"It would be better, only they'll cut loose at anything that passes the door. They'll show their hand before long." He enlarged the hole to admit his rifle barrel. She watched him in silence. Which was just as well, for she had no words to express her admiration for his steadiness and courage under the trying pressure of that situation. Her confidence in him was so entire that she had no fear; it did not admit a question of their safe deliverance. With him at her side, this dangerous, grave matter seemed but a passing perplexity. She left it to him with the confidence and up-looking trust of a child. While she understood the peril of their situation, fear, doubt, had no place in her mind. She was under the protection of Alan Macdonald, the infallible. No matter what others may think of a man's infallibility, it is only a dangerous one who considers himself endowed with that more than human attribute. Macdonald did not share her case of mind as he stood with his eye to the squint-hole that he had bored beside the rotting jamb. "How did you find her? where was she?" she asked, her thoughts more on the marvel of Nola's return than her own present danger. "I lost Thorn's trail that first day," he returned, "and then things began to get so hot for us up the valley that I had to drop the search and get those people back to safety ahead of Chadron's raid. Yesterday afternoon we caught a man trying to get through our lines and down into the valley. He was a half-breed trapper who lives up in the foothills, carrying a note down to Chadron. I've got that curious piece of writing around me somewhere--you can read it when this blows by. Anyway, it was from Thorn, demanding ten thousand dollars in gold. He wanted it sent back by the messenger, and he prescribed some picturesque penalties in case of failure on Chadron's part." "And then you found her?" "I couldn't very well ask anybody else to go after her," he admitted, with a modest reticence that amounted almost to being ashamed. "After I made sure that we had Chadron's raiders cooped up where they couldn't get out, I went up and got her. Thorn wasn't there, nobody but the Indian woman, the 'breed's wife. She was the jailer--a regular wildcat of a woman." That was all there was to be told, it seemed, as far as Macdonald was concerned. He had the hole in the wall--at which he had worked as he talked--to his liking now, and was squinting through it like a telescope. "Nola wasn't afraid to come with you," she said, positively. "She didn't appear to be, Frances." "No; she _knew_ she was safe, no matter how little she deserved any kindness at your hands. I know what she did--I know how she--how she--_struck_ you in the face that time!" "Oh," said he, as if reminded of a trifle that he had forgotten. "Did she--put her arms around your neck that way _many_ times while you were carrying her home?" "She did _not_! Many times! why, she didn't do it even once." "Oh, at the gate--I saw her!"