The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  Chadron was gaping in amazement. That feeling in him seemed to smother every other, even his hot rage against King for this sudden shifting of their plans and complete overthrow of the cattlemen’s expectations of the troops. The one little comfort that he was to get out of the expedition was that of seeing his raiders taken out of Macdonald’s hands and marched off to be set free.

  Macdonald felt that he understood the change in King. The major had come there full of the intention of doing Chadron’s will; he had not a doubt of that. But murder, even with the faint color of excuse that they would have contrived to give it, could not be done in the eyes of such a witness as Frances Landcraft. Subserviency, a bending of dignity even, could not be stooped to before one who had been schooled to hold a soldier’s honor his most precious endowment.

  Major King had shown a hand of half-fairness in treating both sides alike. That much was to his credit, at the worst. But he had not done it because he was a high-souled and honorable man. His eyes betrayed him in that, no matter how stern he tried to make them. The coming of that fair outrider in the night had turned aside a great tragedy, and saved Major King partly to himself, at least, and perhaps wholly to his career.

  Macdonald tried to tell her in one long and earnest look all this. She nodded, seeming to understand.

  “You’ve double-crossed me, King,” Chadron accused, in the flat voice of a man throwing down his hand. “I brought you up here to throw these nesters off of our land.”

  “The civil courts must decide the ownership of that,” returned King, sourly. “Disarm that man!” He indicated Macdonald, and turned his horse as if to ride back and join his command.

  The lieutenant appeared to feel that it would be no lowering of his dignity to touch the weapons of a man such as Macdonald’s bearing that morning had shown him to be. He approached with a smile half apologetic. Chadron was sitting by on his horse watching the proceeding keenly.

  “Pardon me,” said the officer, reaching out to receive Macdonald’s guns.

  A swift change swept over Macdonald’s face, a flush dyeing it to his ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question, the young officer’s hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten feet away, slung a revolver from his side and fired.

  Macdonald rocked in his saddle as Frances leaped to the ground and ran to his side. He wilted forward, his hat falling, and crumpled into her arms. The lieutenant relieved her of her bloody burden, and eased Macdonald to the ground.

  Major King came riding back. At his sharp command troopers surrounded Chadron, who sat with his weapon still poised, like one gazing at the mark at which he had fired, the smoke of his shot around him.

  “In a second he’d ’a’ got me! but I beat him to it, by God! I beat him to it!” he said.

  Macdonald’s belt had slipped free of his body. With its burden of cartridges and its two long pistols it lay at Frances’ feet. She stooped, a little sound in her throat between a sob and a cry, jerked one of the guns out, wheeled upon Chadron and fired. The lieutenant struck up her arm in time to save the cattleman’s life. The blow sent the pistol whirling out of her hand.

  “They will go off that way, sometimes,” said the young officer, with apology in his soft voice.

  The soldiers closed around Chadron and hurried him away. A moment Major King sat looking at Macdonald, whose blood was wasting in the roadside dust from a wound in his chest. Then he flashed a look into Frances’ face that had a sneer of triumph in it, wheeled his horse and galloped away.

  In a moment the lieutenant was summoned, leaving Frances alone between the two forces with Macdonald. She did not know whether he was dead. She dropped to her knees in the dust and began to tear frantically at his shirt to come to the wound. Tom Lassiter came hurrying up with others, denouncing the treacherous shot, swearing vengeance on the cowardly head that had conceived so murderous a thing.

  Lassiter said that he was not dead, and set to work to stem the blood. It seemed to Frances that the world had fallen away from her, leaving her alone. She stood aside a little, her chin up in her old imperious way, her eyes on the far hills where the tender sunlight was just striking among the white-limbed aspen trees. But her heart was bent down to the darkness of despair.

  She asked no questions of the men who were working so earnestly after their crude way to check that precious stream; she stood in the activity of passing troopers and escorted raiders insensible of any movement or sound in all the world around her. Only when Tom Lassiter stood from his ministrations and looked at her with understanding in his old weary eyes she turned her face back again, slowly resolute, to see if he had died.

  Her throat was dry. It took an effort to bring a sound from it, and then it was strained and wavering.

  “Is he—dead?”

  “No, miss, he ain’t dead,” Tom answered. But there was such a shadow of sorrow and pain in his eyes that tears gushed into her own.

  “Will—will—”

  Tom shook his head. “The Lord that give him alone can answer that,” he said, a feeling sadness in his voice.

  The troops had moved on, save the detail singled for police duty. These were tightening girths and trimming for the road again a little way from the spot where Macdonald lay. The lieutenant returned hastily.

  “Miss Landcraft, I am ordered to convey you to Alamito Ranch—under guard,” said he.

  Banjo Gibson, held to be harmless and insignificant by Major King, had been set free. Now he came up, leading his horse, shocked to the deepest fibers of his sensitive soul by the cowardly deed that Saul Chadron had done.

  “It went clean through him!” he said, rising from his inspection of Macdonald’s wound. And then, moved by the pain in Frances’ tearless eyes, he enlarged upon the advantages of that from a surgical view. “The beauty of a hole in a man’s chest like that is that it lets the pizen dreen off,” he told her. “It wouldn’t surprise me none to see Mac up and around inside of a couple of weeks, for he’s as hard as old hick’ry.”

