Chadron started out, wrathfully and noisily. Half-way to the door he turned, his dark face sneering in contemptuous scorn.
“Yes, you’re one hell of a colonel!” he said.
Major King was holding the door open; Chadron swung his big body around to face it, and passed out. Major King saluted his superior officer and followed the cattleman into the hall, closing the sacred door behind him on the wrathful little old soldier standing beside his desk. King extended his hand, sympathy in gesture and look.
“If I was in command of this post, sir, you’d never have to ask twice for troops,” he said.
Chadron’s sudden interest seemed to give him the movement of a little start. His grip on the young officer’s hand tightened as he bent a searching look into his eyes.
“King, I believe you!” he said.
Nola came pattering down the stairs. Chadron stood with open arms, and swallowed her in them as she leaped from the bottom tread. Major King did not wait to see her emerge again, rosy and lip-tempting. There was unfinished business within the colonel’s room.
A few minutes later Nola, excited to her finger-ends, 144 was retailing the story of the rustlers’ uprising to Frances.
“Mother’s all worked up over it; she’s afraid they’ll burn us out and murder us, but of course we’d clean them up before they’d ever get that far down the river.”
“It looks to me like a very serious situation for everybody concerned,” Frances said. “If your father brings in the men that you say he’s gone to Meander to telegraph for, there’s going to be a lot of killing done on both sides.”