“Sergeant, you are not hurt?” she questioned.  “Tell me you are not hurt?”

“Oh, no,” dragging himself up the bank, yet panting as he endeavored to speak cheerfully.  “Only that was a rather hard pull, the last of it, and I am short of breath.  I shall be all right in a moment.”

There was a sand-dune just beyond, and he seated himself and leaned against it.

“I am beginning to breathe easier already,” he explained.  “Sit down here, Miss McDonald.  We are safe enough now in this darkness.”

“You are all wet, soaking wet.”

“That is nothing; the sand is warm yet from yesterday’s sun, and my clothes will dry fast enough.  It is beginning to grow light in the east.”

The faces of both turned in that direction where appeared the first twilight approach of dawn.  Already were visible the dark lines of the opposite shore, across the gleam of water, and beyond appeared the dim outlines of the higher bluffs.  The slope between river and hill, however, remained in impenetrable darkness.  The minds of both fugitives reverted to the same scene—­the wrecked stage with its dead passengers within, its savage watchers without.  She lifted her head, and the soft light reflected on her face.

“I—­I thank God we are not over there now,” she said falteringly.

“Yes,” he admitted.  “They will be creeping in closer; they will not wait much longer.  Hard as I have worked, I can’t realize yet that we are out of those toils.”

“You did not expect to succeed?”

“No; frankly I did not; all I could do was hope—­take the one chance left.  The slightest accident meant betrayal.  I am ashamed of being so weak just now, but it was the strain.  You see,” he explained carefully, “I ’ve been scouting through hostile Indian country mostly day and night for nearly a week, and then this thing happened.  No matter how iron a man is his nerve goes back on him after a while.”

“I know.”

“It was n’t myself,” he went on doggedly, “but it was the knowledge of having to take care of you.  That was what made me worry; that, and knowing a single misstep, the slightest noise, would bring those devils on us, where I could n’t fight, where there was just one thing I could do.”

There was silence, her hands pressed to her face, her eyes fixed on him.  Then she questioned him soberly.

“You mean, kill me?”

“Sure,” he answered simply, without looking around; “I would have had to do it—­just as though you were a sister of mine.”

Her hands reached out and clasped his, and he glanced aside at her face, seeing it clearly.

“I—­I thought you would,” she said, her voice trembling.  “I—­I was going to ask you once before I was hurt, but—­but I could n’t, and somehow I trusted you from the first, when you got in.”  She hesitated, and then asked, “How did you know I was Molly McDonald?  You never asked.”