The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 57

"Does it not strike you that you have only regarded the affair from one point of view so far?"

Breckenridge nodded. "I understand. But one feels very diffident when he knows the slight value of what he has to offer. I should always love you, whether you say yes or no. For the rest, there is a little land in the old country, and an income which I believe should be enough for two. It seems more becoming to throw myself on your charity."

"And what would Larry do without you?" asked Miss Schuyler.

The quick enthusiasm in Breckenridge's face pleased her. "Larry's work is splendidly done already," he said. "He asked nothing for himself--and got no more; but now the State is offering every man the rights he fought for.

The proclamations are out, and any citizen who wants it can take up his homestead grant. It will be something to remember that I carried his s.h.i.+eld; but Larry has no more need of an armour-bearer."

"I am older than you are."

"Ten years in wisdom, and fifty in goodness, but I scarcely fancy that more than six months separate our birthdays. Now, I know I am not expressing myself very nicely, but, you see, we can't all be eloquent, and perhaps it should count for a little when I tell you that I never made an attempt of the kind before. I am, however, most painfully anxious to convince you."

Miss Schuyler recognized it, and liked him the more for the diffidence which he wrapped in hasty speech. "Then," she said softly, "if in six months from now----"

Breckenridge swayed in his saddle; but the girl's heel was quicker, and as her horse plunged the hand he would have laid on her bridle fell to his side.

"No!" she said. "If in six months you are still in the same mind, you can come to Hastings-on-the-Hudson, and speak to me again. Then, you may find me disposed to listen; but we will go on to Fremont in the meanwhile."

Breckenridge's response was unpremeditated, but the half-broken horse, provoked by his sudden movement, rose with fore hoofs in the air, and then whirled round in a circle. Its rider laughed exultantly, swaying lithely, with the big hat still in one hand that disdained the bridle; but his face grew grave when there was quietness again, and he turned towards the girl.

"I shall be in the same mind," he said, "for ever and ever."

They rode on to Fremont, and the next day Breckenridge drove Miss Schuyler, who was going back to New York, the first stage of her journey to the depot. A month had pa.s.sed when one evening Torrance rode that way.

The prairie, lying still and silent with a flush of saffron upon its western rim, was tinged with softest green, but broad across the foreground stretched the broken, chocolate-tinted clods of the ploughing, and the man's face grew grimmer as he glanced at them. He turned and watched the long lines of crawling cattle that stretched half-way across the vast sweep of green; and Larry and his wife, who stood waiting him outside the homestead, understood his feelings. Raw soil, rent by the harrows and seamed by the seeder, and creeping bands of stock, were tokens of the downfall of the old regime. Then Torrance, drawing bridle, sat still in his saddle while Hetty and her husband stood by his stirrup.

"I promised your friend, Hetty, that I would see you before I went away,"

he said. "I left Cedar for the last time a few hours ago, and I am riding in to the railroad now. The stock you see there are mine and Allonby's, and the cars are waiting to take them to Omaha. I shall spend the years that may be left me on the Pacific slope."

Hetty's lips quivered, and it was Larry who spoke.

"Was it necessary, sir?"

Torrance smiled grimly. "Yes. The State offered me a few paltry concessions, and a little of what was all mine by right. It didn't seem a fit thing to accept their charity. Well, you have beaten us, Larry."

Grant's face flushed a little. "Only that the rest will gain more than the few will lose I could almost be sorry, sir."

Torrance swung himself down from the saddle and laid his hand on Hetty's shoulder.

"You have chosen your husband among the men who pulled us down, and nothing can be quite the same between you and me," he said. "But I am getting an old man, and may never see you again."

Hetty looked up at him with a faint trace of pride in her misty eyes.

"There was n.o.body among our friends fit to stand beside him," she said.

"If you kiss me you will shake hands with Larry."

"I can do both," and Torrance held out his hand when he turned to Grant.

"Larry, I believe now you tried to do the square thing, and there might have been less trouble between us but for Clavering. I hope you will bear me no ill will, and while we can't quite wipe out the bitterness yet, by and by we may be friends again."

"I hope so, sir," said Larry.

Torrance said nothing further, but, moving stiffly, swung himself into the saddle and slowly rode away. Hetty watched him with a curious wistfulness in her eyes until he wheeled his horse on the crest of the rise, and sat still a moment looking back on them, a lonely, dusky object silhouetted against the paling sky. Then he turned again, and sank into the shadowy prairie. Hetty clung a little more tightly to her husband's arm, and for a time they stood watching the crawling cattle and dim shapes of the stockriders slowly fade, until the last pale flicker of saffron died out and man and beast sank into the night. A little cold wind came sighing out of the emptiness and emphasized its silence.

Hetty s.h.i.+vered. "Larry," she said, "they will never come back."

Grant drew her closer to him. "It had to be, my dear," he said. "They blocked the way, and nothing can stop the people you and I--and they--belong to, moving on. Well, we will look forward and do what we can, for we must be ready to step out when our turn comes and watch the rest go by."