She was gone before he came out of his bewilderment.  He rushed down the trail; he called her name.  The gloom had swallowed her, and only the echo of his voice made answer.

XII ECHO CLIFFS

When thought came clearly to him he halted irresolute.  For Mescal’s sake he must not appear to have had any part in her headlong flight, or any knowledge of it.

With stealthy footsteps he reached the cottonwoods, stole under the gloomy shade, and felt his way to a point beyond the twinkling lights.  Then, peering through the gloom until assured he was safe from observation, and taking the dark side of the house, he gained the hall, and his room.  He threw himself on his bed, and endeavored to compose himself, to quiet his vibrating nerves, to still the triumphant bell-beat of his heart.  For a while all his being swung to the palpitating consciousness of joy—­Mescal had taken her freedom.  She had escaped the swoop of the hawk.

While Hare lay there, trying to gather his shattered senses, the merry sound of voices and the music of an accordion hummed from the big living-room next to his.  Presently heavy boots thumped on the floor of the hall; then a hand rapped on his door.

“Jack, are you there?” called August Naab.

“Yes.”

“Come along then.”

Hare rose, opened the door and followed August.  The room was bright with lights; the table was set, and the Naabs, large and small, were standing expectantly.  As Hare found a place behind them Snap Naab entered with his wife.  She was as pale as if she were in her shroud.  Hare caught Mother Ruth’s pitying subdued glance as she drew the frail little woman to her side.  When August Naab began fingering his Bible the whispering ceased.

“Why don’t they fetch her?” he questioned.

“Judith, Esther, bring her in,” said Mother Mary, calling into the hallway.

Quick footsteps, and the girls burst in impetuously, exclaiming:  “Mescal’s not there!”

“Where is she, then?” demanded August Naab, going to the door.  “Mescal!” he called.

Succeeding his authoritative summons only the cheery sputter of the wood-fire broke the silence.

“She hadn’t put on her white frock,” went on Judith.

“Her buckskins aren’t hanging where they always are,” continued Esther.

August Naab laid his Bible on the table.  “I always feared it,” he said simply.

“She’s gone!” cried Snap Naab.  He ran into the hall, into Mescal’s room, and returned trailing the white wedding-dress.  “The time we thought she spent to put this on she’s been—­”

He choked over the words, and sank into a chair, face convulsed, hands shaking, weak in the grip of a grief that he had never before known.  Suddenly he flung the dress into the fire.  His wife fell to the floor in a dead faint.  Then the desert-hawk showed his claws.  His hands tore at the close scarf round his throat as if to liberate a fury that was stifling him; his face lost all semblance to anything human.  He began to howl, to rave, to curse; and his father circled him with iron arm and dragged him from the room.