"I BEAT HIM TO IT"
The last dash of that long ride was only a whirlwind of emotions to
Frances. It was a red streak. She did not know what became of the boy;
she left him there as she lashed her horse past him on the last
desperate stretch.
The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just
mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped
for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off,
a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald's
men, their prisoners under guard between two long-strung lines of
horsemen, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road
made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a
man on horseback.
When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry
from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen
her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to
him was, Tom Lassiter and those who rode with him at the head of the
column pressing around.
The question and mystification in Macdonald's face at her coming
cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in
her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night
straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another
woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been
marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like
one man to another in a pass where words alone would be weak and
lame.
"I was looking for Chadron to come with help and attempt a rescue, and
I was moving to forestall him, but we were late getting under way.
They"--waving his hand toward the prisoners--"held out until an hour
ago."
"You must think, and think fast!" she said. "They're almost here!"
"Yes. I'm going ahead to meet them, and offer to turn these prisoners
over to Major King. They'll have no excuse for firing on us then."
"No, no! some other way--think of some other way!"
He looked gravely into her anxious, pleading eyes. "Why, no matter,
Frances. If they've come here to do that, they'll do it, but this way
they'll have to do it in the open, not by a trick."
"I'll go with you," she said.
"I think perhaps--"
"I'll go!"
Macdonald turned to Lassiter in a few hurried words. She pressed to
his side as the two rode away alone to meet the troops, repeating as
if she had been denied:
"I'll go!"
There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack
of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face.
"What's up, Macdonald--where're you off to?" he inquired.
Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He
introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who
had arrived at the homesteaders' camp the evening past.
"So they got troops, did they?" the newspaper man said, riding forward
keenly. "Yes, they told me down in Cheyenne they'd put that trick
through. Here they come!"
Macdonald spurred ahead, holding up his right hand in the Indian sign
of peace. Major King was riding with Chadron at the head of the
vanguard. They drew rein suddenly at sight of what appeared to be such
a formidable force at Macdonald's back, for at that distance, and with
the dimness of the scattering mist, it appeared as if several hundred
horsemen were approaching.
Distrustful of Chadron, fearing that he might induce Major King to
shoot Macdonald down as he sat there making overtures of peace,
Frances rode forward and joined him, the correspondent coming jolting
after her in his horn-riding way. After a brief parley among
themselves Chadron and King, together with three or four officers,
rode forward. One remained behind, and halted the column as it came
around the brushwood screen at the turn of the road.
Major King greeted Frances as he rode up, scowling in high dignity.
Chadron could not cover his surprise so well as Major King at seeing
her there, her horse in a sweat, her habit torn where the brambles had
snatched at her in her hard ride to get ahead of the troops. He gave
her a cold good-morning, and sat in the attitude of a man pricking up
his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force
ahead.
The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald;
about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry
had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if
waiting for Macdonald to begin. He looked the homesteader captain over
with severe eyes.
"Well, sir?" said he.
"We were starting for Meander, Major King, to deliver to the sheriff
fifty men whom we have taken in the commission of murder and arson,"
Macdonald replied, with dignity. "Up to a few minutes ago we had no
information that martial law had superseded the civil in this troubled
country, but since that is the case, we will gladly turn our prisoners
over to you, with the earnest request that they be held, collectively
and individually, to answer for the crimes they have committed here."
"Them's my men, King--they've got 'em there!" said Chadron, boiling
over the brim.
"This expedition has come to the relief of certain men, attacked and
surrounded in the discharge of their duty by a band of cattle thieves
of which you are the acknowledged head," replied Major King.
"Then you have come on a mistaken errand, sir," Macdonald told him.
"I have come into this lawless country to restore order and insure the
lives and safety of property of the people to whom it belongs."
"The evidence of these hired raiders' crimes lies all around you,
Major King," Macdonald said. "These men swept in here in the employ of
the cattle interests, burned these poor homes, and murdered such of
the inhabitants as were unable to fly to safety in the hills ahead of
them. We are appealing to the law; the cattlemen never have done
that."
"Say, Mr. Soldier, let me tell you something"--the newspaper
correspondent, to whom one man's dignity was as much as another's,
kicked his horse forward--"these raiders that bloody-handed Chadron
sent in here have murdered children and women, do you know that?"
