ecember, and the noonday sun at Sandy still beat hotly on the barren level of the parade. The fierce and sudden campaign seemed ended, for the time, at least, as only in scattered remnants could the renegade Indians be found. Eastward from the Agua Fria to the Chiquito, and northward from the Salado to the very cliffs of the grand caÑon, the hard-worked troopers had scoured the wild and mountainous country, striking hard whenever they found a hostile band, striving ever, through interpreters and runners, to bring the nervous and suspicious tribes to listen to reason and to return to their reservations. This for long days, however, seemed impossible. The tragic death of Raven Shield, most popular of the young chiefs, struck down, as they claimed, when he was striving only to defend Natzie, daughter of a revered leader, had stirred the savages to furious reprisals, and nothing but the instant action of the troops in covering the valley had saved the scattered settlers from universal massacre. Enough had been done by one band alone to thrill the West with horror, but these had fled southward into Mexico and were safe beyond the border. The settlers were slowly creeping back now to their abandoned homes, and one after another the First to come in was Stout's triumphant half hundred, the happiest family of horse and foot, commingled, ever seen upon the Pacific slope, for their proud lot it had been to reach and rescue Angela, beloved daughter of the regiment, and Blakely, who had well-nigh sacrificed himself in the effort to find and save her. Stout and his thirty "doughboys," Brewster, the sergeant, with his twenty troopers, had been welcomed by the entire community as the heroes of the brief campaign, but Stout would none of their adulation. "There is the one you should thank and bless," said he, his eyes turning to where stood Natzie, sad and silent, watching the attendants who were lifting Neil Blakely from the litter to the porch of the commanding officer. They had brought her in with them, Lola and Alchisay as well—the last two scowling and sullen, but ruled by the chieftain's daughter. They had loaded her with praise and thanks, but she paid no heed. Two hours after Stout and his troopers had reached the cliff and driven away the murderous band of renegades—Tontos and Apache Yumas—bent on stealing her captives, there had come a little party of her own kindred in answer to her signals, but these would have been much too late. Blakely would have been butchered. Angela and her benefactors, too, would probably have been the victims of "Can't you make her understand, Mr. Arnold?" she pleaded. "I don't know a word of her language, and I And then the frontiersman did a thing for which, when she heard of it one sunset later, his better half said words of him and to him that overstepped all bounds of parliamentary usage, and that only a wife would dare to employ. With the blundering stupidity of his sex, poor Arnold "settled things" for many a day and well-nigh ruined the sweetest romance that Sandy had ever seen the birth of. "Ah, Miss Angela! only one place will ever be home to Natzie now. Her eyes will tell you that." And already, regardless of anything these women of the white chiefs might think or say, unafraid save of seeing him no more, unashamed save of being where she could not heed his every look or call or gesture, the daughter of the mountain and the desert stood gazing again after the vanished form her eyes long months had worshiped, and the daughter of the schools and civilization stood flushing one-half moment, then slowly paling, as, without another glance or effort, she turned silently away. Kate Sanders it was who sprang quickly after her and encircled the slender waist with her fond and clasping arm. That night the powers of all Camp Sandy were exhausted in effort to suitably provide for Natzie and her two companions. Mrs. Sanders, Mrs. Bridger, even Mother Shaughnessy and Norah pleaded successively with this princess of the wilderness, and pleaded in vain. At tattoo there came a Mexican woman from one of the down-stream ranches, sent in by the post trader, who said she could speak the Apache-Mohave language sufficiently well to make Natzie understand the situation, and this frontier linguist strove earnestly. Natzie understood every word she said, was her report, but could not be made to understand that she ought to go. In the continued absence of Mrs. Plume, both the major and the post surgeon had requested of Mrs. Graham that she should come over for a while and "see what she could do," and, leaving her own sturdy bairnies, the good, motherly soul had come and presided over this diplomatic interview, propos "Has she been tould Miss Angela and—him—is no kin at all, at all?" "I don't want her told," said Mrs. Graham briefly. And so Natzie was still there, sitting sleepless in the soft and radiant moonlight, when toward twelve o'clock Graham came forth from his last visit for the night, and she lifted up her head and looked him dumbly in the face,—dumbly, yet imploring a word of hope or comfort,—and it was more than the soft-hearted Scot could bear. "Major," said he, as he gently laid a big hand upon the black and tangled wealth of hair, "that lad in yonder would have been beyond the ken of civilization days ago if it hadn't been for this little savage. I'm thinking he'll sleep none the worse for her watching over him. Todd's there for the night, the same that attended him before, and she won't be strange with him—or I'm mistaken." "Why?" asked Plume, mystified. "I'm not saying, until Blakely talks for himself. For one reason I don't know. For another, he's the man to tell, if anybody," and a toss of the head toward the dark doorway told who was meant by "he." "D'you mean you'd have this girl squatting there by Blakely's bedside the rest of the night?" asked the commander, ruffled in spirit. "What's to prevent her singing their confounded death song, or invoking heathen spirits, or knifing us all, for that matter?" "What was to prevent her from knifing the Bugologist and Angela both, when she had 'em?" was the sturdy reply. "The girl's a theoretical heathen, but a practical Christian. Come with us, Natzie," he finished, one hand extended to aid her to rise, the other pointing to the open doorway. She was on her feet in an instant, and, silently signing her companions to stay, followed the doctor into the house. And so it happened that when Blakely wakened, hours later, the sight that met him, dimly comprehending, was that of a blue-coated soldier snoozing in a reclining chair, a blue-blanketed Indian girl seated on the floor near the foot of his bed, looking with all her soul in her gaze straight into his wondering eyes. At his low whisper, "Natzie," she sprang to her feet without word or sound; seized the thin white hand tremulously extended toward her, and, pillowing her cheek upon it, knelt humbly by the bedside, her black hair streaming to the floor. A pathetic picture it made in the dim light of the newborn day, forcing itself through the shrouded windows, and Major Plume, restless and astir the hour before reveille, stood unnoted a moment at the doorway, then strode back through the hall and summoned from the adjoining veranda another sleepless watcher, gratefully breathing the fra Todd, roused to instant action at sight of the post commander, bent quickly and nabbed the first. The girl herself darted after the second, whereat the attendant, misjudging her motive, dreading danger to his betters or rebuke to himself, sprang upon her as she stooped, and dropping his first prize, dared to seize the Apache girl with both hands at the throat. There was a warning cry from the bed, a flash of steel through one slanting ray of sunshine, a shriek from the lips of Janet Wren, and with a stifled moan the luckless soldier sank in his tracks, while |