afield,
made a little speech.

"After this here," he said, "we four stands er falls together. Now
look here, there's lots of things can happen to a person on this cussed
praira, and no one be none th' wiser. So see here, Mis' Ford, every
night one of us is a-goin' to th' roof of this shack. From there we can
see your place. If anything is th' matter--it don't signify how little
er how big--you hang a lantern on th' stick that I'll put alongside th'
house to-morrow. Yeh can h'ist th' light up with a string, and every
mornin' before we go out we'll look too, and a white rag'll bring us
quick as we can git there. We don't say nothin' about what we owe yeh,
fur that ain't our way, but we sticks to each other from this on."

Catherine's eyes were moist. She looked at Henderson. His face had no
expression in it at all. He did not even say good-by to her, and she
turned, with the tears suddenly dried under her lids, and walked down
the road in the twilight.

Weeks went by, and though Gillispie and Waite were often at Catherine's,
Henderson never came. Gillispie gave it out as his opinion that
Henderson was an ungrateful puppy; but Waite said nothing. This strange
man, who seemed like a mere untoward accident of nature, had changed
during the summer. His big ill-shaped body had grown more gaunt;
his deep-set gray eyes had sunk deeper; the gentleness which had
distinguished him even on the wild ranges of Montana became more marked.
Late in August he volunteered to take on himself the entire charge of
the night watch.

"It's nicer to be out at night," he said to Catherine. "Then you don't
keep looking off at things; you can look inside;" and he struck his
breast with his splay hand.

Cattle are timorous under the stars. The vastness of the plains, the
sweep of the wind under the unbroken arch, frighten them; they are
made for the close comforts of the barn-yard; and the apprehension is
contagious, as every ranchman knows. Waite realized the need of becoming
good friends with his animals. Night after night, riding up and down
in the twilight of the stars, or dozing, rolled in his blanket, in the
shelter of a knoll, he would hear a low roar; it was the cry of the
alarmist. Then from every direction the cattle would rise with trembling
awkwardness on their knees, and answer, giving out sullen bellowings.
Some of them would begin to move from place to place, spreading the
baseless alarm, and then came the time for action, else