Frances was looking at the dust-cloud that rose behind Macdonald. He was no longer in sight.
“Where has he gone?” she inquired, her suspicion growing every moment.
“He’s gone to find that cowman’s child, young lady, and take her home to her mother,” Tom replied, with dignity. He rode on. She followed, presently gaining his side.
“Is there such a man as Mark Thorn?” she asked after a little, looking across at Lassiter with sly innuendo.
“No, there ain’t no man by that name, but there’s a devil in the shape of a human man called that,” he answered.
“Is he—what does he do?” She reined a little nearer to Lassiter, feeling that there was little harm in him apart from the directing hand.
“He hires out to kill off folks that’s in the way of the cattlemen at so much a head, miss; like some hires out to kill off wolves. The Drovers’ Association hires him, and sees that he gits out of jail if anybody ever puts him in, and fixes it up so he walks safe with the blood of no knowin’ how many innocent people on his hands. That’s what Mark Thorn does, ma’am. Chadron brought him in here a couple of weeks ago to do some killin’ off amongst us homesteaders so the rest ’d take a scare and move out. He give that old devil a list of twenty men he wanted shot, and Alan Macdonald’s got that paper. His own name’s at the top of it, too.”
“Oh!” said she, catching her breath sharply, as if in pain. Her face was white and cold. “Did he—did he—kill anybody here?”
“He killed my little boy; he shot him down before his mother’s eyes!”
Tom Lassiter’s guttered neck was agitated; the muscles of his bony jaw knotted as he clamped his teeth and looked straight along the road ahead of him.
“Your little boy! Oh, what a coward he must be!”
“He was a little tow-headed feller, and he had his mother’s eyes, as blue as robins’ eggs,” said Tom, his reminiscent sorrow so poignant that tears sprung to her eyes in sympathy and plashed down unheeded and unchecked. “He’d ’a’ been fifteen in November. Talkin’ about fightin’, ma’am, that’s the way some people fights.”
“I’m sorry I said that, Mr. Lassiter,” she confessed, hanging her head like a corrected child.
“He can’t hear you now,” said Tom.
They rode on a little way. Tom told her of the other outrages for which Thorn was accountable in that settlement. She was amazed as deeply as she was shocked to hear of this, for if any word of it had come to the post, it had been kept from her. Neither was it ever mentioned in Chadron’s home.
“No,” said Tom, when she mentioned that, “it ain’t the kind of news the cattlemen spreads around. But if we shoot one of them in defendin’ our own, the news runs like a pe-rairie fire. They call us rustlers, and come ridin’ up to swipe us out. Well, they’s goin’ to be a change.”
“But if Chadron brought that terrible man in here, why should the horrible creature turn against him?” she asked, doubt and suspicion grasping the seeming fault in Lassiter’s tale.
“Chadron refused to make settlement with him for the killin’ he done because he didn’t git Macdonald. Thorn told Alan that with his own bloody tongue.”
Lassiter retailed to her eager ears the story of Macdonald’s capture of Thorn, and his fight with Chadron’s men when they came to set the old slayer free, as Lassiter supposed.
“They turned him loose,” said he, “and you know now what I meant when I said Chadron’s chickens has come home to roost.”
“Yes, I know now.” She turned, and looked back. Remorse was heavy on her for the injustice she had done Macdonald that day, and shame for her sharp words bowed her head as she rode at old Tom Lassiter’s hand.
“He’ll run the old devil down ag’in,” Tom spoke confidently, as of a thing that admitted no dispute, “and take that young woman home if he finds her livin’. Many thanks he’ll git for it from them and her. Like as not she’ll bite the hand that saves her, for she’s a cub of the old bear. Well, let me tell you, colonel’s daughter, if she was to live a thousand years, and pray all her life, she wouldn’t no more than be worthy at the end to wash that man’s feet with her tears and dry ’em on her hair, like that poor soul you’ve read about in the Book.”
Frances slowed her horse as if overcome by a sudden indecision, and turned in her saddle to look back again. Again she had let him go away from her misunderstood, his high pride hurt, his independent heart too lofty to bend down to the mean adjustment to be reached through argument or explanation. One must accept Alan Macdonald for what his face proclaimed him to be. She knew that now. He was not of the mean-spirited who walk among men making apology for their lives.
“He’s gone on,” said Lassiter, slowing his horse to her pace.
“I’m afraid I was hasty and unjust,” she confessed, struggling to hold back her tears.
“Yes, you was,” said Lassiter, frankly, “but everybody on the outside is unjust to all of us up here. We’re kind of outcasts because we fence the land and plow it. But I want to tell you, Macdonald’s a man amongst men, ma’am. He’s fed the poor and lifted up the afflicted, and he’s watched with us beside our sick and prayed with us over our dead. We know him, no matter what folks on the outside say. Well, we’ll have to spur up a little, ma’am, for we’re in a hurry to git back.”
They approached the point where the road to the post branched.
“There’s goin’ to be fightin’ over here if Chadron tries to drive us out,” Tom said, “and we know he’s sent for men to come in and help him try it. We don’t want to fight, but men that won’t fight for their homes ain’t the kind you’d like to ride along the road with, ma’am.”
“Maybe the trouble can be settled some other way,” she suggested, thinking again of the hope that she had brought with her to the ranch the day before.
“When we bring the law in here, and elect officers to see it put in force for every man alike, then this trouble it’ll come to an end. Well, if you ever feel like we deserve a good word, colonel’s daughter, we’d be proud to have you say it, for the feller that stands up for the law and the Lord and his home agin the cattlemen in this land, ma’am, he’s got a hard row to hoe. Yes, we’ll count any good words you might say for us as so much gold. ‘And the Levite, thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.’”
Tom’s voice was slow and solemn when he quoted that Mosaic injunction. The appeal of the disinherited was in it, and the pain of lost years. It touched her like a sorrow of her own. Tears were on her cheeks again as she parted from him, giving him her hand in token of trust and faith, and rode on toward the ranchhouse by the river.
* * *
CHAPTER XIV
WHEN FRIENDS PART
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,” she said, pressing the liniment-soaked cloth to Banjo’s bruised forehead.
<
br /> 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, 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! 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 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 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 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 over the apparent failure of her news to surprise from Chadron a betrayal of his guilty connection wi
th 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!”
The Rustler of Wind River Page 14