Twenty-four hours after Banjo’s departure a messenger arrived at the ranchhouse. It was one of the cowboys attached to the ranch, and he came with his right arm in a sling. He was worn, and beaten out by long hours in the saddle and the pain of his wound.
He said they had news of Nola, and that Chadron sent word that she would be home before another night passed. This intelligence sent Mrs. Chadron off to bedroom and kitchen to make preparations for her reception and restoration.
As she left the room Frances turned to the messenger, who stood swinging his big hat awkwardly by the brim. She untied the sling that held his wounded arm and made him sit by the table while she examined his injury, concerning which Mrs. Chadron, in her excitement, had not even inquired.
The shot had gone through the forearm, grazing the bone. When Frances, with the aid of Maggie, the Mexican woman with tender eyes, had cleansed and bound up the wound, she turned to him with a decisive air of demand.
“Now, tell me the truth,” she said.
He was a bashful man, with a long, sheepish nose
“That’s what the boss told me to say,” he demurred.
“I know he did; but what’s happening?”
“Well, we ain’t heard hide nor hair of her”—he looked round cautiously, lest Mrs. Chadron surprise him in the truth—“and them rustlers they’re clean gone and took everything but their houses and fences along—beds and teams and stock, and everything.”
“Gone!” she repeated, staring at him blankly; “where have they gone?”
“Macdonald’s doin’ it; that man’s got brainds,” the cowboy yielded, with what he knew to be unlawful admiration of the enemy’s parts. “He’s herdin’ ’em back in the hills where they’ve built a regular fort, they say. Some of us fellers caught up to a few of the stragglers last night, and that’s when I got this arm put on me.”
“Have any of the rustlers been killed?”
“No,” he admitted, disgustedly, “they ain’t! We’ve burnt all the shacks we come to, and cut their fences, but they all got slick and clean away, down to the littlest kid. But the boss’s after ’em,” he added, with brisk hopefulness, “and you’ll have better news by mornin’.”
Chadron himself was the next rider to arrive at that anxious house, and he came as the messenger of disaster. He arrived between midnight and morning, his horse spur-gashed, driven to the limit, himself
Mrs. Chadron was asleep when he entered the living-room where Frances was keeping lonely watch before the chimney fire.
“What’s happened?” she asked, hastening to meet him.
Chadron stood there gray and dusty, his big hat down hard on his head, his black eyes shooting inquiry into the shadowed room.
“Where is she?” he whispered.
“Upstairs, asleep—I’ve only just been able to persuade her to lie down and close her eyes.”
“Well, there’s no use to wake her up for bad news.”
“You haven’t found Nola?”
“I know right where she is. I could put my hand on her if I could reach her.”
“Then why—?”
“Hell!” said Chadron, bursting into a fire of passion, “why can’t I fly like an eagle? Young woman, I’ve got to tell you I’ve been beat and tricked for the first time in my life! They’ve got my men hemmed in, I tell you—they’ve got ’em shut up in a caÑon as tight as if they was nailed in their coffins!”
If Chadron had been clearer of sight and mind in that moment of his towering anger, he would have seen her cheeks flush at his words, and her nostrils dilate and her breath come faster. But he was blind;
“That damned Macdonald done it, led ’em into it like they was blind! He’s a wolf, and he’s got the tricks of a wolf, he skulked ahead of ’em with a little pack of his rustlers and led ’em into his trap, then the men he had hid there and ready they popped up as thick as grass. They’ve got fifty of my men shut up there where they can’t git to water, and where they can’t fight back. Now, what do you think of that?”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” she said, throwing up her head, her eyes as quick and bright as water in the sun, “I think it’s the judgment of God! I glory in the trick Alan Macdonald played you, and I pray God he can shut your hired murderers there till the last red-handed devil dies of thirst!”
Chadron fell back from her a step, his eyes staring, his mouth open, his hand lifted as if to silence her. He stood so a moment, casting his wild look around, fearful that somebody else had heard her passionate denunciation.
“What in the hell do you mean?” he asked, crouching as he spoke, his teeth clenched, his voice smothered in his throat.
