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A FIERCE WHITE FROTHING ABOUT HIM.—Page 335.

THE

CATTLE-BARON’S

DAUGHTER

BY

HAROLD BINDLOSS

Author of “Alton of Somasco,” etc.

NEW YORK

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1906, by

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

This Edition published in September, 1906

All rights reserved

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE CATTLE-BARON’S DAUGHTER

I

THE PORTENT

The hot weather had come suddenly, at least a month earlier than usual, and New York lay baking under a scorching sun when Miss Hetty Torrance sat in the coolest corner of the Grand Central Depot she could find. It was by her own wish she had spent the afternoon in the city unattended, for Miss Torrance was a self-reliant young woman; but it was fate and the irregularity of the little gold watch, which had been her dead mother’s gift, that brought her to the depot at least a quarter of an hour too soon. But she was not wholly sorry, for she had desired more solitude and time for reflection than she found in the noisy city, where a visit to an eminent modiste had occupied most of her leisure. There was, she had reasons for surmising, a decision of some moment to be made that night, and as yet she was no nearer arriving at it than she had been when the little note then in her pocket had been handed her.

Still, it was not the note she took out when she found a seat apart from the hurrying crowd, but a letter from her father, Torrance, the Cattle-Baron, of Cedar Range. It was terse and to the point, as usual, and a little smile crept into the girl’s face as she read.

“Your letter to hand, and so long as you have a good time don’t worry about the bills. You’ll find another five hundred dollars at the bank when you want them. Thank God, I can give my daughter what her mother should have had. Two years since I’ve seen my little girl, and now it seems that somebody else is wanting her! Well, we were made men and women, and if you had been meant to live alone dabbling in music you wouldn’t have been given your mother’s face. Now, I don’t often express myself this way, but I’ve had a letter from Captain Jackson Cheyne, U. S. Cavalry, which reads as straight as I’ve found the man to be. Nothing wrong with that family, and they’ve dollars to spare; but if you like the man I can put down two for every one of his. Well, I might write a good deal, but you’re too much like your father to be taken in. You want dollars and station, and I can see you get them, but in a contract of this kind the man is everything. Make quite sure you’re getting the right one.”

There was a little more to the same purpose, and when she slipped the letter into her pocket Hetty Torrance smiled.

“The dear old man!” she said. “It is very like him; but whether Jake is the right one or not is just what I can’t decide.”

Then she sat still, looking straight in front of her, a very attractive picture, as some of the hurrying men who turned to glance at her seemed to find, in her long light dress. Her face, which showed a delicate oval under the big white hat, was a trifle paler than is usual with most Englishwomen of her age, and the figure the thin fabric clung about less decided in outline. Still, the faint warmth in her cheeks emphasized the clear pallor of her skin, and there was a depth of brightness in the dark eyes that would have atoned for a good deal more than there was in her case necessity for. Her supple slenderness also became Hetty Torrance well, and there was a suggestion of nervous energy in her very pose. In addition to all this, she was a rich man’s daughter, who had been well taught in the cities, and had since enjoyed all that wealth and refinement could offer her. It had also been a cause of mild astonishment to the friends she had spent the past year with, that with these advantages, she had remained Miss Torrance. They had been somewhat proud of their guest, and opportunities had not been wanting had she desired to change her status.

While she sat there musing, pale-faced citizens hurried past, great locomotives crawled to and fro, and long trains of cars, white with the dust of five hundred leagues, rolled in. Swelling in deeper cadence, the roar of the city came faintly through the din; but, responsive to the throb of life as she usually was, Hetty Torrance heard nothing of it then, for she was back in fancy on the grey-white prairie two thousand miles away. It was a desolate land of parched grass and bitter lakes with beaches dusty with alkali, but a rich one to the few who held dominion over it, and she had received the homage of a princess there. Then she heard a voice that was quite in keeping with the spirit of the scene, and was scarcely astonished to see that a man was smiling down on her.

He was dressed in city garments, and they became him; but the hand he held out was lean, and hard, and brown, and, for he stood bareheaded, a paler streak showed where the wide hat had shielded a face that had been darkened by stinging alkali dust from the prairie sun. It was a quietly forceful face, with steady eyes, which had a little sparkle of pleasure in them, and were clear and brown, while something in the man’s sinewy pose suggested that he would have been at home in the saddle. Indeed, it was in the saddle that Hetty Torrance remembered him most vividly, hurling his half-tamed broncho straight at a gully down which the nondescript pack streamed, while the scarcely seen shape of a coyote blurred by the dust, streaked the prairie in front of them.

“Hetty!” he said.

“Larry!” said the girl. “Why, whatever are you doing here?”

Then both laughed a little, perhaps to conceal the faint constraint that was upon them, for a meeting between former comrades has its difficulties when one is a man and the other a woman, and the bond between them has not been defined.

“I came in on business a day or two ago,” said the man. “Ran round to check some packages. I’m going back again to-morrow.”

“Well,” said the girl, “I was in the city, and came here to meet Flo Schuyler and her sister. They’ll be in at four.”

The man looked at his watch. “That gives us ’most fifteen minutes, but it’s not going to be enough. We’ll lose none of it. What about the singing?”

Hetty Torrance flushed a trifle. “Larry,” she said, “you are quite sure you don’t know?”

The man appeared embarrassed, and there was a trace of gravity in his smile. “Your father told me a little; but I haven’t seen him so often of late. Any way, I would sooner you told me.”

“Then,” said the girl, with the faintest of quivers in her voice, “the folks who understand good music don’t care to hear me.”

There was incredulity, which pleased his companion, in the man’s face, but his voice vaguely suggested contentment.

“That is just what they can’t do,” he said decisively. “You sing most divinely.”

“There is a good deal you and the boys at Cedar don’t know, Larry. Any way, lots of people sing better than I do, but I should be angry with you if I thought you were pleased.”

The man smiled gravely. “That would hurt. I’m sorry for you, Hetty; but again I’m glad. Now there’s nothing to keep you in the city, you’ll come back to us. You belong to the prairie, and it’s a better place than this.”

He spoke at an opportune moment. Since her cherished ambition had failed her, Hetty Torrance had grown a trifle tired of the city and the round of pleasure that must be entered into strenuously, and there were times when, looking back in reverie, she saw the great silent prairie roll back under the red sunrise into the east, and fade, vast, solemn, and restful, a cool land of shadow, when the first pale stars came out. Then she longed for the jingle of the bridles and the drumming of the hoofs, and felt once more the rush of the gallop stir her blood. But this was what she would not show, and her eyes twinkled a trifle maliciously.

“Well, I don’t quite know,” she said. “There is always one thing left to most of us.”

