The Rustler of Wind River Part 3

"No, it isn't a church subscription, Miss Landcraft, it's for a cemetery," said he.

"Oh," said she again, wondering why she did not go back to Major King, whose horse appeared restive, and in need of the spur, which the major gave him unfeelingly.

At the same time she noted that Alan Macdonald's forehead was broad and deep, for his leather-weighted hat was pushed back from it where his fair, straight hair lay thick, and that his bony chin had a little croft in it, and that his face was long, and hollowed like a student's, and that youth was in his eyes in spite of the experience which hards.h.i.+ps of unknown kind had written across his face. Not a handsome man, but a strong one in his way, whatever that way might be.

"I am indebted to you for this," said he, drawing forth his watch with a quick movement as he spoke, opening the back cover, folding the little paper carefully away in it, "and grateful beyond words."

"Good-bye, Mr. Macdonald," said she, wheeling her horse suddenly, smiling back at him as she rode away to Major King.

Alan Macdonald sat with his hat off until she was again at the major's side, when he replaced it over his fair hair with slow hand, as if he had come from some holy presence. As for Frances, her turn of defiance had driven her clouds away. She met the major smiling and radiant, a twinkling of mischief in her lively eyes.

The major was a diplomat, as all good soldiers, and some very indifferent ones, are. Whatever his dignity and gentler feelings had suffered while she was away, he covered the hurt now with a smile.

"And how fares the bandit king this morning?" he inquired.

"He seems to be in spirits," she replied.

The others were out of sight around the buildings where the carca.s.ses of beef had been prepared. n.o.body but the major knew of Frances'

little dash out of the conventional, and the knowledge that it was so was comfortable in his breast.

"And the pe-apers," said he, in melodramatic whisper, "were they the thieves' muster roll?"

"He isn't a thief," said she, with quiet dignity, "he's a gentleman.

Yes, the paper _was_ important."

"Ha! the plot deepens!" said Major King.

"It was a matter of life and death," said she, with solemn rebuke for his levity, speaking a truer word than she was aware.

CHAPTER III

THE RANCHHOUSE BY THE RIVER

Saul Chadron had built himself into that house. It was a solid and a.s.sertive thing of rude importance where it stood in the great plain, the river lying flat before it in its low banks like a gray thread through the summer green. There was a bold front to the house, and a turret with windows, standing like a lighthouse above the sea of meadows in which his thousand-numbered cattle fed.

As white as a dove it sat there among the cottonwoods at the riverside. A stream of water led into its gardens to gladden them and give them life. Years ago, when Chadron's importance was beginning to feel itself strong upon its legs, and when Nola was a little thing with light curls blowing about her blue eyes, the house had grown up under the wand of riches in that barren place.

The post at Fort Shakie had been the nearest neighbor in those days, and it remained the nearest neighbor still, with the exception of one usurper and outcast homesteader, Alan Macdonald by name, who had invaded the land over which Chadron laid his extensive claim. Fifteen miles up the river from the grand white house Macdonald had strung his barbed wire and carried in the irrigation ditch to his alfalfa field.

He had chosen the most fertile spot in the vast plain through which the river swept, and it was in the heart of Saul Chadron's domain.

After the lordly manner of the cattle "barons," as they were called in the Northwest, Chadron set his bounds by mountains and rivers.

Twenty-five hundred square miles, roughly measured, lay within his lines, the Alamito Ranch he called it--the Little Cottonwood. He had no more t.i.tle to that great sweep of land than the next man who might come along, and he paid no rental fee to nation nor state for grazing his herds upon it. But the cattle barons had so apportioned the land between themselves, and Saul Chadron, and each member of the Drovers'

a.s.sociation, had the power of their mighty organization to uphold his hand. That power was incontestable in the Northwest in its day; there was no higher law.

This Alan Macdonald was an unaccountable man, a man of education, it was said, which made him doubly dangerous in Saul Chadron's eyes. Saul himself had come up from the saddle, and he was not strong on letters, but he had seen the power of learning in lawyers' offices, and he respected it, and handled it warily, like a loaded gun.

Chadron had sent his cowboys up the river when Macdonald first came, and tried to "throw a holy scare into him," as he put it. The old formula did not work in the case of the lean, long-jawed, bony-chinned man. He was polite, but obdurate, and his quick gray eyes seemed to read to their inner process of bluff and bl.u.s.ter as through tissue paper before a lamp. When they had tried to flash their guns on him, the climax of their play, he had beaten them to it. Two of them were carried back to the big ranchhouse in blankets, with bullets through their fleshy parts--not fatal wounds, but effective.

The problem of a fighting "nester" was a new one to the cattlemen of that country. For twenty years they had kept that state under the dominion of the steer, and held its rich agricultural and mineral lands undeveloped. The herbage there, curing in the dry suns of summer as it stood on the upland plains, provided winter forage for their herds. There was no need for man to put his hand to the soil and debase himself to a peasant's level when he might live in a king's estate by roaming his herds over the untamed land.

Homesteaders who did not know the conditions drifted there on the westward-mounting wave, only to be hustled rudely away, or to pay the penalty of refusal with their lives. Reasons were not given, rights were not pleaded by the lords of many herds. They had the might to work their will; that was enough.

So it could be understood what indignation mounted in the breast of tough old Saul Chadron when a pigmy homesteader put his firm feet down on the ground and refused to move along at his command, and even fought back to maintain what he claimed to be his rights. It was an unprecedented stand, a dangerous example. But this nester had held out for more than two years against his forces, armed by some invisible strength, it seemed, guarded against ambuscades and surprises by some cunning sense which led him whole and secure about his nefarious ways.

