But Frances Landcraft was not afraid of the night as she rode silently through it with Banjo Gibson at her side. There was no shudder in it for her as there had been on the night that Nola was stolen; it could not have raised up a terror grim enough to turn her back upon the road.
Her one thought was that she must reach Macdonald before Chadron and King could find him, and tell him that the troops were coming, and that he was to be trapped into firing upon them. She knew that many lives depended upon her endurance, courage, and strategy; many lives, but most of all Alan Macdonald’s life. He must be warned, at the cost of her own safety, her own life, if necessary.
To that end the troops must be followed, and a desperate dash at daylight must be made into Macdonald’s camp. Perhaps it would be a race with the cavalry at the last moment.
Banjo said it was beginning to feel like morning. An hour past they had crossed the river at the ford near Macdonald’s place, and the foothills stood rough and black against the starry horizon. They were near them now, so near that the deeper darkness of their timbered sides fell over them like a cold shadow.
Suddenly she checked Banjo with a sharp word.
“I heard them!” she whispered.
Banjo’s little horse, eager for the fellowship of its kind as his master was for his own in his way, threw up its head and whinnied. Banjo churned it with his heels, slapped it on the side of the head, and shut off the shrill call in a grunt, but the signal had gone abroad. From the blackness ahead it was answered, and the slow wind prowling down from the hills ahead of dawn carried the scent of cigarettes to them as they waited breathlessly for results.
“They’re dismounted, and waiting for daylight,” she said. “We must ride around them.”
They were leaving the road, the low brush rasping harshly on their stirrups—as loud as a bugle-call, it seemed to Frances—when a dash of hoofs from ahead told that a detachment was coming to investigate. Now there came a hail. Frances stopped; Banjo behind her whispered to know what they should do.