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Show Flame of the Border By VINGIE E. ROE Copyright, Doubleday, Doran & Co., Inc. WNU Servic Sonya swung down and took off her saddlebags. As she entered the hogan her lips set themselves In a sharp, unconscious line. Bad was right, she thought. There was the smell of death here She would need to gird her loins today to-day In all truth. At first the dusky shadows hid the Interior from her sight. Then, as her eyes adjusted themselves, she set down her bags and knelt beside the first heap of skins and blankets which lay on the sandy floor. There were throe of these flat beds. In the farther one the two children still slept heavily. In this one Little Moon lay, panting with fever, her big black eyes beautiful In the dim light. "Courage, little mother," Sonya said in Navajo, "1 am with you." The Indian woman smiled, touched her hand with timid fingers. She took the draught which the other gave her presently, and watched her as she set about cooking some oatmeal oat-meal over the coals of the tiny fire. This It was which had made Sonya the Idol of these poor and silent people, peo-ple, this service of heart and hand which had saved them, literally, from death In many cases. She fought for what sanitation she could produce among them, taught them the importance impor-tance of proper feeding In fevers, the superiority of mustard plasters over singsongs In pneumonia, and labored generally like a mother with her children. chil-dren. Now she bathed the hot brown body under the blankets, gave Little Moon the thinned cereal as a drink, waked and washed the children, fed them the rest of the oatmeal, ate two pieces of fried mutton and some crackers with Two Fingers, and stood for a while outside the hogan In the morning sunlight. She felt wonderful herself, strong and high within, as If she set her body against a wall and could not be backed down. This was the gauge of battle In her, that she knew, the deep determination to win in what she set herself to do, the passionate sympathy sympa-thy and. pity which were like a steel 1 SYNOPSIS Seeking death by throwing herself from the summit of Lone Mesa, to ' escape dishonor at 'the hands of a drunken desperado, Sonya Savarln allows al-lows herself to be rescued by her suddenly sud-denly sobered and repentant attacker. The irirl )a a self -appointed physician to the Navajo Indians, living on an Arizona sheep ranch with her brother SerRH, his wife, Llla, and their small daugh ter, Babs. For a year she has been engaged to Rodney Blake, wealthy New Yorker, but her heart is with the friend less Navajos and she evades a wedding. her at the rising figures In the tiny tube. The crisis was coming. It would be here by midafternoon. Her mouth set a little harder, her black eyes were narrow between their dusky lashes. She squatted patiently by the heap of skins and blankets, her fingers fin-gers on Little Moon's hot wrist So the hours passed and the crisis came, a tense, panting hour, with the silver thread in the little tube running up a ghastly record, and the patient dark head rolling at last In unendurable unendur-able suffering. Sonya held the moving hands, bathed the drawn face. "Hold tight hold tight steady steady," she kept saying in Navajo, "hold tight, little mother." And after a timeless space when she neither moved nor took her eyes from the other's features, there came a creeping stillness, a hush, a cessation of movement. The weary head dropped ! sidewlse, the thin hands became quiet. Sonya loosed them and reached for her stethoscope, her hypodermic filled arid ready with its needle In a cup of sterile water. This was the crux, and she must not fail for Two Fingers and the babies out in Cb.ee wash somewhere. some-where. She did not fail. With the sun on the western rim of the austere desert the Indian came up the wash with one child asleep on his shoulder, the other on his back. Far off he saw Sonya standing at the hogan's door and stopped a long moment to study with his eagle eyes her pose, her manner. She stood tall and straight, ana one hand was laid high up on the bleached pole of the doorway, the other rested on her nip. Her head was up, too, and at the sight Two fingers swung out in a swift dog-trot. "It is well. Blue South Woman," he said with conviction as he came to her ; "you have saved her." "It is well," said Sonya proudly and smiled Into his dark face. Without another word he went Into the hogan and looked down at Little Moon, sleeping heavily with a sweat upon her skin. So the night came down, blue with Its dark sky, silver with Its stars, and Sonya lay down on the second pile of skins and went to sleep with her hand on Little Moon's. Two Fingers sat all night In the hogan's