“Oh, goody!” she cried, tilting on her toes.  “I’ll ask all the girls to come see, but they needn’t stick in!  We can get along without them, can’t we?”

Jack leaned toward her.  He was the charmed fluttering bird, while the Angel was the snake.

“Well, I rather guess!” he cried.

The Angel drew a deep breath and surveyed him rapturously.

“My, but you’re tall!” she commented.  “Do you suppose I ever will grow to reach your shoulders?”

She stood on tiptoe and measured the distance with her eyes.  Then she developed timid confusion, while her glance sought the ground.

“I wish I could do something,” she half whispered.

Jack seemed to increase an inch in height.

“What?” he asked hoarsely.

“Lariat Bill used always to have a bunch of red flowers in his shirt pocket.  The red lit up his dark eyes and olive cheeks and made him splendid.  May I put some red flowers on you?”

Freckles stared as he wheezed for breath.  He wished the earth would open and swallow him.  Was he dead or alive?  Since his Angel had seen Black Jack she never had glanced his way.  Was she completely bewitched?  Would she throw herself at the man’s feet before them all?  Couldn’t she give him even one thought?  Hadn’t she seen that he was gagged and bound?  Did she truly think that these were McLean’s men?  Why, she could not!  It was only a few days ago that she had been close enough to this man and angry enough with him to peel the hat from his head with a shot!  Suddenly a thing she had said jestingly to him one day came back with startling force:  “You must take Angels on trust.”  Of course you must!  She was his Angel.  She must have seen!  His life, and what was far more, her own, was in her hands.  There was nothing he could do but trust her.  Surely she was working out some plan.

The Angel knelt beside his flower bed and recklessly tore up by the roots a big bunch of foxfire.

“These stems are so tough and sticky,” she said.  “I can’t break them.  Loan me your knife,” she ordered Freckles.

As she reached for the knife, her back was for one second toward the men.  She looked into his eyes and deliberately winked.

She severed the stems, tossed the knife to Freckles, and walking to Jack, laid the flowers over his heart.

Freckles broke into a sweat of agony.  He had said she would be safe in a herd of howling savages.  Would she?  If Black Jack even made a motion toward touching her, Freckles knew that from somewhere he would muster the strength to kill him.  He mentally measured the distance to where his club lay and set his muscles for a spring.  But no—­by the splendor of God!  The big fellow was baring his head with a hand that was unsteady.  The Angel pulled one of the long silver pins from her hat and fastened her flowers securely.

Freckles was quaking.  What was to come next?  What was she planning, and oh! did she understand the danger of her presence among those men; the real necessity for action?