The question was not unwarranted, for it was close on midnight, but Flora Schuyler did not answer. She could hear nothing but the moan of the wind, the ranch was very still, until once more there came an angry growl. Then, out of the icy darkness followed the sound of running feet, a hoarse cry, and a loud pounding at the outer door. Hetty stood up, trembling and white in the face, but very straight. "Don't be frightened, Flo," she said. "We'll whip them back to the place they came from." "Who is it?" asked Miss Schuyler. Again the building rang to the blows upon the outer door; but Hetty's voice was even, and a little contemptuous. "The rustlers!" she said. There was a trampling below, and a corridor beneath the girls vibrated with the footsteps of hurrying men, while Torrance's voice rose faintly through the din; a very unpleasant silence, until somebody rapped upon the door. Flora Schuyler felt her heart throbbing painfully, and gasped when Torrance looked in. His lean face was very stern. "Put the lamp out, and sit well away from the window," he said. "No," said Hetty in a voice Miss Schuyler had not heard before; "we are coming down." Torrance considered for a second, and then smiled significantly as he glanced at his daughter's face. "Well, you would be 'most as safe down there--and I guess it was born in you," he said. The girls followed him down the cedar stairway and into the hall. A lamp burning very low stood on a table in one corner, but the big room was dim and shadowy, and the girls could scarcely see the five or six men standing near, not in front of, one open window. Framed by its log casing the white prairie faded into the dimness under a smear of indigo sky. Here and there a star shone in it with intense brilliancy, and though the great stove roared in the draught it seemed to Miss Schuyler that a destroying cold came in. Already she felt her hands grow numb. "Where are the boys, Hetty?" she asked. "In at the railroad, most of them. One or two at the back. Now, I'll show you how to load a rifle, Flo." Miss Schuyler followed her to the table, where several rifles were lying beside a big box of cartridges, and Hetty took one of them up. "You push this slide back, and drop the cartridge in," she said. "Now it has gone into this pipe here, and you drop in another. Get hold, and push them in until you can't get in any more. Why--it can't hurt you--your hands are shaking!" There was a rattle, and the venomous, conical-headed cartridge slipped from Miss Schuyler's fingers. She had never handled one before, and it seemed to her that a horrible, evil potency was bound up in that insignificant roll of metal. Then, while the rifle click-clacked in Hetty's hands, Torrance stood by the window holding up a handkerchief. He called out sharply, and there was a murmur of derision in the darkness outside. "Come out!" said a hoarse voice. "We'll give you a minute. Then you can have a sleigh to drive to perdition in."