hite dim haze of starlight and presently
he made out moving figures. Horses, with riders--a string of
them--one--two--three--four--five--and he counted up to eleven. Eleven
horsemen riding into the village! He was amazed, and suddenly keenly
anxious. This visit might be one of Shadd's raids.

"Shadd's gang!" he whispered.

"No, Bi Nai," replied Nas Ta Bega, and he drew Shefford farther into the
shade of the cedars. His voice, his action, the way he kept a hand on
Shefford's shoulder, all this told much to the young man.

Mormons come on a night visit! Shefford realized it with a slight shock.
Then swift as a lightning flash he was rent by another shock--one that
brought cold moisture to his brow and to his heart a flame of hell.

He was shaking when he sank down to find the support of a log. Like
a shadow the Indian silently moved away. Shefford watched the eleven
horses pass the camp, go down the road, to disappear in the village.
They vanished, and the soft clip-clops of hoofs died away. There was
nothing left to prove he had not dreamed.

Nothing to prove it except this sudden terrible demoralization of his
physical and spiritual being! While he peered out into the valley,
toward the black patch of cedars and pinyons that hid the cabins,
moments and moments passed, and in them he was gripped with cold and
fire.

Was the Mormon who had abducted Fay--the man with the cruel voice--was
he among those eleven horsemen? He might not have been. What a torturing
hope! But vain--vain, for inevitably he must be among them. He was there
in the cabin already. He had dismounted, tied his horse, had knocked on
her door. Did he need to knock? No, he would go in, he would call her in
that cruel voice, and then...

Shefford pulled a blanket from his bed and covered his cold and
trembling body. He had sunk down off the log, was leaning back upon it.
The stars were pale, far off, and the valley seemed unreal. He found
himself listening--listening with sick and terrible earnestness, trying
to hear against the thrum and beat of his heart, straining to catch a
sound in all that cold, star-blanched, silent valley. But he could hear
no sound. It was as if death held the valley in its perfect silence.
How he hated that silence! There ought to have been a million horrible,
bellowing demons making the night hideous. Did the stars serenely look
down upon the lonely cabins of these exiles? Was there no thunderbolt
to drop down from that d