Frances checked her horse and remained behind, out of range of hearing. She was cut to the heart with shame for her companions, and her cheek burned with the indignation that she suffered with the harried woman in their midst. A little Indian girl came flying past, ducking and dashing under the neck of Frances' horse, in pursuit of a piece of paper which the wind whirled ahead of her. At Frances' stirrup she caught it, and held it up with a smile. "Did you lose this, lady?" she asked, in the very best of mission English. "No," said Frances, bending over to see what it might be. The little girl placed it in her hand and scurried away again to a beckoning woman, who stood on her knees and scowled over her offspring's dash into the ways of civilized little girls. It was a narrow strip of paper that she had rescued from the wind, with the names of several men written on it in pencil, and at the head of the list the name of Alan Macdonald. Opposite that name some crude hand had entered, with pen that had flowed heavily under his pressure, the figures "$500." Frances turned it round her finger and sat waiting for the others to leave off their persecution of the minister's wife and come back to her, wondering in abstracted wandering of mind who Alan Macdonald might be, and for what purpose he had subscribed the sum of five hundred dollars. "I think she's the most romantic little thing in the world!" Nola was declaring, in her extravagant surface way as they returned to where Frances sat her horse, her wandering eyes on the blue foothills, the strip of paper prominent about her finger. "Oh, honey! what's the matter? Did you cut your finger?" "No," said Frances, her serious young face lighting with a smile, "it's a little subscription list, or something, that somebody lost. Alan Macdonald heads it for five hundred dollars. Do you know Alan Macdonald, and what his charitable purpose may be?" Nola tossed her head with a contemptuous sniff. "They call him the 'king of the rustlers' up the river," said she. "Oh, he _is_ a man of consequence, then?" said Frances, a quickening of humor in her brown eyes, seeing that Nola was up on her high horse about it. "We'd better be going down to the slaughter-house if we want to see the fun," bustled the colonel, wheeling his horse. "I see a movement setting in that way." "He's just a common thief!" declared Nola, with flushed cheek and resentful eye, as Frances fell in beside her for the march against the abattoir. Frances still carried the paper twisted about her finger, reserving her judgment upon Alan Macdonald, for she knew something of the feuds of that hard-speaking land. "Anyway, I suppose he'd like to have his paper back," she suggested. "Will you hand it to him the next time you meet him?"