Then his daughter stood up with a little flush in her face. "You could not
have meant that, father?" she said.
"Well," said Torrance, drily, "I quite think I did, but there's a good
deal you can't get the hang of, Hetty--and it's getting very late."
He looked at his daughter steadily, and Flora Schuyler looked at all of
them, and remembered the picture--Torrance sitting lean and sardonic with
the lamplight on his face, Clavering watching the girl with a curious
little smile, and Hetty standing very slim and straight, with something in
the poise of her shapely head that had its meaning to Miss Schuyler. Then
with a "Good-night" to Torrance, and a half-ironical bend of the head to
Clavering, she turned to her companion, and they went out together before
he could open the door for them.
Five minutes later Hetty tapped at Miss Schuyler's door. The pink tinge
still showed in her cheeks, and her eyes had a suspicious brightness in
them.
"Flo," she said, "you'll go back to New York right off. I'm sorry I
brought you here. This place isn't fit for you."
"I am quite willing, so long as you are coming too."
"I can't. Isn't that plain? This thing is getting horrible--but I have to
see it through. It was Clavering fixed it, any way."
"Put it away until to-morrow," Flora Schuyler advised. "It will be easier
to see whether you have any cause to be angry then."
Hetty turned towards her with a flash in her eyes. "I know just what you
mean, and it would be nicer just to look as if I never felt anything, as
some of those English folks you were fond of did; but I can't. I wasn't
made that way. Still, I'm not going to apologize for my father. He is
Torrance of Cedar, and I'm standing in with him--but if I were a man I'd
go down and whip Clavering. I could almost have shaken him when he wanted
to stay here and tried to make me ask him."
"Well," said Flora Schuyler, quietly, "I am going to stay with you; but I
don't quite see what Clavering has done."
"No?" said Hetty. "Aren't you just a little stupid, Flo? Now, he has made
me ashamed--horribly--and I was proud of the men we had in this country.
He's starving the women and the little children; there are quite a few of
them lying in freezing shanties and sod-huts out there in the snow. It's
just awful to be hungry with the temperature at fifty below."
Miss Schuyler shivered. It was very warm and cosy sitting there, behind
double casements, beside a glowing stove; but there had been times when,
wrapped in costly furs and great sleigh-robes and generously fed, she had
felt her flesh shrink from the cold of the prairie.
"But they have Mr. Grant to help them," she said.
Even in her agitation Hetty was struck by something which suggested
unquestioning faith in her companion's tone.
"You believe he could do something," she said.
"Of course! You know him better than I do, Hetty."
"Well," said Hetty, "though he has made me vexed with him, I am proud of
Larry; and there's just one thing he can't do. That is, to see women and
children hungry while he has a dollar to buy them food with. Oh, I know
who was going to pay for the provisions that came from Chicago that
Clavering got the railroad men to send the wrong way, and if Larry had
only been with us he would have been splendid. As it is, if he feeds them
in spite of Clavering, I could 'most forgive him everything."
"Are you quite sure that you have a great deal to forgive?"
Hetty, instead of resenting the question, stretched out her hand
appealingly. "Don't be clever, Flo. Come here quite close, and be nice to
me. This thing is worrying me horribly; and I'm ashamed of myself and--of
everybody. Oh, I know I'm a failure. I couldn't sing to please folks and I
sent Jake Cheyne away, while now, when the trouble's come, I'm too mean
even to stand behind my father as I meant to do. Flo, you'll stay with me.
I want you."
Miss Schuyler, who had not seen Hetty in this mood before, petted her,
though she said very little, for she felt that the somewhat unusual
abasement might, on the whole, be beneficial to her companion. So there
was silence in the room, broken only by the snapping of the stove and the
faint moaning of the bitter wind about the lonely building, while Miss
Schuyler sat somewhat uncomfortably on the arm of Hetty's chair with the
little dusky head pressed against her shoulder. Hetty could not see her
face or its gravity might have astonished her. Miss Schuyler had not
spoken quite the truth when, though she had only met him three times, she
admitted that Hetty knew Larry Grant better than she did. In various
places and different guises Flora Schuyler had seen the type of manhood he
stood for, but had never felt the same curious stirring of sympathy this
grave, brown-faced man had aroused in her.
A hound bayed savagely, and Hetty lifted her head. "Strangers!" she said.
