AFOOT AND ALONE
Mark Thorn had not killed anybody since shooting the man at the plow.
There were five deaths to his credit on that contract, although none
of the fallen was on the cattlemen's list of desirables to be
removed.
Five days had passed without a tragedy, and the homesteaders were
beginning to draw breath in the open again, in the belief that
Macdonald must have driven the slayer out of the country. Nothing had
been seen or heard of Macdonald since the evening that he parted
company with Tom Lassiter, father of the murdered boy.
Macdonald, in the interval, was hard on the old villain's trail. He
had picked it up on the first day of his lone-handed hunt, and once he
had caught a glimpse of Thorn as he dodged among the red willows on
the river, but the sight had been too transitory to put in a shot. It
was evident now that Thorn knew that he was being hunted by a single
pursuer. More than that, there were indications written in the loose
earth where he passed, and in the tangled brushwood where he skulked,
that he had stopped running away and had turned to hunt the hunter.
For two days they had been circling in a constantly tightening ring,
first one leading the hunt, then the other. Trained and accustomed as
he was to life under those conditions, Thorn had not yet been able to
take even a chance shot at his clinging pursuer.
Macdonald was awake to the fact that this balance in his favor could
not be maintained long. As it was, he ascribed it more to luck than
skill on his part. This wild beast in human semblance must possess all
the wild beast's cunning; there would be a rift left open in this
straining game of hide and seek which his keen eyes would be sure to
see at no distant hour.
The afternoon of that day was worn down to the hock. Macdonald had
been creeping and stooping, running, panting, and lying concealed from
the first gleam of dawn. Whether by design on the part of Thorn, or
merely the blind leading of the hunt, Macdonald could not tell, the
contest of wits had brought them within sight of Alamito ranchhouse.
Resting a little while with his back against a ledge which insured him
from surprise, Macdonald looked out from the hills over the
wide-spanning valley, the farther shore of which was laved in a purple
mist as rich as the dye of some oriental weaving. He felt a surge of
indignant protest against the greedy injustice of that manorial
estate, the fair house glistening in the late sun among the
white-limbed cottonwoods. There Saul Chadron sat, like some distended
monster, his hands spread upon more than he could honestly use, or his
progeny after him for a thousand years, growling and snapping at all
whose steps lagged in passing, or whose weary eyes turned longingly
toward those grassy vales.
There had been frost for many nights past; the green of the summerland
had merged into a yellow-brown, now gold beneath the slanting
sunbeams. A place of friendly beauty and sequestered peace, where a
man might come to take up his young dreams, or stagger under the
oppression of his years to put them down, and rest. It seemed so, in
the light of that failing afternoon.
But the man who sat with his back against the ledge, his ears strained
to find the slightest hostile sound, his roaming eyes always coming
back with unconscious alertness and frowning investigation to the
nearer objects in the broken foreground, had tasted beneath the
illusive crust of that land, and the savor was bitter upon his lips.
He questioned what good there was to be got out of it, for him or
those for whom he had taken up the burden, for many a weary year to
come.
The gloom of the situation bore heavily upon him; he felt the
uselessness of his fight. He recalled the words of Frances Landcraft:
"There must be millions behind the cattlemen." He felt that he never
had realized the weight of millions, iniquitous millions, before that
hour. They formed a barrier which his shoulder seemed destined never
to overturn.
There he was, on that broad heath, afoot and alone, hunting, and
hunted by a slayer of men, one who stalked him as he would a wolf or a
lion for the bounty upon his head. And in the event that a lucky shot
should rid the earth of that foul thing, how much would it strengthen
his safety, and his neighbors', and fasten their weak hold upon the
land?
Little, indeed. Others could be hired out of those uncounted millions
of the cattlemen's resources to finish what Mark Thorn had begun. The
night raids upon their fields would continue, the slanders against
them would spread and grow. Colonel Landcraft believed him to be what
malicious report had named him; there was not a doubt of that. And
what Frances thought of him since that misadventure of the glove, it
was not hard to guess.
But that was not closed between them, he told himself, as he had told
himself before, times unnumbered. There was a final word to be said,
at the right time and place. The world would turn many times between
then and the Christmas holidays, when Frances was to become the bride
of another, according to the colonel's plans.
Macdonald was weary from his night vigils and stealthy prowlings by
day, and hungry for a hot meal. Since he had taken the trail of Mark
Thorn alone he had not kindled a fire. Now the food that he had
carried with him was done; he must turn back home for a fresh supply,
and a night's rest.
It did not matter much, anyway, he said, feeling the uselessness of
his life and strife in that place. It was a big and unfriendly land, a
hard and hopeless place for a man who tried to live in defiance of the
established order there. Why not leave it, with its despair and
heart-emptiness? The world was full enough of injustices elsewhere if
he cared to set his hand to right them.
But a true man did not run away under fire, nor a brave one block out
a task and then shudder and slink away, when he stood off and saw the
immensity of the thing that he had undertaken. Besides all these
considerations, which in themselves formed insuperable reasons against
retreat, there had been some big talk into the ear of Frances
Landcraft. There was no putting down what he had begun. His dream had
taken root there; it would be cruel cowardice to wrench it up.
