Under the willows at the edge of the pool a young girl sat
daydreaming, though the day was nearly done. All in the valley was
wrapped in shadow, though the cliffs and turrets across the stream
were resplendent in a radiance of slanting sunshine. Not a cloud
tempered the fierce glare of the arching heavens or softened the sharp
outline of neighboring peak or distant mountain chain. Not a whisper
of breeze stirred the drooping foliage along the sandy shores or
ruffled the liquid mirror surface. Not a sound, save drowsy hum of
beetle or soft murmur of rippling waters, among the pebbly shallows
below, broke the vast silence of the scene. The snow cap, gleaming at
the northern horizon, lay one hundred miles away and looked but an
easy one-day march.
The black upheavals of the Matitzal, barring the
southward valley, stood sullen and frowning along the Verde, jealous
of the westward range that threw their rugged gorges into early shade.
Above and below the still and placid pool and but a few miles distant,
the pine-fringed, rocky hillsides came shouldering close to the
stream, but fell away, forming a deep, semicircular basin toward the
west, at the hub of which stood bolt-upright a tall, snowy flagstaff,
its shred of bunting hanging limp and lifeless from the peak, and in
the dull, dirt-colored buildings of adobe, ranged in rigid lines about
the dull brown, flat-topped mesa, a thousand yards up stream above
the pool, drowsed a little band of martial exiles, stationed here to
keep the peace 'twixt scattered settlers and swarthy, swarming
Apaches. The fort was their soldier home; the solitary girl a
soldier's daughter.
She could hardly have been eighteen. Her long, slim figure, in its
clinging riding habit, betrayed, despite roundness and supple grace, a
certain immaturity. Her hands and feet were long and slender. Her
sun-tanned cheek and neck were soft and rounded. Her mouth was
delicately chiseled and the lips were pink as the heart of a
Bridesmaid rose, but, being firmly closed, told no tale of the teeth
within, without a peep at which one knew not whether the beauty of the
sweet young face was really made or marred. Eyes, eyebrows, lashes,
and a wealth of tumbling tresses of rich golden brown were all superb,
but who could tell what might be the picture when she opened those
pretty, curving lips to speak or smile? Speak she did not, even to the
greyhounds stretched sprawling in the warm sands at her feet. Smile
she could not, for the young heart was sore troubled.
Back in the thick of the willows she had left her pony, blinking
lazily and switching his long tail to rid his flanks of humming
insects, but never mustering energy enough to stamp a hoof or strain
a thread of his horsehair riata. Both the long, lean, sprawling
hounds lolled their red, dripping tongues and panted in the sullen
heat. Even the girl herself, nervous at first and switching with her
dainty whip at the crumbling sands and pacing restlessly to and fro,
had yielded gradually to the drooping influences of the hour and,
seated on a rock, had buried her chin in the palm of her hand, and,
with eyes no longer vagrant and searching, had drifted away into
maiden dreamland. Full thirty minutes had she been there waiting for
something, or somebody, and it, or he, had not appeared.