Six days after Quelele the Papago set out on his mission of mercy from the Casa O’Donoju he returned to the oasis. It was in the first flush of dawn that the _shuf-shuf_ of the little car roused master and servants; Quelele had travelled all night and at a pace to conserve the strength of the wounded man, who lay on thick straw in the box body. All night without lights save the thickly strewn lamps in the firmament, wending hither and thither through the scrub where half-guessed lines in the sand marked the Road of the Dead Men--a journey weird enough. For Grant Hickman it was but part of the moving drama of a dream. That instant of flight from the chain gang, when a bullet tore through his shoulder and sent him toppling into the arroyo, was the visitation of death; in his flickering perceptions all else following was but adventuring in the country beyond death--incidents to paint impressions on a consciousness otherwise wiped clean of otherworld recollections. First of these exposures on the cloudy plate of his mind came many days after the rurales had left him for dead in the desert: a face deep-dyed as mahogany and with white bristles of a beard about chin and lips, a face kindly withal, which bent near his as a hand lifted his head to bring his lips to a vessel of pungent brew. Then another age of drifting and swimming through soft clouds. Grant had just come to accept the grey-thatched face of El Doctor Coyote Belly as part of a permanent picture when another Indian appeared between himself and the bundles of sticks making a roof over his head. This second personage in the world of the unreal, a giant with the features of a boy, had spelled El Doctor in ministering herb brews and keeping the wet cloths under the burning wound in his back for what seemed many years. Then Grant had felt himself lifted, carried from the hut with the bundles of sticks for a roof and laid on sweet smelling straw. In the starshine he felt the hand of El Doctor close over his own with a heartening squeeze. Then--wonder of wonders!--the racking cough of a gas engine, and Grant was soaring back to that familiar earth which had been lost to him so long. Upon the arrival of the car bringing Grant to the Casa O’Donoju Don Padraic, hastily dressed, superintended the moving of his guest to a small, clean room, candle lit. The wounded man felt the gracious softness of feathers under him, the suave clinging of sheets. An aged Indian woman, working under the white man’s direction, divested him of his tattered clothes and patted everything comfortable. Drowsy luxury stole across his consciousness to cloud it and bring sleep.