She had rounded the cavalry troop and left it far behind; the silence which immersed the sleeping land told her this. No hoof but her own mount's beat the earth within sound, no foot but hers strained saddle-leather within reach of her now, she believed. There was only one thing to do; ride slowly in the direction that she had been holding with Banjo, and keep eyes, ears, and nose all on the watch. The ways of the range were early; if there was anybody within a mile of her to windward she would smell the smoke of his fire when he lit it, and see the wink of it, too, unless he built it low. But it was neither the scent of fire nor the red eye of it winking on the hill that at length gave her despairing heart a fresh handful of hope--nothing less indeed than the aroma of boiling coffee. It had such a feeling of comfort and welcome, of domesticity and peace in it that she felt as if she approached a door with a friend standing ready to take her horse. Her horse was not insensible to the cheer that somebody was brewing for himself in that wild place. She felt him quicken under her, and put up his head eagerly, and go forward as if he was nearing home. She wondered how far the smell of coffee would carry, and subsequent experience was a revelation on that point. She had entered the hills, tracking back that wavering scent of coffee, which rose fresh and sudden now, and trailed away the next moment to the mere color of a smell. Now she had it, now she lost it, as she wound over rugged ridges and through groves of quaking-asp and balm of Gilead trees, always mounting among the hills, her eager horse taking the way without guidance, as keen on the scent as she. It must have taken her an hour to run down that coffee pot. Morning was coming among the fading stars when she mounted a long ridge, the quick striding of her horse indicating that there was something ahead at last, and came upon the camp fire, the coffee, and the cook, all beside a splintered gray rock that rose as high as a house out of the barrenness of the hill. The coffee-maker was a woman, and her pot was of several gallons' capacity. She was standing with the cover of the boiler in one hand, a great spoon in the other, her back half bent over her beverage, in the position that the sound of Frances' coming had struck her. She did not move out of that alert pose of suspicion until Frances drew rein within a few feet of her and gave her good-morning. When the poor harried creature saw that the visitor was a woman, her fright gave place to wonder. Frances introduced herself without parley, and made inquiry for Macdonald. "Why, bless your heart, you don't aim to tell me you rode all the way from the post in the night by yourself?" the simple, friendly creature said. "Well, Mr. Macdonald and most of the men they've left to take them scoun'rels sent in here by the cattlemen to murder all of us over to the jail at Meander." "How long have they been gone?"