“Yellow Hand,” he said, once more addressing the Comanche, “your hands are no longer tied. In the morning go back to your people. You shall ride alone if you wish. Tell your people that I am going back to my own village at the Wichita hills and sit down. Tell them I will not follow the Comanches this summer. Tell them that my young men are following the men who killed the women of the Comanches. All these men are going on the war trail. They will not rest until they bring back that man.” And thus spoke Danny to the chief. “Well, sunny days and starry nights to you, my dear!” The old soldier turned to Anastasie Lockhart. Her troubled eyes looked into his an instant. He would not listen to her stammering attempt at thanks. A bugle sounded. The troops took formation, rode away, jaunty guidon at the head; a waif of silk in a buckskin land, themselves waifs of fortune, doing their duty unseen on the far frontier, with thanks of no one and criticism from all. They were men of the Army which had saved a country and now was finding one—our Army—never understood; one day, to-day, our day, ignorantly to be despised. * * * * * “It looks like you was riding, too,” commented Nabours. He nodded to the saddled horse of McMasters, the additional horse with light pack, whose lariat was thrown over the saddle horn. “Yes,” said McMasters in his cold and noncommittal way. “I wish you didn’t have to go. The men don’t want to see you go. It’s only kind of hard for them to say so. But afore you do ride north—and I reckon I know why you do—I wisht you’d sort of give me some idee of the country ahead. You’ve heard or seen more of it than I ever have.” McMasters took a stick and began to make a map in the smoothed ashes of the camp fire. “I’d like to help you over the Washita,” he said: “but you won’t find that a very bad crossing—steep banks, and swift, but narrow. You’d better make some sort of raft and get the carts across. “The next big river is the main Canadian, not so far above here. It’ll be dry, always very little water in it. It’s bone-dry sometimes for a hundred miles. “The North Fork of the Canadian—it runs here—is the crookedest river out of doors. It carries more water than the big river. You will probably have to swim some there, but you ought to make it all right. “You’ll get through the blackjack country, and then you’ll come up to the Cimarron-easy fording. Just beyond that you’ll be somewhere close to latitude thirty-six. You might then almost say you are getting out of the South and into the North. “My father and old Colonel Lockhart always used to talk to me about wintering all their cattle just under that line. They said that would make them free of sticks for the next season. Some longhorns took fever even as far north as Illinois. It didn’t make Texas popular.