I gave one quick glance over my shoulder and saw that the horseman was a
Mexican. I have lived a life so fraught with danger that I should hardly
remember the feeling of fear but for the indelible imprint of that one
terrified minute in the moonlit street of Council Grove.

Two ruffians on watch outside the saloon sprang up with yells. The door
burst open and a gang of rowdies fairly spilled out around us. We three
on our ponies had the instinctive security on horseback of children born
to the saddle, else we should never have escaped from the half-drunken
crew. I recall the dust of striking hoofs, the dark forms dodging
everywhere, the Mexican rider keeping between us and the saloon door,
and most of all I remember one glimpse of Mat Nivers's face with big,
staring eyes, and firm-set mouth; and I remember my fleeting impression
that she could take care of herself if we could; and over all a sudden
shadow as the moon, in pity of our terror, hid its face behind a tiny
cloud.

When it shone out again we were dashing by separate ways up the steep
slope to the west ridge, but, strangely enough, the Mexican horseman
with a follower or two had turned away from us and was chasing off
somewhere out of sight.

Up on top of the bluff, with Rex Krane and Aunty Boone, we watched and
waited. The wooded Neosho valley full of inky blackness seemed to us
like a bottomless gorge of terror which no moonlight could penetrate. We
strained our ears to catch the rattle of the wagons, but the noise from
the saloon, coming faintly now and then, was all the sound we could hear
save the voices of the night rising up from the river, and the
whisperings of the open prairie to the west.