The Rustler of Wind River Part 24

"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.

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 pa.s.sed, 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 compa.s.sionately a moment in the door.

The place was like Nola in its light and brightness and surface comfort and a.s.sertive 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' a.s.sociation 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 a.s.sa.s.sins 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' a.s.sociation 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 pa.s.sed 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 hors.e.m.e.n 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, pa.s.sing 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 att.i.tude 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 with 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 La.s.siter had told her of Thorn's employers and his b.l.o.o.d.y 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 p.r.o.nounced 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 La.s.siter 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!"

"Couldn't it be settled without all this fighting and killing?" she went on, pressing her point.

"It's all over now but the shoutin'," said he. "There's only one way to handle a rustler, Miss Frances, and that's to salt his hide."