The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  Frances smiled behind her friend’s back. The impatient disregard by civilians of the forms which her father held in such esteem always was a matter of humor to her. She expected now to hear explosions from within her father’s sacred place, and when the sound failed to reach her she concluded that some subordinate hand had opened the door to Chadron’s summons.

  “I’ll hurry”—Nola dashed into her own room, finishing from the door—“I want to catch him before he goes and find out what’s wrong.”

  Frances went below to see about breakfast for her tardy guest, a little fluttering of excitement in her own breast. She wondered what could have brought the cattleman to the post so early—he must have left long before dawn—and in such haste to see her father, all buckled about with his arms. She trusted that it might not be that Alan Macdonald was involved in it, for it was her constant thought to hope well for that bold young man who had heaved the homesteaders’ world to his shoulders and stood straining, untrusted and uncheered, under its weight.

  True, he had not died in defense of her glove, but she had forgiven him in her heart for that. A reasonable man would not have imperiled his life for such a trifle, and a reasonable woman would not have expected it. There was a great deal more sense in Alan Macdonald living for his life’s purpose than in dying for a foolish little glove. So she said.

  The white gossamer fichu about her throat moved as with a breath in the agitation of her bosom as she passed down the stairs; her imperious chin was lowered, and her strong brown eyes were bent like a nun’s before the altar. Worthy or unworthy, her lips moved in a prayer for Alan Macdonald, strong man in his obscure place; worthy or unworthy, she wished him well, and her heart yearned after him with a great tenderness, like a south wind roaming the night in gentle quest.

  Major King, in attendance upon his chief, had opened the door to Saul Chadron at the colonel’s frowning nod. Without waiting for the password into the mysteries of that chamber, Chadron had entered, his heavy quirt in hand, gauntlets to his elbows, dusty boots to his knees. Colonel Landcraft stood at his desk to receive him, his brows bent in a disfavoring frown.

  “I’ve busted in on you, colonel, because my business is business, not a mess of reportin’ and signin’ up on nothing, like your fool army doin’s.” Chadron clamped with clicking spurs across the severe bare floor as he made this announcement, the frown of his displeasure in having been stopped at the door still dark on his face.

  “I’m waiting your pleasure, sir,” Colonel Landcraft returned, stiffly.

  “I want twenty-five troopers and a cannon, and somebody that knows how to use it, and I want ’em right away!”

  Chadron gave the order with a hotness about him, and an impatience not to be denied.

  “Sir!” said Colonel Landcraft, throwing his bony shoulders back, his little blue eyes growing very cold and unfriendly.

  “Them damn rustlers of Macdonald’s are up and standin’ agin us, and I tell you I want troopers, and I want ’em on the spot!”

  Colonel Landcraft swallowed like an eagle gorging a fish. His face grew red, he clamped his jaw, and held his mouth shut. It took him some little time to suppress his flooding emotions, and his voice trembled even when he ventured to trust himself to speak.

  “That’s a matter for your civil authorities, sir; I have nothing to do with it at all.”

  “You ain’t got—nothing—?” Chadron’s amazement seemed to overcome him. He stopped, his eyes big, his mouth open; he turned his head from side to side in dumbfounded way, as if to find another to bear witness to this incredible thing.

  “I tell you they’re threatenin’ my property, and the property of my neighbors!” protested Chadron, stunned, it seemed, that he should have to stop for details and explanations. “We’ve got millions invested—if them fellers gobbles up our land we’re ruined!”

  “Sir, I can sympathize with you in your unfortunate business, but if I had millions of my own at stake under similar conditions I would be powerless to employ, on my own initiative, the forces of the United States army to drive those brigands away.”

  Chadron looked at him hard, his hat on his head, where it had remained all the time, his eyes staring in unspeakable surprise.

  “The hell you would!” said he.

  “You and your neighbors surely can raise enough men to crush the scoundrels, and hang their leader to a limb,” the colonel suggested. “Call out your men, Chadron, and ride against him. I never took you for a man to squeal for help in a little affair like this.”

