Banjo had returned, with fever in his wound. Mrs. Chadron was putting horse liniment on it when Frances entered the sitting-room where the news of the tragedy had visited them the night past.

“I didn’t go to the post—I saw some men in the road and turned back,” Frances told them, sinking down wearily in a chair before the fire.

“I’m glad you turned back, honey,” Mrs. Chadron said, shaking her head sadly, “for I was no end worried about you. Them rustlers they’re comin’ down from their settlement and gatherin’ up by Macdonald’s place, the men told Banjo, and no tellin’ what they might ’a’ done if they’d seen you.”

Mrs. Chadron’s face was not red with the glow of peppers and much food this morning. One night of anxiety had racked her, and left hollows under her eyes and a flat grayness in her cheeks.

Banjo had brought no other news. The men had scattered at daybreak to search for the trail of the man who had carried Nola away, but Banjo, sore and shaken, had come back depressed and full of pains. Mrs. Chadron said that Saul surely would be home before noonday, and urged Frances to go to her room and sleep.

“I’m steadier this morning, I’ll watch and wait,” 183 she said, pressing the liniment-soaked cloth to Banjo’s bruised forehead.

Banjo contracted his muscles under the application, shriveling up on himself like a snail in a fire, for it was hot and heroic liniment, and strong medicine for strong beasts and tougher men. Banjo’s face was a picture of patient suffering, but he said nothing, and had not spoken since Frances entered the room, for the treatment had been under way before her arrival and there was scarcely enough breath left in him to suffice for life, and none at all for words. Frances had it in mind to suggest some milder remedy, but held her peace, feeling that if Banjo survived the treatment he surely would be in no danger from his hurt.

The door of Nola’s room was open as Frances passed, and there was a depression in the counterpane which told where the lost girl’s mother had knelt beside it and wet it with her tears. Frances wondered whether she had prayed, lingering compassionately a moment in the door.

The place was like Nola in its light and brightness and surface comfort and assertive color notes of happiness, hung about with the trophies of her short but victorious career among the hearts of men. There were photographs of youths on dressing-table, chiffonier, and walls, and flaring pennants of eastern universities and colleges. Among the latter, as if it was the most triumphant trophy of them all, there hung a little highland bonnet with a broken feather, 184 of the plaid Alan Macdonald had worn on the night of Nola’s mask.

Frances went in for a nearer inspection, and lifted the little saucy bit of headgear from its place in the decorations of Nola’s wall. There could be no doubting it; that was Alan Macdonald’s bonnet, and there was a bullet hole in it at the stem of the little feather. The close-grazing lead had sheared the plume in two, and gone on its stinging way straight through the bonnet.

An exclamation of tender pity rose above her breath. She fondled the little headdress and pressed it to her bosom; she laid it against her cheek and kissed it in consolation for its hurt—the woman’s balsam for all sufferings and heartbreaks, and incomparable among the panaceas of all time.

In spite of her sympathy for Nola in her grave situation, facing or undergoing what terrors no one knew, there was a bridling of resentment against her in Frances’ breast as she hung the marred bonnet back in its place. It seemed to her that Nola had exulted over both herself and Alan Macdonald when she had put his bonnet on her wall, and that she had kept it there after the coming of Frances to that house in affront to friendship and mockery of the hospitality that she professed to extend.

Nola had asked her to that house so that she might see it hanging there; she had arranged it and studied it with the cunning intent of giving her pain. And how close that bullet had come to him! 185 It must have sheared his fair hair as it tore through and dashed the bonnet from his head.

How she suffered in picturing his peril, happily outlived! How her heart trembled and her strong young limbs shook as she lived over in breathless agony the crisis of that night! He had carried her glove in his bonnet—she remembered the deft little movement of stowing it there just the moment before he bent and flashed away among the shadows. Excuse enough for losing it, indeed!

But he had not told her of his escape to justify the loss; proudly he had accepted the blame, and turned away with the hurt of it in his unbending heart.

