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Page 3
'Papa,' she whispered excitedly. 'There's some one already here.'
She led him a few paces and pointed, making him stoop to see. Under
the tangle of a thin brush patch he made out what she had seen. But a
short distance from the spot they had elected for their camp site was a
tiny fire blazing merrily.
'Ahem,' said Helen's father, shifting nervously and looking at his
daughter as though for an explanation of this oddity. 'This is
peculiar. It has an air of--of----'
'Why, it is the most natural thing in the world,' she said swiftly.
'Where would you expect to find a camp-fire if not near a spring?'
'Yes, yes, that part of it is all right,' he admitted grudgingly. 'But
why does he hold back and thereby give one an impression of a desire on
his part for secrecy? Why does he not come forward and make himself
known? I do not mean to alarm you, my dear, but this is not the way an
honest fellow-wayfarer should behave. Wait here for me; I shall
investigate.' Intrepidly he walked toward the fire. Helen kept close
to his side.
'Hello!' he called, when they had taken a dozen steps. They paused and
listened. There was no reply, and Helen's fingers tightened on his
arm. Again he looked to her as though once more he asked the
explanation of her; the look hinted that upon occasion the father
leaned on the daughter more than she on him. He called again. His
voice died away echoless, the silence seeming heavier than before.
When one of the horses behind them, turning from the water, trod upon a
dry twig, both man and girl started. Then Helen laughed and went
forward again.
Since the fire had not lighted itself, it merely bespoke the presence
of a man. Men had no terror to her. In the ripe fullness of her
something less than twenty years she had encountered many of them.
While with due modesty she admitted that there was much in the world
that she did not know, she considered that she 'knew' men.
The two pressed on together. Before they had gone far they were
greeted by the familiar and vaguely comforting odours of boiling coffee
and frying bacon. Still they saw no one. They pushed through the last
clump of bushes and stood by the fire. On the coals was the black
coffee-pot. Cunningly placed upon two stones over a bed of coals was
the frying-pan. Helen stooped instinctively and lifted it aside; the
half-dozen slices of bacon were burned black.
'Hello!' shouted the man a third time, for nothing in the world was
more clear than that whoever had made the fire and begun his supper
preparations must be within call. But no answer came. Meantime the
night had deepened; there was no moon; the taller shrubs, aspiring to
tree proportions, made a tangle of shadow.
'He has probably gone off to picket his horse,' said Helen's father.
'Nothing could be more natural.'
Helen, more matter-of-fact and less given to theorizing, looked about
her curiously. She found a tin cup; there was no bed, no pack, no
other sign to tell who their neighbour might be. Close by the spot
where she had set down the frying-pan she noted a second spring.
Through an open space in the stunted desert growth the trail came in
from the north. Glancing northward she saw for the first time the
outline of a low hill. She stepped quickly to her father's side and
once more laid her hand on his arm.
'What is it?' he asked, his voice sharpening at her sudden grip.
'It's--it's spooky out here,' she said.
He scoffed. 'That's a silly word. In a natural world there is no
place for the supernatural.' He grew testy. 'Can I ever teach you,
Helen, not to employ words utterly meaningless?'
But Helen was not to be shaken.
'Just the same, it is spooky. I can feel it. Look there.' She
pointed. 'There is a hill. There will be a little ring of hills. In
the centre of the basin they make would be the pool. And you know what
we heard about it before we left San Juan. This whole country is
strange, somehow.'
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