  “He’s got as many as a hundred men organized, maybe twice that”—Chadron multiplied on the basis of damage that his men had suffered—“and my men tell me he’s drillin’ ’em like soldiers.”

  “I’m not surprised to hear that,” nodded the colonel; “that man Macdonald’s got it in him to do that, and fight like the devil, too.”

  “A gang of ’em killed three of my men a couple of days ago when I sent ’em up there to his shack to investigate a little matter, and Macdonald shot my foreman up so bad I guess he’ll die. I tell you, man, it’s a case for troopers!”

  “What has the sheriff and the rest of you done to restore order?”

  “I took twenty of my men up there yisterday, and a bunch of Sam Hatcher’s from acrosst the river was to join us and smoke that wolf out of his hole and hang his damn hide on his cussed bob-wire fence. But hell! they was ditched in around that shack of his’n, I tell you, gentlemen, and he peppered us so hard we had to streak out of there. I left two of my men, and Hatcher’s crew couldn’t come over to help us, for them damn rustlers had breastworks throwed up over there and drove ’em away from the river. They’ve got us shut out from the only ford in thirty miles.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned!” said the colonel, warming at this warlike news.

  “Macdonald’s had the gall to send me notice to keep out of that country up the river, and to run my cattle out of there, and it’s my own land, by God! I’ve been grazin’ it for eighteen years!”

  “It looks like a serious situation,” the colonel admitted.

  “Serious!” There was scorn for the word and its weakness in Chadron’s stress. “It’s hell, I tell you, when a man can’t set foot on his own land!”

  “Are they all rustlers up there in the settlement? are there no honest homesteaders among them who would combine with you against this wild man and his unlawful followers?” the colonel wanted to know.

  “Not a man amongst ’em that ain’t cut the brand out of a hide,” Chadron declared. “They’ve been nestin’ up there under that man Macdonald for the last two years, and he’s the brains of the pack. He gits his rake-off out of all they run off and sell. Me and the other cattlemen we’ve been feedin’ and supportin’ ’em till the drain’s gittin’ more’n we can stand. We’ve got to put ’em out, like a fire, or be eat up. We’ve got to hit ’em, and hit ’em hard.”

  “It would seem so,” the colonel agreed.

  “It’s a state of war, I tell you, colonel; you’re free to use your troops in a state of war, ain’t you? Twenty-five troopers, with a little small cannon”—Chadron made illustration of the caliber that he considered adequate for the business with his hands—“to knock ’em out of their ditches so we could pick ’em off as they scatter, would be enough; we can handle the rest.”

  “If there is anything that I can do for you in my private capacity, I am at your command,” offered Colonel Landcraft, with official emptiness, “but I regret that I am powerless to grant your request for troops. I couldn’t lift a finger in a matter like this without a department order; you ought to understand that, Chadron.”

  “Oh, if that’s all that’s bitin’ you, go ahead—I’ll take care of the department,” Chadron told him, with the relieved manner of one who had seen a light.

  “Sir!”

  If Chadron had proposed treason the colonel could not have compressed more censure into that word.

  “That’s all right,” Chadron assured him, com
fortably; “I’ve got two senators and five congressmen back there in Washington that jigger when I jerk the gee-string. You can cut loose and come into this thing with a free hand, and go the limit, the department be damned if they don’t like it!”

  Colonel Landcraft’s face was flaming angrily. He snapped his dry old eyelids like flints over the steel of his eyes, and stood as straight as the human body could be drawn, one hand on his sword hilt, the other pointing a trembling finger at Chadron’s face.

  “You cattlemen run this state, and one or two others here in the Northwest, I’m aware of that, Chadron. But there’s one thing that you don’t run, and that’s the United States army! I don’t care a damn how many congressmen dance to your tune, you’re not big enough to move even one trooper out of my barracks, sir! That’s all I’ve got to say to you.”

  Chadron stood a little while, glowering at the colonel. It enraged him to be blocked in that manner by a small and inconsequential man. This he felt Colonel Landcraft to be, measured against his own strength and importance in that country. Himself and the other two big cattlemen in that section of the state lorded it over an area greater than two or three of the old states where the slipping heritage of individual liberty was born. Now here was a colonel in his way; one little old gray colonel!

  “All right,” Chadron said at length, charging his words with what he doubtless meant to be a significant foreboding, measuring Colonel Landcraft with contemptuous eye. “I can call out an army of my own. I came to you because we pay you fellers to do what I’m askin’ of you, and because I thought it’d save me time. That’s all.”

  “You came to me because you have magnified your importance in this country until you believe you’re the entire nation,” the colonel replied, very hot and red.

  Chadron made no answer to that. He turned toward the military door, but Colonel Landcraft would not permit his unsanctified feet, great as they were and free to come and go as they liked in other places, to pass that way. He frowned at Major King, who had stood by in silence all the time, like a good soldier, his eyes straight ahead. Major King touched Chadron’s arm.

  “This way, sir, if you please,” he said.

  Chadron started out, wrathfully and noisily. Half-way to the door he turned, his dark face sneering in contemptuous scorn.

  “Yes, you’re one hell of a colonel!” he said.

  Major King was holding the door open; Chadron swung his big body around to face it, and passed out. Major King saluted his superior officer and followed the cattleman into the hall, closing the sacred door behind him on the wrathful little old soldier standing beside his desk. King extended his hand, sympathy in gesture and look.

  “If I was in command of this post, sir, you’d never have to ask twice for troops,” he said.

  Chadron’s sudden interest seemed to give him the movement of a little start. His grip on the young officer’s hand tightened as he bent a searching look into his eyes.

  “King, I believe you!” he said.

  Nola came pattering down the stairs. Chadron stood with open arms, and swallowed her in them as she leaped from the bottom tread. Major King did not wait to see her emerge again, rosy and lip-tempting. There was unfinished business within the colonel’s room.

  A few minutes later Nola, excited to her finger-ends, was retailing the story of the rustlers’ uprising to Frances.

  “Mother’s all worked up over it; she’s afraid they’ll burn us out and murder us, but of course we’d clean them up before they’d ever get that far down the river.”

  “It looks to me like a very serious situation for everybody concerned,” Frances said. “If your father brings in the men that you say he’s gone to Meander to telegraph for, there’s going to be a lot of killing done on both sides.”

  “Father says he’s going to clean them out for good this time—they’ve cost us thousands of dollars in the past three years. Oh, you can’t understand what a low-down bunch of scrubs those rustlers are!”

  “Maybe not,” Frances said, giving it up with a little sigh.

  “I’ve got to go back to mother this morning, right away, but that little fuss up the river doesn’t need to keep you from going home with me as you promised, Frances.”

  “I shouldn’t mind, but I don’t believe father will want me to go out into your wild country. I really want to go—I want to look around in your garden for a glove that I lost there on the night of the ball.”

  “Oh, why didn’t you tell me?” Nola’s face seemed to clear of something, a shadow of perplexity, it seemed, that Frances had seen in it from time to time since her coming there. She looked frankly and reprovingly at Frances.

  “I didn’t miss it until I was leaving, and I didn’t want to delay the rest of them to look for it. It really doesn’t matter.”

  “It’s a wonder mother didn’t find it; she’s always prowling around among the flowers,” said Nola, her eyes fixed in abstracted stare, as if she was thinking deeply of something apart from what her words expressed.

  What she was considering, indeed, was that her little scheme of alienation had failed. Major King, she told herself, had not returned the glove to Frances. For all his lightness in the matter, perhaps he cared deeply for Frances, and would be more difficult to wean than she had thought. It would have to be begun anew. That Frances was ignorant of her treachery, as she now fully believed, made it easier. So the little lady told herself, surveying the situation in her quick brain, and deceiving herself completely, as many a shrewder schemer than she, when self-entangled in the devious plottings of this life.

