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“Why, she’s only just gone to sleep, Wells; I don’t want to wake her up out of a warm bed and send her off four miles a chilly night like this,–all for a scare, too. The boys down there would laugh at me,–just after bringing her here from Denver, too.”

“They’re not laughing down there this night, Farron, and they’re not the kind that get stampeded either. Keep Jessie, if you say so, and I’ll stay through the night; but I’ve fixed some signals with them down at the road and you’ve got to abide by them. They can see your light plain as a beacon, and it’s got to go out in fifteen minutes.”

Farron had begun by pooh-poohing the sergeant’s views, but he already felt that they deserved serious consideration. He was more than half disposed to adopt Wells’s plan and let him take Jessie down to the safer station at Phillips’s, but she looked so peaceful and bonny, sleeping there in her little bed, that he could not bear to disturb her. He was ashamed, too, of the appearance of yielding.

So he told the sergeant that while he would not run counter to any arrangement he had made as to signals, and was willing to back him up in any project for the common defence, he thought they could protect Jessie and the ranch against any marauders that might come along. He didn’t think it was necessary that they should all sit up. One man could watch while the others slept.

As a first measure Farron and the sergeant took a turn around the ranch. The house itself was about thirty yards from the nearest side of the corral, or enclosure, in which Farron’s horses were confined. In the corral were a little stable, a wagon-shed, and a poultry-house. The back windows of the stable were on the side towards the house, and should Indians get possession of the stable they could send fire-arrows, if they chose, to the roof of the house, and with their rifles shoot down any persons who might attempt to escape from the burning building.

This fault of construction had long since been pointed out to Farron, but the man who called his attention to it, unluckily, was an officer of the new regiment, and the ranchman had merely replied, with a self-satisfied smile, that he guessed he’d lived long enough in that country to know a thing or two about the Indians.

Sergeant Wells shook his head as he looked at the stable, but Farron said that it was one of his safe-guards.

“I’ve got two mules in there that can smell an Indian five miles off, and they’d begin to bray the minute they did. That would wake me up, you see, because their heads are right towards me. Now, if they were way across the corral I mightn’t hear ’em at all. Then it’s close to the house, and convenient for feeding in winter. Will you put your horse in to-night?”

Sergeant Wells declined. He might need him, he said, and would keep him in front of the house where he was going to take his station to watch the valley and look out for signals. He led the horse to the stream and gave him a drink, and asked Farron to lay out a hatful of oats. “They might come in handy if I have to make an early start.”

However lightly Farron might estimate the danger, his men regarded it as a serious matter. Having heard the particulars from Sergeant Wells, their first care was to look over their rifles and see that they were in perfect order and in readiness for use. When at last Farron had completed a leisurely inspection of his corral and returned to the house, he found Wells and Pete in quiet talk at the front, and the sergeant’s horse saddled close at hand.

“Oh, well!” he said, “if you’re as much in earnest as all that, I’ll bring my pipe out here with you, and if any signal should come, it’ll be time enough then to wake Jessie, wrap her in a blanket, and you gallop off to Phillips’s with her.”