The offering was flung out by the bubbling water, and as he stared,
distressed at this unwelcome omen, a picture formed on the surface--the
anguished features of Zecana. He ran to his horse, galloped away, and
paused neither for rest nor food till he had reached the post. The
Spaniard was gone. Turning, then, to the foot-hills, he urged his jaded
horse toward his cabin, and arrived, one bright morning, flushed with joy
to see his wife before his door and to hear her singing. When he spoke
she looked up carelessly and resumed her song. She did not know him.
Reason was gone.

It was his cry of rage and grief, when, from her babbling, Ta-in-ga-ro
learned of the Spaniard's treachery, that brought the wandering mind back
for an instant. Looking at her husband with a strange surprise and pain,
she plucked the knife from his belt. Before he could realize her purpose
she had thrust it into her heart and had fallen dead at his feet. For
hours he stood there in stupefaction, but the stolid Indian nature soon
resumed its sway. Setting his lodge in order and feeding his horse, he
wrapped Zecana's body in a buffalo-skin, then slept through the night in
sheer exhaustion. Two nights afterward the Indian stood in the shadow of
a room in the trading fort and watched the Spaniard as he lay asleep.
Nobody knew how he passed the guard.

In the small hours the traitor was roused by the strain of a belt across
his mouth, and leaping up to fling it off, he felt the tug of a lariat at
his throat. His struggles were useless. In a few moments he was bound
hand and foot. Lifting some strips of bark from the low roof, Ta-in-ga-ro
pushed the Spaniard through the aperture and lowered him to the ground,
outside the enclosure of which the house formed part. Then, at the embers
of a fire he kindled an arrow wrapped in the down of cottonwood and shot
it into a haystack in the court. In the smoke and confusion thus made,