Since she had once given way to softer feelings, Jenny's better self arose against the hard, cruel spirit that had prompted her to turn from all of Ray's attempts at kindly explanation. Bitterly she regretted the harsh words she had uttered when her eyes first fell on that miserable letter; and, like serpent's fangs, the words she had called after him on parting, struck again and again into her own bleeding heart. Restlessly she tossed on her bed all night--the first to discover the approach of a band of Apaches, from the uneasy stamping and the frightened wickering of the mules--she was the only one who insisted that Tucson's bark could be heard among the gang of _coyotes_ that made night hideous with their howls. With the first gleam of the coming day she was up; and, in spite of all her brother-in-law could say, in spite of the suspicious footprints that marked the ground in the neighborhood of the mule-_corral_, she started for home, alone and unprotected, as she had come the night before. The gorgeous sunrise had no charm for her; unheeding, her eye passed over the landscape, that was like the smile of a fair, false woman--soft and alluring to the eye--a bright mask only, veiling death and destruction from those who were blinded by it. When near the town, a small, ragged-looking object came ambling swiftly toward her. "What--Tucson?" and then, apostrophizing the dog, who crouched in the sand at her feet with a pitiful whine: "You mean little deserter! Couldn't you hold out as long as your master? And I know your master has not come back yet." Nor _had_ he--though she entered the house with an insane hope that she might meet the grave eyes peering out from the gloom of the darkened hall. After another sharp reprimand, she prepared Tucson's breakfast from a part of her own; and then flew into a passion and drove the dog from the house, because, instead of tasting a mouthful, he insisted on dragging her to the door by the dress-skirt, and barking and howling in turn, when she refused to come. Later in the morning, when she had occasion to go "down town" for something, she recounted how the dog had shrunk from the fatigues of the prospecting-trip, and had returned to his comfortable quarters at home. "But I drove him from the house; and I guess he has gone to overtake his master now--I don't see him around any more." He _had_ gone to overtake his master--but not alone. The dog's strange bearing had excited suspicion--here, where people are always on the alert for danger and evil of all kinds. Before the sun was well up, a little band of well-armed citizens was on the trail that Oray Granville and his friends had travelled but the day before.