aul Chadron was mounting the steps booted and dusty, his revolvers
belted over his coat. "I wonder what's the matter? I hope it isn't
mother--I'll run down and see."

The maid had let Chadron in by the time Nola opened the door of the
room, and there she stood leaning and listening, her little head out
in the hall, as if afraid to run to meet trouble. Chadron's big voice
came up to them.

"It's all right," Nola nodded to Frances, who stood at her elbow, "he
wants to see the colonel."

Frances had heard the cattleman's loud demand for instant audience.
Now the maid was explaining in temporizing tones.

"The colonel he's busy with military matters this early in the day,
sir, and nobody ever disturbs him. He don't see nobody but the
officers. If you'll step in and wait--"

"The officers can wait!" Chadron said, in loud, assertive voice that
made the servant shiver. "Where's he at?"

Frances could see in her lively imagination the frightened maid's
gesture toward the colonel's office door. Now the girl's feet sounded
along the hall in hasty retreat as Chadron laid his hearty knock
against the colonel's panels.

Frances smiled behind her friend's back. The impatient disregard by
civilians of the forms which her father held in such esteem always was
a matter of humor to her. She expected now to hear explosions from
within her father's sacred place, and when the sound failed to reach
her she concluded that some subordinate hand had opened the door to
Chadron's summons.

"I'll hurry"--Nola dashed into her own room, finishing from the
door--"I want to catch him before he goes and find out what's wrong."

Frances went below to see about breakfast for her tardy guest, a
little fluttering of excitement in her own breast. She wondered what
could have brought the cattleman to the post so early--he must have
left long before dawn--and in such haste to see her father, all
buckled about with his arms. She trusted that it might not be that
Alan Macdonald was involved in it, for it was her constant thought to
hope well for that bold young man who had heaved the homesteaders'
world to his shoulders and stood straining, untrusted and uncheered,
under its weight.

True, he had not died in defense of her glove, but she had forgiven
him in her heart for that. A reasonable man would not have imperiled
his life for such a trifle, and a reasonable woman would not have
expected it. There was a great deal more sense in Alan Macdonald