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The Navajo pondered a moment on the proposition. "Yes," he said presently, looking up, his distrustful eyes, still full of suspicion, resting doubtfully on Stephens. "Promise, you, that your men stay where they are, and do nothing against us, and I'll take you to her."

"I'll do that much," answered the American; "so then it's a bargain."

"It's a bargain," returned the red man; the confidence shown in him was producing its effect.

"That's all right then," said Stephens cheerfully, rising to his feet and leaving his Winchester still on the ground. He was not one whit less on the alert than before, but his cue now was to betray no distrust. For the first time since their meeting he took his eyes off Mahletonkwa and looked back to where he had left his Pueblo friends, who had remained all this time as invisible as ever, waiting on the event with the inexhaustible patience of their race.

"Hullo!" he called back, "you scouts, stay there where you are till I come back again. I am going to the camp of the Navajos to see about settling things."

As before, the Pueblos acknowledged his message from afar with a wild answering shout of assent.

He turned round, picked up his Winchester in a quiet, undemonstrative manner, and threw it into the hollow of his arm. "Go ahead, Mahletonkwa," said he, "you heard what I said. They will keep still till I return. Let's go to your camp, you and me."

The redskin likewise stood up with his weapon in his hand. "I've got to give some orders, too," he said, and he began to speak in his own tongue. Much to Stephens's surprise he was answered at once from a few yards off. The head of a concealed Navajo suddenly appeared from a fissure near at hand. Stephens instantly recognised him as the Notalinkwa whom Don Nepomuceno had said was as big a villain as the other. He rapidly calculated in his mind what this might mean. It was, in a measure, evidence that the Navajo chief had not been intending to keep faith. At any rate, this was proof positive that he had only made a pretence of sending his men away while he met Stephens alone; and yet during their colloquy he had kept this confederate posted within a few yards of him the whole time. "It's all right," said Mahletonkwa, in answer to the look of surprise apparent on Stephens's face; "no treachery, no lies. I leave Notalinkwa here to watch for us that your men don't advance. Come along. It's all right."

That Mahletonkwa should leave a sentinel now seemed natural enough, and Stephens decided promptly to acquiesce. He was in for it now, and he must play the game boldly, and with unhesitating steps he followed the Navajo chief over the rugged lava to the camp where the prisoner was held.

The camp lay in a narrow sunken meadow, of a few acres in extent, bordered on either side by the black, forbidding wall of the lava bed.

An unknown cause had here divided the lava stream for some hundreds of yards, leaving the space between unravaged by the desolating flow. And in the little oasis thus shut off the grass grew rich and green, looking tenfold brighter from its contrast with the blackened wilderness around.

"What a perfect place for stock-thieves to hide in," thought Stephens as he beheld it. "Of course these Navajos know every hidden recess like this in the country." His eyes eagerly scanned the scene for the form that was the object of his search. Close under the rocks, on the far side, was the group of which he had already caught a glimpse from the point where he had had his colloquy with the Indian chief. Yes, it was indeed her dress he had discerned. There she was, sitting on the ground amid the saddles and horse furniture, the Navajo guards standing watchfully about in the space between him and her as he and Mahletonkwa approached. Guns were visible in the hands of most of them, but some carried only bows. He took note that the latter were strung, and that besides the bow two or three arrows were held ready in the fingers of the left hand.

But though his swift, wary glance took in every detail, it was to the face of the captive girl that his eyes were most anxiously directed. As he approached she sprang to her feet, and with a cry of recognition ran forward to meet him. Some of the Indians put out their hands as if to restrain her, but at a sign from Mahletonkwa they refrained. His outstretched hand met hers in a vigorous clasp.

"You have come," she cried in broken tones, "you have come at last. And my father,--is he safe?"

"Yes, he's safe," said the American, "and so are you."

CHAPTER XX

THE WOLF'S LAIR

"You'll be all right now," said Stephens; "you've nothing to fear." He deliberately assumed a security he was far from feeling, but it was part of the game he must play. Her little hand still lay in his; it was the first time it had ever done so; it seemed as if the firm pressure of his strong fingers must reassure this poor terrified young thing, the wild leaping of whose pulses he could feel. Her breast heaved convulsively as she strove to control her sobs; the great tear-drops gathered under her eyelids and ran down her cheeks.

"Great God!" he said, "that you should have suffered like this! But don't be afraid; we'll get you out of this all right." His voice sounded in his own ears strained and unnatural. He was trying his best to play his part by appearing cheerful and consolatory, while at that very same moment the strongest feeling in him was a burning, fierce desire to pump lead into the gang of savages who had made this tender creature suffer this agony of terror. And but for her presence he might have done it there and then. To preserve her, however, it was above all things necessary to temporise; and to preserve her must be his first thought.

He must hear her own story and consult with her on his next move; but to do that he must talk in Spanish, which Mahletonkwa understood. What a pity she did not speak English, but that could not be helped. How could he manage to take her out of earshot.

"Oh, where is my father? where is Andres?" she sobbed, in a passion of fear for the possible fate of her own people. "I heard two shots, and then I heard no more. Were they there?"