She saw the man wince ever so slightly, and was pleased at it; but he was, as she had once told him in the old days, grit all through, and he smiled a little.

“Of course!” he said. “Still, the trouble is that there are very few of us good enough for you. But you will come back for a little?”

Miss Torrance would not commit herself. “How are they getting along at the Range?”

“Doesn’t your father write you?”

“Yes,” said the girl, colouring a trifle. “I had a letter from him a few days ago, but he seldom mentioned what he was doing, and I want you to tell me about him.”

The man appeared thoughtful. “Well,” he said, “it’s quite three months since I spoke to him. He was stirring round as brisk as ever, and is rolling the dollars in this year.”

“But you used to be always at the Range.”

The man nodded, but the slight constraint that was upon him did not escape the girl. “Still, I don’t go there so often now. The Range is lonesome when you are away.”

Miss Torrance accepted the speech as one made by a comrade, and perhaps was wrong, but a tramp of feet attracted her attention then, and she looked away from her companion. Driven by the railroad officials, and led by an interpreter, a band of Teutons some five or six hundred strong filed into the station. Stalwart and stolid, tow-haired, with the stamp of acquiescent patience in their homely faces, they came on with the swing, but none of the usual spirit, of drilled men. They asked no questions, but went where they were led, and the foulness of the close-packed steerage seemed to cling about them. For a time the depot rang to the rhythmic tramp of feet, and when, at a sign from the interpreter, it stopped, two bewildered children, frowsy and unwashed, in greasy homespun, sat down and gazed at Miss Torrance with mild blue eyes. She signed to a boy who was passing with a basket slung before him, and made a little impatient gesture when the man slipped his hand into his pocket.

“No,” she said; “you’ll make me vexed with you. Tell him to give them all he has. They’ll be a long while in the cars.”

She handed the boy a silver coin, and while the children sat still, undemonstratively astonished, with the golden fruit about them, the man passed him a bill.

“Now get some more oranges, and begin right at the top of the line,” he said. “If that doesn’t see you through, come back to me for another bill.”

Hetty Torrance’s eyes softened. “Larry,” she said, “that was dreadfully good of you. Where are they all going to?”

“Chicago, Nebraska, Minnesota, Montana,” said the man. “There are the cars coming in. Just out of Castle Garden, and it’s because of the city improvements disorganizing traffic they’re bringing them this way. They’re the advance guard, you see, and there are more of them coming.”

The tramp of feet commenced again, but this time it was a horde of diverse nationality, Englishmen, Irishmen, Poles, and Finns, but all with the stamp of toil, and many with that of scarcity upon them. Bedraggled, unkempt, dejected, eager with the cunning that comes of adversity, they flowed in, and Hetty Torrance’s face grew pitiful as she watched them.

“Do they come every week like this and, even in our big country, have we got room for all of them?” she said.

There was a curious gleam in the man’s brown eyes. “Oh, yes,” he said. “It’s the biggest and greatest country this old world has ever seen, and the Lord made it as a home for the poor—the folks they’ve no food or use for back yonder; and, while there are short-sighted fools who would close the door, we take them in, outcast and hopeless, and put new heart in them. In a few short years we make them men and useful citizens, the equal of any on this earth—Americans!”

Hetty Torrance nodded, and there was pride but no amusement in her smile; for she had a quick enthusiasm, and the reticence of Insular Britain has no great place in that country.

“Still,” she said; “all these people coming in must make a difference.”

The man’s face grew grave. “Yes,” he said; “there will have to be a change, and it is coming. We are only outwardly democratic just now, and don’t seem to know that men are worth more than millionaires. We have let them get their grip on our industries, and too much of our land, until what would feed a thousand buys canvas-backs, and wines from Europe for one. Isn’t what we raise in California good enough for Americans?”

Miss Torrance’s eyes twinkled. “Some of it isn’t very nice, and they don’t live on canvas-backs,” she said. “Still, it seems to me that other men have talked like that quite a thousand years ago; and, while I don’t know anyone better at breaking a broncho or cutting out a steer, straightening these affairs out is too big a contract for you.”

The man laughed pleasantly. “That’s all right, but I can do a little in the place I belong to, and the change is beginning there. Is it good for this country that one man should get rich feeding his cattle on leagues of prairie where a hundred families could make a living growing wheat?”

“Now,” said the girl drily, “I know why you and my father haven’t got on. Your opinions wouldn’t please him, Larry.”

“No,” said the man, with a trace of embarrassment, “I don’t think they would; and that’s just why we’ve got to convince him and the others that what we want to do is for the good of the country.”

Hetty Torrance laughed. “It’s going to be hard. No man wants to believe anything is good when he sees it will take quite a pile of dollars out of his pocket.”

The man said nothing, and Hetty fancied he was not desirous of following up the topic, while as they sat silent a big locomotive backed another great train of emigrant cars in. Then the tramp of feet commenced again, and once more a frowsy host of outcasts from the overcrowded lands poured into the depot. Wagons piled with baggage had preceded them, but many dragged their pitiful belongings along with them, and the murmur of their alien voices rang through the bustle of the station. Hetty Torrance was not unduly fanciful, but those footsteps caused her, as she afterwards remembered, a vague concern. She believed, as her father did, that America was made for the Americans; but it was evident that in a few more years every unit of those incoming legions would be a citizen of the Republic, with rights equal to those enjoyed by Torrance of Cedar Range. She had seen that as yet the constitution gave no man more than he could by his own hand obtain; but it seemed not unlikely that some, at least, of those dejected, unkempt men had struck for the rights of humanity that were denied them in the older lands with dynamite and rifle.

Then, as the first long train of grimy cars rolled out close packed with their frowsy human freight, a train of another kind came in, and two young women in light dresses swung themselves down from the platform of a car that was sumptuous with polished woods and gilding. Miss Torrance rose as she saw them, and touched her companion.

“Come along, Larry, and I’ll show you two of the nicest girls you ever met,” she said.

The man laughed. “They would have been nicer if they hadn’t come quite so soon,” he said.

He followed his companion and was duly presented to Miss Flora and Miss Caroline Schuyler. “Larry Grant of Fremont Ranch,” said Miss Torrance. “Larry is a great friend of mine.”

The Misses Schuyler were pretty. Carolina, the younger, pale, blue-eyed, fair-haired and vivacious; her sister equally blonde, but a trifle quieter. Although they were gracious to him, Grant fancied that one flashed a questioning glance at the other when there was a halt in the conversation. Then, as if by tacit agreement, they left him alone a moment with their companion, and Hetty Torrance smiled as she held out her hand.

“I can’t keep them waiting, but you’ll come and see me,” she said.

