“It’s too good to be true,” he decided, looking it over. “I’m chewing bacon and it tastes natural, but I’m betting with myself that this is a dream, and I’ll wake up in the dope pond with my mouth full of sulphur water.”
The girl watched him gravely, and ate sparingly, though parched corn had been her only sustenance through the trail of the dreadful night. Her poor sandals were almost cut from her feet, and even while jesting at the unreality of it all, Kit was making mental note of her needs––the wild burro would at least provide green hide sandals for her until better could be found, and she had earned the best.
He was amazed at her keenness. She did not seem to think, but instinctively to feel her way to required knowledge, caring for herself in the desert as a fledgling bird tossed by some storm from the home nest. He remembered there were wild burros in the Sonora hills, but that she should have already located one on this most barren of mountains was but another unbelievable touch to the trail of enchantment, and after a century of lost lives and treasure in the search for the Indian mine, to think that this Indian stray, picked up on a desolate trail, should have been the one to know that secret and lead him to it!
“Other times you have been here?” he asked as he poured coffee in a tin for Miguel, and dug out the last box of crackers from the grub pack.
“Once I come, one time, and it was to make prayer here. It is mine to know, but not my mother, not other peoples, only the father of me and me. If I die then he show the trail to other one, not if I live. That is how.”
“He surely picked the right member of his honorable family,” decided Kit. “Only once over the trail, once?”
“I knowing it long before I see it,” she explained gravely. “The father of me make that trail in the sand for my eyes when I am only little. I make the same for him in a game to play. When I make every turn right, and name the place, and never forget––then he bring me, for it is mine to know.”
“Sufferin’ cats!” muttered Rhodes, eyeing her in wonder. “The next time I see an Indian kid playing in the sand, I’ll linger on the trail and absorb wisdom!”
“Come,” she said, “you not seeing the one enchant look, the––how you say?––the not believe look.”
“Well, take it from me, Cinderella, I’m seeing not believe things this very now,” announced Kit, giving a fond look towards that comforting gleam of yellow metal bedding flecks of quartz. “I see it, but will have to sleep, and wake up to find it in the same place before I can believe what I think I see.”