“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 216 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 217 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 218 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, 221 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 222 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 226 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.