"HASTA LUEGO"
Frances came into the room as fresh as a morning-glory. Her cheeks
were like peonies, and the fire of her youth and strength danced in
her happy eyes. Macdonald rose to greet her, tall, gaunt, and pale
from the drain that his wound had made upon his life. He had been
smoking before the fireplace, and he reached up now to put his pipe
away on the manteltree.
"And how are things at the post?" he asked, as she stood before him in
her saddle dress, her sombrero pressing down her hair, her quirt
swinging by its thong from her gloved wrist.
Before replying she intercepted the hand that was reaching to stow the
pipe away, pressed it firmly back, inserted the stem between his close
lips.
"In this family, the man smokes," she said.
His slow smile, which was reward enough to her for all the trouble
that it took to wake it, twinkled in his eyes like someone coming to
the window with a light.
"Then the piece of a man will go ahead and smoke," said he, drawing a
chair up beside his own and leading her to it with gentle pressure
upon her hand.
"Has Mrs. Chadron been overfeeding you while I was gone? Did she give
you chili?"
"She _offered_ me chili, in five different dishes, which I,
remembering the injunction, regretfully put aside."
"Well, they're coming with the ambulance, I rode on ahead, and you'll
soon be beyond the peril of chili." She smiled as she looked up into
his face, and the smile broadened into an outright laugh when she saw
the little flitting cloud of vexation there.
"I could well enough ride," said he.
"The doctor says you could not."
"I'm as fit for the saddle this minute as I ever was in my life," he
declared.
She made no reply to that in words. But there was tender pity in her
caressing eyes as they measured the weakness of his thin arms, wasted
down to tendon and bone now, it seemed. He would ride to the post, she
knew very well, if permitted, and come through it without a murmur.
But the risk would be foolish, no matter what his pride must suffer by
going in a wagon.
"Have you heard the news from Meander?" she inquired.
"No, news comes slowly to Alamito Ranch, and will come slower now that
Banjo is gone, Mrs. Chadron says. What's been happening at Meander?"
"They held their conventions there last week to nominate county
officers, and what do you think? They've nominated you for something,
for--for _what_ do you suppose?"
"Nominated me? Who's nominated me?"
"Oh, one party or the other began it, and the other indorsed you,
for--oh, it's--"
"For what, Frances?" he asked, laughter in his eyes at her unaccountable
way of holding back on the secret.
"Why, for _sheriff!_" said she, with magnificent scorn.
Macdonald leaned back in his chair and laughed, the first audible
sound of merriment that she ever had heard come from those stern lips.
She looked at him with reproach.
"It should have been governor, the very least they could have done,
decently!" She was full of feeling on the subject of what she believed
to be his undervaluation.
Macdonald took her hand, the laughter dying out of his sober face.
"That's all in the different ways of looking at a man, _palomita_," he
said to her.
"But you look bigger than _sheriff_ to anybody!" she replied,
indignation large in her heart.
"In this country, Frances, a sheriff is a pretty sizable man," he
said, his thoughtful eyes on the fire, "about the biggest man they can
conceive, next only to the president himself. Up here in the cattle
country the greatness of men is dimmed, their magnitude being measured
by appreciable results. The offices of lawmaker, governor, and such as
the outside world invest with their peculiar dignity, are incidental,
indefinite--all but negative, here. It's different with a sheriff.
He's the man who comes riding with his guns at his side; they can see
him perform. All the law that they know centers in him; all branches
of government, as they understand his powers. Yes, a sheriff is
something of a figure in this county, Frances, and to be nominated for
that office by one party and indorsed by another is just about the
biggest compliment a man can receive."
"But surely, Alan, you'll not accept it?"
"Why, I think so," he returned, thoughtfully. "I think I'd be worth
more to this county as sheriff than I would be as--as governor, let us
say."
"Yes, but they go shooting sheriffs," she protested.
"They'll not be doing so much careless and easy shooting around here
since Colonel--Brigadier-General Landcraft--and that sounds more like
his size, too--gave them a rubdown with the iron hand. The cattle
barons' day is over; their sun went down when Mark Thorn brought the
holy scare to Saul Chadron's door."
"Father is of the same opinion. Do you know, Alan, the whole story
about that horrible old man Thorn is in the eastern papers?"
"Is it possible?"
"With a Cheyenne date-line," she nodded, "the whole story--who hired
him to skulk and kill, and a list of his known crimes. Father says if
there was anything lacking in the fight you made on the cattlemen,
this would finish them. It's a terrible story--poor Nola read it, and
learned for the first time her father's connection with Thorn. She's
humiliated and heartbroken over it all."
"With sufficient reason," he nodded.
"She's afraid her mother will hear of it in some way."
"She'll find it out in time, Frances; a thing like that walks on a
man's grave."
"It will not matter so much after a while, after her first grief
settles."
"Did Nola come back with you?"
