The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  “What was that flashed a-past the winder like a streak a minute ago?” Banjo inquired.

  “Flashed by the window?” Nola repeated, puzzled.

  Frances laughed, the two girls stopping in the door, merriment gleaming from their young faces like rays from iridescent gems.

  “Why, that was Nola,” Frances told him, curious to learn what the sentimental eyes of the little musician foretold.

  “I thought it was a star from the sky,” said Banjo, sighing softly, like a falling leaf.

  As they waited at the gate to welcome the guests, who were cantering up with a curtain of dust behind them, they laughed over Banjo’s compliment.

  “I knew there was something behind those eyes,” said Frances.

  “No telling how long he’s been saving it for a chance to work it off on somebody,” Nola said. “He got it out of a book—the Mexicans all have them, full of brindies, what we call toasts, and silly soft compliments like that.”

  “I’ve seen them, little red books that they give for premiums with the Mexican papers down in Texas,” Frances nodded, “but Banjo didn’t get that out of a book—it was spontaneous.”

  “I must write it down, and compare it with the next time he gets it off.”

  “Give him credit for the way he delivered it, no matter where he got it,” Frances laughed. “Many a more sophisticated man than your desert troubadour would have broken his neck over that. He’s in love with you, Nola—didn’t you hear him sigh?”

  “Oh, he has been ever since I was old enough to take notice of it,” returned Nola, lightly.

  “Oh, my luv’s like a falling star,” paraphrased Frances.

  “Not much!” Nola denied, more than half serious. “Venus is ascendant; you keep your eye on her and see.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER IV

  THE MAN IN THE PLAID

  There was no mistaking the assiduity with which Major King waited upon Nola Chadron that night at the ball, any more than there was a chance for doubt of that lively little lady’s identity. He sought her at the first, and hung by her side through many dances, and promenaded her in the garden walks where Japanese lanterns glimmered dimly in the soft September night, with all the close attention of a farrier cooling a valuable horse.

  Perhaps it was punishment—or meant to be—for the insubordination of Frances Landcraft in speaking to the outlawed Alan Macdonald on last beef day. If so, it was systematically and faithfully administered.

  Nola was dressed like a cowgirl. Not that there were any cowgirls in that part of the country, or anywhere else, who dressed that way, except at the Pioneer Week celebration at Cheyenne, and in the romantic dramas of the West. But she was so attired, perhaps for the advantage the short skirt gave her handsome ankles—and something in silk stockings which approached them in tapering grace.

  She was improving her hour, whether out of exuberant mischief or in deadly earnest the ladies from the post were puzzled to understand, and if headway toward the already pledged heart of Major King was any indication of it, her star was indeed ascendant.

  Frances Landcraft appeared at the ball as an Arabian lady, meaning in her own interpretation of the masking to stand as a representation of the “Thou,” who is endearingly and importantly capitalized in the verses of the ancient singer made famous by Irish-English Fitzgerald. Her disguise was sufficient, only that her hair was so richly assertive. There was not any like it in the cattle country; very little like it anywhere. It was a telltale, precious possession, and Major King never could have made good a plea of hidden identity against it in this world.

  Frances had consolation enough for his alienation and absence from her side if numbers could compensate for the withdrawal of the fealty of one. She distributed her favors with such judicial fairness that the tongue of gossip could not find a breach. At least until the tall Scotsman appeared, with his defiant red hair and a feather in his bonnet, his plaid fastened across his shoulder with a golden clasp.

  Nobody knew when he arrived, or whence. He spoke to none as he walked in grave stateliness among the merry groups, acknowledging bold challenges and gay banterings only with a bow. The ladies from the post had their guesses as to who he might be, and laid cunning little traps to provoke him into betrayal through his voice. As cunningly he evaded

  them, with unsmiling courtesy, his steady gray eyes only seeming to laugh at them behind his green mask.

  Frances had finished a dance with a Robin Hood—the slender one in billiard-cloth green—there being no fewer than four of them, variously rounded, diversely clad, when the Scot approached her where she stood with her gallant near the musicians’ brake of palms.

  A flask of wine, a book of verse—and Thou

  Beside me singing in the wilderness—

  said the tall Highlandman, bending over her shoulder, his words low in her ear. “Only I could be happy without the wine,” he added, as she faced him in quick surprise.

  “Your penetration deserves a reward—you are the first to guess it,” said she.

  “Three dances, no less,” said he, like a usurer demanding his toll.

  He offered his arm, and straightway bore her off from the astonished Robin Hood, who stood staring after them, believing, perhaps, that he was the victim of some prearranged plan.

  The spirit of his free ancestors seemed to be in the lithe, tall Highlander’s feet. There was no dancer equal to him in that room. A thistle on the wind was not lighter, nor a wheeling swallow more graceful in its flight.

  Many others stopped their dancing to watch that pair; whisperings ran round like electrical conjectures. Nola steered Major King near the whirling couple, and even tried to maneuver a collision, which failed.

  “Who is that dancing with Frances Landcraft?” she breathed in the major’s ear.

