Lone Pine: The Story of a Lost Mine

by R. B. Townshend

"Oh yes, of course they must know them all; why, they're simply bound to know this whole country just like a book. They'd never be able to fly around in it, keeping themselves out of sight in the way they do, if they didn't."

The pair seated themselves on the rock forming the lip of the cistern. They were here out of earshot of the Indians if they did not speak loud.

"Now tell me, señorita," he began in a low voice, "how you were carried off."

She blushed and looked down. "I hardly know how to say it," she said, "it was all so quick. I had got up and gone across the patio, thinking it was near daybreak—you know there was no moon—and never dreaming of the possibility of any danger inside the house, when I was seized from behind, and gagged and bound in a moment; and then they threw a riata round me and lifted me to the top of the house, and down the outside on to a pony's back, and I was hurried off I knew not where. Oh, it was dreadful! I was gagged so that I could not even cry out, and I did not know where they were taking me or what would become of me. Oh, I was terribly frightened!" She paused, quite overcome for the moment by the recollection.

Stephens felt a passion of pity sweep through his whole being at the thought of the helpless plight of this lovely girl in the hands of enemies—such enemies! "Yes," he said soothingly, taking her hand again in his—they had unclasped hands as they sat down; "don't be afraid; you're all right now; but go on and tell me about it."

"There isn't anything to tell," she answered with a little half-laugh that was almost hysterical. "They held me on a horse, and we rode and we rode and we rode, till I was so tired that I thought I should have fainted; but," said she proudly, "I didn't faint. Then, when the daylight came, I was blindfolded with a rag—pah!"—she added with a little moue of disgust—"such a dirty rag!—I don't like these Indians,—they're not at all clean people."

Stephens could not help smiling to himself at this bit of petulance. If she had nothing worse to complain of than their lack of soap and water they could afford to smile a little now, he and she both.

"Yes," he assented with amused gravity, "they do show a most reprehensible neglect of the washtub. In fact, I don't suppose there's such a thing as a proper washboard in the whole Navajo nation."

Their eyes met again, and they both laughed, he of set purpose to raise her spirits, she because she could not help it. The awful tension of her captivity, a tension that had never ceased for a moment, not even in her fitful and broken snatches of sleep, was relaxed at last. In the presence of this brave man who had come to rescue her, confidence returned, and now the reaction of feeling was so strong that, had she let herself go, she could have laughed as wildly as a maniac. But her spirit was unbroken, and she held herself in.