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“That’s my brave little girl!” says the sergeant. “Papa was right when he told us down at Russell that he had the pluckiest little daughter in all Wyoming. It isn’t every baby that would take a night ride with an old dragoon so quietly.”

He bends down and softly kisses the thick, curling hair that hangs over her forehead. Then his keen eye again sweeps over the valley, and he touches his charger’s flank with the spur.

“Looks all clear,” he mutters, “but I’ve seen a hundred Indians spring up out of a flatter plain than that. They’ll skulk behind the smallest kind of a ridge, and not show a feather until one runs right in among them. There might be dozens of them off there beyond the Chug at this moment, and I not be able to see hair or hide of ’em.”

Almost half way to Phillips’s, and still all is quiet. Then he notes that far ahead the low ridge, a few hundred yards to his left, sweeps round nearly to the trail, and dips into the general level of the prairie within short pistol-shot of the path along which he is riding. He is yet fully three-quarters of a mile from the place where the ridge so nearly meets the trail, but it is plainly visible now in the silvery moonlight.

“If they should have come down, and should be all ranged behind that ridge now, ‘twould be a fearful scrape for this poor little mite,” he thinks, and then, soldier-like, sets himself to considering what his course should be if the enemy were suddenly to burst upon him from behind that very curtain.

“Turn and run for it, of course!” he mutters. “Unless they should cut me off, which they couldn’t do unless some of ’em were far back along behind the ridge. Hullo! A shadow on the trail! Coming this way. A horseman. That’s good! They’ve sent out a man to meet me.”

The sound of iron-shod hoofs that came faintly across the wide distance from the galloping shadow carried to the sergeant’s practised ear the assurance that the advancing horseman was not an Indian. After the suspense of that lonely and silent ride, in the midst of unknown dangers, Wells felt a deep sense of relief.

“The road is clear between here and Phillips’s, that’s certain,” he thought. “I’ll take Jessie on to the station, and then go back to Farron’s. I wonder what news that horseman brings, that he rides so hard.”

Still on came the horseman. All was quiet, and it seemed that in five minutes more he would have the news the stranger was bringing,–of safety, he hoped. Jessie, at any rate, should not be frightened unless danger came actually upon them. He quickened his horse’s gait, and looked smilingly down into Jessie’s face.

“It’s all right, little one! Somebody is coming up the trail from Phillips’s, so everything must be safe,” he told her.

Then came a cruel awakening. Quick, sudden, thrilling, there burst upon the night a mad chorus of shouts and shots and the accompaniment of thundering hoofs. Out from the sheltering ridge by dozens, gleaming, flashing through the moonlight, he saw the warriors sweep down upon the hapless stranger far in front.

He reined instantly his snorting and affrighted horse, and little Jessie, with one low cry of terror, tried to release her arms from the circling blanket and throw them about his neck; but he held her tight. He grasped the reins more firmly, gave one quick glance to his left and rear, and, to his dismay, discovered that he, too, was well-nigh hemmed in; that, swift and ruthless as the flight of hawks, a dozen warriors were bounding over the prairie towards him, to cut off his escape.

He had not an instant to lose. He whirled his practised troop horse to the right about, and sent him leaping madly through the night back for Farron’s ranch.