“Nola wasn’t afraid to come with you,” she said, positively.
“She didn’t appear to be, Frances.”
“No; she knew she was safe, no matter how little she deserved any kindness at your hands. I know what she did—I know how she—how she—struck you in the face that time!”
“Oh,” said he, as if reminded of a trifle that he had forgotten.
“Did she—put her arms around your neck that way many times while you were carrying her home?”
“She did not! Many times! why, she didn’t do it even once.”
“Oh, at the gate—I saw her!”
He said nothing for a little while, only stood with head bent, as if thinking it over.
“Well, she didn’t get very far with it,” he said, quite seriously. “Anyway, she was asleep then, and didn’t know what she was doing. It was just the subconscious reaching up of a falling, or dreaming, child.”
She was not a little amused, in a quick turn from her serious bent of jealousy, at his long and careful explanation of the incident. She laughed, and the little green cloud that had troubled her blew away on the gale of her mirth.
“Oh, well!” said she, from her deep corner across the bright oblong of the door, tossing it all away from her. “Do you think they’ll go away and let us come out after a while?”
“I don’t believe they’ve got any such intention. If it doesn’t come to a fight before then, I believe we’ll have to drive the horses out ahead of us after dark, and try to get away under the confusion. You should have gone on, Frances, when I told you.”
The horses were growing restive, moving, stamping, snorting, and becoming quarrelsome together. Macdonald’s little range animal had a viciousness in it, and would not make friends with the chestnut cavalry horse. It squealed and bit, and even tried to use its heels, at every friendly approach.
Macdonald feared that so much commotion might bring the shaky, rotten roof down on them. A hoof driven against one of the timbers which supported it might do the trick, and bring them to a worse end than would the waiting bullets of Dalton and his gang.
“I’ll have to risk putting that horse of yours over on your side,” he told her. “Stand ready to catch him, but don’t lean a hair past the door.”
He turned the horse and gave it a slap. As it crossed the bar of light falling through the door, a shot cracked among the rocks. The bullet knocked earth over him as it smacked in the facing of the door. The man who had fired had shot obliquely, there being no shelter directly in front, and that fact had saved the horse.
Macdonald peered through his loophole. He could not see the smoke, but he let them know that he was primed by answering the shot at random. The shot drew a volley, a bullet or two striking the rear wall of the cave.
After that they waited for what might come between then and night. They said little, for each was straining with unpleasant thoughts and anxieties, and put to constant watchfulness to keep the horses from slewing around into the line of fire. Every time a tail switched out into the streak of light a bullet came nipping in. Sometimes Macdonald let them go unanswered, and again he would spring up and drive away at the rocks which he knew sheltered them, almost driven to the point of rushing out and trying to dislodge them by storm.
So the day wore by. They had been in the dugout since a little after sunrise. Sunset was pale on the hilltops beyond them when Macdonald, his strained and tired eyes to the loophole, saw Dalton and two of his men slipping from rock to rock, drawing nearer for what he expected to be the rush.
“Can you shoot?” he asked her, his mouth hot and dry as if his blood had turned to liquid fire.
“Yes, I can shoot,” she answered, steadily.
He tossed one of his revolvers across to her, dimly seen now in the deepening gloom of the cave, and flung a handful of cartridges after it.
“They’re closing in on us for the rush, and I’m going to try to stop them. Keep back there where you are, and hold your horse under cover as long as you hear me shooting. If I stop first, call Dalton and tell him who you are. I believe in that case he’ll let you go.”
“I’m going to help you,” she said, rising resolutely. “When you—stop shooting—” she choked a little over the words, her voice caught in a dry little sob—“then I’ll stop shooting, too!”
“Stay back there, Frances! Do you hear—stay back!”
Somebody was on the roof of the dugout; under his weight clods of earth fell, and then, with a soft breaking of rotten timber, a booted foot broke through. It was on Frances’ side, and the fellow’s foot almost touched her saddle as her frightened horse plunged.
