Helen’s eyes looked unusually large and bright.  She turned her head, glancing over her shoulder.

‘Some one was here just a minute ago,’ she cried softly.  ’He was camping for the night.  Something frightened him away.  It might have been the noise we made.  Or—­what do you think, papa?’

’I never attempt to solve a problem until the necessary data are given me,’ he announced academically.

‘Or,’ went on Helen, at whose age one does not bother about such trifles as necessary data, ’he may not have run away at all.  He may be hiding in the bushes, listening to us.  There are all kinds of people in the desert.  Don’t you remember how the sheriff came to San Juan just before we left?  He was looking for a man who had killed a miner for his gold dust.’

‘You must curb a proclivity for such fanciful trash.’  He cleared his throat for the utterance.  He put out his hand and Helen hastily slipped her own into it.  Silently they returned to their own camp site, the girl carrying in her free hand the wand tipped with the bluebird feather.  Several times they paused and looked back.  There was nothing but the glow of the dwindling fire and the sweep of sand, covered sparsely with ragged bushes.  New stars flared out; the spirit of the night descended upon the desert.  As the world seemed to draw further and further away from them, these two beings, strange to the vastness engulfing them, huddled closer together.  They spoke little, always in lowered voices.  Between words they were listening, awaiting that which did not come.

Chapter II

Superstition Pool

Physically tired as they were, the night was a restless one for both Helen and her father.  They ate their meal in silence for the most part, made their beds close together, picketed their horses near by and said their listless ‘good nights’ early.  Each heard the other turn and fidget many times before both went to sleep.  Helen saw how her father, with a fine assumption of careless habit, laid a big new revolver close to his head.

The girl dozed and woke when the pallid moon shone upon her face.  She lifted herself upon her elbow.  The moonlight touched upon the willow stick she had thrust into the sand at her bedside; the feather was upright and like a plume.  She considered it gravely; it became the starting-point of many romantic imaginings.  Somehow it was a token; of just exactly what, to be sure, she could not decide.  Not definitely, that is; it was always indisputable that the message of the bluebird is one of good fortune.