It was a clear, cold afternoon, and Hetty, driving back from Allonby’s ranch, sent the team at a gallop down the dip to the Cedar Bridge. The beaten trail rang beneath the steel shoes of the rocking sleigh, the birches streamed up blurred together out of the hollow, and Flora Schuyler felt the wind sting her cheeks like the lash of a whip. The coldness of it dimmed her eyes, and she had only a hazy and somewhat disconcerting vision of a streak of snow that rolled back to the horses’ feet amidst the whirling trees. It was wonderfully exhilarating—the rush of the lurching sleigh, the hammering of the hoofs, and the scream of the wind—but Miss Schuyler realized that it was also unpleasantly risky as she remembered the difficult turn before one came to the bridge.

She decided, however, that there was nothing to be gained by pointing this out to her companion, for Hetty, who sat swaying a little in the driving seat, had been in a somewhat curious mood since the attack on Cedar Range, and unusually impatient of advice or remonstrance. Indeed, Flora Schuyler fancied that it was the restlessness she had manifested once or twice of late which impelled her to hurl the sleigh down into the hollow at that reckless pace. So she said nothing, until the streak of snow broke off close ahead, and there were only trees in front of them. Then, a wild lurch cut short the protest she made, and she gasped as they swung round the bend and flashed across the bridge. The trail, however, led steeply upwards now, and Hetty, laughing, dropped the reins upon the plodding horses’ necks.

“Didn’t that remind you of the Chicago Limited?” she said.

“I was wondering,” said Miss Schuyler breathlessly, “if you had any reason for trying to break your neck.”

“Well,” said Hetty, with a twinkle in her eyes, “I felt I had to do something a little out of the usual, and it was really safe enough. Everybody feels that way now and then, and I couldn’t well work it off by quarrelling with you, or going out and talking to the boys as my father does. I don’t know a better cure than a gallop or a switchback in a sleigh.”

“Some folks find it almost as soothing to tell their friends what is worrying them, and I scarcely think it’s more risky,” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s face became grave. “Well,” she said, “one can talk to you, and I have been worried, Flo. I know that it is quite foolish, but I can’t help it. I came back to see my father through the trouble, and I’m going to; but while I know that he’s ever so much wiser than I am, some of the things he has to do hurt me. It’s our land, and we’re going to keep it; but it’s not nice to think of the little children starving in the snow.”

This, Miss Schuyler decided, was perfectly correct, so far as it went; but she also felt tolerably certain that, while it was commendable, Hetty’s loyalty to her father would be strenuously tested, and did not alone account for her restlessness.

“And there was nothing else?” she said.

“No,” said Hetty, a little too decisively. “Of course! Any way, now I have told you we are not going to worry about these things to-day, and I drove fast partly because the trail is narrow, and one generally meets somebody here. Did it ever strike you, Flo, that if there’s anyone you know in a country that has a bridge in it, you will, if you cross it often enough, meet him there?”

“No,” and Miss Schuyler smiled satirically, “it didn’t, though one would fancy it was quite likely. I, however, remember that we met Larry here not very long ago. That Canadian blanket suit shows you off quite nicely, Hetty. It is especially adapted to your kind of figure.”

Hetty flicked the horses, then pulled them up again, and Miss Schuyler laughed as a sleigh with two men in it swung out from beneath the trees in front of them.

“This is, of course, a coincidence,” she said.

Hetty coloured. “Don’t be foolish, Flo,” she said. “How could I know he was coming?”

Flora Schuyler did not answer, and Hetty was edging her horses to the side of the trail, in which two sleighs could scarcely pass, when a shout came down.

“Wait. We’ll pull up and lead our team round.”

In another minute Grant stepped out of his sleigh, and would have passed if Hetty had not stopped him. She sat higher than her companion, and probably knew that the Canadian blanket costume, with its scarlet trimmings, became her slender figure. The crimson toque also went well with the clustering dark hair and dark eyes, and there was a brightness in the latter which was in keeping with the colour the cold wind had brought into the delicate oval face. The man glanced at her a moment, and then apparently found that a trace required his attention.

