"I don't know, honey, but you don't need to worry; them rustlers can't pass our men Saul left camped up the valley." "I wasn't thinking of that; I'm not afraid." Mrs. Chadron chuckled. "Did I tell you about Nola?" she asked. Then, answering herself, before Frances could more than turn her head inquiringly; "No, of course, I never. It was too funny for anything!" "What was it?" Frances asked, in girlish eagerness. Mrs. Chadron's smile was reflected in her face as she sat straight, and turned expectantly to her hostess. "The other evening when she and her father was comin' home from the postoffice over at the agency they run acrosst that sneak Macdonald, afoot in the road, guns so thick on him you couldn't count 'em. Saul asked him what he was skulkin' around down this way for, and the feller he was kind of sassy about it, and tried to pass Nola and go on. He had the gall to tip his hat to her, just like she was low enough to notice a brand-burner! Well, she give him a larrup over the face with her whip that cut the hide! He took hold of her bridle to shove her horse out of the way so he could run, I reckon, and she switched him till he squirmed like a puppy-dog! I laughed till I nearly split when Saul told me!" Mrs. Chadron surrendered again to her keen appreciation of the humor in that situation. Frances felt now that she understood the attitude of the cattlemen toward the homesteaders as she never had even sensed it before. Here was this motherly woman, naturally good at heart and gentle, hardened and blinded by her prejudices until she could discuss murder as a thing desired, and the extirpation of a whole community as a just and righteous deed. There was no feeling of softness in her breast for the manful strivings of Alan Macdonald to make a home in that land, not so much for himself--for it was plain that he would grace a different world to far better advantage--but for the disinherited of the earth. To Mrs. Chadron he was a thing apart from her species, a horrible, low, grisly monster, to whom the earth should afford no refuge and man no hiding-place. There was no virtue in Alan Macdonald; his fences had killed his right to human consideration. In a moment Mrs. Chadron was grave again. She put out her hand in that gentle, motherly way and touched Frances' hair, smoothing it from her forehead, pleased with the irrepressible life of it which sprung it back after the passage of her palm like water in a vessel's wake. "I let on to you a little while ago that I wasn't uneasy, honey," she said, "but I ain't no hand at hidin' the truth. I am uneasy, honey, and on pins, for I don't trust them rustlers. I'm afraid they'll hear that Saul's gone, and come sneakin' down here and burn us out before morning, and do worse, maybe. I don't know why I've got that feelin', but I have, and it's heavy in me, like raw dough." "I don't believe they'd do anything like that," Frances told her.