“I am going home to-morrow,” said the man. “When are you coming, Hetty?”

The girl smiled curiously, and there was a trace of wistfulness in her eyes. “I don’t quite know. Just now I fancy I may not come at all, but you will not forget me, Larry.”

The man looked at her very gravely, and Hetty Torrance appeared to find something disconcerting in his gaze, for she turned her head away.

“No,” he said, and there was a little tremor in his voice, “I don’t think I shall forget you. Well, if ever you grow tired of the cities you will remember the lonely folks who are longing to have you home again back there on the prairie.”

Hetty Torrance felt her fingers quiver under his grasp, but the next moment he had turned away, and her companions noticed there was a faint pink tinge in her cheeks when she rejoined them. But being wise young women, they restrained their natural inquisitiveness, and asked no questions then.

In the meanwhile Grant, who watched them until the last glimpse of their light dresses was lost in the crowd, stood beside the second emigrant train vacantly glancing at the aliens who thronged about it. His bronzed face was a trifle weary, and his lips were set, but at last he straightened his shoulders with a little resolute movement and turned away.

“I have my work,” he said, “and it’s going to be quite enough for me.”

II

HETTY TAKES HEED

It was evening when Hetty Torrance sat alone in a room of Mrs. Schuyler’s house at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. The room was pretty, though its adornment was garish and somewhat miscellaneous, consisting as it did of the trophies of Miss Schuyler’s European tour. A Parisian clock, rich in gilded scroll work to the verge of barbarity, contrasted with the artistic severity of one or two good Italian marbles, while these in turn stood quaintly upon choice examples of time-mellowed English cabinet-work. There was taste in them all, but they suffered from the juxtaposition, which, however, was somewhat characteristic of the country. Still, Miss Schuyler had not spoiled the splendid parquetrie floor of American timber.

The windows were open wide, and when a little breeze from the darkening river came up across the lawn, Hetty languidly raised her head. The coolness was grateful, the silken cushions she reclined amidst luxurious, but the girl’s eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed with humanity that was much less cared for than her father’s cattle.

She had often before seen the dusty cars roll into a wayside depot to wait until the luxurious limited passed, and the grimy faces at the windows, pale and pinched, cunning, or coarsely brutal, after the fashion of their kind, had roused no more than a passing pity. It was, however, different that night, for Grant’s words had roused her to thought, and she wondered with a vague apprehension whether the tramp of weary feet she had listened to would once more break in upon her sheltered life. Larry had foreseen changes, and he was usually right. Then she brushed these fancies into the background, for she had still a decision to make. Captain Cheyne would shortly arrive, and she knew what he came to ask. He was also a personable man, and, so far as the Schuylers knew, without reproach, while Hetty had seen a good deal of him during the past twelve months. She admitted a liking for him, but now that the time had come to decide, she was not certain that she would care to spend her life with him. As a companion, he left nothing to be desired, but, as had happened already with another man with whom Miss Torrance had been pleased, that position did not appear to content him; and she had misgivings about contracting a more permanent bond. It was almost a relief when Miss Schuyler came in.

“Stand up, Hetty. I want to look at you,” she said.

Miss Torrance obeyed and stood before her, girlishly slender in her long dress, though there was an indefinite suggestion of imperiousness in her dark eyes.

“Will I pass?” she asked.

Flora Schuyler surveyed her critically and then laughed. “Yes,” she said. “You’re pretty enough to please anybody, and there’s a style about you that makes it quite plain you were of some importance out there on the prairie. Now you can sit down again, because I want to talk to you. Who’s Larry Grant?”

“Tell me what you think of him.”

Miss Schuyler pursed her lips reflectively. “Well,” she said, “he’s not New York. Quite a good-looking man, with a good deal in him, but I’d like to see him on horseback. Been in the cavalry? You’re fond of them, you know.”

“No,” said Hetty, “but he knows more about horses than any cavalry officer. Larry’s a cattle-baron.”

“I never quite knew what the cattle-barons were, except that your father’s one, and they’re mostly rich,” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t think Larry’s very rich. They’re the men or the sons of them, who went west when the prairie belonged to the Indians and the Blackfeet, Crows, and Crees made them lots of trouble. Still, they held the land they settled on, and covered it with cattle, until the Government gave it to them, ’most as much as you could ride across in a day, to each big rancher.”

“Gave it to them?”

Hetty nodded. “A lease of it. It means the same thing. A few of them, though I think it wasn’t quite permitted, bought other leases in, and out there a cattle-baron is a bigger man than a railroad king. You see, he makes the law—all there is—as well as supports the industry, for there’s not a sheriff in the country dares question him. The cattle-boys are his retainers, and we’ve a squadron of them at the Range. They’d do just what Torrance of Cedar told them, whatever it was, and there are few men who could ride with them in the U. S. Cavalry.”

“Then,” said Flora Schuyler, “if the Government ever encouraged homesteading in their country they’d make trouble.”

Hetty laughed. “Yes,” she said drily, “I guess they would, but no government dares meddle with us.”

“Well,” said Flora Schuyler, “you haven’t told us yet who Larry is. You know quite well what I mean.”

Hetty smiled. “I called him my partner when I was home. Larry held me on my first pony, and has done ’most whatever I wanted him ever since. Fremont isn’t very far from the Range, and when I wanted to ride anywhere, or to have a new horse broken, Larry was handy.”

Miss Schuyler appeared reflective, but there was a bond of confidence between the two, and the reserve that characterizes the Briton is much less usual in that country.

“It always seemed to me, my dear, that an arrangement of that kind is a little rough on the man, and I think this one is too good to spoil,” she said.

Hetty coloured a trifle, but she smiled. “It is all right with Larry. He never expected anything.”

“No?” said Flora Schuyler. “He never tried to make love to you?”

The tinge of colour grew a trifle deeper in Hetty’s cheek. “Only once, and I scarcely think he meant it. It was quite a long while ago, and I told him he must never do it again.”

“And since then he has tamed your horses, and bought you all the latest songs and books—good editions in English art bindings. It was Larry who sent you those flowers when we could scarcely get one?”

Hetty for some reason turned away her head. “Don’t you get things of that kind?”

A trace of gravity crept into Flora Schuyler’s blue eyes, which were unusually attractive ones. “When they come too often I send them back,” she said. “Oh, I know I’m careless now and then, but one has to do the square thing, and I wouldn’t let any man do all that for me unless I was so fond of him that I meant to marry him. Now I’m going to talk quite straight to you, Hetty. You’ll have to give up Larry by and by, but if you find that’s going to hurt you, send the other man away.”

