of country places in those days. Dolan managed to say under his breath
to Barclay, "It's all right--but the girls must stay in the house
to-night." And John knew that if he and Bob escaped with horses before
ten o'clock, they could reach the Ridge in time to sign the levy
before midnight. Darkness fell at eight, and a screech-owl in the wood
complained to the night. Dolan rose and stretched and yawned, and then
began to talk of going to bed, and Gabriel Carnine, whose turn it was
to sleep because he had been up two nights, shuffled off to the
straw-covered stable to lie down with the Texan who was his bunk mate,
leaving half a dozen men to guard the prisoners. An hour later the
screech-owl in the wood murmured again, this time much closer, and
Dolan rose and took off his hat and threw it in the straw beside him.
He was looking at the time anxiously toward the wood. But the next
moment from behind the barn in the opposite direction something
attracted them. It was a glare of light, and the guards noticed it at
the same time. A last year's straw stack next to the barn was afire.
Jane Mason was standing in the back door of the house, and in the
hurried blur of moving events John divined that she had slipped out
and fired the stack. In an instant there was confusion. The men were
on their feet. They must fight fire, or the barn would go. Dolan ran
with the men to the straw stack. "We'll help you," he cried. "I'll
wake Gabe." There was hurrrying for water pails. The women appeared,
crying shrilly, and in the glare that reddened the sky the yard
seemed, full of mad men racing heedlessly.

"John," whispered Jane, coming up to him as he drew water from the
well, "let me do this. There are two horses in the pasture. You and
Bob go--fly--fly." The Texan came running from the barn, which was
beginning to blaze. Dolan and Carnine still were in it. Then from the
wood back of the camp fifty men appeared, riding at a gallop. Lige