She ran halfway up the ridge, and met the farm hand returning.  It was only a bit of washing after all, and he was glad he hadn’t fired his gun.  On the other hand, Lanty confessed she had got “so skeert” being alone, that she came to seek him.  She had the shivers; wasn’t her hand cold?  It was, but thrilling even in its coldness to the bashfully admiring man.  And she was that weak and dizzy, he must let her lean on his arm going down; and they must go slow.  She was sure he was cold, too, and if he would wait at the back door she would give him a drink of whiskey.  Thus Lanty, with her brain afire, her eyes and ears straining into the darkness, and the vague outline of the barn beyond.  Another moment was protracted over the drink of whiskey, and then Lanty, with a faint archness, made him promise not to tell her mother of her escapade, and she promised on her part not to say anything about his “stalking a petticoat on the clothesline,” and then shyly closed the door and regained her room.  He must have got away by this time, or have been discovered; she believed they would not open the barn door until the return of the posse.

She was right.  It was near daybreak when they returned, and, again crouching low beside her window, she heard, with a fierce joy, the sudden outcry, the oaths, the wrangling voices, the summoning of her father to the front door, and then the tumultuous sweeping away again of the whole posse, and a blessed silence falling over the rancho.  And then Lanty went quietly to bed, and slept like a three-year child!

Perhaps that was the reason why she was able at breakfast to listen with lazy and even rosy indifference to the startling events of the night; to the sneers of the farm hands at the posse who had overlooked the knife when they searched their prisoner, as well as the stupidity of the corral guard who had never heard him make a hole “the size of a house” in the barn side!  Once she glanced demurely at Silas Briggs—­the farm hand and the poor fellow felt consoled in his shame at the remembrance of their confidences.

But Lanty’s tranquillity was not destined to last long.  There was again the irruption of exciting news from the highroad; the Mexican leader had been recaptured, and was now safely lodged in Brownsville jail!  Those who were previously loud in their praises of the successful horse-thief who had baffled the vigilance of his pursuers were now equally keen in their admiration of the new San Francisco deputy who, in turn, had outwitted the whole gang.  It was he who was fertile in expedients; he who had studied the whole country, and even risked his life among the gang, and he who had again closed the meshes of the net around the escaped outlaw.  He was already returning by way of the rancho, and might stop there a moment,—­so that they could all see the hero.  Such was the power of success on the country-side!  Outwardly indifferent, inwardly bitter, Lanty turned away.  She should not grace his triumph, if she kept in her room all day!  And when there was a clatter of hoofs on the road again, Lanty slipped upstairs.