“It will be a cold ride across the prairie,” said Neal. “If there were a house between here and home I’d leave you there and ride on for something to wrap around you. Foolishly I left my blanket when I started out to meet you, and that’s something a Texan ought never to do, part from his blanket.” “I should have had better sense myself than to have gone so far from home with nothing for an emergency. I didn’t bring a blanket even for Chico.” “Well, all of us are foolish sometimes,” remarked Neal. “We’ll just have to make the best of it and hurry on as fast as we can.” The gale increased and the grass of the prairie bent in long waves like those of the sea; they seemed to be riding between its rolling billows. Rain began to descend and the cold steadily increased till Alison’s teeth fairly chattered. Neal viewed her anxiously and tried to think of some way to alleviate the situation. “There used to be a little cabin somewhere in these woods,” he said. “I wonder if I could find it without going much out of the way.” “Pike Smith’s cabin, do you mean?” “Yes, but what do you know about it?” asked Neal quickly. Alison hesitated before she decided to make a clean breast of it. “If you are going to undertake a search for Steve,” she began, “I may as well tell you what I do know about it, for you will want all the information you can get. I don’t feel any compunctions now.” And she told him the story of her adventure with its consequences in giving them a clue to the cause of Steve’s disappearance. Neal listened with grave attention, making no comment for some moments after she had finished what she had to tell. Then he said: “That was a pretty close shave for you, Alison, and I can’t promise that I’ll keep my hands off that man if I ever get within sight of him.” Alison looked troubled, and gave a timid glance at Neal’s stern face so different in expression from an hour before. Here was a man who could be as relentless as he could be tender, and whose virile strength she had scarcely realized in her association with him, for the softer side had been that shown her. She had known him only as a good comrade, a man full of merry humors, though often, under certain influences, of gentle speech and delicate courtesy. She felt a sudden leaping of heart as she acknowledged her appreciation of those knightly qualities which permitted the existence of no dragon which might interfere with justice and right. “Even if he should really kill the Blatant Beast,” said Alison to herself, “I do not think I could blame him.” But she said aloud: “You remember I told you that you must allow somebody else to do any killing that may be necessary.”