"You'll answer for detaining me here, sir!"

"There ain't no man in this country that I answer to!" returned Chadron, not without dignity, for power undisputed for so long, and in such large affairs, had given him a certain manner of imperialism.

"You'll find out where your mistake is, to your bitter cost, before many days have gone over your head. Your master is on the way; you'll meet him yet."

"You might as well ca'm down, and take that hat off and make yourself easy, Miss Frances; you ain't goin' to the post tonight."

"Open that door, Mr. Chadron! For the memory of your daughter, be a man!"

"I'm actin' for the best, Miss Frances." Chadron softened in speech, but unbent in will. "You must stay here till we settle them fellers. I ain't got time to bring any more men up from Cheyenne—I've got to have help within the next twenty-four hours. You can see how your misplaced feelin's might muddle and delay me, and hold off the troopers till they've killed off all of my men in that canyon back yonder in the hills. It's for the best, I tell you; you'll see it that way before daylight."

"It's a pity about your gallant cutthroats! It's time the rest of this country knew something about the methods of you cattlemen up here, and the way you harass and hound and murder honest men that are trying to make homes!"

"Oh, Miss Frances! ca'm down, ca'm down!" coaxed Chadron, spreading his hands in conciliatory gesture, as if to smooth her troubled spirits, and calm her down by stroking her, like a cat.

"Now you want to call out the army to rescue that pack of villains, you want to enlist the government to help you murder more children! Well, I'm a daughter of the army; I'm not going to stand around and see you pull it down to any such business as yours!"

"You'd better make up your mind to take it easy, now, Miss Frances. Put down your hat and things, now, and run along off to bed like a good little girl."

She turned from him with a disdainful toss of the head, and walked across to the window where Mrs. Chadron's great chair stood beside her table.

"Do you want it known that I was forced to leave your house by the window?" she asked, her hand on the sash.

"It won't do you any good if you do," Chadron growled, turning and throwing the door open with gruff decision. He stood a moment glowering at her, his shoulders thrust into the room. "You can't leave here till I'm ready for you to go—I'm goin' to put my men on the watch for you. If you try it afoot they'll fetch you back, and if you git stubborn and try to ride off from 'em, they'll shoot your horse. You take my word that I mean it, and set down and be good."

He closed the door. She heard his heavy tread, careless, it seemed, whether he broke the troubled sleep of his wife, pass out by way of the kitchen. She returned to the fire, surging with the outrage of it, and sat down to consider the situation.

There was no doubt that Chadron meant what he had said. This was only a mild proceeding to suppress evidence compared to his usual methods, as witnessed by the importation of Mark Thorn, and now his wholesale attempt with this army of hired gunslingers. But above the anger and indignation there was the exultant thought of Macdonald's triumph over the oppressor of the land. It glowed like a bright light in the turmoil of her present hour.

She had told Chadron that his master was on the way, and she had seen him swell with the cloud of anger that shrouded his black heart. And she knew that he feared that swift-footed man Macdonald, who had outgeneraled him and crippled him before he had struck a blow. Well, let him have his brutal way until morning; then she would prevail on Mrs. Chadron to rescind his order and let her go home.

There being nothing more to be hoped or dreaded in the way of news that night, Frances suppressed her wrath and went upstairs and to bed. But not to sleep; only to lie there with her hot cheeks burning like fever, her hot heart triumphing in the complete confidence and justification of Macdonald that Chadron's desperate act had established. She glowed with inner warmth as she told herself that there would be no more doubting, no more swaying before the wind of her inclination. Her heart had read him truly that night in the garden close.

She heard Chadron ride away as she watched there for the dawn, and saw the cowboy guard that he had established rouse themselves while the east was only palely light and kindle their little fires. Soon the scent of their coffee and bacon came through her open window. Then she rose and dressed herself in her saddle garb again, and went tiptoeing past Mrs. Chadron's door.

Since going to bed Mrs. Chadron bad not stirred. She seemed to have plunged over the precipice of sleep and to be lying stunned at the bottom. Frances felt that there was no necessity for waking her out of that much-needed repose, for the plan that she had formulated within the past few minutes did not include an appeal for Mrs. Chadron's assistance in it.

Experience told her that Mrs. Chadron would accept unquestioningly the arrangements and orders of her husband, in whom her faith was boundless and her confidence without bottom. She would advance a hundred tearful pleas to take the edge off Frances' indignant anger, and weep and implore, but ten to one remain as steadfast as a ledge in her fealty to Saul. So Frances was preparing to proceed without her help or hindrance.

She went softly into the room where she had faced Chadron a few hours before, and crossed to the fireplace, where the last coals of the fire that had kept her company were red among the ashes. It was dark yet, only a little grayness, like murky water, showing under the rim of the east, but she knew where the antlers hung above the mantel, with the rifle in its case, and the two revolvers which Alvino had brought to his mistress from the wounded foreman in the bunkhouse.

But the antlers were empty. She felt them over with contracting heart, then struck a match to make sure. The guns were gone. Saul Chadron had removed them, foreseeing that they might stand her in the place of a friend.

She lit a lamp and began a search of the lower part of the house for arms. There was not a single piece left in any of the places where they commonly were a familiar sight. Even the shotgun was gone from over the kitchen door. She returned to the sitting-room and laid some sticks on the coals, and sat leaning toward the blaze in that sense of comradeship that is as old between man and fire as the servitude of that captive element.

Her elbows were on her knees, and her gloved hands were clasped, and the merry little fire laughed up into her fixed and thoughtful eyes.

Fire has but one mood, no matter what it cheers or destroys. It always laughs. There is no melancholy note in it, no drab, dull color of death such as the flood comes tainted with. Even while it eats away our homes and possessions, it has a certain comfort in its touch and glow if we stand far enough away.

Dawn broadened; the watery light came in like cold. Frances got up, shivering a little at the unfriendly look of the morning. She thought she heard a cautious foot stealing away from the window, and turned from it with contemptuous recollection of Chadron's threat to set spies over her.

Frances left the house with no caution to conceal her movements, and went to the barn. Alvino was hobbling about among the horses with his lantern. He gave her an open and guileless good-morning, and she told him to saddle her horse.

She was determined to ride boldly out of the gate and away, hardly convinced that even those seasoned ruffians would take a chance of hitting her by firing at her horse. None of the imported shooters was in sight as she mounted before the barn door, but two of them lounged casually at the gate as she approached.

"Where was you aimin' to go so early?" asked one of them, laying hand on her bridle.

"I'm the daughter of Colonel Landcraft, commanding officer at Fort Shakie, and I'm going home," she answered, as placidly and good-humoredly as if it might be his regular business to inquire.

"I'm sorry to have to edge in on your plans, sissy," the fellow returned, familiarly, "but nobody goes away from this ranch for some little time to come. That's the boss's orders. Don't you know them rustlers is shootin' up the country ever' which way all around here? Shucks! It ain't safe for no lady to go skylarkin' around in."

"They wouldn't hurt me—they know there's a regiment of cavalry at the post standing up for me."

"I don't reckon them rustlers cares much more about them troopers than we do, sis."

"Will you please open the gate?"

"I hate to refuse a lady, but I dasn't do it." He shook his head in exaggerated gravity, and his companion covered a sputtering laugh with his hand.

Frances felt her resolution to keep her temper dissolving. She shifted her quirt as the quick desire to strike him down and ride over his ugly grinning face flashed through her. But the wooden stock was light under the braided leather; she knew that she could not have knocked a grunt out of the tough rascal who barred her way with his insolent leer in his mean squint eyes. He was a man who had nothing to lose, therefore nothing to fear.

"If it's dangerous for me to go alone, get your horse and come with me. I'll see that you get more out of it than you make working for Chadron."

The fellow squinted up at her with eyes half-shut, in an expression of cunning.

"Now you trot along back and behave you'self, before I have to take you down and spank you," he said.

The other three men of the ranch guard came waddling up in that slouching gait of saddle-men, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Frances saw that she would not be allowed to pass that way. But they were all at that spot; none of them could be watching the back gate. She wheeled her long-legged cavalry horse to make a dash for it, and came face to face with Mrs. Chadron, who was hurrying from the house with excited gesticulations, pointing up the road.

"Somebody's comin', it looks like one of the boys, I saw him from the upstairs winder!" she announced, "Where was you goin', honey?"

"I was starting home, Mrs. Chadron, but these men—"

"There he comes!" cried Mrs. Chadron, hastening to the gate.

A horseman had come around the last brush-screened turn of the road, and was drawing near. Frances felt her heart leap like a hare, and a delicious feeling of triumph mingle with the great pride that swept through her in a warm flood. Tears were in her eyes, half-blinding her; a sob of gladness rose in her breast and burst forth a little happy cry.

For that was Alan Macdonald coming forward on his weary horse, bearing something in his arms wrapped in a blanket, out of which a shower of long hair fell in bright cascade over his arm.

Mrs. Chadron pressed her lips tight. Neither cry nor groan came out of them as she stood steadying herself by a straining grip on the gate, watching Macdonald's approach. None of them knew whether the burden that he bore was living or dead; none of them in the group at the gate but Frances knew the rider's face.

One of the cowboys opened the gate wide, without a word, to let him enter. Mrs. Chadron lifted her arms appealingly, and hurried to his side as he stopped. Stiffly he leaned over, his inert burden held tenderly, and lowered what he bore into Mrs. Chadron's outstretched arms.

