Thus the interest of the on-lookers at the bluff became divided. Women with straining eyes gazed at the lonely courier, and then fearfully scanned the ridge line between him and the northward sky; praying with white lips for his safety; dreading with sinking hearts that at any moment those savage riders should come darting over the divide and swooping down upon their helpless prey. Men, with eyes that snapped and fists that clinched, or fingers that seemed twitching with mad desire to clasp pistol butt or sabre hilt, or loud barking carbine, ran in sheer nervous frenzy up and down the bluffs, staring only at Blake's far-distant riders, swinging their hats and waving them on, praying only for another sight of the Sioux in front of the envied seven, and craving with all their soldier hearts to share in the fight almost sure to follow. On the Rays' piazza, with pallid face and quivering lips, Esther Dade clung to her mother's side. Mrs. Ray had encircled with her arm the slender waist of Nannie Blake, whose eyes never for an instant quit their gaze after the swift-speeding dots across the distant prairie. All her world was there in one tall, vehement horseman. Other troopers, mounting at the stables, had spurred away under Captain Gregg, and were splashing through the ford. Other denizens of Fort Frayne, hearing of the excitement, came hurrying to the bluff, hangers-on from the trader's store and corral, the shopman himself, even the bar-keeper in his white jacket and apron; two or three panting, low-muttering halfbreeds, their eyes aflame, their teeth gleaming in their excitement; then Hay himself, and with him,--her dark face almost livid, her hair disordered and lips rigid and almost purple, with deep lines at the corners of her mouth,--Nanette Flower. Who that saw could ever forget her as she forced her way through the crowd and stood at the very brink, saying never a word, but swiftly focussing her ready glasses? Hardly had she reached the spot when wild, sudden, exultant, a cheer burst fiercely from the lips of the throng. "Look!" "Look!" "By God, they've got 'em!" yelled man after man, in mad excitement. Three black dots had suddenly swept into view, well to the right of Blake's men, and came whirling down grade straight for the lone courier on the gray. Theirs had been the short side, ours the long diagonal of the race. Theirs was the race, perhaps, but not the prize, for he had turned up far from the expected point. Still they had him, if only,--if only those infernal troopers failed to see them. There was their hope! Plainly in view of the high bluff at the fort, they were yet hidden by a wave of the prairie from sight of the interceptors, still heading for the ridge the warriors had just left behind. Only for a second or two, however. A yell of fierce rejoicing went up from the crowd on the bluff as the easternmost of Blake's black specks was seen suddenly to check, then to launch out