The man was tugging to drag his foot through the roof now, earth and broken timber showering down. Macdonald only glanced over his shoulder, as if leaving that trapped one to her. He was set for their charge in front. She raised her revolver to fire as the other leg broke through, and the fellow’s body dropped into the enlarged hole. At that moment the men in front fired a volley through the gaping door. Frances saw the intruder drop to the ground, torn by the heavy bullets from his companions’ guns.
The place was full of smoke, and the turmoil of the frightened horses, and the noise of quick shots from Macdonald’s station across the door. She could not make anything out in the confusion as she turned from the dead man to face the door, only that Macdonald was not at his place at the loophole now.
She called him, but her voice was nothing in the sound of firing. A choking volume of smoke was packing the cave. She saw Macdonald’s horse lower its head and dash out, with a whip of its tail like a defiance of her authority. Then in a moment everything was still out there, with a fearful suddenness.
She flung herself into the cloud of smoke that hung in the door, sobbing Macdonald’s name; she stumbled into the fresh sweet air, almost blind in her anxiety, and the confusion of that quickly enacted scene, her head bent as if to run under the bullets which she expected.
She did not see how it happened, she did not know that he was there; but his arm was supporting her, his cool hand was on her forehead, stroking her face as if he had plucked her drowning from the sea.
“Where are they?” she asked, only to exclaim, and shrink closer to him at the sight of one lying a few rods away, in that sprawling limp posture of those who fall by violence.
“There were only four of them—there the other two go.” He pointed down the little swale where the tall grass was still green. Macdonald’s horse had fallen to grazing there, his master’s perils and escapes all one to him now. It threw its head up and stood listening, trotted a little way and stopped, ears stiff, nostrils stretched.
“There’s somebody coming,” she said.
“Yes—Chadron and a fresh gang, maybe.”
He sprang to the dugout door, where Frances’ horse stood with its head out inquiringly.
“Jump up—quick!” he said, bringing the horse out. “Go this time, Frances; don’t hang back a second more!”
“Never mind, Alan,” she said, from the other side of the horse, “it’s the cavalry—I guess they’ve come after me.”
Major King was at the head of the detail of seven men which rode up, horses a lather of sweat. He threw himself from the saddle and hurried to Frances, his face full of the liveliest concern. Macdonald stepped around to meet him.
“Thank heaven! you’re not hurt,” the major said.
“No, but we thought we were in for another fight,” she told him, offering him her hand in the gratefulness of her relief. He almost snatched it in his eagerness, and drew her toward him, and stood holding it in his haughty, proprietary way. “Mr. Macdonald—”
“The scoundrels heard us coming and ran—we got a glimpse of them down there. Chadron will have to answer for this outrage!” the major said.
“Major King, this is Mr. Macdonald,” said she, firmly, breaking down the high manner in which the soldier persisted in overlooking and eliminating the homesteader.
Major King’s face flushed; h
e drew back a hasty step as Macdonald offered his hand, in the frank and open manner of an equal man who raised no thought nor question on that point.
“Sir, I’ve been hearing of the gallant rescue that you made of another young lady this morning,” he said, with sneering emphasis. “You are hardly the kind of a man I shake hands with!”
The troopers, sitting their blowing horses a rod away, made their saddles creak as they shifted to see this little dash of melodrama. Macdonald’s face was swept by a sudden paleness, as if a sickness had come over him. He clenched his lean jaw hard; the firmness of his mouth was grimmer still as his hand dropped slowly to his side. Frances looked her indignation and censure into Major King’s hot eyes.
“Mr. Macdonald has defended me like a gallant gentleman, sir! Those ruffians didn’t run because they heard you coming, but because he faced them out here in the open, single-handed and alone, and drove them to their horses, Major King!”
The troopers were looking Macdonald over with favor. They had seen the evidence of his stand against Chadron’s men.