  On the other hand there sat Frances across the table—they were breakfasting alone, Mrs. Landcraft being a strict militarist, and always serving the colonel’s coffee with her own hand—throwing up a framework of speculation on her own account. Perhaps if she should go to the ranch she might be in some manner instrumental in bringing this needless warfare to a pacific end. Intervention at the right time, in the proper quarter, might accomplish more than strife and bloodshed could bring out of that one-sided war.

  No matter for the justice of the homesteaders’ cause, and the sincerity of their leader, neither of which she doubted or questioned, the weight of numbers and resources would be on the side of the cattlemen. It could result only in the homesteaders being driven from their insecure holdings after the sacrifice of many lives. If she could see Macdonald, and appeal to him to put down this foolish, even though well-intended strife, something might result.

  It was an inconsequential turmoil, it seemed to her, there in that sequestered land, for a man like Alan Macdonald to squander his life upon. If he stood against the forces which Chadron had gone to summon, he would be slain, and the abundant promise of his life wasted like water on the sand.

  “I’ll go with you, Nola,” she said, rising from the table in quick decision.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XII

  “THE RUSTLERS!”

  “I’ve stood up for that man, and I’ve stood by him,” said Banjo Gibson, “but when a man shoots a friend of my friend he ain’t no friend of mine. I’m done with him; I won’t never set a boot-heel inside of his door ag’in.”

  Banjo was in Mrs. Chadron’s south sitting-room, with its friendly fireplace and homely things, including Mrs. Chadron and her apparently interminable sock. Only now it was a gray sock, designed not for the mighty foot of Saul, but for Chance Dalton, lying on his back in the bunkhouse in a fever growing out of the handling that he had gone through at Macdonald’s place.

  Banjo had arrived at the ranch the previous evening. He was sitting now with his fiddle on his knee, having gone through the repertory most favored by his hostess, with the exception of “Silver Threads.” That was an afternoon melody, Banjo maintained, and one would have strained his friendship and shaken his respect if he had insisted upon the musician putting bow to it in the morning hours.

  “Yes,” sighed Mrs. Chadron, “it was bad enough when he just shot cowboys, but when it come to Chance we
felt real grieved. Chance he ain’t much to look at, but he’s worth his weight in gold on the ranch.”

  “Busted his right arm all to pieces, they tell me?”

  “Right here.” Mrs. Chadron marked across her wrist with her knitting needle, and shook her head in heavy sadness.

  “That’ll kind of spile him, won’t it?”

  “Well, Saul says it won’t make so much difference about him not havin’ the use of his hand on that side if it don’t break his nerve. A man loses confidence in himself, Saul says, most always when he loses the hand or arm he’s slung his gun with all his life. He takes the notion that everybody’s quicker’n he is, and just kind of slinges back and drops out of the game.”

  “Do you expect Saul he’ll come back here with them soldiers he went after?”

  “I expect he’ll more’n likely order ’em right up the river to clear them rustlers out before he stops or anything,” she replied, in high confidence.

  “The gall of them low-down brand-burners standin’ up to fight a man on his own land!” Banjo’s indignation could not have been more pointed if he had been a lord of many herds himself.

  “There comes them blessed girls!” reported Mrs. Chadron from her station near the window. Banjo crossed over to see, his fiddle held to his bosom like an infant. Nola and Frances were nearing the gate.

  “That colonel girl she’s a up-setter, ain’t she?” Banjo admired.

  “She’s as sweet as locus’ blooms,” Mrs. Chadron declared, unstintingly.

  “But she’s kind of distant; nothing friendly and warm-hearted like your little Nola, mom.”

  “She’s a little cool to strangers, but when she knows a body she comes out.”

  Banjo nodded, drawing little whispers of melody from his fiddle-strings by fingering them against the neck.