"Bowie knows all the cattle-boys. Who can be coming at this hour?"
The question was not unwarranted, for it was close on midnight, but Flora
Schuyler did not answer. She could hear nothing but the moan of the wind,
the ranch was very still, until once more there came an angry growl. Then,
out of the icy darkness followed the sound of running feet, a hoarse cry,
and a loud pounding at the outer door.
Hetty stood up, trembling and white in the face, but very straight. "Don't
be frightened, Flo," she said. "We'll whip them back to the place they
came from."
"Who is it?" asked Miss Schuyler.
Again the building rang to the blows upon the outer door; but Hetty's
voice was even, and a little contemptuous.
"The rustlers!" she said.
There was a trampling below, and a corridor beneath the girls vibrated
with the footsteps of hurrying men, while Torrance's voice rose faintly
through the din; a very unpleasant silence, until somebody rapped upon the
door. Flora Schuyler felt her heart throbbing painfully, and gasped when
Torrance looked in. His lean face was very stern.
"Put the lamp out, and sit well away from the window," he said.
"No," said Hetty in a voice Miss Schuyler had not heard before; "we are
coming down."
Torrance considered for a second, and then smiled significantly as he
glanced at his daughter's face. "Well, you would be 'most as safe down
there--and I guess it was born in you," he said.
The girls followed him down the cedar stairway and into the hall. A lamp
burning very low stood on a table in one corner, but the big room was dim
and shadowy, and the girls could scarcely see the five or six men standing
near, not in front of, one open window. Framed by its log casing the white
prairie faded into the dimness under a smear of indigo sky. Here and there
a star shone in it with intense brilliancy, and though the great stove
roared in the draught it seemed to Miss Schuyler that a destroying cold
came in. Already she felt her hands grow numb.
"Where are the boys, Hetty?" she asked.
"In at the railroad, most of them. One or two at the back. Now, I'll show
you how to load a rifle, Flo."
Miss Schuyler followed her to the table, where several rifles were lying
beside a big box of cartridges, and Hetty took one of them up.
"You push this slide back, and drop the cartridge in," she said. "Now it
has gone into this pipe here, and you drop in another. Get hold, and push
them in until you can't get in any more. Why--it can't hurt you--your
hands are shaking!"
There was a rattle, and the venomous, conical-headed cartridge slipped
from Miss Schuyler's fingers. She had never handled one before, and it
seemed to her that a horrible, evil potency was bound up in that
insignificant roll of metal. Then, while the rifle click-clacked in
Hetty's hands, Torrance stood by the window holding up a handkerchief. He
called out sharply, and there was a murmur of derision in the darkness
outside.
"Come out!" said a hoarse voice. "We'll give you a minute. Then you can
have a sleigh to drive to perdition in."
The laughter that followed frightened Miss Schuyler more than any threats
would have done. It seemed wholly horrible, and there was a hint in it of
the fierce exultation of men driven to desperation.
"That wouldn't suit me," said Torrance. "What do you want here, any way?"
"Food," somebody answered. "You wanted to starve us, Torrance, and rode us
out when we went chopping stove wood in the bluff. Well, you don't often
miss your supper at the Range, and there's quite enough of it to make a
decent blaze. You haven't much of that minute left. Are you coming out?"
"No," said Torrance briefly, and, dropping the handkerchief, moved from
the window.
The next moment there was a flash in the darkness, and something came
whirring into the room. The girls could not see it, but they heard the
thud it struck with and saw a chip start from the cedar panelling. Then,
there was a rush of feet, and twice a red streak blazed from the window. A
man jerked a cartridge, which fell with a rattle from his rifle, and a
little blue smoke blew across the room. Flora Schuyler shivered as the
acrid fumes of it drifted about her, but Hetty stood very straight, with
one hand on the rim of the table.
"Got nobody, and they're into the shadow now," said a man disgustedly, and
Flora Schuyler, seeing his face, which showed a moment fierce and brutish
as he turned, felt that she could not forget it, and most illogically
hated him.
For almost a minute there was silence. Nobody moved in the big room, where
the shadows wavered as the faint flickering lamplight rose and fell, and
there was no sound but the doleful wail of the night wind from the
prairie. It was broken by a dull crash that was repeated a moment later,
and the men looked at one another.
"They've brought their axes along," said somebody. "If there's any of the
Michigan boys around they'll drive that door in."
