Maggie and Alvino had the ranch to themselves when the military party from the upper valley arrived, Mrs. Chadron and Nola having driven to Meander that morning. It had been their intention to return that evening, Maggie said. Mrs. Chadron had gone after chili peppers, and other things, but principally chili peppers. There was not one left in the house, and the mistress could not live without them, any more than fire could burn without wood.

Dusk had settled when they reached the ranch, and night thickened fast. The lieutenant dropped two men at the corral gate—her guard, Frances understood—and went back to his task of watching for armed men upon the highroads.

Under the direction of Frances, Maggie had placed a cot in Mrs. Chadron’s favored sitting-room with the fireplace. There Macdonald lay in clean sheets, a blaze on the hearth, and Maggie was washing his wound with hot water, groaning in the pity which is the sweetest part of the women of her homely race.

“I think that he will live, miss,” she said hopefully. “See, he has a strong breath on my damp hand—I can feel it like a little wind.”

She spoke in her native tongue, which Frances understood thoroughly from her years in Texas and 269 Arizona posts. Frances shook her head sorrowfully.

“I am afraid his breath will fail soon, Maggie.”

“No, if they live the first hour after being shot, they get well,” Maggie persisted, with apparent sincerity. “Here, put your hand on his heart—do you feel it? What a strong heart he has to live so well! what a strong, strong heart!”

“Yes, a strong, strong heart!” Tears were falling for him now that there was none to see them, scalding their way down her pale cheeks.

“He must have carried something sacred with him to give him such strength, such life.”

“He carried honor,” said Frances, more to herself than to Maggie, doubting that she would understand.

“And love, maybe?” said Maggie, with soft word, soft upward-glancing of her feeling dark eyes.

“Who can tell?” Frances answered, turning her head away.

Maggie drew the sheet over him and stood looking down into his severe white face.

“If he could speak he would ask for his mother, and for water then, and after that the one he loves. That is the way a man’s mind carries those three precious things when death blows its breath in his face.”

“I do not know,” said Frances, slowly.

There was such stress in waiting, such silence in the world, and such emptiness and pain! Reverently as Maggie’s voice was lowered, soft and sympathetic as her word, Frances longed for her to be still, and 270 go and leave her alone with him. She longed to hold the dear spark of his faltering life in her own hands, alone, quite alone; to warm it back to strength in her own lone heart. Surely her name could not be the last in his remembrance, no matter for the disturbing breath of death.

“I will bring you some food,” said Maggie. “To give him life out of your life you must be strong.”

Frances started out of her sleep in the rocking-chair before the fire. She had turned the lamp low, but there was a flare of light on her face. Her faculties were so deeply sunk in that insidious sleep which had crept upon her like a bindweed upon wheat that she struggled to rise from it. She sprang up, her mind groping, remembering that there was something for which she was under heavy responsibility, but unable for a moment to bring it back to its place.

Nola was in the door with a candle, shading the flame from her eyes with her hand. Her hair was about her shoulders, her feet were bare under the hem of her long dressing-robe. She was staring, her lips were open, her breath was quick, as if she had arrived after a run.

“Is he—alive?” she whispered.

“Why should you come to ask? What is his life to you?” asked Frances, sorrowfully bitter.

“Oh, Maggie just woke and came up to tell me, mother doesn’t know—she’s just gone to bed. Isn’t it terrible, Frances!”

Nola spoke distractedly, as if in great agony, or great fear.

“He can’t harm any of you now, you’re safe.” Frances was hard and scornful. She turned from Nola and laid her hand on Macdonald’s brow, drawing her breath with a relieved sigh when she felt the warmth of life still there.

“Oh, Frances, Frances!” Nola moaned, with expression of despair, “isn’t this terrible!”

“If you mean it’s terrible to have him here, I can’t help it. I’m a prisoner, here against my will. I couldn’t leave him out there alone to die.”

Nola lowered her candle and stared at Frances, her eyes big and blank of everything but a wild expression that Frances had read as fear.

“Will he die?” she whispered.

“Yes; you are to have your heartless way at last. He will die, and his blood will be on this house, never to be washed away!”

“Why didn’t you come back when we called you—both of you?” Nola drew near, reaching out an appealing hand. Frances shrank from her, to bend quickly over Macdonald when he groaned and moved his head.

“Put out that light—it’s in his eyes!” she said.

