in. Abe would have been all right if
Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it
was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come
back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found
her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He
would hurt someone. He would follow, too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she
reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had
set out to do; and because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go
free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would
be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and, when the time came
she would face it and put things right somehow.

The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn
came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge
above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of
her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to
the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear
beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.

Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
fainting, into Dingan's Lodge.

A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly
searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he
had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free.

"You've fooled us," he said to Nance, sourly, yet with a kind of
admiration, too. "Through you, they got away with it. But I wouldn't try
it again, if I were you."

"Once is enough," answered the girl, laconically, as Lambton, set free,
caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.

MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he
said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.

"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we
want out here."

A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.

He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
Lambton. "I'm last in," he said, in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its
leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand toward Nance.
"It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were
full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm