Five minutes later the two girls stood with their arms about each other, watching from a wide window as the men rode away and Virginia noticed that they were taking the trail toward the west. How she did hope that they would not turn north at the sandhills, and also that Tom had not been delayed. She glanced at the clock, as she said: “By now Tom ought to be safe in the Papago village.” CHAPTER XXXI WINONA, THE INDIAN MAIDEN Luckily for Tom’s comfort, the storm which had threatened when he left V. M. Ranch was turned by a changing wind toward the south; and, when the chill grey of daylight came, he found that he had ridden many miles to the north and that he was slowly crossing a vast, wild broken upland, which was gradually ascending toward a range of mountains that looked grim, lonely and forbidding. In those barren walls of rock, Virginia had told him that he would find the almost hidden entrance to the Papago Indian village. No creature was in sight at that early hour save a low sailing hawk, and, now and then, a lizard, frightened by the horse’s hoofs, darted across the trail. So near was it to the color of the sand that only by its quick flashing motion could it be discerned. As Tom neared the seemingly impenetrable wall of rock, it was hard for him to believe that this was really a fortress surrounding a village of any kind. He was weary and hungry, but, try as he might, he could not find the entrance. [Illustration: When the two riders appeared a pack of wolf-dogs made a mad rush at the stranger.] Suddenly his horse snorted and stopped. Tom wondered what it had heard for surely there was nothing to see, but he was not long puzzled, for a second later a lean, shaggy pony, ridden by a small Indian boy, emerged from what seemed to be solid rock. Tom urged his horse forward and hailed the little fellow who, after looking at the stranger with startled eyes, seemed about to return by the way he had come. Then it was Tom remembered something. He had been told to say to the first Indian he met, “Virginia Davis sent me,” which sentence, he had been assured would prove an open sesame that would win for him admittance and welcome. Nor had he been misinformed, for, when the small Indian boy who was about to disappear, heard the name which Tom called, he smiled, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth, and then, silently beckoning he led the way through a crevice, so narrow that Tom no longer wondered that it had escaped his observation. It gradually widened, however, into a canyon which at last opened into a huge bowl-shaped valley where the grass was green and where clumps of scarlet flowers were blossoming. Scattering about were a dozen or more low adobe huts and in the midst of them in a large corral were many wiry Indian ponies.