"Who in the hell are you?" Chadron demanded, bristling with rage,
whirling his horse to face him.
"This is Chadron," Macdonald said, a little flash of humor in his eyes
over Chadron's hearing the truth about himself from an unexpected
source.
"Well, I'm glad I've run into you, Chadron; I've got a little list of
questions to ask you," the correspondent told him, far from being
either impressed or cowed. "Neel is my name, of the _Chicago Tribune_,
I've--"
"You'd just as well keep your questions for another day--you'll send
nothing out of here!" said Major King, sharply.
Neel looked across his nose at King with triumphant leer.
"I've sent out something, Mr. Soldier-man," said he; "it was on the
wire by midnight last night, rushed to Meander by courier, and it's
all over the country this morning. It's a story that'll give the other
side of this situation up here to the war department, and it'll make
this whole nation climb up on its hind legs and howl. Murder? Huh,
murder's no name for it!"
Chadron was growling something below his breath into King's ear.
"Forty-three men and boys--look at them, there they are--rounded up
fifty of the cutthroats the Drovers' Association rushed up here from
Cheyenne on a special train to wipe the homesteaders out," Neel
continued, rising to considerable heat in the partisanship of his new
light. "Five dollars a day was the hire of that gang, and five dollars
bonus for every man, woman, or baby that they killed! Yes, I've got
signed statements from them, Chadron, and I'd like to know what you've
got to say, if anything?"
"Disarm that rabble," said Major King, speaking to a subordinate
officer, "and take charge of the men they have been holding."
"Sir, I protest--" Macdonald began.
"I have no words to waste on you!" Major King cut him off shortly.
"I'd play a slow hand on that line, King, and a careful one, if I were
you," advised Neel. "If you take these men's guns away from them
they'll be at the mercy of Chadron's brigands. I tell you, man, I know
the situation in this country!"
"Thank you," said King, in cold hauteur.
Chadron's eyes were lighting with the glitter of revenge. He sat
grinding his bridle-reins in his gloved hand, as if he had the bones
of the nesters in his palm at last.
"You will proceed, with the rescued party under guard, to Meander,"
continued Major King to his officer, speaking as if he had plans for
his own employment aside from the expedition. "There, Mr. Chadron will
furnish transportation to return them whence they came."
"I'll furnish--" began Chadron, in amazement at this unexpected turn.
"Transportation, sir," completed Major King, in his cold way.
"These men should be held to the civil authorities for trial in this
county, and not set free," Macdonald protested, indignant over the
order.
Major King ignored him. He was still looking at Chadron, who was
almost choking on his rage.
"Hell! Do you mean to tell me the whole damn thing's goin' to fizzle
out this way, King? I want something done, I tell you--I want
something done! I didn't bring you up here--"
"Certainly not, sir!" snapped King.
"My orders to you--" Chadron flared.
"It happens that I am not marching under your orders at--"
"The hell you ain't!" Chadron exploded.
"It's an outrage on humanity to turn those scoundrels loose, Major
King!" Neel said. "Why, I've got signed statements, I tell you--"
"Remove this man to the rear!" Major King addressed a lieutenant, who
communicated the order to the next lowest in rank immediately at hand,
who passed it on to two troopers, who came forward briskly and rode
the protesting correspondent off between them.
Other troopers were collecting the arms of the homesteaders, a
proceeding which Macdonald witnessed with a sick heart. Frances,
sitting her horse in silence through all that had passed, gave him
what comfort and hope she could express with her eyes.
"Detail a patrol of twenty men," Major King continued his instructions
to his officer, "to keep the roads and disarm all individuals and
bands encountered."
"That don't apply to my men!" declared Chadron, positively. In his
face there was a dark threat of disaster for Major King's future hopes
of advancement.
"It applies to everybody as they come," said King. "Troops have come
in here to restore order, and order will be restored."
Chadron was gaping in amazement. That feeling in him seemed to smother
every other, even his hot rage against King for this sudden shifting
of their plans and complete overthrow of the cattlemen's expectations
of the troops. The one little comfort that he was to get out of the
expedition was that of seeing his raiders taken out of Macdonald's
hands and marched off to be set free.
Macdonald felt that he understood the change in King. The major had
come there full of the intention of doing Chadron's will; he had not a
doubt of that. But murder, even with the faint color of excuse that
they would have contrived to give it, could not be done in the eyes of
such a witness as Frances Landcraft. Subserviency, a bending of
dignity even, could not be stooped to before one who had been schooled
to hold a soldier's honor his most precious endowment.
