Then a white man came out of the door.  He waved a hand and shouted.  Dust and wool and flour were thick upon him.  He was muscular and weather-beaten, and appeared young in activity rather than face.  A gun swung at his hip and a row of brass-tipped cartridges showed in his belt.  Shefford looked into a face that he thought he had seen before, until he realized the similarity was only the bronze and hard line and rugged cast common to desert men.  The gray searching eyes went right through him.

“Glad to see you.  Get down and come in.  Just heard from an Indian that you were coming.  I’m the trader Withers,” he said to Shefford.  His voice was welcoming and the grip of his hand made Shefford’s ache.

Shefford told his name and said he was as glad as he was lucky to arrive at Kayenta.

“Hello!  Nas Ta Bega!” exclaimed Withers.  His tone expressed a surprise his face did not show.  “Did this Indian bring you in?”

Withers shook hands with the Navajo while Shefford briefly related what he owed to him.  Then Withers looked at Nas Ta Bega and spoke to him in the Indian tongue.

“Shadd,” said Nas Ta Bega.  Withers let out a dry little laugh and his strong hand tugged at his mustache.

“Who’s Shadd?” asked Shefford.

“He’s a half-breed Ute—­bad Indian, outlaw, murderer.  He’s in with a gang of outlaws who hide in the San Juan country. . . .  Reckon you’re lucky.  How’d you come to be there in the Sagi alone?”

“I traveled from Red Lake.  Presbrey, the trader there, advised against it, but I came anyway.”

“Well.”  Withers’s gray glance was kind, if it did express the foolhardiness of Shefford’s act.  “Come into the house. . . .  Never mind the horse.  My wife will sure be glad to see you.”

Withers led Shefford by the first stone house, which evidently was the trading-store, into the second.  The room Shefford entered was large, with logs smoldering in a huge open fireplace, blankets covering every foot of floor space, and Indian baskets and silver ornaments everywhere, and strange Indian designs painted upon the whitewashed walls.  Withers called his wife and made her acquainted with Shefford.  She was a slight, comely little woman, with keen, earnest, dark eyes.  She seemed to be serious and quiet, but she made Shefford feel at home immediately.  He refused, however, to accept the room offered him, saying that he me meant to sleep out under the open sky.  Withers laughed at this and said he understood.  Shefford, remembering Presbrey’s hunger for news of the outside world, told this trader and his wife all he could think of; and he was listened to with that close attention a traveler always gained in the remote places.

“Sure am glad you rode in,” said Withers, for the fourth time.  “Now you make yourself at home.  Stay here—­come over to the store—­do what you like.  I’ve got to work.  To-night we’ll talk.”