"THE RUSTLERS!"
"I've stood up for that man, and I've stood by him," said Banjo
Gibson, "but when a man shoots a friend of my friend he ain't no
friend of mine. I'm done with him; I won't never set a boot-heel
inside of his door ag'in."
Banjo was in Mrs. Chadron's south sitting-room, with its friendly
fireplace and homely things, including Mrs. Chadron and her apparently
interminable sock. Only now it was a gray sock, designed not for the
mighty foot of Saul, but for Chance Dalton, lying on his back in the
bunkhouse in a fever growing out of the handling that he had gone
through at Macdonald's place.
Banjo had arrived at the ranch the previous evening. He was sitting
now with his fiddle on his knee, having gone through the repertory
most favored by his hostess, with the exception of "Silver Threads."
That was an afternoon melody, Banjo maintained, and one would have
strained his friendship and shaken his respect if he had insisted upon
the musician putting bow to it in the morning hours.
"Yes," sighed Mrs. Chadron, "it was bad enough when he just shot
cowboys, but when it come to Chance we felt real grieved. Chance he
ain't much to look at, but he's worth his weight in gold on the
ranch."
"Busted his right arm all to pieces, they tell me?"
"Right here." Mrs. Chadron marked across her wrist with her knitting
needle, and shook her head in heavy sadness.
"That'll kind of spile him, won't it?"
"Well, Saul says it won't make so much difference about him not havin'
the use of his hand on that side if it don't break his nerve. A man
loses confidence in himself, Saul says, most always when he loses the
hand or arm he's slung his gun with all his life. He takes the notion
that everybody's quicker'n he is, and just kind of slinges back and
drops out of the game."
"Do you expect Saul he'll come back here with them soldiers he went
after?"
"I expect he'll more'n likely order 'em right up the river to clear
them rustlers out before he stops or anything," she replied, in high
confidence.
"The gall of them low-down brand-burners standin' up to fight a man on
his own land!" Banjo's indignation could not have been more pointed if
he had been a lord of many herds himself.
"There comes them blessed girls!" reported Mrs. Chadron from her
station near the window. Banjo crossed over to see, his fiddle held to
his bosom like an infant. Nola and Frances were nearing the gate.
"That colonel girl she's a up-setter, ain't she?" Banjo admired.
"She's as sweet as locus' blooms," Mrs. Chadron declared, unstintingly.
"But she's kind of distant; nothing friendly and warm-hearted like
your little Nola, mom."
"She's a little cool to strangers, but when she knows a body she comes
out."
Banjo nodded, drawing little whispers of melody from his fiddle-strings
by fingering them against the neck.
"I noticed when she smiles she seems to change," he said. "It's like
puttin' bow to the strings. A fiddle's a glum kind of a thing till you
wake it up; she's that way, I reckon."
"Well, git ready for dinner--or lunch, as Nola calls it--they'll be
starved by this time, ridin' all the way from the post in this chilly
wind. I'm mighty afraid we're goin' to have some weather before
long."
"Can't put it off much longer," Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship
of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the
sudden cold grew so sharp that a man's banjo strings broke in the
tense contraction. That had happened to him more than once, and it
only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like
Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He
smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his face and soap his
hair.
They passed a very pleasant afternoon at the ranchhouse, in spite of
Mrs. Chadron's uneasiness on account of their defenseless state. At
that season Chadron and his neighbors could not draw very heavily on
their scattered forces following the divided herds spread out over the
vast territory for the winter grazing.
The twenty men gathered in a hurry-call by Chadron to avenge the
defeat of Chance Dalton, who had in their turn been met and
unexpectedly repulsed by the homesteaders, as Chadron had related in
his own way to Colonel Landcraft, were lying in camp several miles up
the river. That is, all that were left of them fit for duty after the
fight. A good many of them were limping, and would limp for many a
day.
They were waiting the arrival of the troops, which they expected with
the same confidence Mrs. Chadron had held before Nola brought her an
explanation that covered the confusion of refusal.
Neither of the young women knew of the tiff between the colonel and
Chadron, for the colonel was a man who kept his family apart from his
business. Chadron had not seen fit to uncover his humiliation to his
daughter, but had told her that he was acting on the advice of Colonel
Landcraft in sending to his friends in Cheyenne for men to put down
the uprising of rustlers himself.
So there were comfortable enough relations between them all at the
ranch as the day bent to evening and the red sunset changed to gray.
Banjo played for them, as he had done that other afternoon, and sang
his sentimental songs in voice that quavered in the feeling passages.
Chadron had not left anybody to guard the house, because he knew very
well that Macdonald considered nothing beyond defense, and that he
would as quickly burn his own mother's roof above her head as he would
set torch to that home by the riverside.
"Sing us that dreamy one, Banjo," Nola requested, "the one that begins
'Come sit by my side little--' you know the one I mean."