door, and none might know what was in his mind of gratitude and hope and silent joy. Sonya was up by dawn, and Little Moon was awake, weak unto death but peaceful. Sonya fed her and made a pot of the precious gruel and Instructed Instruct-ed the man in its giving, Its protection from contamination. "You'd better go to the trading post, Two Fingers," she told him, "and get some more oatmeal a big package. Take the children with you. She will be all right. She needs rest now, no worry, and much gruel. Also, presently, pres-ently, mutton broth. I go today to my own place to sleep and I will come back. Her life is yours now. See that you keep it by doing as I tell you." To Little Moon herself she said, "1 go now to rest but I will come again. Drink the gruel as I have given it to you, a little at a time, and sleep much sleep all you can. So will you walk in the sun again." Then she was outside the hogan, pulling on her gloves, her saddlebags at her feet, waiting for Two Fingers to bring her horse. He put the bags In place, and over the saddle his eyes were on her gravely. "There was a Blue Woman of the South once," he said in Navajo, "whose son, being a son of the Sun goa, too, delivered the Navajos from nnaer the earth. She was all goodness the Turquoise Woman. She makes her hogan ii your heart." To save her life Sonya, wuo isnew the legends of these people, coma not help the tears that sprang to her eyes. It was because she was a little tired, maybe a bit unstrung with the recent ordeal but Two Fingers was telling her that she had delivered him and his. Before she couia reply a sound struck on the stillness, the crack of a horse's hoof against stone, and she looked quickly down the wash. There, almost upon her, was Kod-ney Kod-ney Blake on Serge's Day mare. "Why, Rod 1" she cried. "How In the world did you find meT" "Serge told me the way. Are you ready?" "Yes. Just going. Oh, I'm glad you came! Jt'll be a grand ride back with the sun coming up. This is Two Fingers, Fin-gers, whose wife is sick." The Indian looked up, but Rod Blake did not see him. It was as If she had not spoken the last few word3, or as If they had not penetrated his consciousness. "Yes," he said, "it will, though it has been cold." "All right," said Sonya, reaching for Darkness' rein. "Let's go. I'm ready, and so is Darkness. He's been penned up too " She did not finish, for another sound came out of the profound stillness of the sunrise the shuffle and slide of a man's booted feet this time and around the bulge of the hogan a tall figure in a blue shirt, worn chaps, and high-heeled boots appeared. A strange, half painful shock of recognition went over Sonya. It was the man of Lone Mesa. Taking in the unexpected group with lightning swiftness, his gaze came back to her, rested upon her as If against his own volition, and a slow red tide flowed up along his lean face. As Rod a moment before had not been conscious of Two Fingers, so now this man was not conscious of anyone but the slim girl In riding clothes with her foot arrested in the stirrup. He stood so long looking at her that Rodney Blake's face changed. TO BB CONTINUED. CHAPTER II 2 Sonya Gets a New Name. By early dawn Sonya was up and dressed, her saddlebags replenished with such remedies as she might need for her battle with Old Man Death in the hogan beyond Chee wash. Darkness, Dark-ness, full fed and watered, waited patiently pa-tiently in the patio. She stood in the dim kitchen with a cup of coffee In one hand, a hastily made sandwich In the other, and talked lowly to Llla. "It's going to be a hard day, old dear," she said, "and I may not get back tonight. If I don't, don't worry. I'll be with Two Fingers and the babies and poor Little Moon. If she seems to be going, I'll not leave her." "No," said Llla, "no, of course not. 1 know. What shall I tell Rod when he gets up?" "He knows I'm going I told him last night but not that I might stay over. Tell him again how It Is with Little Moon and mention the babies." "They're just dirty little Navajos to him." "They're tragic babies just the same," said Sonya sharply, "and he will have to see It. Well, so long. I'm off." She set down her empty cup, pulled on her gloves, and went softly out. She hugged Darkness' nose, which nudged her breast after a little rite that was common between them, and went up his tall side and into her old saddle with the easy grace of a working work-ing cow hand. The big horse, hard as iron and perfect per-fect in training, leaned to the almost Imperceptible motion of hand and rein on his neck, and trotted out of the patio. Once on the sandy stretch of level country he rolled away in a long and tireless lope, a harbinger of hope, a bringer of comfort to the lowly. Far to the south