e plains above, and each couple split up,
taking their individual ways with a certainty which displayed their
perfect prairie craft.

Far out into the night they rode, each with clear instructions filling
his mind, each with the certainty that one or more of their number
must be brought face to face with a crisis before morning, which would
need all their nerve and wit to bring to a successful issue.

The moon rose up, a great golden globe, slowly changing to a cold
silvery light as it mounted the starlit vault. Then came a change.
Instead of leaving a starry track behind it, a bank of cloud followed
hard upon its heels, threatening to overtake it and hide its splendor
behind a pall of summer storm.

Stanley Fyles watched with satisfaction the signs of the night.

* * * * *

A solitary horseman sat leaning forward upon the horn of his saddle,
his eyes searching, searching, with aching intensity, that dim,
shadowed skyline now almost lost against its backing of cloud. He was
half-hidden in the shadow of a small bluff of spruce, with the depths
of the valley hard behind him.

Not only were his eyes searching with an almost unblinking
watchfulness, but his ears, too, were busy with that intense,
nerve-racking straining which leaves them ever ready to carry the
phantom sounds of imagination to the impatient brain above.

It was a long, intense vigil, and a hundred times the waiting man saw
movements and heard sounds which set him ready to give the final
signal which was to complete the carefully laid plans of his chief.
But, in each case, he was spared the false alarm to which tricks of
imagination so nearly drove him.

Midnight came and passed. The sky grew more threatening. The man's
eyes were upon that distant, southern upland which marked the skyline.
Something seemed to be moving in the hazy distance, but as yet there
was no sound accompanying the movement.

Was there not? Hark, what was that?

The man sighed. It was the rustle of the trees about him, stirred
by a gentle rising breeze. But was it? Hark! That sounded like a
footfall. But a footfall was not wanted. It was the sound of wheels
for which his ears were straining. Ah, that was surely the wind.
And--yes--listen. A rumble. It might be the wheels at last, or was it
thunder? He sat up. The strain was hard to bear. It was thunder. And
his eyes, for a moment, left the horizon for the clouds above. He
regretted the absence