The Rustler of Wind River Part 41

Chadron was facing his wife, his back to Frances as she pa.s.sed.

"Yes, it was me, and all I'm sorry for is that I didn't finish him on the spot. Here, you fellers"--to some troopers who crowded about the open door leading to the veranda--"come in here and carry out this cot."

But it wasn't their day to take orders from Chadron; none of them moved. Frances touched Nola's arm; she withdrew it and let her pa.s.s.

Macdonald, alone in the room, had lifted himself to his elbow, listening. Frances pressed him back to his pillow with one hand, reaching with the other under the cot for his revolvers. Her heart jumped with a great, glad bound, as if it had leaped from death to safety, when she touched the weapons. A cold steadiness settled over her. If Saul Chadron entered that room, she swore in her heart that she would kill him.

"Don't interfere with me, King," said Chadron, turning again to the door, "I tell you he goes, alive or dead. I can't breathe--"

"Stop where you are!" Frances rose from her groping under the cot, a revolver in her hand.

Chadron, who had laid hold of Nola to tear her from the door, jumped like a man startled out of his sleep. In the heat of his pa.s.sion he had not noticed one woman more or less.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, catching himself as his hand reached for his gun.

"Frances will take him away as soon as he's able to be moved," said Nola, pleading, fearful, her eyes great with the terror of what she saw in Frances' face.

"Yes, she'll go with him, right now!" Chadron declared. "I'll give you just ten seconds to put down that gun, or I'll come in there and take it away from you! No d.a.m.n woman--"

A loud and impatient summons sounded on the front door, drowning Chadron's words. He turned, with an oath, demanding to know who it was. Frances, still covering him with her steady hand, heard hurrying feet, the door open, and Mrs. Chadron exclaiming and calling for Saul.

The man at the door had entered, and was jangling his spurs through the hall in hasty stride. Chadron stood as if frozen in his boots, his face growing whiter than wounded, blood-drained Macdonald's on his cot of pain.

Now the sound of the newcomer's voice rose in the hall, loud and stern. But harsh as it was, and unfriendly to that house, the sound of it made Frances' heart jump, and something big and warm rise in her and sweep over her; dimming her eyes with tears.

"Where's my daughter, Chadron, you cutthroat! Where's Miss Landcraft?

If the lightest hair of her head has suffered, by G.o.d! I'll burn this house to the sills!"

CHAPTER XXII

PAID

Colonel Landcraft stood before Chadron in his worn regimentals, his old campaign hat turned back from his forehead as if he had been riding in the face of a wind. Macdonald, looking up at Frances from his couch, spoke to her with his eyes. There was satisfaction in them, a triumphant glow. She moved a step toward the door, and the colonel, seeing her there, rushed to her and clasped her against his dusty breast.

"Standing armed against you in your own house, before your own wife and daughter!" said he, turning like the old tiger that he was upon Chadron again. "And in the presence of an officer of the United States Army--my daughter, armed to protect herself! By heaven, sir! you've disgraced the uniform you wear!"

Major King, scowling darkly, dropped his hand in suggestive gesture to his sword. Colonel Landcraft, his slight, bony old frame drawn up to its utmost inch, marched to him, fire in his eye.

"Unbuckle that sword! You're not fit to wear it," said he.

Chadron had drawn away from the door of Macdonald's room a little, and stood apart from Major King with his wife and daughter. The cattleman had attempted no defense, had said no word. In the coming of Colonel Landcraft, full of authority, strong and certain of hand, Chadron appeared to know that his world was beginning to tumble about his ears.

Now he stepped forward to interpose in behalf of his tool and co-conspirator, in one last big bluff. Major King fell back a stride before the charge of the infuriated old colonel, which seemed to have a threat of personal violence in it, the color sinking out of his face, his hand still on his sword.

"What authority have you got to come into my house givin' orders?"

Chadron wanted to know. "Maybe your bluffin' goes with some people, but it don't go with me. You git to h.e.l.l out of here!"

