FOES OR FRIENDS?
Mounted on the mustang mare, Frank Hamersley pursues his way, wondering at his strange guide.

So lovely a being encountered in such an out-of-the-way corner of the world--in the midst of a treeless, waterless desert, over a hundred miles from the nearest civilised settlement! Who is she?
Where has she come from?
Whither is she conducting him?
To the last question he will soon have an answer; for as they advance she now and then speaks words of encouragement, telling him they are soon to reach a place of rest.
"Yonder!" she at length exclaims, pointing to two mound-shaped elevations that rise twin-like above the level of the plain.

"Between those runs our road.

Once there, we shall not have much farther to go; the rancho will be in sight." The young prairie merchant makes no reply.

He only thinks how strange it all is--the beautiful being by his side--her dash--her wonderful knowledge exhibited with such an air of _naivete_--her generous behaviour--the picturesqueness of her dress--her hunter equipment--the great dogs trotting at her heels--the dead game on the croup behind--the animal he bestrides--all are before his mind and mingling in his thoughts like the unreal phantasmagoria of a dream.
And not any more like reality is the scene disclosed to his view when, after passing around the nearest of the twin mound-shaped hills, and entering a gate-like gorge that opens between them, he sees before him and below--hundreds of feet below--a valley of elliptical form like a vast basin scooped out of the plain.