"Oh, they're all right," said the American heartily, in the very cheerfullest tones he could muster. "Don't you fret, senorita," and he patted reassuring the little hand he held in his, loosing his grip of his rifle to do so and squeezing the trusty weapon against his body with his elbow. "It was only me out there that they were shooting at; no harm done. Your father and brother are all right." Nevertheless this repetition by her of her anxious inquiries brought a disturbing idea into his head. Had she any special reason for thinking that her father and her brother were wounded or slain? Could the cacique's conjecture have been true, and had the Mexicans overtaken Mahletonkwa's band on the Mesa del Verendo and fought with them there and been beaten off? He longed to ask her about this, but he did not like to do so within hearing of the Navajos. Still, he reflected, Mahletonkwa would hardly have met him so boldly if there was fresh blood on his hands. Ah, but he might have done that to lure him into this trap; and now, behold, here he was in the wolf's lair! Thoughts raced through his mind like lightning. Then he spoke.

"Mahletonkwa, I suppose you make no objection to her coming with me now?"

"Not go," was the somewhat ominous reply; "stay here; sit down; talk."

"But I want to talk to her by herself," he said; "I suppose you won't object, then, if we go to the middle of the meadow and sit down there?"

"Not go," repeated the Indian deliberately; "yes, you can go and sit in there if you like," and he pointed to the overhanging side of the lava bed, close to which was the camp.

"He means the cave there where the water is," quickly interposed the girl, who was by this time recovering the control of her voice, though her breast still heaved convulsively.

"All right, then, certainly, let's come on there; that'll do as well,"

said the American with assumed ease. Still keeping her hand in his, he turned in the direction indicated, and made a move as if to start. The other Navajos rapidly exchanged some sentences in their own language.

"You must leave your rifle if you go in there," said Mahletonkwa, turning to Stephens again after listening to what they said.

"No," replied he, "certainly not. I'm no prisoner. No treachery, Mahletonkwa." He slung himself round and faced the chief, placing himself directly in front of the captive girl, as if assuming possession of her.

"No treachery," re-echoed the Indian promptly, "only"--he hesitated to say what was in his mind, but Manuelita divined it instantly.

"Their water is in the cave in a great rock-hole," she said, "and he fears you will take cover in there and then shoot at him from thence."

"No, I won't, Mahletonkwa," said Stephens at once; "I won't do that, and I hadn't ever even thought of such a thing. It was your own suggestion that I should go there. I had rather go out in the middle of the meadow where I proposed first; there's no cover out in the meadow."

"No, not there," said Mahletonkwa; "better you go on into the cave"; and following his direction they went forward together hand in hand.

Right in under the lava bed there was visible a wide, overarching cavity extending some twenty or thirty feet back and at the far end of this lay a deep natural rock-cistern full of clear dark water. It was a hidden well.

"This is their spring," said the girl, pointing to it. "These Navajos know every secret water-spring in the country."

The extraordinary quickness with which she had mastered her feelings, and now the perfectly natural tone in which she spoke, and the straightforward way in which she referred to her captors, greatly relieved the American's anxiety; had she suffered at their hands what his knowledge of the nature of Indians had led him to dread, it seemed to him that she could not have spoken of them in this unembarrassed style. She had raised her eyes to his as she uttered the words, and though they were still wet with the tears that she had shed, their glance was frank and open; there was no trace in her mien of the dull despair of irreparable wrong he remembered in the victim of the Sioux.

His relief was shown by the reassured expression in his own eyes as he returned her glance, and said lightly;

"Oh yes, of course they must know them all; why, they're simply bound to know this whole country just like a book. They'd never be able to fly around in it, keeping themselves out of sight in the way they do, if they didn't."

The pair seated themselves on the rock forming the lip of the cistern.

They were here out of earshot of the Indians if they did not speak loud.

"Now tell me, senorita," he began in a low voice, "how you were carried off."

She blushed and looked down. "I hardly know how to say it," she said, "it was all so quick. I had got up and gone across the patio, thinking it was near daybreak--you know there was no moon--and never dreaming of the possibility of any danger inside the house, when I was seized from behind, and gagged and bound in a moment; and then they threw a riata round me and lifted me to the top of the house, and down the outside on to a pony's back, and I was hurried off I knew not where. Oh, it was dreadful! I was gagged so that I could not even cry out, and I did not know where they were taking me or what would become of me. Oh, I was terribly frightened!" She paused, quite overcome for the moment by the recollection.

Stephens felt a passion of pity sweep through his whole being at the thought of the helpless plight of this lovely girl in the hands of enemies--such enemies! "Yes," he said soothingly, taking her hand again in his--they had unclasped hands as they sat down; "don't be afraid; you're all right now; but go on and tell me about it."

"There isn't anything to tell," she answered with a little half-laugh that was almost hysterical. "They held me on a horse, and we rode and we rode and we rode, till I was so tired that I thought I should have fainted; but," said she proudly, "I didn't faint. Then, when the daylight came, I was blindfolded with a rag--pah!"--she added with a little _moue_ of disgust--"such a dirty rag!--I don't like these Indians,--they're not at all clean people."

Stephens could not help smiling to himself at this bit of petulance. If she had nothing worse to complain of than their lack of soap and water they could afford to smile a little now, he and she both.

"Yes," he assented with amused gravity, "they do show a most reprehensible neglect of the washtub. In fact, I don't suppose there's such a thing as a proper washboard in the whole Navajo nation."

Their eyes met again, and they both laughed, he of set purpose to raise her spirits, she because she could not help it. The awful tension of her captivity, a tension that had never ceased for a moment, not even in her fitful and broken snatches of sleep, was relaxed at last. In the presence of this brave man who had come to rescue her, confidence returned, and now the reaction of feeling was so strong that, had she let herself go, she could have laughed as wildly as a maniac. But her spirit was unbroken, and she held herself in.

"So, then, with that rag over your eyes you had no sort of idea where you were being taken to?" he said interrogatively.

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