"Oh, you don't know 'em like we do, honey, the low-down thieves! They ort to be hunted like wolves and shot, wherever they're found." "Some of them have wives and children, haven't they?" Frances asked, thinking aloud, as she sat with her chin resting in her hand. "Oh, I suppose they litter like any other wolves," Mrs. Chadron returned, unfeelingly. "_Si a tu ventana llega una paloma_," sang Maggie in the kitchen, the snapping of the oven door coming in quite harmoniously as she closed it on the baking peppers. Mrs. Chadron sighed. "_Tratala con cariña que es mi persona_," sounded Maggie, a degree louder. Mrs. Chadron sat upright, with a new interest in life apart from her uneasy forebodings about the rustlers. Maggie was in the dining-room, spreading the cloth. The peppers were coming along. Somebody burst into the kitchen; uncertain feet came across it; a cry broke Maggie's song short as she jingled the silver in place on the cloth. Banjo Gibson stumbled into the room where the low fire twinkled in the chimney, reeling on his legs, his breath coming in groans. Maggie was behind him, holding the door open; the light from the big lamp on the dining-table fell on the musician, who weaved there as if he might fall. His hat was off, blood was in his eyes and over his face from a wound at the edge of his hair. "Nola--Nola!" he gasped. Mrs. Chadron, already beside him, laid hold of him now and shook him. "Tell it, you little devil--tell it!" she screamed. Frances, with gentler hand, drew Banjo from her. "What's happened to Nola?" she asked. "The rustlers!" he said, his voice falling away in horror. "The rustlers!" Mrs. Chadron groaned, her arms lifted above her head. She ran in wild distraction into the dining-room, now back to the chimney to take down a rifle that hung in its case on a deer prong over the mantel. "Nola, Nola!" she called, running out into the garden. Her wild voice came back from there in a moment, crying her daughter's name in agony. Banjo had sunk to the floor, his battered face held in his hands. "My God! they took her!" he groaned. "The rustlers, they took her, and I couldn't lift a hand!" Frances beckoned to Maggie, who had followed her mistress to the kitchen door. "Give him water; stop the blood," she ordered sharply. In a moment she had dashed out after Mrs. Chadron, and was running frantically along the garden path toward the river. CHAPTER XIII THE TRAIL AT DAWN Frances stopped at the high wire fence along the river bank. It was dark there between the shrubs of the garden on one hand and the tall willows on the other, but nothing moved in them but her own leaping heart. She called Mrs. Chadron, running along the fence as she cried her name. Mrs. Chadron answered from the barn. Frances found her saddling a horse, while Maggie's husband, an old Mexican with a stiff leg, muttered prayers in his native tongue as he tightened the girths on another.