“You don’t understand,” and there was a little flash in Hetty’s dark eyes. “Larry’s kind to everyone—he can’t help it; but he doesn’t want me.”

Flora Schuyler gravely patted her companion’s arm. “My dear, we don’t want to quarrel, but you’ll be careful—to please me. Jake Cheyne is coming, and you might be sorry ever after if you made a mistake to-night.”

Hetty made no answer, and there was silence for a space while the light grew dimmer, until the sound of voices rose from without, and she felt her heart beat a trifle faster than usual, when somebody said, “Captain Cheyne!”

Then there was a rustle of draperies and Mrs. Schuyler, thin, angular, and considerably more silent than is customary with women of her race, came in, with her younger daughter and a man in her train. The latter bore the stamp of the soldier plainly, but there was a distinction in his pose that was not the result of a military training. Then as he shook hands with Flora Schuyler the fading light from the window fell upon his face, showing it clean cut from the broad forehead to the solid chin, and reposeful instead of nervously mobile. His even, low-pitched voice was also in keeping with it, for Jackson Cheyne was an unostentatious American of culture widened by travel, and, though they are not always to be found in the forefront in their own country, unless it has need of them, men of his type have little to fear from comparison with those to be met with in any other one.

He spoke when there was occasion, and was listened to, but some time had passed before he turned to Mrs. Schuyler. “I wonder if it would be too great a liberty if I asked Miss Torrance to give us some music,” he said. “I am going away to-morrow to a desolate outpost in New Mexico, and it will be the last time for months that I shall have a treat of that kind.”

Flora Schuyler opened the piano, and Hetty smiled at Cheyne as she took her place; but the man made a little gesture of negation when Mrs. Schuyler would have rung for lights.

“Wouldn’t it be nicer as it is?” he said.

Hetty nodded, and there was silence before the first chords rang softly through the room. Though it may have been that the absence of necessity to strive and stain her daintiness amidst the press was responsible for much, Hetty Torrance’s voice had failed to win her fame; but she sang and played better than most well-trained amateurs. Thus there was no rustle of drapery or restless movements until the last low notes sank into the stillness. Then the girl glanced at the man who had unobtrusively managed to find a place close beside her.

“You know what that is?” she said.

Carolina Schuyler laughed. “Jake knows everything!”

“Yes,” said the man quietly. “A nocturne. You were thinking of something when you played it.”

“The sea,” said Flora Schuyler, “when the moon is on it. Was that it, Hetty?”

“No,” said Miss Torrance, who afterwards wondered whether it would have made a great difference if she had not chosen that nocturne. “It was the prairie when the stars are coming out over Cedar Range. Then it seems bigger and more solemn than the sea. I can see it now, wide and grey and shadowy, and so still that you feel afraid to hear yourself breathing, with the last smoky flush burning on its northern rim. Now, you may laugh at me, for you couldn’t understand. When you have been born there, you always love the prairie.”

Then with a little deprecatory gesture she touched the keys again. “It will be different this time.”

Cheyne glanced up sharply during the prelude, and then, feeling that the girl’s eyes were upon him, nodded as out of the swelling harmonies there crept the theme. It suggested the tramp of marching feet, but there was a curious unevenness in its rhythm, and the crescendo one of the listeners looked for never came. The room was almost dark now, but none of those who sat there seemed to notice it as they listened to the listless tramp of marching feet. Then the harmonies drowned it again, and Hetty looked at Cheyne.

“Now,” she said, “can you tell me what that means?”

Cheyne’s voice seemed a trifle strained, as though the music had troubled him. “I know the march, but the composer never wrote what you have played to-night,” he said. “It was—may mine be defended from it!—the shuffle of beaten men. How could you have felt what you put into the music?”

“No,” said Hetty. “Your men could never march like that. It was footsteps going west, and I could not have originated their dragging beat. I have heard it.”

There was a little silence, until Cheyne said softly, “One more.”

“Then,” said Hetty, “you will recognize this.”

The chords rang under her fingers until they swelled into confused and conflicting harmonies that clashed and jarred upon the theme. Their burden was strife and struggle and the anguish of strain, until at last, in the high clear note of victory, the theme rose supreme.

“Yes,” said Flora Schuyler, “we know that. We heard it with the Kaiser in Berlin. Only one man could have written it; but his own countrymen could not play it better than you do. A little overwhelming. How did you get down to the spirit of it, Hetty?”

Lights were brought in just then, and they showed that the girl’s face was a trifle paler than usual, as closing the piano, she turned, with a little laugh, upon the music-stool.

“Oh!” she said, “I don’t quite know, and until to-night it always cheated me. I got it at the depot—no, I didn’t. It was there I felt the marching, and Larry brought the prairie back to me; but I couldn’t have seen what was in the last music, because it hasn’t happened yet.”

“It will come?” said Flora.

“Yes,” said Hetty, “wherever those weary men are going to.”

“And to every one of us,” said Cheyne, with a curious graveness they afterwards remembered. “That is, the stress and strain—it is the triumph at the end of it only the few attain.”

Once more there was silence, and it was a relief when the unemotional Mrs. Schuyler rose.

“Now,” she said, and her voice, at least, had in it the twang of the country, “you young folks have been solemn quite long enough. Can’t you talk something kind of lively?”

They did what they could, and—for Cheyne could on occasion display a polished wit—light laughter filled the room, until Caroline Schuyler, perhaps not without a motive, suggested a stroll on the lawn. If there was dew upon the grass none of them heeded it, and it was but seldom anyone enjoyed the privilege of pacing that sod when Mr. Schuyler was at home. Every foot had cost him many dollars, and it remained but an imperfect imitation of an English lawn. There was on the one side a fringe of maples, and it was perhaps by Mrs. Schuyler’s contrivance that eventually Hetty found herself alone with Cheyne in their deeper shadow. It was not, however, a surprise to her, for she had seen the man’s desire and tacitly fallen in with it. Miss Torrance had discovered that one seldom gains anything by endeavouring to avoid the inevitable.

“Hetty,” he said quietly, “I think you know why I have come to-night?”

The girl stood very still and silent for a space of seconds, and afterwards wondered whether she made the decision then, or what she had seen and heard since she entered the depot had formed it for her.

“Yes,” she said slowly. “I am so sorry!”

Cheyne laid his hand upon her arm, and his voice trembled a little. “Don’t be too hasty, Hetty,” he said. “I would not ask you for very much just now, but I had ventured to fancy you could in time grow fond of me. I know I should have waited, but I am going away to-morrow, and I only want you to give me a promise to take away with me.”

It was with a visible effort the girl lifted her head and looked at him. “I feel horribly mean, Jake, but I can’t,” she said. “I ought to have made you realize that long ago, but I liked you, and, you see, I didn’t quite know. I thought if I waited a little I might be more sure of what I felt for you!”

