TEARS IN THE NIGHT
They buried Saul Chadron next day in a corner of the garden by the
river. And there was the benediction of tender autumn sunshine over
the place where they laid him down, away from the turmoil of his life,
and the tangle of injustices that he left behind.
But there was none to come forward and speak for the body of Mark
Thorn. The cowboys hid him in the sage at the foot of a butte, as men
go silently and shadow-like to bury away a shame.
There seemed to be a heart-soreness over the ranchhouse by the river
as night fell upon it again. Saul Chadron had been a great and noble
man to some who wept in its silent rooms as the gloaming deepened into
darkness over the garden, where the last leaves of autumn were tugging
at their anchorage to sail away. Even Frances Landcraft in her vigil
beside Macdonald's cot felt pity for Chadron's fall. She regretted, at
least, that he had not gone out of life more worthily.
Colonel Landcraft had gone up the river to carry a new message to the
homesteaders whose houses lay in ashes. He had ridden to tell them
that they could build in security and live in peace. The surgeon had
returned to the post, but was coming again tomorrow. Behind him he had
left the happy assurance that Macdonald would live.
Macdonald himself had added his own brave word to bear out the
doctor's prediction, as far as Frances would permit him to speak. That
was not above ten words, whispered into her ear, inclined low to hear.
When he attempted to go beyond that, soft warm fingers made a latch
upon his lips.
Mrs. Chadron came down a little after dark, and whispered at the door.
Macdonald was sleeping, and Frances went softly to tell her.
"Nola's askin' for you," Mrs. Chadron told her, "she's all heartbroke
and moanin' in her bed. If you'll go to her, and comfort her a little,
honey, I'll take as good care of him as if he was my own."
Frances was touched by the appeal for sympathy. She could picture
Nola, little fashioned by nature or her life's experiences to bear
grief, shuddering and sobbing alone in the dark, and her heart went
out to her in all its generosity and large forgivingness.
Nola's room was dark for all except the night sky at her window.
Frances stood a moment in her door, listening, believing from the
silence that she must have gone to sleep.
"Nola," she whispered, softly.
A little shivering sob was the answer. Frances went in, and closed the
door. Nola was lying face downward on her pillow, like a child, and
Frances found on putting out her comforting hand that the fickle
little lady's bolster was wet with tears. She sat on the bedside and
tried gently to turn Nola's face toward her. That brought on a storm
of tears and moanings, and agonized burrowing of her face into the
pillow.
"Oh, I feel so mean and wicked!" she cried. "If I hadn't been so
deceitful and treacherous and--and--and everything, maybe all this
sorrow wouldn't have come to us!"
Frances said nothing. She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying
under Nola's cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let
the tears of penitence purge the sufferer's soul in their world-old
way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and
moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her
friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be
denied.
Afterwards she sat up in bed, and brushed her hair back from her
throbbing forehead with her palms.
"Oh, it aches and aches--_so!_" she said.
"I'll bind a cold towel around it, dear; that always used to ease it,
you remember?"
"Not my head, Frances--my heart, my heart!"
It was better so, Frances understood. Penitence that brings only a
headache is like plating over brass; it cannot long conceal the
baseness of the thing that lies beneath.
"Time is the only remedy for that, Nola," she said, her own words slow
and sad.
"Do you think I've sinned past forgiveness because I--because--I love
him?" Nola's voice trembled with earnestness.
"He is free, to love and be loved as it may fall, Nola. I told you he
was mine, but I thought then that I was claiming him from death. He
will live. He never has asked me to marry him; maybe he never will.
When he recovers, he may turn to you--who can tell?"
"No, it's only you that he thinks of, Frances. When I was watching by
him he opened his eyes, and you should have seen the look in them when
he saw me instead of you. He struggled to sit up and look for you, and
he called your name, sharp and frightened, as if he thought somebody
had taken you away from him forever."
Frances did not need that assurance to quiet any fear of his loyalty.
She had spoken the truth, only because it was the truth, but not to
give Nola hope. For hope she knew there was not any, nor any love, to
come to Nola out of that man's heart.
"We'll not talk of it," Frances said.
"I must, I can't let anything stand between us, Frances. If I'd been
fair, all the way through--but I wasn't. I wasn't fair about Major
King, and I wasn't fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if
you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me!
He'd never love me, never in a million years!"
Frances said nothing. But she was beginning to doubt the sincerity of
Nola's repentance. There, under the shadow of her bereavement, she
could think of nothing but the hopelessness of love.
"But I didn't want you to come up just to pet me and be good to me,
Frances--I wanted to give you something."
Nola felt under her pillow, and groped for Frances' hand, in which she
placed a soft something with a stub of a feather in it.
"I have no right to keep it," said Nola. "Do you know what it is?"
"Yes, I know."
