ack to her home. We have
our grievances against Saul Chadron, God knows! and they are grave
enough. But we don't fight that way, Miss Landcraft."

"If you're innocent, then prove it by forcing the men that carried her
off, or the man, if there was only one, to bring her back home. Then
I'll believe you. Maybe others will, too. What are you riding the road
so early for, all armed and suspicious, if you're such honest men?"

"We're goin' to the agency after ammunition to defend our homes, and
our wives and children--such of us as Saul Chadron and his hired
hounds has left children to, colonel's daughter," Tom Lassiter
answered, reproof in his kind old eyes.

Frances had unrolled the bit of evidence that she had picked up from
the bushes, and was holding it on the horn of her saddle now, quite
unconscious of what her hands were doing, for she had forgotten the
importance of her find in the heat of that meeting. Macdonald spurred
forward, pointing to the thing in her hand.

"Where did you get that?" he asked, a sharp note of concern in his
voice that made her start.

She told him. He took it from her and turned to his comrades.

"It's Mark Thorn's cap!" he said, holding it up, his fingers in the
crown.

Tom Lassiter nodded his slow head as the others leaned to look.

"Saul Chadron's chickens has come home to roost," he said.

Frances understood nothing of the excitement that sprung out of the
mention of the outlaw's name, for Mark Thorn and his bloody history
were alike unknown to her. Her resentment mounted at being an outsider
to their important or pretended secret.

"Well, if you know whose cap it is, it ought to be easy for you to
find the owner," she said, unable to smother the sneer in her words.

"He isn't one of us," said a homesteader, with grim shortness.

"Oh!" said she, tossing her lofty head.

There was a pallor in Macdonald's weathered face, as if somebody near
and dear to himself was in extreme peril.

"She may never see home again," he said. Then quickly: "Which way did
he go, do you know?"

She told him what she knew, not omitting the lost horseshoe. Tom
Lassiter bent in his saddle with eagerness as she mentioned that
particular, and ran his eyes over the road like one reading the pages
of a book.

"There!" he said, pointing, "I've been seein' it all the way down,
Alan. He was headin' for the hills."

Frances could not see the print of the shoeless hoof, nor any
peculiarity among the s