“Then,” said the man, a trifle hoarsely, “give me what you can now and I will be patient.”

Hetty turned half way from him and closed one hand. The man was pleasant to look upon, in character and disposition all she could desire, and she had found a curious content in his company. Had that day passed as other days had done, she might have yielded to him, but she had been stirred to the depths of her nature during the last few hours, and Flora Schuyler’s warning had been opportune. She had, as she had told him, a liking for Jackson Cheyne, but that, she saw very clearly now, was insufficient. Destiny had sent Larry Grant, with the associations that clung about him, into the depot.

“No,” she said, with a little tremble in her voice, “it wouldn’t be honest or fair to you. I am not half good enough for you.”

The man smiled somewhat mirthlessly, but his voice was reproachful. “You always speak the truth, Hetty. My dear, knowing what the best of us are, I wonder how I dared to venture to ask you to share your life with me.”

Hetty checked him with a little gesture. “Can’t you understand?” she said. “The girl who sang to you now and then isn’t me. I am selfish, discontented, and shallow, and if you hadn’t heard me sing or play you would never have thought of me. There are people who sing divinely, and are—you see, I have met them with the mask off—just horrible.”

“Hetty,” said Cheyne, “I can’t allow anyone to malign you, even if it’s yourself, and if you have any faults, my dear, I’ll take them with the rest. In fact, I would be glad of one or two. They would only bring you a little nearer to me.”

The girl lifted her hand and silenced him. “Jake,” she said appealingly, “please take your answer and go away. If I could only be fond of you in the right way I would, but I can’t, you see. It is not my fault—it isn’t in me.”

The man recognized the finality in her tone, but, feeling that it was useless, made a last endeavour.

“I’m going away to-morrow,” he said. “You might think differently when I come back again.”

The girl’s voice quivered a little. “No,” she said. “I have to be straightforward now, and I know you will try to make it easier for me, even if I’m hurting you. It’s no use. I shall think the same, and by and by you’ll get over this fancy, and wonder what you ever saw in me.”

The man smiled curiously. “I am afraid it will take me a lifetime,” he said.

In another moment he had gone, and Hetty turned, a trifle flushed in face, towards the house across the lawn.

“He took it very well—and I shall never find anyone half so nice again,” she said.

It was half an hour later, and Miss Torrance had recovered at least her outward serenity, when one of Mrs. Schuyler’s neighbours arrived. She brought one or two young women, and a man, with her. The latter she presented to Mrs. Schuyler.

“Mr. Reginald Clavering,” she said. “He’s from the prairie where Miss Torrance’s father lives, and is staying a day or two with us. When I heard he knew Hetty I ventured to bring him over.”

Mrs. Schuyler expressed her pleasure, and—for they had gone back to the lighted room now—Hetty presently found herself seated face to face with the stranger. He was a tall, well-favoured man, slender, and lithe in movement, with dark eyes and hair, and a slightly sallow face that suggested that he was from the South. It also seemed fitting that he was immaculately dressed, for there was a curious gracefulness about him that still had in it a trace of insolence. No one would have mistaken him for a Northerner.

“It was only an hour ago I found we were so near, and I insisted upon coming across at once,” he said. “You have changed a good deal since you left the prairie.”

“Yes,” said the girl drily. “Is it very astonishing? You see, we don’t spend half our time on horseback here. You didn’t expect to find me a sharp-tongued Amazon still?”

Clavering laughed as he looked at her, but the approval of what he saw was a trifle too evident in his black eyes.

“Well,” he said languidly, “you were our Princess then, and there was only one of your subjects’ homage you never took kindly to. That was rough on him, because he was at least as devoted as the rest.”

“That,” said the girl, with a trace of acerbity, “was because he tried to patronize me. Even if I haven’t the right to it, I like respect.”

Clavering made a little gesture, and the deference in it was at least half sincere. “You command it, and I must try to make amends. Now, don’t you want to hear about your father and the Range?”

“No,” said Hetty. “I had a talk with Larry to-day.”

“In New York?”

“Yes. At the depot. He is going back to-morrow. You seem astonished?”

Clavering appeared thoughtful. “Well, it’s Chicago he usually goes to.”

“Usually?” said Hetty. “I scarcely remember him leaving Fremont once in three years.”

Clavering laughed. “Then he leaves it a good deal more often now. A man must have a little diversion when he lives as we do, and no doubt Larry feels lonely. You are here, and Heloise Durand has gone away.”

Hetty understood the implication, for she had some notion how the men who spent months together in the solitude of the prairie amused themselves in the cities. Nor had she and most of her neighbours wholly approved of the liberal views held by Heloise Durand. She had, however, an unquestioning belief in Larry, and none in the man beside her.

“I scarcely think you need have been jealous of him,” she said. “Larry wasn’t Miss Durand’s kind, and he couldn’t be lonely. Everybody was fond of him.”

Clavering nodded. “Of course! Still, Larry hasn’t quite so many friends lately.”

“Now,” said Hetty with a little flash in her eyes, “when you’ve told me that you have got to tell the rest. What has he been doing?”

“Ploughing!” said Clavering drily. “I did what I could to restrain him, but nobody ever could argue with Larry.”

Hetty laughed, though she felt a little dismay. It was then a serious affair to drive the wheat furrow in a cattle country, and the man who did it was apt to be regarded as an iconoclast. Nevertheless, she would not show that she recognized it.

“Well,” she said, “that isn’t very dreadful. The plough is supreme in the Dakotas and Minnesota now. Sooner or later it has got to find a place in our country.”

“Still, that’s not going to happen while your father lives.”

The girl realized the truth of this, but she shook her head. “We’re not here to talk wheat and cattle, and I see Flo Schuyler looking at us,” she said. “Go across and make yourself agreeable to the others for the honour of the prairie.”

Clavering went; but he had left an unpleasant impression behind him, as he had perhaps intended, while soon after he took his departure Flora Schuyler found her friend alone.

“So you sent Jake away!” she said.

“Yes,” said Hetty. “I don’t know what made me, but I felt I had to. I almost meant to take him.”

Flora Schuyler nodded gravely. “But it wasn’t because of that man Clavering?”

“It was not,” said Hetty, with a little laugh. “Don’t you like him? He is rather a famous man back there on the prairie.”

Flora Schuyler shook her head. “No,” she said; “he reminded me of that Florentine filigree thing. It’s very pretty, and I bought it for silver, but it isn’t.”

“You think he’s that kind of man?”

