“Yes, Genie,” replied Adam, with a hand of sympathy upon her shoulder. “We know now. He’ll never come back.” With the buckle in her hands the girl slowly walked toward the graves of her parents. Charley Jim mounted his pony to ride away. “Chief--tell me of Oella,” said Adam. The Indian gazed down upon Adam with somber eyes. Then his lean, sinewy hand swept up with stately and eloquent gesture to be pressed over his heart. “Oella dead,” he replied, sonorously, and then he looked beyond Adam, out across the lonesome land, beyond the ranges, perhaps to the realm of his red gods. Adam read the Indian gesture. Oella had died of a broken heart. * * * * * He stood there at the edge of the oasis, stricken mute, as his old Indian friend turned to go back across the valley to the Coahuila encampment. A broken heart! That superb Indian maiden, so lithe and tall and strong, so tranquil, so sure--serene of soul as the steady light of her midnight eyes--dead of a broken heart! She had loved him--a man alien to her race--a wanderer and a stranger within her gates, and when he had gone away life became unendurable. Another mystery of the lonely, gray, melancholy wastelands! Adam quivered there in the grip of it all. * * * * * Later when he returned to Genie it was to say, simply, “My dear, as soon as I can find my burros we pack for the long trail.” “No!” she exclaimed, with lighting eyes. “Yes. I shall take you out to find you a home.” “Honest Injun?” she blazed at him, springing erect. “Genie, I would not tease about that. We know your uncle is dead. The time to go has come. We’ll start at sunrise.” Forgotten were Genie’s dreams of yesterday! A day at her time of life meant change, growth, oblivion for what had been. With a cry of wondering delight she flung herself upon Adam, leaped and climbed to the great height of his face, and there, like a bird, she pecked at him with cool, sweet lips, and clung to him in an ecstasy. “Don’t!... Still a child, Genie,” he said, huskily, as he disengaged himself from her wild embrace. He meant that she was not still a child. It amazed him and hurt him to see her radiance at the thought of leaving the desert oasis which had been home for so long. Fickleness of youth! Yesterday she had wanted to live there forever; to-day the enchantments of new life, people, places, called alluringly. It was what Adam had expected. It was what he wanted for her. How clear had been his vision of the future! How truly, the moment he had fought down his selfish desires, had he read her innocent heart! His own swelled with gladness, numbing out the pang. For him, some little meed of praise! Not little was it to have conquered self--not little was it to have builded the happiness of an orphan!