“Well, well!” said she, her face brightening a little at the news.
“How’s Alan by now?”
“Up and around—he’s goin’ to leave us in the morning.”
“Frances here?” he asked.
“No, she went over home this morning—I thought maybe you met her—but she’s comin’ back for him in the morning.”
Banjo sat musing a little while. Then—
“Yes, you’ll have neighbors, mom, plenty of ’em. A colony of nesters is comin’ here, three or four hundred of ’em, they tell me, all ready to go to puttin’ up schoolhouses and go to plowin’ in the spring. And they’re goin’ to run that hell-snortin’ railroad right up this valley. I reckon it’ll cut right along here somewheres a’past your place.”
“Yes, changes’ll come, Banjo, changes is bound to come,” she sighed.
“All over this country, they say, the nesters’ll squat now wherever they want to, and nobody won’t dast to take a shot at ’em to drive ’em off of his grass. They put so much in the papers about this rustlers’ war up here that folks has got it through ’em the nesters ain’t been gittin’ what was comin’ to ’em. The big ranches ’ll all be split up to flinders inside of five years.”
“Yes, the cattle days is passin’, along with the folks that was somebody in this country once. Well, Banjo, we had some good times in the old days; we can remember them. But changes will come, we must expect changes. You don’t need to pack up and go on account of that. I ain’t goin’ to leave.”
“I’ve made up my mind. I’m beginnin’ to feel tight in the chist already for lack of air.”
Both sat silent a little while. Banjo’s elbows were across his knees, his face lifted toward the window. The wind was falling, and there was a little breaking among the low clouds, baring a bit of blue sky here and there. Banjo viewed this brightening of the day with gladness.
“I guess it’s passin’,” he said, going to the window and peering round as much of the horizon as he could see, “it wasn’t nothing but a little shakin’ out of the tablecloth after breakfast.”
“I’m glad of it, for I don’t think it’s good luck to start out on a trip in a storm. That there Nola she’s out in it, too.”
“Gone up the river?”
“Yes. It beats all how she’s takin’ up with them people, and them with her. She’s even bought lumber with her own money to help some of ’em build.”
“She’s got a heart like a dove,” he sighed.
“As soft as a puddin’,” Mrs. Chadron nodded.
“But I never could git to it.” Banjo sighed again.
Mrs. Chadron shook her head, with an expression of sadness for his failure which was deeper than any words she knew.
“The loss of her pa bore down on her terrible; she’s pinin’ and grievin’ too hard for a body so young. I hear her cryin’ and moanin’ in the night sometimes, and I know it ain’t no use goin’ to her, for I’ve tried. She seems to need something more than an old woman like me can give, but I don’t know what it is.”
“Maybe she needs a change—a change of air,” Banjo suggested, with what vague hope only himself could tell.
“Maybe, maybe she does. Well, you’re goin’ to take a change of air, anyhow, Banjo. But what’re you goin’ to do away out there amongst strangers?”
“I was out there one time, five years ago, and didn’t seem to like it then. But since I’ve stood off and thought it over, it seems to me that’s a better place for me than here, with my old friends goin’ or gone, and things changin’ this a-way. Out there around them hop and fruit ranches they have great times at night in the camps, and a man of my build can keep busy playin’ for dances. I done it before, and they took to me, right along.”
“They do everywheres, Banjo.”
“Some don’t,” he sighed, watching out of the window in the direction that Nola must come.
“She’s not likely to come back before morning—I think she aims to go to the post tonight and stay with Frances,” she said, reading his heart in his face.
“Maybe it’s for the best,” said Banjo.
“I guess everything that comes to us is for the best, if we knew how to take it,” she said. “Well, you set there and be comfortable, and I’ll stir Maggie up and have her make you something nice for dinner. After that I want you to play me the old songs over before you go. Just to think I’ll never hear them songs no more breaks my heart, Banjo—plumb breaks my heart!”
As she passed Banjo she laid her hand on his head in a manner of benediction, and tears were in her eyes.
The sun was out again when they had finished lunch, coaxing autumn on into November at the peril of frosted toes. Mrs. Chadron had brightened considerably, also. Even bereavement and sorrow could not shake her fealty to chili, and now it was rewarding her by a rubbing of her old color in her face as she sat by the window and waited for Banjo to tune his instruments for the parting songs.
Her workbasket was beside her, the bright knitting-needles in the unfinished sock. It never would be completed now, she knew, but she kept it by her to cry over in the twilight hours, when thoughts of Saul came over her with their deep-harrowing pangs.
Banjo sang the touching old ballads over to her appreciative ear, watching the shadows outside, as he played, for three o’clock. That was the hour set for him to go. “Silver Threads” was saved for the end, and when its last strain died Mrs. Chadron’s face was hidden in her hands. She was rocking gently, her handkerchief fallen to the floor.
Banjo put his bow in its place in the lid of the case, the rosin in its little box. But the fiddle he still held on his knee, stroking its smooth back with loving hand, as if he would soothe Mrs. Chadron’s regrets and longings and back-tugging pains by that vicarious caress. So he sat petting his instrument, and after a little she looked at him, her eyes red, and tear-streaks on her face.
