The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's. Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried, fainting, into Dingan's Lodge. A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free. "You've fooled us," he said to Nance sourly, yet with a kind of admiration too. "Through you they got away with it. But I wouldn't try it again, if I were you." "Once is enough," answered the girl laconically, as Lambton, set free, caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear. MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded. "Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we want out here." A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot. He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and Lambton. "I'm last in," he said in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand towards Nance. "It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me, Nance?" He took off his cap to her. He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble. "You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it. I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go with me. Are you comin'?" His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer. "Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?" She reached a hand towards Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak. Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead. "She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."