wind. There
was a sense of indistinctness through the mist which was an ally to
Chadron. Ten rods away, even in the growing morning, it would have
been impossible to tell a cowboy from a cavalryman.

Here a haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin
blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of
the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot.
At the roadside a little farther on the burned ruins of a cabin lay.
It had stood so near the wheel track that the heat of its embers was
warm on Frances' face as she galloped by. The wire fence was cut
between each post, beyond splicing or repair; the shrubs which some
home-hungry woman had set in her dooryard were trampled; the well curb
was overthrown.

Over and over again as they rode that sad picture was repeated.
Destruction had swept the country, war had visited it. Side by side
upon the adjoining lines many of the homesteaders had built their
little houses, for the comfort of being near their kind. In the corner
of each quarter section on either side of the road along the fertile
valley, a little home had stood three days ago. Now all were gone,
marked only by little heaps of embers which twinkled a dying glow in
the breath of the morning wind.

Day was spreading now. From the little swells in the land as she
mounted them Frances could see the deeper mist hovering in the low
places, the tops of tall shrubs and slender quaking-asp showing above
it as if they stood in snow. The band of sunrise was broadening across
the east; far down near the horizon a little slip of lemon-rind moon
was faltering out of sight.

But there was no sight, no sound, of anybody in the road ahead. She
spurred up beside her guide and asked him if there was any other way
that they might have taken. No, he said; they would have to go that
way, for there was only one fordable place in the river for many
miles. He pointed to the road, fresh-turned by many hoofs, and clamped
his lean thighs to his bare horse, galloping on.

"We'll take a cut acrosst here, and maybe head 'em off," he said,
dashing away through the stirrup-high sage, striking close to the
hills again, and into rougher going.

The ache of the most intense anxiety that she ever had borne was upon
Frances; hope was only a shred in her hand. She believed now that all
her desperate riding must come to nothing in the end.

She never had been that long in the saddle before in