“Don’t put it away just yet, Banjo,” she requested; “there’s another one I want you to sing, and that will be the last. It’s the saddest one you play—one that I couldn’t stand one time—do you remember?” Banjo remembered; he nodded. “I can stand it now, Banjo; I want to hear it now.”
Banjo drew bow again, no more words on either side, and began his song:
All o-lone and sad he left me,
But no oth-o’s bride I’ll be;
For in flow-os he bedecked me,
In tho cottage by tho sea.
When he finished, Mrs. Chadron’s head was bent upon her arm across the little workstand where her basket stood. Her shoulders were moving in piteous convulsions, but no sound of crying came from her. Banjo knew that it was the hardest kind of weeping that tears the human heart.
He put away his fiddle, and strapped the case. Then he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll have to be saddlin’ up, mom,” said he, his own voice thick, “and I’ll say adios to you now.”
“Good-bye, Banjo, and may God bless you in that country you’re goin’ to so fur away from the friends you used to know!”
Banjo’s throat moved as he gulped his sorrow. “I’ll not come back in the house, but I’ll wave you good-bye from the gate,” said he.
“I had hopes you might change your mind, Banjo,” she said, as she took his hand and held it a little while.
“If I could’a’got to somebody’s heart that I’ve pined for many a day, I would’a’changed my mind, mom. But it wasn’t to be.”
“It wasn’t to be, Banjo,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think she’ll ever marry—she’s changed, she’s so changed!”
“Well, adios to you, mom, and the best of luck.”
“Adios, Banjo, boy; good-bye!”
She waited at the window for him to pass the gate. He appeared there leading his horse, and bent to examine the girths before putting foot to the stirrup. She hoped that he was coming back, to tell her that he could not find it in his heart to go. But no; the change that was coming over the cattle
country was like an unfriendly wind to the little troubadour. His way was staked into the west where new ties waited him, where new hearts were to be won. He mounted, turned to the window, waved his hat and rode away.
Mrs. Chadron sat in her old place and watched him until he passed beyond the last hill line and out of her sight. Her last glimpse of him had been in water lines through tears. Now she reached for her basket and took out her unfinished knitting. Broken off there, like her own life it was, she thought, never to be completed as designed. The old days were done; the promise of them only partly fulfilled. She was bidding farewell to more than Banjo, parting with more than friends.
“Good-bye, Banjo,” she murmured, looking dimly toward the farthest hill; “adios!”
* * *
CHAPTER XXV
“HASTA LUEGO”
Frances came into the room as fresh as a morning-glory. Her cheeks were like peonies, and the fire of her youth and strength danced in her happy eyes. Macdonald rose to greet her, tall, gaunt, and pale from the drain that his wound had made upon his life. He had been smoking before the fireplace, and he reached up now to put his pipe away on the manteltree.
“And how are things at the post?” he asked, as she stood before him in her saddle dress, her sombrero pressing down her hair, her quirt swinging by its thong from her gloved wrist.
Before replying she intercepted the hand that was reaching to stow the pipe away, pressed it firmly back, inserted the stem between his close lips.
“In this family, the man smokes,” she said.
His slow smile, which was reward enough to her for all the trouble that it took to wake it, twinkled in his eyes like someone coming to the window with a light.
“Then the piece of a man will go ahead and smoke,” said he, drawing a chair up beside his own and leading her to it with gentle pressure upon her hand.
“Has Mrs. Chadron been overfeeding you while I was gone? Did she give you chili?”
“She offered me chili, in five different dishes, which I, remembering the injunction, regretfully put aside.”
“Well, they’re coming with the ambulance, I rode on ahead, and you’ll soon be beyond the peril of chili.” She smiled as she looked up into his face, and the smile broadened into an outright laugh when she saw the little flitting cloud of vexation there.
“I could well enough ride,” said he.
“The doctor says you could not.”
“I’m as fit for the saddle this minute as I ever was in my life,” he declared.
She made no reply to that in words. But there was tender pity in her caressing eyes as they measured the weakness of his thin arms, wasted down to tendon and bone now, it seemed. He would ride to the post, she knew very well, if permitted, and come through it without a murmur. But the risk would be foolish, no matter what his pride must suffer by going in a wagon.
“Have you heard the news from Meander?” she inquired.
“No, news comes slowly to Alamito Ranch, and will come slower now that Banjo is gone, Mrs. Chadron says. What’s been happening at Meander?”
“They held their conventions there last week to nominate county officers, and what do you think? They’ve nominated you for something, for—for what do you suppose?”
“Nominated me? Who’s nominated me?”
“Oh, one party or the other began it, and the other indorsed you, for—oh, it’s—”
“For what, Frances?” he asked, laughter in his eyes at her unaccountable way of holding back on the secret.
“Why, for sheriff!” said she, with magnificent scorn.
Macdonald leaned back in his chair and laughed, the first audible sound of merriment that she ever had heard come from those stern lips. She looked at him with reproach.
