She was with him, a slender shape, a spirit, keeping step
with him, and memory was strong, sweet, beating, beautiful.
Far down in the west, faintly golden with light of the sinking moon,
he saw a cloud that resembled her face. A cloud on the desert horizon!
He gazed and gazed. Was that a spirit face like the one by his
side? No--he did not dream.
In the hot, sultry morning Yaqui appeared at camp, after long hours
of absence, and he pointed with a long, dark arm toward the west.
A bank of clouds was rising above the mountain barrier.
"Rain!" he cried; and his sonorous voice rolled down the arroyo.
Those who heard him were as shipwrecked mariners at sight of a
distant sail.
Dick Gale, silent, grateful to the depths of his soul, stood with
arm over Blanco Sol and watched the transforming west, where
clouds of wonderous size and hue piled over one another, rushing,
darkening, spreading, sweeping upward toward that white and glowing
sun.
When they reached the zenish and swept round to blot out the blazing
orb, the earth took on a dark, lowering aspect. The red of sand
and lava changed to steely gray. Vast shadows, like ripples on
water, sheeted in from the gulf with a low, strange moan. Yet
the silence was like death. The desert was awaiting a strange
and hated visitation--storm! If all the endless torrid days, the
endless mystic nights had seemed unreal to Gale, what, then, seemed
this stupendous spectacle?
"Oh! I felt a drop of rain on my face!" cried Mercedes; and
whispering the name of a saint, she kissed her husband.
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