Her father was to sell that day a large herd of cattle to Cash Hawkins. Intuitively she knew what the two days’ visit from Hawkins would mean for them—despair when her father realized the trick the white man had played on him, scarcity of food and many privations for her, then long weeks of silent suffering for both. Still she stood staring into the winding, desolate land, the stretching heavens, the stretching plains—both flat, straight, unbroken, like two skies. A world might be above one or under the other. Could this intermediate space of ambient atmosphere lay claim to a life of fact and reality? But no such thoughts came to Nat-u-ritch as she watched the sandy face of the country. The desert was her home. She had toddled across its burning ground, following, as far as her baby strength would permit, her father’s pony. In the solitude of the waste land she had grown into womanhood. She knew that to-day’s dreariness could be broken until the entire place echoed and re-echoed to the life of the men whose cattle thundered at their heels. She had heard the desert answer to the fanatical outburst of her tribes; had seen the white men drive her people farther and farther back. For her and her people it had been their refuge. Suddenly she stretched out her delicate arms. Her figure grew erect. From the distance came the distinct beat of horse’s hoofs; it passed so close within her vision that she could easily distinguish the features of the rider. He was a stranger who had recently settled there, the stranger whom she had first met at a bear-dance down at the agency. She remembered that with the squaw’s privilege of choosing her partner she had selected him. She remembered his eyes. As she did so her own turned and followed the man who, unlike the other horsemen of the prairie, rose in his stirrups, and into her sphinx-like face came a look of unutterable yearning. She watched the clouds of dust envelop him as they had swallowed up her father, but this time she no longer stood staring into the prairie. Swiftly she caught her pony, mounted him, and let him gallop across a trail that led to a short cut to Maverick. For a long time she lay flat on her animal, the hot sun sizzling down on her clinging figure. She only drew her hair as a veil over her face, while her wistful eyes watched the stranger across the plains as she sped close on his track. She was glad that she was gaining ground, too long had she lingered after her father’s departure. She soon reached the short cut, and a wise smile lighted up her face. She would be in Maverick ahead of the man riding across the plains, and she wondered whether she would see him at the Long Horn saloon. Then the smile died away; she was not going to Maverick for that purpose. First she must find and guard her father from Cash Hawkins’s machinations; and then—