Major King had shown a hand of half-fairness in treating both sides
alike. That much was to his credit, at the worst. But he had not done
it because he was a high-souled and honorable man. His eyes betrayed
him in that, no matter how stern he tried to make them. The coming of
that fair outrider in the night had turned aside a great tragedy, and
saved Major King partly to himself, at least, and perhaps wholly to
his career.
Macdonald tried to tell her in one long and earnest look all this. She
nodded, seeming to understand.
"You've double-crossed me, King," Chadron accused, in the flat voice
of a man throwing down his hand. "I brought you up here to throw these
nesters off of our land."
"The civil courts must decide the ownership of that," returned King,
sourly. "Disarm that man!" He indicated Macdonald, and turned his
horse as if to ride back and join his command.
The lieutenant appeared to feel that it would be no lowering of his
dignity to touch the weapons of a man such as Macdonald's bearing that
morning had shown him to be. He approached with a smile half
apologetic. Chadron was sitting by on his horse watching the
proceeding keenly.
"Pardon me," said the officer, reaching out to receive Macdonald's
guns.
A swift change swept over Macdonald's face, a flush dyeing it to his
ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question,
the young officer's hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his
hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle
of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten
feet away, slung a revolver from his side and fired.
Macdonald rocked in his saddle as Frances leaped to the ground and ran
to his side. He wilted forward, his hat falling, and crumpled into her
arms. The lieutenant relieved her of her bloody burden, and eased
Macdonald to the ground.
Major King came riding back. At his sharp command troopers surrounded
Chadron, who sat with his weapon still poised, like one gazing at the
mark at which he had fired, the smoke of his shot around him.
"In a second he'd 'a' got me! but I beat him to it, by God! I beat him
to it!" he said.
Macdonald's belt had slipped free of his body. With its burden of
cartridges and its two long pistols it lay at Frances' feet. She
stooped, a little sound in her throat between a sob and a cry, jerked
one of the guns out, wheeled upon Chadron and fired. The lieutenant
struck up her arm in time to save the cattleman's life. The blow sent
the pistol whirling out of her hand.
"They will go off that way, sometimes," said the young officer, with
apology in his soft voice.
The soldiers closed around Chadron and hurried him away. A moment
Major King sat looking at Macdonald, whose blood was wasting in the
roadside dust from a wound in his chest. Then he flashed a look into
Frances' face that had a sneer of triumph in it, wheeled his horse and
galloped away.
In a moment the lieutenant was summoned, leaving Frances alone between
the two forces with Macdonald. She did not know whether he was dead.
She dropped to her knees in the dust and began to tear frantically at
his shirt to come to the wound. Tom Lassiter came hurrying up with
others, denouncing the treacherous shot, swearing vengeance on the
cowardly head that had conceived so murderous a thing.
Lassiter said that he was not dead, and set to work to stem the blood.
It seemed to Frances that the world had fallen away from her, leaving
her alone. She stood aside a little, her chin up in her old imperious
way, her eyes on the far hills where the tender sunlight was just
striking among the white-limbed aspen trees. But her heart was bent
down to the darkness of despair.
She asked no questions of the men who were working so earnestly after
their crude way to check that precious stream; she stood in the
activity of passing troopers and escorted raiders insensible of any
movement or sound in all the world around her. Only when Tom Lassiter
stood from his ministrations and looked at her with understanding in
his old weary eyes she turned her face back again, slowly resolute, to
see if he had died.
Her throat was dry. It took an effort to bring a sound from it, and
then it was strained and wavering.
"Is he--dead?"
"No, miss, he ain't dead," Tom answered. But there was such a shadow
of sorrow and pain in his eyes that tears gushed into her own.
"Will--will--"
Tom shook his head. "The Lord that give him alone can answer that," he
said, a feeling sadness in his voice.
The troops had moved on, save the detail singled for police duty.
These were tightening girths and trimming for the road again a little
way from the spot where Macdonald lay. The lieutenant returned
hastily.
"Miss Landcraft, I am ordered to convey you to Alamito Ranch--under
guard," said he.
Banjo Gibson, held to be harmless and insignificant by Major King, had
been set free. Now he came up, leading his horse, shocked to the
deepest fibers of his sensitive soul by the cowardly deed that Saul
Chadron had done.
