Two ruffians on watch outside the saloon sprang up with yells.  The door burst open and a gang of rowdies fairly spilled out around us.  We three on our ponies had the instinctive security on horseback of children born to the saddle, else we should never have escaped from the half-drunken crew.  I recall the dust of striking hoofs, the dark forms dodging everywhere, the Mexican rider keeping between us and the saloon door, and most of all I remember one glimpse of Mat Nivers’s face with big, staring eyes, and firm-set mouth; and I remember my fleeting impression that she could take care of herself if we could; and over all a sudden shadow as the moon, in pity of our terror, hid its face behind a tiny cloud.

When it shone out again we were dashing by separate ways up the steep slope to the west ridge, but, strangely enough, the Mexican horseman with a follower or two had turned away from us and was chasing off somewhere out of sight.

Up on top of the bluff, with Rex Krane and Aunty Boone, we watched and waited.  The wooded Neosho valley full of inky blackness seemed to us like a bottomless gorge of terror which no moonlight could penetrate.  We strained our ears to catch the rattle of the wagons, but the noise from the saloon, coming faintly now and then, was all the sound we could hear save the voices of the night rising up from the river, and the whisperings of the open prairie to the west.

In that hour Rex Krane became our good angel.

“Keep the law, ‘Hold fast’!  You made a splendid race of it, and if Providence made that fellow lose you gettin’ out, and led him and his gang sideways from you, I reckon she will keep on takin’ care of you till Clarenden resumes control, so don’t you worry.”

But for his brave presence the terror of that lonely watch would have been harder than the peril of the street, for he seemed more like a gentle mother than the careless, scoffing invalid of the trail.

Midnight came, and the chill of midnight.  We huddled together in our wagon and still we waited.  Down in the village the lights still burned, and angry voices with curses came to our ears at intervals.

Meantime the three men across the river moved cautiously, hoping that we were safe on the bluff, and knowing that they dared not follow us too rapidly.  The wagons creaked and the harness rattled noisily in the night stillness, as slowly, one by one, they lumbered through the darkness across the river and up the bank to the village street.  Here they halted and grouped together.

“We must hide out and wait, Clarenden,” Jondo counciled.  “I hope the ponies and the wagon ahead are safe, but they stirred things up.  If we go now we’ll all be caught.”

The three wagons fell apart and halted wide of the trail where the oak-trees made the blackest shade.  The minutes dragged out like hours, and the anxiety for the unprotected group on the bluff made the three men frantic to hurry on.  But Jondo’s patience equaled his courage, and he always took the least risk.  It was nearly midnight, and every noise was intensified.  If a mule but moved it set up a clatter of harness chains that seemed to fill the valley.