Banjo had returned, with fever in his wound. Mrs. Chadron was putting horse liniment on it when Frances entered the sitting-room where the news of the tragedy had visited them the night past.

“I didn’t go to the post—I saw some men in the road and turned back,” Frances told them, sinking down wearily in a chair before the fire.

“I’m glad you turned back, honey,” Mrs. Chadron said, shaking her head sadly, “for I was no end worried about you. Them rustlers they’re comin’ down from their settlement and gatherin’ up by Macdonald’s place, the men told Banjo, and no tellin’ what they might ’a’ done if they’d seen you.”

Mrs. Chadron’s face was not red with the glow of peppers and much food this morning. One night of anxiety had racked her, and left hollows under her eyes and a flat grayness in her cheeks.

Banjo had brought no other news. The men had scattered at daybreak to search for the trail of the man who had carried Nola away, but Banjo, sore and shaken, had come back depressed and full of pains. Mrs. Chadron said that Saul surely would be home before noonday, and urged Frances to go to her room and sleep.

Banjo contracted his muscles under the application, shriveling up on himself like a snail in a fire, for it was hot and heroic liniment, and strong medicine for strong beasts and tougher men. Banjo’s face was a picture of patient suffering, but he said nothing, and had not spoken since Frances entered the room, for the treatment had been under way before her arrival and there was scarcely enough breath left in him to suffice for life, and none at all for words. Frances had it in mind to suggest some milder remedy, but held her peace, feeling that if Banjo survived the treatment he surely would be in no danger from his hurt.

The door of Nola’s room was open as Frances passed, and there was a depression in the counterpane which told where the lost girl’s mother had knelt beside it and wet it with her tears. Frances wondered whether she had prayed, lingering compassionately a moment in the door.

Frances went in for a nearer inspection, and lifted the little saucy bit of headgear from its place in the decorations of Nola’s wall. There could be no doubting it; that was Alan Macdonald’s bonnet, and there was a bullet hole in it at the stem of the little feather. The close-grazing lead had sheared the plume in two, and gone on its stinging way straight through the bonnet.

An exclamation of tender pity rose above her breath. She fondled the little headdress and pressed it to her bosom; she laid it against her cheek and kissed it in consolation for its hurt—the woman’s balsam for all sufferings and heartbreaks, and incomparable among the panaceas of all time.

In spite of her sympathy for Nola in her grave situation, facing or undergoing what terrors no one knew, there was a bridling of resentment against her in Frances’ breast as she hung the marred bonnet back in its place. It seemed to her that Nola had exulted over both herself and Alan Macdonald when she had put his bonnet on her wall, and that she had kept it there after the coming of Frances to that house in affront to friendship and mockery of the hospitality that she professed to extend.

How she suffered in picturing his peril, happily outlived! How her heart trembled and her strong young limbs shook as she lived over in breathless agony the crisis of that night! He had carried her glove in his bonnet—she remembered the deft little movement of stowing it there just the moment before he bent and flashed away among the shadows. Excuse enough for losing it, indeed!

But he had not told her of his escape to justify the loss; proudly he had accepted the blame, and turned away with the hurt of it in his unbending heart.

She went back and took down the jaunty little cap again, and kissed it with compensatory tenderness, and left a jewel trembling on its crown from the well of her honest brown eye. If ever amends were made to any little highland bonnet in this world, then Alan Macdonald’s was that bonnet, hanging there among the flaring pennants and trivial little schoolgirl trophies on Nola Chadron’s wall.

Chadron came home toward evening at the head of sixty men. He had raised his army speedily and effectively. These men had been gathered by the members of the Drovers’ Association and sent to Meander by special train, horses, guns, ammunition, and provisions with them, ready for a campaign.

Press agents of the Drovers’ Association in Cheyenne were sowing nation-wide picturesque stories of the rustlers’ uprising. The ground was being prepared for the graver news that was to come; the cattlemen’s justification was being carefully arranged in advance.

Frances shuddered for the homesteaders when she looked out of her window upon this formidable force of lean-legged, gaunt-cheeked gun-fighters. They were men of the trade, cowboys who had fought their employers’ battles from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri. They were grim and silent men as they pressed round the watering troughs at the windmill with their horses, with flapping hats and low-slung pistols, and rifles sheathed in leather cases on their saddles.

Chadron was in the saddle again, and there was hurrying among his men at barn and corral as they put on bridles which they had jerked off, and tightened girths and gathered up dangling straps. Chadron was riding among them, large and commanding as a general, with a cloud in his dark face that seemed a threat of death.

Mrs. Chadron was hurrying in to make a bundle of some heavy clothing for Nola to protect her against the night chill on her way home, which the confident soul believed her daughter would be headed upon before midnight. Saul the invincible was taking the trail; Saul, who smashed his way to his desires in all things. She gave Frances a hurried word of encouragement as they passed outside the door.

