he cloth,
Miss Maclaire."

"Please do not call me that!"

"But you said it didn't make any difference what I called you."

"I thought it didn't then, but it does now."

"Oh, I see; we are already on a new footing. Yet I must call you
something."

She hesitated just long enough for him to notice it. Either she had no
substitute ready at hand, or else doubted the advisability of confiding
her real name under present circumstances to one so nearly a stranger.

"You may call me Hope."

"A name certainly of good omen," he returned. "From this moment I shall
forget Christie Maclaire, and remember only Miss Hope. All right, Neb;
now turn over a chair, and sit your man up against it. He will rest all
the easier in that position until his gang arrive."

He thrust his head out of the door, peering cautiously forth into the
night, and listening. A single horse, probably the one Hawley had been
riding, was tied to a dwarfed cottonwood near the corner of the cabin.
Nothing else living was visible.

"I am going to round up our horses, and learn the condition of Hawley's
outfit," he announced in a low voice. "I may be gone for fifteen or
twenty minutes, and, meanwhile, Miss Hope, get ready for a long ride.
Neb, stand here close beside the door, and if any one tries to come in
brain him with your gun-stock. I'll rap three times when I return."

He slipped out into the silent night, and crept cautiously around the
end of the dark cabin. The distinct change in the girl's attitude of
friendship toward him, her very evident desire that he should think well
of her, together with the providential opportunity for escape, had left
him full of confidence. The gambler had played blindly into their hands,
and Keith was quick enough to accept the advantage. It was a risk to
himself, to be sure, thus turning again to the northward, yet the clear
duty he owed the girl left such a choice almost imperative. He certainly
could not drag her along with him on his flight into the wild Comanche
country extending beyond the Canadian. She must, at the very least,
be first returned to the protection of the semi-civilization along the
Arkansas. After that had been accomplished, he would consider his own
safety. He wondered if Hope really was her name, and whether it was the
family cognomen, or her given name. That she was Christie Maclaire he
had no question, yet that artistic embellishment was probably merely
assumed for the work of the concert ha