She went back and took down the jaunty little cap again, and kissed it with compensatory tenderness, and left a jewel trembling on its crown from the well of her honest brown eye. If ever amends were made to any little highland bonnet in this world, then Alan Macdonald’s was that bonnet, hanging there among the flaring pennants and trivial little schoolgirl trophies on Nola Chadron’s wall.

Chadron came home toward evening at the head of sixty men. He had raised his army speedily and effectively. These men had been gathered by the members of the Drovers’ Association and sent to Meander by special train, horses, guns, ammunition, and provisions with them, ready for a campaign.

The cattlemen had made a common cause of this sectional difficulty. Their indignation had been 186 voiced very thoroughly by Mrs. Chadron when she had spoken to Frances with such resentment of the homesteaders standing up to fight. That was an unprecedented contingency. The “holy scare,” such as Mark Thorn and similar hired assassins spread in communities of homesteaders, had been sufficient up to that day. Now this organized front of self-defense must be broken, and the bold rascals involved must be destroyed, root and branch.

Press agents of the Drovers’ Association in Cheyenne were sowing nation-wide picturesque stories of the rustlers’ uprising. The ground was being prepared for the graver news that was to come; the cattlemen’s justification was being carefully arranged in advance.

Frances shuddered for the homesteaders when she looked out of her window upon this formidable force of lean-legged, gaunt-cheeked gun-fighters. They were men of the trade, cowboys who had fought their employers’ battles from the Rio Grande to the Little Missouri. They were grim and silent men as they pressed round the watering troughs at the windmill with their horses, with flapping hats and low-slung pistols, and rifles sheathed in leather cases on their saddles.

She hurried down when she saw Chadron dismount at the gate. Mrs. Chadron was there to meet him, for she had stood guard at her window all day watching for his dust beyond the farthest hill. Frances could hear her weeping now, and Chadron’s 187 heavy voice rising in command as she came to the outer door.

Chadron was in the saddle again, and there was hurrying among his men at barn and corral as they put on bridles which they had jerked off, and tightened girths and gathered up dangling straps. Chadron was riding among them, large and commanding as a general, with a cloud in his dark face that seemed a threat of death.

Mrs. Chadron was hurrying in to make a bundle of some heavy clothing for Nola to protect her against the night chill on her way home, which the confident soul believed her daughter would be headed upon before midnight. Saul the invincible was taking the trail; Saul, who smashed his way to his desires in all things. She gave Frances a hurried word of encouragement as they passed outside the door.

Chadron was talking earnestly to his men. “I’ll give fifty dollars bonus to the man that brings him down,” she heard him say as she drew near, “and a hundred to the first man to lay eyes on my daughter.”

Frances was hurrying to him with the information that she had kept for his ear alone. She was flushed with excitement as she came among the rough horsemen like a bright bloom tossed among rusty weeds. They fell back generously, not so much to give her room as to see her to better advantage, passing winks and grimaces of approval between themselves in their free and easy way. Chadron gave his 188 hand in greeting as she spoke some hasty words of comfort.

“Thank you, Miss Frances, for your friendship in this bad business,” he said, heartily, and with the best that there was in him. “You’ve been a great help and comfort to her mother, and if it wouldn’t be askin’ too much I’d like for you to stay here with her till we bring my little girl back home.”

“Yes, I intended to stay, Mr. Chadron; I didn’t come out to tell you that.” She looked round at the admiring faces, too plainly expressive of their approbation, some of them, and plucked Chadron’s sleeve. “Bend down—I want to tell you something,” she said, in low, quick voice.

Chadron stooped, his hand lightly on her shoulder, in attitude of paternal benediction.

“It wasn’t Macdonald, it was Mark Thorn,” she whispered.

Chadron’s face displayed no surprise, shadowed no deeper concern. Only there was a flitting look of perplexity in it as he sat upright in his saddle again.

“Who is he?” he asked.

“Don’t you know?” She watched him closely, baffled by his unmoved countenance.

“I never heard of anybody in this country by that name,” he returned, shaking his head with a show of entire sincerity. “Who was tellin’ you about him—who said he was the man?”

