ground and he and Billy examined the scarf tenderly, eagerly. 

 "I told you! I told you!" exulted Billy hoarsely.  "See that weight fastened to it? Wasn't that smart of her? Bless her heart! Now we got to get above, somehow, and find where she dropped it from!" 

 

 

 CHAPTER VI 

 ENTERING THE DESERT KINDERGARTEN 

 "We'll start now," said Kut-le. 

 Alchise led out the horses. The squaws each threw an emancipated, sinewy leg across a pony's back and followed Alchise's fluttering shirt up the mountain. Kut-le stood holding the bridle of a sedate little horse on which he had fastened a comfortable high-backed saddle. 

 "Come, Rhoda," he said.  "I'll shorten the stirrups after you are mounted." 

 Rhoda stood with her back to the wall, her blue-veined hands clutching the rough out-croppings on either side, horror and fear in her eyes. 

 "I can't ride cross-saddle!" she exclaimed.  "I used to be a good horsewoman in the side-saddle. But I'm so weak that even keeping in the side-saddle is out of the question." 

 "Anything except cross-saddle is utterly out of the question," replied the Indian, "on the sort of trails we have to take. You might as well begin to control your nerves now as later. I'm going to have an expert rider in you by the time you have regained your strength. Come, Rhoda." 

 The girl turned her face to the afterglow. Remote and pitiless lay the distant crimson ranges. She shuddered and turned back to the young Indian who stood watching her. For the moment all the agony of her situation was concentrated in horror of another night in the saddle. 

 "Kut-le, I can't!" 

 "Shall I pick you up and carry you over here?" asked Kut-le patiently. 

 In her weakness and misery, Rhoda's cleft chin quivered. There was only merciless determination in the Indian's face. Slowly the girl walked to his side. He swung her to the saddle, adjusted the stirrups 

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