"You have become chilled standing there—it is severely cold. Step back into the house and warm yourself before you start. I will hold your horse while you do so." And he reached for the bridle reins.

She looked up into his face, and again trusted him; again she experienced a peculiar gratitude, and turning she obeyed him. As she stood inside over the little monkey stove a moment later, she could see him, and appreciated how thoughtful he was.

She returned after a few minutes, stood beside the animal he had brought and was ready to go. Suddenly she vaulted into the saddle. She regarded him again intently, while he returned the same a bit abstractedly. She started to urge the mare forward, and then she drew her to a stop before she had gotten fully started. Impulsively she leaned forward and stretched her hand toward him. Mechanically he took it. She unconsciously gripped his, as she said:

"I'm glad it happened.... That I became lost and—and—you were saved." His dark face colored with gratitude, and he had an effort to keep from choking when he tried to reply. In the meantime, she bestowed upon him a happy smile, and the next moment her horse had found the trail and was dashing along it toward the place she lived.

And as she went homeward over the hill, the man in whose life she was later to play such a strange and intimate part, stood looking after her long and silently.

CHAPTER V

Table of Contents

WHEN THE INDIANS SHOT THE TOWN UP

THE CLAIM of Jean Baptiste, containing 160 acres of land, adjoined the little town of Dallas on the north, and it was one of the surprises that Agnes Stewart had not wandered into it when she found the sod house and had later found Jean Baptiste in the snow.

The town had been started the winter before. A creek of considerable depth, and plenty of water ran to the south of it a half mile, and up this valley the promoters of the town contended that the railroad would build. It came up the same valley many miles below where at a way station it suddenly lifted out of it and sought the higher land to Bonesteel. Now the promoters, because the Railroad Company owned considerable land where the tracks left the valley to ascend to the highland, contended that it was the purpose of the railroad to split the trade country by coming up the valley, and that was why the town had been located where it was, on a piece of land that had once belonged to an Indian.

There were three other towns, platted by the government along a route that did not strike Dallas, and if the railroad should continue the route it was following where its tracks stopped west of Bonesteel, it was a foregone conclusion that it must hit the three government townsites.