The Rustler of Wind River. George W. Ogden

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СКАЧАТЬ “I have seen you from afar.”

      26

      “Oh,” said she, as lame as the word was short.

      He was scanning the written paper. Now he looked at her, a smile waking in his eyes. It moved in slow illumination over his face, but did not break his lips, pressed in their stern, strong line. She saw that his long hair was light, and that his eyes were gray, with sandy brows over them which stood on end at the points nearest his nose, from a habit of bending them in concentration, she supposed, as he had been doing but a moment before he smiled.

      “No, it isn’t a church subscription, Miss Landcraft, it’s for a cemetery,” said he.

      “Oh,” said she again, wondering why she did not go back to Major King, whose horse appeared restive, and in need of the spur, which the major gave him unfeelingly.

      At the same time she noted that Alan Macdonald’s forehead was broad and deep, for his leather-weighted hat was pushed back from it where his fair, straight hair lay thick, and that his bony chin had a little croft in it, and that his face was long, and hollowed like a student’s, and that youth was in his eyes in spite of the experience which hardships of unknown kind had written across his face. Not a handsome man, but a strong one in his way, whatever that way might be.

      “I am indebted to you for this,” said he, drawing forth his watch with a quick movement as he spoke, opening the back cover, folding the little paper carefully away in it, “and grateful beyond words.”

      27

      “Good-bye, Mr. Macdonald,” said she, wheeling her horse suddenly, smiling back at him as she rode away to Major King.

      Alan Macdonald sat with his hat off until she was again at the major’s side, when he replaced it over his fair hair with slow hand, as if he had come from some holy presence. As for Frances, her turn of defiance had driven her clouds away. She met the major smiling and radiant, a twinkling of mischief in her lively eyes.

      The major was a diplomat, as all good soldiers, and some very indifferent ones, are. Whatever his dignity and gentler feelings had suffered while she was away, he covered the hurt now with a smile.

      “And how fares the bandit king this morning?” he inquired.

      “He seems to be in spirits,” she replied.

      The others were out of sight around the buildings where the carcasses of beef had been prepared. Nobody but the major knew of Frances’ little dash out of the conventional, and the knowledge that it was so was comfortable in his breast.

      “And the pe-apers,” said he, in melodramatic whisper, “were they the thieves’ muster roll?”

      “He isn’t a thief,” said she, with quiet dignity, “he’s a gentleman. Yes, the paper was important.”

      “Ha! the plot deepens!” said Major King.

      “It was a matter of life and death,” said she, with solemn rebuke for his levity, speaking a truer word than she was aware.

      28

CHAPTER III

       THE RANCHHOUSE BY THE RIVER

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      Saul Chadron had built himself into that house. It was a solid and assertive thing of rude importance where it stood in the great plain, the river lying flat before it in its low banks like a gray thread through the summer green. There was a bold front to the house, and a turret with windows, standing like a lighthouse above the sea of meadows in which his thousand-numbered cattle fed.

      As white as a dove it sat there among the cottonwoods at the riverside. A stream of water led into its gardens to gladden them and give them life. Years ago, when Chadron’s importance was beginning to feel itself strong upon its legs, and when Nola was a little thing with light curls blowing about her blue eyes, the house had grown up under the wand of riches in that barren place.

      The post at Fort Shakie had been the nearest neighbor in those days, and it remained the nearest neighbor still, with the exception of one usurper and outcast homesteader, Alan Macdonald by name, who had invaded the land over which Chadron laid his extensive claim. Fifteen miles up the river from the grand white house Macdonald had strung his barbed wire and carried in the irrigation ditch to his alfalfa field. He had chosen the most fertile spot 29 in the vast plain through which the river swept, and it was in the heart of Saul Chadron’s domain.

      After the lordly manner of the cattle “barons,” as they were called in the Northwest, Chadron set his bounds by mountains and rivers. Twenty-five hundred square miles, roughly measured, lay within his lines, the Alamito Ranch he called it—the Little Cottonwood. He had no more title to that great sweep of land than the next man who might come along, and he paid no rental fee to nation nor state for grazing his herds upon it. But the cattle barons had so apportioned the land between themselves, and Saul Chadron, and each member of the Drovers’ Association, had the power of their mighty organization to uphold his hand. That power was incontestable in the Northwest in its day; there was no higher law.

      This Alan Macdonald was an unaccountable man, a man of education, it was said, which made him doubly dangerous in Saul Chadron’s eyes. Saul himself had come up from the saddle, and he was not strong on letters, but he had seen the power of learning in lawyers’ offices, and he respected it, and handled it warily, like a loaded gun.

      Chadron had sent his cowboys up the river when Macdonald first came, and tried to “throw a holy scare into him,” as he put it. The old formula did not work in the case of the lean, long-jawed, bony-chinned man. He was polite, but obdurate, and his quick gray eyes seemed to read to their inner process 30 of bluff and bluster as through tissue paper before a lamp. When they had tried to flash their guns on him, the climax of their play, he had beaten them to it. Two of them were carried back to the big ranchhouse in blankets, with bullets through their fleshy parts—not fatal wounds, but effective.

      The problem of a fighting “nester” was a new one to the cattlemen of that country. For twenty years they had kept that state under the dominion of the steer, and held its rich agricultural and mineral lands undeveloped. The herbage there, curing in the dry suns of summer as it stood on the upland plains, provided winter forage for their herds. There was no need for man to put his hand to the soil and debase himself to a peasant’s level when he might live in a king’s estate by roaming his herds over the untamed land.

      Homesteaders who did not know the conditions drifted there on the westward-mounting wave, only to be hustled rudely away, or to pay the penalty of refusal with their lives. Reasons were not given, rights were not pleaded by the lords of many herds. They had the might to work their will; that was enough.

      So it could be understood what indignation mounted in the breast of tough old Saul Chadron when a pigmy homesteader put his firm feet down on the ground and refused to move along at his command, and even fought back to maintain what he claimed to be his rights. It was an unprecedented 31 stand, a dangerous example. But this nester had held out for more than two years against his forces, armed by some invisible strength, it seemed, guarded against ambuscades and surprises by some cunning sense which led him whole and secure about his nefarious ways.

      Not alone that, but other homesteaders had come and settled near СКАЧАТЬ