had hit for the state line, knowing that Nevada was a wilderness,
and feeling that I'd surely lose them there. And I did. But in doing
it I nearly lost Merridy. You see, the constant travel and hardship
was too much for a prattling baby, and she fell sick from the heat
and the dust and the thirst. I'd been going and going till I was a
riding skeleton, till my arms were crooked and dead from holding
her, but this new thing frightened me like those men and dogs had
never done. Here was a thing I couldn't hide from nor outride, so I
doubled back and came boldly into the watered country again,
expecting they would take me, of course, for a runaway man with a
babe in his arms isn't hard to identify, but I didn't care. I was
bound for the nearest ranch or mining-camp where a woman could be
found; but, as luck would have it, I went through without trying. I
had gone farther from men and things, however, than I thought, and
this return pursuit was a million times worse than the other, for I
couldn't go fast enough to shake Death, who ran with his hand on my
cantle or rode on my horse's rump. It was then I found Alluna. She
was with a hunting-party of Pah-Utes, who knew nothing of me nor of
the white man's affairs, and cared less; and when I saw the little
squaw I rode my horse up beside her, laid the sick child in her
arms, then tumbled out of the saddle. They had a harder job to pull
me through than they did to save Merridy, for I'd given the baby all
the water and hadn't slept or rested for many years, so it seemed.

"The little one was playing around several days before I got back my
reason. Meanwhile the party had moved North, taking us with them,
and, as it happened, just missing a posse who were returning from
the desert.

"When I was able to get about I told Alluna that I must be going,