a close carriage out with a doctor and two other passengers,
and Elliot Chittenden had gone in an open buckboard with a driver. By
and by the buckboard had come back and another party had gone out in it.
Then the carriage had returned and gone forth again with fresh horses
and a fresh driver.

She played a good deal with the riding-crop during the evening, and now
and then she went outside the door and took a look at the weird,
shroud-like shape, there in the light of the window. Once she stepped up
to it and pushed the riding-crop in, to its full length, just to make
sure that there was nothing under the snow. After that she took the
riding-crop in and dried it carefully on a towel.

Before she knew it the evening was far gone, and all but one carriage
had returned.

"Guess Jim's turned in at some ranch," came the word from the
livery-stable. "He'll be ready to start out again as soon as it's
light."

If the evening had not seemed so miraculously short, Amy could not have
forgiven herself for having been so slow in arriving at her own plan of
action. As it was, the clock had struck twelve, before she found
herself, clothed in two or three knit and wadded jackets under a loose
old seal-skin sack, crossing the yard to the stable door. The maids had
long since gone to bed, and Thomas Jefferson was a mile away, under his
own modest roof.

Presently, with a clatter of hoofs, Sunbeam came forth from the stable
door, bearing on his back, a funny, round, dumpy figure, very unlike in
its outlines to the slender form which usually graced that seat. The
gallant steed was still further encumbered by a fur-lined great coat of
the doctor's, strapped on behind, its pockets well stocked with brandy
flask and biscuits.

The storm had much abated, and there was already a break in the clouds
over yonder. The air was intensely cold, but the wind had quite died
down. Sunbeam took the road at a good pace, for he had a valiant spirit
and would have scorned to remember the day's fatigues. His rider sat, a
funny little ball of fur, looking neither to the right nor to the left.
Stephen was nowhere on the open road; that was sure, for he was far too
good a horseman to come to grief out there. There was but one place to
look for him, and that was among the prairie-dog holes. She had told him
of the danger there was among them, and he would have hastened there the
moment he believed that she was lost.

Amy did not do very much thinking a