“God shall charge His angel legions Watch and ward o’er thee to keep; Though thou walk through hostile regions, Though in desert wilds thou sleep.”

Surely a man riding toward—­perhaps through—­skulking Indian hordes, as he must, could have no better message reach him than that.  The bent of his mind was toward mysticism, and while he did not think the train of reasoning out, could not have said that he believed it so, yet the familiar lines flashing suddenly, clearly, on the curtain of his mind, seemed to him, very simply, to be sent from a larger thought than his own.  As a child might take a strong hand held out as it walked over rough country, so he accepted this quite readily and happily, as from that Power who was never far from him, and in whose service, beyond most people, he lived and moved.  Low but clear and deep his voice went on, following one stanza with its mate: 

“Since with pure and firm affection Thou on God hast set thy love, With the wings of His protection He will shield thee from above.”  The simplicity of his being sheltered itself in the broad promise of the words.

Light-heartedly he rode on and on, though now more carefully; lying flat and peering over the crests of hills a long time before he crossed their tops; going miles perhaps through ravines; taking advantage of every bit of cover where a man and a horse might be hidden; travelling as he had learned to travel in three years of experience in this dangerous Indian country, where a shrub taken for granted might mean a warrior, and that warrior a hundred others within signal.  It was his plan to ride until about twelve—­ to reach Massacre Mountain, and there rest his horse and himself till gray daylight.  There was grass there and a spring—­two good and innocent things that had been the cause of the bad, dark thing which had given the place its name.  A troop under Captain James camping at this point, because of the water and grass, had been surprised and wiped out by five hundred Indian braves of the wicked and famous Red Crow.  There were ghastly signs about the place yet; Morgan had seen them, but soldiers may not have nerves, and it was good camping ground.

On through the valleys and half-way up the slopes, which rolled here far away into a still wilder world, the young man rode.  Behind the distant hills in the east a glow like fire flushed the horizon.  A rim of pale gold lifted sharply over the ridge; a huge round ball of light pushed faster, higher, and lay, a bright world on the edge of the world, great against the sky—­the moon had risen.  The twilight trembled as the yellow rays struck into its depths, and deepened, dying into purple shadows.  Across the plain zigzagged the pools of a level stream, as if a giant had spilled handfuls of quicksilver here and there.

Miles Morgan, riding, drank in all the mysterious, wild beauty, as a man at ease; as open to each fair impression as if he were not riding each moment into deeper danger, as if his every sense were not on guard.  On through the shining moonlight and in the shadow of the hills he rode, and, where he might, through the trees, and stopped to listen often, to stare at the hilltops, to question a heap of stones or a bush.