“Her darter, stranger—not his, I guess. She was a scraggly little black-haired thing, more like a boy.” Brainard smiled as his young man’s dream of a beautiful heroine, with aristocratic manners and gracious character, crumbled at the miner’s touch. “She used to ride all over the place on her pony—she was a wild sort. Sometime after her mother died, she disappeared.” “Where did she go?” The old man shook his head slowly. “Nobody could tell. One night, a month or more ago, she just rode off on the trail. I seed her going down there at a run on her pony, and she never came back. P’r’aps she was going to look for Krutzmacht. They caught the pony over by Phantom, but nothing has been heard of her since.” “Melody—” “Yes, that was her name, stranger!” the old miner said with a look of surprise. “Melody White! How did you come to know it?” “I must have guessed it,” Brainard replied with a smile. “The mine was named after her, or she after the mine; I don’t know which.” Brainard stared out into the grim Arizona landscape, before which rose the deserted mansion. There was a Melody! He had never really doubted her existence, but this assurance of his conviction pleased him, even though she might not be all that his ardent fancy had imagined. “And now the house is empty, same as the mine, and I dunno what will become of it all. Sold for taxes, I expect, if they can git any one to buy it!” They strolled up the road in the direction of the house upon the hill. The austere dusk of the desert was settling over the dreary habitations of Monument. Far away along the horizon purple mountains lifted their heads in grandeur. The house was so placed that it gave a large view of the horizon from the mountains to the distant rim of the desert and again to mountains. Close beneath, in wide folds, the river bed wound its serpent course westward into the dusk. Before the broad southern veranda there were signs of old flower beds, which had once been cherished with precious water brought in iron pipes from the river below. The great white pillars had peeled their one coat of paint, and underfoot the sun-dried boards rattled. The scene was large and grand, but inhumanly empty—as empty as the great house itself. No wonder that the young girl, her mother dead, had fled from this parched desert and these bony mountains in search of the world of men and women, in search of life! “Kind of lonesome here?” the miner observed. “It’s like death!” “But you get used of it, same as death. . . . She and her mother stayed here by themselves after the old man went, and I guess the girl had enough of it.” “How old was she, do you think?” The old miner wrinkled his brows thoughtfully. “She must have been nigh on sixteen,” he said. “She warn’t quite ten when Krutzmacht left.” This girl of “nigh on sixteen” had gone forth alone in search of the stepfather, who for long years had left her and her mother neglected here.