They might be her father's men, and they might have been very polite and chivalrous to her.

But their voices and their manner of speaking had been rough; and it is one thing, Lorraine reflected, to mingle with made-up villains--even to be waylaid and kidnapped and tied to trees and threatened with death--but it is quite different to accost rough-speaking men in the dark when you know that they are not being rough to suit the director of the scene.
She was so absorbed in trying to construct a range war or something equally thrilling from the scrap of conversation she had heard that she reached the hilltop in what seemed a very few minutes of climbing.

The sky was becoming overcast.

Already the stars to the west were blotted out, and the absolute stillness of the atmosphere frightened her more than the big, dark wilderness itself.

It seemed to her exactly as though the earth was holding its breath and waiting for something terrible to happen.