Colonel Landcraft had no thought apart from what he felt to be his hovering disgrace. He had forgotten his rage against Chadron, forgotten that his daughter had lived through a day as hazardous as any that he had experienced in the Apache campaigns, or in his bleak watches against the Sioux. He turned to her now, where she stood weeping softly with bowed head, the grime of the dugout on her habit, her hair, its bonds broken, straying over her face. "I had counted pleasurably on seeing you two married," he said, "but something tells me I shall never come back from this journey, never resume command of this post." He turned back to his marching, stopped three or four paces along, turned sharply, a new light in his face. "Why shouldn't it be before I leave--tonight, within the hour?" "Oh, father!" said Frances, in terrified voice, lifting her face in its tear-wet loveliness. "I must make the train that leaves Meander at four o'clock tomorrow morning, I shall have to leave here within--" he flashed out his watch with his quick, nervous hand--"within three-quarters of an hour. What do you say, Major King? Are you ready?" "I have been ready at any time for two years," Major King replied, in trembling eagerness. Frances was thrown into such a mental turmoil by the sudden proposal that she could not, at that moment, speak a further protest. She stood with white face, her heart seeming to shrivel, and fall away to laboring faintness. Colonel Landcraft was not considering her. He was thinking that he must have three hours' sleep in the hotel at Meander before the train left for Omaha. "Then we shall have the wedding at once, just as you stand!" he declared. "We'll have the chaplain in and--go and tell your mother, child, and--oh, well, throw on another dress if you like." Frances found her tongue as her danger of being married off in that hot and hasty manner grew imminent. "I'm not going to marry Major King, father, now or at any future time," said she, speaking slowly, her words coming with coldness from her lips. "Silence! you have nothing to say, nothing to do but obey!" Colonel Landcraft blazed up in sudden explosion, after his manner, and set his heel down hard on the floor, making his sword clank in its scabbard on his thigh. "I have not had much to say," Frances admitted, bitterly, "but I am going to have a great deal to say in this matter now. Both of you have gone ahead about this thing just as if I was irresponsible, both of you--" "Hold your tongue, miss! I command you--hold your tongue!" "It's the farthest thing from my heart to give you pain, or disappoint you in your calculations of me, father," she told him, her voice gathering power, her words speed, for she was a warrior like himself, only that her balance was not so easily overthrown; "but I am not going to marry Major King." "Heaven and hell!" said Colonel Landcraft, stamping up and down. "Heaven _or_ hell," said she, "and not hell--if I can escape it."