The Rustler of Wind River Part 4

Regaled at length, Banjo Gibson, in the wake of Mrs. Chadron, who presented him with pride, came into the room where the young ladies waited with impatience the waning of the daylight hours. Banjo acknowledged the honor of meeting Miss Landcraft with extravagant words, which had the flavor of a manual of politeness and a ready letter-writer in them. He was on more natural terms with Nola, having known her since childhood, and he called her "Miss Nola," and held her hand with a tender lingering.

His voice was full and rich, a deep, soft note in it like a rare instrument in tune. His small feet were shod in the shiningest of shoes, which he had given a furbishing in the barn, and a flowing cravat tied in a large bow adorned his low collar. There were stripes in the musician's shirt like a Persian tent, but it was as clean and unwrinkled as if he had that moment put it on.

Banjo Gibson--if he had any other christened name, it was unknown to men--was an original. As Nola had said, he belonged back a few hundred years, when musical proficiency was not so common as now. The profession was not crowded in that country, happily, and Banjo traveled from ranch to ranch carrying cheer and entertainment with him as he pa.s.sed.

He had been doing that for years, having worked his way westward from Nebraska with the big cattle ranches, and his art was his living.

Banjo's arrival at a ranch usually resulted in a dance, for which he supplied the music, and received such compensation as the generosity of the host might fix. Banjo never quarreled over such matters. All he needed was enough to buy cigarettes and shirts.

Banjo seldom played in company with any other musician, owing to certain limitations, which he raised to distinguishing virtues. He played by "air," as he said, despising the unproficiency of all such as had need of looking on a book while they fiddled. Knowing nothing of transposition, he was obliged to tune his banjo--on those rare occasions when he stooped to play "second" at a dance--in the key of each fresh tune. This was hard on the strings, as well as on the patience of the player, and Banjo liked best to go it single-handed and alone.

When he heard that musicians were coming from Cheyenne--a day's journey by train--to play for Nola's ball, his face told that he was hurt, but his respect of hospitality curbed his words. He knew that there was one appreciative ear in the mansion by the river that no amount of "dago fiddlin'" ever would charm and satisfy like his own voice with the banjo, or his little brown fiddle when it gave out the old foot-warming tunes. Mrs. Chadron was his champion in all company, and his friend in all places.

"Well, sakes alive! Banjo, I'm as tickled to see you as if you was one of my own folks," she declared, her face as warm as if she had just gorged on the hottest of hot dishes which her Mexican cook, Maggie, could devise.

"I'm glad to be able to make it around ag'in, thank you, mom," Banjo a.s.sured her, sentiment and soul behind the simple words. "I always carry a warm place in my heart for Alamito wherever I may stray."

Nola frisked around and took the banjo from its green cover, talking all the time, pushing and placing chairs, and settling Banjo in a comfortable place. Then she armed him with the instrument, making quite a ceremony of it, and asked him to play.

Banjo tw.a.n.ged the instrument into tune, hooked the toe of his left foot behind the forward leg of his chair, and struck up a song which he judged would please the young ladies. Of Mrs. Chadron he was sure; she had laughed over it a hundred times. It was about an adventure which the bard had shared with his gal in a place designated in Banjo's uncertain vocabulary as "the big cook-quari-um." It began:

Oh-h-h, I stopped at a big cook-quari-um Not very long ago, To see the ba.s.s and suckers And hear the white whale blow.

The chorus of it ran:

Oh-h-h-h, the big sea-line he howled and he growled, The seal beat time on a drum; The whale he swallered a den-vereel In the big cook-quari-um.

From that one Banjo pa.s.sed to "The Cowboy's Lament," and from tragedy to love. There could be nothing more moving--if not in one direction, then in another--than the sentimental expression of Banjo's little sandy face as he sang:

I know you were once my true-lov-o-o-o, But such a thing it has an aind; My love and my transpo'ts are ov-o-o-o, But you may still be my fraind-d-d.

Sundown was rosy behind the distant mountains, a sea of purple shadows laved their nearer feet, when Banjo got out his fiddle at Mrs.

Chadron's request and sang her "favorite" along with the moving tones of that instrument.

Dau-ling I am growing-a o-o-eld, Seel-vo threads a-mong tho go-o-ld--

As he sang, Nola slipped from the room. He was finishing when she sped by the window and came sparkling into the room with the announcement that the guests from far Cheyenne were coming. Frances was up in excitement; Mrs. Chadron searched the floor for her unfinished sock.