Much of the softness which Frances had for the highland bonnet was in
her voice as she replied, and the little bonnet itself was being
nestled against her cheek, as a mother cuddles a baby's hand.
"The best that's in me goes out to that man," said Nola solemnly--and
truthfully, Frances knew--"but I wouldn't take him from you now,
Frances, even if I could. I don't want to care for him, I don't want
to think of him. I just want to think of poor father lying out there
under the ground."
"It's best for you to think of him."
"Only a day ago he was alive and warm, like you and me, and now he's
dead! Mother never will want to leave this place again now, and I
don't feel like I want to either. I just want to lie down and die--oh,
I just want to die!"
Pity for herself brought Nola's tears gushing again, and her choking
sobs into her throat. Her voice was hoarse from her lamentations;
there seemed to be only sorrow for her in every theme. Frances held
her shivering slim body in her supporting arm, and Nola's face bent
down upon her shoulder. It seemed that her renunciation was complete,
her regeneration undeniable. But Frances knew that a great flood of
tears was required to put out the fire of passion in a woman's heart.
One spark, one little spark, might live through the deluge to spring
into the heat of the past under the breath of memory.
Again the heaving breast grew calm, and the tear-wet face was lifted
to shake back the fallen hair.
"This has emptied everything out for me," Nola sighed. "I'm going to
be serious in everything, with everybody, after this. Do you suppose
Mrs. Mathews would let me help her over at the mission--if I went to
her meek and humble and asked her?"
"If she saw that it would help _you_, she would, Nola."
"Just think how lonesome it will be here when the post's abandoned and
everybody but the Indians gone! You'll be away--maybe long before
that--and I'll not see anybody but Indians and cowboys from year's
beginning to year's end. Oh, it will be so dreary and lonesome here!"
"There's work up the river in the homesteaders' settlement, Nola;
there's suffering to be relieved, and bereaved hearts to be comforted.
There's your work, it seems to me, for you and those nearest to you
are to blame for the desolation of those poor homes, excuse it as
charitably as we may."
Frances felt a shudder run through the girl's body as her arm clasped
the pliant waist.
"Why, Frances! You can't mean that! They're terrible--just think what
they've done--oh, the underhanded thieves! By the law of the range
it's my fight now, instead of my work to help them!"
"The law of the range isn't the law any longer here, Nola, and it
never will be again. Alan Macdonald has done the work that he put his
lone hand to. You have no quarrel with anybody, child, no feud to
carry on to a bloody end. Put it out of your mind. If you are sincere
in your heart, and truly penitent, you can prove it best by beginning
to do good in the place where your house has done a terrible, sad
wrong."
"They started it!" said Nola, vindictively, the lifelong hatred for
those who encroached upon the range so deep in her breast, it seemed,
that the soil of her life must come away on its roots.
"There's no use talking to you about it, then," said Frances, coldly.
Nola seemed hurt by her tone. She began to cry again, and plead her
cause in moaning, broken words. "It's our country, we were here
first--father always said that!"
"I know."
"But I don't blame Mr. Macdonald, they deceived him, the rustlers
deceived him and told him lies. He didn't belong to this country, he
couldn't know at first, or understand. Frances"--she put her hand on
her friend's shoulder, and lifted her head as if trying to pierce the
dark and look into her eyes--"don't you know how it was with him? He
was too much of a man to turn his back on them, even when he found he
was on the wrong side. A man like him _must_ have understood it our
way."
"What he has done in this country calls for no excuse," returned
Frances, loftily.
"In your eyes and mine he wouldn't need any excuse for anything he
might do," said Nola, with a sagacity unexpected. "We love him, and
we'd love him, right or wrong. Well"--a sigh--"you've got a right to
love him, and I haven't. I wouldn't try to make him care for me now if
I could, for I'm different; I'm all emptied out."
"It takes more than you've gone through to empty a human life, Nola.
But you have no right to love him; honor and honesty are in the way,
friendship not considered at all. You'll spring up in the sun again
after a little while, like fresh grass that's trodden on, just as
happy and light-hearted as before. Let me have this one without any
more interference--there are plenty in the world that you would stand
heart-high to with your bright little head, just as well as Alan
Macdonald."
"I can't give him up, the thought of him, and the longing for him,
without regret, Frances; I can't!"
"I wouldn't have you do it. I want you to have regret, and pain--not
too deep nor too lasting, but some corrective pain. Now, go to
sleep."
Frances pressed her back to the pillow, and touched her head with
light caress.
"Frances," she whispered, a new gladness dawning in her voice, "I'll
go and see those poor people, and try to help them--if they'll let me.
Maybe we _were_ wrong--partly, anyhow."
"That's better," Frances encouraged.
"And I'll try not to care for him, or think about him, even one little
bit."
Frances bent and kissed her. Nola's arms clung to her neck a little,
holding her while she whispered in her ear.
"For I'm going to be different, I'm going to be good--abso-_lutely_
good!"