A sentimental tenderness came into Banjo's face. He turned his head so
that he could look out of the window into the thickening landscape
beyond the corral gate, gray and mysterious and unfriendly now as a
twilight sea. Nola touched Frances' arm to prime her for the treat.
"Watch his face," she whispered, smiling behind her hand.
Banjo struck the chords of his accompaniment; the sentimental cast of
his face deepened, until it seemed that he was about to come to tears.
He sang:
Come sit by my side litt-ul dau-ling,
And lay your brown head on my breast,
Whilse the angels of twilight o-round us
Are singing the flow-ohs to rest.
Banjo must have loved many ladies in many lands, for that is the gift
and the privilege of the troubadour. Now he seemed calling up their
vanished faces out of the twilight as he sang his little song. What
feeling he threw into the chorus, what shaking of the voice, what soft
sinking away of the last notes, the whang of the banjo softened by
palm across the strings!
The chorus:
O, what can be sweet-o than dreaming
Tho dream that is on us tonight!
Pre-haps do you know litt-ul dau-ling,
Tho future lies hidded from sight.
There was a great deal more of that song, which really was not so bad,
the way Banjo sang it, for he exalted it on the best qualities that
lived in his harmless breast; not so bad that way, indeed, as it looks
in print. Frances could not see where the joke at the little
musician's expense came in, although Nola was laughing behind his
unsuspecting back as the last notes died.
Mrs. Chadron wiped her eyes. "I think it's the sweetest song that ever
was sung!" she said, and meant it, every word.
Banjo said nothing at all, but put away his instrument with reverent
hands, as if no sound was worthy to come out of it after that sweet
agony of love.
Mrs. Chadron got up, in her large, bustling, hospitable way,
sentimentally satisfied, and withal grossly hungry.
"Supper'll be about ready now, children," she said, putting her sock
away in its basket, "and while you two are primpin' I'll run down to
the bunkhouse and take some chicken broth to Chance that Maggie made
him."
"Oh, poor old Chance!" Nola pitied, "I've been sitting here enjoying
myself and forgetting all about him. I'll take it down to him,
mother--Banjo he'll come with me."
Banjo was alert on the proposal, and keen to go. He brought Nola's
coat at her mother's suggestion, for the evening had a feeling of
frost in it, and attended her to the kitchen after the chicken broth
as gallantly as if he wore a sword.
Mrs. Chadron came back from her investigations in the kitchen in a
little while to Frances, who waited alone before the happy little fire
in the chimney. She sighed as she resumed her rocking-chair by the
window, and crossed her seldom idle hands over her comfortably
inelegant front.
"It'll be some little time before supper's ready to set down to," she
announced regretfully. "Maggie's makin' stuffed peppers, and they're
kind of slow to bake. We can talk."
"Of course," Frances agreed, her mind running on the hope that had
brought her to the ranch; the hope of seeing Macdonald, and appealing
to him in pity's name for peace.
"That thievin' Macdonald's to blame for Chance, our foreman, losin'
the use of his right hand," Mrs. Chadron said, with asperity. "Did
Nola tell you about the fight they had with him?"
"Yes, she told me about it as we came."
"It looks like the devil's harnessed up with that man, he does so much
damage without ever gittin' hurt himself. He had a crowd of rustlers
up there with him when Chance went up there to trace some stock, and
they up and killed three of our cowboys. Ain't it terrible?"
"It is terrible!" Frances shuddered, withholding her opinion on which
side the terror lay, together with the blame.
"Then Saul went up there with some more of the men to burn that
Macdonald's shack and drive him off of our land, and they run into a
bunch of them rustlers that Macdonald he'd fetched over there, and two
more of our men was killed. It looks like a body's got to fight night
and day for his rights now, since them nesters begun to come in here.
Well, we was here first, and Saul says we'll be here last. But I think
it's plumb scan'lous the way them rustlers bunches together and
fights. They never was known to do it before, and they wouldn't do it
now if it wasn't for that black-hearted thief, Macdonald!"
"Did you ever see him?" Frances asked.
"No, I never did, and don't never want to!"
"I just asked you because he doesn't look like a bad man."
"They say he sneaked in here the night of Nola's dance, but I didn't
see him. Oh, what 'm I tellin' you? Course you know _that_--you danced
with him!"
"Yes," said Frances, neither sorry nor ashamed.
"But you wasn't to blame, honey," Mrs. Chadron comforted, "you didn't
know him from Adamses off ox."
Frances sat leaning forward, looking into the fire. The light of the
blaze was on her face, appealingly soft and girlishly sweet. Mrs.
Chadron laid a hand on her hair in motherly caress, moved by a
tenderness quite foreign to the vindictive creed which she had
pronounced against the nesters but a little while before.
"I'm afraid you're starved, honey," she said, in genuine solicitude,
thus expressing the nearest human sympathy out of her full-feeding
soul.
"I'm hungry, but far from starving," Frances told her, knowing that
the confession to an appetite would please her hostess better than a
gift. "When do you expect Mr. Chadron home?"
