“Shore thet’s fine!” said Lassiter.  “But mebbe I won’t get to use them guns, after all.”

“Hardly on that gang,” laughed Shefford.  “The two Piutes and what others escaped turned back.  Maybe they’ll meet a posse of Mormons—­ for of course the Mormons will track us, too—­and come back to where Shadd lost his life.  That’s an awful place.  Even the Piute got lost —­couldn’t follow Nas Ta Bega.  It would take any pursuers some time to find how we got in here.  I believe we need not fear further pursuit.  Certainly not to-night or to-morrow.  Then we’ll be far down the canyon.”

When Shefford concluded his earnest remarks the faces of Fay and Jane had lost the signs of suppressed dread.

“Nas Ta Bega, make camp here,” said Shefford.  “Water—­wood—­grass—­ why, this ’s something like. . . .  Fay, how’s your arm?”

“It hurts,” she replied, simply.

“Come with me down to the brook and let me wash and bind it properly.”

They went, and she sat upon a stone while he knelt beside her and untied his scarf from her arm.  As the blood had hardened, it was necessary to slit her sleeve to the shoulder.  Using his scarf, he washed the blood from the wound, and found it to be merely a cut, a groove, on the surface.

“That’s nothing,” Shefford said, lightly.  “It’ll heal in a day.  But there’ll always be a scar.  And when we—­we get back to civilization, and you wear a pretty gown without sleeves, people will wonder what made this mark on your beautiful arm.”

Fay looked at him with wonderful eyes.  “Do women wear gowns without sleeves?” she asked.

“They do.”

“Have I a—­beautiful arm?”

She stretched it out, white, blue-veined, the skin fine as satin, the lines graceful and flowing, a round, firm, strong arm.

“The most beautiful I ever saw,” he replied.

But the pleasure his compliment gave her was not communicated to him.  His last impression of that right arm had been of its strength, and his mind flashed with lightning swiftness to a picture that haunted him—­Waggoner lying dead on the porch with that powerfully driven knife in his breast.  Shefford shuddered through all his being.  Would this phantom come often to him like that?  Hurriedly he bound up her arm with the scarf and did not look at her, and was conscious that she felt a subtle change in him.

The short twilight ended with the fugitives comfortable in a camp that for natural features could not have been improved upon.  Darkness found Fay and Jane asleep on a soft mossy bed, a blanket tucked around them, and their faces still and beautiful in the flickering camp-fire light.  Lassiter did not linger long awake.  Nas Ta Bega, seeing Shefford’s excessive fatigue, urged him to sleep.  Shefford demurred, insisting that he share the night-watch.  But Nas Ta Bega, by agreeing that Shefford might have the following night’s duty, prevailed upon him.