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One starry night, about ten o’clock, he went, as was his custom, to drink at the spring.  Upon his return to the cedars Nas Ta Bega, who slept under the same tree with him, had arisen, with his blanket hanging half off his shoulder.

“Listen,” said the Indian.

Shefford took one glance at the dark, somber face, with its inscrutable eyes, now so strange and piercing, and then, with a kind of cold excitement, he faced the way the Indian looked, and listened.  But he heard only the soft moan of the night wind in the cedars.

Nas Ta Bega kept the rigidity of his position for a moment, and then he relaxed, and stood at ease.  Shefford knew the Indian had made a certainty of what must have been a doubtful sound.  And Shefford leaned his ear to the wind and strained his hearing.

Then the soft night breeze brought a faint patter—­the slow trot of horses on a hard trail.  Some one was coming into the village at a late hour.  Shefford thought of Joe Lake.  But Joe lay right behind him, asleep in his blankets.  It could not be Withers, for the trader was in Durango at that time.  Shefford thought of Willetts and Shadd.

“Who’s coming?” he asked low of the Indian.

Nas Ta Bega pointed down the trail without speaking.

Shefford peered through the white dim haze of starlight and presently he made out moving figures.  Horses, with riders—­a string of them—­ one—­two—­three—­four—­five—­and he counted up to eleven.  Eleven horsemen riding into the village!  He was amazed, and suddenly keenly anxious.  This visit might be one of Shadd’s raids.

“Shadd’s gang!” he whispered.

“No, Bi Nai,” replied Nas Ta Bega, and he drew Shefford farther into the shade of the cedars.  His voice, his action, the way he kept a hand on Shefford’s shoulder, all this told much to the young man.

Mormons come on a night visit!  Shefford realized it with a slight shock.  Then swift as a lightning flash he was rent by another shock—­one that brought cold moisture to his brow and to his heart a flame of hell.

He was shaking when he sank down to find the support of a log.  Like a shadow the Indian silently moved away.  Shefford watched the eleven horses pass the camp, go down the road, to disappear in the village.  They vanished, and the soft clip-clops of hoofs died away.  There was nothing left to prove he had not dreamed.

Nothing to prove it except this sudden terrible demoralization of his physical and spiritual being!  While he peered out into the valley, toward the black patch of cedars and pinyons that hid the cabins, moments and moments passed, and in them he was gripped with cold and fire.

Was the Mormon who had abducted Fay—­the man with the cruel voice—­ was he among those eleven horsemen?  He might not have been.  What a torturing hope!  But vain—­vain, for inevitably he must be among them.  He was there in the cabin already.  He had dismounted, tied his horse, had knocked on her door.  Did he need to knock?  No, he would go in, he would call her in that cruel voice, and then . . .