When the two riders appeared a pack of wolf-dogs made a mad rush at the stranger.
Suddenly his horse snorted and stopped. Tom wondered what it had heard for surely there was nothing to see, but he was not long puzzled, for a second later a lean, shaggy pony, ridden by a small Indian boy, emerged from what seemed to be solid rock. Tom urged his horse forward and hailed the little fellow who, after looking at the stranger with startled eyes, seemed about to return by the way he had come. Then it was Tom remembered something. He had been told to say to the first Indian he met, “Virginia Davis sent me,” which sentence, he had been assured would prove an open sesame that would win for him admittance and welcome.
Nor had he been misinformed, for, when the small Indian boy who was about to disappear, heard the name which Tom called, he smiled, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth, and then, silently beckoning he led the way through a crevice, so narrow that Tom no longer wondered that it had escaped his observation.
It gradually widened, however, into a canyon which at last opened into a huge bowl-shaped valley where the grass was green and where clumps of scarlet flowers were blossoming.
Scattering about were a dozen or more low adobe huts and in the midst of them in a large corral were many wiry Indian ponies.
When the two riders appeared a pack of wolf-dogs made a mad rush at the stranger, barking furiously. However at a word of command from the small Indian boy, they slunk away, to Tom’s secret relief. The lad had evidently assured them that the intruder was a friend and not a foe.
The Indian boy knew little English, but he led Tom to the most imposing of the adobe huts. There he paused and uttered a cry like that of some wild bird.
Tom gazed curiously at the open door which was festooned with dried red peppers. He wondered who would appear. He hoped and believed that it would be Winona, the Indian maiden, who was Virginia’s friend, but instead a shriveled old Indian woman wrapped in a bright-colored blanket shuffled to the door and evidently asked the lad what he wished at the home of the chief.
Tom understood only one word in the lad’s reply and that was “Winona.” For answer the old woman silently pointed toward the nearest cliff. Tom, looking in that direction, saw a graceful Indian girl approaching and on her head she was balancing a very large red pottery jar which was almost brimming full of sparkling water from a mountain spring.
Whirling his pony, the little Indian had galloped toward the dusky maiden, who paused to listen to what he had to say with an eager interest.