at the window. Diane was there,
so was Joe, with two guns hanging to his belt. He had little
difficulty in drawing their attention. There was no dalliance about
his visit this time. He waived aside the eager questions with which
the girl assailed him, and merely gave her a quiet warning.

"Stay up all night, dear," he said, "but do not let your father know
it."

To Joe he said: "Joe, if you sleep a wink this night I'll never
forgive you."

Then he hurried away, satisfied that neither would fail him, and went
to the barn. Without a word, almost without a sound, he saddled the
Lady Jezebel.

His mare ready, he went and gazed long and earnestly up at the
rancher's house. He was speculating in his mind as to the risk he was
running. Not the general risk, but the risk of success or failure in
his enterprise.

He waited until the last of the lights had gone out, and the house
stood out a mere black outline in the moonlight, then he disappeared
within the barn again, and presently reappeared leading his fractious
mare. A few moments later he rode quietly off. And the manner of his
going brought a grim smile to his lips, for he thought of the ghostly
movements of the night-riders as he had witnessed them. His way lay in
a different direction from that of his comrades. Instead of taking the
trail, as they had done, he skirted the upper corral and pastures, and
plunged into the black pinewoods behind the house.

* * * * *

The Widow Dangley's homestead looked much more extensive in the
moonlight than it really was. Everything was shown up, endowed with a
curious silvery burnish which dazzled the eyes till shadows became
magnified into buildings, and the buildings themselves distorted out
of all proportion. Hers was simply a comfortable place and quite
unpretentious.

The ranch stood in a narrow valley, in the midst of which a small
brook gurgled its way on to the Mosquito River, about four miles
distant. The valley was one of those sharp cuttings in which the
prairie abounds, quite hidden and unmarked from the land above, lying
unsuspected until one chances directly upon it. It was much like a
furrow of Nature's ploughing, cut out to serve as a drainage for the
surrounding plains. It wound its irregular course away east and west,
a maze of undergrowth, larger bluff, low red-sand cut-banks and
crumbling gravel cliffs, all scattered by a prodigal hand, with a
profusion that seemed wanton