“I am glad we met you, Larry,” said the girl. “Flo thanked you the night you came to Cedar, and I wanted to, but, while you know why I couldn’t, I would not like you to think it was very unkind of me. Whatever my father does is right, you see.”

“Of course,” said Grant gravely. “You have to believe it, Hetty.”

Hetty’s eyes twinkled. “That was very nice of you. Then you must be wrong.”

“Well,” said Grant, with a merry laugh, “it is quite likely that I am now and then. One can only do the best he can, and to be right all the time is a little too much to expect from any man.”

Miss Schuyler, who was talking to Breckenridge, turned and smiled, and Hetty said, “Then, that makes it a little easier for me to admit that the folks I belong to go just a little too far occasionally. Larry, I hate to think of the little children going hungry. Are there many of them?”

Grant’s face darkened for a moment. “I’m afraid there are quite a few—and sick ones, too, lying with about half enough to cover them in sod-hovels.”

Hetty shuddered and her eyes grew pitiful, for since the grim early days hunger and want had been unknown in the cattle country. “If I want to do something for them it can’t be very wrong,” she said. “Larry, you will take a roll of bills from me, and buy them whatever will make it a little less hard for them?”

“No,” said Grant quietly, “I can’t, Hetty. Your father gives you that money, and we have our own relief machinery.”

The girl laid her hand upon his arm appealingly. “I have a little my mother left me, and it was hers before she married my father. Can’t you understand? I am with my father, and would not lift my finger to help you and the homestead-boys against him, but it couldn’t do anybody any harm if I sent a few things to hungry children. You have just got to take those dollars, Larry.”

“Then I dare not refuse,” said Grant, after thinking a moment. “They need more than we can give them. But you can’t send me the dollars.”

“No,” said Hetty, “and I have none with me now. But if a responsible man came to the bluff to-morrow night at eight o’clock, my maid could slip down with the wallet—you must not come. It would be too dangerous. My father, and one or two of the rest, are very bitter against you.”

“Well,” said Grant, smiling gravely, “a responsible man will be there. There are folks who will bless you, Hetty.”

“You must never tell them, or anybody,” the girl insisted.

Grant said nothing further, and led his team past; but Hetty noticed the shadow in his bronzed face and the wistfulness in his eyes. Then, she shook the reins, and as the horses plodded up the slope Miss Schuyler fancied that she sighed.

In the meanwhile Grant got into his sleigh, and Breckenridge, who had been vanquished by Miss Schuyler in an exchange of badinage, found him somewhat silent during the journey to Fremont ranch. He retired to rest soon after they reached it, and set out again before daylight the next morning, and it was late at night when he came back very weary, with his garments stiff with frost. The great bare room where Breckenridge awaited him was filled with a fusty heat, and as he came in, partly dazed by the change of temperature, Grant did not see the other man who sat amidst the tobacco-smoke beside the glowing stove. He sank into a hide chair limply, and when Breckenridge glanced at him inquiringly, with numbed fingers dragged a wallet out of his pocket.

“Yes,” he said, “I got the dollars. I don’t know that it was quite the square thing, but with Harper’s wife and the Dutchman’s children ’most starving in the hollow, I felt I had to take them.”

Breckenridge made a little warning gesture, and the man behind the stove, reaching forward, picked up a packet that had dropped unnoticed by the rest when Grant took out the wallet.

“You seem kind of played out, Larry, and I guess you didn’t know you dropped the thing,” he said.

Grant blinked at him; for a man who has driven for many hours in the cold of the Northwest is apt to suffer from unpleasant and somewhat bewildering sensations when his numbed brain and body first throw off the effect of the frost.

“No,” he said unevenly. “Let me alone a minute. I didn’t see you.”

The man, who was one of the homesteaders’ leaders in another vicinity, sat still with the packet in his hand until, perhaps without any intention of reading it, his eyes rested on the address. Then he sat upright suddenly and stared at Grant.

“Do you know what you have got here, Larry?” he asked.

Grant stretched out his hand and took the packet, then laid it upon the table with the address downwards.

“It’s something that dropped out of the wallet,” he said.