and west Sonya could see Lone Mesa. She loved the great tableland. Times without number num-ber she had climbed Its steep trail on Darkness, to ride Its three-by-five-mlle top, to sit in the sun beside its ancient pueblo walls with their rotting ladders, lad-ders, to stand on its sharp-cut rim and scan the lone world below. Until yesterday yes-terday nothing had ever disturbed her, nothing disputed her right of way until yesterday. At the thought her face flushed red with anger at the man who had ridden her down to the mesa's edge and pulled her from her saddle, his handsome hand-some face aflame with rapine. She felt the blood burn along her cheeks. It was resentment she felt, the fierce rage of Indignation that anyone or anything should interfere with her freedom and her right to it. Her dark eyes were hot with it, her soft mouth set In a prim line. But the look she gave the mesa as she rode along beneath be-neath it was neither fearful nor resigned. re-signed. It was a look of promise, as If some stubborn thing within her would take her to its lonely heights more often than usual now. The sun came up as she and Darkness Dark-ness entered the broad mouth of Chee wash with Us red sandstone walls, and a little later they came in sight of the hogan of Two Fingers. A round, low habitation of a single room, laid up of flat stones one above another, like flakes of prehistoric dough, it faced the east, as all hogans must. From its central rise a thin thread of smoke ascended. Something caught at Sonya's heart it was so stark and poor a home, its people so helpless. Two Fingers met her beside the water hole. He was a man of around thirty, weathered like dark leather, his patient pa-tient face as native to the land as Lone Mesa itself, and there was about him a simple dignity, as there was about the poorest of these Indians. He wore a blue flannel shirt, corduroy pants held by a silver-studded belt, and his hair was long and bound in two neat doubled flares on the back of his head. ; Though he spoke fair English and had j a sizable band of sheep, this manner ; of wearing his hal1- stamped him as a "wild buck," one of those who had not yet become entirely civilized. For one tiling, Two Fingers did not drink, and for another, he still worshiped his ancient gods. Sonya liked him. Now she said, "Hello, Two Fingers. How is she this morning?" "Baii," he said briefly and reached ior Darkness' rein. Two Fingers Would Be Praying to His Ancient Gods. blade in her. If It were possible to save the patient brown woman in there with what weapons she had at her command, with unrelenting vigilance, vig-ilance, with instant combat of every adverse change, then she would do it or know the reason for her failure. She looked up at the high blue sky with Its sailing, full white clouds, her mind an attitude of prayer, and turning, turn-ing, lifted the blanket which was the door, and went in. Two Fingers gathered the babies and made ready to depart, according to her request made a moment back. She wanted the day alone, clear vis-ioned vis-ioned for the crisis, nothing within sight to distract her. The man looked down at the woman on the low bed, holding one child, leading the other, and the woman looked up. They said nothing. It might be their last look on earth, their eternal parting, for all they knew, yet there was no outcry, no sign of sorrow, nothing but that deep look. Perhaps nothing more was needed. Then Two Fingers went away, and the women were alone In the hogan. "We meet the enemy," said Sonya, still In Navajo there was a comfort In it, a strength, it seemed "but we meet him together. I hold your hand. Hold tight to mine. We must both fight, very hard. The medicine will fight, too. It is a good fighter. But not for a moment must we fail or sink or stop fighting. You understand?" The other nodded. "It is good," said Sonya. And the day of battle began. Somewhere out in the sand and rocks of Chee wash Two Fingers would be praying to his ancient gods, sitting quietly, perhaps, watching the babies playing with sticks, building corrals for their pebble horses. He had some mutton jerky in the pouch at his belt. He would feed them with it at noon. It was the way of life In the solitudes, soli-tudes, the way of death, all chance, all waiting. Sonya in the hogan worked tirelessly. tireless-ly. The cold of the night had given place to the heat of day, and sweat dripped from her temples. Regularly she fed the woman the thin warm gruel. Regularly, monotonously, she bathed her from head to foot Regularly Regu-larly she slipped her thermometer Into the parched mouth, reading it anxiously. anx-iously. As steadily she gave her medicines. medi-cines. At noon she saw no sign of hope, but rather her heart chilled In |