The examination was short. The sentries who had tramped the high board walk vouched for The Squaw's constant presence in the stockade throughout the whole of the required time. The guards at the sliding-panel lent corroboration. From sun-up till taps of the previous day, Charley had fleshed at the hide of an elk, the scarred fury, Afraid-of-a-Fawn, hanging over him the while. Both nights, from taps on, he had watched outside the lodge occupied by the hag and an Indian girl. Captain Oliver crossed to the bend to tell Dallas his results. "Matthews has witnesses who know where he was every minute of the time," he said. "Undoubtedly he had no active part in this affair." "He knows about it, though," she answered. "That would be hard to prove." Before he went, the captain proposed certain defensive improvements for the shack. She accepted them gratefully. Later, a carpenter nailed thick cleats across the warped door, and the post blacksmith put heavy lashes of iron over the eyes of the shack. At nightfall, a detachment landed on the east bank, divided, and went on a scout in opposite directions. It was only part of Oliver's plan of guarding, for he did one thing more--spoke plainly to Matthews in regard to the bend. "I advise you to relinquish all claim to the Lancaster place," he said. "I shall allow no warring on girls." Matthews gave his promise. During the first few days that followed, Marylyn's heart beat pendulum-like between grief and dread. It was grief when, in a moment of forgetfulness, she found that she had set the table for three; or when, missing her father sorely--for in the past year he had been much with her--she spoke of him to Dallas. At such times, with sweet impartiality, she mourned him as sincerely as she had mourned her mother. But at night, when the detachment came back from its scouting, she felt a terrible dread--dread least the hunt had been successful, and the troopers should ride across the prairie to the shack door, bearing something solemnly home. Those first days past, however, the sharp edge of her sorrow, together with her fears, wore gradually away. She had the elastic spirit of eighteen. And she was impatient of this new heartache, which possessed none of the romantic qualities of the old. A doubt of her father's death, fostered by Dallas, grew until it became a conviction. He had been taken away, or he had fled; he would return. Meanwhile, though nothing could have induced her to leave the shack after dark, it fretted her sorely, that, in the daytime, she was not permitted to go as far as the grove. That restriction was the only hardship that the elder girl allowed the younger to bear. Dallas believed that their father had come to mortal harm. But she never shared that belief with Marylyn. "We got to keep a stiff upper lip, baby sister," she would say, with an encouraging pat. And her smile was always hopeful and cheering.