st 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 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 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