see what keeps you alive."

"Hope, Dad, hope. It is what we women live upon. Some cherish it all
their lives, and never reap a harvest. I watch the sun leap over the
edge of the world at dawn, and hope that before it sinks behind the
western hills the man I love will come home to my heart. Oh, Dad, I'm
not myself! I haven't been myself since the day I sent him away--my
heart isn't here. It's out in the desert behind yon mountains--with
Jack."

"Thar, thar, don't take on so, honey."

Kneeling beside her father, she laid her head on his lap, as she did in
childhood when overwhelmed with the little troubles of the hour.
Looking into his eyes, she sighed: "Oh, Dad, it's all so tangled. I
haven't known a peaceful moment since he went away. I've sent him away
into God knows what unfriendly lands, perhaps never to return--never to
know how much I