“Yes,” said Miss Schuyler. “I wouldn’t take him at face value. The silver’s all on top. I don’t know what is underneath it, and would sooner somebody else found out.”

III

THE CATTLE-BARONS

It was a still, hot evening when a somewhat silent company of bronze-faced men assembled in the big living room of Cedar Range. It was built of birch trunks, and had once, with its narrow windows and loopholes for rifle fire, resembled a fortalice; but now cedar panelling covered the logs, and the great double casements were filled with the finest glass. They were open wide that evening. Around this room had grown up a straggling wooden building of dressed lumber with pillars and scroll-work, and, as it stood then, flanked by its stores and stables, barns and cattle-boys’ barracks, there was no homestead on a hundred leagues of prairie that might compare with it.

Outside, on the one hand, the prairie rolled away in long billowy rises, a vast sea of silvery grey, for the grass that had been green a month or two was turning white again, and here and there a stockrider showed silhouetted, a dusky mounted figure against the paling flicker of saffron that still lingered upon the horizon. On the other, a birch bluff dipped to the Cedar River, which came down faintly chilled with the Rockies’ snow from the pine forests of the foothills. There was a bridge four miles away, but the river could be forded beneath the Range for a few months each year. At other seasons it swirled by, frothing in green-stained flood, swollen by the drainage of snowfield and glacier, and there was no stockrider at the Range who dared swim his horse across.

Sun and wind had their will with the homestead, for there was little shelter from icy blizzard and scorching heat at Cedar; but though here and there the frame-boarding gaped and the roof-shingles were rent, no man accustomed to that country could fail to notice the signs of careful management and prosperity. Corrals, barns, and stables were the best of their kind; and, though the character of all of them was not beyond exception, in physique and fitness for their work it would have been hard to match the sinewy men in blue shirts, wide hats, and long boots, then watering their horses at the ford. They were as daring and irresponsible swashbucklers as ever rode out on mediæval foray, and, having once sold their allegiance to Torrance of Cedar, and recognized that he was not to be trifled with, were ready to do without compunction anything he bade them.

In the meanwhile Torrance sat at the head of the long table, with Clavering of Beauregard at his right hand. His face was bronzed and resolute, and the stamp of command sat plainly upon him. There was grey in his dark hair, and his eyes were keen and black, with a little glint in them; but, vigorous as he still seemed, the hand on the table was smooth and but slightly tinted by the sun, for Torrance was one who, in the language of that country, did his work, which was usually arduous, with his gloves on. He was dressed in white shirt and broadcloth, and a diamond of price gleamed in the front of the former.

His guests were for the most part younger, and Clavering was scarcely half his age: but when they met in conclave something usually happened, for the seat of the legislature was far away, and their will considerably more potent thereabouts than the law of the land. Sheriff, postmaster, railroad agent, and petty politician carried out their wishes, and as yet no man had succeeded in living in that region unless he did homage to the cattle-barons. They were Republicans, admitting in the abstract the rights of man, so long as no venturesome citizen demanded too much of them; but they had discovered that in practice liberty is usually the prerogative of the strong. Still, they had done their nation good service, for they had found the land a wilderness and covered it with cattle, so that its commerce fed the railroads and supported busy wooden towns. Some of the older men had disputed possession with the Indian, and most of them in the early days, enduring thirst and loneliness and unwearying toil, had held on stubbornly in the face of ruin by frost and drought and hail. It was not astonishing that as they had made that land—so they phrased it—they regarded it as theirs.

There were eight of them present, and for a time they talked of horses and cattle as they sipped their wine, which was the choicest that France could send them; and it is also probable that no better cigars ever came from Cuba than those they smoked. By and by, however, Torrance laid his aside.

“It’s time we got down to work,” he said. “I sent for ten of you, and eight have come. One sent valid excuses, and one made no answer.”

“Larry Grant,” said Clavering. “I guess he was too busy at the depot bringing a fat Dutchman and a crowd of hard-faced Dakota ploughboys in.”

There was a little murmur of astonishment which, had the men been different, would not have been quite free from consternation, for it was significant news.

“You’re quite sure?” asked Torrance, and his face was stern.

“Well,” said Clavering languidly, “I saw him, and bantered him a little on his prepossessing friends. Asked him why, when he was at it, he didn’t go to Manitoba for Canadians. Larry didn’t take it nicely.”

“I’m sorry,” said one of the older men. “Larry is one of us, and the last man I’d figure on committing that kind of meanness would be the son of Fremont Grant. Quite sure it’s not a fit of temper? You have not been worrying him, Torrance?”

Torrance closed one hand. “Grant of Fremont was my best friend, and when he died I ’most brought the lad up as a son. When he got hold of his foolish notions it hurt me considerably, and I did what I could to talk him out of them.”

There was a little smile in the faces of some of the men, for Torrance’s draconic fashion of arguing was known to them.

“You put it a little too straight, and he told you something that riled you,” said one.

“He did,” said Torrance grimly. “Still, for ’most two years I kept a curb on my temper. Then one evening I told him he had to choose right then between his fancies and me. I could have no dealings with any man who talked as he did.”

“Do you remember any of it?” asked another man.

“Yes,” said Torrance. “His father’s friends were standing in the way of progress. Land that would feed a thousand families was keeping us in luxury no American was entitled to. This was going to be the poor man’s country, and the plough was bound to come!”

Clavering laughed softly, and there were traces of ironical amusement in the faces of the rest. Very similar predictions had more than once been flung at them, and their possessions were still, they fancied, secure to them. They, however, became grave again, and it was evident that Larry Grant had hitherto been esteemed by them.

“If it had been any one else, we could have put our thumb on him right now,” said one. “Still, I don’t quite figure it would work with Larry. There are too many folks who would stand in with him.”

There was a little murmur of approbation, and Clavering laughed. “Buy him off,” he said tentatively. “We have laid out a few thousand dollars in that way before.”

Some of the men made gestures of decided negation, and Torrance looked at the speaker a trifle sternly.

“No, sir,” he said. “Larry may be foolish, but he’s one of us.”

“Then,” said somebody, “we’ve got to give him time. Let it pass. You have something to tell us, Torrance?”

Torrance signed to one of them. “You had better tell them, Allonby.”

A grey-haired man stood up, and his fingers shook a little on the table. “My lease has fallen in, and the Bureau will not renew it,” he said. “I’m not going to moan about my wrongs, but some of you know what it cost me to break in that place of mine. You have lived on the bitter water and the saleratus bread, but none of you has seen his wife die for the want of the few things he couldn’t give her, as I did. I gave the nation my two boys when the good times came, and they’re dead—buried in their uniform both of them—and now, when I’d laid out my last dollar on the ranch, that the one girl I’ve left me might have something when I’d gone, the Government will take it away from me. Gentlemen, is it my duty to sit down quietly?”

