“Wait,” I bade. “Then she again fell on her knees, panting like a nun of old Panama facing a buccaneer. But suddenly she called out, this time gladly, and flung up her two arms, to the sky. And Lavelle saw that which frightened even him. The north was strangely black and jagged; out of the black there issued a roaring, and a gigantic spectacle speeding very swiftly. It might have been the thunder bird of the Sioux, said Lavelle, or a winged canoe, or monstrous devouring demon--and it might have been an avalanching cloud of wind and rain. But to her it was as if God were riding in upon a thunderbolt chariot, and she had reached up her two arms to be taken into that driving shelter.” “And this happened, you say; did it?” smiled my old man, sarcastically. “And you happen to know!” “It happened, and I happen to know,” said I. “Lavelle was stopped short again. The Indian in him recoiled. Then his ruffian courage surged back within him. Whether god or spirit, it should not have her. So he threw his rifle to his shoulder, and just as the blackness swooped roaring and whistling to envelop her he touched trigger. Then he ran headlong, in retreat out of the way. The cloud descended, it passed, the rush of air in its wake knocked him flat, the terror and the rain and the hail and the thunder and lightning plastered him, face to the ground, at the foot of the mesa.” * * * * * “The morning the sun rose clear. But Lavelle could not get atop that mesa again. The cloudburst had sheered away the approaches, like a hydraulic stream, and washed them down as mud and gravel. The mesa rose rimrocked and precipitous, like a biscuit to an ant. He hallooed and got no answer. One horse had broken its tether; he rode the other to a near-by ridge and gazed across. He could see the girl lying white and motionless. His hawk eyes told him that she was dead. So, being a coward in heart, he made off at speed. He quit the country altogether, changed his name, drifted down into border Arizona, and was shot at a gambling table in Tombstone some forty years ago. The girl, you see,” said I, “has been lying here ever since, the half coin--that half coin of promise in her fingers, waiting for you and your understanding.” “But,” he cried fiercely, “you say so. You weave a story. How am I to know? Where is your proof? Why should I believe? How does it happen----?” “Because,” I answered, “these bones and this half coin ‘happen’ to be here; and you ‘happen’ to be my passenger; and we ‘happen’ to land together upon this ‘God-forsaken’ spot. And my middle name,” said I, “‘happens’ to be Lavelle, from the line of my grandfather who in his private memoirs confessed to a great wrong.” My old man plumped to his knees; he groped for the half coin. I left him pressing it to his lips and babbling a name, and I went back to the plane. [Transcriber’s Note: This story appeared in the February 1926 issue of Weird Tales magazine.]