The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off, a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald's men, their prisoners under guard between two long-strung lines of horsemen, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a man on horseback. When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to him was, Tom Lassiter and those who rode with him at the head of the column pressing around. The question and mystification in Macdonald's face at her coming cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like one man to another in a pass where words alone would be weak and lame. "I was looking for Chadron to come with help and attempt a rescue, and I was moving to forestall him, but we were late getting under way. They"--waving his hand toward the prisoners--"held out until an hour ago." "You must think, and think fast!" she said. "They're almost here!" "Yes. I'm going ahead to meet them, and offer to turn these prisoners over to Major King. They'll have no excuse for firing on us then." "No, no! some other way--think of some other way!" He looked gravely into her anxious, pleading eyes. "Why, no matter, Frances. If they've come here to do that, they'll do it, but this way they'll have to do it in the open, not by a trick." "I'll go with you," she said. "I think perhaps--" "I'll go!" Macdonald turned to Lassiter in a few hurried words. She pressed to his side as the two rode away alone to meet the troops, repeating as if she had been denied: "I'll go!" There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face. "What's up, Macdonald--where're you off to?" he inquired. Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who had arrived at the homesteaders' camp the evening past. "So they got troops, did they?" the newspaper man said, riding forward keenly. "Yes, they told me down in Cheyenne they'd put that trick through. Here they come!"