The desert had been Benicia’s teacher; had moulded her spirit to its own pattern of elemental strength. Born the last of the O’Donojus in the desert oasis that was the ultimate remnant of the once kingly Rancho del Refugio--grant of a Spanish Philip to her ancestor--she had been reared in the asperities of the land, had absorbed into her bone and tissue the rigours and simple verities of a wilderness. Because there was no son in the Casa O’Donoju and because, too, this only daughter came into the world with the inheritance of a spirit impetuous and errant as a desert bird, Don Padraic, her father, gave over all attempts at imposing on her the straight decorum that shackles the Spanish maiden of gentle blood. With the death of her mother when Benicia was still in short skirts came this loosening of the bonds. Instead of growing to maturity a shy creature who must never quit the sight of a duenna and whose eyes shall tell no secrets, the girl warmed to a wonderful companionship with her father, lived the life of a boy. Her flaming red hair bobbed about the fringe of milling cores of wild cattle at the round-up. At _Sahuaro_ feasts of the Papagoes, Mo Vopoki (Lightning Hair) added her shrill soprano to the chorus of the Frog Doctor Song. She learned where gold lay in shallow pockets and winnowed it from the sands in the Indian fashion. She brought home a mewing, spitting kitten she had taken from a bobcat’s litter. Her doll was discarded for a rifle before her strength could shoulder it. Schooling came in her father’s library, filled with books in three languages. English and music, the music of the great harp, became her passions. The harp had been her great-grandmother’s; Don Padraic could make the mesh of strings sing with the sound of rain on flowers. He was her first teacher. Then, when twenty years were hers and Don Padraic realized something besides the wild desert life was needed to round out the full beauty of his daughter’s soul, he had urged further studies on the harp as the excuse for Benicia’s two years in the cities of the States. Those two years had served well to overlay upon the rugged handiwork of the wild the softness and subtleties of culture. Benicia believed she possessed all her father’s confidences. So she did--all but one. She did not know that when she came into the world with tiny head furry in burning red Donna Francisca, her mother, had cried herself into hysteria and Don Padraic’s heart had gone cold. Nor was she ever told that her flaming hair marked her with the finger of Nemesis.