"I was low-down enough to believe what they told me about Macdonald shootin' up Chance Dalton. I believed it till Missus Mathews give me the straight of it. One of them Injun police fellers told her how that job was put up, and how it failed to work." "A man named Lassiter told me about it." They rode along in silence a long time after that. Then Banjo-- "Well, I hope we don't bust out onto them cavalry fellers too sudden and meet a flock of bullets. I'd never forgive the man that put a bullet through my fiddle." "We'll go slowly, and keep listening; I can tell cavalry from cowboys as far as I can hear." "I bet a purty you can, brought up with 'em like you was." "They'll not be able to do anything before daylight, and when we overtake them we'll ride around and get ahead while they're waiting for morning. I don't know where the homesteaders are, but they'll be sending out scouts to locate them, and we can watch." They were following the road that the cavalry had taken an hour in advance of them. Listening now, they rode on without words. Now and then a bush at the roadside flipped a stirrup, now and again Banjo's little horse snorted in short impatience, as if expressing its disapproval of this journey through the dark. Night was assertive in its heaviness, but communicative of its mysteries in its wild scents--the silent music of its hour. There are those who, on walking in the night, can tell the hour by the smell, the taste, the elusive fine aroma of the quiet air. Before midnight it is like a new-lit censer; in the small hours the smell of old camp fires comes trailing, and the scent of rain upon embers. But Frances Landcraft was not afraid of the night as she rode silently through it with Banjo Gibson at her side. There was no shudder in it for her as there had been on the night that Nola was stolen; it could not have raised up a terror grim enough to turn her back upon the road. Her one thought was that she must reach Macdonald before Chadron and King could find him, and tell him that the troops were coming, and that he was to be trapped into firing upon them. She knew that many lives depended upon her endurance, courage, and strategy; many lives, but most of all Alan Macdonald's life. He must be warned, at the cost of her own safety, her own life, if necessary. To that end the troops must be followed, and a desperate dash at daylight must be made into Macdonald's camp. Perhaps it would be a race with the cavalry at the last moment. Banjo said it was beginning to feel like morning. An hour past they had crossed the river at the ford near Macdonald's place, and the foothills stood rough and black against the starry horizon. They were near them now, so near that the deeper darkness of their timbered sides fell over them like a cold shadow. Suddenly she checked Banjo with a sharp word. "I heard them!" she whispered.