“Oh, it seems impossible that anybody could be so heartless and low!”
“A man that’d burn brands is low enough to go past anything you could imagine in that little head of yours, Miss Frances. Do you mind runnin’ in and tellin’—no, here she comes.”
“Couldn’t this trouble between you and the homesteaders—”
“Homesteaders! They’re cattle thieves, born in ’em and bred in ’em, and set in the hide and hair of ’em!”
“Couldn’t it be settled without all this fighting and killing?” she went on, pressing her point.
“It’s all over now but the shoutin’,” said he. “There’s only one way to handle a rustler, Miss Frances, and that’s to salt his hide.”
“I’d be willing—I’d be glad—to go up there myself, alone, and take any message you might send,” she offered. “I think they’d listen to reason, even to leaving the country if you want them to, rather than try to stand against a ga—force like this.”
“You can’t understand our side of it, Miss Frances,”—Chadron spoke impatiently, reaching out for the bundle that his wife was bringing while she was yet two rods away—“for you ain’t been 191 robbed and wronged by them nesters like we have. You’ve got to live it to know what it means, little lady. We’ve argued with ’em till we’ve used up all our words, but their fences is still there. Now we’re goin’ to clear ’em out.”
“But Macdonald seemed hurt when I asked him how much money they wanted you to pay as Nola’s ransom,” she said.
“He’s deep, and he’s tricky—too deep and too slick for you.” Chadron gathered up his reins, leaned over and whispered: “Don’t say anything about that Thorn yarn to her”—a sideways jerk of the head toward his wife—“her trouble’s deep enough without stirrin’ it.”