"Isn't it strange how easily one can return to the natural life if one has known it before?" said Chiquita later in the evening, as the three lay stretched on their blankets around the small fire which JosÉ had kindled in the center of the grove, and watched the flickering flames and dancing shadows against the dark pine boughs surrounding them.

"The life of yesterday has fallen from me," she continued, gazing pensively into the fire whose red glare illumined her beautiful bronze features.

"Yes, you are an Indian once more, Chiquita mia," said the Captain.

"Ah! you are as much of an Indian as JosÉ or myself!" she retorted gayly. "What a pity you didn't know the life before the land was conquered and tamed by the White man! Verily, a glory has passed from this earth!" A peculiar light shone in JosÉ's eyes as he listened to her words. He seemed on the point of speaking, but did not. He smiled and rolled a fresh cigarillo, lighting it with a pine twig which he took from the fire.

"Tell me why you insisted on our coming this way, Chiquita?" asked the Captain, disposing himself comfortably on his blanket.

"Because I want to see my people again. They are the strongest and most advanced people in Mexico, and we will be safe with them until things have quieted down. Because I wanted you to see where I came from and how I lived before Padre Antonio introduced me to a new world and made of me a woman that you could love. Besides, we can start from their country on our camping trip as well as from any other place. My people are not quite the savages you probably think them. But there is something else," she continued after a pause. "I was impelled, drawn this way. Why, I can not say, but something always kept pointing me toward the northwest. I feel as though the climax of our lives is yet to come; that we are on the verge of something great; that our work in life may begin with them."

"Perhaps it may be so!" interrupted JosÉ, no longer able to conceal the agitation her words aroused in him. "That is, if the vision of the White Cloud prove to be true. At any rate, my people await your coming," he added. At the mention of the White Cloud, Chiquita sat bolt upright, regarding JosÉ intently the while—then rose to her feet.

"The White Cloud? Your people?" she repeated excitedly. "Then you are a Tewana?" JosÉ also had risen from his sitting posture, and dropping on one knee with face downward and both arms extended straight out before him with the palms of the hands turned downward, he exclaimed in the Tewana tongue: "Princess, Flaming Star—I greet you! I am Onakipo, the Pine Tree, son of Ixlao, the Swan!" JosÉ's attitude and manner of speech formed a most striking picture. He had not even revealed his true identity to the Captain.

Chiquita had noticed the furtive, stolen glances he had cast at her from time to time during the journey, a thing strange in an Indian, and it caused her some uneasiness, but now she understood. He had just acknowledged her by his attitude of submission and the salute common to his people, as their tribal head.

"You and I, Princess, were the sole survivors of that last battle in which your father's band was annihilated," continued JosÉ in Spanish, seating himself once more on the ground on the other side of the fire opposite Chiquita who again had taken her place beside the Captain.

"I do not wonder that you did not recognize me," he went on after a pause, during which he rolled and lit a fresh cigarillo. "I was a mere boy at the time. The battle, you will remember, took place just before sunset, and when the enemy charged our camp, I was struck on the head, as you see by the scar over my left eye. I fell over a ledge of rock into a gully below, alighting in a thick clump of bushes, breaking my fall and saving my life. Fortunately the bushes concealed me from view, causing the enemy to overlook me, else they certainly had finished me before departing. I lay unconscious all that night until noon of the following day, when I awoke. For a long time after awakening I was too weak to rise, but finally I managed to crawl to the little stream that ran at the bottom of the gully just below me. There I slaked my thirst and washed my face and wound and bound it up as best I could. All that afternoon I lay by the stream, drinking and dipping my head in the water until evening, when I regained sufficient strength to crawl back to the top of the great rock where we made our last stand.

"There, a ghastly sight met my eyes. With his back against a large bowlder where the enemy had placed him, sat your father, the Whirlwind, still dressed in his war regalia and around him, just as they had fallen, lay our dead comrades. I counted them. There were forty-eight in all, and as you were not among the dead, I rightly conjectured, as it soon afterward proved, that you had been taken prisoner. Three weeks later I succeeded in reaching our people and told the news. A war party was organized immediately, and I guided it back to the land of the Ispali where after a battle, we learned of your capture and escape from several of the Ispali whom we succeeded in capturing.

"That was ten years ago, and ever since then, we have sent out runners each year to visit the towns and villages throughout the land in the hope of finding you and bringing you back again to rule over us; for as you know, Princess, you are the last of the royal blood. But in vain. In spite of the fact that the White Cloud, our great Sachem, said you were still alive, that he repeatedly saw you among the living in his visions and predicted your return, we found no trace of you. That was because we had overlooked Santa FÉ. It lies so far east of our country that it escaped our notice. We never imagined that you had crossed the Sierra Madres in your flight, and had I not chanced to enter the Captain's service, we probably never would have heard of you again.