“I mean that I know you’re a murderer—and worse! You hired those men, like you hired Mark Thorn, to come here and murder those innocent men and their families!”
“Well, what if I did?” he said, standing straight again, his composure returning. “They’re thieves; they’ve been livin’ off of my cattle for years. Anybody’s got a right to kill a rustler—that’s the only cure. Well, they’ll not pen them men of mine up there till they crack for water, I’ll bet you a purty on that! I’m goin’ after soldiers, and this time I’ll git ’em, too.”
“Soldiers!” said she, in amazement. “Will you ask the United States government to march troops here to save your hired assassins? Well, you’ll not get troops—if there’s anything that I can say against you to keep you from it!”
“You keep out of it, my little lady; you ain’t got no call to mix up with a bunch of brand-burnin’ thieves!”
“They’re not thieves, and you know it! Macdonald never stole an animal from you or anybody else; none of the others ever did.”
“What do you know about it?” sharply.
“I know it, as well as I know what’s in your mind about the troops. You’ll go over father’s head to get them. Well, by the time he wires to the department the facts I’m going to lay before him, I’d like to see the color of the trooper you’ll get!”
“You’ll keep your mouth shut, and hold your finger out of this pie before you git it burnt!”
“I’ll not keep my mouth shut!” She began moving about the room, picking up her belongings. “I’m going to saddle my horse and go to the post right
“You’re not goin’—to the—post!” Chadron’s words were slow and hard. He stood with his back to the door. “This house was opened to you as a friend, not as a traitor and a spy. You’re not goin’ to put your foot outside of it into any business of mine, no matter which way you lean.”
All day she had been dressed ready to mount and ride in any emergency, her hat, gloves and quirt on the table before the fireplace. In that sober habit she appeared smaller and less stately, and Saul Chadron, with his heavy shoulders against the closed door, towered above her, dark and angrily determined.
“I’m going to get my horse,” said she, standing before him, waiting for him to quit the door.
“You’re goin’ to stay right in this house, there’s where you’re goin’ to stay; and you’ll stay till I’ve cleaned out Macdonald and his gang, down to the last muddy-bellied wolf!”
“You’ll answer for detaining me here, sir!”
“There ain’t no man in this country that I answer to!” returned Chadron, not without dignity, for power undisputed for so long, and in such large affairs, had given him a certain manner of imperialism.
“You’ll find out where your mistake is, to your bitter cost, before many days have gone over your head. Your master is on the way; you’ll meet him yet.”
“You might as well ca’m down, and take that hat off and make yourself easy, Miss Frances; you ain’t goin’ to the post tonight.”
“Open that door, Mr. Chadron! For the memory of your daughter, be a man!”
“I’m actin’ for the best, Miss Frances.” Chadron softened in speech, but unbent in will. “You must stay here till we settle them fellers. I ain’t got time to bring any more men up from Cheyenne—I’ve got to have help within the next twenty-four hours. You can see how your misplaced feelin’s might muddle and delay me, and hold off the troopers till they’ve killed off all of my men in that caÑon back yonder in the hills. It’s for the best, I tell you; you’ll see it that way before daylight.”
“It’s a pity about your gallant cutthroats! It’s time the rest of this country knew something about the methods of you cattlemen up here, and the way you harass and hound and murder honest men that are trying to make homes!”
“Oh, Miss Frances! ca’m down, ca’m down!” coaxed Chadron, spreading his hands in conciliatory gesture, as if to smooth her troubled spirits, and calm her down by stroking her, like a cat.
“Now you want to call out the army to rescue that pack of villains, you want to enlist the government to help you murder more children! Well, I’m a daughter of the army; I’m not going to stand around and see you pull it down to any such business as yours!”
“You’d better make up your mind to take it easy, now, Miss Frances. Put down your hat and things, now, and run along off to bed like a good little girl.”
She turned from him with a disdainful toss of the head, and walked across to the window where Mrs. Chadron’s great chair stood beside her table.
“Do you want it known that I was forced to leave your house by the window?” she asked, her hand on the sash.
