“Yes.”

Banion spoke so shortly that the good dame, owner of a sought-for daughter, looked at him keenly.

“He lived at Liberty, too.  I’ve known Molly to write of him.”

“Yes?” suddenly and with vigor.  “She knows him then?”

“Why, yes.”

“So do I,” said Banion simply.  “He was in our regiment—­captain and adjutant, paymaster and quartermaster-chief, too, sometimes.  The Army Regulations never meant much with Doniphan’s column.  We did as we liked—­and did the best we could, even with paymasters and quartermasters!”

He colored suddenly, and checked, sensitive to a possible charge of jealousy before this keen-eyed mother of a girl whose beauty had been the talk of the settlement now for more than a year.

The rumors of the charm of Molly Wingate—­Little Molly, as her father always called her to distinguish her from her mother—­now soon were to have actual and undeniable verification to the eye of any skeptic who mayhap had doubted mere rumors of a woman’s beauty.  The three advance figures—­the girl, Woodhull, her brother Jed—­broke away and raced over the remaining few hundred yards, coming up abreast, laughing in the glee of youth exhilarated by the feel of good horseflesh under knee and the breath of a vital morning air.

As they flung off Will Banion scarce gave a look to his own excited steed.  He was first with a hand to Molly Wingate as she sprang lightly down, anticipating her other cavalier, Woodhull, who frowned, none too well pleased, as he dismounted.

Molly Wingate ran up and caught her mother in her strong young arms, kissing her roundly, her eyes shining, her cheeks flushed in the excitement of the hour, the additional excitement of the presence of these young men.  She must kiss someone.

Yes, the rumors were true, and more than true.  The young school-teacher could well carry her title as the belle of old Liberty town here on the far frontier.  A lovely lass of eighteen years or so, she was, blue of eye and of abundant red-brown hair of that tint which ever has turned the eyes and heads of men.  Her mouth, smiling to show white, even teeth, was wide enough for comfort in a kiss, and turned up strongly at the corners, so that her face seemed always sunny and carefree, were it not for the recurrent grave, almost somber look of the wide-set eyes in moments of repose.

Above the middle height of woman’s stature, she had none of the lank irregularity of the typical frontier woman of the early ague lands; but was round and well developed.  Above the open collar of her brown riding costume stood the flawless column of a fair and tall white throat.  New ripened into womanhood, wholly fit for love, gay of youth and its racing veins, what wonder Molly Wingate could have chosen not from two but twenty suitors of the best in all that countryside?  Her conquests had been many since the time when, as a young girl, and fulfilling her parents’ desire to educate their daughter, she had come all the way from the Sangamon country of Illinois to the best school then existent so far west—­Clay Seminary, of quaint old Liberty.