then I’d have to get across the desert to the Navajos or starve in the canyon.  I hesitated about climbing out into the desert, for I wasn’t sure of the trail to the waterholes.  Noddle wandered off up the canyon and never came back.  After he was gone and I knew I couldn’t get out I grew homesick.  The days weren’t so bad because I was always hunting for something to eat, but the nights were lonely.  I couldn’t sleep.  I lay awake listening to the river, and at last I could hear whispering and singing and music, and strange sounds, and low thunder, always low thunder.  I wasn’t really frightened, only lonely, and the canyon was so black and full of mutterings.  Sometimes I’d dream I was back on the plateau with you, Jack, and Bolly and the sheep, and when I’d awake in the loneliness I’d cry right out—­”

“Mescal, I heard those cries,” said Hare.

“It was strange—­the way I felt.  I believe if I’d never known and—­and loved you, Jack, I’d have forgotten home.  After I’d been here a while, I seemed to be drifting, drifting.  It was as if I had lived in the canyon long before, and was remembering.  The feeling was strong, but always thoughts of you, and of the big world, brought me back to the present with its loneliness and fear of starvation.  Then I wanted you, and I’d cry out.  I knew I must send Wolf home.  How hard it was to make him go!  But at last he trotted off, looking backward, and I—­waited and waited.”

She leaned against him.  The hand which had plucked at his sleeve dropped to his fingers and clung there.  Hare knew how her story had slighted the perils and privations of that long year.  She had grown lonely in the canyon darkness; she had sent Wolf away and had waited—­all was said in that.  But more than any speech, the look of her, and the story told in the thin brown hands touched his heart.  Not for an instant since his arrival had she altogether let loose of his fingers, or coat, or arm.  She had lived so long alone in this weird world of silence and moving shadows and murmuring water, that she needed to feel the substance of her hopes, to assure herself of the reality of the man she loved.

“My mustang—­Bolly—­tell me of her,” said Mescal.

“Bolly’s fine.  Sleek and fat and lazy!  She’s been in the fields ever since you left.  Not a bridle on her.  Many times have I seen her poke her black muzzle over the fence and look down the lane.  She’d never forget you, Mescal.”

“Oh! how I want to see her!  Tell me—­everything.”

“Wait a little.  Let me fetch Silvermane and we’ll make a fire and eat.  Then—­”

“Tell me now.”

“Well, Mescal, it’s soon told.”  Then came the story of events growing out of her flight.  When he told of the shooting at Silver Cup, Mescal rose with heaving bosom and blazing eyes.

“It was nothing—­I wasn’t hurt much.  Only the intention was bad.  We saw no more of Snap or Holderness.  The worst of it all was that Snap’s wife died.”