Nola blew out the candle and came glimmering into the room in her soft white gown.

“Don’t blame me, Frances, don’t blame any of us. Mother and I wanted to save you both, we tried to stop the men, and we could have held them back if 272 it hadn’t been for Chance. Chance got three of them to go, the others—”

“They paid for that!” said Frances, a little lift of triumph in her voice.

“Yes, but they—”

“Chance didn’t do it, I tell you! If he says he did it he lies! It was—somebody else.”

“The soldiers?”

“No, not the soldiers.”

“I thought maybe—I saw one of them on guard in front of the house as we came in.”

“He’s guarding me, I’m under arrest, I tell you. The soldiers have nothing to do with him.”

Nola stood looking down at Macdonald, who was deathly white in the weak light of the low, shaded lamp. With a little timid outreaching, a little starting and drawing back, she touched his forehead, where a thick lock of his shaggy hair fell over it, like a sheaf of ripe wheat burst from its band.

“Oh, it breaks my heart to see him dying—it—breaks—my—heart!” she sobbed.

“You struck him! You’re not—you’re not fit to touch him—take your hand away!”

Frances pushed her hand away roughly. Nola drew back, drenched with a sudden torrent of penitential tears.

“I know it, I know it!” she confessed in bitterness, “I knew it when he took me away from those people in the mountains and brought me home. He carried me in his arms when I was tired, and sang to me as 273 we rode along there in the lonesome night! He sang to me, just like I was a little child, so I wouldn’t be afraid—afraid—of him!”

“Oh, and you struck him, you struck him like a dog!”

“I’ve suffered more for that than I hurt him, Frances—it’s been like fire in my heart!”

“I pray to God it will burn up your wicked pride!”

“We believed him, mother and I believed him, in spite of what Chance said. Oh, if you’d only come back then, Frances, this thing wouldn’t have happened!”

“I can’t see what good that would have done,” said Frances, wearily; “there are others who don’t believe him. They’d have got him some time, just like they got him—in a coward’s underhanded way, never giving him a chance for his life.”

“We went to Meander this morning thinking we’d catch father there before he left. We wanted to tell him about Mr. Macdonald, and get him to drop this feud. If we could have seen him I know he’d have done what we asked, for he’s got the noblest heart in the world!”

Whatever Frances felt on the noble nature of Saul Chadron she held unexpressed. She did not feel that it fell to her duty to tell Nola whose hand had struck Macdonald down, although she believed that the cattleman’s daughter deserved whatever pain and humiliation the revelation might bring. For it was 274 as plain as if Nola had confessed it in words that she had much more than a friendly feeling of gratitude for the foeman of her family.

Her heart was as unstable as mercury, it seemed. Frances despised her for her fickleness, scorned her for the mean face of friendship over the treachery of her soul. Not that she regretted Major King. Nola was free to take him and make the most of him. But she was not to come in as a wedge to rive her from this man.

Let her pay her debt of gratitude in something else than love. Living or dead, Alan Macdonald was not for Nola Chadron. Her penance and her tears, her meanings and sobs and her broken heart, even that, if it should come, could not pay for the humiliation and the pain which that house had brought upon him.

“When did it happen?” asked Nola, the gust of her weeping past.

“This morning, early.”

“Who did it—how did it happen? You got away from Chance—you said it wasn’t Chance.”

“We got away from that gang yesterday; this happened this morning, miles from that place.”

“Who was it? Why don’t you tell me, Frances?”

They were standing at Macdonald’s side. A little spurt of flame among the ends of wood in the chimney threw a sudden illumination over them, and played like water over a stone upon Macdonald’s face, then sank again, as if it had been plunged in ashes. Frances remained silent, her vindictiveness, her 275 hardness of heart, against this vacillating girl dying away as the flame had died. It was not her desire to hurt her with that story of treachery and cowardice which must leave its stain upon her name for many a year.

“The name of the man who shot him is a curse and a blight on this land, a mockery of every holy human thought. I’ll not speak it.”

Nola stared at her, horror speaking from her eyes. “He must be a monster!”

“He is the lowest of the accursed—a coward!” Frances said.

Nola shuddered, standing silently by the couch a little while. Then: “But I want to help you, Frances, if you’ll let me.”

“There’s nothing that you can do. I’m waiting for Mrs. Mathews and the doctor from the agency.”

