The cavalcade of white horses passed within five hundred yards of
campfires, around which dark forms moved in plain sight. Soft pads
in sand, faint metallic tickings of steel on thorns, low, regular
breathing of horses--these were all the sounds the fugitives made,
and they could not have been heard at one-fifth the distance.
The lights disappeared from time to time, grew dimmer, more
flickering, and at last they vanished altogether. Belding's fleet
and tireless steeds were out in front; the desert opened ahead wide,
dark, vast. Rojas and his rebels were behind, eating, drinking, careless.
The somber shadow lifted from Gale's heart. He held now an unquenchable
faith in the Yaqui. Belding would be listening back there along the river.
He would know of the escape. He would tell Nell, and then hide her safely.
As Gale accepted a strange and fatalistic foreshadowing of toil, blood,
and agony in this desert journey, so he believed in Mercedes's ultimate
freedom and happiness, and his own return to the girl who had grown
dearer than life.
A cold, gray dawn was fleeing before a rosy sun when Yaqui halted
the march at Papago Well. The horses were taken to water, then
led down the arroyo into the grass. Here packs were slipped,
saddles removed. Mercedes was cold, lame, tired, but happy. It
warmed Gale's blood to look at her. The shadow of fear still lay
in her eyes, but it was passing. Hope and courage shone there,
and affection for her ranger protectors and the Yaqui, and
unutterable love for the cavalryman.
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