“Why?” queried Shefford, again with that curious thrill.

“They are being persecuted by the government.”

Shefford asked no more questions and his host vouchsafed no more information on that score.  The conversation lagged.  Then Shefford inquired about the Indian girl and learned that she lived up the valley somewhere.  Presbrey had never seen her before Willetts came with her to Red Lake.  And this query brought out the fact that Presbrey was comparatively new to Red Lake and vicinity.  Shefford wondered why a lonely six months there had not made the trader old in experience.  Probably the desert did not readily give up its secrets.  Moreover, this Red Lake house was only an occasionally used branch of Presbrey’s main trading-post, which was situated at Willow Springs, fifty miles westward over the mesa.

“I’m closing up here soon for a spell,” said Presbrey, and now his face lost its set hardness and seemed singularly changed.  It was a difference, of light and softness.  “Won’t be so lonesome over at Willow Springs. . . .  I’m being married soon.”

“That’s fine,” replied Shefford, warmly.  He was glad for the sake of this lonely desert man.  What good a wife would bring into a trader’s life!

Presbrey’s naive admission, however, appeared to detach him from his present surroundings, and with his massive head enveloped by a cloud of smoke he lived in dreams.

Shefford respected his host’s serene abstraction.  Indeed, he was grateful for silence.  Not for many nights had the past impinged so closely upon the present.  The wound in his soul had not healed, and to speak of himself made it bleed anew.  Memory was too poignant; the past was too close; he wanted to forget until he had toiled into the heart of this forbidding wilderness—­until time had gone by and he dared to face his unquiet soul.  Then he listened to the steadily rising roar of the wind.  How strange and hollow!  That wind was freighted with heavy sand, and he heard it sweep, sweep, sweep by in gusts, and then blow with dull, steady blast against the walls.  The sound was provocative of thought.  This moan and rush of wind was no dream—­this presence of his in a night-enshrouded and sand-besieged house of the lonely desert was reality—­this adventure was not one of fancy.  True indeed, then, must be the wild, strange story that had led him hither.  He was going on to seek, to strive, to find.  Somewhere northward in the broken fastnesses lay hidden a valley walled in from the world.  Would they be there, those lost fugitives whose story had thrilled him?  After twelve years would she be alive, a child grown to womanhood in the solitude of a beautiful canyon?  Incredible!  Yet he believed his friend’s story and he indeed knew how strange and tragic life was.  He fancied he heard her voice on the sweeping wind.  She called to him, haunted him.  He admitted the improbability of her existence, but lost nothing of the persistent