"It went clean through him!" he said, rising from his inspection of
Macdonald's wound. And then, moved by the pain in Frances' tearless
eyes, he enlarged upon the advantages of that from a surgical view.
"The beauty of a hole in a man's chest like that is that it lets the
pizen dreen off," he told her. "It wouldn't surprise me none to see
Mac up and around inside of a couple of weeks, for he's as hard as old
hick'ry."
"Well, I'm not going to Alamito Ranch and leave him out here to die of
neglect, orders or no orders!" said she to the lieutenant.
The young officer's face colored; he plucked at his new mustache in
embarrassment. Perhaps the prospect of carrying a handsome and
dignified young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was
not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a
slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders
were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and
polite phrasing.
She scorned him and his veneration for orders, and turned from him
coldly.
"Is there no doctor with your detachment?" she asked.
"He has gone on with the main body, Miss Landcraft. They have several
wounded."
"Wounded murderers and burners of homes! Well, I'm not going to
Alamito Ranch with you, sir, unless you can contrive an ambulance of
some sort and take this gentleman too."
The officer brightened. He believed it could be arranged. Inside of an
hour he had Tom Lassiter around with a team and spring wagon, in which
the homesteaders laid Macdonald tenderly upon a bed of hay.
Banjo waited until they were ready to begin their slow march to the
ranch, when he led his little horse forward.
"I'll go on to the agency after the doctor and send him over to
Alamito as quick as he can go," he said. "And I'll see if Mother
Mathews can go over, too. She's worth four doctors when it comes to
keep the pizen from spreadin' in a wound."
Frances gave him her benediction with her eyes, and farewell with a
warm handclasp, and Banjo's beribboned horse frisked off on its long
trip, quite refreshed from the labors of the past night.
Frances was carrying Macdonald's cartridge belt and revolvers, the
confiscation of which had been overlooked by Major King in the
excitement of the shooting. The young lieutenant hadn't the heart to
take the weapons from her. Orders had been carried out; Macdonald had
been disarmed. He let it go at that.
Frances rode in the wagon with Macdonald, a canteen of water slung
over her shoulders. Now and then she moistened his lips with a little
of it, and bathed his eyes, closed in pathetic weariness. He was
unconscious still from the blow of Saul Chadron's big bullet. As she
ministered to him she felt that he would open his eyes on this world's
pains and cruel injustices nevermore.
And why had Major King ordered her, virtually under arrest, to Alamito
Ranch, instead of sending her in disgrace to the post? Was it because
he feared that she would communicate with her father from the post,
and discover to him the treacherous compact between Chadron and King,
or merely to take a mean revenge upon her by humiliating her in Nola
Chadron's eyes?
He had taken the newspaper correspondent with him, and certainly would
see that no more of the truth was sent out by him from that
flame-swept country for several days. With her at the ranch, far from
telegraphic communication with the world, nothing could go out from
her that would enlighten the department on the deception that the
cattlemen had practiced to draw the government into the conflict on
their side. In the meantime, the Drovers' Association would be at
work, spreading money with free hand, corrupting evidence with the old
dyes of falsehood.
Major King had seen his promised reward withdrawn through her
intervention, and had made a play of being fair to both sides in the
controversy, except that he kept one hand on Chadron's shoulder, so to
speak, in making martyrs of those bloody men whom he had sent there to
burn and kill. They were to be shipped safely back to their place,
where they would disperse, and walk free of all prosecution
afterwards. For that one service to the cattlemen Major King could
scarcely hope to win his coveted reward.
She believed that Alan Macdonald would die. It seemed that the fever
which would consume his feeble hope of life was already kindling on
his lips. But she had no tears to pour out over him now. Only a great
hardness in her heart against Saul Chadron, and a wild desire to lift
her hand and strike him low.
Whether Major King would make her attempt against Chadron's life, or
her interference with his military expedition his excuse for placing
her under guard, remained for the future to develop. She turned these
things in her mind as they proceeded along the white river road toward
the ranch.
It came noontime, and decline of sun; the shadow of the mountains
reached down into the valley, the mist came purple again over the
foothills, the fire of sunset upon the clouds. Alan Macdonald still
lived, his strong harsh face turned to the fading skies, his tired
eyelids closed upon his dreams.