"I don't know, honey, but you don't need to worry; them rustlers can't
pass our men Saul left camped up the valley."
"I wasn't thinking of that; I'm not afraid."
Mrs. Chadron chuckled. "Did I tell you about Nola?" she asked. Then,
answering herself, before Frances could more than turn her head
inquiringly; "No, of course, I never. It was too funny for anything!"
"What was it?" Frances asked, in girlish eagerness. Mrs. Chadron's
smile was reflected in her face as she sat straight, and turned
expectantly to her hostess.
"The other evening when she and her father was comin' home from the
postoffice over at the agency they run acrosst that sneak Macdonald,
afoot in the road, guns so thick on him you couldn't count 'em. Saul
asked him what he was skulkin' around down this way for, and the
feller he was kind of sassy about it, and tried to pass Nola and go
on. He had the gall to tip his hat to her, just like she was low
enough to notice a brand-burner! Well, she give him a larrup over the
face with her whip that cut the hide! He took hold of her bridle to
shove her horse out of the way so he could run, I reckon, and she
switched him till he squirmed like a puppy-dog! I laughed till I
nearly split when Saul told me!"
Mrs. Chadron surrendered again to her keen appreciation of the humor
in that situation. Frances felt now that she understood the attitude
of the cattlemen toward the homesteaders as she never had even sensed
it before. Here was this motherly woman, naturally good at heart and
gentle, hardened and blinded by her prejudices until she could discuss
murder as a thing desired, and the extirpation of a whole community as
a just and righteous deed.
There was no feeling of softness in her breast for the manful
strivings of Alan Macdonald to make a home in that land, not so much
for himself--for it was plain that he would grace a different world to
far better advantage--but for the disinherited of the earth. To Mrs.
Chadron he was a thing apart from her species, a horrible, low, grisly
monster, to whom the earth should afford no refuge and man no
hiding-place. There was no virtue in Alan Macdonald; his fences had
killed his right to human consideration.
In a moment Mrs. Chadron was grave again. She put out her hand in that
gentle, motherly way and touched Frances' hair, smoothing it from her
forehead, pleased with the irrepressible life of it which sprung it
back after the passage of her palm like water in a vessel's wake.
"I let on to you a little while ago that I wasn't uneasy, honey," she
said, "but I ain't no hand at hidin' the truth. I am uneasy, honey,
and on pins, for I don't trust them rustlers. I'm afraid they'll hear
that Saul's gone, and come sneakin' down here and burn us out before
morning, and do worse, maybe. I don't know why I've got that feelin',
but I have, and it's heavy in me, like raw dough."
"I don't believe they'd do anything like that," Frances told her.
"Oh, you don't know 'em like we do, honey, the low-down thieves! They
ort to be hunted like wolves and shot, wherever they're found."
"Some of them have wives and children, haven't they?" Frances asked,
thinking aloud, as she sat with her chin resting in her hand.
"Oh, I suppose they litter like any other wolves," Mrs. Chadron
returned, unfeelingly.
"_Si a tu ventana llega una paloma_," sang Maggie in the kitchen, the
snapping of the oven door coming in quite harmoniously as she closed
it on the baking peppers. Mrs. Chadron sighed.
"_Tratala con cariña que es mi persona_," sounded Maggie, a degree
louder. Mrs. Chadron sat upright, with a new interest in life apart
from her uneasy forebodings about the rustlers. Maggie was in the
dining-room, spreading the cloth. The peppers were coming along.
Somebody burst into the kitchen; uncertain feet came across it; a cry
broke Maggie's song short as she jingled the silver in place on the
cloth. Banjo Gibson stumbled into the room where the low fire twinkled
in the chimney, reeling on his legs, his breath coming in groans.
Maggie was behind him, holding the door open; the light from the big
lamp on the dining-table fell on the musician, who weaved there as if
he might fall. His hat was off, blood was in his eyes and over his
face from a wound at the edge of his hair.
"Nola--Nola!" he gasped.
Mrs. Chadron, already beside him, laid hold of him now and shook him.
"Tell it, you little devil--tell it!" she screamed.
Frances, with gentler hand, drew Banjo from her.
"What's happened to Nola?" she asked.
"The rustlers!" he said, his voice falling away in horror.
"The rustlers!" Mrs. Chadron groaned, her arms lifted above her head.
She ran in wild distraction into the dining-room, now back to the
chimney to take down a rifle that hung in its case on a deer prong
over the mantel.
"Nola, Nola!" she called, running out into the garden. Her wild voice
came back from there in a moment, crying her daughter's name in
agony.
Banjo had sunk to the floor, his battered face held in his hands.
"My God! they took her!" he groaned. "The rustlers, they took her, and
I couldn't lift a hand!"
Frances beckoned to Maggie, who had followed her mistress to the
kitchen door.
"Give him water; stop the blood," she ordered sharply.
In a moment she had dashed out after Mrs. Chadron, and was running
frantically along the garden path toward the river.