With that change of position there was a sharp movement in the muffling blanket, two arms reached up with the quick clutching of a falling child, and clasped him about the neck. Then a sharp cry of waking recognition, and Nola was sobbing on her mother's breast.

Alan Macdonald said no word. The light of the sunrise was strong on his face, set in the suffering of great weariness; the stiffness of his long and burdened ride was in his limbs. He turned his dusty horse, with its head low-drooping, and rode out the way that he had come. No hand was lifted to stop him, no voice raised in either benediction or curse.

Mrs. Chadron was soothing her daughter, who was incoherent in the joy of her delivery, holding her clasped in her arms. Beyond that bright head there was no world for that mother then; save for the words which she crooned in the child's ears there was no message in her soul.

Frances felt tears streaking her face in hot rivulets as she sat in her saddle, struck inactive by the great admiration, the boundless pride, that this unselfish deed woke in her. She never had, in her life of joyousness, experienced such a high sense of human admiration before.

The cowboy who had opened the gate still held it so, the spell of Macdonald's dramatic arrival still over him. With his comrades he stood speechless, gazing after the departing horseman.

Frances touched her horse lightly and rode after him. Mother and daughter were so estranged from all the world in that happy moment of reunion that neither saw her go, and the guards at the gate, either forgetful of their charge or softened by the moving scene, did not interpose to stop her.

Macdonald raised his drooping head with quick start as she came dashing to his side. She was weeping, and she put out her hand with a motion of entreaty, her voice thick with sobs.

"I wronged you and slandered you," she said, in bitter confession, "and I let you go when I should have spoken! I'm not worthy to ride along this road with you, Alan Macdonald, but I need your protection, I need your help. Will you let me go?"

He checked his horse and looked across at her, a tender softening coming into his tired face.

"Why, God bless you! there's only one road in the world for you and me," said he. His hand met hers where it fluttered like a dove between them; his slow, translating smile woke in his eyes and spread like a sunbeam over his stern lips.

Behind them Mrs. Chadron was calling. Frances turned and waved her hand.

"Come back, Frances, come back here!" Mrs. Chadron's words came distinctly to them, for they were not more than a hundred yards from the gate, and there was a note of eagerness in them, almost a command. Both of them turned.

There was a commotion among the men at the gate, a hurrying and loud words. Nola was beckoning to Frances to return; now she called her name, with fearful entreaty.

"That's Chance Dalton with his arm in a sling," said Macdonald, looking at her curiously. "What's up?"

"Chadron has made them all believe that you stole Nola for the sole purpose of making a pretended rescue to win sympathy for your cause," she said. "Even Nola will believe it—maybe they've told her. Chadron has offered a reward of fifty dollars—a bonus, he called it, so maybe there is more—to the man that kills you! Come on—quick! I'll tell you as we go."

Macdonald's horse was refreshed in some measure by the diminishing of its burden, but the best that it could do was a tired, hard-jogging gallop. In a little while they rounded the screen of brush which hid them from the ranchhouse and from those who Frances knew would be their pursuers in a moment. Quickly she told him of her reason for wanting to go to the post, and Chadron's reason for desiring to hold her at the ranch.

Macdonald looked at her with new life in his weary eyes.

"We'll win now; you were the one recruit I lacked," he said.

"But they'll kill you—Mrs. Chadron can't hold them back—she doesn't want to hold them back—for she's full of Chadron's lies about you. Your horse is worn out—you can't outrun them."

"How many are there besides the five I saw?"

"Only Dalton, and he's supposed to be crippled."

"Oh, well," he said, easily, as if only five whole men and a cripple didn't amount to so much, taken all in the day's work.

"Your men up there need your leadership and advice. Take my horse and go; he can outrun them."

He looked at her admiringly, but with a little reproving shake of the head.

"There's neither mercy nor manhood in any man that rides in Saul Chadron's pay," he told her. "They'd overtake you on this old plug before you'd gone a mile. The one condition on which I part company with you is that you ride ahead, this instant, and that you put your horse through for all that's in him."

"And leave you to fight six of them!"

"Staying here would only put you in unnecessary danger. I ask you to go, and go at once."

"I'll not go!" She said it finally and emphatically.

Macdonald checked his horse; she held back her animal to the slow pace of his. Now he offered his hand, as in farewell.

"You can assure them at the post that we'll not fire on the soldiers—they can come in peace. Good-bye."

"I'm not going!" she persisted.

"They'll not consider you, Frances—they'll not hold their fire on your account. You're a rustler now, you're one of us."

"You said—there—was—only—one—road," she told him, her face turned away.

"It's that way, then, to the left—up that dry bed of Horsethief Canyon." He spoke with a lift of exultation, of pride, and more than pride. "Ride low—they're coming!"



CHAPTER XVI

DANGER AND DIGNITY

"Did you carry her that way all the way home?"

Frances asked the question abruptly, like one throwing down some troublesome and heavy thing that he has labored gallantly to conceal. It was the first word that she had spoken since they had taken refuge from their close-pressing pursuers in the dugout that some old-time homesteader had been driven away from by Chadron's cowboys.

Macdonald was keeping his horse back from the door with the barrel of his rifle, while he peered out cautiously again, perplexed to understand the reason why Dalton had not led his men against them in a charge.

"Not all the way, Frances. She rode behind me till she got so cold and sleepy I was afraid she'd fall off."

"Yes, I'll bet she put on half of it!" she said, spitefully. "She looked strong enough when you put her down there at the gate."

This unexpected little outburst of jealousy was pleasant to his ears. Above the trouble of that morning, and of the future which was charged with it to the blackness of complete obscuration, her warrant of affection was like a lifting sunbeam of hope.

"I can't figure out what Dalton and that gang mean by this," said he, the present danger again pressing ahead of the present joy.

"I saw a man dodge behind that big rock across there a minute ago," she said.

"You keep back away from that door—don't lean over out of that corner!" he admonished, almost harshly. "If you get where you can see, you can be seen. Don't forget that."

He resumed his watch at the little hole that he had drilled beside the weight-bowed jamb of the door in the earth front of their refuge. She sat silent in her dark corner across from him, only now and then shaking her glove at the horses when one of them pricked up his ears and shewed a desire to dodge out into the sunlight and pleasant grazing spread on the hillside.

It was cold and moldy in the dugout, and the timbers across the roof were bent under the weight of the earth. It looked unsafe, but there was only one place in it that a bullet could come through, and that was the open door. There was no way to shut that; the original battens of the homesteader lay under foot, broken apart and rotting.

"Well, it beats me!" said he, his eye to the peephole in the wall.

"If I'd keep one of the horses on this side it wouldn't crowd your corner so," she suggested.

"It would be better, only they'll cut loose at anything that passes the door. They'll show their hand before long." He enlarged the hole to admit his rifle barrel. She watched him in silence. Which was just as well, for she had no words to express her admiration for his steadiness and courage under the trying pressure of that situation. Her confidence in him was so entire that she had no fear; it did not admit a question of their safe deliverance. With him at her side, this dangerous, grave matter seemed but a passing perplexity. She left it to him with the confidence and up-looking trust of a child.

While she understood the peril of their situation, fear, doubt, had no place in her mind. She was under the protection of Alan Macdonald, the infallible.

No matter what others may think of a man's infallibility, it is only a dangerous one who considers himself endowed with that more than human attribute. Macdonald did not share her case of mind as he stood with his eye to the squint-hole that he had bored beside the rotting jamb.

"How did you find her? where was she?" she asked, her thoughts more on the marvel of Nola's return than her own present danger.

"I lost Thorn's trail that first day," he returned, "and then things began to get so hot for us up the valley that I had to drop the search and get those people back to safety ahead of Chadron's raid. Yesterday afternoon we caught a man trying to get through our lines and down into the valley. He was a half-breed trapper who lives up in the foothills, carrying a note down to Chadron. I've got that curious piece of writing around me somewhere—you can read it when this blows by. Anyway, it was from Thorn, demanding ten thousand dollars in gold. He wanted it sent back by the messenger, and he prescribed some picturesque penalties in case of failure on Chadron's part."

"And then you found her?"

"I couldn't very well ask anybody else to go after her," he admitted, with a modest reticence that amounted almost to being ashamed. "After I made sure that we had Chadron's raiders cooped up where they couldn't get out, I went up and got her. Thorn wasn't there, nobody but the Indian woman, the 'breed's wife. She was the jailer—a regular wildcat of a woman."

That was all there was to be told, it seemed, as far as Macdonald was concerned. He had the hole in the wall—at which he had worked as he talked—to his liking now, and was squinting through it like a telescope.

"Nola wasn't afraid to come with you," she said, positively.

"She didn't appear to be, Frances."

"No; she knew she was safe, no matter how little she deserved any kindness at your hands. I know what she did—I know how she—how she—struck you in the face that time!"

"Oh," said he, as if reminded of a trifle that he had forgotten.

"Did she—put her arms around your neck that way many times while you were carrying her home?"

"She did not! Many times! why, she didn't do it even once."

"Oh, at the gate—I saw her!"

He said nothing for a little while, only stood with head bent, as if thinking it over.

"Well, she didn't get very far with it," he said, quite seriously. "Anyway, she was asleep then, and didn't know what she was doing. It was just the subconscious reaching up of a falling, or dreaming, child."

She was not a little amused, in a quick turn from her serious bent of jealousy, at his long and careful explanation of the incident. She laughed, and the little green cloud that had troubled her blew away on the gale of her mirth.

