Invitations, accordingly, were issued for a certain day; but the Fates so willed it that the horses of Company "F" were stampeded from the picket-line by a band of Apaches, during the night preceding; and Arroyos, the guide, expressed his conviction that he could lead the troops to the _rancheria_ of these Indians, and recover the horses taken. Although Major Stanford's position as post-commander would have justified him in sending some subaltern officer, he preferred to take charge of the expedition in person, leaving the post in Captain Manson's hands. "You look pale, child," said Major Stanford, bidding Eva farewell, while the orderly was holding his horse outside. "I am almost glad, on your account, that the dinner-party could be put off. Your color has been fading for weeks, and if you do not brighten up soon, I shall have to send you back home, to your aunt." And tenderly smoothing the glossy hair back from her face, he kissed it again and again, before vaulting into the saddle. Accompanied by Marcelita alone, Eva, toward evening, set out on her usual ramble, following the road from which the path branched off, leading into the valley. At the point where the road falls off toward Tucson, she stopped before taking the path that led to the spring, and cast a long, shivering look around her. Wearily her eyes roamed over the desolate land; wearily they followed the road, with its countless windings, far into the level country; wearily they watched the flight of a solitary crow, flapping its wings as it hovered, with a doleful cry, over the one, single tree on the plain, that held its ragged branches up to the sky, as though pleading for the dews of heaven to nurture and expand its stunted growth. An endless, dreary waste--an infinitude of hopeless, changeless desert--a hard, yellow crust, where the wind had left it bare from sand, above which the air was still vibrating from the heat of the day, though the breeze that came with the sunset had already sprung up; the only verdure an occasional bush of grease-wood, or mesquite, with never a blade of grass, nor a bunch of weeds, in the wide spaces between. Farther on to her right, she could see the rough, frowning rocks in the mountain yonder, looking as though evil spirits had piled them there, in well-arranged confusion, to prevent the children of earth from taking possession of its steep heights, and its jealously-hidden treasures. Grand, and lonely, and desolate looked the mountain, and lonely and desolate looked the plain, as Eva stood there, her hands folded and drooping, the light wind tossing her hair, and fluttering and playing in the folds of her dress. It was the picture of her own life unfolding before her: lone, and drear, and barren; without change or relief, without verdure, or blossom, or goodly springs of crystal water; the arid desert--her life, dragging its slow length along; the frowning mountain--her duties, and the unavoidable tasks that life imposed on her.