The night that succeeded the second day of the captives’ sojourn in Apachedom was most beautiful to contemplate.
For hours Mabel Denison and Lina Aiken stood behind the lodge curtains, and gazed through the narrow opening at the stars that glittered in the azure deep of the sky.
They thought of friends who, secure in happy homes, far toward the rising sun, slept and dreamed, perhaps of them.
Such thoughts sent more than one tear down the girls’ cheeks, and, as they turned to the skin couches which red hands had prepared, a sigh for the hopes, the joys, the pleasures of the past, escaped their lips.
Sleep quickly followed their lying down, and near midnight Mabel awoke from a strange dream, wherein home and deserts were wildly commingled.
A slight noise, like the scratchings of a ’coon, against the back of the lodge, saluted her ears. With her heart in her throat, she crept from the couch without disturbing Lina, and put her ear against the side of the structure directly opposite the noise.
Now she knew that a knife was at work, and at last the thin blade slipped through the bark and grazed her cheek.
Then came a low voice.
“Do the pale girls sleep?”
“No!”