“It should have been governor, the very least they could have done, decently!” She was full of feeling on the subject of what she believed to be his undervaluation.
Macdonald took her hand, the laughter dying out of his sober face.
“That’s all in the different ways of looking at a man, palomita,” he said to her.
“But you look bigger than sheriff to anybody!” she replied, indignation large in her heart.
“In this country, Frances, a sheriff is a pretty sizable man,” he said, his thoughtful eyes on the fire, “about the biggest man they can conceive, next only to the president himself. Up here in the cattle country the greatness of men is dimmed, their magnitude being measured by appreciable results. The offices of lawmaker, governor, and such as the outside world invest with their peculiar dignity, are incidental, indefinite—all but negative, here. It’s different with a sheriff. He’s the man who comes riding with his guns at his side; they can see him perform. All the law that they know centers in him; all branches of government, as they understand his powers. Yes, a sheriff is something of a figure in this county, Frances, and to be nominated for that office by one party and indorsed by another is just about the biggest compliment a man can receive.”
“But surely, Alan, you’ll not accept it?”
“Why, I think so,” he returned, thoughtfully. “I think I’d be worth more to this county as sheriff than I would be as—as governor, let us say.”
“Yes, but they go shooting sheriffs,” she protested.
“They’ll not be doing so much careless and easy shooting around here since Colonel—Brigadier-General Landcraft—and that sounds more like his size, too—gave them a rubdown with the iron hand. The cattle barons’ day is over; their sun went down when Mark Thorn brought the holy scare to Saul Chadron’s door.”
“Father is of the same opinion. Do you know, Alan, the whole story about that horrible old man Thorn is in the eastern papers?”
“Is it possible?”
“With a Cheyenne date-line,” she nodded, “the whole story—who hired him to skulk and kill, and a list of his known crimes. Father says if there was anything lacking in the fight you made on the cattlemen, this would finish them. It’s a terrible story—poor Nola read it, and learned for the first time her father’s connection with Thorn. She’s humiliated and heartbroken over it all.”
“With sufficient reason,” he nodded.
“She’s afraid her mother will hear of it in some way.”
“She’ll find it out in time, Frances; a thing like that walks on a man’s grave.”
“It will not matter so much after a while, after her first grief settles.”
“Did Nola come back with you?”
“No, she went on to take some things to poor old Mrs. Lassiter. She never has recovered from the loss of her son—it’s killing her by inches, Tom says. And you considering that office of sheriff!” She turned to him with censorious eyes as she spoke, as if struck with a pain of which he was the cause. “I tell you, you men don’t know, you don’t know! It’s the women that suffer in all this shooting and killing—we are the ones that have to bear the sorrows in the night and watch through the uncertain days!”
“Yes,” said he gently, “the poor women must bear most of this world’s pain. That is why God made them strong above all his created things.”
They sat in silence, thinking it over between them. Outside there was sunshine over the brown rangeland; within there dwelt the lifting confidence that their feet had passed the days of trouble and were entering the bounds of an enlarging peace.
“And Major King?” said he.
“Father has relented, as I knew he would, out of regard for their friendship of the past, and will not bring charges based on Major King’s plottings with Chadron.”
“It’s better that way,” he nodded. “Do you suppose there’s nothing between him and Nola?”
“I think she’ll have him after her grief passes, Alan.”
“Better than he deserves,” said he. “There’s a lump of gold in that little lady’s heart, Frances.”
“There is, Alan; I’m glad to hear you say that.” There was moisture in her tender eyes.
“There was something in that
man, too,” he reflected. “It’s unfortunate that he allowed his desire to humiliate you and me to drive him into such folly. If he’d only have held those brigands here for the civil authorities, as I requested, we could have forgotten the rest.”
“Yes, father says that would have saved him in his eyes, in spite of his scheming with Chadron against your life, and against father’s honor and all that he holds sacred. But it’s done, and he’s genuinely despised in the service for it. And there’s the ambulance coming over the hill.”
“Ambulance for me!” said he, in disgust of his slow mending.
“Be glad that it isn’t—oh, I shouldn’t say that!”
“I am,” said he, nodding his slow, grave head.
“We’ll have to say good-bye to Mrs. Chadron,” said she, bustling around, or making a show of doing so to hide the tears which had sprung into her eyes at the thought that it might have been a different sort of conveyance coming to Alamito to take Alan Macdonald away.
“And to Alamito,” said he, looking out into the frost-stricken garden with a tenderness in his eyes. “I shall always have a softness in my heart for Alamito, because it gave me you. That garden out there yielded me the dearest flower that any garden ever gave a man”—he took her hands, and folded them above his heart—“a flower with a soul in it to keep it alive forever.”
She bowed her head as he spoke, as if receiving a benediction.
“I hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Chadron,” she said, her voice trembling, “for she’ll cry, and I’m afraid I’ll cry, too.”
“It will not be farewell, only hasta luego[A] we can assure her of that. We’ll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is our val paraiso.”
“Our valley of paradise,” she nodded, her hands reaching up to his shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, “our home!”
The Rustler of Wind River Page 24