Chadron was talking earnestly to his men. “I’ll give fifty dollars bonus to the man that brings him down,” she heard him say as she drew near, “and a hundred to the first man to lay eyes on my daughter.”

“Thank you, Miss Frances, for your friendship in this bad business,” he said, heartily, and with the best that there was in him. “You’ve been a great help and comfort to her mother, and if it wouldn’t be askin’ too much I’d like for you to stay here with her till we bring my little girl back home.”

“Yes, I intended to stay, Mr. Chadron; I didn’t come out to tell you that.” She looked round at the admiring faces, too plainly expressive of their approbation, some of them, and plucked Chadron’s sleeve. “Bend down—I want to tell you something,” she said, in low, quick voice.

Chadron stooped, his hand lightly on her shoulder, in attitude of paternal benediction.

“It wasn’t Macdonald, it was Mark Thorn,” she whispered.

Chadron’s face displayed no surprise, shadowed no deeper concern. Only there was a flitting look of perplexity in it as he sat upright in his saddle again.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?” She watched him closely, baffled by his unmoved countenance.

“I never heard of anybody in this country by that name,” he returned, shaking his head with a show of entire sincerity. “Who was tellin’ you about him—who said he was the man?”

Chadron shook his head with an air of serious concern. There was a look of commiseration in his eyes for her credulity, and shameful duping by the cunning word of Alan Macdonald.

“That’s one of Macdonald’s lies,” he said, something so hard and bitter in his voice when he pronounced that name that she shuddered. “I never heard of anybody named Thorn, here or anywheres else. That rustler captain he’s a deep one, Miss Frances, and he was only throwin’ dust in your eyes. But I’m glad you told me.”

“But they said—the man he called Lassiter said—that Macdonald would find Nola, and bring her home,” she persisted, unwilling yet to accept Chadron’s word against that old man’s, remembering the paper with the list of names.

“He’s bald-faced enough to try even a trick like that!” he said.

Chadron looked impatiently toward the house, muttering something about the slowness of “them women,” avoiding Frances’ eyes. For she did not believe Saul Chadron, and her distrust was eloquent in her face.

“You mean that he’d pretend a rescue and bring her back, just to make sympathy for himself and his side of this trouble?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Chadron nodded, frowning sternly.

“Oh, it seems impossible that anybody could be so heartless and low!”

“A man that’d burn brands is low enough to go past anything you could imagine in that little head of yours, Miss Frances. Do you mind runnin’ in and tellin’—no, here she comes.”

“Couldn’t this trouble between you and the homesteaders—”

“Homesteaders! They’re cattle thieves, born in ’em and bred in ’em, and set in the hide and hair of ’em!”

“Couldn’t it be settled without all this fighting and killing?” she went on, pressing her point.

“It’s all over now but the shoutin’,” said he. “There’s only one way to handle a rustler, Miss Frances, and that’s to salt his hide.”

“I’d be willing—I’d be glad—to go up there myself, alone, and take any message you might send,” she offered. “I think they’d listen to reason, even to leaving the country if you want them to, rather than try to stand against a ga—force like this.”

“But Macdonald seemed hurt when I asked him how much money they wanted you to pay as Nola’s ransom,” she said.

“He’s deep, and he’s tricky—too deep and too slick for you.” Chadron gathered up his reins, leaned over and whispered: “Don’t say anything about that Thorn yarn to her”—a sideways jerk of the head toward his wife—“her trouble’s deep enough without stirrin’ it.”

Chadron had the bundle now, and Mrs. Chadron was helping him tie it behind his saddle, shaking her head sadly as she handled the belongings of her child with gentle touch. Tears were running down her cheeks, but her usually ready words seemed dead upon her tongue.

From the direction of the barn a little commotion moved forward among the horsemen, like a wave before a breeze. Banjo Gibson appeared on his horse as the last thong was tied about Nola’s bundle, his hat tilted more than its custom to spare the sore place over his eye.

The cowboys looked at his gaudy trappings with curious eyes. Chadron gave him a short word of greeting, and bent to kiss his wife good-bye.

Chadron slewed in his saddle with an ugly scowl.

“We don’t want any banjo-pickers on this job, it’s men’s work!” he said.

Banjo seemed to droop with humiliation. Chuckles and derisive words were heard among Chadron’s train. The little musician hung his bandaged head.

“Oh, you ortn’t be hard on Banjo, he means well,” Mrs. Chadron pleaded.

