cally she withdrew the
bolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire.
Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows.
"I aint much hand with children," she reminded him. "You better send
Senora Vigil, too."

As she strode toward the wagon, the man in the sombrero looked up. He
was good-looking, in a girlish sort of way, with a fair skin and blue
eyes. A lock of damp, yellow hair fell over his forehead, and he kept
pushing it back as if it confused and blinded him.

"Go in, ma'am--go in!" he said, brokenly. "Though I do not reckon any
one can do much for her. Poor Margarita! I wish I'd made her life
easier--but luck was against me! Go in, ma'am!"

As Jane, clutching the iron brace, clambered up the step and pulled
back the canvas curtain, the inner darkness struck blank upon her
sun-blinded eyes. Then presently a stretch of red stuff, zigzagged with
arrow-heads of white and orange and green, grew distinct, and under the
thick sweep of the Navajo blanket, the impression of a long, still
shape. The face on the flat pillow was also still, with closed eyes
whose lashes lay dark upon the lucid brown of the cheek. A braid of
black hair, shining like a rope of silk, hung over the Indian rug.
Heavy it hung, in a lifeless fall, which told Jane that she was too
late for any last service to the stranger lying before her under the
scarlet cover.

Neither human kindness nor anything could touch her farther. "The tale
of what we are" was ended for her; and from the peace of the quiet lips
it seemed as if the close had been entirely free of bitterness or
pain. Jane moved toward the sleeper. She meant to lay the hands
together, as she remembered her mother's had been laid long ago in the
stricken gloom of the Kansas farmhouse which had been her home; but
suddenly there was a movement at her feet, and she stopped, having
stumbled over some living thing in the shadows of the couch, something
that stirred and struggled and gasped passionately, "_Vamos! Vamos!_"

Such was the wrathful force of this voice which, with so little
courtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger the
well-meaning visitor.

"I want to help you, my poor child!" Jane said. And her bosom throbbed
at the sight of the little, stony face now lifted upon her from the
dusk of the floor--a face with a fierce gleam in its dark eyes, and
clouded with a wild array of black hair in which was knotted and
twisted a