"What was that flashed a-past the winder like a streak a minute ago?"

Banjo inquired.

"Flashed by the window?" Nola repeated, puzzled.

Frances laughed, the two girls stopping in the door, merriment gleaming from their young faces like rays from iridescent gems.

"Why, that was Nola," Frances told him, curious to learn what the sentimental eyes of the little musician foretold.

"I thought it was a star from the sky," said Banjo, sighing softly, like a falling leaf.

As they waited at the gate to welcome the guests, who were cantering up with a curtain of dust behind them, they laughed over Banjo's compliment.

"I knew there was something behind those eyes," said Frances.

"No telling how long he's been saving it for a chance to work it off on somebody," Nola said. "He got it out of a book--the Mexicans all have them, full of _brindies_, what we call toasts, and silly soft compliments like that."

"I've seen them, little red books that they give for premiums with the Mexican papers down in Texas," Frances nodded, "but Banjo didn't get that out of a book--it was spontaneous."

"I must write it down, and compare it with the next time he gets it off."

"Give him credit for the way he delivered it, no matter where he got it," Frances laughed. "Many a more sophisticated man than your desert troubadour would have broken his neck over that. He's in love with you, Nola--didn't you hear him sigh?"

"Oh, he has been ever since I was old enough to take notice of it,"

returned Nola, lightly.

"Oh, my luv's like a falling star," paraphrased Frances.

"Not much!" Nola denied, more than half serious. "Venus is ascendant; you keep your eye on her and see."

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN IN THE PLAID

There was no mistaking the a.s.siduity with which Major King waited upon Nola Chadron that night at the ball, any more than there was a chance for doubt of that lively little lady's ident.i.ty. He sought her at the first, and hung by her side through many dances, and promenaded her in the garden walks where j.a.panese lanterns glimmered dimly in the soft September night, with all the close attention of a farrier cooling a valuable horse.

Perhaps it was punishment--or meant to be--for the insubordination of Frances Landcraft in speaking to the outlawed Alan Macdonald on last beef day. If so, it was systematically and faithfully administered.

Nola was dressed like a cowgirl. Not that there were any cowgirls in that part of the country, or anywhere else, who dressed that way, except at the Pioneer Week celebration at Cheyenne, and in the romantic dramas of the West. But she was so attired, perhaps for the advantage the short skirt gave her handsome ankles--and something in silk stockings which approached them in tapering grace.

She was improving her hour, whether out of exuberant mischief or in deadly earnest the ladies from the post were puzzled to understand, and if headway toward the already pledged heart of Major King was any indication of it, her star was indeed ascendant.

Frances Landcraft appeared at the ball as an Arabian lady, meaning in her own interpretation of the masking to stand as a representation of the "Thou," who is endearingly and importantly capitalized in the verses of the ancient singer made famous by Irish-English Fitzgerald.

Her disguise was sufficient, only that her hair was so richly a.s.sertive. There was not any like it in the cattle country; very little like it anywhere. It was a telltale, precious possession, and Major King never could have made good a plea of hidden ident.i.ty against it in this world.

Frances had consolation enough for his alienation and absence from her side if numbers could compensate for the withdrawal of the fealty of one. She distributed her favors with such judicial fairness that the tongue of gossip could not find a breach. At least until the tall Scotsman appeared, with his defiant red hair and a feather in his bonnet, his plaid fastened across his shoulder with a golden clasp.

n.o.body knew when he arrived, or whence. He spoke to none as he walked in grave stateliness among the merry groups, acknowledging bold challenges and gay banterings only with a bow. The ladies from the post had their guesses as to who he might be, and laid cunning little traps to provoke him into betrayal through his voice. As cunningly he evaded

them, with unsmiling courtesy, his steady gray eyes only seeming to laugh at them behind his green mask.

Frances had finished a dance with a Robin Hood--the slender one in billiard-cloth green--there being no fewer than four of them, variously rounded, diversely clad, when the Scot approached her where she stood with her gallant near the musicians' brake of palms.

A flask of wine, a book of verse--and Thou Beside me singing in the wilderness--

said the tall Highlandman, bending over her shoulder, his words low in her ear. "Only I could be happy without the wine," he added, as she faced him in quick surprise.

"Your penetration deserves a reward--you are the first to guess it,"