Not alone that, but other homesteaders had come and settled near him across the river on two other big ranches which cornered there against Chadron's own. These nesters drew courage from Macdonald's example, and cunning from his counsel, and stood against the warnings, persecutions, and attempts at forceful dislodgment. The law of might did not seem to apply to them, and there was no other source equal to the dignity of the Drovers' a.s.sociation--at least none to which it cared to carry its grievances and air them.

So they cut Alan Macdonald's fences, and other homesteaders' fences, in the night and drove a thousand or two cattle across his fields, trampling the growing grain and forage into the earth; they persecuted him in a score of hara.s.sing, quick, and hidden blows. But this homesteader was not to be driven away by ordinary means. Nature seemed to lend a hand to him, he made crops in spite of the cattlemen, and was prospering. He had taken root and appeared determined to remain, and the others were taking deep root with him, and the free, wide range was coming under the menace of the fence and the lowly plow.

That was the condition of things in those fair autumn days when Prances Landcraft returned to the post. The Drovers' a.s.sociation, and especially the president of it, was being defied in that section, where probably a hundred homesteaders had settled with their families of long-backed sons and daughters. They were but a speck on the land yet, as Chadron had told the smoky stranger when he had engaged him to try his hand at throwing the "holy scare." But they spread far over the upland plain, having sought the most favored spots, and they were a blight and a pest in the eyes of the cattlemen.

Nola had flitted back to the ranchhouse, carrying Frances with her to bring down the curtain on her summer's festivities there in one last burst of joy. The event was to be a masquerade, and everybody from the post was coming, together with the few from Meander who had polish enough to float them, like new needles in a gla.s.s of water, through frontier society's depths. Some were coming from Cheyenne, also, and the big house was dressed for them, even to the bank of palms to conceal the musicians, in the polite way that society has of standing something in front of what it cannot well dispense with, yet of which it appears to be ashamed.

It was the afternoon of the festal day, and Nola sighed happily as she stood with Frances in the ballroom, surveying the perfection of every detail. Money could do things away off there in that corner of the world as well as it could do them in Omaha or elsewhere. Saul Chadron had hothouses in which even oranges and pineapples grew.

Mrs. Chadron was in the living-room, with its big fireplace and homely things, when they came chattering out of the enchanted place. She was sitting by the window which gave her a view of the dim gray road where it came over the gra.s.sy swells from Meander and the world, knitting a large blue sock.

Mrs. Chadron was a cow-woman of the unimproved school. She was a heavy feeder on solids, and she liked plenty of chili peppers in them, which combination gave her a waist and a ruddiness of face like a brewer.

But she was a good woman in her fas.h.i.+on, which was narrow, and intolerant of all things which did not wear hoofs and horns, or live and grow mighty from the proceeds of them. She never had expanded mentally to fit the large place that Saul had made for her in the world of cattle, although her struggle had been both painful and sincere.

Now she had given it up, and dismissed the troubles of high life from her fat little head, leaving Nola to stand in the door and do the honors with credit to the entire family. She had settled down to her roasts and hot condiments, her knitting and her afternoon naps, as contentedly as an old cat with a singed back under a kitchen stove.

She had no desire to go back to the winter home in Cheyenne, with its grandeur, its Chinese cook, and furniture that she was afraid to use.

There was no satisfaction in that place for Mrs. Chadron, beyond the swelling pride of owners.h.i.+p. For comfort, peace, and a mind at ease, give her the ranchhouse by the river, where she could set her hand to a dish if she wanted to, no one thinking it amiss.

"Well, I declare! if here don't come Banjo Gibson," said she, her hand on the curtain, her red face near the pane like a beacon to welcome the coming guest. There was pleasure in her voice, and antic.i.p.ation.

The blue sock slid from her lap to the floor, forgotten.

"Yes, it's Banjo," said Nola. "I wonder where he's been all summer? I haven't seen him in an age."

"Who is he?" Frances inquired, looking out at the approaching figure,

"The troubadour of the North Platte, I call him," laughed Nola; "the queerest little traveling musician in a thousand miles. He belongs back in the days of romance, when men like him went playing from castle to court--the last one of his kind."

Frances watched him with new interest as he drew up to the big gate, which was arranged with weights and levers so that a horseman could open and close it without leaving the saddle. The troubadour rode a mustang the color of a dry chili pepper, but with none of its spirit.

It came in with drooping head, the reins lying untouched on its neck, its mane and forelock platted and adorned fantastically with vari-colored ribbons. Rosettes were on the bridle, a fringe of leather thongs along the reins.

The musician himself was scarcely less remarkably than the horse. He looked at that distance--now being at the gate--to be a dry little man of middle age, with a thirsty look about his throat, which was long, with a lump in it like an elbow. He was a slender man and short, with gloves on his hands, a slight sandy mustache on his lip, and wearing a dun-colored hat tilted a little to one side, showing a waviness almost curly in his glistening black hair. He carried a violin case behind his saddle, and a banjo in a green covering slung like a carbine over his shoulder.

"He'll know where to put his horse," said Mrs. Chadron, getting up with a new interest in life, "and I'll just go and have Maggie stir him up a bite to eat and warm the coffee. He's always hungry when he comes anywhere, poor little man!"

"Can he play that battery of instruments?" Prances asked.

"Wait till you hear him," nodded Nola, a laugh in her merry eyes.

Then they fell to talking of the coming night, and of the trivial things which are so much to youth, and to watching along the road toward Meander for the expected guests from Cheyenne, who were to come up on the afternoon train.