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"I just asked you because he doesn't look like a bad man." "They say he sneaked in here the night of Nola's dance, but I didn't see him. Oh, what 'm I tellin' you? Course you know that you danced with him!" "Yes," said Frances, neither sorry nor ashamed. "But you wasn't to blame, honey," Mrs. Chadron comforted, "you didn't know him from Adamses off ox."
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. Mrs. Chadron was for riding in pursuit of Nola's abductors, although she had not mounted a horse in fifteen years.
She could picture Nola, little fashioned by nature or her life's experiences to bear grief, shuddering and sobbing alone in the dark, and her heart went out to her in all its generosity and large forgivingness. Nola's room was dark for all except the night sky at her window. Frances stood a moment in her door, listening, believing from the silence that she must have gone to sleep.
"Hell! Haven't they told you fool women the straight of it yet? I tell you I had to shoot him to save my own life he was pullin' a gun on me, but I beat him to it!" "Oh Saul, my Saul!" Mrs. Chadron moaned. "Was it you that oh, was it you!" There was accusation, disillusionment, sorrow and more than words can define in Nola's voice. Frances waited to hear no more.
There were photographs of youths on dressing-table, chiffonier, and walls, and flaring pennants of eastern universities and colleges. Among the latter, as if it was the most triumphant trophy of them all, there hung a little highland bonnet with a broken feather, of the plaid Alan Macdonald had worn on the night of Nola's mask.
She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying under Nola's cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let the tears of penitence purge the sufferer's soul in their world-old way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be denied.
Frances could not see the print of the shoeless hoof, nor any peculiarity among the scores of tracks that would tell her of Nola's abductor having ridden that far along the road. She flushed as the thought came to her that this was a trick to throw her attention from themselves and the blame upon some fictitious person, when they knew whose hands were guilty all the time.
But it wasn't their day to take orders from Chadron; none of them moved. Frances touched Nola's arm; she withdrew it and let her pass. Macdonald, alone in the room, had lifted himself to his elbow, listening. Frances pressed him back to his pillow with one hand, reaching with the other under the cot for his revolvers.
Banjo was alert on the proposal, and keen to go. He brought Nola's coat at her mother's suggestion, for the evening had a feeling of frost in it, and attended her to the kitchen after the chicken broth as gallantly as if he wore a sword. Mrs. Chadron came back from her investigations in the kitchen in a little while to Frances, who waited alone before the happy little fire in the chimney.
Major King was enjoying the passage between the girls, riding at Nola's side with his cavalry hands held precisely. "If I'm not mistaken, the gentleman in question is there talking to Miller, the agent," said he, nodding toward two horsemen a little distance ahead. "But I wouldn't excite him, Miss Landcraft, if I were you.
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