“It won’t do you any good if you do,” Chadron growled, turning and throwing the door open with gruff decision. He stood a moment glowering at her, his shoulders thrust into the room. “You can’t leave here till I’m ready for you to go—I’m goin’ to put my men on the watch for you. If you try it afoot they’ll fetch you back, and if you git stubborn and try to ride off from ’em, they’ll shoot your horse. You take my word that I mean it, and set down and be good.”
He closed the door. She heard his heavy tread, careless, it seemed, whether he broke the troubled sleep of his wife, pass out by way of the kitchen. She returned to the fire, surging with the outrage of it, and sat down to consider the situation.
There was no doubt that Chadron meant what he had said. This was only a mild proceeding to suppress evidence compared to his usual methods, as witnessed by the importation of Mark Thorn, and now his wholesale attempt with this army of hired gunslingers. But above the anger and indignation there
She had told Chadron that his master was on the way, and she had seen him swell with the cloud of anger that shrouded his black heart. And she knew that he feared that swift-footed man Macdonald, who had outgeneraled him and crippled him before he had struck a blow. Well, let him have his brutal way until morning; then she would prevail on Mrs. Chadron to rescind his order and let her go home.
There being nothing more to be hoped or dreaded in the way of news that night, Frances suppressed her wrath and went upstairs and to bed. But not to sleep; only to lie there with her hot cheeks burning like fever, her hot heart triumphing in the complete confidence and justification of Macdonald that Chadron’s desperate act had established. She glowed with inner warmth as she told herself that there would be no more doubting, no more swaying before the wind of her inclination. Her heart had read him truly that night in the garden close.
She heard Chadron ride away as she watched there for the dawn, and saw the cowboy guard that he had established rouse themselves while the east was only palely light and kindle their little fires. Soon the scent of their coffee and bacon came through her open window. Then she rose and dressed herself in her saddle garb again, and went tiptoeing past Mrs. Chadron’s door.
Since going to bed Mrs. Chadron bad not stirred. She seemed to have plunged over the precipice of sleep and to be lying stunned at the bottom. Frances felt that there was no necessity for waking her out of that much-needed repose, for the plan that she had formulated within the past few minutes did not include an appeal for Mrs. Chadron’s assistance in it.
Experience told her that Mrs. Chadron would accept unquestioningly the arrangements and orders of her husband, in whom her faith was boundless and her confidence without bottom. She would advance a hundred tearful pleas to take the edge off Frances’ indignant anger, and weep and implore, but ten to one remain as steadfast as a ledge in her fealty to Saul. So Frances was preparing to proceed without her help or hindrance.
She went softly into the room where she had faced Chadron a few hours before, and crossed to the fireplace, where the last coals of the fire that had kept her company were red among the ashes. It was dark yet, only a little grayness, like murky water, showing under the rim of the east, but she knew where the antlers hung above the mantel, with the rifle in its case, and the two revolvers which Alvino had brought to his mistress from the wounded foreman in the bunkhouse.
But the antlers were empty. She felt them over with contracting heart, then struck a match to make sure. The guns were gone. Saul Chadron had removed
She lit a lamp and began a search of the lower part of the house for arms. There was not a single piece left in any of the places where they commonly were a familiar sight. Even the shotgun was gone from over the kitchen door. She returned to the sitting-room and laid some sticks on the coals, and sat leaning toward the blaze in that sense of comradeship that is as old between man and fire as the servitude of that captive element.
Her elbows were on her knees, and her gloved hands were clasped, and the merry little fire laughed up into her fixed and thoughtful eyes.
Fire has but one mood, no matter what it cheers or destroys. It always laughs. There is no melancholy note in it, no drab, dull color of death such as the flood comes tainted with. Even while it eats away our homes and possessions, it has a certain comfort in its touch and glow if we stand far enough away.
Dawn broadened; the watery light came in like cold. Frances got up, shivering a little at the unfriendly look of the morning. She thought she heard a cautious foot stealing away from the window, and turned from it with contemptuous recollection of Chadron’s threat to set spies over her.