The other man laughed a little, but his face was intent. “Oh, yes, that’s quite plain; but if I know the writing it’s a letter with something in it from Torrance to the Sheriff. There’s no mistaking the way he makes the ‘g.’ Turn it over and I’ll show you.”

Grant laid a brown hand on the packet. “No. Do you generally look at letters that don’t belong to you, Chilton?”

Breckenridge saw that Grant was recovering, and that the contemptuous manner of his question was intentional, and guessed that his comrade had intended to sting the other man to resentment, and so lead him from the point at issue. Chilton coloured, but he persisted.

“Well,” he said, “I guess that one belongs to the committee. I didn’t mean to look at the thing, but, now I’m sure of it, I have to do what I can for the boys who made me their executive. I don’t ask you how you got it, Larry.”

“I got it by accident.”

Chilton looked astonished, and almost incredulous. “Well, we needn’t worry over that. The question is, what you’re going to do with it?”

“I’m going to send it back.”

Chilton made a gesture of impatience. “That’s what you can’t do. As we know, the cattle-men had a committee at Cedar a day or two ago, and now here’s a packet stuffed with something going to the Sheriff. Doesn’t it strike you yet that it’s quite likely there’s a roll of dollar bills and a letter telling him what he has to do inside it?”

“Well?” said Grant, seeing that he must face the issue sooner or later.

“We don’t want their dollars, but that letter’s worth a pile of them to us. We could get it printed by a paper farther east, with an article on it that would raise a howl from everybody. There are one or two of them quite ready for a chance of getting a slap at the legislature, while there’s more than one man who would be glad to hawk it round the lobbies. Then his friends would have no more use for the Sheriff, and we might even get a commission sent down to straighten things up for us.”

“The trouble is that we can’t make any use of it,” said Grant.

“No?” said Chilton, and the men looked at each other steadily.

“No,” repeated Grant. “It wasn’t meant that I should get it, and I’m going to send it back.”

“Then, while I don’t want to make trouble, I’ll have to mention the thing to my committee.”

“You’ll do just what you believe is right. Any way, we’ll have supper now. It will be ready.”

Chilton stood still a moment. “You are quite straight with us in this?”

“Yes,” said Grant, “but I’m not going to give you that letter. Are you coming in to supper? It really wouldn’t commit you to anything.”

“I am,” said Chilton simply. “I have known you quite a long while, and your assurance is good enough for me; but you would have found it difficult to make other folks believe you.”

They sat down at table, and Larry smiled as he said, “It’s the first time I have seen your scruples spoil your appetite, Chilton, but I had a notion that you were not quite sure about taking any supper from me.”

“Well,” laughed Chilton, “that just shows how foolish a man can be, because the supper’s already right here inside me. When I came in Breckenridge got it for me. Still, I have driven a long way, and I can worry through another.”

He made a very creditable attempt, and when he had been shown to his room Grant glanced at Breckenridge.

“You know how I got the letter?”

“Yes,” said Breckenridge. “Miss Torrance must have inadvertently slipped it into the wallet. You couldn’t have done anything else, Larry; but the affair is delicate and will want some handling. How are you going to get the packet back?”

“Take it myself,” Grant said quietly.

It was ten o’clock the next night, and Hetty Torrance and Miss Schuyler sat talking in their little sitting-room. Torrance was away, but his married foreman, who had seen service in New Mexico, and his wife, slept in the house, and Cedar Range was strongly guarded. Now and then, the bitter wind set the door rattling, and there was a snapping in the stove; but when the gusts passed the ranch seemed very still, and Miss Schuyler could hear the light tread of the armed cow-boy who, perhaps to keep himself warm, paced up and down the hall below. There was another at a window in the corridor, and one or two more on guard in the stores and stables.

“Wasn’t Chris Allonby to have come over to-day?” asked Miss Schuyler.

“Yes,” said Hetty. “I’m sorry he didn’t. I have a letter for the Sheriff to give him, and wanted to get rid of the thing. It is important, and I fancy, from what my father told me, if any of the homestead-boys got it they could make trouble for us. Chris is to ride in with it and hand it to the Sheriff.”

