face.  I knew why he had said that he would need me.  Bill Banney was always reliable, but growing more silent and unapproachable every day.  Rex Krane’s mind was on the girl-wife he had left in the stone house on the bluff above the Missouri.  Beverly was too cock-sure of himself and too light-hearted, too eager for an Indian fight.  Jondo could counsel with Smith and Davis of the St. Louis trains, but only as a last resort would he dictate to them.  So he turned to me.

We were nearing Pawnee Rock, but as yet no hint of an Indian trail could we find anywhere.  Advance-guards and rear-guards had no news to report when night came, and the sense of security grew hourly.  The day had been very warm, but our nooning was shortened and we went into camp early.  Everything had gone wrong that day:  harness had broken; mules had grown fractious; a wagon had upset on a rough bit of the trail; half a dozen men, including Smith and Davis of the St. Louis trains, had fallen suddenly ill; drinking-water had been warm and muddy; and, most of all, the consciousness of wide-spread opposition to Jondo’s strict ruling where there were no signs of danger made a very ugly-spirited group of men who sat down together to eat our evening meal.  Bets were openly made that we wouldn’t see a hostile redskin this side of Santa Fe.  Covert sneers pointed many comments, and grim silence threatened more than everything else.  Jondo’s face was set, but there was a calmness about his words and actions, and even the most rebellious that night knew he was least afraid of any man among us.

At midnight he wakened me.  “I want you to help me, Gail,” he said.  “The Kiowas will gather for us at Pawnee Rock.  They missed us there once because they were looking for a big train, and it was there we took their captive girl.  The boys are ready to mutiny to-night.  I count on you to stand by me.”

Stand by Jondo!  In my helpless babyhood, my orphaned childhood, my sturdy growing years toward young manhood, Jondo had been father, mother, brother, playmate, guardian angel.  I would have walked on red-hot coals for his sake.

“I want you to slip away to-night, when Rex and Bev are on guard, and find out what’s over that ridge to the north.  Don’t come back till you do find out.  We’ll get to Pawnee Rock to-morrow.  I must know to-night.  Can you do it?  If you aren’t back by sunrise, I’ll follow your trail double quick.”

“I’ll go,” I replied, proud to show both my courage and my loyalty to my captain.

The night was gray, with a dying moon in the west, and the north ridge loomed like a low black shadow against the sky.  There was a weird chanting voice in the night wind, pouring endlessly across the open plains.  And everywhere an eyeless, voiceless, motionless land, whereon my pony’s hoof-beats were big and booming.  Nature made my eyes and ears for the trail life, and matched my soul to its level spaces.  To-night I was alert with that love of mastery that made me eager for this task.  So I rode forward until our great camp was only a dull blot on the horizon-line, melting into mere nothingness as it grew farther away.  And I was alone on the earth.  God had taken out every other thing in it, save the sky over my head and the uneven short-grass sod under my feet.