"Oh, well!" said she, from her deep corner across the bright oblong of the door, tossing it all away from her. "Do you think they'll go away and let us come out after a while?"

"I don't believe they've got any such intention. If it doesn't come to a fight before then, I believe we'll have to drive the horses out ahead of us after dark, and try to get away under the confusion. You should have gone on, Frances, when I told you."

The horses were growing restive, moving, stamping, snorting, and becoming quarrelsome together. Macdonald's little range animal had a viciousness in it, and would not make friends with the chestnut cavalry horse. It squealed and bit, and even tried to use its heels, at every friendly approach.

Macdonald feared that so much commotion might bring the shaky, rotten roof down on them. A hoof driven against one of the timbers which supported it might do the trick, and bring them to a worse end than would the waiting bullets of Dalton and his gang.

"I'll have to risk putting that horse of yours over on your side," he told her. "Stand ready to catch him, but don't lean a hair past the door."

He turned the horse and gave it a slap. As it crossed the bar of light falling through the door, a shot cracked among the rocks. The bullet knocked earth over him as it smacked in the facing of the door. The man who had fired had shot obliquely, there being no shelter directly in front, and that fact had saved the horse.

Macdonald peered through his loophole. He could not see the smoke, but he let them know that he was primed by answering the shot at random. The shot drew a volley, a bullet or two striking the rear wall of the cave.

After that they waited for what might come between then and night. They said little, for each was straining with unpleasant thoughts and anxieties, and put to constant watchfulness to keep the horses from slewing around into the line of fire. Every time a tail switched out into the streak of light a bullet came nipping in. Sometimes Macdonald let them go unanswered, and again he would spring up and drive away at the rocks which he knew sheltered them, almost driven to the point of rushing out and trying to dislodge them by storm.

So the day wore by. They had been in the dugout since a little after sunrise. Sunset was pale on the hilltops beyond them when Macdonald, his strained and tired eyes to the loophole, saw Dalton and two of his men slipping from rock to rock, drawing nearer for what he expected to be the rush.

"Can you shoot?" he asked her, his mouth hot and dry as if his blood had turned to liquid fire.

"Yes, I can shoot," she answered, steadily.

He tossed one of his revolvers across to her, dimly seen now in the deepening gloom of the cave, and flung a handful of cartridges after it.

"They're closing in on us for the rush, and I'm going to try to stop them. Keep back there where you are, and hold your horse under cover as long as you hear me shooting. If I stop first, call Dalton and tell him who you are. I believe in that case he'll let you go."

"I'm going to help you," she said, rising resolutely. "When you—stop shooting—" she choked a little over the words, her voice caught in a dry little sob—"then I'll stop shooting, too!"

"Stay back there, Frances! Do you hear—stay back!"

Somebody was on the roof of the dugout; under his weight clods of earth fell, and then, with a soft breaking of rotten timber, a booted foot broke through. It was on Frances' side, and the fellow's foot almost touched her saddle as her frightened horse plunged.

The man was tugging to drag his foot through the roof now, earth and broken timber showering down. Macdonald only glanced over his shoulder, as if leaving that trapped one to her. He was set for their charge in front. She raised her revolver to fire as the other leg broke through, and the fellow's body dropped into the enlarged hole. At that moment the men in front fired a volley through the gaping door. Frances saw the intruder drop to the ground, torn by the heavy bullets from his companions' guns.

The place was full of smoke, and the turmoil of the frightened horses, and the noise of quick shots from Macdonald's station across the door. She could not make anything out in the confusion as she turned from the dead man to face the door, only that Macdonald was not at his place at the loophole now.

She called him, but her voice was nothing in the sound of firing. A choking volume of smoke was packing the cave. She saw Macdonald's horse lower its head and dash out, with a whip of its tail like a defiance of her authority. Then in a moment everything was still out there, with a fearful suddenness.

She flung herself into the cloud of smoke that hung in the door, sobbing Macdonald's name; she stumbled into the fresh sweet air, almost blind in her anxiety, and the confusion of that quickly enacted scene, her head bent as if to run under the bullets which she expected.

She did not see how it happened, she did not know that he was there; but his arm was supporting her, his cool hand was on her forehead, stroking her face as if he had plucked her drowning from the sea.

"Where are they?" she asked, only to exclaim, and shrink closer to him at the sight of one lying a few rods away, in that sprawling limp posture of those who fall by violence.

"There were only four of them—there the other two go." He pointed down the little swale where the tall grass was still green. Macdonald's horse had fallen to grazing there, his master's perils and escapes all one to him now. It threw its head up and stood listening, trotted a little way and stopped, ears stiff, nostrils stretched.

"There's somebody coming," she said.

"Yes—Chadron and a fresh gang, maybe."

He sprang to the dugout door, where Frances' horse stood with its head out inquiringly.

"Jump up—quick!" he said, bringing the horse out. "Go this time, Frances; don't hang back a second more!"

"Never mind, Alan," she said, from the other side of the horse, "it's the cavalry—I guess they've come after me."

Major King was at the head of the detail of seven men which rode up, horses a lather of sweat. He threw himself from the saddle and hurried to Frances, his face full of the liveliest concern. Macdonald stepped around to meet him.

"Thank heaven! you're not hurt," the major said.

"No, but we thought we were in for another fight," she told him, offering him her hand in the gratefulness of her relief. He almost snatched it in his eagerness, and drew her toward him, and stood holding it in his haughty, proprietary way. "Mr. Macdonald—"

"The scoundrels heard us coming and ran—we got a glimpse of them down there. Chadron will have to answer for this outrage!" the major said.

"Major King, this is Mr. Macdonald," said she, firmly, breaking down the high manner in which the soldier persisted in overlooking and eliminating the homesteader.

Major King's face flushed; he drew back a hasty step as Macdonald offered his hand, in the frank and open manner of an equal man who raised no thought nor question on that point.

"Sir, I've been hearing of the gallant rescue that you made of another young lady this morning," he said, with sneering emphasis. "You are hardly the kind of a man I shake hands with!"

The troopers, sitting their blowing horses a rod away, made their saddles creak as they shifted to see this little dash of melodrama. Macdonald's face was swept by a sudden paleness, as if a sickness had come over him. He clenched his lean jaw hard; the firmness of his mouth was grimmer still as his hand dropped slowly to his side. Frances looked her indignation and censure into Major King's hot eyes.

"Mr. Macdonald has defended me like a gallant gentleman, sir! Those ruffians didn't run because they heard you coming, but because he faced them out here in the open, single-handed and alone, and drove them to their horses, Major King!"

The troopers were looking Macdonald over with favor. They had seen the evidence of his stand against Chadron's men.

"You're deceived in your estimation of the fellow, Miss Landcraft," the major returned, red to the eyes in his offended dignity. "I arrived at the ranch not an hour ago, detailed to escort you back to the post. Will you have the kindness to mount at once, please?"

He stepped forward to give her a hand into the saddle. But Macdonald was before him in that office, urged to it by the quick message of her eyes. From the saddle she leaned and gave him her warm, soft hand.

"Your men need you, Mr. Macdonald—go to them," she said. "My prayers for your success in this fight for the right will follow you."

Macdonald was standing bareheaded at her stirrup. Her hand lingered a moment in his, her eyes sounded the bottom of his soul. Major King, with his little uprising of dignity, was a very small matter in the homesteader's mind just then, although a minute past he had fought with himself to keep from twisting the arrogant officer's neck.

She fell in beside Major King, who was sitting grim enough in his way now, in the saddle, and they rode away. Macdonald stood, hat in hand, the last sunbeams of that day over his fair tangled hair, the smoke of his conflict on his face, the tender light of a man's most sacred fire in his eyes.



CHAPTER XVII

BOOTS AND SADDLES

When Major King delivered Frances—his punctilious military observance made her home-coming nothing less—to Colonel Landcraft, they found that grizzled warrior in an electrical state of excitement. He was moving in quick little charges, but with a certain grim system in all of them, between desk and bookcases, letter files, cabinets, and back to his desk again. He drew a document here, tucked one away there, slipped an elastic about others assembled on his desk, and clapped a sheaf of them in his pocket.

Major King saluted within the door.

"I have the honor to report the safe return of the detachment dispatched to Alamito Ranch for the convoy of Miss Landcraft," he said.

Colonel Landcraft returned the salute, and stood stiffly while his officer spoke.

"Very well, sir," said he. Then flinging away his official stiffness, he met Frances half-way as she ran to meet him, and enfolded her to his breast, just as if his dry old heart knew that she had come to him through perils.

Breathlessly she told him the story, leaving no word unsaid that would mount to the credit of Alan Macdonald. Colonel Landcraft was as hot as blazing straw over the matter. He swore that he would roast Saul Chadron's heart on his sword, and snatched that implement from the chair where it hung as he spoke, and buckled it on with trembling hand.

King interposed to tell him that Chadron was not at the ranch, and begged the colonel to delegate to him the office of avenger of this insult and hazard that Frances had suffered at the hands of his men. For a moment Colonel Landcraft held the young officer's eye with thankful expression of admiration, then he drew himself up as if in censure for wasted time, saluted, took a paper from his desk, and said with grave dignity:

"It must fall to you, Major King, to demand the reparation for this outrage that I shall not be here to enforce. I am ordered to Washington, sir, to make my appearance before the retiring board. The department has vested the command of this post in you, sir—here is the order. My soldiering days are at an end."

He handed the paper to Major King, with a salute. With a salute the young officer took it from his hand, an eager light in his eyes, a flush springing to his pale face. Frances clung to her father's arm, a little trembling moan on her lips as if she had received a mortal hurt.