  “I didn’t know it was Miss Landcraft,” he replied, although he knew it very well, and resolved to find out who the Scotsman was, speedily and completely.

  “My enchanted hour will soon pass,” said the Scot, when that dance was done, “and I have been looking the world over for you.”

  “Dancing all the way?” she asked him lightly.

  “Far from it,” he answered, his voice still muffled and low.

  They were standing withdrawn a little from the press in the room after their second dance, when Major King came by. The major was a cavalier in drooping hat, with white satin cape, and sword by his side, and well enough known to all his friends in spite of the little spat of mustache and beard. As the major passed he jostled the Scot with his shoulder with a rudeness openly intentional.

  The major turned, and spoke an apology. Frances felt the Highlander’s muscles swell suddenly where her hand lay on his arm, but whatever had sprung into his mind he repressed, and acknowledged the major’s apology with a lofty nod.

  The music for another dance was beginning, and couples were whirling out upon the floor.

  “I don’t care to dance again just now, delightfully as you carry a clumsy one like me through—”

  “A self-disparagement, even, can’t stand unchallenged,” he interrupted.

  “Mr. Macdonald,” she whispered, “your wig is awry.”

  They were near the door opening to the illumined garden, with its late roses, now at their best, and hydrangea clumps plumed in foggy bloom. They stepped out of the swirl of the dance like particles thrown from a wheel, not missed that moment even by those interested in keeping them in sight.

  “You knew me!” said he, triumphantly glad, as they entered the garden’s comparative gloom.

  “At the first word,” said she.

  “I came here in the hope that you would know me, and you alone—I came with my heart full of that hope, and you knew me at the first word!”

  There was not so much marvel as satisfaction, even pride for her penetration, in it.

  “Somebody else may have recognized you, too—that man who brushed against you—”

  “He’s one of your officers.
”

  “I know—Major King. Do you know him?”

  “No, and he doesn’t know me. He can have no interest in me at all.”

  “Very well; set your beautiful red wig straight and then tell me why you wanted to come here among your enemies. It seems to me a hardy challenge, a most unnecessary risk.”

  “No risk is unnecessary that brings me to you,” he said, his voice trembling in earnestness. “I dared to come because I hoped to meet you on equal ground.”

  “You’re a bold man—in more ways than one.” She shook her head as in rebuke of his temerity.

  “But you don’t believe I’m a thief,” said he, conclusively.

  “No; I have made public denial of it.” She laughed lightly, but a little nervously, an uneasiness over her that she could not define.

  “An angel has risen to plead for Alan Macdonald, then!”

  “Why should you need anybody to plead for you if there’s no truth in their charges? What is a man like you doing in this wild place, wasting his life in a land where he isn’t wanted?”

  They had turned into a path that branched beyond the lanterns. The white gravel from the river bars with which it was paved glimmered among the shadowy shrubs. Macdonald unclasped his plaid from his shoulders and transferred it to hers. She drew it round her, wrapping her arms in it like a squaw, for the wind was coming chill from the mountains now.

  “It is soon said,” he answered, quite willingly. “I am not hiding under any other man’s name—the one they call me by here is my own. I was a ‘son of a family,’ as they say in Mexico, and looked for distinction, if not glory, in the diplomatic service. Four years I grubbed, an under secretary in the legation at Mexico City, then served three more as consul at Valparaiso. An engineer who helped put the railroad through this country told me about it down there when the rust of my inactive life was beginning to canker my body and brain. I threw up my chance for diplomatic distinction and came off up here looking for life and adventure, and maybe a copper mine. I didn’t find the mine, but I’ve had some fun with the other two. Sometimes I’d like to lose the adventure part of it now—it gets tiresome to be hunted, after a while.”

  “What else?” she asked, after a little, seeing that he walked slowly, his head up, his eyes far away on the purple distances of the night, as if he read a dream.

  “I settled in this valley quite innocently, as others have done, before and after me, not knowing conditions. You’ve heard it said that I’m a rustler—”

  “King of the rustlers,” she corrected.

  “Yes, even that. But I am not a rustler. Everybody up here is a rustler, Miss Landcraft, who doesn’t belong to, or work for, the Drovers’ Association. They can’t oust us by merely charging us with homesteading government land, for that hasn’t been made a statutory crime yet. They have to make some sort of a charge against us to give the color of justification to the crimes they practice on us, and rustler is the worst one in the cattlemen’s dictionary. It stands ahead of murder and arson in this country. I’m not saying there are no rustlers around the edges of these big ranches, for there are some. But if there are any among the settlers up our way we don’t know it—and I think we’d pretty soon find out.”

  They turned and walked back toward the house.

  “I don’t see why you should trouble about it; this plainly isn’t your place,” she said.