“You can go up and rest until they come, Frances, you look so tired and pale. I’ll watch by him—you can tell me what to do, and I’ll call you when they come.”

“No; I’ll stay until—I’ll stay here.”

“Oh, please go, Frances; you’re nearly dead on your feet.”

“Why do you want me to leave him?” Frances asked, in a flash of jealous suspicion. She turned to Nola, as if to search out her hidden intention.

“You were asleep in your chair when I came in, Frances,” Nola chided her, gently.

Again they stood in silence, looking down upon the 276 wounded man. Frances was resentful of Nola’s interest in him, of her presence in the room. She was on the point of asking her to leave when Nola spoke.

“If he hadn’t been so proud, if he’d only stooped to explain things to us, to talk to us, even, this could have been avoided, Frances.”

“What could he have said?” Frances asked, wondering, indeed, what explanation could have lessened his offense in Saul Chadron’s eyes.

“If I had known him, I would have understood,” Nola replied, vaguely, in soft low voice, as if communing with herself.

“You! Well, perhaps—perhaps even you would have understood.”

“Look—he moved!”

“Sh-h-h! your talking disturbs him, Nola. Go to bed—you can’t help me any here.”

“And leave him all to you!”

The words flashed from Nola, as if they had sprung out of her mouth before her reason had given them permission to depart.

“Of course with me; he’s mine!”

“If he’s going to die, Frances, can’t I share him with you till the end—can’t I have just a little share in the care of him here with you?”

Nola laid her hand on Frances’ arm as she pleaded, turning her white face appealingly in the dim light.

“Don’t talk that way, girl!” said Frances, roughly; “you have no part in him at all—he is nothing to you.”

“He is all to me—everything to me! Oh, Frances! If you knew, if you knew!”

“What? If I knew what?” Frances caught her arm in fierce grip, and shook her savagely.

“Don’t—don’t—hurt me, Frances!” Nola cringed and shrank away, and lifted her arms as if to ward a blow.

“What did you mean by that? Tell me—tell me!”

“Oh, the way it came to me, the way it came to me as he carried me in his arms and sang to me so I wouldn’t be afraid!” moaned Nola, her face hidden in her hands. “I never knew before what it was to care for anybody that way—I never, never knew before!”

“You can’t have this man, nor any share in him, living or dead! I gave up Major King to you; be satisfied.”

“Oh, Major King!”

“Poor shadow that he is in comparison with a man, he’ll have to serve for you. Living or dead, I tell you, this man is mine. Now go!”

Nola was shaking again with sudden gust of weeping. She had sunk to the floor at the head of the couch, a white heap, her bare arms clasping her head.

“It breaks my heart to see him die!” she moaned, rocking herself in her grief like a child.

And child Frances felt her to be in her selfishness, a child never denied, and careless and unfeeling of the rights of others from this long indulgence. She 278 doubted Nola’s sincerity, even in the face of such demonstrative evidence. There was no pity for her, and no softness.

“Get up!” Frances spoke sternly—“and go to your room.”

“He must not be allowed to die—he must be saved!” Nola reached out her hands, standing now on her knees, as if to call back his struggling soul.

“Belated tears will not save him. Get up—it’s time for you to go.”

Nola bent forward suddenly, her hair sweeping the wounded man’s face, her lips near his brow. Frances caught her with a sound in her throat like a growl, and flung her back.

“You’ll not kiss him—you’ll never kiss him!” she said.

Nola sprang up, not crying now, but hot with sudden anger.

“If you were out of the way he’d love me!”

“Love you! you little cat!”

“Yes, he’d love me—I’d take him away from you like I’ve taken other men! He’d love me, I tell you—he’d love me!”

Frances looked at her steadily a moment, contempt in her eloquent face. “If you have no other virtue in you, at least have some respect for the dying,” she said.

“He’s not dying, he’ll not die!” Nola hotly denied. “He’ll live—live to love me!”

“Go! This room—”

“It’s my house; I’ll go and come in it when I please.”

“I’m a prisoner in it, not a guest. I’ll force you out of the room if I must. This disgraceful behavior must end, and end this minute. Are you going?”

“If you were out of the way, he’d love me,” said Nola from the door, spiteful, resentful, speaking slowly, as if pressing each word into Frances’ brain and heart; “if you were out of the way.”