Frances left the house with no caution to conceal her movements, and went to the barn. Alvino was hobbling about among the horses with his lantern.
She was determined to ride boldly out of the gate and away, hardly convinced that even those seasoned ruffians would take a chance of hitting her by firing at her horse. None of the imported shooters was in sight as she mounted before the barn door, but two of them lounged casually at the gate as she approached.
“Where was you aimin’ to go so early?” asked one of them, laying hand on her bridle.
“I’m the daughter of Colonel Landcraft, commanding officer at Fort Shakie, and I’m going home,” she answered, as placidly and good-humoredly as if it might be his regular business to inquire.
“I’m sorry to have to edge in on your plans, sissy,” the fellow returned, familiarly, “but nobody goes away from this ranch for some little time to come. That’s the boss’s orders. Don’t you know them rustlers is shootin’ up the country ever’ which way all around here? Shucks! It ain’t safe for no lady to go skylarkin’ around in.”
“They wouldn’t hurt me—they know there’s a regiment of cavalry at the post standing up for me.”
“I don’t reckon them rustlers cares much more about them troopers than we do, sis.”
“Will you please open the gate?”
“I hate to refuse a lady, but I dasn’t do it.” He shook his head in exaggerated gravity, and his companion covered a sputtering laugh with his hand.
Frances felt her resolution to keep her temper dissolving. She shifted her quirt as the quick desire to strike him down and ride over his ugly grinning face flashed through her. But the wooden stock was light under the braided leather; she knew that she could not have knocked a grunt out of the tough rascal who barred her way with his insolent leer in his mean squint eyes. He was a man who had nothing to lose, therefore nothing to fear.
“If it’s dangerous for me to go alone, get your horse and come with me. I’ll see that you get more out of it than you make working for Chadron.”
The fellow squinted up at her with eyes half-shut, in an expression of cunning.
“Now you trot along back and behave you’self, before I have to take you down and spank you,” he said.
The other three men of the ranch guard came waddling up in that slouching gait of saddle-men, cigarettes dangling from their lips. Frances saw that she would not be allowed to pass that way. But they were all at that spot; none of them could be watching the back gate. She wheeled her long-legged cavalry horse to make a dash for it, and came face to face with Mrs. Chadron, who was hurrying from the house with excited gesticulations, pointing up the road.
“Somebody’s comin’, it looks like one of the boys, I saw him from the upstairs winder!” she announced, “Where was you goin’, honey?”
“I was starting home, Mrs. Chadron, but these men—”
“There he comes!” cried Mrs. Chadron, hastening to the gate.
A horseman had come around the last brush-screened turn of the road, and was drawing near. Frances felt her heart leap like a hare, and a delicious feeling of triumph mingle with the great pride that swept through her in a warm flood. Tears were in her eyes, half-blinding her; a sob of gladness rose in her breast and burst forth a little happy cry.
For that was Alan Macdonald coming forward on his weary horse, bearing something in his arms wrapped in a blanket, out of which a shower of long hair fell in bright cascade over his arm.
Mrs. Chadron pressed her lips tight. Neither cry nor groan came out of them as she stood steadying herself by a straining grip on the gate, watching Macdonald’s approach. None of them knew whether the burden that he bore was living or dead; none of them in the group at the gate but Frances knew the rider’s face.
One of the cowboys opened the gate wide, without a word, to let him enter. Mrs. Chadron lifted her arms appealingly, and hurried to his side as he stopped. Stiffly he leaned over, his inert burden held tenderly, and lowered what he bore into Mrs. Chadron’s outstretched arms.
With that change of position there was a sharp movement in the muffling blanket, two arms reached
Alan Macdonald said no word. The light of the sunrise was strong on his face, set in the suffering of great weariness; the stiffness of his long and burdened ride was in his limbs. He turned his dusty horse, with its head low-drooping, and rode out the way that he had come. No hand was lifted to stop him, no voice raised in either benediction or curse.
Mrs. Chadron was soothing her daughter, who was incoherent in the joy of her delivery, holding her clasped in her arms. Beyond that bright head there was no world for that mother then; save for the words which she crooned in the child’s ears there was no message in her soul.
