She wished he hadn't said that, but, nevertheless, she returned a little archly: "But you haven't any business with the stage company nor with ME, although I admit I intend to get my Dunstable hereafter from your firm at the wholesale prices."

Before he could reply, the detonation of two gunshots, softened by distance, floated down from the ridge above them. "There!" said Miss Cantire eagerly. "Do you hear that?"

His face was turned towards the distant ridge, but really that she might not question his eyes. She continued with animation: "That's from the coach--to guide us--don't you see?"

"Yes," he returned, with a quick laugh, "and it says hurry up--mighty quick--we're tired waiting--so we'd better push on."

"Why don't you answer back with your revolver?" she asked.

"Haven't got one," he said.

"Haven't got one?" she repeated in genuine surprise. "I thought you gentlemen who are traveling always carried one. Perhaps it's inconsistent with your gospel of good-humor."

"That's just it, Miss Cantire," he said with a laugh. "You've hit it."

"Why," she said hesitatingly, "even I have a derringer--a very little one, you know, which I carry in my reticule. Captain Richards gave it to me." She opened her reticule and showed a pretty ivory-handled pistol.

The look of joyful surprise which came into his face changed quickly as she c.o.c.ked it and lifted it into the air. He seized her arm quickly.

"No, please don't, you might want it--I mean the report won't carry far enough. It's a very useful little thing, for all that, but it's only effective at close quarters." He kept the pistol in his hand as they walked on. But Miss Cantire noticed this, also his evident satisfaction when she had at first produced it, and his concern when she was about to discharge it uselessly. She was a clever girl, and a frank one to those she was inclined to trust. And she began to trust this stranger. A smile stole along her oval cheek.

"I really believe you're afraid of something, Mr. Boyle," she said, without looking up. "What is it? You haven't got that Indian scare too?"

Boyle had no false shame. "I think I have," he returned, with equal frankness. "You see, I don't understand Indians as well as you--and Foster."

"Well, you take my word and Foster's that there is not the least danger from them. About here they are merely grown-up children, cruel and destructive as most children are; but they know their masters by this time, and the old days of promiscuous scalping are over. The only other childish propensity they keep is thieving. Even then they only steal what they actually want,--horses, guns, and powder. A coach can go where an ammunition or an emigrant wagon can't. So your trunk of samples is quite safe with Foster."

Boyle did not think it necessary to protest. Perhaps he was thinking of something else.

"I've a mind," she went on slyly, "to tell you something more.

Confidence for confidence: as you've told me YOUR trade secrets, I'll tell you one of OURS. Before we left Pine Barrens, my father ordered a small escort of cavalrymen to be in readiness to join that coach if the scouts, who were watching, thought it necessary. So, you see, I'm something of a fraud as regards my reputation for courage."

"That doesn't follow," said Boyle admiringly, "for your father must have thought there was some danger, or he wouldn't have taken that precaution."

"Oh, it wasn't for me," said the young girl quickly.

"Not for you?" repeated Boyle.

Miss Cantire stopped short, with a pretty flush of color and an adorable laugh. "There! I've done it, so I might as well tell the whole story.

But I can trust you, Mr. Boyle." (She faced him with clear, penetrating eyes.) "Well," she laughed again, "you might have noticed that we had a quant.i.ty of baggage of pa.s.sengers who didn't go? Well, those pa.s.sengers never intended to go, and hadn't any baggage! Do you understand? Those innocent-looking heavy trunks contained carbines and cartridges from our post for Fort Taylor"--she made him a mischievous curtsy--"under MY charge! And," she added, enjoying his astonishment, "as you saw, I brought them through safe to the station, and had them transferred to this coach with less fuss and trouble than a commissary transport and escort would have made."

"And they were in THIS coach?" repeated Boyle abstractedly.

"Were? They ARE!" said Miss Cantire.

"Then the sooner I get you back to your treasure again the better," said Boyle with a laugh. "Does Foster know it?"

"Of course not! Do you suppose I'd tell it to anybody but a stranger to the place? Perhaps, like you, I know when and to whom to impart information," she said mischievously.

Whatever was in Boyle's mind he had s.p.a.ce for profound and admiring astonishment of the young lady before him. The girlish simplicity and trustfulness of her revelation seemed as inconsistent with his previous impression of her reserve and independence as her girlish reasoning and manner was now delightfully at variance with her tallness, her aquiline nose, and her erect figure. Mr. Boyle, like most short men, was apt to overestimate the qualities of size.

