der to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his
lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough, out-door life
would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college
walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He
had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble;
but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which
had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had
been in his life, by whomever committed.

Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
brightly in her, reached out toward this man living on so narrow a margin
of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each
day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team
of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his
last stage. She was at the door, and saw him coming while he was yet a
long distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for
she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The
Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them,
her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a
few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a
deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms
(for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the
persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.

Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then
floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college
pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a
woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move
in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border
now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the
pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and
word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a
few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile at any moment