PAID
Colonel Landcraft stood before Chadron in his worn regimentals, his
old campaign hat turned back from his forehead as if he had been
riding in the face of a wind. Macdonald, looking up at Frances from
his couch, spoke to her with his eyes. There was satisfaction in them,
a triumphant glow. She moved a step toward the door, and the colonel,
seeing her there, rushed to her and clasped her against his dusty
breast.
"Standing armed against you in your own house, before your own wife
and daughter!" said he, turning like the old tiger that he was upon
Chadron again. "And in the presence of an officer of the United States
Army--my daughter, armed to protect herself! By heaven, sir! you've
disgraced the uniform you wear!"
Major King, scowling darkly, dropped his hand in suggestive gesture to
his sword. Colonel Landcraft, his slight, bony old frame drawn up to
its utmost inch, marched to him, fire in his eye.
"Unbuckle that sword! You're not fit to wear it," said he.
Chadron had drawn away from the door of Macdonald's room a little, and
stood apart from Major King with his wife and daughter. The cattleman
had attempted no defense, had said no word. In the coming of Colonel
Landcraft, full of authority, strong and certain of hand, Chadron
appeared to know that his world was beginning to tumble about his
ears.
Now he stepped forward to interpose in behalf of his tool and
co-conspirator, in one last big bluff. Major King fell back a stride
before the charge of the infuriated old colonel, which seemed to have
a threat of personal violence in it, the color sinking out of his
face, his hand still on his sword.
"What authority have you got to come into my house givin' orders?"
Chadron wanted to know. "Maybe your bluffin' goes with some people,
but it don't go with me. You git to hell out of here!"
"In your place and time I'll talk to you, you sneaking hound!" Colonel
Landcraft answered, throwing Chadron one blasting look. "Take off that
sword, surrender those arms! You are under arrest." This to Major
King, who stood scowling, watching the colonel as if to ward an
attack.
"By whose authority do you make this demand?" questioned Major King,
insolently. "I am not aware that any command--"
Colonel Landcraft turned his back upon him and strode to the open
door, through which the dismounted troopers could be seen standing
back a respectful distance in the shaft of light that fell through it.
At his appearance there, at the sight of that old battered hat and
familiar uniform, the men lifted a cheer. Little tyrant that he was,
hard-handed and exacting, they knew him for a soldier and a man. They
knew, too, that their old colonel had not been given a square deal in
that business, and they were glad to see him back.
The colonel acknowledged the greeting with a salute, his old head held
prouder at that moment than he ever had carried it in his life.
"Sergeant Snow!" he called.
The sergeant hurried forward, stepped out into the light, came up at
salute with the alacrity of a man who found pleasure in the service to
be demanded of him.
"Bring a detail of six men into this room, disarm Major King, and
place him under guard."
The colonel wheeled again to face Chadron and King.
"I am not under the obligation of explaining my authority to enter
this house to any man," said he, "but for your satisfaction, madam,
and in deference to you, Miss Chadron, I will tell you that I was
recalled by the department on my way to Washington and sent back to
resume command of Fort Shakie."
Chadron was biting his mustache like an angry horse mouthing the bit.
In the background a captain and two lieutenants, who had arrived with
Chadron and King, stood doubtful, it seemed, of their part in that
last act of the cattleman's rough melodrama.
Frances had returned to Macdonald's side, fearful that the excitement
might bring on a hemorrhage in his wound. She stood soothing him with
low, soft, and unnecessary words, unconscious of their tenderness,
perhaps, in the stress of her anxiety. But that they were appreciated
was evident in the slow-stealing smile that came over his worn, rugged
face like a breaking sun.
Major King surrendered his arms to the sergeant with a petulant, lofty
shrug of his shoulders.
"I'm not through with you yet, you old cuss!" said Chadron. "I never
started out to git a man but what I got him, and I'll git you.
I'll--"
Chadron's voice caught in his throat. He stood there looking toward
the outside door, drawing his breath like a man suffocating.
Stealthily his hand moved toward his revolver, while his wife and
daughter, even Frances, struck by a thrill of some undefined terror,
leaned and looked as Chadron was looking, toward the open door.
A tall, gaunt, dark shaggy man was standing there, an old flapping hat
drooping over his scowling eyes. He was a man with a great branching
mustache, and the under lid of one eye was drawn down upon his cheek
in a little point, as if caught by a surgical hook and held ready for
the knife; a man who bent forward from the middle, as if from long
habit of skulking under cover of low-growing shrubs; an evil man,
whose foul soul cried of bloody deeds through every feature of his
leering face.
"Oh, that man! that man!" cried Nola, in fearful, wild scream.
Mrs. Chadron clasped her in her arms and turned her defiant face
toward the man in the door. He was standing just as he had stood when
they first saw him, silent, still; as grim as the shadow of Saul
Chadron's sins.
The soldiers who stood around Major King looked on with puzzled eyes;
Colonel Landcraft frowned. Macdonald from his cot could not see the
door, but he felt the sharp striking of those charged seconds. Chadron
moved to one side a little, his fixed eyes on the man in the door, his
hand nearer his revolver now; so near that his fingers touched it, and
now it was in his hand with a sudden bright flash into the light.
Two shots in that quiet room, one following the other so closely that
they seemed but a divided one; two shots, delivered so quickly after
Nola's awful scream that no man could whip up his shocked nerves to
obedience fast enough to interpose. Saul Chadron pitched forward, his
hands clutching, his arms outspread, and fell dead, his face groveling
upon the floor. Outside, the soldiers lifted Mark Thorn, a bullet
through his heart.