She shook her head. "That's the greatest difficulty," she complained. "I shouldn't have let you know that I have a secret, but I bungled and let it out. And I must keep it. But just the same, I'm with you heart and soul. I'm on your side from start to finish, and I want you to believe it." "I do," he said simply. As they reached the cabin he asked: "Did you feel the end of the pipe under the water in the spring?" She nodded. Then with the promise to meet him next morning for their ride to the fiesta, she moved her mare slowly up the cañon and disappeared in the trees. CHAPTER XV THE FIRE DANCE The round moon looked down upon a scene so weird and compelling that Oliver Drew vaguely wondered if it all were real, or one of those strange dreams that leave in the mind of the dreamer the impression that ages ago he has looked upon the things which his sleeping fancy pictured. The moon rode low in the heavens. The night was waning. Tall pines and spruce stood black and bar-like against the silver radiance. Away in the distance coyotes lifted their yodel, half jocular, half mournful, as a maudlin drunkard sings dolefully a merry tune. In a cup of the hills, surrounded by acres and acres of almost impenetrable chaparral and timber, a hundred or more human beings were clustered about a blazing fire. Horses stamped in the corrals. Now and then an Indian dog cast back a vicious challenge at the wild dogs on the hill. White men and women and Indian men and women stood about the fire in a great circle, silent, intent on what was taking place at the fire's edge. Within this outer circle of spectators revolved another smaller circle of brown-skinned men and women. But one of this number was white, and in the flickering light of the fire his skin glowed in odd contrast to the skins of those who danced with him. For Oliver Drew was stripped but for a breechcloth about his loins, and directly opposite him in the circle, always across the fire from him as the human snake revolved about the flames, was a stalwart young Indian, likewise nearly nude. He it was who at the proper moment would dash upon the fire with this white man, when, with hands clasped over it, they two would strive to beat it to ashes with naked feet. Side by side, shoulder to shoulder, pressed into the circle like canned fish, the fire dancers circled the leaping flames. Sweat streamed from their bodies, for the fire was a huge one and roared and crackled and leaped at them incessantly. For two solid hours the dance had been in progress. Now and then an old squaw, faint from the heat of the fire and the nerve strain which only the fanatic knows, dropped wearily out and staggered away. Then the rank would close and fill the vacancy; and this automatically made the circle smaller and brought the dancers closer to the flames, for they must touch each other always as they circled slowly.