"In your place and time I'll talk to you, you sneaking hound!" Colonel Landcraft answered, throwing Chadron one blasting look. "Take off that sword, surrender those arms! You are under arrest." This to Major King, who stood scowling, watching the colonel as if to ward an attack.

"By whose authority do you make this demand?" questioned Major King, insolently. "I am not aware that any command--"

Colonel Landcraft turned his back upon him and strode to the open door, through which the dismounted troopers could be seen standing back a respectful distance in the shaft of light that fell through it.

At his appearance there, at the sight of that old battered hat and familiar uniform, the men lifted a cheer. Little tyrant that he was, hard-handed and exacting, they knew him for a soldier and a man. They knew, too, that their old colonel had not been given a square deal in that business, and they were glad to see him back.

The colonel acknowledged the greeting with a salute, his old head held prouder at that moment than he ever had carried it in his life.

"Sergeant Snow!" he called.

The sergeant hurried forward, stepped out into the light, came up at salute with the alacrity of a man who found pleasure in the service to be demanded of him.

"Bring a detail of six men into this room, disarm Major King, and place him under guard."

The colonel wheeled again to face Chadron and King.

"I am not under the obligation of explaining my authority to enter this house to any man," said he, "but for your satisfaction, madam, and in deference to you, Miss Chadron, I will tell you that I was recalled by the department on my way to Washington and sent back to resume command of Fort Shakie."

Chadron was biting his mustache like an angry horse mouthing the bit.

In the background a captain and two lieutenants, who had arrived with Chadron and King, stood doubtful, it seemed, of their part in that last act of the cattleman's rough melodrama.

Frances had returned to Macdonald's side, fearful that the excitement might bring on a hemorrhage in his wound. She stood soothing him with low, soft, and unnecessary words, unconscious of their tenderness, perhaps, in the stress of her anxiety. But that they were appreciated was evident in the slow-stealing smile that came over his worn, rugged face like a breaking sun.

Major King surrendered his arms to the sergeant with a petulant, lofty shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm not through with you yet, you old cuss!" said Chadron. "I never started out to git a man but what I got him, and I'll git you.

I'll--"

Chadron's voice caught in his throat. He stood there looking toward the outside door, drawing his breath like a man suffocating.

Stealthily his hand moved toward his revolver, while his wife and daughter, even Frances, struck by a thrill of some undefined terror, leaned and looked as Chadron was looking, toward the open door.

A tall, gaunt, dark s.h.a.ggy man was standing there, an old flapping hat drooping over his scowling eyes. He was a man with a great branching mustache, and the under lid of one eye was drawn down upon his cheek in a little point, as if caught by a surgical hook and held ready for the knife; a man who bent forward from the middle, as if from long habit of skulking under cover of low-growing shrubs; an evil man, whose foul soul cried of b.l.o.o.d.y deeds through every feature of his leering face.

"Oh, that man! that man!" cried Nola, in fearful, wild scream.

Mrs. Chadron clasped her in her arms and turned her defiant face toward the man in the door. He was standing just as he had stood when they first saw him, silent, still; as grim as the shadow of Saul Chadron's sins.

The soldiers who stood around Major King looked on with puzzled eyes; Colonel Landcraft frowned. Macdonald from his cot could not see the door, but he felt the sharp striking of those charged seconds. Chadron moved to one side a little, his fixed eyes on the man in the door, his hand nearer his revolver now; so near that his fingers touched it, and now it was in his hand with a sudden bright flash into the light.

Two shots in that quiet room, one following the other so closely that they seemed but a divided one; two shots, delivered so quickly after Nola's awful scream that no man could whip up his shocked nerves to obedience fast enough to interpose. Saul Chadron pitched forward, his hands clutching, his arms outspread, and fell dead, his face groveling upon the floor. Outside, the soldiers lifted Mark Thorn, a bullet through his heart.

CHAPTER XXIII

TEARS IN THE NIGHT