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 towards
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 keeping to old
trails. I'm for goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and
hash-and-clothes people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture
toward MacFee and his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step
forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm
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