"Never mind, never mind, dear heart," said the old man, a shake in his own voice. Frances, looking up with her great pity into his stern, set face, saw a tear creeping down his cheek, toughened by the fires of thirty years' campaigns.

"I'll never soldier any more," he said, "the politicians have got me. They've been after me a long time, and they've got me. But there is one easement in my disgrace—"

"Don't speak of it on those terms, sir!" implored Major King, more a man than a soldier as he laid a consoling hand on the old man's arm.

"No, no!" said Frances, clinging to her father's hand.

Colonel Landcraft smiled, looking from one to the other of them, and a softness came into his face. He took Major King's hand and carried it to join Frances', and she, in her softness for her father, allowed it to remain in the young soldier's grasp.

"There is one gleam of joy in the sundown of my life," the colonel said, "and that is in seeing my daughter pledged to a soldier. I must live in the reflection of your achievements, if I live beyond this disgrace, sir."

"I will try to make them worthy of my mentor, sir," Major King returned.

Frances stood with bowed head, the major still holding her hand in his ardent grasp.

"It's a crushing blow, to come before the preferment in rank that I have been led to expect would be my retiring compensation!" The colonel turned from them sharply, as if in pain, and walked in marching stride across the room. Frances withdrew her hand, with a little struggle, not softened by the appeal in the major's eyes.

"My poor wife is bowed under it," the colonel spoke as he marched back and forth. "She has hoped with me for some fitting reward for the years of service I have unselfishly given to my country, sir, for the surrender of my better self to the army. I'll never outlive it, I feel that I'll never outlive it!"

Colonel Landcraft had no thought apart from what he felt to be his hovering disgrace. He had forgotten his rage against Chadron, forgotten that his daughter had lived through a day as hazardous as any that he had experienced in the Apache campaigns, or in his bleak watches against the Sioux. He turned to her now, where she stood weeping softly with bowed head, the grime of the dugout on her habit, her hair, its bonds broken, straying over her face.

"I had counted pleasurably on seeing you two married," he said, "but something tells me I shall never come back from this journey, never resume command of this post." He turned back to his marching, stopped three or four paces along, turned sharply, a new light in his face. "Why shouldn't it be before I leave—tonight, within the hour?"

"Oh, father!" said Frances, in terrified voice, lifting her face in its tear-wet loveliness.

"I must make the train that leaves Meander at four o'clock tomorrow morning, I shall have to leave here within—" he flashed out his watch with his quick, nervous hand—"within three-quarters of an hour. What do you say, Major King? Are you ready?"

"I have been ready at any time for two years," Major King replied, in trembling eagerness.

Frances was thrown into such a mental turmoil by the sudden proposal that she could not, at that moment, speak a further protest. She stood with white face, her heart seeming to shrivel, and fall away to laboring faintness. Colonel Landcraft was not considering her. He was thinking that he must have three hours' sleep in the hotel at Meander before the train left for Omaha.

"Then we shall have the wedding at once, just as you stand!" he declared. "We'll have the chaplain in and—go and tell your mother, child, and—oh, well, throw on another dress if you like."

Frances found her tongue as her danger of being married off in that hot and hasty manner grew imminent.

"I'm not going to marry Major King, father, now or at any future time," said she, speaking slowly, her words coming with coldness from her lips.

"Silence! you have nothing to say, nothing to do but obey!" Colonel Landcraft blazed up in sudden explosion, after his manner, and set his heel down hard on the floor, making his sword clank in its scabbard on his thigh.

"I have not had much to say," Frances admitted, bitterly, "but I am going to have a great deal to say in this matter now. Both of you have gone ahead about this thing just as if I was irresponsible, both of you—"

"Hold your tongue, miss! I command you—hold your tongue!"

"It's the farthest thing from my heart to give you pain, or disappoint you in your calculations of me, father," she told him, her voice gathering power, her words speed, for she was a warrior like himself, only that her balance was not so easily overthrown; "but I am not going to marry Major King."

"Heaven and hell!" said Colonel Landcraft, stamping up and down.

"Heaven or hell," said she, "and not hell—if I can escape it."

"I'll not permit this insubordination in a member of my family!" roared the colonel, his face fiery, his rumpled eyebrows knitted in a scowl. "I'll have obedience, with good grace, and at once, or damn my soul, you'll leave my house!"

"Major King, if you are a gentleman, sir, you will relieve me of this unwelcome pressure to force me against my inclination. It is quite useless, sir, I tell you most earnestly. I would rather die than marry you—I would rather die!"

"Sir, I have no wish to coerce the lady"—Major King's voice shook, his words were low—"as she seems to have no preference for me, sir. Miss Landcraft perhaps has placed her heart somewhere else."

"She has no right to act with such treachery to me and you, sir," the colonel said. "I'll not have it! Where else, sir—who?"

"Spare me the humiliation of informing you," begged Major King, with averted face, with sorrow in his voice.

"Oh, you slanderous coward!" Frances assailed him with scorn of word and look. Colonel Landcraft was shaking a trembling finger at her, his face thrust within a foot of her own.

"I'll not have it! you'll not—who is the fellow, who?"

"There is nothing to conceal, there is no humiliation on my part in speaking his name, but pride—the highest pride of my heart!"

She stood back from them a little, her lofty head thrown back, her face full of color now, the strength of defense of the man she loved in her brave brown eyes.

"Some low poltroon, some sneaking civilian—"

"He is a man, father—you have granted that. His name is—"

"Stop!" thundered the colonel. "Heaven and hell! Will you disgrace me by making public confession of your shame? Leave this room, before you drive me to send you from it with a curse!"

In her room Frances heard the horses come to the door to carry her father away. She had sat there, trembling and hot, sorry for his foolish rage, hurt by his narrow injustice. Yet she had no bitterness in her heart against him, for she believed that she knew him best. When his passion had fallen he would come to her, lofty still, but ashamed, and they would put it behind them, as they had put other differences in the past.

Her mother had gone to him to share the last moments of his presence there, and to intercede for her. Now Frances listened, her hot cheek in her hand, her eyes burning, her heart surging in fevered stroke. There was a good deal of coming and going before the house; men came up and dismounted, others rode away. Watching, her face against the cool pane, she did not see her father leave. Yet he had not come to her, and the time for his going was past.

Her heart was sore and troubled at the thought that perhaps he had gone without the word of pacification between them. It was almost terrifying to her to think of that. She ran down the stairs and stood listening at his closed door.

That was not his voice, that heavy growl, that animal note. Saul Chadron's; no other. Her mother came in through the front door, weeping, and clasped Frances in her arms as she stood there, shadowy in the light of the dim hall lamp.

"He is gone!" she said.

Frances did not speak. But for the first time in her life a feeling of bitterness against her father for his hardness of heart and unbending way of injustice lifted itself in her breast. She led her mother to her own room, giving her such comfort as she could put into words.

"He said he never marched out to sure defeat before," Mrs. Landcraft told her. "I've seen him go many a time, Frances, but never with such a pain in my heart as tonight!"

And Saul Chadron was the man who had caused his going, Frances knew, a new illumination having come over the situation since hearing his voice in the colonel's office a few minutes past. Chadron had been at Meander, telegraphing to the cattlemen's servants in Washington all the time. He had demanded the colonel's recall, and the substitution of Major King, because he wanted a man in authority at the post whom he could use.

This favoritism of Chadron made her distrustful at once of Major King. There must be some scheming and plotting afoot. She went down and stood in the hall again, not even above bending to listen at the keyhole. Chadron was talking again. She felt that he must have been talking all the time that she had been away. It must be an unworthy cause that needed so much pleading, she thought.

"Well, he'll not shoot, I tell you, King; he's too smart for that. He'll have to be trapped into it. If you've got to have an excuse to fire on them—and I can't see where it comes in, King, damn my neck if I can—we've got to set a trap."

"Leave that to me," returned Major King, coldly.

"How much force are you authorized to use?"

"The order leaves that detail to me. 'Sufficient force to restore order,' it says."

"I think you ort to take a troop, at the least, King, and a cannon—maybe two."

"I don't think artillery will be necessary, sir."

"Well, I'll leave it to you, King, but I'd hate like hell to take you up there and have that feller lick you. You don't know him like I do. I tell you he'd lay on his back and fight like a catamount as long as he had a breath left in him."

"Can you locate them in the night?"

"I think we'd have to wait up there somewheres for daybreak. I'm not just sure which canyon they are in."

There was silence. Frances peeped through the keyhole, but could see nothing except thick smoke over bookcases and files.

"Well, we'll not want to dislodge them before daylight, anyway," said King.

"If Macdonald can back off without a fight, he'll do it," Chadron declared, "for he knows as well as you and I what it'd mean to fire on the troops. And I want you to git him, King, and make sure you've got him."

"It depends largely on whether the fellow can be provoked into firing on us, Chadron. You think he can be; so do I. But in case he doesn't, the best we can do will be to arrest him."

"What good would he be to me arrested, King? I tell you I want his scalp, and if you bring that feller out of there in a sack you'll come back a brigadier. I put you where you're at. Well, I can put you higher just as easy. But the purty I want for my trouble is that feller's scalp."

There was the sound of somebody walking about, in quick, nervous strides. Frances knew that Major King had got up from his usurped place at the desk—place unworthily filled, this low intrigue with Chadron aside, she knew—and was strutting in the shadow of his promised glory.