“You’re deceived in your estimation of the fellow, Miss Landcraft,” the major returned, red to the eyes in his offended dignity. “I arrived at the ranch not an hour ago, detailed to escort you back to the post. Will you have the kindness to mount at once, please?”
He stepped forward to give her a hand into the saddle. But Macdonald was before him in that office, urged to it by the quick message of her eyes. From the saddle she leaned and gave him her warm, soft hand.
“Your men need you, Mr. Macdonald—go to them,” she said. “My prayers for your success in this fight for the right will follow you.”
Macdonald was standing bareheaded at her stirrup. Her hand lingered a moment in his, her eyes sounded the bottom of his soul. Major King, with his little uprising of dignity, was a very small matter in the homesteader’s mind just then, although a minute past he had fought with himself to keep from twisting the arrogant officer’s neck.
She fell in beside Major King, who was sitting grim enough in his way now, in the saddle, and they rode away. Macdonald stood, hat in hand, the last sunbeams of that day over his fair tangled hair, the smoke of his conflict on his face, the tender light of a man’s most sacred fire in his eyes.
* * *
CHAPTER XVII
BOOTS AND SADDLES
When Major King delivered Frances—his punctilious military observance made her home-coming nothing less—to Colonel Landcraft, they found that grizzled warrior in an electrical state of excitement. He was moving in quick little charges, but with a certain grim system in all of them, between desk and bookcases, letter files, cabinets, and back to his desk again. He drew a document here, tucked one away there, slipped an elastic about others assembled on his desk, and clapped a sheaf of them in his pocket.
Major King saluted within the door.
“I have the honor to report the safe return of the detachment dispatched to Alamito Ranch for the convoy of Miss Landcraft,” he said.
Colonel Landcraft returned the salute, and stood stiffly while his officer spoke.
“Very well, sir,” said he. Then flinging away his official stiffness, he met Frances half-way as she ran to meet him, and enfolded her to his breast, just as if his dry old heart knew that she had come to him through perils.
Breathlessly she told him the story, leaving no word unsaid that would mount to the credit of Alan Macdonald. Colonel Landcraft was as hot as blazing straw over the matter. He swore that he would roast Saul Chadron’s heart on his sword, and snatched that implement from the chair where it hung as he spoke, and buckled it on with trembling hand.
King interposed to tell him that Chadron was not at the ranch, and begged the colonel to delegate to him the office of avenger of this insult and hazard that Frances had suffered at the hands of his men. For a moment Colonel Landcraft held the young officer’s eye with thankful expression of admiration, then he drew himself up as if in censure for wasted time, saluted, took a paper from his desk, and said with grave dignity:
“It must fall to you, Major King, to demand the reparation for this outrage that I shall not be here to enforce. I am ordered to Washington, sir, to make my appearance before the retiring board. The department has vested the command of this post in you, sir—here is the order. My soldiering days are at an end.”
He handed the paper to Major King, with a salute. With a salute the young officer took it from his hand, an eager light in his eyes, a flush springing to his pale face. Frances clung to her father’s arm, a little trembling moan on her lips as if she had received a mortal hurt.
“Never mind, never mind, dear heart,” said the old man, a shake in his own voice. Frances, looking up with her great pity into his stern, set face, saw a tear creeping down his cheek, toughened by the fires of thirty years’ campaigns.
“I’ll never soldier any more,” he said, “the politicians have got me. They’ve been after me a long time, and they’ve got me. But there is one easement in my disgrace—”
“Don’t speak of it on those terms, sir!” implored Major King, more a man than a soldier as he laid a consoling hand on the old man’s arm.
“No, no!” said Frances, clinging to her father’s hand.
Colonel Landcraft smiled, looking from one to the other of them, and a softness came into his face. He took Major King’s hand and carried it to join Frances’, and she, in her softness for her father, allowed it to remain in the young soldier’s grasp.
