to turn away, saw something, however, which held her. In the shadow of the wagon the doctor's buggy disclosed itself. Some one lay ill under the tunnel of canvas.

She had just said this to herself when out upon the sunny stillness rang a sharp, lamentable cry, such as a child might utter in an extremity of fear or pain. The sound seemed to strike a sudden horror upon the day's bright face, and Jane shivered. She made an impulsive step out into her corn-field, hardly knowing what she meant to do. And then she saw the doctor alighting from the wagon, and pausing to speak to a man who followed him.

This man wore a broad felt hat, whose peaked crown was bound in a silver cord which glittered gaily above the startled whiteness of his face. He had on buckskin trousers, and there was a dash of color at his waist, like a girdle, which gave a sort of theatric air to his gesture as he threw up his arms wildly and turned away.

The doctor seemed perplexed. He looked distractedly about, and seeing Jane Combs in her field, called to her and came running. He reached the fence breathless, for he was neither so young nor so slim as the man leaning weeping against the wagon-step.

"Will you go over there, Miss Combs?" he panted. "There's a poor woman in that wagon breathing her last. They were on their way from Taos to Cripple Creek—been camping along the way for some time. Probably they struck bad water somewhere. She's had a low fever. The husband—Keene, his name is—came for me at daybreak, but it was too late. She seems to be a Mexican, though the man isn't. What I want you to do is to look after a child—a little girl of ten or twelve—who is there with her mother. She must be brought away. Did you hear her cry out just now?—that desperate wail? We'd just told her!"

"I guess everybody heard it," said Jane. Mechanically she withdrew the bolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire. Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows. "I aint much hand with children," she reminded him. "You better send Señora Vigil, too."

As she strode toward the wagon, the man in the sombrero looked up. He was good-looking, in a girlish sort of way, with a fair skin and blue eyes. A lock of damp, yellow hair fell over his forehead, and he kept pushing it back as if it confused and blinded him.

"Go in, ma'am—go in!" he said, brokenly. "Though I do not reckon any one can do much for her. Poor Margarita! I wish I'd made her life easier—but luck was against me! Go in, ma'am!"

As Jane, clutching the iron brace, clambered up the step and pulled back the canvas curtain, the inner darkness struck blank upon her sun-blinded eyes. Then presently a stretch of red stuff, zigzagged with arrow-heads of white and orange and green, grew distinct, and under the thick sweep of the Navajo blanket, the impression of a long, still shape. The face on the flat pillow was also still, with closed eyes whose lashes lay dark upon the lucid brown of the cheek. A braid of black hair, shining like a rope of silk, hung over the Indian rug. Heavy it hung, in a lifeless fall, which told Jane that she was too late for any last service to the stranger lying before her under the scarlet cover.

Neither human kindness nor anything could touch her farther. "The tale of what we are" was ended for her; and from the peace of the quiet lips it seemed as if the close had been entirely free of bitterness or pain. Jane moved toward the sleeper. She meant to lay the hands together, as she remembered her mother's had been laid long ago in the stricken gloom of the Kansas farmhouse which had been her home; but suddenly there was a movement at her feet, and she stopped, having stumbled over some living thing in the shadows of the couch, something that stirred and struggled and gasped passionately, "Vamos! Vamos!"

Such was the wrathful force of this voice which, with so little courtesy, bade the intruder begone, as fairly to stagger the well-meaning visitor.

"I want to help you, my poor child!" Jane said. And her bosom throbbed at the sight of the little, stony face now lifted upon her from the dusk of the floor—a face with a fierce gleam in its dark eyes, and clouded with a wild array of black hair in which was knotted and twisted a fantastic faja of green wool, narrowly woven.

"I ask no help!" said the child, in very good English. "Only that you go away! We—we want to be by ourselves, here—" suddenly she broke off, glancing piteously toward the couch, and crying out in a changed, husky voice, "Madre mia! muerta! muerta!"

A ray of sunshine sped into the wagon as some hand outside withdrew the rear curtain a little. It shot a sharp radiance through the red and orange of the Indian blanket, and flashed across the array of tin and copper cooking things hung against one of the arching ribs of the canvas hood. Also it disclosed how slight and small a creature it was who spoke so imperatively, asking solitude for her mourning.

Jane, viewing the little, desperate thing, seemed to find in herself no power of consolation. And as she stood wordless, with dimming eyes, there came from without a sound of mingling voices. Others were come with offers of service and sympathy. A confusion of Spanish and English hurtled on Jane's uncomprehending ear; some one climbing the step cried, "Ave Maria!" as his eyes fell on the couch. It was Pablo Vigil, a mild-eyed Mexican, with a miner's lamp burning blue in his cap.

Behind him rose the round, doughy visage of his wife, blank with awe. She muttered a saint's name as she dragged herself upward, and said, "Ay! ay! ay! the poor little one! Let me take her away! So you are here, too, Mees Combs. But she will not speak to you, eh? Lo se! lo se! She will speak to one who is like herself, a Mexican!"

She seemed to gather up the child irresistibly, murmuring over her in language Jane could not understand, "Tell me thy name, pobrecita! Maria de los Dolores, is it? A name of tears, but blessed. And they call thee Lola, surely, as the custom is? Come, querida! Come with me to my house. It will please thy mother!"

It was not precisely clear to Jane how among them the half-dozen Mexican women, who now thronged the wagon and filled it with wailing exclamations, managed to pass the little girl from hand to hand and out into the air. Seeing, however, that this was accomplished, she descended into the crowd of villagers now assembled outside. There was a strange, dumb pain in her breast as she saw the little, green-tricked head disappear in the press about the doctor's buggy. She was sensible of wishing to carry the child home to her own dwelling; and there was in her a kind of jealous pang that Señora Vigil should so easily have accomplished a task of which she herself had made a distinct failure.

"If I'd only known how to call the poor little soul a lot of coaxing names!" deplored Jane, "Then maybe she'd have come with me. She'd have been better off sleeping on my good feather bed than what she will on those ragged Mexican mats over to Vigil's." Then, observing that two burros and several goats, taking advantage of the open gate, were now gorging themselves on her alfalfa, she proceeded to make a stern end of their delight.

Early in the morning of the stranger's burial, Mexicans from up the cañon and down the creek arrived in town in ramshackle wagons, attended by dogs and colts. She who lay dead had been of their race. It was meet that she should not go unfriended to the Campo