"But now I understand that it was so intended—that the time was not yet ripe. That the Great Spirit had ordained you should not return to your people until you had become worthy of the charge which is about to be conferred upon you, and which, as you shall presently learn, goes to prove the truth of the subsequent prophecies the White Cloud made concerning you." He paused and for some minutes gazed silently into the fire. He had accompanied his narrative with intense, dramatic gestures and expressions illustrative of its incidents; a characteristic common to his race. Presently a smile lit up his face and looking up once more, he resumed.

"You remember, Princess, how the White Cloud counseled us to accept the terms of the Government, bad though they were, and make peace, and prophesied that disaster would befall us if we refused. Well, then as now, events have proved the truth of his words. As the years went by and no further trace of you could be found, the people lost hope of ever seeing you again and said you were dead. But the White Cloud maintained that you were still alive; that the day of your return was drawing ever nearer; that he heard the song of birds and the sound of laughing waters and beheld the desert carpeted with flowers in his vision and you in their midst coming towards them, which typified the renewal of life and rebirth of the nation. But when he announced that he always saw you in the company of a white man who later should rule over us, they laughed at his prophecies.

"'A white man rule over the Tewana? How absurd—impossible!' They shook their heads and said: 'The White Cloud is old—his vision has become dim, impaired through age!'"

The Captain and Chiquita were too amazed by JosÉ's words to venture a reply, and sat gazing alternately at one another and then at the speaker.

"When I first met the Captain," continued JosÉ, "I wondered greatly why I was so drawn toward him. True, he was a man to my liking and I was doubly grateful to him for saving my life, but that did not wholly account for my attachment. I was drawn to him irresistibly as by an invisible power. I could not leave him; and when I again saw you, Princess, on the day that you and the beautiful SeÑorita met for the first time and heard from your own lips who you were as well as your avowal of love for my Master, I knew then that the White Cloud had read rightly the future; that my Master, the Grand SeÑor, had been chosen by the Great Spirit to rule with you over our people.

"It was then that I learned how you had come to Padre Antonio, after which I returned to our people and told them what I knew; that I had found not only you, but also the White Chief whom the White Cloud had seen in his vision, and that, if you returned to them at all, it would surely be as his bride. At first they would not believe me, but when I persisted and reminded them of the disasters that had befallen us in the past for our failure to heed the White Cloud's councils, they at last yielded and called a grand council and decided to send a deputation composed of the leading men of the nation to verify my statements.

"It was not so much the news that you were still alive that was so difficult for them to believe, but that a white man should rule over them—a thing impossible and past all belief; besides, they would not have it. However, when I conducted the deputation, consisting of six of our leading men, to Santa FÉ and they secretly beheld you, Princess, they one and all exclaimed as with one breath: ''Tis she, the Princess—the Flaming Star! How like her father, the Whirlwind, she is!'

"They wanted to disclose their identity to you then and there and exhort you to return with them to your people, but I persuaded them to wait, reminding them that the White Cloud's prophecy was not yet entirely fulfilled. I then showed you to them, Master," he went on, addressing the Captain, "and although they acknowledged that you were a magnificent specimen of a man and had the appearance of one born to command, they shook their heads and said it was impossible—that a White Chief could never rule over the Tewana.

"'Of a truth,' I answered, 'the black-robed Padres are right! You are a stiff-necked people who persist in following in the footsteps of our forefathers who, we all know, were unable to lead the people to the light. Only the White Cloud was able to foresee the future; grasp the significance of both the Padres' and our ancient Sachems' teachings. That the old order of things had come to an end. That the time had come when strife must cease among men; that the tidings were now to be fulfilled which the White Child with a face like the sun had brought to the world, and whose coming our ancient Sachems had predicted in the ancient days. Know also, that the Princess has seen the great world which you have not seen; that in many ways she is more like a white woman than one of our race; that she is wiser than you are; that the Great Spirit has shown her the things that are good for us, and if she becomes the wife of the White Chief, you must accept him if you accept her, for without him she will never return to you. Besides, the White Chief is the wisest of us all. In his sight both we and most of the men of his own race are as children.'

"They could not find a fitting answer to my words and returned to our people. Ever since then runners have been coming and going constantly between us. They have been apprised of our coming and await us." JosÉ ceased speaking and sat gazing meditatively into the fire where he watched the pink and violet flames leap upward and lose themselves in the thin wreath of white smoke which slowly ascended and floated away over the tree tops. For some time no one spoke, then Captain Forest finally broke the silence.

"What you say, JosÉ, is truly wonderful; but know, that we have no more desire to rule the Tewana than to rule other men. But should they, like the rest of the world, fail to heed our example, they shall perish in their ignorance." He leaned forward and tossed some fresh sticks of wood on the fire.

"It is time for the first watch, JosÉ," he continued, rising to his feet and glancing up at the stars visible above the tree tops. "Call me when the Great Bear has half circled the Pole Star. I'll keep the second watch."