Ruth left the children alone in the tent. Fifteen minutes later she returned and Carlos had again disappeared. This time she made up her mind that the Indian boy must be sent back to his own people, since they could do nothing to stop his disobedience. But Olive had been trying to teach the little fellow to read and write, and in straightening up her bed Ruth found a piece of torn yellow paper. On it Carlos had written in quaint, scrawling letters: "I Go Girl Never Afrid. Find Not, Come Back Not."
Ruth put the letter away; her heart once more softened toward the lad, hoping for his sake that he might be the one to bring Jack to them.
But no one need have been troubled about Jack on this wonderful summer morning. Quite comfortably she awoke in her nest of branches to a bewildering chorus of song, a little stiff, of course; hungry and thirsty. But climbing out on the ground, she ran for half a mile until the soreness was out of her muscles and the surging blood warmed her heart and cheeks. Jack took off her sweater, carrying it under her arm, the wind blew back her hair, which had the colors of the sun in it, her lips were open and full and a deep crimson. If ever any of the old-time pagan goddesses that one reads of in mythology sheds her influence over the modern girl, Jack had drawn some of her spirit from Diana. She looked as you might imagine Diana to have looked after she had spent the night hunting with her maidens in some lonely forest—fresh, brilliant and gay.
When Jack stopped to rest from her run she saw, near the rocky gorges and in many of the waste places, red cacti blooming against the gray buttes, like splashes of flame. Gathering a little she stuck it in her belt, but Jack hoped to discover a cactus plant of a different kind. Her father and Jim had taught her all they knew of the plants and flowers that grow in the American desert, for they wished her to be prepared for just such an emergency as had now befallen her. At first Jack kept close to the path at the side of the gorge, retracing the steps she had wrongly taken the night before. When she came beyond the thicket through which the cougar had followed her, a stretch of arid country spread away to her right on this side the gorge. Standing in the desert with nothing about it but sand and sage brush, Jack spied the cactus she sought. It rose like a tree, with thick, bunchy leaves at its base, and dozens of clusters of small mustard-colored flowers on separate branches sticking out from its summit like the ribs of an umbrella.
The American aloe has been the salvation of many a traveler in the desert country of the West. Hurrying to it, Jack cut away some of the thick leaves and then settling herself comfortably in the sand she sucked the sap from the leaves until her throat was no longer parched and her hunger and thirst were both appeased.
She was resting, trying to make up her mind to go back to the ravine, where Jim would surely find her, when she heard a well-known whistle. It was not like the note of a bird, and yet it did not seem to come from a human throat, yet Jack recognized it at once. It was the odd sound Carlos made when calling to the birds in the woods or fields. The call had traveled a great distance in the clear morning air.
Jack clapped her hands loudly. "I am coming, Carlos, I am coming," she cried; "wait for me." Then she ran back toward the edge of the cliff. She would have liked to cry out with pleasure when she first saw Carlos, but instead kept quite still.
The lad had made himself a whistle from a stalk of wild grass that grew like a reed. He was wandering along searching everywhere for Jack, yet beguiling his way with wonderful woodland noises which he made through his whistle. A robin sat perched on his black hair, several other birds fluttered over his head, afraid to alight and yet unwilling to leave him. If Jack had suggested the huntress Diana, Carlos looked like a follower of Pan. Surely in mythological days just such red-brown boys had accompanied the old wood god, making the weird and eerie music that caused a smile to hover ever on his wild face.
The caravan party, except Jim and the truants, were eating luncheon when Jack and Carlos burst in upon them. Jack flew to Ruth, flinging her arms about her and giving her a breathless hug. "It was all my fault, as usual," she explained, "but there is nothing the matter with me except a bruise on my forehead and an empty feeling in another place." Jack stopped, suddenly discovering the presence of the stranger, Ralph Merrit.
Hugging Jack with one arm, Ruth respectfully shook hands with Carlos with the other. The small lad tried not to show emotion, but a light of triumph shone in his eyes. He and not the "Big White Chief" had found "The Girl Who Was Never Afraid." Now surely he would be forgiven the sin of his failure to keep faith.