“Anyway, I’m glad you weren’t baptised, after what Father said to-day.”

“You’ll be gladder still when you get out there where they got a full-grown man’s God.”

They talked on of many things, chiefly of the wonder of their love—­that each should actually be each and the two have come together—­until a full yellow moon came up, seemingly from the farther side of the hill in front of them.  When at last its light flooded the road so that it lay off to the north like a broad, gray ribbon flung over the black land, they set out again, galloping side by side mile after mile, scanning sharply the road ahead and its near sides.

Down out of Pine Valley they went, and over more miles of gray alkali desert toward a line of hills low and black in the north.

They came to these, followed the road out of the desert through a narrow gap, and passed into the Mountain Meadows, reining in their horses as they did so.

Before them the Meadows stretched between two ranges of low, rocky hills, narrow at first but widening gradually from the gap through which they had come.  But the ground where the long, rich grass had once grown was now barren, gray and ugly in the moonlight, cut into deep gullies and naked of all but a scant growth of sage-brush which the moon was silvering, and a few clumps of shadowy scrub-oak along the base of the hills on either side.

Instinctively they stopped, speaking in low tones.  And then there came to them out of the night’s silence a strange, weird beating; hollow, muffled, slow, and rhythmic, but penetrating and curiously exciting, like another pulse cunningly playing upon their own to make them beat more rapidly.  The girl pulled her horse close in by his, but he reassured her.

“It’s Indians—­they must be holding the funeral of some chief.  But no matter—­these Indians aren’t any more account than prairie-dogs.”

They rode on slowly, the funeral-drum sounding nearer as they went.

Then far up the meadow by the roadside they could see the hard, square lines of the cross in the moonlight.  Slower still they went, while the drumbeats became louder, until they seemed to fall upon their own ear-drums.

“Could he have come to this dreadful place?” she asked, almost in a whisper.

“We haven’t passed him, that’s sure; and I’ve got a notion he did.  I’ve heard him talk about this cross off and on—­it’s been a good deal in his mind—­and maybe he was a little out of his head.  But we’ll soon see.”

They walked their horses up a little ascent, and the cross stood out more clearly against the sky.  They approached it slowly, leaning forward to peer all about it; but the shadows lay heavy at its base, and from a little distance they could distinguish no outline.

But at last they were close by and could pierce the gloom, and there at the foot of the cross, beside the cairn of stones that helped to support it, was a little huddled bit of blackness.  It moved as they looked, and they knew the voice that came from it.