They walked on for some moments in silence. The ascent was comparatively easy but devious, and Boyle could see that this new detour would take them still some time to reach the summit. Miss Cantire at last voiced the thought in his own mind. "I wonder what induced them to turn off here? and if you hadn't been so clever as to discover their tracks, how could we have found them? But," she added, with feminine logic, "that, of course, is why they fired those shots."

Boyle remembered, however, that the shots came from another direction, but did not correct her conclusion. Nevertheless he said lightly: "Perhaps even Foster might have had an Indian scare."

"He ought to know 'friendlies' or 'government reservation men' better by this time," said Miss Cantire; "however, there is something in that. Do you know," she added with a laugh, "though I haven't your keen eyes I'm gifted with a keen scent, and once or twice I've thought I SMELT Indians--that peculiar odor of their camps, which is unlike anything else, and which one detects even in their ponies. I used to notice it when I rode one; no amount of grooming could take it away."

"I don't suppose that the intensity or degree of this odor would give you any idea of the hostile or friendly feelings of the Indians towards you?" asked Boyle grimly.

Although the remark was consistent with Boyle's objectionable reputation as a humorist, Miss Cantire deigned to receive it with a smile, at which Boyle, who was a little relieved by their security so far, and their nearness to their journey's end, developed further ingenious trifling until, at the end of an hour, they stood upon the plain again.

There was no sign of the coach, but its fresh track was visible leading along the bank of the ravine towards the intersection of the road they should have come by, and to which the coach had indubitably returned.

Mr. Boyle drew a long breath. They were comparatively safe from any invisible attack now. At the end of ten minutes Miss Cantire, from her superior height, detected the top of the missing vehicle appearing above the stunted bushes at the junction of the highway.

"Would you mind throwing those old flowers away now?" she said, glancing at the spoils which Boyle still carried.

"Why?" he asked.

"Oh, they're too ridiculous. Please do."

"May I keep one?" he asked, with the first intonation of masculine weakness in his voice.

"If you like," she said, a little coldly.

Boyle selected a small spray of myrtle and cast the other flowers obediently aside.

"Dear me, how ridiculous!" she said.

"What is ridiculous?" he asked, lifting his eyes to hers with a slight color. But he saw that she was straining her eyes in the distance.

"Why, there don't seem to be any horses to the coach!"

He looked. Through a gap in the furze he could see the vehicle now quite distinctly, standing empty, horseless and alone. He glanced hurriedly around them; on the one side a few rocks protected them from the tangled rim of the ridge; on the other stretched the plain. "Sit down, don't move until I return," he said quickly. "Take that." He handed back her pistol, and ran quickly to the coach. It was no illusion; there it stood vacant, abandoned, its dropped pole and cut traces showing too plainly the fearful haste of its desertion! A light step behind him made him turn. It was Miss Cantire, pink and breathless, carrying the c.o.c.ked derringer in her hand. "How foolish of you--without a weapon," she gasped in explanation.

Then they both stared at the coach, the empty plain, and at each other! After their tedious ascent, their long detour, their protracted expectancy and their eager curiosity, there was such a suggestion of hideous mockery in this vacant, useless vehicle--apparently left to them in what seemed their utter abandonment--that it instinctively affected them alike. And as I am writing of human nature I am compelled to say that they both burst into a fit of laughter that for the moment stopped all other expression!

"It was so kind of them to leave the coach," said Miss Cantire faintly, as she took her handkerchief from her wet and mirthful eyes. "But what made them run away?"

Boyle did not reply; he was eagerly examining the coach. In that brief hour and a half the dust of the plain had blown thick upon it, and covered any foul stain or blot that might have suggested the awful truth. Even the soft imprint of the Indians' moccasined feet had been trampled out by the later horse hoofs of the cavalrymen. It was these that first attracted Boyle's attention, but he thought them the marks made by the plunging of the released coach horses.

Not so his companion! She was examining them more closely, and suddenly lifted her bright, animated face. "Look!" she said; "our men have been here, and have had a hand in this--whatever it is."

"Our men?" repeated Boyle blankly.

"Yes!--troopers from the post--the escort I told you of. These are the prints of the regulation cavalry horseshoe--not of Foster's team, nor of Indian ponies, who never have any! Don't you see?" she went on eagerly; "our men have got wind of something and have galloped down here--along the ridge--see!" she went on, pointing to the hoof prints coming from the plain. "They've antic.i.p.ated some Indian attack and secured everything."

"But if they were the same escort you spoke of, they must have known you were here, and have"--he was about to say "abandoned you," but checked himself, remembering they were her father's soldiers.

"They knew I could take care of myself, and wouldn't stand in the way of their duty," said the young girl, antic.i.p.ating him with quick professional pride that seemed to fit her aquiline nose and tall figure.