Neither of the young women knew of the tiff between the colonel and Chadron, for the colonel was a man who kept his family apart from his business. Chadron had not seen fit to uncover his humiliation to his daughter, but had told her that he was acting on the advice of Colonel Landcraft in sending to his friends in Cheyenne for men to put down the uprising of rustlers himself.
So there were comfortable enough relations between them all at the ranch as the day bent to evening and the red sunset changed to gray. Banjo played for them, as he had done that other afternoon, and sang 151 his sentimental songs in voice that quavered in the feeling passages. Chadron had not left anybody to guard the house, because he knew very well that Macdonald considered nothing beyond defense, and that he would as quickly burn his own mother’s roof above her head as he would set torch to that home by the riverside.
“Sing us that dreamy one, Banjo,” Nola requested, “the one that begins ‘Come sit by my side little—’ you know the one I mean.”
A sentimental tenderness came into Banjo’s face. He turned his head so that he could look out of the window into the thickening landscape beyond the corral gate, gray and mysterious and unfriendly now as a twilight sea. Nola touched Frances’ arm to prime her for the treat.
“Watch his face,” she whispered, smiling behind her hand.
Banjo struck the chords of his accompaniment; the sentimental cast of his face deepened, until it seemed that he was about to come to tears. He sang:
Come sit by my side litt-ul dau-ling,
And lay your brown head on my breast,
Whilse the angels of twilight o-round us
Are singing the flow-ohs to rest.