horses steaming from rain had stopped in front of the Mission gate and Mrs. Williams had come out “wondering about Fordie in the storm.”  With her back to the waiting mother, Eleanor had spent an unconscionable time tying the ponies, trying to control her own trembling lips and threshing round for some way to tell the untenable.  She remembered the roil of the raging waters, the floating star blossoms on the muddy swirl, the light sifting in beaten rain dust through the silver pine needles, the curve and dip of the joyous swallows.  Then, she had followed the little white haired lady into the Mission Parlor.

Almost hysterically, that saying of an old profane writer came to mind, “God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb;” and all her inner being was shouting in rebellion “Does He, Does He?” Then she shut the door.  She knew very well how she ought to have broken the news with the pious platitudes that everything is for the best, with the whitewashed lies that every damnable tragedy is a blessing in disguise, that every devil-dance of fool circumstance is beneficent design, that disease is really health in a mask and sin a joke, a misnomer, that crime is really a trump card up Deity’s sleeve to play down some wonderful trick of good; but—­was it the Indian strain in her blood back many generations?  She could not mouthe the hollow mockery of such sophistries in the presence of Death.

“Eleanor—­what is it?  Why do your eyes look so strange?”

The little woman clasped both the girl’s hands and gazed questioningly up in her face.  At the same moment, she began to tremble.  She tried to ask and faltered; a tremor pulsed in the upper lip.  Then the grand-daughter of the man of the iron hand had gathered the little white haired lady in her arms as if to ward the blow.

“The outlaws drove Fordie over the Rim Rocks with the herd,” she said.

“Is he dead?  Is he dead?”

The little woman had drawn her body up its full height.

Eleanor tried to answer.  The words would not come from her lips.  She nodded.  There again she had to shut the door of memory; for, when we break the news, it isn’t the news we break; it’s the news breaks us.

After what seemed an interminable quiet, Mrs. Williams was asking through dry tearless sobs: 

“What does it all mean?  Have we not given our whole lives to God?  How could this thing happen—­to an innocent child?  There isn’t any justice or right in this whole world.”

“We must not be quiescent any more, Mrs. Williams.  We must fight.  We have such a habit of letting things go, and things let go—­go wrong.  It isn’t God’s fault at all:  it’s us—­us humans:  it’s our fault.  Every one of us ought to have been ready to die to prevent crime; and we’ve been letting things go.  We mustn’t be quiescent any more.  We must fight wrongs and evils.  And much more;” the girl in tears, the little woman fevered, red-eyed, gazing with glazed look into dark spaces, kneading her clasped hands together.  Once the door opened and the shawled head of the old half-breed woman poked in.