“It is terrible!” Frances shuddered, withholding her opinion on which side the terror lay, together with the blame.
“Then Saul went up there with some more of the men to burn that Macdonald’s shack and drive him off of our land, and they run into a bunch of them rustlers that Macdonald he’d fetched over there, and two more of our men was killed. It looks like a body’s got to fight night and day for his rights now, since them nesters begun to come in here. Well, we was here first, and Saul says we’ll be here last. But I think it’s plumb scan’lous the way them rustlers bunches together and fights. They never was known to do it before, and they wouldn’t do it now if it wasn’t for that black-hearted thief, Macdonald!”
“Did you ever see him?” Frances asked.
“No, I never did, and don’t never want to!”
“I just asked you because he doesn’t look like a bad man.”
“They say he sneaked in here the night of Nola’s dance, but I didn’t see him. Oh, what ’m I tellin’ you? Course you know that—you danced with him!”
“Yes,” said Frances, neither sorry nor ashamed.
“But you wasn’t to blame, honey,” Mrs. Chadron comforted, “you didn’t know him from Adamses off ox.”
Frances sat leaning forward, looking into the fire. The light of the blaze was on her face, appealingly soft and girlishly sweet. Mrs. Chadron laid a hand on her hair in motherly caress, moved by a tenderness quite foreign to the vindictive creed which she had pronounced against the nesters but a little while before.