"Watch it, two of you," said Torrance. "Jake, can't you get a shot at
them?"
A man crouched by the open window, which was some little height from the
ground, his arms upon the sill, and his head showing against the darkness
just above them. He was, it seemed to Miss Schuyler, horribly deliberate,
and she held her breath while she watched, as if fascinated, the long
barrel move a little. Then its muzzle tilted suddenly, a train of red
sparks blew out, and something that hummed through the smoke struck the
wall. The man dropped below the sill, and called hoarsely through the
crash of the falling axes.
"Got the pillar instead of him. There's a streak of light behind me. Well,
I'll try for him again."
Hetty emptied the box of cartridges, and, with hands that did not seem to
tremble, stood it up before the lamp. Once more the man crouched by the
window, a blurred, huddled object with head down on the rifle stock, and
there was another streak of flame. Then, the thud of the axes suddenly
ceased, and he laughed a little discordant laugh.
"Got him this time. The other one's lit out," he said.
Miss Schuyler shuddered, and clutched at the table, while, though Hetty
was very still, she fancied she heard a stifled gasp. The silence was even
more disconcerting than the pounding of the axes or the crash of the
firing. Flora Schuyler could see the shadowy figures about the window, and
just distinguish some of them. The one standing close in front of it, as
though disdainful of the risk he ran, was Torrance; the other, who now and
then moved lithely, and once rested a rifle on the sill, was Clavering;
another, the man who had fired the last shot; but the rest were blurred,
formless objects, a little darker than the cedar panelling. Now and then
the streak of radiance widened behind the box, and the cold grew numbing
as the icy wind flowed in.
Suddenly a voice rose up outside. "You can't keep us out, Torrance. We're
bound to get in; but I'll try to hold the boys now if you'll let us have
our wounded man, and light out quietly."
Torrance laughed. "You are not making much of a show, and I'm quite ready
to do the best I can," he said. "If there's any life in him we want your
man for the Sheriff."
Then he turned to the others. "I was 'most forgetting the fellow outside
there. We'll hold them off from the window while you bring him in."
It appeared horribly risky, but Torrance spoke with a curious
unconcernedness, and Clavering laughed as, signing to two men, he prepared
to do his bidding. There was a creaking and rattling, and the great door
at one end of the hall swung open, and Flora Schuyler, staring at the
darkness, expected to see a rush of shadowy figures out of it. But she saw
only the blurred outline of two men who stooped and dragged something in,
and then the door swung to again.
They lifted their burden higher. Torrance, approaching the table, took up
the lamp, and Miss Schuyler had a passing glimpse of a hanging head and a
drawn grey face as they tramped past her heavily. She opened her blue lips
and closed them again, for she was dazed with cold, and the cry that would
have been a relief to her never came. It was several minutes later when
Torrance's voice rose from by the stove.
"We'll leave him here in the meanwhile, where he can't freeze," he said.
"Shot right through the shoulder, but there's no great bleeding. The cold
would stop it."
Hetty was at her father's side the next moment. "Flo," she said, "we have
to do something now."
Torrance waved them back. "The longer that man stops as he is, the better
chances he's going to have." He glanced towards the window. "Boys, can you
see what they're doing now?"
"Hauling out prairie hay," said Clavering. "They've broken into the store,
and from what one fellow shouted they've found the kerosene."
Torrance said nothing whatever, and his silence was significant. Listening
with strained attention, Flora Schuyler could hear a faint hum of voices,
and now and then vague sounds amidst a patter of hurrying steps. They told
her very little, but the tension in the attitude of the half-seen men had
its meaning. It was evident that their assailants purposed to burn them
out.
Ten minutes passed, as it were interminably, and still nobody moved. The
voices had grown a little louder, and there was a rattle as though men
unseen behind the buildings were dragging up a wagon. Suddenly a rhythmic
drumming came softly through it, and Clavering glanced at Torrance.
"Somebody riding this way at a gallop," he said.
The beat of hoofs grew louder. The men without seemed to be running to and
fro, and shouting to one another, while those in the hall clustered about
the window, reckless of the risk they ran. Standing a little behind them
Hetty saw a dim mounted figure sweep out of the waste of snow, and a
hoarse shout went up. "Hold on! Throw down that rifle! It's Larry Grant."