When Day Dawned

Upon the flat top of Red Dirt Hill, Howard and Helen drove their
stakes. Thereafter they made a little fire in the shelter of a tumble
of boulders and camped throughout the night under the blazing desert
stars. Were they right? Were they wrong? They did not know. In the
darkness they could make out little of the face of the earth about
them. Alan thought himself certain of one thing: that only near here
could it be likely that Longstreet should have broken off fragments of
stone with so plain a marking of red dirt on them. Helen merely knew
that her father had more than once climbed up here, though she had
laughed at him for seeking gold upon the exalted heights. To know
anything beyond this meagre and unsatisfying data, they must await the
dawn.

The hours passed and Sanchia Murray did not come. Before now, they
estimated, she could have hurried here even though she came on foot;
before now, had she thought of it and had the patience, she might have
found Longstreet's horse. Yet she did not come. The fact made their
uncertainty the greater. They had ample opportunity to ask themselves
a hundred times if they had done the foolish thing in racing off here.
Should they have held by Sanchia?

Toward morning it grew chill and they came closer together over their
little brush fire. They spoke in lowered voices, and not always of
Helen's father and of his gold. At times they spoke of themselves.
To-morrow Helen might be mistress of a bonanza; to-morrow she might be,
as she was to-night, a girl but briefly removed from pennilessness. As
the stars waxed and began at last to wane and the sky brightened, as
the still thin air grew colder at the first promises of another day,