  “First, I refused to be driven out by Chadron and the rest because the thing got on my mettle. I knew that I was right, and that they were simply stealing the public domain. Then, as I hung on, it became apparent that there was a man’s work cut out for somebody up here. I’ve taken the ready-made job.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “There’s a monstrous injustice being practiced, systematically and cruelly, against thousands of homeless people who come to this country in innocent hope every year. They come here believing it’s the great big open-handed West they’ve heard so much about, carrying everything with them that they own. They cut the strings that hold them to the things they know when they face this way, and when they try to settle on the land that is their inheritance, this copper-bottomed combination of stockmen drives them out. If they don’t go, they shoot them. You’ve heard of it.”

  “Not just that way,” said she, thoughtfully.

  “No, they never shoot anybody but a rustler, the way the world hears of it,” said he, in resentment. “But they’ll hear another story on the outside one of these days. I’m in this fight up to the eyes to break the back of this infernal combination that’s choking this state to death. It’s the first time in my life that I ever laid my hand to anything for anybody but myself, and I’m going to see it through to daylight.”

  “But there must be millions behind the cattlemen, Mr. Macdonald.”

  “There are. It seems just about hopeless that a handful of ragged homesteaders ever can make a stand against them. But they’re usurping the public domain, and they’ll overreach themselves one of these days. Chadron has title to this homestead, but that’s every inch of land that he’s got a legal right over. In spite of that, he lays the claim of ownership to the land fifteen miles north of here, where I’ve nested. He’s been telling me for more than two years that I must clear out.”

  “You could give it up, and go back to your work among men, where it would count,” she said.

  “There are things here that count. I couldn’t put a state on the map—an industrial and progressive one, I mean—back home in Washington, or sitting with my feet on the desk in some sleepy consulate. And I’m going to put this state on the map where it belongs. That’s the job that’s cut out for me here, Miss Landcraft.”

  He said it without boast, but with such a stubborn note of determination that she felt something lift within her, raising her to the plane of his aspirations. She knew that Alan Macdonald was right about it, although the thing that he would do was still dim in her perception.

  “Even then, I don’t see what a ranch away off up here from anywhere ever will be worth to you, especially when the post is abandoned. You know the department is going to give it up?”

  “And then you—” he began in consternation, checking himself to add, slowly, “no, I didn’t know that.”

  “Perhaps in a year.”

  “It can’t make much difference in the value of land up this valley, though,” he mused. “When the railroad comes on through—and that will be as soon as we break the strangle hold of Chadron and men like him—this country will develop overnight. There’s petroleum under the land up where I am, lying shallow, too. That will be worth something then.”

  The music of an old-style dance was being played. Now the piping cowboy voice of some range cavalier rose, calling the figures. The two in the garden path turned with one accord and faced away from the bright windows again.

  “They’ll be unmasking at midnight?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t go in again, then. The hour of my enchantment is nearly at its end.”

  “You shouldn’t have come,” she chided, yet not in severity, rather in subdued admiration for his reckless bravery. “Suppose they—”

  “Mac! O Mac!” called a cautious, low voice from a hydrangea bush close at hand.

  “Who’s there?” demanded Macdonald, springing forward.

  “They’re onto you, Mac,” answered the voice from the shrub, “they’re goin’ to do you hurt. They’re lookin’ for you now!”

  There was a little rustling in the leaves as the unseen friend moved away. The voice was the voice of Banjo Gibson, but not even the shadow of the messenger had been seen.

  “You should have gone before—hurry!” she whispered in alarm.

  “Never mind. It was a risk, and I took it, and I’d take it again tomorrow. It gave me these minutes with you, it was worth—”

  “You must go! Where’s your horse?”

  “Down by the river in the willows. I can get to him, all right.”


  “They may come any minute, they—”

  “No, they’re dancing yet. I expected they’d find me out; they know me too well. I’ll get a start of them, before they even know I’m gone.”

  “They may be waiting farther on—why don’t you go—go! There—listen!

  “They’re saddling,” he whispered, as low sounds of haste came from the barnyard corral.

  “Go—quick!” she urged, flinging his plaid across his arm.

  “I’m going—in one moment more. Miss Landcraft, I’ll ride away from you tonight perhaps never to see you again, and if I speak impetuously before I leave you, forgive me before you hear the words—they’ll not hurt you—I don’t believe they’ll shame you.”

  “Don’t say anything more, Mr. Macdonald—even this delay may cost your life!”

  “They’ll kill me if they can; they’ve tried it more than once. I never know when I ride away whether I’ll ever return. It isn’t a new experience, just a little graver than usual—only that. I came here tonight because I—I came to—in the hope—” he stammered, putting out his hands as if supplicating her to understand, his plaid falling to the ground.

  “Go!” she whispered, her hand on his arm in appeal, standing near him, dangerously near.

  “I’ve got a right to love you—I’ve got a right!” he said, the torrent of his passion leaping all curbing obstacles of delicacy, confusion, fear. He flung the words from him in wild vehemence, as if they eased a pang.

  “No—no, you have no right! you—”

  “I’ll leave you in a minute, Frances, without the expectation of ever seeing you again—only with the hope. It’s mine to love you, mine to have you if I come through this night. If you’re pledged to another man it can’t be because you love him, and I’ll tear the right away from him—if I come through this night!”