The speaker’s words came deliberately, and he gave a contemptuous wave of the hand as he closed.  And the six sat silent for a time.  Then another voice broke the stillness.

“Yonder is your trail.  Chief Clarenden and big white chiefs go by to Santa Fe to buy and sell and grow rich.  Indian sell captives to grow rich!  No!  White chief not let Indians buy and sell.  But we do not kill white dogs.  We leave you here to watch the trail for wagon-trains.  They may not come soon.  They may not see you nor hear you.  You can see them pass on their way to get rich.  You can watch them.  Hopi girl would have brought us big money.  We get no richer.  Watch white men go get rich.  You may watch many days till sun dries your eyes.  Nothing trouble you here.  Watch the trail.  No wild animal come here.  No water drown you here.  No fine meat make you ache with eating here.  Watch.”

The six looked long at me, and as the light faded their black eyes and dark faces seemed like the glittering eyes and hooked bills of six great dark birds of prey.

When the last sunset glow was in the west the six rose up and walked backward, still looking at me, until they passed my range of vision and I could only feel their eyes upon me.  Then I heard the clatter of ponies’ feet on the hard rock, the fainter stroke on the thin, sandy soil, the thud on the thickening sod.  Thump, thump, thump, farther and farther and farther away.  The west grew scarlet, deepened to purple and melted at last into the dull gray twilight that foreruns the darkness of night.  One ray of pale gold shimmered far along toward the zenith and lost itself in the upper heavens, and the stars came forth in the blue-black eastern sky.  And I was alone with the Presence whose arm is never shortened and whose ear grows never heavy.

The trail to the east was only a dull line along the darker earth.  I looked up at the myriad stars coming swiftly out of space to greet me.  The starlit sky above the open prairie speaks the voice of the Infinite in a grandeur never matched on land or sea.

I thought of Little Blue Flower on that dim-lighted dawning when she had showed us her bleeding hands and lashed shoulders.  And again I heard Beverly’s boyish voice ring out: 

“Let’s take her and take our chances.”

And then I was beside the glistening waters of the Flat Rock, and Little Blue Flower was there in her white Grecian robe and the wrought-silver headband with coral pendants.  And Eloise.  The golden hair, the soft dark eyes, the dainty peach-bloom cheek.  Eloise whom I had loved always and always.  Eloise who loved Beverly—­good, big-hearted, sunny-faced Beverly, who never had visions.  Any girl would love him.  Most of all, Little Blue Flower.  What a loving message she had left us in the one word, Lolomi.  God pity her.

A thousand sharp pains racked my body.  I tried to move.  I longed for water.  Then a merciful darkness fell upon me—­not sleep, but unconsciousness.  And the stars watched over me through that black night, lying there half dead and utterly alone.