There was a murmur, and the men looked at one another with an ominous question in their eyes, until Torrance raised his hand.

“The land’s not open to location. I guess they’re afraid of us, and Allonby’s there on toleration yet,” he said. “Gentlemen, we mean to keep him just where he is, because when he pulls out we will have to go too. But this thing has to be done quietly. When the official machinery moves down here it’s because we pull the strings, and we have got to have the law upon our side as far as we can. Well, that’s going to cost us money, and we want a campaign fund. I’ll give Allonby a cheque for five hundred dollars in the meanwhile, if he’ll be treasurer; but as we may all be fixed as he is presently, we’ll want a good deal more before we’re through. Who will follow me?”

Each of them promised five hundred, and then looked at Clavering, who had not spoken. One of them also fancied that there was for a moment a trace of embarrassment in his face; but he smiled carelessly.

“The fact is, dollars are rather tight with me just now,” he said. “You’ll have to wait a little if I’m to do as much as the rest of you. I am, however, quite willing.”

“I’ll lend you them,” said Torrance. “Allonby, I’ll make that cheque a thousand. You have got it down?”

Allonby accepted office, and one of the other men rose up. “Now it seems to me that Torrance is right, and with our leases expired or running out, we’re all in the same tight place,” he said. “The first move is to get every man holding cattle land from here to the barren country to stand in, and then, one way or another, we’ll freeze out the homesteaders. Well, then, we’ll constitute ourselves a committee, with Torrance as head executive, and as we want to know just what the others are doing, my notion is that he should start off to-morrow and ride round the country. If there are any organizations ready, it might suit us to affiliate with them.”

It was agreed to, and Clavering said, “It seems to me, sir, that the first question is, ‘Could we depend upon the boys if we wanted them?’”

Torrance strode to an open window and blew a silver whistle. Its shrill note had scarcely died away when a mounted man came up at a gallop, and a band of others in haste on foot. They stopped in front of the window, picturesque in blue shirts and long boots, sinewy, generously fed, and irresponsibly daring.

“Boys,” he said, “you’ve been told there’s a change coming, and by and by this country will have no more use for you. Now, if any folks came here and pulled our boundaries up to let the mean whites from back east in, what are you going to do?”

There was a burst of hoarse laughter. “Ride them down,” said one retainer, with the soft blue eyes of a girl and a figure of almost matchless symmetry.

“Grow feathers on them,” said another. “Ride them back to the railroad on a rail.”

“I scarcely think that would be necessary,” said Torrance quietly. “Still, you’d stand behind the men who pay you?”

There was a murmur that expressed a good deal, though it was inarticulate, and a man stood forward.

“You’ve heard them, sir,” he said. “Well, we’ll do just what you want us to. This is the cattle-baron’s country, and we’re here. It’s good enough for us, and if it means lots of trouble we’re going to stay here.”

Torrance raised his hand, and when the men moved away turned with a little grim smile to his guests. “They’ll be quite as good as their word,” he said.

Then he led them back to the table, and when the decanter had gone round, one of the younger men stood up.

“We want a constitution, gentlemen, and I’ll give you one,” he said. “The Cedar District Stockraisers’ Committee incorporated to-day with for sole object the defence of our rights as American citizens!”

Clavering rose with the others, but there was a little ironical smile in his eyes as he said, “If necessary against any unlawful encroachments made by the legislature!”

Torrance turned upon him sternly. “No, sir!” he said. “By whatever means may appear expedient!”

The glasses were lifted high, and when they had laid them down the men rode away, though only one or two of them realized the momentous issues which they and others had raised at about much the same time. They had not, however, met in conclave too soon, for any step that man makes forward towards a wider life is usually marked by strife, and the shadow of coming trouble was already upon the land. It had deepened little by little, and the cattle-barons had closed their eyes, as other men who have held the reins have done since the beginning, until the lean hands of the toilers fastened upon them, and fresh horrors added to an ancient wrong were the price of liberty that was lost again. They had done good service to their nation, with profit to themselves, and would not see that the times were changing and that the nation had no longer need of them.

Other men, however, at least suspected it, and there was an expectant gathering one hot afternoon in the railroad depot of a little wooden town where Grant stood waiting for the west-bound train. There was little to please the eye about the station, and still less about the town. Straight out of the great white levels ran the glistening track, and an unsightly building of wood and iron rose from the side of it, flanked by a towering water-tank. A pump rattled under it, and the smell of creosote was everywhere. Cattle corrals ran back from the track, and beyond them sun-rent frame houses roofed with cedar shingles straggled away on the one hand, paintless, crude, and square. On the other, a smear of trail led the dazzled vision back across the parched levels to the glancing refraction on the horizon, and the figure of a single horseman showing dimly through a dust cloud emphasized their loneliness. The town was hot and dusty, its one green fringe of willows defiled by the garbage the citizens deposited there, and the most lenient stranger could have seen no grace or beauty in it. Yet, like many another place of the kind, it was destined to rise to prosperity and fame.

The depot was thronged that afternoon. Store and hotel keeper, citizens in white shirts and broadcloth, jostled blue-shirted cattle men, while here and there a petty politician consulted with the representative of a Western paper. The smoke of cigars drifted everywhere, and the listless heat was stirred by the hum of voices eager and strident. It was evident that the assembly was in an expectant mood, and there was a murmur of approbation when one newspaper man laid hold of Grant.

“I couldn’t light on you earlier, but ten minutes will see us through,” he said. “We’ll make a half-page of it if you’ll let me have your views. New epoch in the country’s history! The small farmer the coming king! A wood-cut of the man who brought the first plough in.”

Larry Grant laughed a little. “There are quite a few ahead of me, and if you spread my views the barons would put their thumb on you and squeeze you flat,” he said. “On the other hand, it wouldn’t suit me if you sent them anything I told you to publish.”

The man appeared a trifle embarrassed. “The rights of the Press are sacred in a free country, sir,” he said.

“Well,” said Grant drily, “although I hope it will be, this country isn’t quite free yet. I surmise that you don’t know that the office of your contemporary farther east was broken into a few hours ago, and an article written by a friend of mine pulled out of the press. The proprietor was quietly held down upon the floor when he objected. You will hear whether I am right or wrong to-morrow.”

What the man would have answered did not appear, for just then somebody shouted, and a trail of smoke swept up above the rim of the prairie. It rose higher and whiter, something that flashed dazzlingly grew into shape beneath it, and there was a curious silence when the dusty cars rolled into the little station. It was followed by a murmur as an elderly man in broad white hat and plain store clothing, and a plump, blue-eyed young woman, came out upon the platform of a car. He wore a pair of spectacles and gazed about him in placid inquiry, until Grant stepped forward. Then he helped the young woman down, and held out a big, hard hand.