“He can stay here and scratch the pigs,” Chadron returned, in his brutal way. “We’ve got to go now, old lady, but we’ll be back before morning, and we’ll bring Nola. Don’t you worry any more; she’ll be all right—they wouldn’t dare to harm a hair of her head.”

Mrs. Chadron looked at him with large hope and larger trust in her yearning face, and Banjo slewed his horse directly across the gate.

“Before you leave, Saul, I want to tell you this,” he said. “You’ve hurt me, and you’ve hurt me deep! I’ll leave here before another hour passes by, and I’ll never set a boot-heel inside of your door ag’in as long as you live!”

“Oh hell!” said Chadron, spurring forward into the road.

Banjo led his horse to the gate in front of the house and left it standing there while he went in to get his instruments. Mrs. Chadron was moved to a fresh outburst of weeping by his preparations for departure, and the sad, hurt look in his simple face.

“You stay here, Banjo; don’t you go!” she begged. “Saul he didn’t mean any harm by what he said—he won’t remember nothing about it when he comes back.”

“I’ll remember it,” Banjo told her, shaking his head in unbending determination, “and I couldn’t be easy here like I was in the past. If I was to try to swaller a bite of Saul Chadron’s grub after this it’d stick in my throat and choke me. No, I’m a-goin’, mom, but I’m carryin’ away kind thoughts of you in my breast, never to be forgot.”

Banjo hitched the shoulder strap of the instrument from which he took his name with a jerking of the shoulder, and settled it in place; he took up his fiddle box and hooked it under his arm, and offered Mrs. Chadron his hand. She was crying, her face in her apron, and did not see. Frances took the extended hand and clasped it warmly, for the little musician and his homely small sentiments had found a place in her heart.

Banjo looked at her with pain reflected in his shallow eyes.

“The hurt that gives me my misery is where it can’t be seen,” he said.

“Where are you goin’, Banjo, with the country riled up this way, and you li’ble to be shot down any place by them rustlers?” Mrs. Chadron asked, looking at him appealingly, her apron ready to stem her gushing tears.

“I’ll go over to the mission and stay with Mother Mathews till I’m healed up. I’ll be welcome in that house; I’d be welcome there if I was blind, and had m’ back broke and couldn’t touch a string.”

“Yes, you would, Banjo,” Mrs. Chadron nodded.

“She’s married to a Injun, but she’s as white as a angel’s robe.”

“She’s a good soul, Banjo, as good as ever lived.”

Frances took advantage of Banjo’s trip to the reservation to send a note to her father apprising him of the tragedy at the ranch. Banjo buttoned it inside his coat, mounted his horse, and rode away.

Mrs. Chadron watched him out of sight with lamentations.

“I wish he’d ’a’ stayed—it ’d ’a’ been all right with Saul; Saul didn’t mean any harm by what he said. He’s the tender-heartedest man you ever saw, he wouldn’t hurt a body’s feelin’s for a farm.”

“I don’t believe Banjo is a man to hold a grudge very long,” Frances told her, looking after the retreating musician, her thoughts on him but hazily, but rather on a little highland bonnet with a bullet hole in its crown.

“No, he ain’t,” Mrs. Chadron agreed, plucking up a little brightness. “But it’s a bad sign, a mighty bad sign, when a friend parts from you with a hurt in his heart that way, and leaves your house in a huff and feels put out like Banjo does.”

“Yes,” said Frances, “we let them go away from us too often that way, with sore hearts that even a little word might ease.”

She spoke with such wistful regret that the older woman felt its note through her own deep gloom. She groped out, tears blinding her, until her hand found her young friend’s, and then she clasped it, and stood holding it, no words between them.

Twenty-four hours after Banjo’s departure a messenger arrived at the ranchhouse. It was one of the cowboys attached to the ranch, and he came with his right arm in a sling. He was worn, and beaten out by long hours in the saddle and the pain of his wound.

He said they had news of Nola, and that Chadron sent word that she would be home before another night passed. This intelligence sent Mrs. Chadron off to bedroom and kitchen to make preparations for her reception and restoration.

As she left the room Frances turned to the messenger, who stood swinging his big hat awkwardly by the brim. She untied the sling that held his wounded arm and made him sit by the table while she examined his injury, concerning which Mrs. Chadron, in her excitement, had not even inquired.

The shot had gone through the forearm, grazing the bone. When Frances, with the aid of Maggie, the Mexican woman with tender eyes, had cleansed and bound up the wound, she turned to him with a decisive air of demand.

“Now, tell me the truth,” she said.

“That’s what the boss told me to say,” he demurred.

“I know he did; but what’s happening?”

“Well, we ain’t heard hide nor hair of her”—he looked round cautiously, lest Mrs. Chadron surprise him in the truth—“and them rustlers they’re clean gone and took everything but their houses and fences along—beds and teams and stock, and everything.”

