although unconscious;
face white, eyes closed. As he grasped her, her eyes opened.

* * * * *

After the excitement, the shouts and the cursings, the crashing of wood
and the fighting, quiet reigned on the _Far West_.

Robert Burroughs, sitting in the long northern twilight, rubbed his sore
muscles while Scar Faced Charlie and the doctor paced the deck.

"Danvers did a big thing. He saved my sister's life. I'll never forget
it. If the time ever comes I'll do as much for him," declared Charlie.

"Perhaps you may," mused the doctor. "We can never tell what the future
holds. Perhaps you'll not save his life, but life isn't everything. He
may ask you to do something that you won't want to do."

The grating of the steamer on a sand-bar interrupted him.

Brought into high relief by the rising moon, the lead-man stationed
forward called:

"Four feet scant--four feet--by the lead five n' a half! No bottom!"
Then came:

"Three--t-h-r-e-e--f-e-e-t--scant!" Again the boat scraped the sand.

As the pilot shouted down the tube to the engineers to pile on more
steam Charlie reverted to the rescue.

"Danvers looked pretty well used up when he was brought aboard. But
darned if he yipped. He was all for lookin' after Winnie."

"I like the lad," nodded the doctor approvingly. "He has the gift of
silence. Shakespeare says: 'Give thy thoughts no tongue.'"

In their next turn they saw Burroughs.

"It'll never do for you to locate at Macleod, Bob, 'f you're goin' to
aggravate every recruit you don't happen to like," suggested Charlie,
with the privilege of friendship.

"I was a fool!" Burroughs confessed. "But somehow that youngster----"

"You an' he'll always be like two bull buffalo in a herd," said Charlie,
wisely.

"I'll do him yet," snarled Burroughs, as he rose to go to the cabin.

[Illustration]

Chapter II

The Girl on the _Fontenelle_

The passengers on the _Far West_ rose early. Danvers stood watching the
slow sun uplift from the gently undulating prairie. He threw back his
head, his lungs expanded as though he could not get enough of the air.
He did not know why, but he suddenly felt himself a part of the
country--felt that this great, open country was his. The banks of the
Missouri were not high and he had an unobstructed view of the vast,
grassy sea rolling uncounted miles away to where the sky came down to
the edge of the world.

The song of the meadow lark, swe