blur of the trail his thoughts were far
away, and it was by an almost unconscious effort he restrained the
impatient horse. Because speed was essential, he dare risk no undue haste.
He was not the only rider out on the waste that night, and the shiver that
went through him was not due to the cold as he pictured the other horsemen
pressing on towards Cedar Ranch. Of the native-born he had little fear,
and he fancied but few of them would be there. There was even less to
dread from any of English birth, but he feared the insensate alien, and
still more the human vultures that had gathered about the scene of strife.
They had neither race, nor creed, nor aspirations, but only an unhallowed
lust for the fruits of rapine.

He could also picture Hetty, sitting slight and dark-eyed at the piano, as
he had often seen her, and Torrance listening with a curious softening of
his lean face to the voice that had long ago wiled Larry's heart away from
him. That led him back to the days when, loose-tressed and flushed in
face, Hetty had ridden beside him in the track of the flying coyote, and
he had seen her eyes glisten at his praise. There were other times when,
sitting far apart from any of their kind, with the horses tethered beside
them in the shadow of a bluff, she had told him of her hopes and
ambitions, but half-formed then, and to silence his doubts sung him some
simple song. Larry had travelled through Europe, to look about him, as he
naively said, but it was what reminded him of that voice he had found most
pleasure in when he listened to famous sopranos and great cathedral
choirs.

Still, he had expected little, realizing, as he had early done, that Hetty
was not for him. It was enough to be with her when she had any need of him
and to dream of her when absent, while it was only when he heard she had
found her hopes were vain that he clutched at the very faint but alluring
possibility that now her heart might turn to him. Then, had come the
summons of duty, and when he had to choose which side he would take,
Larry, knowing what it would cost him, had with the simple loyalty which
had bound him as Hetty's servant without hope of reward, decided on what
he felt was right. He was merely one of the many quiet, steadfast men whom
the ostentatious sometimes mistake for fools, until the nation they form
the backbone of rises to grapple with disaster or emergency. They are not
confined to any one country; for his comrade, Muller,