“Miss Diana,” he said solemnly, “will you give me one of your long hairs?”

Quite as solemnly, Diana plucked a long chestnut spear and Jonas wrapped it round the stem of the feather.  Then he joined the other two at the water hole.  Enoch and Diana looked at each other with a smile.

“Do you think it will work, Diana?” asked Enoch.

“Eagle feather magic is strong magic,” replied Diana.  “I shall go to sleep believing in it.  Good night, Enoch.”

“Good night, Diana.”

Wee-tah left them after breakfast, cantering away briskly on his pony, his long hair blowing, Na-che and Jonas shouting laughingly after him.

It was a brisk, clear morning, with ribbons of mist blowing across the distant ranges.  By noon, their way was leading through scattered growths of stunted cedar and juniper with an occasional gnarled, undersized oak in which grew mistletoe thick-hung with ivory berries.  Bear grass and bunch grass dotted the sand.  Orioles and robins sang as they foraged for the blue cedar berry.  All the afternoon the trees increased in size and when they made camp at night, it was under a giant pine whose kindred stretched in every direction as far as the eye could pierce through the dusk.  There was water in a tiny rivulet near by.

“It’s heavenly, Diana!” exclaimed Enoch, as he returned from hobbling the horses.  “We must be getting well up as to elevation.  There is a tang to the air that says so.”

Diana nodded a little sadly.  “One night more, after this, then you’ll sleep at El Tovar, Enoch.”

“I’m not thinking even of to-morrow, Diana.  This moment is enough.  Are you tired?”

“Tired?  No!” but the eyes she lifted to Enoch’s were faintly shadowed.  “Perhaps,” she suggested, “I’m not living quite so completely in the present as you are.”

“Necessity hasn’t trained you during the years, as it has me,” said Enoch.  “If the trail had not been so bad to-day and I could have ridden beside you, I think I could have kept your thoughts here, sweetheart.”

“I think you could have, Enoch,” agreed Diana, with a wistful smile.

The hunting had been good that day.  Amongst them, the travelers had bagged numerous quail and cottontails, and Jonas had brought in at noon a huge jack rabbit.  This they could not eat but its left hind foot, Jonas claimed, would make a sensation in Washington.  Supper was a festive meal, Na-che producing a rabbit soup, and Jonas broiling the quail, which he served with hot biscuit that the most accomplished chef might have envied.

After the meal was finished and Enoch and Diana were standing before the fire, debating the feasibility of a walk under the pines, Jonas and Na-che approached them solemnly.

Jonas cleared his throat.  “Boss and Miss Diana, Na-che and me, we want you to do something for us.  We know you all trust us both and so we don’t want you to ask the why or the wherefore, but just go ahead and do it.”