The Rustler of Wind River Part 31

"Sir, I have no wish to coerce the lady"--Major King's voice shook, his words were low--"as she seems to have no preference for me, sir.

Miss Landcraft perhaps has placed her heart somewhere else."

"She has no right to act with such treachery to me and you, sir," the colonel said. "I'll not have it! Where else, sir--who?"

"Spare me the humiliation of informing you," begged Major King, with averted face, with sorrow in his voice.

"Oh, you slanderous coward!" Frances a.s.sailed him with scorn of word and look. Colonel Landcraft was shaking a trembling finger at her, his face thrust within a foot of her own.

"I'll not have it! you'll not--who is the fellow, who?"

"There is nothing to conceal, there is no humiliation on my part in speaking his name, but pride--the highest pride of my heart!"

She stood back from them a little, her lofty head thrown back, her face full of color now, the strength of defense of the man she loved in her brave brown eyes.

"Some low poltroon, some sneaking civilian--"

"He is a man, father--you have granted that. His name is--"

"Stop!" thundered the colonel. "Heaven and h.e.l.l! Will you disgrace me by making public confession of your shame? Leave this room, before you drive me to send you from it with a curse!"

In her room Frances heard the horses come to the door to carry her father away. She had sat there, trembling and hot, sorry for his foolish rage, hurt by his narrow injustice. Yet she had no bitterness in her heart against him, for she believed that she knew him best.

When his pa.s.sion had fallen he would come to her, lofty still, but ashamed, and they would put it behind them, as they had put other differences in the past.

Her mother had gone to him to share the last moments of his presence there, and to intercede for her. Now Frances listened, her hot cheek in her hand, her eyes burning, her heart surging in fevered stroke.

There was a good deal of coming and going before the house; men came up and dismounted, others rode away. Watching, her face against the cool pane, she did not see her father leave. Yet he had not come to her, and the time for his going was past.

Her heart was sore and troubled at the thought that perhaps he had gone without the word of pacification between them. It was almost terrifying to her to think of that. She ran down the stairs and stood listening at his closed door.

That was not his voice, that heavy growl, that animal note. Saul Chadron's; no other. Her mother came in through the front door, weeping, and clasped Frances in her arms as she stood there, shadowy in the light of the dim hall lamp.

"He is gone!" she said.

Frances did not speak. But for the first time in her life a feeling of bitterness against her father for his hardness of heart and unbending way of injustice lifted itself in her breast. She led her mother to her own room, giving her such comfort as she could put into words.

"He said he never marched out to sure defeat before," Mrs. Landcraft told her. "I've seen him go many a time, Frances, but never with such a pain in my heart as tonight!"

And Saul Chadron was the man who had caused his going, Frances knew, a new illumination having come over the situation since hearing his voice in the colonel's office a few minutes past. Chadron had been at Meander, telegraphing to the cattlemen's servants in Washington all the time. He had demanded the colonel's recall, and the subst.i.tution of Major King, because he wanted a man in authority at the post whom he could use.

This favoritism of Chadron made her distrustful at once of Major King.

There must be some scheming and plotting afoot. She went down and stood in the hall again, not even above bending to listen at the keyhole. Chadron was talking again. She felt that he must have been talking all the time that she had been away. It must be an unworthy cause that needed so much pleading, she thought.

"Well, he'll not shoot, I tell you, King; he's too smart for that.

He'll have to be trapped into it. If you've got to have an excuse to fire on them--and I can't see where it comes in, King, d.a.m.n my neck if I can--we've got to set a trap."

"Leave that to me," returned Major King, coldly.

"How much force are you authorized to use?"

"The order leaves that detail to me. 'Sufficient force to restore order,' it says."

"I think you ort to take a troop, at the least, King, and a cannon--maybe two."

"I don't think artillery will be necessary, sir."

"Well, I'll leave it to you, King, but I'd hate like h.e.l.l to take you up there and have that feller lick you. You don't know him like I do.

I tell you he'd lay on his back and fight like a catamount as long as he had a breath left in him."

"Can you locate them in the night?"

"I think we'd have to wait up there somewheres for daybreak. I'm not just sure which canon they are in."

There was silence. Frances peeped through the keyhole, but could see nothing except thick smoke over bookcases and files.

"Well, we'll not want to dislodge them before daylight, anyway," said King.

"If Macdonald can back off without a fight, he'll do it," Chadron declared, "for he knows as well as you and I what it'd mean to fire on the troops. And I want you to git him, King, and make sure you've got him."

"It depends largely on whether the fellow can be provoked into firing on us, Chadron. You think he can be; so do I. But in case he doesn't, the best we can do will be to arrest him."

"What good would he be to me arrested, King? I tell you I want his scalp, and if you bring that feller out of there in a sack you'll come back a brigadier. I put you where you're at. Well, I can put you higher just as easy. But the purty I want for my trouble is that feller's scalp."

There was the sound of somebody walking about, in quick, nervous strides. Frances knew that Major King had got up from his usurped place at the desk--place unworthily filled, this low intrigue with Chadron aside, she knew--and was strutting in the shadow of his promised glory.

"Leave it to me, Chadron; I've got my own account to square with that wolf of the range!"

A sharp little silence, in which Frances could picture Chadron looking at King in his covert, man-weighing way. Then Chadron went on:

"King, I've noticed now and then that you seemed to have a soft spot in your gizzard for that little girl of mine. Well, I'll throw her in to boot if you put this thing through right. Is it a go?"

"I'd hesitate to bargain for the young lady without her being a party to the business," King replied, whether from wisdom born of his recent experience, or through lack of interest in the proposal Frances could not read in his even, well-pitched voice.

"Oh, she'd jump at you like a bullfrog at red flannel," Chadron a.s.sured him. "I could put your uniform on a wooden man and marry him off to the best girl in seven states. They never think of lookin'

under a soldier's vest."

"You flatter me, Mr. Chadron, and the uniform of the United States army," returned King, with barely covered contempt. "Suppose we allow events to shape themselves in regard to Miss Chadron. She'll hardly be entertaining marriage notions yet--after her recent experience."

Chadron got up so quickly he overturned his chair.

"By G.o.d, sir! do you mean to intimate you wouldn't have her after what she's gone through? Well, I'll put a bullet through any man that says--"

"Oh, hold yourself in, Chadron; there's no call for this."

King's cold contempt would have been like a lash to a man of finer sensibilities than Saul Chadron. As it was, Frances could hear the heavy cattleman breathing like a mad bull.

"When you talk about my little girl, King, go as easy as if you was carryin' quicksilver in a dish. You told me she was all right a little while ago, and I tell you I don't like--"

"Miss Chadron was as bright as a redbird when I saw her this afternoon," King a.s.sured him, calmly. "She has suffered no harm at the hands of Macdonald and his outlaws."