Frances felt tears streaking her face in hot rivulets as she sat in her saddle, struck inactive by the great admiration, the boundless pride, that this unselfish deed woke in her. She never had, in her life of joyousness, experienced such a high sense of human admiration before.
The cowboy who had opened the gate still held it so, the spell of Macdonald’s dramatic arrival still over him. With his comrades he stood speechless, gazing after the departing horseman.
Frances touched her horse lightly and rode after him. Mother and daughter were so estranged from all the world in that happy moment of reunion that
Macdonald raised his drooping head with quick start as she came dashing to his side. She was weeping, and she put out her hand with a motion of entreaty, her voice thick with sobs.
“I wronged you and slandered you,” she said, in bitter confession, “and I let you go when I should have spoken! I’m not worthy to ride along this road with you, Alan Macdonald, but I need your protection, I need your help. Will you let me go?”
He checked his horse and looked across at her, a tender softening coming into his tired face.
“Why, God bless you! there’s only one road in the world for you and me,” said he. His hand met hers where it fluttered like a dove between them; his slow, translating smile woke in his eyes and spread like a sunbeam over his stern lips.
Behind them Mrs. Chadron was calling. Frances turned and waved her hand.
“Come back, Frances, come back here!” Mrs. Chadron’s words came distinctly to them, for they were not more than a hundred yards from the gate, and there was a note of eagerness in them, almost a command. Both of them turned.
There was a commotion among the men at the gate, a hurrying and loud words. Nola was beckoning to Frances to return; now she called her name, with fearful entreaty.
“That’s Chance Dalton with his arm in a sling,” said Macdonald, looking at her curiously. “What’s up?”
“Chadron has made them all believe that you stole Nola for the sole purpose of making a pretended rescue to win sympathy for your cause,” she said. “Even Nola will believe it—maybe they’ve told her. Chadron has offered a reward of fifty dollars—a bonus, he called it, so maybe there is more—to the man that kills you! Come on—quick! I’ll tell you as we go.”
Macdonald’s horse was refreshed in some measure by the diminishing of its burden, but the best that it could do was a tired, hard-jogging gallop. In a little while they rounded the screen of brush which hid them from the ranchhouse and from those who Frances knew would be their pursuers in a moment. Quickly she told him of her reason for wanting to go to the post, and Chadron’s reason for desiring to hold her at the ranch.
Macdonald looked at her with new life in his weary eyes.
“We’ll win now; you were the one recruit I lacked,” he said.
“But they’ll kill you—Mrs. Chadron can’t hold them back—she doesn’t want to hold them back—for she’s full of Chadron’s lies about you. Your horse is worn out—you can’t outrun them.”
“How many are there besides the five I saw?”
“Only Dalton, and he’s supposed to be crippled.”
“Oh, well,” he said, easily, as if only five whole men and a cripple didn’t amount to so much, taken all in the day’s work.
“Your men up there need your leadership and advice. Take my horse and go; he can outrun them.”
He looked at her admiringly, but with a little reproving shake of the head.
“There’s neither mercy nor manhood in any man that rides in Saul Chadron’s pay,” he told her. “They’d overtake you on this old plug before you’d gone a mile. The one condition on which I part company with you is that you ride ahead, this instant, and that you put your horse through for all that’s in him.”
“And leave you to fight six of them!”
“Staying here would only put you in unnecessary danger. I ask you to go, and go at once.”
“I’ll not go!” She said it finally and emphatically.
Macdonald checked his horse; she held back her animal to the slow pace of his. Now he offered his hand, as in farewell.
“You can assure them at the post that we’ll not fire on the soldiers—they can come in peace. Good-bye.”
“I’m not going!” she persisted.
“They’ll not consider you, Frances—they’ll not hold their fire on your account. You’re a rustler now, you’re one of us.”
“You said—there—was—only—one—road,” she told him, her face turned away.
“It’s that way, then, to the left—up that dry bed of Horsethief CaÑon.” He spoke with a lift of exultation, of pride, and more than pride. “Ride low—they’re coming!”
