A wild, girlish hope flashed up in her heart. Langford would come—had he not sworn it to her father? Had he not given his hand as a pledge? It means something to shake hands in the cattle country. He was big and brave and true. When he came, these awful, creeping terrors would disperse—grim shadows that must steal away when morning comes. When he came, she could put her rifle in his big, confident hands, lie down on the floor and—cry. She wanted to cry—oh, how she did want to cry! If Paul Langford would only come, she could cry. Cold reason came back to her aid and dissipated the weak and womanish longing to give way to tears. There was a pathetic droop to her mouth, a long, quivering, sobbing sigh, and she buried her woman’s weakness right deeply and stamped upon it. How utterly wild and foolish her brief hope had been! Langford and all his men were sound in sleep long ago. How could he know? Were the ruffians out there men to tell? Ah, no! There was no one to know. It would all happen in the dark,—in awful loneliness, and there would be no one to know until it was all over—to-morrow, maybe, or next week, who could tell? They were off the main trail, few people ever sought them out. There would be no one to know. As her strained sight stared out into the darkness, it was borne to her intuitively, it may be, that something was creeping up on her. She could see nothing and yet knew it to be true. Every fibre of her being tingled with the certainty of it. It was coming closer and closer. She felt it like an actual presence. Her eyes shifted here, there—swept her half-circle searchingly—stared and stared. Still nothing moved. And yet the nearness of some unseen thing grew more and more palpable. If she could not see it soon, she must scream aloud. She breathed in little quickened gasps. Soon, very soon now, she would scream. Ah! A shadow down by the biggest cottonwood! It boldly sought a nearer and a smaller trunk. Another slinking shadow glided behind the vacated position. It was a ghastly presentation of “Pussy-wants-a-corner” played in nightmare. But at last it was something tangible,—something to do away with that frightful sensation of that crawling, creeping, twisting, worming, insinuating—nearer and nearer, so near now that it beat upon her—unseen presence. She pressed her finger to the trigger to shoot at the tangible shadows and dispel that enveloping, choking, blanket horror, when God knows what stayed the muscular action of her fingers. Call it instinct, what you will, her hand was stayed even before her physical eye was caught and held by a blot darker still than the night, over to her right, farthest from the spring. It lay perfectly still. It came to her, the wily plan, with startling clearness. The blot was waiting for her to fire futilely at grinning shadows among the trees and, under cover of her engrossed attention, insinuate its treacherous body the farther forward. Then the play would go merrily on till—the end.