"Leave it to me, Chadron; I've got my own account to square with that wolf of the range!"

A sharp little silence, in which Frances could picture Chadron looking at King in his covert, man-weighing way. Then Chadron went on:

"King, I've noticed now and then that you seemed to have a soft spot in your gizzard for that little girl of mine. Well, I'll throw her in to boot if you put this thing through right. Is it a go?"

"I'd hesitate to bargain for the young lady without her being a party to the business," King replied, whether from wisdom born of his recent experience, or through lack of interest in the proposal Frances could not read in his even, well-pitched voice.

"Oh, she'd jump at you like a bullfrog at red flannel," Chadron assured him. "I could put your uniform on a wooden man and marry him off to the best girl in seven states. They never think of lookin' under a soldier's vest."

"You flatter me, Mr. Chadron, and the uniform of the United States army," returned King, with barely covered contempt. "Suppose we allow events to shape themselves in regard to Miss Chadron. She'll hardly be entertaining marriage notions yet—after her recent experience."

Chadron got up so quickly he overturned his chair.

"By God, sir! do you mean to intimate you wouldn't have her after what she's gone through? Well, I'll put a bullet through any man that says—"

"Oh, hold yourself in, Chadron; there's no call for this."

King's cold contempt would have been like a lash to a man of finer sensibilities than Saul Chadron. As it was, Frances could hear the heavy cattleman breathing like a mad bull.

"When you talk about my little girl, King, go as easy as if you was carryin' quicksilver in a dish. You told me she was all right a little while ago, and I tell you I don't like—"

"Miss Chadron was as bright as a redbird when I saw her this afternoon," King assured him, calmly. "She has suffered no harm at the hands of Macdonald and his outlaws."

"He'll dance in hell for that trick before the sun goes down on another day!"

"His big play for sympathy fell flat," said King, with a contemptuous laugh. "There wasn't much of a crowd on hand when he arrived at the ranch."

Silence. A little shifting of feet, a growl from Chadron, and a curse.

"But as for your proposal involving Miss Chadron, I am honored by it," said King.

"Any man would be!" Chadron declared.

"And we will just let it stand, waiting the lady's sanction."

That brightened Chadron up. He moved about, and there was a sound as if he had slapped the young officer on the back in pure comradeship and open admiration.

"What's your scheme for drawin' that feller into firin' on your men?" he asked.

"We'll talk it over as we go," said King.

A bugle lifted its sharp, electrifying note in the barracks.

"Boots and saddles!" Chadron said.

"Yes; we march at nine o'clock."



CHAPTER XVIII

THE TRAIL OF THE COFFEE

"You done right to come to the mission after me, for I'd ride to the gatepost of hell to turn a trick agin Saul Chadron!"

Banjo's voice had a quaver of earnestness in it that needed no daylight to enforce. The pitchy night made a bobbing blur of him as he rode his quick-stepping little horse at Frances Landcraft's side.

"Yes, you owe him one," Frances admitted.

"And I'll pay him before mornin' or it won't be no fault of mine. That there little ten-cent-size major he'd 'a' stopped you if he'd 'a' known you was goin', don't you suppose?"

"I'm sure he would have, Mr. Gibson."

"Which?" said Banjo.

"Banjo," she corrected.

"Now, that sounds more comfortabler," he told her. "I didn't know for a minute who you meant, that name's gittin' to be a stranger to me."

"Well, we don't want a stranger along tonight," said she, seriously.

"You're right, we don't. That there horse you're ridin' he's a good one, as good as any in the cavalry, even if he ain't as tall. He was an outlaw till Missus Mathews tamed him down."

"How did she do it—not break him like a bronco-buster?"

"No, she done it like she tames Injuns and other folks, by gentle words and gentler hands. Some they'll tell you she's sunk down to the ways of Injuns, clean out of a white man's sight in the dirt and doin's of them dead-horse eatin' 'Rapahoes. But I know she ain't. She lets herself down on a level to reach 'em, and git her hands under 'em so she can lift 'em up, the same as she puts herself on my level when she wants to reach me, or your level, or anybody's level, mom."

"Her eyes and her soft ways tell you that, Banjo, as plain as any words."

"She's done ten times as much as that big-backed buffalo of a preacher she's married to ever done for his own people, or ever will. He's clim above 'em with his educated ways; the Injun's ironed out of that man. You can't reach down and help anybody up, mom, if you go along through this here world on stilts."

"Not very well, Banjo."

"You need both of your hands to hold your stilts, mom; you ain't got even a finger to spare for a low-down feller like me."

"You're not a low-down fellow, Banjo. Don't be calling yourself names."

"I was low-down enough to believe what they told me about Macdonald shootin' up Chance Dalton. I believed it till Missus Mathews give me the straight of it. One of them Injun police fellers told her how that job was put up, and how it failed to work."

"A man named Lassiter told me about it."

They rode along in silence a long time after that. Then Banjo—

"Well, I hope we don't bust out onto them cavalry fellers too sudden and meet a flock of bullets. I'd never forgive the man that put a bullet through my fiddle."

"We'll go slowly, and keep listening; I can tell cavalry from cowboys as far as I can hear."

"I bet a purty you can, brought up with 'em like you was."

"They'll not be able to do anything before daylight, and when we overtake them we'll ride around and get ahead while they're waiting for morning. I don't know where the homesteaders are, but they'll be sending out scouts to locate them, and we can watch."

They were following the road that the cavalry had taken an hour in advance of them. Listening now, they rode on without words. Now and then a bush at the roadside flipped a stirrup, now and again Banjo's little horse snorted in short impatience, as if expressing its disapproval of this journey through the dark. Night was assertive in its heaviness, but communicative of its mysteries in its wild scents—the silent music of its hour.

There are those who, on walking in the night, can tell the hour by the smell, the taste, the elusive fine aroma of the quiet air. Before midnight it is like a new-lit censer; in the small hours the smell of old camp fires comes trailing, and the scent of rain upon embers.

But Frances Landcraft was not afraid of the night as she rode silently through it with Banjo Gibson at her side. There was no shudder in it for her as there had been on the night that Nola was stolen; it could not have raised up a terror grim enough to turn her back upon the road.

Her one thought was that she must reach Macdonald before Chadron and King could find him, and tell him that the troops were coming, and that he was to be trapped into firing upon them. She knew that many lives depended upon her endurance, courage, and strategy; many lives, but most of all Alan Macdonald's life. He must be warned, at the cost of her own safety, her own life, if necessary.

To that end the troops must be followed, and a desperate dash at daylight must be made into Macdonald's camp. Perhaps it would be a race with the cavalry at the last moment.

Banjo said it was beginning to feel like morning. An hour past they had crossed the river at the ford near Macdonald's place, and the foothills stood rough and black against the starry horizon. They were near them now, so near that the deeper darkness of their timbered sides fell over them like a cold shadow.

Suddenly she checked Banjo with a sharp word.

"I heard them!" she whispered.

Banjo's little horse, eager for the fellowship of its kind as his master was for his own in his way, threw up its head and whinnied. Banjo churned it with his heels, slapped it on the side of the head, and shut off the shrill call in a grunt, but the signal had gone abroad. From the blackness ahead it was answered, and the slow wind prowling down from the hills ahead of dawn carried the scent of cigarettes to them as they waited breathlessly for results.

"They're dismounted, and waiting for daylight," she said. "We must ride around them."

They were leaving the road, the low brush rasping harshly on their stirrups—as loud as a bugle-call, it seemed to Frances—when a dash of hoofs from ahead told that a detachment was coming to investigate. Now there came a hail. Frances stopped; Banjo behind her whispered to know what they should do.

"Keep that little fool horse still!" she said.

Now the patrol, which had stopped to hail, was coming on again. Banjo's horse was not to be sequestered, nor his craving for companionship in that lonesome night suppressed. He lifted his shrill nicker again, and a shot from the outriders of cavalry was the answer.

"Answer them, tell them who you are Banjo—they all know you—and I'll slip away. Good-bye, and thank you for your brave help!"

"I'll go with you, they'll hear one as much as they'll hear two."

"No, no, you can help me much better by doing as I tell you. Tell them that a led horse got away from you, and that's the noise of it running away."

She waited for no more words, for the patrol was very near, and now and then one of them fired as he rode. Banjo yelled to them.

"Say, you fellers! Stop that fool shootin' around here, I tell you!"

"Who are you?" came the answer.

"Banjo, you darned fool! And I tell you right now, pardner, the first man that busts my fiddle with a bullet'll have to mix with me!"

The soldiers came up laughing, and heard Banjo's explanation of the horse, still dimly heard, galloping off. Frances stopped to listen. Presently she heard them coming on again, evidently not entirely satisfied with Banjo's story. But the parley with him had delayed them; she had a good lead now.

In a little swale, where the greasewood reached above her head, she stopped again to listen. She heard the troopers beating the bushes away off to one side, and knew that they soon would give it up. When they passed out of her hearing, she rode on, slowly, and with caution.

She was frontiersman enough to keep her direction by the north star—Colonel Landcraft had seen to that particular of her education himself—but Polaris would not tell her which way to go to find Alan Macdonald and his dusty men standing their vigil over their cooped-up enemies. Nothing but luck, she knew, could lead her there, for she was in a sea of sage-brush, with the black river valley behind her, the blacker hills ahead, and never a mark of a trail to follow anywhere.

