“I hid in the rocks.” He pointed vaguely to the broken hills in the west. “They looked all around for me and never found me, but I saw them. Then they went away.” “How long ago was that?” The child looked troubled. “I don't know,” he finally answered. “I 'low you ain't forgot your name?” “No. “Well, what is it, son?” “Benny Rogers,” then all at once he began to cry from sheer weakness and wretchedness. The two men were puzzled and mystified. There was that one point about the Indians that they could not understand; and yet what they had seen in the ditch was in accord with their preconceived notions as to Indian warfare. “We'd better go into camp, Jim,” said the Missourian. “You keep hold of the boy while I unsaddle the mules and turn them out,” but midway in his task he paused and glanced at the child who was still crying softly, miserably. “I half believe the little codger lied to us,” he muttered. “Well, maybe it was Indians after all, he surely ought to know.” CHAPTER TWENTY EPHRIAM RAYMOND, standing in the doorway of his ranch house, well within the shadow of the foothills, was watching two horsemen as they crept along the trail. To the west, where the land dropped from bench to bench until it finally found the level of the flat valley with its farms and irrigating ditches, lay Great Salt Lake; a gleam of sunlight was reflected on the water, and a few misty clouds low in the sapphire light betokened its nearness. A year before, and the trail had been illy marked through the mountains; and scarcely more than a trace, as it crossed the desert beyond, where it wound its course from failing streams which fought the dry, thirsty sands, on to brackish water holes that were evil to smell, and yet more evil to drink from. But that single season had altered without lessening its terrors. It was heavy now with alkali du$t, dry with the season's rainless suns, and fine with the grinding wheels of freight and emigrant wagons; it was further marked by the bones of cattle and horses. No one could mistake it now. As the two men came nearer, Ephriam saw that they were mounted on mules, and that one of the men, a gaunt, red-whiskered fellow, shared his saddle with a child. “Is this heah Raymond's settlement?” the latter demanded, reining in his mule before the ranch house door. “Yes,” answered Ephriam. “Won't you light down?” he added. He was a kindly, venerable man, with a patriarchal beard and long, grey hair; there was more than a touch of the ministerial in the decent black broadcloth suit he wore; the fact that he was collarless, and that his trousers were tucked in at the tops of his heavy boots, did not detract in the least from his palpable pulpit dignity. “We will, elder, if it's agreeable to you, and we'd admire to fill up on kitchen victuals.” And the red-whiskered man drew the back of his hand across his bearded lips. “You're just in time,” said Ephriam smiling.