A little confused, and more than a little disappointed 189 over the apparent failure of her news to surprise from Chadron a betrayal of his guilty connection with Mark Thorn, she related the adventure of the morning, the finding of the cap, the meeting with Macdonald and his neighbors. She reserved nothing but what Lassiter had told her of Thorn’s employers and his bloody work in that valley.

Chadron shook his head with an air of serious concern. There was a look of commiseration in his eyes for her credulity, and shameful duping by the cunning word of Alan Macdonald.

“That’s one of Macdonald’s lies,” he said, something so hard and bitter in his voice when he pronounced that name that she shuddered. “I never heard of anybody named Thorn, here or anywheres else. That rustler captain he’s a deep one, Miss Frances, and he was only throwin’ dust in your eyes. But I’m glad you told me.”

“But they said—the man he called Lassiter said—that Macdonald would find Nola, and bring her home,” she persisted, unwilling yet to accept Chadron’s word against that old man’s, remembering the paper with the list of names.

“He’s bald-faced enough to try even a trick like that!” he said.

Chadron looked impatiently toward the house, muttering something about the slowness of “them women,” avoiding Frances’ eyes. For she did not believe Saul Chadron, and her distrust was eloquent in her face.

“You mean that he’d pretend a rescue and bring her back, just to make sympathy for himself and his side of this trouble?”

“That’s about the size of it,” Chadron nodded, frowning sternly.

“Oh, it seems impossible that anybody could be so heartless and low!”

“A man that’d burn brands is low enough to go past anything you could imagine in that little head of yours, Miss Frances. Do you mind runnin’ in and tellin’—no, here she comes.”

“Couldn’t this trouble between you and the homesteaders—”

“Homesteaders! They’re cattle thieves, born in ’em and bred in ’em, and set in the hide and hair of ’em!”

“Couldn’t it be settled without all this fighting and killing?” she went on, pressing her point.

“It’s all over now but the shoutin’,” said he. “There’s only one way to handle a rustler, Miss Frances, and that’s to salt his hide.”

“I’d be willing—I’d be glad—to go up there myself, alone, and take any message you might send,” she offered. “I think they’d listen to reason, even to leaving the country if you want them to, rather than try to stand against a ga—force like this.”

“You can’t understand our side of it, Miss Frances,”—Chadron spoke impatiently, reaching out for the bundle that his wife was bringing while she was yet two rods away—“for you ain’t been 191 robbed and wronged by them nesters like we have. You’ve got to live it to know what it means, little lady. We’ve argued with ’em till we’ve used up all our words, but their fences is still there. Now we’re goin’ to clear ’em out.”

“But Macdonald seemed hurt when I asked him how much money they wanted you to pay as Nola’s ransom,” she said.

“He’s deep, and he’s tricky—too deep and too slick for you.” Chadron gathered up his reins, leaned over and whispered: “Don’t say anything about that Thorn yarn to her”—a sideways jerk of the head toward his wife—“her trouble’s deep enough without stirrin’ it.”

Chadron had the bundle now, and Mrs. Chadron was helping him tie it behind his saddle, shaking her head sadly as she handled the belongings of her child with gentle touch. Tears were running down her cheeks, but her usually ready words seemed dead upon her tongue.

From the direction of the barn a little commotion moved forward among the horsemen, like a wave before a breeze. Banjo Gibson appeared on his horse as the last thong was tied about Nola’s bundle, his hat tilted more than its custom to spare the sore place over his eye.

The cowboys looked at his gaudy trappings with curious eyes. Chadron gave him a short word of greeting, and bent to kiss his wife good-bye.

“I’m with you in this here thing, Saul,” said 192 Banjo; “I’ll ride to hell’s back door to help you find that little girl!”

Chadron slewed in his saddle with an ugly scowl.

“We don’t want any banjo-pickers on this job, it’s men’s work!” he said.

Banjo seemed to droop with humiliation. Chuckles and derisive words were heard among Chadron’s train. The little musician hung his bandaged head.

“Oh, you ortn’t be hard on Banjo, he means well,” Mrs. Chadron pleaded.

