Olive, meanwhile, was riding fast towards Cotton Wood Creek which she reached and crossed by the last shreds of daylight. She stumbled up out of the bottom-lands on to the high prairie, then perceiving by the sound of Rebel’s hoofs that at last she had struck grass again, for the fire had not crossed the Creek, she determined to camp. It was a black night, but she knew how to drive her picket and unsaddle her horse blindfold. Taking her saddle and shawl out of the circle of Rebel’s night-range, she wrapped herself up to wait until daylight should permit her again to go forward. She was not in the least frightened, although the prairie wolves were yelping in the distance. The nervous terrors that had beset her when sitting in her own comfortable little kitchen with her dog at her feet, and a stout lad in the room overhead, were quite gone. Yet there was enough to frighten a more valiant person than our poor little Olive, with her half-defined thoughts and her generous impulses. What was it she proposed to herself in this expedition? First of all to overtake Cotterell and his captors, and then to do what the wit of woman could devise to save him from their fury. In her ignorance of prairie feelings and ideas she attached no importance to the fact that he would have been captured riding the well-known brown mare belonging to Perfection City. He would of course explain that she had lent him the animal, and that question would at once drop out of the debate. Then the terrible one of the shooting of Jake Mills would have to be settled. That was what she feared for Cotterell, and that was where her testimony and pleading might avail. She knew from his own lips how the fatal affray had occurred, and she would be able in some measure, perhaps, to counteract the evidence of that wicked lying negro who out of revenge was going to swear away Cotterell’s life. Olive hated to do it, but she knew she could say things to any western jury that would make it difficult for them to admit negro evidence. For once in a way the mighty race-prejudice could be relied upon to work for justice, and poor Olive, fanatical friend of the negro, had to confess she was glad to have so strong a lever to her hand in this dreadful emergency. Meanwhile the never-ending night wore on. How long, how unutterably long are the hours of darkness to them who wait sleeplessly for the dawn! The twinkling stars passed over her head, and Olive tried to fix her eyes steadily on one or two of them in order to convince herself that they really did move after all. Thus staring at the stars, her eyes became weary, and the lids dropped slowly over them, and she fell into a troubled sleep, haunted with fearsome visions.