ame a
time when these did not avail, when Joyce faced the truth too--that they
were lost in the desert, two helpless girls, with night upon them and a
storm driving up. Somewhere, not many miles from them, lay Goldbanks.
There were safety, snug electric-lighted rooms with great fires blazing
from open chimneys, a thousand men who would gladly have gone into the
night to look for them. But all of these might as well be a hundred
leagues away, since they did not know the way home.

The big deep eyes of Joyce shone with fear. Never before in her
sheltered life had she been brought close to Nature in one of her
terrible moods.

From her soft round throat sobbing words leaped. "We're lost, Moya.
We're going to die."

"Nonsense. Don't be a goosie," her downright friend answered sharply.

"But--what shall we do?"

Scudding clouds had leaped across the sky and wiped out the last narrow
line of sunlight along the eastern horizon. Every minute it was getting
colder. The wind had a bitter sting to it.

"We must find the trail," Moya replied.

"And if we don't?"

"But we shall," the Irish girl assured with a finality that lacked
conviction. "You wait here. Don't move from the spot. I'm going to ride
round you at a little distance. There must be a trail here somewhere."

Moya gave her pony the quirt and cantered off. Swiftly she circled, but
before she had completed the circumference the snow, now falling
heavily, had covered the ground and obliterated any path there might be.
With a heavy heart she started to return to her friend.

Owing both to the lie of the ground and the increasing density she could
not see Joyce. Thrice she called before a faint answer reached her ears.
Moya rode toward the voice, stopping now and again to call and wait for
a reply. Her horizon was now just beyond the nose of her pony, so that
it was not until they were only a few yards apart that she saw Two Step
and its rider. Both broncho and girl were sheeted with snow.

"Oh, I thought you were gone. I thought you were never coming," Joyce
reproached in a wail of despair. "Did you find the road?"

"No, but I've thought of something. They say horses will find their own
way home if you let them. Loosen the reins, dear."

Moya spoke with a business-like cheerfulness meant to deceive her
friend. She knew it must be her part to lead. Joyce was as soft and
about as competent as a kitten to face a crisis like this. She was a
creature all curves an