The Rustler of Wind River Part 42

They buried Saul Chadron next day in a corner of the garden by the river. And there was the benediction of tender autumn sunshine over the place where they laid him down, away from the turmoil of his life, and the tangle of injustices that he left behind.

But there was none to come forward and speak for the body of Mark Thorn. The cowboys hid him in the sage at the foot of a b.u.t.te, as men go silently and shadow-like to bury away a shame.

There seemed to be a heart-soreness over the ranchhouse by the river as night fell upon it again. Saul Chadron had been a great and n.o.ble man to some who wept in its silent rooms as the gloaming deepened into darkness over the garden, where the last leaves of autumn were tugging at their anchorage to sail away. Even Frances Landcraft in her vigil beside Macdonald's cot felt pity for Chadron's fall. She regretted, at least, that he had not gone out of life more worthily.

Colonel Landcraft had gone up the river to carry a new message to the homesteaders whose houses lay in ashes. He had ridden to tell them that they could build in security and live in peace. The surgeon had returned to the post, but was coming again tomorrow. Behind him he had left the happy a.s.surance that Macdonald would live.

Macdonald himself had added his own brave word to bear out the doctor's prediction, as far as Frances would permit him to speak. That was not above ten words, whispered into her ear, inclined low to hear.

When he attempted to go beyond that, soft warm fingers made a latch upon his lips.

Mrs. Chadron came down a little after dark, and whispered at the door.

Macdonald was sleeping, and Frances went softly to tell her.

"Nola's askin' for you," Mrs. Chadron told her, "she's all heartbroke and moanin' in her bed. If you'll go to her, and comfort her a little, honey, I'll take as good care of him as if he was my own."

Frances was touched by the appeal for sympathy. She could picture Nola, little fashioned by nature or her life's experiences to bear grief, shuddering and sobbing alone in the dark, and her heart went out to her in all its generosity and large forgivingness.

Nola's room was dark for all except the night sky at her window.

Frances stood a moment in her door, listening, believing from the silence that she must have gone to sleep.

"Nola," she whispered, softly.

A little shivering sob was the answer. Frances went in, and closed the door. Nola was lying face downward on her pillow, like a child, and Frances found on putting out her comforting hand that the fickle little lady's bolster was wet with tears. She sat on the bedside and tried gently to turn Nola's face toward her. That brought on a storm of tears and moanings, and agonized burrowing of her face into the pillow.

"Oh, I feel so mean and wicked!" she cried. "If I hadn't been so deceitful and treacherous and--and--and everything, maybe all this sorrow wouldn't have come to us!"

Frances said nothing. She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying under Nola's cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let the tears of penitence purge the sufferer's soul in their world-old way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be denied.

Afterwards she sat up in bed, and brushed her hair back from her throbbing forehead with her palms.

"Oh, it aches and aches--_so!_" she said.

"I'll bind a cold towel around it, dear; that always used to ease it, you remember?"

"Not my head, Frances--my heart, my heart!"

It was better so, Frances understood. Penitence that brings only a headache is like plating over bra.s.s; it cannot long conceal the baseness of the thing that lies beneath.

"Time is the only remedy for that, Nola," she said, her own words slow and sad.

"Do you think I've sinned past forgiveness because I--because--I love him?" Nola's voice trembled with earnestness.

"He is free, to love and be loved as it may fall, Nola. I told you he was mine, but I thought then that I was claiming him from death. He will live. He never has asked me to marry him; maybe he never will.

When he recovers, he may turn to you--who can tell?"

"No, it's only you that he thinks of, Frances. When I was watching by him he opened his eyes, and you should have seen the look in them when he saw me instead of you. He struggled to sit up and look for you, and he called your name, sharp and frightened, as if he thought somebody had taken you away from him forever."

Frances did not need that a.s.surance to quiet any fear of his loyalty.

She had spoken the truth, only because it was the truth, but not to give Nola hope. For hope she knew there was not any, nor any love, to come to Nola out of that man's heart.

"We'll not talk of it," Frances said.

"I must, I can't let anything stand between us, Frances. If I'd been fair, all the way through--but I wasn't. I wasn't fair about Major King, and I wasn't fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me!

He'd never love me, never in a million years!"

Frances said nothing. But she was beginning to doubt the sincerity of Nola's repentance. There, under the shadow of her bereavement, she could think of nothing but the hopelessness of love.

"But I didn't want you to come up just to pet me and be good to me, Frances--I wanted to give you something."

Nola felt under her pillow, and groped for Frances' hand, in which she placed a soft something with a stub of a feather in it.

"I have no right to keep it," said Nola. "Do you know what it is?"

"Yes, I know."

Much of the softness which Frances had for the highland bonnet was in her voice as she replied, and the little bonnet itself was being nestled against her cheek, as a mother cuddles a baby's hand.

"The best that's in me goes out to that man," said Nola solemnly--and truthfully, Frances knew--"but I wouldn't take him from you now, Frances, even if I could. I don't want to care for him, I don't want to think of him. I just want to think of poor father lying out there under the ground."

"It's best for you to think of him."

"Only a day ago he was alive and warm, like you and me, and now he's dead! Mother never will want to leave this place again now, and I don't feel like I want to either. I just want to lie down and die--oh, I just want to die!"

Pity for herself brought Nola's tears gushing again, and her choking sobs into her throat. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e from her lamentations; there seemed to be only sorrow for her in every theme. Frances held her shivering slim body in her supporting arm, and Nola's face bent down upon her shoulder. It seemed that her renunciation was complete, her regeneration undeniable. But Frances knew that a great flood of tears was required to put out the fire of pa.s.sion in a woman's heart.

One spark, one little spark, might live through the deluge to spring into the heat of the past under the breath of memory.

Again the heaving breast grew calm, and the tear-wet face was lifted to shake back the fallen hair.

"This has emptied everything out for me," Nola sighed. "I'm going to be serious in everything, with everybody, after this. Do you suppose Mrs. Mathews would let me help her over at the mission--if I went to her meek and humble and asked her?"

"If she saw that it would help _you_, she would, Nola."

"Just think how lonesome it will be here when the post's abandoned and everybody but the Indians gone! You'll be away--maybe long before that--and I'll not see anybody but Indians and cowboys from year's beginning to year's end. Oh, it will be so dreary and lonesome here!"

"There's work up the river in the homesteaders' settlement, Nola; there's suffering to be relieved, and bereaved hearts to be comforted.

There's your work, it seems to me, for you and those nearest to you are to blame for the desolation of those poor homes, excuse it as charitably as we may."

Frances felt a shudder run through the girl's body as her arm clasped the pliant waist.

"Why, Frances! You can't mean that! They're terrible--just think what they've done--oh, the underhanded thieves! By the law of the range it's my fight now, instead of my work to help them!"

"The law of the range isn't the law any longer here, Nola, and it never will be again. Alan Macdonald has done the work that he put his lone hand to. You have no quarrel with anybody, child, no feud to carry on to a b.l.o.o.d.y end. Put it out of your mind. If you are sincere in your heart, and truly penitent, you can prove it best by beginning to do good in the place where your house has done a terrible, sad wrong."

"They started it!" said Nola, vindictively, the lifelong hatred for those who encroached upon the range so deep in her breast, it seemed, that the soil of her life must come away on its roots.

"There's no use talking to you about it, then," said Frances, coldly.

Nola seemed hurt by her tone. She began to cry again, and plead her cause in moaning, broken words. "It's our country, we were here first--father always said that!"