"No, she went on to take some things to poor old Mrs. Lassiter. She
never has recovered from the loss of her son--it's killing her by
inches, Tom says. And you considering that office of sheriff!" She
turned to him with censorious eyes as she spoke, as if struck with a
pain of which he was the cause. "I tell you, you men don't know, you
don't know! It's the women that suffer in all this shooting and
killing--we are the ones that have to bear the sorrows in the night
and watch through the uncertain days!"
"Yes," said he gently, "the poor women must bear most of this world's
pain. That is why God made them strong above all his created things."
They sat in silence, thinking it over between them. Outside there was
sunshine over the brown rangeland; within there dwelt the lifting
confidence that their feet had passed the days of trouble and were
entering the bounds of an enlarging peace.
"And Major King?" said he.
"Father has relented, as I knew he would, out of regard for their
friendship of the past, and will not bring charges based on Major
King's plottings with Chadron."
"It's better that way," he nodded. "Do you suppose there's nothing
between him and Nola?"
"I think she'll have him after her grief passes, Alan."
"Better than he deserves," said he. "There's a lump of gold in that
little lady's heart, Frances."
"There is, Alan; I'm glad to hear you say that." There was moisture in
her tender eyes.
"There was something in that man, too," he reflected. "It's
unfortunate that he allowed his desire to humiliate you and me to
drive him into such folly. If he'd only have held those brigands here
for the civil authorities, as I requested, we could have forgotten the
rest."
"Yes, father says that would have saved him in his eyes, in spite of
his scheming with Chadron against your life, and against father's
honor and all that he holds sacred. But it's done, and he's genuinely
despised in the service for it. And there's the ambulance coming over
the hill."
"Ambulance for me!" said he, in disgust of his slow mending.
"Be glad that it isn't--oh, I shouldn't say that!"
"I am," said he, nodding his slow, grave head.
"We'll have to say good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," said she, bustling
around, or making a show of doing so to hide the tears which had
sprung into her eyes at the thought that it might have been a
different sort of conveyance coming to Alamito to take Alan Macdonald
away.
"And to Alamito," said he, looking out into the frost-stricken garden
with a tenderness in his eyes. "I shall always have a softness in my
heart for Alamito, because it gave me you. That garden out there
yielded me the dearest flower that any garden ever gave a man"--he
took her hands, and folded them above his heart--"a flower with a soul
in it to keep it alive forever."
She bowed her head as he spoke, as if receiving a benediction.
"I hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," she said, her voice
trembling, "for she'll cry, and I'm afraid I'll cry, too."
"It will not be farewell, only _hasta luego_[A] we can assure her of
that. We'll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is
our _val paraiso_."
"Our valley of paradise," she nodded, her hands reaching up to his
shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, "our home!"
His arm about her shoulders, he faced her to the window, and pointed
to the hills, asleep now in their brown winter coat behind a clear
film of smoky blue.
"I stood up there one evening, weighted down with guns and ammunition,
hunting and hunted in the most desperate game I ever played," he said.
"The sun was low over this valley, and Alamito was a gleam of white
among the autumn gold. I was tired, hungry, dusty, thirsty and sore,
and my heart was all but dead in its case. That was after you had sent
me away from the post, scorned and half despised."
"Don't rebuke me for that night now, Alan," she pleaded, turning her
pained eyes to his. "I have suffered for my injustice."
"It wasn't injustice, it was discipline, and it was good for both of
us. We must come to confidence through misunderstandings and false
charges very frequently in this life. Never mind that; I was telling
you about that evening on the side of the hill. I had been sitting
with my back to a rock, watching the brush for Mark Thorn, but I was
thinking more of you than of him. For he meant only death, and you
were life. But I thought that I had lost you that day."
She drew nearer to him as they stood, in the unequivocal consolation
of her presence, in the most comforting refutation of that sad hour's
dark forebodings.
"I thought that, until I stood up and started down the slope to go my
lone-handed way. The sun struck me in the face then, and it was yellow
over the valley, and the wind was glad. I knew then, when I looked out
over it, that it held something for me, that it was my country, and my
home. The lines of gray old Joaquin Miller came to me, and lifted my
heart in a new vision. I said them over to myself:
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--
only, there were two lines which I did not repeat, I dared not repeat,
even in my heart. My vision halted short of their fulfillment."
"What are the words--do you remember them?" she asked.
"Yes; I can repeat them now, for my vision is broader, it is a better
dream:
Lo! Duty and Love, and a sweet babe's smiles,
And there, O friend, are the Fortunate Isles."
He pressed her closer, and kissed her hair. They stood, unmindful of
the waiting ambulance, their vision fusing in the blue distances of
the land their hearts held dear. It was home.
"Come on, Alan"--she started from her reverie and drew him by the
hand--"there's Mrs. Chadron on the porch, waiting for _hasta luego_."
"For _hasta luego_," said he.
-----
[A] For a little while.
End of Project Gutenberg's The Rustler of Wind River, by G. W. Ogden