That beautiful happy day, like life or love itself, could not be wholly perfect. Yaqui came to Dick to say good-by. Dick was startled, grieved, and in his impulsiveness forgot for a moment the nature of the Indian. Yaqui was not to be changed. Belding tried to overload him with gifts. The Indian packed a bag of food, a blanket, a gun, a knife, a canteen, and no more. The whole household went out with him to the corrals and fields from which Belding bade him choose a horse--any horse, even the loved Blanco Diablo. Gale's heart was in his throat for fear the Indian might choose Blanco Sol, and Gale hated himself for a selfishness he could not help. But without a word he would have parted with the treasured Sol. Yaqui whistled the horses up--for the last time. Did he care for them? It would have been hard to say. He never looked at the fierce and haughty Diablo, nor at Blanco Sol as he raised his noble head and rang his piercing blast. The Indian did not choose one of Belding's whites. He caught a lean and wiry broncho, strapped a blanket on him, and fastened on the pack. Then he turned to these friends, the same emotionless, inscrutable dark and silent Indian that he had always been. This parting was nothing to him. He had stayed to pay a debt, and now he was going home. He shook hands with the men, swept a dark fleeting glance over Nell, and rested his strange eyes upon Mercedes's beautiful and agitated face. It must have been a moment of intense feeling for the Spanish girl. She owed it to him that she had life and love and happiness. She held out those speaking slender hands. But Yaqui did not touch them. Turning away, he mounted the broncho and rode down the trail toward the river. "He's going home," said Belding. "Home!" whispered Ladd; and Dick knew the ranger felt the resurging tide of memory. Home--across the cactus and lava, through solemn lonely days, the silent, lonely nights, into the vast and red-hazed world of desolation. "Thorne, Mercedes, Nell, let's climb the foothill yonder and watch him out of sight," said Dick. They climbed while the others returned to the house. When they reached the summit of the hill Yaqui was riding up the far bank of the river. "He will turn to look--to wave good-by?" asked Nell. "Dear he is an Indian," replied Gale. From that height they watched him ride through the mesquites, up over the river bank to enter the cactus. His mount showed dark against the green and white, and for a long time he was plainly in sight. The sun hung red in a golden sky. The last the watchers saw of Yaqui was when he rode across a ridge and stood silhouetted against the gold of desert sky--a wild, lonely, beautiful picture. Then he was gone.