On the day of his arrival in Little Rivers he found a town peopled mostly by women and children.  All of the men who could bear arms and get a horse had departed, and with them Mary.  Thereby hangs a story all to the honor of little Ignacio.  After Jack had ridden away with his insistent refusal of assistance, apprehension among the group that watched him disappear in the gathering darkness was allayed by reports of men who had been at the store, where they found the Leddyites hanging about as usual.  True, no one had seen either Pete or Ropey Smith, but Lang said that they were upstairs playing poker, a favorite relaxation from the strain of their intellectual life.

But Ignacio learned from another Indian in Lang’s service that Pete and seven of his best shots had started for Agua Fria about the same time as Jack, while the rest of the gang that had been left behind were making it their business to cover the leader’s absence.  Distrusting Ignacio, they locked him in a closet off the bar.  In the early hours of the morning he succeeded in escaping with his news, which he carried first to Mary.  She was not asleep when he rapped at her door.  It had been a night of wakefulness for her, recalling the night after her meeting with Jack on the pass before the duel in the arroyo.

“I for Senor Don’t Care, now!  I for every devil in him!  And they go to kill him!” was the incoherent way in which he began his announcement.

In an hour the alarm had travelled from house to house.  While the gang slept at Lang’s or in their tents, a solemn cavalcade set forth quietly into the night, with rifles slung over their shoulders or lying across the pommels of their saddles, bound to rescue Jack Wingfield.  They had protested against Mary’s going with all the old, familiar arguments that occur to the male at thought of a woman in physical danger.

“It is the least that any of us can do,” she declared.

“But of what service will you be?” Dr. Patterson asked.

“No one can say yet,” she replied.  “And no one shall stop me!” She was driven by the same impulse that had sent her across the arroyo in face of the ruffians on the bank to Jack’s side after he was wounded.  “My pony can keep up with the best of yours,” she added.

Leddy had eight hours’ start on a two-days’ journey.  It was not in horse-flesh to gain much on his fast and hardened ponies.  There was little chance that Jack could hold out against such odds as he must face, even if he had escaped an ambush.  So they rode in desperation and in silence, each too certain of what was in the minds of the others to make pretence of a hope that was not in the heart.

Their only stop for rest was at Las Cascadas in the hot hours of midday.  Darkness had fallen when they overtook a solitary horseman coming from Agua Fria.  John Prather drew rein well to one side of the trail.  He had a moment, as they approached, in which to think out his explanation of his position.