“Allie, climb up behind him,” said Horn, motioning to the girl.

“I’ll stay with mother,” she replied.

“Go child—­go!” entreated Mrs. Durade.

Others urged her, but she shook her head.  Horn’s big hand trembled as he held it out, and for once there was no trace of hardness about his face.

“Allie, I never had no lass of my own....  I wish you’d go with him.  You’d be safe—­an’ you could take my—­”

“No!” interrupted the girl.

Slingerland gave her a strange, admiring glance, then turned his quick gray eyes upon Horn.  “Anythin’ I can take?”

Horn hesitated.  “No.  It was jest somethin’ I wanted the girl to hev.”

Slingerland touched his shaggy horse and called over his shoulder:  “Rustle out of hyar!” Then he galloped down the trail, leaving the travelers standing aghast.

“Break camp!” thundered Horn.

A scene of confusion followed.  In a very short while the prairie-schooners were lumbering down the valley.  Twilight came just as the flight got under way.  The tired oxen were beaten to make them run.  But they were awkward and the loads were heavy.  Night fell, and the road was difficult to follow.  The wagons rolled and bumped and swayed from side to side; camp utensils and blankets dropped from them.  One wagon broke down.  The occupants, frantically gathering together their possessions, ran ahead to pile into the one in front.

Horn drove on and on at a gait cruel to both men and beasts.  The women were roughly shaken.  Hours passed and miles were gained.  That valley led into another with an upgrade, rocky and treacherous.  Horn led on foot and ordered the men to do likewise.  The night grew darker.  By and by further progress became impossible, for the oxen failed and a wild barrier of trees and rocks stopped the way.

Then the fugitives sat and shivered and waited for dawn.  No one slept.  All listened intently to the sounds of the lonely night, magnified now by their fears.  Horn strode to and fro with his rifle —­a grim, dark, silent form.  Whenever a wolf mourned, or a cat squalled, or a night bird voiced the solitude, or a stone rattled off the cliff, the fugitives started up quiveringly alert, expecting every second to hear the screeching yell of the Sioux.  They whispered to keep up a flickering courage.  And the burly Horn strode to and fro, thoughtful, as though he were planning something, and always listening.  Allie sat in one of the wagons close to her mother.  She was wide awake and not so badly scared.  All through this dreadful journey her mother had not seemed natural to Allie, and the farther they traveled eastward the stranger she grew.  During the ride that night she had moaned and shuddered, and had clasped Allie close; but when the flight had come to a forced end she grew silent.

Allie was young and hopeful.  She kept whispering to her mother that the soldiers would come in time.