“Gone!” she repeated, staring at him blankly; “where have they gone?”

“Macdonald’s doin’ it; that man’s got brainds,” the cowboy yielded, with what he knew to be unlawful admiration of the enemy’s parts. “He’s herdin’ ’em back in the hills where they’ve built a regular fort, they say. Some of us fellers caught up to a few of the stragglers last night, and that’s when I got this arm put on me.”

“Have any of the rustlers been killed?”

“No,” he admitted, disgustedly, “they ain’t! We’ve burnt all the shacks we come to, and cut their fences, but they all got slick and clean away, down to the littlest kid. But the boss’s after ’em,” he added, with brisk hopefulness, “and you’ll have better news by mornin’.”

Mrs. Chadron was asleep when he entered the living-room where Frances was keeping lonely watch before the chimney fire.

“What’s happened?” she asked, hastening to meet him.

Chadron stood there gray and dusty, his big hat down hard on his head, his black eyes shooting inquiry into the shadowed room.

“Where is she?” he whispered.

“Upstairs, asleep—I’ve only just been able to persuade her to lie down and close her eyes.”

“Well, there’s no use to wake her up for bad news.”

“You haven’t found Nola?”

“I know right where she is. I could put my hand on her if I could reach her.”

“Then why—?”

“Hell!” said Chadron, bursting into a fire of passion, “why can’t I fly like an eagle? Young woman, I’ve got to tell you I’ve been beat and tricked for the first time in my life! They’ve got my men hemmed in, I tell you—they’ve got ’em shut up in a cañon as tight as if they was nailed in their coffins!”

“That damned Macdonald done it, led ’em into it like they was blind! He’s a wolf, and he’s got the tricks of a wolf, he skulked ahead of ’em with a little pack of his rustlers and led ’em into his trap, then the men he had hid there and ready they popped up as thick as grass. They’ve got fifty of my men shut up there where they can’t git to water, and where they can’t fight back. Now, what do you think of that?”

“I’ll tell you what I think,” she said, throwing up her head, her eyes as quick and bright as water in the sun, “I think it’s the judgment of God! I glory in the trick Alan Macdonald played you, and I pray God he can shut your hired murderers there till the last red-handed devil dies of thirst!”

Chadron fell back from her a step, his eyes staring, his mouth open, his hand lifted as if to silence her. He stood so a moment, casting his wild look around, fearful that somebody else had heard her passionate denunciation.

“What in the hell do you mean?” he asked, crouching as he spoke, his teeth clenched, his voice smothered in his throat.

“I mean that I know you’re a murderer—and worse! You hired those men, like you hired Mark Thorn, to come here and murder those innocent men and their families!”

“Well, what if I did?” he said, standing straight again, his composure returning. “They’re thieves; they’ve been livin’ off of my cattle for years. Anybody’s got a right to kill a rustler—that’s the only cure. Well, they’ll not pen them men of mine up there till they crack for water, I’ll bet you a purty on that! I’m goin’ after soldiers, and this time I’ll git ’em, too.”

“Soldiers!” said she, in amazement. “Will you ask the United States government to march troops here to save your hired assassins? Well, you’ll not get troops—if there’s anything that I can say against you to keep you from it!”

“You keep out of it, my little lady; you ain’t got no call to mix up with a bunch of brand-burnin’ thieves!”

“They’re not thieves, and you know it! Macdonald never stole an animal from you or anybody else; none of the others ever did.”

“What do you know about it?” sharply.

“I know it, as well as I know what’s in your mind about the troops. You’ll go over father’s head to get them. Well, by the time he wires to the department the facts I’m going to lay before him, I’d like to see the color of the trooper you’ll get!”

“You’ll keep your mouth shut, and hold your finger out of this pie before you git it burnt!”

“You’re not goin’—to the—post!” Chadron’s words were slow and hard. He stood with his back to the door. “This house was opened to you as a friend, not as a traitor and a spy. You’re not goin’ to put your foot outside of it into any business of mine, no matter which way you lean.”

All day she had been dressed ready to mount and ride in any emergency, her hat, gloves and quirt on the table before the fireplace. In that sober habit she appeared smaller and less stately, and Saul Chadron, with his heavy shoulders against the closed door, towered above her, dark and angrily determined.

“I’m going to get my horse,” said she, standing before him, waiting for him to quit the door.

“You’re goin’ to stay right in this house, there’s where you’re goin’ to stay; and you’ll stay till I’ve cleaned out Macdonald and his gang, down to the last muddy-bellied wolf!”

“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 cañon 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 Cañon.” He spoke with a lift of exultation, of pride, and more than pride. “Ride low—they’re coming!”

“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 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.

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.

“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.

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!”

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.