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 them, foreseeing that they might stand her in the place of a friend.
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. He gave her an open and guileless good-morning, and she told him to saddle her horse.
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 up with the quick clutching of a falling child, and clasped him about the neck. Then a sharp cry of waking recognition, and Nola was sobbing on her mother’s breast.
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 neither saw her go, and the guards at the gate, either forgetful of their charge or softened by the moving scene, did not interpose to stop her.
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!”
* * *
CHAPTER XVI
DANGER AND DIGNITY
“Did you carry her that way all the way home?”
Frances asked the question abruptly, like one throwing down some troublesome and heavy thing that he has labored gallantly to conceal. It was the first word that she had spoken since they had taken refuge from their close-pressing pursuers in the dugout that some old-time homesteader had been driven away from by Chadron’s cowboys.
Macdonald was keeping his horse back from the door with the barrel of his rifle, while he peered out cautiously again, perplexed to understand the reason why Dalton had not led his men against them in a charge.
“Not all the way, Frances. She rode behind me till she got so cold and sleepy I was afraid she’d fall off.”
“Yes, I’ll bet she put on half of it!” she said, spitefully. “She looked strong enough when you put her down there at the gate.”
This unexpected little outburst of jealousy was pleasant to his ears. Above the trouble of that morning, and of the future which was charged with it to the blackness of complete obscuration, her warrant of affection was like a lifting sunbeam of hope.
“I can’t figure out what Dalton and that gang mean by this,” said he, the present danger again pressing ahead of the present joy.
“I saw a man dodge behind that big rock across there a minute ago,” she said.
“You keep back away from that door—don’t lean over out of that corner!” he admonished, almost harshly. “If you get where you can see, you can be seen. Don’t forget that.”
He resumed his watch at the little hole that he had drilled beside the weight-bowed jamb of the door in the earth front of their refuge. She sat silent in her dark corner across from him, only now and then shaking her glove at the horses when one of them pricked up his ears and shewed a desire to dodge out into the sunlight and pleasant grazing spread on the hillside.
It was cold and moldy in the dugout, and the timbers across the roof were bent under the weight of the earth. It looked unsafe, but there was only one place in it that a bullet could come through, and that was the open door. There was no way to shut that; the original battens of the homesteader lay under foot, broken apart and rotting.
“Well, it beats me!” said he, his eye to the peephole in the wall.
“If I’d keep one of the horses on this side it wouldn’t crowd your corner so,” she suggested.
“It would be better, only they’ll cut loose at anything that passes the door. They’ll show their hand before long.” He enlarged the hole to admit his rifle barrel. She watched him in silence. Which was just as well, for she had no words to express her admiration for his steadiness and courage under the trying pressure of that situation. Her confidence in him was so entire that she had no fear; it did not admit a question of their safe deliveranc
e. With him at her side, this dangerous, grave matter seemed but a passing perplexity. She left it to him with the confidence and up-looking trust of a child.
While she understood the peril of their situation, fear, doubt, had no place in her mind. She was under the protection of Alan Macdonald, the infallible.
No matter what others may think of a man’s infallibility, it is only a dangerous one who considers himself endowed with that more than human attribute. Macdonald did not share her case of mind as he stood with his eye to the squint-hole that he had bored beside the rotting jamb.
“How did you find her? where was she?” she asked, her thoughts more on the marvel of Nola’s return than her own present danger.
“I lost Thorn’s trail that first day,” he returned, “and then things began to get so hot for us up the valley that I had to drop the search and get those people back to safety ahead of Chadron’s raid. Yesterday afternoon we caught a man trying to get through our lines and down into the valley. He was a half-breed trapper who lives up in the foothills, carrying a note down to Chadron. I’ve got that curious piece of writing around me somewhere—you can read it when this blows by. Anyway, it was from Thorn, demanding ten thousand dollars in gold. He wanted it sent back by the messenger, and he prescribed some picturesque penalties in case of failure on Chadron’s part.”
“And then you found her?”
“I couldn’t very well ask anybody else to go after her,” he admitted, with a modest reticence that amounted almost to being ashamed. “After I made sure that we had Chadron’s raiders cooped up where they couldn’t get out, I went up and got her. Thorn wasn’t there, nobody but the Indian woman, the ’breed’s wife. She was the jailer—a regular wildcat of a woman.”
That was all there was to be told, it seemed, as far as Macdonald was concerned. He had the hole in the wall—at which he had worked as he talked—to his liking now, and was squinting through it like a telescope.
The Rustler of Wind River Page 16