"Go to the house and lie down, Banjo," Mrs. Chadron said; "I ain't time to fool with you!" "Are you two aimin' to go to the post after help?" Banjo steadied himself on his legs by clinging to the horse's mane as he spoke. "We're goin' up the river after the men," Mrs. Chadron told him. "No, I'll go after the men; that's a man's job," Banjo insisted. "I know right where they're camped at, you couldn't find 'em between now and morning." There was no arguing Banjo out of it, no brushing the little man aside. He was as firm as a man three times his weight, and he took Mrs. Chadron by the arm, like a son, and led her away from the horse with a manner at once so firm and yet considerate that it softened her stern heart and plunged her into tears. "If you bring Nola back to me I'll give her to you, Banjo! I'll give her to you!" she sobbed, as she belted him with Chance Dalton's guns. "If any reward in this world could drive me through hell fire to lay my hands on it, you've named it," he said. Frances saw that Mrs. Chadron could be reasoned with now, and she was grateful to Banjo for his opportune arrival. For the night was vast and unfriendly over that empty land, and filled with a thousand shudderful dangers. She was afraid of it, afraid to leave the lights of the house behind her and ride out into it, no matter for all the peril that poor little Nola might be facing in that cruel hour. Banjo rode away. They stood clinging to each other in the dim circle of Alvino's lantern-light, listening to his horse until the distance muffled its feet on the road. Frances was chilled with the horror of that brigandish act. Every movement of the wind in the bushes made her skin crinkle and creep; every sound of animals in barn and corral was magnified into some new danger. Mrs. Chadron was in far worse state, with reason, certainly, for being so. Now that the stimulation of her first wild outburst had been exhausted, she stood wilted and weak, shivering with her hands over her eyes, moaning and moaning in piteous low wail. Frances took the lantern from old Alvino's shaking hand. "Let's go and look for their tracks," she suggested, forcing a note of eagerness into her words, "so we can tell the men, when they come back to pick up the trail, how many there were and which way they went." "Oh, if Chance was only able to go after them, if he was only able!" Mrs. Chadron wailed, following Frances as she hurried along the wire fence that cut the garden from the river. "It was somebody that knowed the lay of the land," Mrs. Chadron said, "for that gate down there back of the house is open. That's the way they come and went--somebody that knowed the lay of the land."