"You can assure them at the post that we'll not fire on the soldiers--they can come in peace. Good-bye." "I'm not going!" she persisted. "They'll not consider you, Frances--they'll not hold their fire on your account. You're a rustler now, you're one of us." "You said--there--was--only--one--road," she told him, her face turned away. "It's that way, then, to the left--up that dry bed of Horsethief Cañon." He spoke with a lift of exultation, of pride, and more than pride. "Ride low--they're coming!" CHAPTER XVI DANGER AND DIGNITY "Did you carry her that way all the way home?" Frances asked the question abruptly, like one throwing down some troublesome and heavy thing that he has labored gallantly to conceal. It was the first word that she had spoken since they had taken refuge from their close-pressing pursuers in the dugout that some old-time homesteader had been driven away from by Chadron's cowboys. Macdonald was keeping his horse back from the door with the barrel of his rifle, while he peered out cautiously again, perplexed to understand the reason why Dalton had not led his men against them in a charge. "Not all the way, Frances. She rode behind me till she got so cold and sleepy I was afraid she'd fall off." "Yes, I'll bet she put on half of it!" she said, spitefully. "She looked strong enough when you put her down there at the gate." This unexpected little outburst of jealousy was pleasant to his ears. Above the trouble of that morning, and of the future which was charged with it to the blackness of complete obscuration, her warrant of affection was like a lifting sunbeam of hope. "I can't figure out what Dalton and that gang mean by this," said he, the present danger again pressing ahead of the present joy. "I saw a man dodge behind that big rock across there a minute ago," she said. "You keep back away from that door--don't lean over out of that corner!" he admonished, almost harshly. "If you get where you can see, you can be seen. Don't forget that." He resumed his watch at the little hole that he had drilled beside the weight-bowed jamb of the door in the earth front of their refuge. She sat silent in her dark corner across from him, only now and then shaking her glove at the horses when one of them pricked up his ears and shewed a desire to dodge out into the sunlight and pleasant grazing spread on the hillside. It was cold and moldy in the dugout, and the timbers across the roof were bent under the weight of the earth. It looked unsafe, but there was only one place in it that a bullet could come through, and that was the open door. There was no way to shut that; the original battens of the homesteader lay under foot, broken apart and rotting. "Well, it beats me!" said he, his eye to the peephole in the wall. "If I'd keep one of the horses on this side it wouldn't crowd your corner so," she suggested.