  “Well, I’m not going to Alamito Ranch and leave him out here to die of neglect, orders or no orders!” said she to the lieutenant.

  The young officer’s face colored; he plucked at his new mustache in embarrassment. Perhaps the prospect of carrying a handsome and dignified young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and polite phrasing.

  She scorned him and his veneration for orders, and turned from him coldly.

  “Is there no doctor with your detachment?” she asked.

  “He has gone on with the main body, Miss Landcraft. They have several wounded.”

  “Wounded murderers and burners of homes! Well, I’m not going to Alamito Ranch with you, sir, unless you can contrive an ambulance of some sort and take this gentleman too.”

  The officer brightened. He believed it could be arranged. Inside of an hour he had Tom Lassiter around with a team and spring wagon, in which the homesteaders laid Macdonald tenderly upon a bed of hay.

  Banjo waited until they were ready to begin their slow march to the ranch, when he led his little horse forward.

  “I’ll go on to the agency after the doctor and send him over to Alamito as quick as he can go,” he said. “And I’ll see if Mother Mathews can go over, too. She’s worth four doctors when it comes to keep the pizen from spreadin’ in a wound.”

  Frances gave him her benediction with her eyes, and farewell with a warm handclasp, and Banjo’s beribboned horse frisked off on its long trip, quite refreshed from the labors of the past night.

  Frances was carrying Macdonald’s cartridge belt and revolvers, the confiscation of which had been overlooked by Major King in the excitement of the shootin
g. The young lieutenant hadn’t the heart to take the weapons from her. Orders had been carried out; Macdonald had been disarmed. He let it go at that.

  Frances rode in the wagon with Macdonald, a canteen of water slung over her shoulders. Now and then she moistened his lips with a little of it, and bathed his eyes, closed in pathetic weariness. He was unconscious still from the blow of Saul Chadron’s big bullet. As she ministered to him she felt that he would open his eyes on this world’s pains and cruel injustices nevermore.

  And why had Major King ordered her, virtually under arrest, to Alamito Ranch, instead of sending her in disgrace to the post? Was it because he feared that she would communicate with her father from the post, and discover to him the treacherous compact between Chadron and King, or merely to take a mean revenge upon her by humiliating her in Nola Chadron’s eyes?

  He had taken the newspaper correspondent with him, and certainly would see that no more of the truth was sent out by him from that flame-swept country for several days. With her at the ranch, far from telegraphic communication with the world, nothing could go out from her that would enlighten the department on the deception that the cattlemen had practiced to draw the government into the conflict on their side. In the meantime, the Drovers’ Association would be at work, spreading money with free hand, corrupting evidence with the old dyes of falsehood.

  Major King had seen his promised reward withdrawn through her intervention, and had made a play of being fair to both sides in the controversy, except that he kept one hand on Chadron’s shoulder, so to speak, in making martyrs of those bloody men whom he had sent there to burn and kill. They were to be shipped safely back to their place, where they would disperse, and walk free of all prosecution afterwards. For that one service to the cattlemen Major King could scarcely hope to win his coveted reward.

  She believed that Alan Macdonald would die. It seemed that the fever which would consume his feeble hope of life was already kindling on his lips. But she had no tears to pour out over him now. Only a great hardness in her heart against Saul Chadron, and a wild desire to lift her hand and strike him low.

  Whether Major King would make her attempt against Chadron’s life, or her interference with his military expedition his excuse for placing her under guard, remained for the future to develop. She turned these things in her mind as they proceeded along the white river road toward the ranch.

  It came noontime, and decline of sun; the shadow of the mountains reached down into the valley, the mist came purple again over the foothills, the fire of sunset upon the clouds. Alan Macdonald still lived, his strong harsh face turned to the fading skies, his tired eyelids closed upon his dreams.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XX

  LOVE AND DEATH

  Maggie and Alvino had the ranch to themselves when the military party from the upper valley arrived, Mrs. Chadron and Nola having driven to Meander that morning. It had been their intention to return that evening, Maggie said. Mrs. Chadron had gone after chili peppers, and other things, but principally chili peppers. There was not one left in the house, and the mistress could not live without them, any more than fire could burn without wood.

  Dusk had settled when they reached the ranch, and night thickened fast. The lieutenant dropped two men at the corral gate—her guard, Frances understood—and went back to his task of watching for armed men upon the highroads.

  Under the direction of Frances, Maggie had placed a cot in Mrs. Chadron’s favored sitting-room with the fireplace. There Macdonald lay in clean sheets, a blaze on the hearth, and Maggie was washing his wound with hot water, groaning in the pity which is the sweetest part of the women of her homely race.

  “I think that he will live, miss,” she said hopefully. “See, he has a strong breath on my damp hand—I can feel it like a little wind.”

  She spoke in her native tongue, which Frances understood thoroughly from her years in Texas and Arizona posts. Frances shook her head sorrowfully.

  “I am afraid his breath will fail soon, Maggie.”

