Adam could not see her plainly. The fire had burned down. He threw on more greasewood and some sage, that flared up with sparkling smoke. Then he drew the girl to the light. What a thin arm she had! And in the small face and staring eyes he read more than the fear that seemed now losing its intensity. Starvation! No man so quick as Adam to see that! “You live there? Then he lied about the water?” asked Adam. “Oh yes--he lied.” “Who are these men?” “I don’t know. They camped at the water. I--I was out--gathering firewood. One of them--the one you hit--grabbed me--carried me off. He put his hand--on my mouth. Then the other man came--with the burros.... My mother’s sick. She didn’t know what happened. She’ll be terribly frightened.... Oh, please take me--home!” “Indeed I will,” replied Adam, heartily. “Don’t worry any more. Come now. Walk right behind me.” Adam led the way out of camp without another glance at the two men, one of whom was groaning. The girl kept close at Adam’s heels. Away from the circle of camp-fire glow, he could see the gray aisles of clean sand between the clumps of greasewood, and he wound in and out between these until he found the trail. Suddenly he remembered the girl had no shoes. “You’ll stick your feet full of cactus,” he said. “You should have on your shoes.” “I have no shoes,” she replied. “But cactus doesn’t hurt me--except the _cholla_. Do you know _cholla_? Even the Indians think _cholla_ bad.” “Guess I do, little girl. Let me carry you.” “I can walk.” So they set off on the starlit trail, and here she walked beside him. Adam noted that she was taller than he would have taken her to be, her small head coming up to his elbow. She had the free stride of an Indian. He gazed out across the level gray and drab desert. Whatever way he directed his wandering steps over this land of waste, he was always gravitating toward new adventure. For him the lonely reaches and rock-ribbed canyons were sure to harbor, sooner or later, some humanity that drew him like a magnet. Everywhere the desert had its evil, its suffering, its youth and age. The heat of Adam’s anger subsided with the thought that somehow he had let the ruffians off easily; and the presence of this girl, a mere child, apparently, for all her height, brought home to him the mystery, the sorrow, the marvel of life on the desert. A sick woman with a child living in the lonely shadow of San Jacinto! Adam felt in this girl’s presence, as he had seen starvation in her face, a cruelty of life, of fate. But how infinitely grateful he felt for the random wandering steps which had led him down that trail!