She had rounded the cavalry troop and left it far behind; the silence which immersed the sleeping land told her this. No hoof but her own mount's beat the earth within sound, no foot but hers strained saddle-leather within reach of her now, she believed.

There was only one thing to do; ride slowly in the direction that she had been holding with Banjo, and keep eyes, ears, and nose all on the watch. The ways of the range were early; if there was anybody within a mile of her to windward she would smell the smoke of his fire when he lit it, and see the wink of it, too, unless he built it low.

But it was neither the scent of fire nor the red eye of it winking on the hill that at length gave her despairing heart a fresh handful of hope—nothing less indeed than the aroma of boiling coffee. It had such a feeling of comfort and welcome, of domesticity and peace in it that she felt as if she approached a door with a friend standing ready to take her horse.

Her horse was not insensible to the cheer that somebody was brewing for himself in that wild place. She felt him quicken under her, and put up his head eagerly, and go forward as if he was nearing home. She wondered how far the smell of coffee would carry, and subsequent experience was a revelation on that point.

She had entered the hills, tracking back that wavering scent of coffee, which rose fresh and sudden now, and trailed away the next moment to the mere color of a smell. Now she had it, now she lost it, as she wound over rugged ridges and through groves of quaking-asp and balm of Gilead trees, always mounting among the hills, her eager horse taking the way without guidance, as keen on the scent as she.

It must have taken her an hour to run down that coffee pot. Morning was coming among the fading stars when she mounted a long ridge, the quick striding of her horse indicating that there was something ahead at last, and came upon the camp fire, the coffee, and the cook, all beside a splintered gray rock that rose as high as a house out of the barrenness of the hill.

The coffee-maker was a woman, and her pot was of several gallons' capacity. She was standing with the cover of the boiler in one hand, a great spoon in the other, her back half bent over her beverage, in the position that the sound of Frances' coming had struck her. She did not move out of that alert pose of suspicion until Frances drew rein within a few feet of her and gave her good-morning. When the poor harried creature saw that the visitor was a woman, her fright gave place to wonder.

Frances introduced herself without parley, and made inquiry for Macdonald.

"Why, bless your heart, you don't aim to tell me you rode all the way from the post in the night by yourself?" the simple, friendly creature said. "Well, Mr. Macdonald and most of the men they've left to take them scoun'rels sent in here by the cattlemen to murder all of us over to the jail at Meander."

"How long have they been gone?"

"Why, not so very long. I reckon you must 'a' missed meetin' 'em by a hair."

"I've got to catch up with them, right away! Is there anybody here that can guide me?"

"My son can, and he'll be glad. He's just went to sleep back there in the tent after guardin' them fellers all night. I'll roust him out."

The pioneer woman came back almost at once, and pressed a cup of her coffee upon Frances. Frances took the tin vessel eagerly, for she was chilled from her long ride. Then she dismounted to rest her horse while her guide was getting ready, and warm her numb feet at the fire. She told the woman how the scent of her coffee had led her out of her groping like a beacon light on the hill.

"It's about three miles from here down to the valley," the woman said. "Coffee will carry on the mornin' air that way."

"Do you think your son—?"

"He's a-comin'," the woman replied.

The boy came around the rock, leading a horse. He was wide awake and alert, bare-footed, bareheaded, and without a coat. He leaped nimbly onto his bare-backed beast, and Frances got into her saddle as fast as her numb limbs would lift her.

As she road away after the recklessly riding youth, she felt the hope that she had warmed in her bosom all night paling to a shadow. It seemed that, circumstances were ranging after a chart marked out for them, and that her own earnest effort to interfere could not turn aside the tragedy set for the gray valley below her.

Morning was broadening now; she could see her guide distinctly even when he rode many rods ahead. Dawn was the hour for treacherous men and deeds of stealth; Chadron would be on the way again before now, with the strength of the United States behind him to uphold his outlawed hand.

When they came down into the valley there was a low-spreading mist over the gray sage, which lent a warmth to the raw morning wind. There was a sense of indistinctness through the mist which was an ally to Chadron. Ten rods away, even in the growing morning, it would have been impossible to tell a cowboy from a cavalryman.

Here a haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot. At the roadside a little farther on the burned ruins of a cabin lay. It had stood so near the wheel track that the heat of its embers was warm on Frances' face as she galloped by. The wire fence was cut between each post, beyond splicing or repair; the shrubs which some home-hungry woman had set in her dooryard were trampled; the well curb was overthrown.

Over and over again as they rode that sad picture was repeated. Destruction had swept the country, war had visited it. Side by side upon the adjoining lines many of the homesteaders had built their little houses, for the comfort of being near their kind. In the corner of each quarter section on either side of the road along the fertile valley, a little home had stood three days ago. Now all were gone, marked only by little heaps of embers which twinkled a dying glow in the breath of the morning wind.

Day was spreading now. From the little swells in the land as she mounted them Frances could see the deeper mist hovering in the low places, the tops of tall shrubs and slender quaking-asp showing above it as if they stood in snow. The band of sunrise was broadening across the east; far down near the horizon a little slip of lemon-rind moon was faltering out of sight.

But there was no sight, no sound, of anybody in the road ahead. She spurred up beside her guide and asked him if there was any other way that they might have taken. No, he said; they would have to go that way, for there was only one fordable place in the river for many miles. He pointed to the road, fresh-turned by many hoofs, and clamped his lean thighs to his bare horse, galloping on.

"We'll take a cut acrosst here, and maybe head 'em off," he said, dashing away through the stirrup-high sage, striking close to the hills again, and into rougher going.

The ache of the most intense anxiety that she ever had borne was upon Frances; hope was only a shred in her hand. She believed now that all her desperate riding must come to nothing in the end.

She never had been that long in the saddle before in her life. Her body was numb with cold and fatigue; she felt the motion of her horse, heard its pounding feet in regular beat as it held to its long, swinging gallop, but with the detached sense of being no party to it. All that was sharp in her was the pain of her lost struggle. For she expected every moment to hear firing, and to come upon confusion and death at the next lift of the hill.

In their short cut across the country they had mounted the top of a long, slender ridge, which reached down into the valley like a finger. Now her guide pulled up his horse so suddenly that it slid forward on stiff legs, its hoofs plowing the loose shale.

"You'd better go back—there's goin' to be a fight!" he said, a look of shocked concern in his big wild eyes.

"Do you see them? Where—"

"There they are!"—he clutched her arm, leaning and pointing—"and there's a bunch of fellers comin' to meet 'em that they don't see! I tell you there's goin' to be a fight!"



CHAPTER XIX

"I BEAT HIM TO IT"

The last dash of that long ride was only a whirlwind of emotions to Frances. It was a red streak. She did not know what became of the boy; she left him there as she lashed her horse past him on the last desperate stretch.

The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off, a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald's men, their prisoners under guard between two long-strung lines of horsemen, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a man on horseback.

When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to him was, Tom Lassiter and those who rode with him at the head of the column pressing around.

The question and mystification in Macdonald's face at her coming cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like one man to another in a pass where words alone would be weak and lame.

"I was looking for Chadron to come with help and attempt a rescue, and I was moving to forestall him, but we were late getting under way. They"—waving his hand toward the prisoners—"held out until an hour ago."

"You must think, and think fast!" she said. "They're almost here!"

"Yes. I'm going ahead to meet them, and offer to turn these prisoners over to Major King. They'll have no excuse for firing on us then."

"No, no! some other way—think of some other way!"

He looked gravely into her anxious, pleading eyes. "Why, no matter, Frances. If they've come here to do that, they'll do it, but this way they'll have to do it in the open, not by a trick."

"I'll go with you," she said.

"I think perhaps—"

"I'll go!"

Macdonald turned to Lassiter in a few hurried words. She pressed to his side as the two rode away alone to meet the troops, repeating as if she had been denied:

"I'll go!"

There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face.

"What's up, Macdonald—where're you off to?" he inquired.

Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who had arrived at the homesteaders' camp the evening past.

"So they got troops, did they?" the newspaper man said, riding forward keenly. "Yes, they told me down in Cheyenne they'd put that trick through. Here they come!"

Macdonald spurred ahead, holding up his right hand in the Indian sign of peace. Major King was riding with Chadron at the head of the vanguard. They drew rein suddenly at sight of what appeared to be such a formidable force at Macdonald's back, for at that distance, and with the dimness of the scattering mist, it appeared as if several hundred horsemen were approaching.

Distrustful of Chadron, fearing that he might induce Major King to shoot Macdonald down as he sat there making overtures of peace, Frances rode forward and joined him, the correspondent coming jolting after her in his horn-riding way. After a brief parley among themselves Chadron and King, together with three or four officers, rode forward. One remained behind, and halted the column as it came around the brushwood screen at the turn of the road.

Major King greeted Frances as he rode up, scowling in high dignity. Chadron could not cover his surprise so well as Major King at seeing her there, her horse in a sweat, her habit torn where the brambles had snatched at her in her hard ride to get ahead of the troops. He gave her a cold good-morning, and sat in the attitude of a man pricking up his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force ahead.

The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald; about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if waiting for Macdonald to begin. He looked the homesteader captain over with severe eyes.

"Well, sir?" said he.

"We were starting for Meander, Major King, to deliver to the sheriff fifty men whom we have taken in the commission of murder and arson," Macdonald replied, with dignity. "Up to a few minutes ago we had no information that martial law had superseded the civil in this troubled country, but since that is the case, we will gladly turn our prisoners over to you, with the earnest request that they be held, collectively and individually, to answer for the crimes they have committed here."

