"Of course! Well, I guess you are not going to have any kind of belief in them now. They're planning to run our big stock train through the Bitter Creek bridge." Hetty turned white. "They would never do that. Their leaders would not let them." "No?" said Allonby. "I'm sorry to mention it, but it seems they have Larry's order." A little flush crept into Flora Schuyler's face, but Hetty's grew still more colourless and her dark eyes glowed. Then she shook her shoulders, and said with a scornful quietness, "Larry would not have a hand in it to save his life. There is not a semblance of truth in that story, Chris." Allonby glanced up in astonishment, but he was youthful, and that Hetty could have more than a casual interest in her old companion appeared improbable to him. "It is quite a long time since you and Larry were on good terms, and no doubt he has changed," he said. "Any way, his friends are going to try giant powder on the bridge, and if we are fortunate Cheyne will get the whole of them, and Larry, too. Now, we'll change the topic, since it does not seem to please you." He changed it several times, but his companions, though they sat and even smiled now and then, heard very few of his remarks. "I'm going," he said at last, reproachfully. "I am sorry if I have bored you, but it is really quite difficult to talk to people who are thinking about another thing. It seems to me you are both in love with somebody, and it very clearly isn't me." He moved away, and for a moment Hetty and Miss Schuyler did not look at one another. Then Hetty stood up. "I should have screamed if he had stayed any longer," she said. "The thing is just too horrible--but it is quite certain Larry does not know. I have got to tell him somehow. Think, Flo." XXIII HETTY'S AVOWAL The dusk Hetty had anxiously waited for was creeping across the prairie when she and Miss Schuyler pulled up their horses in the gloom of the birches where the trail wound down through the Cedar bluff. The weather had grown milder and great clouds rolled across the strip of sky between the branches overhead, while the narrow track amidst the whitened trunks was covered with loose snow. There was no frost, and Miss Schuyler felt unpleasantly clammy as she patted her horse, which moved restively now and then, and shook off the melting snow that dripped upon her; but Hetty seemed to notice nothing. She sat motionless in her saddle with the moisture glistening on her furs, and the thin white steam from the spume-flecked beast floating about her, staring up the trail, and when she turned and glanced over her shoulder her face showed white and drawn. "He must be coming soon," she said, and Miss Schuyler noticed the strained evenness of her voice. "Yes, of course he's coming. It would be too horrible if we could not find him." "Jake Cheyne and his cavalry boys would save the bridge," said Flora Schuyler, with a hopefulness she did not feel.