  “No, if they live the first hour after being shot, they get well,” Maggie persisted, with apparent sincerity. “Here, put your hand on his heart—do you feel it? What a strong heart he has to live so well! what a strong, strong heart!”

  “Yes, a strong, strong heart!” Tears were falling for him now that there was none to see them, scalding their way down her pale cheeks.

  “He must have carried something sacred with him to give him such strength, such life.”

  “He carried honor,” said Frances, more to herself than to Maggie, doubting that she would understand.

  “And love, maybe?” said Maggie, with soft word, soft upward-glancing of her feeling dark eyes.

  “Who can tell?” Frances answered, turning her head away.

  Maggie drew the sheet over him and stood looking down into his severe white face.

  “If he could speak he would ask for his mother, and for water then, and after that the one he loves. That is the way a man’s mind carries those three precious things when death blows its breath in his face.”

  “I do not know,” said Frances, slowly.

  There was such stress in waiting, such silence in the world, and such emptiness and pain! Reverently as Maggie’s voice was lowered, soft and sympathetic as her word, Frances longed for her to be still, and go and leave her alone with him. She longed to hold the dear spark of his faltering life in her own hands, alone, quite alone; to warm it back to strength in her own lone heart. Surely her name could not be the last in his remembrance, no matter for the disturbing breath of death.

  “I will bring you some food,” said Maggie. “To give him life out of your life you must be strong.”

  * * *

  Frances started out of her sleep in the rocking-chair before the fire. She had turned the lamp low, but there was a flare of light on her face. Her faculties were so deeply sunk in that insidious sleep which had crept upon her like a bindweed upon wheat that she struggled to rise from it. She sprang up, her mind groping, remembering that there was something for which she was under heavy responsibility, but unable for a moment to bring it back to its place.

  Nola was in the door with a candle, shading the flame from her eyes with her hand. Her hair was about her shoulders, her feet were bare under the hem of her long dressing-robe. She was staring, her lips were open, her breath was quick, as if she had arrived after a run.

  “Is he—alive?” she whispered.

  “Why should you come to ask? What is his life to you?” asked Frances, sorrowfully bitter.

  “Oh, Maggie just woke and came up to tell me, mother doesn’t know—she’s just gone to bed. Isn’t it terrible, Frances!”

  Nola spoke distractedly, as if in great agony, or great fear.

  “He can’t harm any of you now, you’re safe.” Frances was hard and scornful. She turned from Nola and laid her hand on Macdonald’s brow, drawing her breath with a relieved sigh when she felt the warmth of life still there.

  “Oh, Frances, Frances!” Nola moaned, with expression of despair, “isn’t this terrible!”

  “If you mean it’s terrible to have him here, I can’t help it. I’m a prisoner, here against my will. I couldn’t leave him out there alone to die.”

  Nola lowered her candle and stared at Frances, her eyes big and blank of everything but a wild expression that Frances had read as fear.

  “Will he die?” she whispered.

  “Yes; you are to have your heartless way at last. He will die, and his blood will be on this house, never to be washed away!”

  “Why didn’t you come back when we called you—both of you?” Nola drew near, reaching out an appealing hand. Frances shrank from her, to bend quickly over Macdonald when he groaned and moved his head.

  “Put out that light—it’s in his eyes!” she said.

  Nola blew out the candle and came glimmering into the room in her soft white gown.

  “Don’t blame me, Frances, don’t blame any of us. Mother
and I wanted to save you both, we tried to stop the men, and we could have held them back if it hadn’t been for Chance. Chance got three of them to go, the others—”

  “They paid for that!” said Frances, a little lift of triumph in her voice.

  “Yes, but they—”

  “Chance didn’t do it, I tell you! If he says he did it he lies! It was—somebody else.”

  “The soldiers?”

  “No, not the soldiers.”

  “I thought maybe—I saw one of them on guard in front of the house as we came in.”

  “He’s guarding me, I’m under arrest, I tell you. The soldiers have nothing to do with him.”

  Nola stood looking down at Macdonald, who was deathly white in the weak light of the low, shaded lamp. With a little timid outreaching, a little starting and drawing back, she touched his forehead, where a thick lock of his shaggy hair fell over it, like a sheaf of ripe wheat burst from its band.

  “Oh, it breaks my heart to see him dying—it—breaks—my—heart!” she sobbed.

  “You struck him! You’re not—you’re not fit to touch him—take your hand away!”

  Frances pushed her hand away roughly. Nola drew back, drenched with a sudden torrent of penitential tears.

  “I know it, I know it!” she confessed in bitterness, “I knew it when he took me away from those people in the mountains and brought me home. He carried me in his arms when I was tired, and sang to me as we rode along there in the lonesome night! He sang to me, just like I was a little child, so I wouldn’t be afraid—afraid—of him!”

  “Oh, and you struck him, you struck him like a dog!”

  “I’ve suffered more for that than I hurt him, Frances—it’s been like fire in my heart!”

  “I pray to God it will burn up your wicked pride!”

  “We believed him, mother and I believed him, in spite of what Chance said. Oh, if you’d only come back then, Frances, this thing wouldn’t have happened!”