An hour later found the Warlow family at the foot of Antelope Butte, whither they had all driven to make a search for—what they shrank from saying. They had been there only a short time when they saw the Estill carriage coming. When it drew near they discovered that it was Mrs. Estill and Mora, who, when they were assisted to alight, said they had seen the Warlow carriage with their field-glass, and suspecting the meaning of its visit to the butte, they had hurried up to join the search with their friends.
As Clifford, Rob, and Ralph were carefully searching the face of the declivity, Mrs. Warlow told Mrs. Estill of the remarkable fact that she had also seen that mystic light on the night it had disappeared from Estill Ranch; then, as Mora drew near, she gave a circumstantial account of the event, which caused her hearers to exchange looks of perplexed amazement.
Mora became thoughtfully silent, and, leaving the others, she wandered restlessly back and forth at the foot of the bluff, watching the searchers intently.
She was startled at length by a cry of astonishment from Clifford, and with the others she hastened up the steep acclivity to where he stood in a recess of the cliff. When she reached his side he was leaning heavily against the rocky wall, white and trembling.
"Oh, Clifford! speak! what is it?" she cried, breathless with a strange dread.
He could only point to the face of the rock with an unsteady finger, while the sweat-drops rained down from his white face, wrung by an agony of emotion which he vainly strove to repress.
Sinking down upon the sloping mound, matted with grass, and kneeling there at the foot of the cliff she read with a startled gaze the inscription which was carved in faint, moss-grown letters, upon the magnesian stone:—
"My Ivarene, my lost love, lies dead beside me with our little child, cold and still, on her breast. I am wounded and dying; but death is sweet now. We were coming here to watch for the trains when we were assaulted by the strange hunter, who shot us both. My love only breathed one breath. I carried her here. The child was pierced by the same shot. My eyes are growing dim; but I welcome death. Oh, farewell, bright world! I feel my life ebbing fast away, but would not stay without my darling. I go to meet her where there will be no more parting. Oh, the joy and bliss to see her smile again! It makes me long for death. We shall live again! Bru—"
With a wild cry of agonized grief, Mora covered her face, while the others read, with streaming eyes, that last message from the tomb. Then, as they drew back and waited with broken sobs and smothered weeping, Ralph and Robbie began tenderly to remove the débris and soil which time had formed into a mound below the inscription.
When, at last, there was revealed two skeletons, locked together in the last clasp of love, which even death could not sever, Maud cried aloud with a wail of anguish:—