her life. Her
body was numb with cold and fatigue; she felt the motion of her horse,
heard its pounding feet in regular beat as it held to its long,
swinging gallop, but with the detached sense of being no party to it.
All that was sharp in her was the pain of her lost struggle. For she
expected every moment to hear firing, and to come upon confusion and
death at the next lift of the hill.

In their short cut across the country they had mounted the top of a
long, slender ridge, which reached down into the valley like a finger.
Now her guide pulled up his horse so suddenly that it slid forward on
stiff legs, its hoofs plowing the loose shale.

"You'd better go back--there's goin' to be a fight!" he said, a look
of shocked concern in his big wild eyes.

"Do you see them? Where--"

"There they are!"--he clutched her arm, leaning and pointing--"and
there's a bunch of fellers comin' to meet 'em that they don't see! I
tell you there's goin' to be a fight!"

CHAPTER XIX

"I BEAT HIM TO IT"

The last dash of that long ride was only a whirlwind of emotions to
Frances. It was a red streak. She did not know what became of the boy;
she left him there as she lashed her horse past him on the last
desperate stretch.

The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just
mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped
for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off,
a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald's
men, their prisoners under guard between two long-strung lines of
horsemen, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road
made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a
man on horseback.

When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry
from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen
her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to
him was, Tom Lassiter and those who rode with him at the head of the
column pressing around.

The question and mystification in Macdonald's face at her coming
cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in
her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night
straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another
woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been
marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like