The Rustler of Wind River Part 28

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 a.s.sure 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 Canon." 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 p.r.i.c.ked 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 pa.s.ses 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 deliverance. With him at her side, this dangerous, grave matter seemed but a pa.s.sing 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, n.o.body 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.