“I wouldn’t like a letter of that kind lying round,” said Miss Schuyler. “Where did you put it, Hetty?”

Hetty laughed. “Where nobody would ever find it—under some clothes of mine. Talking about it makes one uneasy. Pull out the second drawer in the bureau, Flo.”

Miss Schuyler did so, and Hetty turned over a bundle of daintily embroidered linen. Then, her face grew very grave, she laid each article back again separately.

“Nothing there!” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s fingers quivered. “Pull the drawer out, Flo. No. Never mind anything. Shake them out on the floor.”

It was done, and a litter of garments lay scattered about them, but no packet appeared, and Hetty sat down limply, very white in the face.

“It was there,” she said, “by the wallet with the dollars. It must have got inside somehow, and I sent the wallet to Larry. This is horrible, Flo.”

“Think!” said Miss Schuyler. “You couldn’t have put it anywhere else?”

“No,” said Hetty faintly. “If the wrong people got it, it would turn out the Sheriff and make an outcry everywhere. That is what I was told, though I don’t know what it was about.”

“Still, you know it would be safe with Mr. Grant.”

“Yes,” said Hetty. “Larry never did anything mean in his life. But you don’t understand, Flo. He didn’t know it was there, and it might have dropped out on the prairie, while, even if he found it, how is he going to get it back to me? The boys would fire on him if he came here.”

Flora Schuyler looked frightened. “You will have to tell your father, Hetty.”

Hetty trembled a little. “It is going to be the hardest thing I ever did. He is just dreadful in his quietness when he is angry—and I would have to tell him I had been meeting Larry and sending him dollars. You know what he would fancy.”

It was evident that Hetty was very much afraid of her father, and as clear to Miss Schuyler that the latter would have some cause for unpleasant suspicions. Then, the girl turned to her companion appealingly.

“Flo,” she said, “tell me what to do. The thing frightens me.”

Miss Schuyler slipped an arm about her. “Wait,” she said. “Your father will not be here until noon to-morrow, and that letter is in the hands of a very honest man. I think you can trust him to get it back to you.”

“But he couldn’t send anybody without giving me away, and he knows it might cost him his liberty to come here,” said Hetty.

“I scarcely fancy that would stop him.”

Hetty turned, and looked at her friend curiously. “Flo, I wonder how it would have suited if Larry had been fond of you.”

Miss Schuyler did not wince; but the smile that was on her lips was absent from her eyes. “You once told me I should have him. Are you quite sure you would like to hand him over now?”

Hetty did not answer the question; instead, she blushed furiously. “We are talking nonsense—and I don’t know how I can face my father to-morrow,” she said.

It was at least an hour later, and the cow-boy below had ceased his pacing, when Hetty, who felt no inclination for sleep, fancied she heard a tapping at the window. She sprang suddenly upright, and saw apprehension in Miss Schuyler’s face. The cow-boys were some distance away, and a little verandah ran round that side of the house just below the window. Flora Schuyler had sufficient courage; but it was not of the kind which appears to advantage in the face of bodily peril, and the colour faded in her cheeks. It was quite certain now that somebody was tapping at or trying to open the window.

“Shake yourself together, Flo,” said Hetty, in a hoarse whisper. “When I tell you, turn the lamp down and open the door. I am going to see who is there.”

The next moment she had opened a drawer of the bureau, while as she stepped forward with something glinting in her hand, Flora Schuyler, who heard a whispered word, turned the lamp right out in her confusion, and, because she dared not stand still, crept after her companion. With a swift motion, Hetty drew the window-curtains back, and Miss Schuyler gasped. The stars were shining outside, and the dark figure of a man was silhouetted against the blue clearness of the night.

“Come back,” she cried. “Oh, he’s coming in. Hetty, I must scream.”

Hetty’s fingers closed upon her arm with a cruel grip. “Stop,” she said. “If you do, they’ll shoot him. Don’t be a fool, Flo.”

It was too dark to see clearly, but Flora Schuyler realized with a painful fluttering of her heart and a great relief whose the white face outside the window must be.