esteaders are, but they'll be
sending out scouts to locate them, and we can watch."

They were following the road that the cavalry had taken an hour in
advance of them. Listening now, they rode on without words. Now and
then a bush at the roadside flipped a stirrup, now and again Banjo's
little horse snorted in short impatience, as if expressing its
disapproval of this journey through the dark. Night was assertive in
its heaviness, but communicative of its mysteries in its wild
scents--the silent music of its hour.

There are those who, on walking in the night, can tell the hour by the
smell, the taste, the elusive fine aroma of the quiet air. Before
midnight it is like a new-lit censer; in the small hours the smell of
old camp fires comes trailing, and the scent of rain upon embers.

But Frances Landcraft was not afraid of the night as she rode silently
through it with Banjo Gibson at her side. There was no shudder in it
for her as there had been on the night that Nola was stolen; it could
not have raised up a terror grim enough to turn her back upon the
road.

Her one thought was that she must reach Macdonald before Chadron and
King could find him, and tell him that the troops were coming, and
that he was to be trapped into firing upon them. She knew that many
lives depended upon her endurance, courage, and strategy; many lives,
but most of all Alan Macdonald's life. He must be warned, at the cost
of her own safety, her own life, if necessary.

To that end the troops must be followed, and a desperate dash at
daylight must be made into Macdonald's camp. Perhaps it would be a
race with the cavalry at the last moment.

Banjo said it was beginning to feel like morning. An hour past they
had crossed the river at the ford near Macdonald's place, and the
foothills stood rough and black against the starry horizon. They were
near them now, so near that the deeper darkness of their timbered
sides fell over them like a cold shadow.

Suddenly she checked Banjo with a sharp word.

"I heard them!" she whispered.

Banjo's little horse, eager for the fellowship of its kind as his
master was for his own in his way, threw up its head and whinnied.
Banjo churned it with his heels, slapped it on the side of the head,
and shut off the shrill call in a grunt, but the signal had gone
abroad. From the blackness ahead it was answered, and the slow wind
prowling down from the hills ahead of dawn carried the scent of
cigarettes to t