ut of it, no brushing the little man
aside. He was as firm as a man three times his weight, and he took
Mrs. Chadron by the arm, like a son, and led her away from the horse
with a manner at once so firm and yet considerate that it softened her
stern heart and plunged her into tears.

"If you bring Nola back to me I'll give her to you, Banjo! I'll give
her to you!" she sobbed, as she belted him with Chance Dalton's guns.

"If any reward in this world could drive me through hell fire to lay
my hands on it, you've named it," he said.

Frances saw that Mrs. Chadron could be reasoned with now, and she was
grateful to Banjo for his opportune arrival. For the night was vast
and unfriendly over that empty land, and filled with a thousand
shudderful dangers. She was afraid of it, afraid to leave the lights
of the house behind her and ride out into it, no matter for all the
peril that poor little Nola might be facing in that cruel hour.

Banjo rode away. They stood clinging to each other in the dim circle
of Alvino's lantern-light, listening to his horse until the distance
muffled its feet on the road.

Frances was chilled with the horror of that brigandish act. Every
movement of the wind in the bushes made her skin crinkle and creep;
every sound of animals in barn and corral was magnified into some new
danger. Mrs. Chadron was in far worse state, with reason, certainly,
for being so. Now that the stimulation of her first wild outburst had
been exhausted, she stood wilted and weak, shivering with her hands
over her eyes, moaning and moaning in piteous low wail.

Frances took the lantern from old Alvino's shaking hand.

"Let's go and look for their tracks," she suggested, forcing a note of
eagerness into her words, "so we can tell the men, when they come back
to pick up the trail, how many there were and which way they went."

"Oh, if Chance was only able to go after them, if he was only able!"
Mrs. Chadron wailed, following Frances as she hurried along the wire
fence that cut the garden from the river.

"It was somebody that knowed the lay of the land," Mrs. Chadron said,
"for that gate down there back of the house is open. That's the way
they come and went--somebody that knowed the lay of the land."

Frances felt her heart die within her as the recollection of another
night in that garden flashed like red fire in her mind. There was a
picture, as she stopped with closed eyes, struck cold and shuddering
by a fear she d