"Them's my men, King—they've got 'em there!" said Chadron, boiling over the brim.

"This expedition has come to the relief of certain men, attacked and surrounded in the discharge of their duty by a band of cattle thieves of which you are the acknowledged head," replied Major King.

"Then you have come on a mistaken errand, sir," Macdonald told him.

"I have come into this lawless country to restore order and insure the lives and safety of property of the people to whom it belongs."

"The evidence of these hired raiders' crimes lies all around you, Major King," Macdonald said. "These men swept in here in the employ of the cattle interests, burned these poor homes, and murdered such of the inhabitants as were unable to fly to safety in the hills ahead of them. We are appealing to the law; the cattlemen never have done that."

"Say, Mr. Soldier, let me tell you something"—the newspaper correspondent, to whom one man's dignity was as much as another's, kicked his horse forward—"these raiders that bloody-handed Chadron sent in here have murdered children and women, do you know that?"

"Who in the hell are you?" Chadron demanded, bristling with rage, whirling his horse to face him.

"This is Chadron," Macdonald said, a little flash of humor in his eyes over Chadron's hearing the truth about himself from an unexpected source.

"Well, I'm glad I've run into you, Chadron; I've got a little list of questions to ask you," the correspondent told him, far from being either impressed or cowed. "Neel is my name, of the Chicago Tribune, I've—"

"You'd just as well keep your questions for another day—you'll send nothing out of here!" said Major King, sharply.

Neel looked across his nose at King with triumphant leer.

"I've sent out something, Mr. Soldier-man," said he; "it was on the wire by midnight last night, rushed to Meander by courier, and it's all over the country this morning. It's a story that'll give the other side of this situation up here to the war department, and it'll make this whole nation climb up on its hind legs and howl. Murder? Huh, murder's no name for it!"

Chadron was growling something below his breath into King's ear.

"Forty-three men and boys—look at them, there they are—rounded up fifty of the cutthroats the Drovers' Association rushed up here from Cheyenne on a special train to wipe the homesteaders out," Neel continued, rising to considerable heat in the partisanship of his new light. "Five dollars a day was the hire of that gang, and five dollars bonus for every man, woman, or baby that they killed! Yes, I've got signed statements from them, Chadron, and I'd like to know what you've got to say, if anything?"

"Disarm that rabble," said Major King, speaking to a subordinate officer, "and take charge of the men they have been holding."

"Sir, I protest—" Macdonald began.

"I have no words to waste on you!" Major King cut him off shortly.

"I'd play a slow hand on that line, King, and a careful one, if I were you," advised Neel. "If you take these men's guns away from them they'll be at the mercy of Chadron's brigands. I tell you, man, I know the situation in this country!"

"Thank you," said King, in cold hauteur.

Chadron's eyes were lighting with the glitter of revenge. He sat grinding his bridle-reins in his gloved hand, as if he had the bones of the nesters in his palm at last.

"You will proceed, with the rescued party under guard, to Meander," continued Major King to his officer, speaking as if he had plans for his own employment aside from the expedition. "There, Mr. Chadron will furnish transportation to return them whence they came."

"I'll furnish—" began Chadron, in amazement at this unexpected turn.

"Transportation, sir," completed Major King, in his cold way.

"These men should be held to the civil authorities for trial in this county, and not set free," Macdonald protested, indignant over the order.

Major King ignored him. He was still looking at Chadron, who was almost choking on his rage.

"Hell! Do you mean to tell me the whole damn thing's goin' to fizzle out this way, King? I want something done, I tell you—I want something done! I didn't bring you up here—"

"Certainly not, sir!" snapped King.

"My orders to you—" Chadron flared.

"It happens that I am not marching under your orders at—"

"The hell you ain't!" Chadron exploded.

"It's an outrage on humanity to turn those scoundrels loose, Major King!" Neel said. "Why, I've got signed statements, I tell you—"

"Remove this man to the rear!" Major King addressed a lieutenant, who communicated the order to the next lowest in rank immediately at hand, who passed it on to two troopers, who came forward briskly and rode the protesting correspondent off between them.

Other troopers were collecting the arms of the homesteaders, a proceeding which Macdonald witnessed with a sick heart. Frances, sitting her horse in silence through all that had passed, gave him what comfort and hope she could express with her eyes.

"Detail a patrol of twenty men," Major King continued his instructions to his officer, "to keep the roads and disarm all individuals and bands encountered."

"That don't apply to my men!" declared Chadron, positively. In his face there was a dark threat of disaster for Major King's future hopes of advancement.

"It applies to everybody as they come," said King. "Troops have come in here to restore order, and order will be restored."

Chadron was gaping in amazement. That feeling in him seemed to smother every other, even his hot rage against King for this sudden shifting of their plans and complete overthrow of the cattlemen's expectations of the troops. The one little comfort that he was to get out of the expedition was that of seeing his raiders taken out of Macdonald's hands and marched off to be set free.

Macdonald felt that he understood the change in King. The major had come there full of the intention of doing Chadron's will; he had not a doubt of that. But murder, even with the faint color of excuse that they would have contrived to give it, could not be done in the eyes of such a witness as Frances Landcraft. Subserviency, a bending of dignity even, could not be stooped to before one who had been schooled to hold a soldier's honor his most precious endowment.

Major King had shown a hand of half-fairness in treating both sides alike. That much was to his credit, at the worst. But he had not done it because he was a high-souled and honorable man. His eyes betrayed him in that, no matter how stern he tried to make them. The coming of that fair outrider in the night had turned aside a great tragedy, and saved Major King partly to himself, at least, and perhaps wholly to his career.

Macdonald tried to tell her in one long and earnest look all this. She nodded, seeming to understand.

"You've double-crossed me, King," Chadron accused, in the flat voice of a man throwing down his hand. "I brought you up here to throw these nesters off of our land."

"The civil courts must decide the ownership of that," returned King, sourly. "Disarm that man!" He indicated Macdonald, and turned his horse as if to ride back and join his command.

The lieutenant appeared to feel that it would be no lowering of his dignity to touch the weapons of a man such as Macdonald's bearing that morning had shown him to be. He approached with a smile half apologetic. Chadron was sitting by on his horse watching the proceeding keenly.

"Pardon me," said the officer, reaching out to receive Macdonald's guns.

A swift change swept over Macdonald's face, a flush dyeing it to his ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question, the young officer's hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten feet away, slung a revolver from his side and fired.

Macdonald rocked in his saddle as Frances leaped to the ground and ran to his side. He wilted forward, his hat falling, and crumpled into her arms. The lieutenant relieved her of her bloody burden, and eased Macdonald to the ground.

Major King came riding back. At his sharp command troopers surrounded Chadron, who sat with his weapon still poised, like one gazing at the mark at which he had fired, the smoke of his shot around him.

"In a second he'd 'a' got me! but I beat him to it, by God! I beat him to it!" he said.

Macdonald's belt had slipped free of his body. With its burden of cartridges and its two long pistols it lay at Frances' feet. She stooped, a little sound in her throat between a sob and a cry, jerked one of the guns out, wheeled upon Chadron and fired. The lieutenant struck up her arm in time to save the cattleman's life. The blow sent the pistol whirling out of her hand.

"They will go off that way, sometimes," said the young officer, with apology in his soft voice.

The soldiers closed around Chadron and hurried him away. A moment Major King sat looking at Macdonald, whose blood was wasting in the roadside dust from a wound in his chest. Then he flashed a look into Frances' face that had a sneer of triumph in it, wheeled his horse and galloped away.

In a moment the lieutenant was summoned, leaving Frances alone between the two forces with Macdonald. She did not know whether he was dead. She dropped to her knees in the dust and began to tear frantically at his shirt to come to the wound. Tom Lassiter came hurrying up with others, denouncing the treacherous shot, swearing vengeance on the cowardly head that had conceived so murderous a thing.

Lassiter said that he was not dead, and set to work to stem the blood. It seemed to Frances that the world had fallen away from her, leaving her alone. She stood aside a little, her chin up in her old imperious way, her eyes on the far hills where the tender sunlight was just striking among the white-limbed aspen trees. But her heart was bent down to the darkness of despair.

She asked no questions of the men who were working so earnestly after their crude way to check that precious stream; she stood in the activity of passing troopers and escorted raiders insensible of any movement or sound in all the world around her. Only when Tom Lassiter stood from his ministrations and looked at her with understanding in his old weary eyes she turned her face back again, slowly resolute, to see if he had died.

Her throat was dry. It took an effort to bring a sound from it, and then it was strained and wavering.

"Is he—dead?"

"No, miss, he ain't dead," Tom answered. But there was such a shadow of sorrow and pain in his eyes that tears gushed into her own.

"Will—will—"

Tom shook his head. "The Lord that give him alone can answer that," he said, a feeling sadness in his voice.

The troops had moved on, save the detail singled for police duty. These were tightening girths and trimming for the road again a little way from the spot where Macdonald lay. The lieutenant returned hastily.

"Miss Landcraft, I am ordered to convey you to Alamito Ranch—under guard," said he.

Banjo Gibson, held to be harmless and insignificant by Major King, had been set free. Now he came up, leading his horse, shocked to the deepest fibers of his sensitive soul by the cowardly deed that Saul Chadron had done.

"It went clean through him!" he said, rising from his inspection of Macdonald's wound. And then, moved by the pain in Frances' tearless eyes, he enlarged upon the advantages of that from a surgical view. "The beauty of a hole in a man's chest like that is that it lets the pizen dreen off," he told her. "It wouldn't surprise me none to see Mac up and around inside of a couple of weeks, for he's as hard as old hick'ry."

