They walked without speaking for several minutes, enjoying a sense of comradeship hardly in keeping with the brevity of their acquaintance; a freedom from restraint spared them the necessity of exchanging small-talk, that frequently irritating toll exacted as tribute to possible friendship.

The desert lay white and palpitating beneath the noonday glare, and from the outermost rim of desolation came dancing “dust-devils” whirling and gliding through the mazes of their eerie dance.  “I think sometimes,” said Judith, “that they are the ghosts of those who have died of thirst in the desert.”

Mary shuddered imperceptibly.  “How do you stand it with never a glimpse of the sea?”

“You’ll love it, or hate it; the desert is too jealous for half measures.  As for the sea”—­Judith shrugged her fine shoulders—­“from all I’ve heard of it, it must be very wet.”

Each felt a reticence about broaching the subject uppermost in her thoughts—­Judith from the instinctive tendency towards secretiveness that was part of the heritage of her Indian blood; Mary because the subject so closely concerned this girl for whom she felt such genuine admiration.

Judith finally brought up the matter with an abruptness that scarce concealed her anxiety.

“You saw my brother yesterday at Mrs. Clark’s eating-house; will you be good enough to tell me just what happened?”

Mary related the incident in detail, Judith cross-examining her minutely as to the temper of the men at table towards Jim.  Did she know if any cattle-men were present?  Did she hear where her brother had gone?

Mary had heard nothing further after he had left the eating-house; the only one she had talked to had been Mrs. Clark, whose sympathy had been entirely with Jim.  Judith thanked her, but in reality she knew no more now than she had heard from Major Atkins.

Judith now stopped in their walk and stood facing the road as it rolled over the foot-hills—­a skein of yellow silk glimmering in the sun.  Then Mary saw that the object spinning across it in the distance, hardly bigger than a doll’s carriage, was the long-delayed stage.  She spoke to the postmistress, but apparently she did not hear—­Judith was watching the nearing stage as if it might bring some message of life and death.  She stood still, and the drooping lines of her figure straightened, every fibre of her beauty kindled.  She was like a flame, paling the sunlight.

And presently was heard the uncouth music of sixteen iron-shod hoofs beating hard from the earth rhythmic notes which presently grew hollow and sonorous as they came rattling over the wooden bridge that spanned the creek.

“Chugg!” exclaimed Leander, rushing to the door in a tumult.  There was something crucial in the arrival of the delayed stage-driver.  His delinquencies had deflected the course of the travellers, left them stranded in a remote corner of the wilderness; but now they should again resume the thread of things; Chugg’s coming was an event.