“Mercedes, you’re a woman.  You’re the woman we fought for.  An’ some of us are shore goin’ to die for you.  Don’t make it all for nothin’.  Let us feel we saved the woman.  Shore you can make Thorne go.  He’ll have to go if you say.  They’ll all have to go.  Think of the years of love an’ happiness in store for you.  A week or so an’ it ‘ll be too late.  Can you stand for me seein’ you?...Let me tell you, Mercedes, when the summer heat hits the lava we’ll all wither an’ curl up like shavin’s near a fire.  A wind of hell will blow up this slope.  Look at them mesquites.  See the twist in them.  That’s the torture of heat an’ thirst.  Do you want me or all us men seein’you like that?...Mercedes, don’t make it all for nothin’.  Say you’ll persuade Thorne, if not the others.”

For all the effect his appeal had to move her Mercedes might have possessed a heart as hard and fixed as the surrounding lava.

“Never!”

White-faced, with great black eyes flashing, the Spanish girl spoke the word that bound her and her companions in the desert.

The subject was never mentioned again.  Gale thought that he read a sinister purpose in Ladd’s mind.  To his astonishment, Lash came to him with the same fancy.  After that they made certain there never was a gun within reach of Ladd’s clutching, clawlike hands.

Gradually a somber spell lifted from the ranger’s mind.  When he was entirely free of it he began to gather strength daily.  Then it was as if he had never known patience—­he who had shown so well how to wait.  He was in a frenzy to get well.  He appetite could not be satisfied.

The sun climbed higher, whiter, hotter.  At midday a wind from gulfward roared up the arroyo, and now only palos verdes and the few saguaros were green.  Every day the water in the lava hole sank an inch.

The Yaqui alone spent the waiting time in activity.  He made trips up on the lava slope, and each time he returned with guns or boots or sombreros, or something belonging to the bandits that had fallen.  He never fetched in a saddle or bridle, and from that the rangers concluded Rojas’s horses had long before taken their back trail.  What speculation, what consternation those saddled horses would cause if they returned to Forlorn River!

As Ladd improved there was one story he had to hear every day.  It was the one relating to what he had missed—­the sight of Rojas pursued and plunged to his doom.  The thing had a morbid fascination for the sick ranger.  He reveled in it.  He tortured Mercedes.  His gentleness and consideration, heretofore so marked, were in abeyance to some sinister, ghastly joy.  But to humor him Mercedes racked her soul with the sensations she had sufferd when Rojas hounded her out on the ledge; when she shot him; when she sprang to throw herself over the precipice; when she fought him; when with half-blinded eyes she looked up to see the merciless Yaqui reaching for the bandit.