“There is one gleam of joy in the sundown of my life,” the colonel said, “and that is in seeing my daughter pledged to a soldier. I must live in the reflection of your achievements, if I live beyond this disgrace, sir.”
“I will try to make them worthy of my mentor, sir,” Major King returned.
Frances stood with bowed head, the major still holding her hand in his ardent grasp.
“It’s a crushing blow, to come before the preferment in rank that I have been led to expect would be my retiring compensation!” The colonel turned from them sharply, as if in pain, and walked in marching stride across the room. Frances withdrew her hand, with a little struggle, not softened by the appeal in the major’s eyes.
“My poor wife is bowed under it,” the colonel spoke as he marched back and forth. “She has hoped with me for some fitting reward for the years of service I have unselfishly given to my country, sir, for the surrender of my better self to the army. I’ll never outlive it, I feel that I’ll never outlive it!”
Colonel Landcraft had no thought apart from what he felt to be his hovering disgrace. He had forgotten his rage against Chadron, forgotten that his daughter had lived through a day as hazardous as any that he had experienced in the Apache campaigns, or in his bleak watches against the Sioux. He turned to her now, where she stood weeping softly with bowed head, the grime of the dugout on her habit, her hair, its bonds broken, straying over her face.
“I had counted pleasurably on seeing you two married,” he said, “but something tells me I shall never come back from this journey, never resume command of this post.” He turned back to his marching, stopped three or four paces along, turned sharply, a new light in his face. “Why shouldn’t it be before I leave—tonight, within the hour?”
“Oh, father!” said Frances, in terrified voice, lifting her face in its tear-wet loveliness.
“I must make the train that leaves Meander at four o’clock tomorrow morning, I shall have to leave here within—” he flashed out his watch with his quick, nervous hand—“within three-quarters of an hour. What do you say, Major King? Are you ready?”
“I have been ready at any time for two years,” Major King replied, in trembling eagerness.
Frances was thrown into such a mental turmoil by the sudden proposal that she could not, at that moment, speak a further protest. She stood with white face, her heart seeming to shrivel, and fall away to laboring faintness. Colonel Landcraft was not considering her. He was thinking that he must have three hours’
sleep in the hotel at Meander before the train left for Omaha.
“Then we shall have the wedding at once, just as you stand!” he declared. “We’ll have the chaplain in and—go and tell your mother, child, and—oh, well, throw on another dress if you like.”
Frances found her tongue as her danger of being married off in that hot and hasty manner grew imminent.
“I’m not going to marry Major King, father, now or at any future time,” said she, speaking slowly, her words coming with coldness from her lips.
“Silence! you have nothing to say, nothing to do but obey!” Colonel Landcraft blazed up in sudden explosion, after his manner, and set his heel down hard on the floor, making his sword clank in its scabbard on his thigh.
“I have not had much to say,” Frances admitted, bitterly, “but I am going to have a great deal to say in this matter now. Both of you have gone ahead about this thing just as if I was irresponsible, both of you—”
“Hold your tongue, miss! I command you—hold your tongue!”
“It’s the farthest thing from my heart to give you pain, or disappoint you in your calculations of me, father,” she told him, her voice gathering power, her words speed, for she was a warrior like himself, only that her balance was not so easily overthrown; “but I am not going to marry Major King.”
“Heaven and hell!” said Colonel Landcraft, stamping up and down.
“Heaven or hell,” said she, “and not hell—if I can escape it.”
“I’ll not permit this insubordination in a member of my family!” roared the colonel, his face fiery, his rumpled eyebrows knitted in a scowl. “I’ll have obedience, with good grace, and at once, or damn my soul, you’ll leave my house!”
“Major King, if you are a gentleman, sir, you will relieve me of this unwelcome pressure to force me against my inclination. It is quite useless, sir, I tell you most earnestly. I would rather die than marry you—I would rather die!”
The Rustler of Wind River Page 17