Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise

"Perhaps we'll find her safe at home," Roger even managed a smile with his broken lips.

"Let's not stop to eat again!" exclaimed Charley.

Roger nodded. They reloaded Peter who was well gorged on spring water and the uncertain looking herbage that grew about its brim.

The trail back was nearly all downward and they had covered it by noon. Roger told Charley of his strange awakening dream of which he made light, but when they sighted the little monument in the distance, they both hurried toward it.

It was there that they found Felicia. On the west side of the monument the prospector had begun a hole and left it. It was not over a foot in depth nor over three feet square. Too small to show in the vast levels of the desert until one was upon it and protected from view from the mountain because of the monument, tiny as it was, it was not too small to hold her little body, huddled face downward, arms and legs cramped.

Roger lifted her out and Charley, without a word, fainted. Roger groaned and covered his eyes for a moment, then he took the pack blanket and rolled the little body in it and left it while he turned to Charley. A part of the canteen of water poured gently over her face revived her. As soon as Roger saw that she was looking at him intelligently he said, sternly: "Charley, you've got to brace up until we can get home. You must help me get you and her back by keeping as much of a grip on yourself as you can. Remember this is desert noon and we can't temporize. You mount Peter. We'll leave the pack here. I'll carry Felicia."

He took the shot gun from the pack and fired three shots into the air, followed by two more; the code that Ernest had suggested after the first night's hunt had led them to fear the worst. Then he lifted the little blanketed form across his breast and slowly led the way back to the ranch. He could not weep. He could not curse. He could only hope, blindly, that the volcano within him would not burst forth until his work was done.

Ernest met him a short distance from the ranch house, and took the little body from his arms, without a word. Roger turned back to Charley.

"I'm not coming up to the house just now," he said gruffly. "I'm afraid to see Dick."

Elsa, hurrying up to help her friend, tears streaming down her tired, pretty face, heard this: "Don't try to see him, Rog, but you're not fit to go down to the camp yet. Lie down on the cot on the porch for a little while first."