He got up, the sun striking him on the face, from which the west wind
pressed back his hat brim as if to let the daylight see it. The dust
of his travels was on it, and the roughness of his new beard, and it
was harsh in some of its lines, and severe as an ashlar from the
craftsman's tool. But it was a man's face, with honor in it; the sun
found no weakness there, no shame concealed under the sophistries and
wiles by which men beguile the world.
Macdonald looked away across the valley, past the white ranchhouse,
beyond the slow river which came down from the northwest in toilsome
curves, whose gray shores and bars were yellow in that sunlight as the
sands of famed Pactolus. His breast heaved with the long inspiration
which flared his thin nostrils like an Arab's scenting rain; he
revived with a new vigor as the freedom of the plains met his eyes and
made them glad. That was his place, his land; its troubles were his to
bear, its peace his to glean when it should ripen. It was his
inheritance; it was his place of rest. The lure of that country had a
deep seat in his heart; he loved it for its perils and its pains. It
was like a sweetheart to bind and call him back. A man makes his own
Fortunate Isles, as that shaggy old gray poet knew so well.
For a moment Mark Thorn was forgotten as Macdonald repeated, in low
voice above his breath:
Lo! These are the isles of the watery miles
That God let down from the firmament.
Lo! Duty and Love, and a true man's trust;
Your forehead to God and your feet in the dust--
Yes, that was his country; it had taken hold of him with that grip
which no man ever has shaken his heart free from, no matter how many
seas he has placed between its mystic lure and his back-straining
soul. Its fight was his fight, and there was gladness in the thought.
His alertness as he went down the slope, and the grim purpose of his
presence in that forbidden place, did not prevent the pleading of a
softer cause, and a sweeter. That rare smile woke in his eyes and
unbent for a moment the harshness of his lips as he thought of brown
hair sweeping back from a white forehead, and a chin lifted
imperiously, as became one born to countenance only the exalted in
this life. There was something that made him breathe quicker in the
memory of her warm body held a transitory moment in his arms; the
recollection of the rose-softness of her lips. All these were waiting
in the world that he must win, claimed by another, true. But that was
immaterial, he told his heart, which leaped and exulted in the memory
of that garden path as if there was no tomorrow, and no such shadow in
man's life as doubt.
Of course, there remained the matter of the glove. A man might have
been expected to die before yielding it to another, as she had said,
speaking out of a hot heart, he knew. There was a more comfortable
thought for Alan Macdonald as he went down the long slope with the
western sun on his face; not a thought of dying for a glove, but of
living to win the hand that it had covered.
Chadron's ranchhouse was several miles to the westward of him,
although it appeared nearer by the trickery of that clear light. He
cut his course to bring himself into the public highway--a government
road, it was--that ran northward up the river, the road along which
Chadron's men had pursued him the night of the ball. He meant to
strike it some miles to the north of Chadron's homestead, for he was
not looking for any more trouble than he was carrying that day.
He proceeded swiftly, but cautiously, watching for his man. But Mark
Thorn did not appear to be abroad in that part of the country. Until
sundown Macdonald walked unchallenged, when he struck the highway a
short distance south of the point where the trail leading to Fort
Shakie branched from it.
Saul Chadron and his daughter Nola came riding out of the Fort Shakie
road, their horses in that tireless, swinging gallop which the animals
of that rare atmosphere can maintain for hours. As he rode, Chadron
swung his quirt in unison with the horse's undulations, from side to
side across its neck, like a baton. He sat as stiff and solid in his
saddle as a carved image. Nola came on neck and neck with him, on the
side of the road nearer Macdonald.
Macdonald was carrying a rifle in addition to his side arms, and he
was a dusty grim figure to come upon suddenly afoot in the high road.
Chadron pulled in his horse and brought it to a stiff-legged stop when
he saw Macdonald, who had stepped to the roadside to let them pass.
The old cattleman's high-crowned sombrero was pinched to a peak; the
wind of his galloping gait had pressed its broad brim back from his
tough old weathered face. His white mustache and little dab of pointed
beard seemed whiter against the darkness of passion which mounted to
his scowling eyes.
"What in the hell're you up to now?" he demanded, without regard for
his companion, who was accustomed, well enough, to his explosions and
expletives.
Macdonald gravely lifted his hand to his hat, his eyes meeting Nola's
for an instant, Chadron's challenge unanswered. Nola's face flared at
this respectful salutation as if she had been insulted. She jerked her
horse back a little, as if she feared that violence would follow the
invasion of her caste by this fallen and branded man, her pliant waist
weaving in graceful balance with every movement of her beast.
Macdonald lowered his eyes from her blazingly indignant face. Her
horse was slewed across the narrow road, and he considered between
waiting for them to ride on and striking into the shoulder-high sage
which grew thick at the roadside there. He thought that she was very
pretty in her fairness of hair and skin, and the lake-clear blueness
of her eyes. She was riding astride, as all the women in that country
rode, dressed in wide pantaloonish corduroys, with twinkling little
silver spurs on her heels.
