“This was the only place to bring you,” said Alma. “The one practicing physician and surgeon in this part of the State lives twenty miles from where you were hurt, and he had taken his rifle and joined the men who were opposing the invaders. I couldn’t have taken you to any ranch house without your presence being known elsewhere, on account of all this excitement. Neighbors are visiting everywhere, and any one who had sheltered a stranger at this time would have come in for general suspicion. But, unless somebody deliberately sets out to trail you, no one will be likely to know you are at this place. It is known that Uncle Billy is opposed to the taking of human life, and that he could not be enlisted in this dispute on either side.”
“Well, Swingley and Tom Hoog will soon be on my trail,” observed the Texan. “I’ll not stay here any longer than I can help, on Uncle Billy’s account. Also on your account,” he added, “as it is not going to do you any particular good to have it known that you helped one of the invaders to safety. People are going to grow more bitter than ever, now that Swingley and Hoog are dominating things in such high-handed fashion.”
“High-handed is a mild term for what they are doing,” replied the girl, her eyes flashing. “They are trying to set up a despotism for the big-cattle interests. After they shot my stepfather and Nate Day, at our little ranch house on the Powderhorn, and had burned the cabin they found the settlers opposing them just the way the farmers opposed the redcoats at Lexington. Things were made so hot for Swingley and his men that they had to fortify themselves in a ranch house, several miles from their objective, the county seat at Wild Horse. They were besieged two days and would have been captured to the last man, if United States soldiers hadn’t intervened. The invaders were taken to Wild Horse under military escort, but it wasn’t ten hours before every one of them was out under bail.”
“There must be bigger men than Swingley mixed up in it,” observed the Texan.
“There are, of course—the biggest cattle interests in the West. But they haven’t shown their hand, and Swingley apparently does just as he pleases. He has headquarters at Wild Horse, with a big bodyguard of fighters, led by Tom Hoog, ready to do his bidding. The rest of the invaders have been scattered among the big-cattle ranches, presumably as cowboys, but really as fighters. It looks as if the trouble had only started.”
The girl’s voice was lowered, but took no new intensity of expression as she continued. “Everybody thought there would be open war in Wild Horse, when my stepfather and Nate Day were buried,” she said. “But the ranchmen made such a showing then that even Swingley seemed to be over-awed for the moment. Wild Horse never was so full of armed men. But the ranchmen were determined that, if there was trouble, they would not be the aggressors. They crowded the little church, where the services were held, and scores of them stood outside. Everybody was heavily armed. When the funeral procession went through the streets, with all those grim, determined-looking men, riding so silent, with their rifles across their saddles, it was terrible!”
The girl bowed her head in her hands. The young Texan wanted to take her in his arms. For first time it came to him, fully and undeniably, that he was in love with this slim, dark-haired young woman whom chance had thrown across his trail. Only the Texan did not call it chance. He wanted to tell the girl that it was Fate that had caused their trails to cross and recross. They had seated themselves on the tiny porch that shaded the front doorway to the cabin. Giant pine trees crowded in friendly fashion about the few acres which the naturalist had cleared. Over the tips of the biggest pines could be seen the white hoods of the mountains. Across the circle of blue sky, that compassed the clearing, drifted masses of white clouds. From the forest came the indistinguishable murmur, that went on always, mingled with the sound of the trout stream, which had first lured Indians and then white men along its course.
“I’ll be going away from these parts in a few days, Miss Caldwell—Alma,” said the Texan. “I reckon I might complicate matters if I stayed here, particularly as I don’t want to bring any trouble on you or your folks, because I was one of Swingley’s crowd. But I don’t want to have you forget me. In fact I just don’t intend to let that happen, because it would be a calamity, as far as I’m concerned. I might as well tell you that I fell in love with you the first time I saw you, and I fell deeper in love in Denver, and, since I’ve been seeing you up here, it’s just been a case of being lost hopelessly.”
The Texan put his hand over the slender fingers that covered the girl’s face. The girl did not draw her hands away, and he drew them down slowly. Her eyes, still wet with tears, were wide and startled. The Texan felt her slender frame tremble. Then her expression changed, and she pushed his hand away, laughing her musical, rippling laughter.
“What suddenness!” she exclaimed. “And yet we Northerners have always felt that you Southerners are rather deliberate in all things.”