"Well, I'm not going to Alamito Ranch and leave him out here to die of neglect, orders or no orders!" said she to the lieutenant.

The young officer's face colored; he plucked at his new mustache in embarrassment. Perhaps the prospect of carrying a handsome and dignified young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and polite phrasing.

She scorned him and his veneration for orders, and turned from him coldly.

"Is there no doctor with your detachment?" she asked.

"He has gone on with the main body, Miss Landcraft. They have several wounded."

"Wounded murderers and burners of homes! Well, I'm not going to Alamito Ranch with you, sir, unless you can contrive an ambulance of some sort and take this gentleman too."

The officer brightened. He believed it could be arranged. Inside of an hour he had Tom Lassiter around with a team and spring wagon, in which the homesteaders laid Macdonald tenderly upon a bed of hay.

Banjo waited until they were ready to begin their slow march to the ranch, when he led his little horse forward.

"I'll go on to the agency after the doctor and send him over to Alamito as quick as he can go," he said. "And I'll see if Mother Mathews can go over, too. She's worth four doctors when it comes to keep the pizen from spreadin' in a wound."

Frances gave him her benediction with her eyes, and farewell with a warm handclasp, and Banjo's beribboned horse frisked off on its long trip, quite refreshed from the labors of the past night.

Frances was carrying Macdonald's cartridge belt and revolvers, the confiscation of which had been overlooked by Major King in the excitement of the shooting. The young lieutenant hadn't the heart to take the weapons from her. Orders had been carried out; Macdonald had been disarmed. He let it go at that.

Frances rode in the wagon with Macdonald, a canteen of water slung over her shoulders. Now and then she moistened his lips with a little of it, and bathed his eyes, closed in pathetic weariness. He was unconscious still from the blow of Saul Chadron's big bullet. As she ministered to him she felt that he would open his eyes on this world's pains and cruel injustices nevermore.

And why had Major King ordered her, virtually under arrest, to Alamito Ranch, instead of sending her in disgrace to the post? Was it because he feared that she would communicate with her father from the post, and discover to him the treacherous compact between Chadron and King, or merely to take a mean revenge upon her by humiliating her in Nola Chadron's eyes?

He had taken the newspaper correspondent with him, and certainly would see that no more of the truth was sent out by him from that flame-swept country for several days. With her at the ranch, far from telegraphic communication with the world, nothing could go out from her that would enlighten the department on the deception that the cattlemen had practiced to draw the government into the conflict on their side. In the meantime, the Drovers' Association would be at work, spreading money with free hand, corrupting evidence with the old dyes of falsehood.

Major King had seen his promised reward withdrawn through her intervention, and had made a play of being fair to both sides in the controversy, except that he kept one hand on Chadron's shoulder, so to speak, in making martyrs of those bloody men whom he had sent there to burn and kill. They were to be shipped safely back to their place, where they would disperse, and walk free of all prosecution afterwards. For that one service to the cattlemen Major King could scarcely hope to win his coveted reward.

She believed that Alan Macdonald would die. It seemed that the fever which would consume his feeble hope of life was already kindling on his lips. But she had no tears to pour out over him now. Only a great hardness in her heart against Saul Chadron, and a wild desire to lift her hand and strike him low.

Whether Major King would make her attempt against Chadron's life, or her interference with his military expedition his excuse for placing her under guard, remained for the future to develop. She turned these things in her mind as they proceeded along the white river road toward the ranch.

It came noontime, and decline of sun; the shadow of the mountains reached down into the valley, the mist came purple again over the foothills, the fire of sunset upon the clouds. Alan Macdonald still lived, his strong harsh face turned to the fading skies, his tired eyelids closed upon his dreams.



CHAPTER XX

LOVE AND DEATH

Maggie and Alvino had the ranch to themselves when the military party from the upper valley arrived, Mrs. Chadron and Nola having driven to Meander that morning. It had been their intention to return that evening, Maggie said. Mrs. Chadron had gone after chili peppers, and other things, but principally chili peppers. There was not one left in the house, and the mistress could not live without them, any more than fire could burn without wood.

Dusk had settled when they reached the ranch, and night thickened fast. The lieutenant dropped two men at the corral gate—her guard, Frances understood—and went back to his task of watching for armed men upon the highroads.

Under the direction of Frances, Maggie had placed a cot in Mrs. Chadron's favored sitting-room with the fireplace. There Macdonald lay in clean sheets, a blaze on the hearth, and Maggie was washing his wound with hot water, groaning in the pity which is the sweetest part of the women of her homely race.

"I think that he will live, miss," she said hopefully. "See, he has a strong breath on my damp hand—I can feel it like a little wind."

She spoke in her native tongue, which Frances understood thoroughly from her years in Texas and Arizona posts. Frances shook her head sorrowfully.

"I am afraid his breath will fail soon, Maggie."

"No, if they live the first hour after being shot, they get well," Maggie persisted, with apparent sincerity. "Here, put your hand on his heart—do you feel it? What a strong heart he has to live so well! what a strong, strong heart!"

"Yes, a strong, strong heart!" Tears were falling for him now that there was none to see them, scalding their way down her pale cheeks.

"He must have carried something sacred with him to give him such strength, such life."

"He carried honor," said Frances, more to herself than to Maggie, doubting that she would understand.

"And love, maybe?" said Maggie, with soft word, soft upward-glancing of her feeling dark eyes.

"Who can tell?" Frances answered, turning her head away.

Maggie drew the sheet over him and stood looking down into his severe white face.

"If he could speak he would ask for his mother, and for water then, and after that the one he loves. That is the way a man's mind carries those three precious things when death blows its breath in his face."

"I do not know," said Frances, slowly.

There was such stress in waiting, such silence in the world, and such emptiness and pain! Reverently as Maggie's voice was lowered, soft and sympathetic as her word, Frances longed for her to be still, and go and leave her alone with him. She longed to hold the dear spark of his faltering life in her own hands, alone, quite alone; to warm it back to strength in her own lone heart. Surely her name could not be the last in his remembrance, no matter for the disturbing breath of death.

"I will bring you some food," said Maggie. "To give him life out of your life you must be strong."

* * * * *

Frances started out of her sleep in the rocking-chair before the fire. She had turned the lamp low, but there was a flare of light on her face. Her faculties were so deeply sunk in that insidious sleep which had crept upon her like a bindweed upon wheat that she struggled to rise from it. She sprang up, her mind groping, remembering that there was something for which she was under heavy responsibility, but unable for a moment to bring it back to its place.

Nola was in the door with a candle, shading the flame from her eyes with her hand. Her hair was about her shoulders, her feet were bare under the hem of her long dressing-robe. She was staring, her lips were open, her breath was quick, as if she had arrived after a run.

"Is he—alive?" she whispered.

"Why should you come to ask? What is his life to you?" asked Frances, sorrowfully bitter.

"Oh, Maggie just woke and came up to tell me, mother doesn't know—she's just gone to bed. Isn't it terrible, Frances!"

Nola spoke distractedly, as if in great agony, or great fear.

"He can't harm any of you now, you're safe." Frances was hard and scornful. She turned from Nola and laid her hand on Macdonald's brow, drawing her breath with a relieved sigh when she felt the warmth of life still there.

"Oh, Frances, Frances!" Nola moaned, with expression of despair, "isn't this terrible!"

"If you mean it's terrible to have him here, I can't help it. I'm a prisoner, here against my will. I couldn't leave him out there alone to die."

Nola lowered her candle and stared at Frances, her eyes big and blank of everything but a wild expression that Frances had read as fear.

"Will he die?" she whispered.

"Yes; you are to have your heartless way at last. He will die, and his blood will be on this house, never to be washed away!"

"Why didn't you come back when we called you—both of you?" Nola drew near, reaching out an appealing hand. Frances shrank from her, to bend quickly over Macdonald when he groaned and moved his head.

"Put out that light—it's in his eyes!" she said.

Nola blew out the candle and came glimmering into the room in her soft white gown.

"Don't blame me, Frances, don't blame any of us. Mother and I wanted to save you both, we tried to stop the men, and we could have held them back if it hadn't been for Chance. Chance got three of them to go, the others—"

"They paid for that!" said Frances, a little lift of triumph in her voice.

"Yes, but they—"

"Chance didn't do it, I tell you! If he says he did it he lies! It was—somebody else."

"The soldiers?"

"No, not the soldiers."

"I thought maybe—I saw one of them on guard in front of the house as we came in."

"He's guarding me, I'm under arrest, I tell you. The soldiers have nothing to do with him."

Nola stood looking down at Macdonald, who was deathly white in the weak light of the low, shaded lamp. With a little timid outreaching, a little starting and drawing back, she touched his forehead, where a thick lock of his shaggy hair fell over it, like a sheaf of ripe wheat burst from its band.

"Oh, it breaks my heart to see him dying—it—breaks—my—heart!" she sobbed.

"You struck him! You're not—you're not fit to touch him—take your hand away!"

Frances pushed her hand away roughly. Nola drew back, drenched with a sudden torrent of penitential tears.

"I know it, I know it!" she confessed in bitterness, "I knew it when he took me away from those people in the mountains and brought me home. He carried me in his arms when I was tired, and sang to me as we rode along there in the lonesome night! He sang to me, just like I was a little child, so I wouldn't be afraid—afraid—of him!"