"What're you prowlin' down here around my place for?" Chadron asked,
spurring his horse as he spoke, checking its forward leap with rigid
arm, which made a commotion of hoofs and a cloud of dust.
"This is a public highway, and I deny your right to question my
motives in it," Macdonald returned, calmly.
"Sneakin' around to see if you can lay hands on a horse, I suppose,"
Chadron said, leaning a little in towering menace toward the man in
the road.
Macdonald felt a hot surge of resentment rise to his eyes, so suddenly
and so strongly that it dimmed his sight. He shut his mouth hard on
the words which sprang into it, and held himself in silence until he
had command of his anger.
"I'm hunting," said he, meeting Chadron's eye with meaning look.
"On foot, and waitin' for dark!" the cattleman sneered.
"I'm going on foot because the game I'm after sticks close to the
ground. There's no need of naming that game to you--you know what it
is."
Macdonald spoke with cutting severity. Chadron's dark face reddened
under his steady eyes, and again the big rowels of his spurs slashed
his horse's sides, making it bound and trample in threatening charge.
"I don't know anything about your damn low business, but I'll tell you
this much; if I ever run onto you ag'in down this way I'll do a little
huntin' on my own accord."
"That would be squarer, and more to my liking, than hiring somebody
else to do it for you, Mr. Chadron. Ride on--I don't want to stand
here and quarrel with you."
"I'm goin' to clear you nesters out of there up the river"--Chadron
waved his hand in the direction of which he spoke--"and put a stop to
your rustlin' before another month rolls around. I've stood your
fences up there on my land as long as I'm goin' to!"
"I've never had a chance to tell you before, Mr. Chadron"--Macdonald
spoke as respectfully as his deep detestation of the cattleman would
allow--"but if you've got any other charge to bring against me except
that of homesteading, bring it in a court. I'm ready to face you on
it, any day."
"I carry my court right here with me," said Chadron, patting his
revolver.
"I deny its jurisdiction," Macdonald returned, drawing himself up, a
flash of defiance in his clear eyes.
Chadron jerked his head in expression of lofty disdain.
"Go on! Git out of my sight!" he ordered.
"The road is open to you," Macdonald replied.
"I'm not goin' to turn my back on you till you're out of sight!"
Chadron bent his great owlish brows in a scowl, laid his hand on his
revolver and whirled his horse in the direction that Macdonald was
facing.
Macdonald did not answer. He turned from Chadron, something in his act
of going that told the cattleman he was above so mean suspicion on his
part. Nola shifted her horse to let him pass, her elbows tight at her
sides, scorn in her lively eyes.
Again Macdonald's hand went to his hat in respectful salute, and again
he saw that flash of anger spread in the young woman's cheeks. Her
fury blazed in her eyes as she looked at him a moment, and a dull
color mounted in his own face as he beheld her foolish and unjustified
pride.
Macdonald would have passed her then, but she spurred her horse upon
him with sudden-breaking temper, forcing him to spring back quickly to
the roadside to escape being trampled. Before he could collect himself
in his astonishment, she struck him a whistling blow with her
long-thonged quirt across the face.
"You dog!" she said, her clenched little white teeth showing in her
parted lips.
Macdonald caught the bridle and pushed her horse back to its haunches,
and she, in her reckless anger, struck him across the hand in sharp
quick blows. Her conduct was comparable to nothing but that of an
ill-bred child striking one whose situation, he has been told, is the
warrant of his inferiority.
The struggle was over in a few seconds, and Macdonald stood free of
the little fury, a red welt across his cheek, the back of his hand cut
until the blood oozed through the skin in heavy black drops. Chadron
had not moved a hand to interfere on either side. Only now that the
foolish display of Nola's temper was done he rocked in his saddle and
shook the empty landscape with his loud, coarse laugh.
He patted his daughter on the shoulder, like a hunter rewarding a dog.
Macdonald walked away from them, the only humiliation that he felt for
the incident being that which he suffered for her sake.
It was not so much that a woman had debased herself to the level of a
savage, although that hurt him, too, but that her blows had been the
expression of the contempt in which the lords of that country held him
and his kind. Bullets did not matter so much, for a man could give
them back as hot as they came. But there was no answer, as he could
see it in that depressing hour, for such a feudal assertion of
superiority as this.
It was to the work of breaking the hold of this hard-handed
aristocracy which had risen from the grass roots in the day of its
arrogant prosperity--a prosperity founded on usurpation of the rights
of the weak, and upheld by murder--that he had set his soul. The need
of hastening the reformation never had seemed greater to him than on
that day, or more hopeless, he admitted in his heart.
For hour by hour the work ahead of him appeared to grow greater.
Little could be expected, judging by the experiences of the past few
days, from those who suffered most. The day of extremest pressure in
their poor affairs was being hastened by the cattlemen, as Chadron's
threat had foretold. Would they when the time came to fight do so, or
harness their lean teams and drive on into the west? That was the big
question upon which the success or the failure of his work depended.
As he had come down from the hillside out of the sunshine and peace to
meet shadow and violence, so his high spirits, hopes, and intentions
seemed this bitter hour steeped in sudden gloom. In more ways than one
that evening on the white river road, Alan Macdonald felt that he was
afoot and alone.