rise so well as Major King at seeing
her there, her horse in a sweat, her habit torn where the brambles had
snatched at her in her hard ride to get ahead of the troops. He gave
her a cold good-morning, and sat in the attitude of a man pricking up
his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force
ahead.

The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald;
about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry
had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if
waiting for Macdonald to begin. He looked the homesteader captain over
with severe eyes.

"Well, sir?" said he.

"We were starting for Meander, Major King, to deliver to the sheriff
fifty men whom we have taken in the commission of murder and arson,"
Macdonald replied, with dignity. "Up to a few minutes ago we had no
information that martial law had superseded the civil in this troubled
country, but since that is the case, we will gladly turn our prisoners
over to you, with the earnest request that they be held, collectively
and individually, to answer for the crimes they have committed here."

"Them's my men, King--they've got 'em there!" said Chadron, boiling
over the brim.

"This expedition has come to the relief of certain men, attacked and
surrounded in the discharge of their duty by a band of cattle thieves
of which you are the acknowledged head," replied Major King.

"Then you have come on a mistaken errand, sir," Macdonald told him.

"I have come into this lawless country to restore order and insure the
lives and safety of property of the people to whom it belongs."

"The evidence of these hired raiders' crimes lies all around you,
Major King," Macdonald said. "These men swept in here in the employ of
the cattle interests, burned these poor homes, and murdered such of
the inhabitants as were unable to fly to safety in the hills ahead of
them. We are appealing to the law; the cattlemen never have done
that."

"Say, Mr. Soldier, let me tell you something"--the newspaper
correspondent, to whom one man's dignity was as much as another's,
kicked his horse forward--"these raiders that bloody-handed Chadron
sent in here have murdered children and women, do you know that?"

"Who in the hell are you?" Chadron demanded, bristling with rage,
whirling his horse to face him.

"This is Chadron," Macdonald said, a little flash of humor in his eyes
over Chadron's hearing the truth about himse