“He can stay here and scratch the pigs,” Chadron returned, in his brutal way. “We’ve got to go now, old lady, but we’ll be back before morning, and we’ll bring Nola. Don’t you worry any more; she’ll be all right—they wouldn’t dare to harm a hair of her head.”

Mrs. Chadron looked at him with large hope and larger trust in her yearning face, and Banjo slewed his horse directly across the gate.

“Before you leave, Saul, I want to tell you this,” he said. “You’ve hurt me, and you’ve hurt me deep! I’ll leave here before another hour passes by, and I’ll never set a boot-heel inside of your door ag’in as long as you live!”

“Oh hell!” said Chadron, spurring forward into the road.

Chadron’s men rode away after him, except five whom he detailed to stay behind and guard the ranch. These turned their horses into the corral, made their little fire of twigs and gleaned brush 193 in their manner of wood-scant frugality, and over it cooked their simple dinner, each man after his own way.

Banjo led his horse to the gate in front of the house and left it standing there while he went in to get his instruments. Mrs. Chadron was moved to a fresh outburst of weeping by his preparations for departure, and the sad, hurt look in his simple face.

“You stay here, Banjo; don’t you go!” she begged. “Saul he didn’t mean any harm by what he said—he won’t remember nothing about it when he comes back.”

“I’ll remember it,” Banjo told her, shaking his head in unbending determination, “and I couldn’t be easy here like I was in the past. If I was to try to swaller a bite of Saul Chadron’s grub after this it’d stick in my throat and choke me. No, I’m a-goin’, mom, but I’m carryin’ away kind thoughts of you in my breast, never to be forgot.”

Banjo hitched the shoulder strap of the instrument from which he took his name with a jerking of the shoulder, and settled it in place; he took up his fiddle box and hooked it under his arm, and offered Mrs. Chadron his hand. She was crying, her face in her apron, and did not see. Frances took the extended hand and clasped it warmly, for the little musician and his homely small sentiments had found a place in her heart.

“You shouldn’t leave until your head gets better,” 194 she said; “you’re hardly able to take another long ride after being in the saddle all night, hurt like you are.”

Banjo looked at her with pain reflected in his shallow eyes.

“The hurt that gives me my misery is where it can’t be seen,” he said.

“Where are you goin’, Banjo, with the country riled up this way, and you li’ble to be shot down any place by them rustlers?” Mrs. Chadron asked, looking at him appealingly, her apron ready to stem her gushing tears.

“I’ll go over to the mission and stay with Mother Mathews till I’m healed up. I’ll be welcome in that house; I’d be welcome there if I was blind, and had m’ back broke and couldn’t touch a string.”

“Yes, you would, Banjo,” Mrs. Chadron nodded.

“She’s married to a Injun, but she’s as white as a angel’s robe.”

“She’s a good soul, Banjo, as good as ever lived.”

Frances took advantage of Banjo’s trip to the reservation to send a note to her father apprising him of the tragedy at the ranch. Banjo buttoned it inside his coat, mounted his horse, and rode away.

Mrs. Chadron watched him out of sight with lamentations.

“I wish he’d ’a’ stayed—it ’d ’a’ been all right with Saul; Saul didn’t mean any harm by what he said. He’s the tender-heartedest man you ever saw, he wouldn’t hurt a body’s feelin’s for a farm.”

“I don’t believe Banjo is a man to hold a grudge very long,” Frances told her, looking after the retreating musician, her thoughts on him but hazily, but rather on a little highland bonnet with a bullet hole in its crown.

“No, he ain’t,” Mrs. Chadron agreed, plucking up a little brightness. “But it’s a bad sign, a mighty bad sign, when a friend parts from you with a hurt in his heart that way, and leaves your house in a huff and feels put out like Banjo does.”

“Yes,” said Frances, “we let them go away from us too often that way, with sore hearts that even a little word might ease.”

She spoke with such wistful regret that the older woman felt its note through her own deep gloom. She groped out, tears blinding her, until her hand found her young friend’s, and then she clasped it, and stood holding it, no words between them.