We had hardly moved after the first alarm, except to peer about and fancy that dark objects were closing in upon us.

It did come to life again.  This time on Jondo’s side of the camp.  Something creeping near, and nearer.

The air was motionless and hot above us, the upper heavens were beginning to be threshed across by clouds, and the silence hung like a weight upon us.  Then suddenly, just beyond the camp, a form rose from the ground, stood upright, and stretched out both arms toward us.  And a low cry, “Take me.  I die,” reached our ears.

Still Jondo commanded silence.  Indians are shrewd to decoy their foes out of the security of the camp.  The form came nearer—­a little girl, no larger than our Mat—­and again came the low call.  The voice was Indian, the accent Spanish, but the words were English.

“Come to us!” Esmond Clarenden answered back in a clear, low tone; and slowly and noiselessly the girl approached the camp.

I can feel it all now, although that was many years ago:  the soft starlight on the plains; the hot, still air holding its breath against the oncoming tornado; the group of wagons making a deeper shadow in the dull light; beyond us the bold front of old Pawnee Rock, huge and gray in the gloom; our little company standing close together, ready to hurl a shower of bullets if this proved but the decoy of a hidden foe; and the girl with light step drawing nearer.  Clad in the picturesque garb of the Southwest Indian, her hair hanging in a great braid over each shoulder, her dark eyes fixed on us, she made a picture in that dusky setting that an artist might not have given to his brush twice in a lifetime on the plains.

A few feet from us she halted.

“Throw up your hands!” Jondo commanded.

The slim brown arms were flung above the girl’s head, and I caught the glint of quaintly hammered silver bracelets, as she stepped forward with that ease of motion that generations of moccasined feet on sand and sod and stone can give.

“Take me,” she cried, pleadingly.  “The Mexicans steal me from my people and bring me far away.  They meet Kiowa.  Kiowa beat me; make me slave.”

She held up her hands.  They were lacerated and bleeding.  She slipped the bright blanket from her brown shoulder.  It was bruised and swollen.

“You go to Santa Fe?  Take me.  I do you good, not bad.”

“What would these Kiowas do to us, then?”

It was Bill Banney who spoke.

“They follow you—­kill you.”

“Oh, cheerful!  I wish you were twins,” Rex Krane said, softly.

Jondo lifted his hand.

“Let me talk to her,” he said.

Then in her own language he got her story.

“Here we are.”  He turned to us.  “Stolen from her people by the Mexicans, probably the same ones we passed in Council Grove; traded to the Kiowas out here somewhere, beaten, and starved, and held for ransom, or trade to some other tribe.  They are over there behind Pawnee Rock.  They got sight of us somehow, but they don’t intend to bother us.  They are on the lookout for a bigger train.  She has slipped away while they sleep.  If we send her back she will be beaten and made a slave.  If we keep her, they will follow us for a fight.  They are fifty to our six.  What shall we do?”