the lamp out, and sit well away from the window," he said.

"No," said Hetty in a voice Miss Schuyler had not heard before; "we are
coming down."

Torrance considered for a second, and then smiled significantly as he
glanced at his daughter's face. "Well, you would be 'most as safe down
there--and I guess it was born in you," he said.

The girls followed him down the cedar stairway and into the hall. A lamp
burning very low stood on a table in one corner, but the big room was dim
and shadowy, and the girls could scarcely see the five or six men standing
near, not in front of, one open window. Framed by its log casing the white
prairie faded into the dimness under a smear of indigo sky. Here and there
a star shone in it with intense brilliancy, and though the great stove
roared in the draught it seemed to Miss Schuyler that a destroying cold
came in. Already she felt her hands grow numb.

"Where are the boys, Hetty?" she asked.

"In at the railroad, most of them. One or two at the back. Now, I'll show
you how to load a rifle, Flo."

Miss Schuyler followed her to the table, where several rifles were lying
beside a big box of cartridges, and Hetty took one of them up.

"You push this slide back, and drop the cartridge in," she said. "Now it
has gone into this pipe here, and you drop in another. Get hold, and push
them in until you can't get in any more. Why--it can't hurt you--your
hands are shaking!"

There was a rattle, and the venomous, conical-headed cartridge slipped
from Miss Schuyler's fingers. She had never handled one before, and it
seemed to her that a horrible, evil potency was bound up in that
insignificant roll of metal. Then, while the rifle click-clacked in
Hetty's hands, Torrance stood by the window holding up a handkerchief. He
called out sharply, and there was a murmur of derision in the darkness
outside.

"Come out!" said a hoarse voice. "We'll give you a minute. Then you can
have a sleigh to drive to perdition in."

The laughter that followed frightened Miss Schuyler more than any threats
would have done. It seemed wholly horrible, and there was a hint in it of
the fierce exultation of men driven to desperation.

"That wouldn't suit me," said Torrance. "What do you want here, any way?"

"Food," somebody answered. "You wanted to starve us, Torrance, and rode us
out when we went chopping stove wood in the bluff. Well, you don't often
miss your supper at the Range, and there's quite enough of