k and fight like a catamount as long as
he had a breath left in him."

"Can you locate them in the night?"

"I think we'd have to wait up there somewheres for daybreak. I'm not
just sure which canyon they are in."

There was silence. Frances peeped through the keyhole, but could see
nothing except thick smoke over bookcases and files.

"Well, we'll not want to dislodge them before daylight, anyway," said
King.

"If Macdonald can back off without a fight, he'll do it," Chadron
declared, "for he knows as well as you and I what it'd mean to fire on
the troops. And I want you to git him, King, and make sure you've got
him."

"It depends largely on whether the fellow can be provoked into firing
on us, Chadron. You think he can be; so do I. But in case he doesn't,
the best we can do will be to arrest him."

"What good would he be to me arrested, King? I tell you I want his
scalp, and if you bring that feller out of there in a sack you'll come
back a brigadier. I put you where you're at. Well, I can put you
higher just as easy. But the purty I want for my trouble is that
feller's scalp."

There was the sound of somebody walking about, in quick, nervous
strides. Frances knew that Major King had got up from his usurped
place at the desk--place unworthily filled, this low intrigue with
Chadron aside, she knew--and was strutting in the shadow of his
promised glory.

"Leave it to me, Chadron; I've got my own account to square with that
wolf of the range!"

A sharp little silence, in which Frances could picture Chadron looking
at King in his covert, man-weighing way. Then Chadron went on:

"King, I've noticed now and then that you seemed to have a soft spot
in your gizzard for that little girl of mine. Well, I'll throw her in
to boot if you put this thing through right. Is it a go?"

"I'd hesitate to bargain for the young lady without her being a party
to the business," King replied, whether from wisdom born of his recent
experience, or through lack of interest in the proposal Frances could
not read in his even, well-pitched voice.

"Oh, she'd jump at you like a bullfrog at red flannel," Chadron
assured him. "I could put your uniform on a wooden man and marry him
off to the best girl in seven states. They never think of lookin'
under a soldier's vest."

"You flatter me, Mr. Chadron, and the uniform of the United States
army," returned King, with barely covered contempt. "Suppose we allow
events to shape themselve