soul and with clenched fingers she said to herself, "I hate the Indians!
In my heart I am a white woman!" She cast one more longing, loving
glance at the disappearing figure and resolution was born in her heart:
"And I will be a white woman, or die!"

She looked hastily about. No one seemed to be watching her. She dropped
the _tinaja_ beside the house and walked swiftly--she feared to run lest
she might attract attention--to the edge of the precipice. There she
looked down over the flight of rude steps, hacked centuries ago in the
stone and worn smooth by many scores of generations of moccasined feet,
which was once the only approach to the fortress-pueblo. It was three
hundred feet down that precipitous wall to where the steps joined the
trail, but from babyhood she had gone up and down, and she knew them
every one. From one to another she fearlessly sprang, and over several
at a time she dropped herself, catching here by her hands and there by
her toes and finally landed, with a last long leap, on the trail. One
glance told her that her lover had almost reached the road at the foot of
the cliff and that if he should then quicken his pace she could scarcely
hope to catch him. But love and determination made steel springs of her
muscles, and she bent herself to the task. For if she could not overtake
him there was no hope anywhere.

Lieutenant Wemple, with his head still hanging on his breast and his
horse creeping along at its own pace, turned from the declivity into the
road which would take him back to Laguna, to the railroad, and to his own
life. There the horse decided to take a rest; and Wemple, aroused to
realization of his surroundings by the sudden stop, jerked himself
together again, straightened up, sent a keen glance across the plain and
over the road in front of him, and struck home his spurs for the gallop
to the railroad station. As the horse leaped forward, he thought he