“You’ve had trouble?”

“Yes.”

“Have you come in here to hide?  Don’t be afraid to tell me.  I won’t give you away.”

“I didn’t come to hide.”

“Then no one is after you?  You’ve done no wrong?”

“Perhaps I wronged myself, but no one else,” replied Shefford, steadily.

“I reckoned so.  Well, tell me, or keep your secret—­it’s all one to me.”

Shefford felt a desire to unburden himself.  This man was strong, persuasive, kindly.  He drew Shefford.

“You’re welcome in Kayenta,” went on Withers.  “Stay as long as you like.  I take no pay from a white man.  If you want work I have it aplenty.”

“Thank you.  That is good.  I need to work.  We’ll talk of it later. . . .  But just yet I can’t tell you why I came to Kayenta, what I want to do, how long I shall stay.  My thoughts put in words would seem so like dreams.  Maybe they are dreams.  Perhaps I’m only chasing a phantom—­perhaps I’m only hunting the treasure at the foot of the rainbow.”

“Well, this is the country for rainbows,” laughed Withers.  “In summer from June to August when it storms we have rainbows that’ll make you think you’re in another world.  The Navajos have rainbow mountains, rainbow canyons, rainbow bridges of stone, rainbow trails.  It sure is rainbow country.”

That deep and mystic chord in Shefford thrilled.  Here it was again—­ something tangible at the bottom of his dream.

Withers did not wait for Shefford to say any more, and almost as if he read his visitor’s mind he began to talk about the wild country he called home.

He had lived at Kayenta for several years—­hard and profitless years by reason of marauding outlaws.  He could not have lived there at all but for the protection of the Indians.  His father-in-law had been friendly with the Navajos and Piutes for many years, and his wife had been brought up among them.  She was held in peculiar reverence and affection by both tribes in that part of the country.  Probably she knew more of the Indians’ habits, religion, and life than any white person in the West.  Both tribes were friendly and peaceable, but there were bad Indians, half-breeds, and outlaws that made the trading-post a venture Withers had long considered precarious, and he wanted to move and intended to some day.  His nearest neighbors in New Mexico and Colorado were a hundred miles distant and at some seasons the roads were impassable.  To the north, however, twenty miles or so, was situated a Mormon village named Stonebridge.  It lay across the Utah line.  Withers did some business with this village, but scarcely enough to warrant the risks he had to run.  During the last year he had lost several pack-trains, one of which he had never heard of after it left Stonebridge.

“Stonebridge!” exclaimed Shefford, and he trembled.  He had heard that name.  In his memory it had a place beside the name of another village Shefford longed to speak of to this trader.