“I can’t say that I was overcome with grief,” said Neal, “though it wasn’t a pretty company to stay with. Still, when I looked at ’em and thought their mothers would like them to have Christian burial, whatever sort of beasts they were, I concluded it wouldn’t hurt me to stay long enough to get them underground decently. Then I packed the few things the Injuns had left and came on. I knew if Steve had got away at all, he was likely to travel towards Santa Fé and so I set my face in that direction. But if I thought I had left danger behind me I was mistaken, for the mountains are full of the savagest kinds of Indians and that I got through with a whole skin was more by good luck than good management. I was glad enough to get out of the mountains and down into the valley where it was easier traveling. In one of the little towns I got my first clue to Steve. Not many white people had visited them until the Americanos had come with an army to take possession of the country, but there had been one man not long before the big army came; he had no horse, and from what I could learn it seemed possible that it might be Steve. He had traveled towards Santa Fé, so I went on in that direction. After a time I learned that the army had gone towards California, and it seemed to my mind that my best plan was to follow its tracks, for I argued if Steve had reached Santa Fé he would have been home before that, so I turned west again. Pretty soon I got into a detestable piece of country, all sand up-hill one way and sand down-hill the other way; no water anywhere. My horse and I were about done for when we got over it. Then I struck another desert; about the worst piece of country I ever did come on. One spell I thought my poor horse had given out entirely, and that I’d have to call the search off, but I thought of two girls waiting down here in Texas and of Steve somewhere, perhaps, and I got the pluck to go on again.” “Oh, you dear boy!” exclaimed Christine. “Whose prayers were at work that time?” came lazily from Steve; and if Alison did not answer in words she did by going over to Neal and taking her place by his side. He put his arm around her with a satisfied sigh.