“_Mon Dieu!_” ejaculated the French traders who came up behind St. Vrain. “_Dios Mio!_” The Mexican mule-drivers crossed themselves fervently and rolled their eyes heavenward. The colonel raised a cautioning hand. The wagons had not been burned; that meant either Indians in ambush or survivors. Silently they rolled down over the brink into the arroyo. But as the inevitable rattle of chains and creak of wagon frames broke the silence, all at once a cry went up from that still circle of wagons. Out of the covered hiding-places rose a score of heads. Almost hysterically the caravaners came running forward; in relief they threw themselves upon Pierre and the colonel. From between the curtains of a covered wagon a delicate face looked out, pale as the yucca flower, and as lovely, with startled eyes of gentian blue and smooth fair hair--a young girl, not more than sixteen. Her arms were tight about the shoulders of a boy of ten or eleven years. Steven Mercer found himself looking toward those parted curtains, and the colonel’s eyes, too, were drawn to the spot. “Sss-acré-dam’,” he drew the breath between his teeth. “A woman like that, a girl, here, on the worst spot of the Red Trail!” There were but fourteen of them, all told, after all. An old woman was inside one of the wagons, very sick. There had been thirty. Bound for Santa Fe, attacked shortly after they left the Cimmaron Crossing, pursued here where they’d taken a stand, their mules stampeded and run off, only six that were tied remaining, and two of those they had been forced to eat. They’d been here in this corral for three days and nights; not a drop of water since yesterday noon. Every night the Indians came and rode circles around them. But now they knew that the white men had plenty of ammunition and so did not open fresh attack. They did not dare abandon the wagons and walk on to the lower Cimmaron Spring, for there were hundreds of Cherokees and Apaches from Texas waiting there. “Your only chance nevertheless,” said St. Vrain, brusquely, “was to have pushed through. Let the child and the young woman ride; cache your goods. Now we are come, it is best for all to turn back. It is as far to Cimmaron Springs, farther, with red men in between, and the way altogether harder, than to return to the Arkansas. We will cut across the desert and take our chance.” He consulted the buffalo map upon which he had chalked the desert wastes and the Cordilleran wildernesses. “Right here we are at the nearest point to the river, nearer than to Cimmaron Crossing, even.”