“Mr. Grant?” he said.

Grant nodded, and raised his hat to the girl. “Yes,” he said. “Mr. Muller?”

“Ja,” said the other man. “Also der fräulein Muller.”

There was a little ironical laughter from the crowd. “A Dutchman,” said somebody, “from Chicago. They raise them there in the sausage machine. The hogs go in at one end, and they rake the Dutchmen out of the other.”

Muller looked round inquiringly, but apparently failed to discover the speaker.

“Dot,” he said, “is der chestnut. I him have heard before.”

There was good-humoured laughter—for even when it has an animus an American crowd is usually fair; and in the meanwhile five or six other men got down from a car. They were lean and brown, with somewhat grim faces, and were dressed in blue shirts and jean.

“Well,” said one of them, “we’re Americans. Got any objections to us getting off here, boys?”

Some of the men in store clothing nodded a greeting, but there were others in wide hats, and long boots with spurs, who jeered.

“Brought your plough-cows along?” said one, and the taunt had its meaning, for it is usually only the indigent and incapable who plough with oxen.

“No,” said one of the newcomers. “We have horses back yonder. When we want mules or cowsteerers, I guess we’ll find them here. You seem to have quite a few of them around.”

A man stepped forward, jingling his spurs, with his jacket of embroidered deerskin flung open to show, though this was as yet unusual, that he wore a bandolier. Rolling back one loose sleeve he displayed a brown arm with the letters “C. R.” tattooed within a garter upon it. “See this. You’ve heard of that mark before?” he said.

“Cash required!” said the newcomer, with a grin. “Well, I guess that’s not astonishing. It would be a blame foolish man who gave you credit.”

“No, sir,” said the stockrider. “It’s Cedar Range, and there’s twenty boys and more cattle than you could count in a long day carrying that brand. It will be a cold day when you and the rest of the Dakotas start kicking against that outfit.”

There was laughter and acclamation, in the midst of which the cars rolled on; but in the meanwhile Grant had seized the opportunity to get a gang-plough previously unloaded from a freight-car into a wagon. The sight of it raised a demonstration, and there were hoots, and cries of approbation, while a man with a flushed face was hoisted to the top of a kerosene-barrel.

“Boys,” he said, “there’s no use howling. We’re Americans. Nobody can stop us, and we’re going on. You might as well kick against a railroad; and because the plough and the small farmer will do more for you than even the locomotive did, they have got to come. Well, now, some of you are keeping stores, and one or two I see here baking bread and making clothes. Which is going to do the most for your trade and you, a handful of rich men, who wouldn’t eat or wear the things you have to sell, owning the whole country, or a family farming on every quarter section? A town ten times this size wouldn’t be much use to them. Well, you’ve had your cattle-barons, gentlemen most of them; but even a man of that kind has to step out of the track and make room when the nation’s moving on.”

He probably said more, but Grant did not hear him, for he had as unostentatiously as possible conveyed Muller and the fräulein into a wagon, and had horses led up for the Dakota men. They had some difficulty in mounting, and the crowd laughed good-humouredly, though here and there a man flung jibes at them; while one, jolting in his saddle as his broncho reared, turned to Grant with a little deprecatory gesture.

“In our country we mostly drive in wagons, but I’ll ride by the stirrup and get down when nobody sees me,” he said. “The beast wouldn’t try to climb out this way if there wasn’t something kind of prickly under his saddle.”

Grant’s face was a trifle grim when he saw that more of the horses were inclined to behave similarly, but he flicked his team with the whip, and there was cheering and derision when, with a drumming of hoofs and rattle of wheels, wagons and horsemen swept away into the dust-cloud that rolled about the trail.

“This,” he said, “is only a little joke of theirs, and they’ll go a good deal further when they get their blood up. Still, I tried to warn you what you might expect.”

“So!” said Muller, with a placid grin. “It is noding to der franc tireurs. I was in der chase of Menotti among der Vosges. Also at Paris.”

“Well,” said Grant drily, “I’m ’most afraid that by and by you’ll go through very much the same kind of thing again. What you saw at the depot is going on wherever the railroad is bringing the farmers in, and we’ve got men in this country who’d make first-grade franc tireurs.”

IV

MULLER STANDS FAST

The windows of Fremont homestead were open wide, and Larry Grant sat by one of them in a state of quiet contentment after a long day’s ride. Outside, the prairie, fading from grey to purple, ran back to the dusky east, and the little cool breeze that came up out of the silence and flowed into the room had in it the qualities of snow-chilled wine. A star hung low to the westward in a field of palest green, and a shaded lamp burned dimly at one end of the great bare room.

By it the Fräulein Muller, flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry’s eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fräulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he had now and then daringly pictured sitting there. Her father, perhaps from force of habit, sat with a big meerschaum in hand, by the empty stove, and if his face expressed anything at all it was phlegmatic content. Opposite him sat Breckenridge, a young Englishman, lately arrived from Minnesota.

“What do you think of the land, now you’ve seen it?” asked Grant.

Muller nodded reflectively. “Der land is good. It is der first-grade hard wheat she will grow. I three hundred and twenty acres buy.”

“Well,” said Grant, “I’m willing to let you have it; but I usually try to do the square thing, and you may have trouble before you get your first crop in.”

“Und,” said Muller, “so you want to sell?”

Grant laughed. “Not quite; and I can’t sell that land outright. I’ll let it to you while my lease runs, and when that falls in you’ll have the same right to homestead a quarter or half section for nothing as any other man. In the meanwhile, I and one or two others are going to start wheat-growing on land that is ours outright, and take our share of the trouble.”

“Ja,” said Muller, “but dere is much dot is not clear to me. Why you der trouble like?”

“Well,” said Grant, “as I’ve tried to tell you, it works out very much like this. It was known that this land was specially adapted to mixed farming quite a few years ago, but the men who ran their cattle over it never drove a plough. You want to know why? Well, I guess it was for much the same reason that an association of our big manufacturers bought up the patents of an improved process, and for a long while never made an ounce of material under them, or let any one else try. We had to pay more than it was worth for an inferior article that hampered some of the most important industries in the country, and they piled up the dollars in the old-time way.”

“Und,” said Muller, “dot is democratic America!”

“Yes,” said Grant. “That is the America we mean to alter. Well, where one man feeds his cattle, fifty could plough and make a living raising stock on a smaller scale, and the time’s quite close upon us when they will; but the cattle-men have got the country, and it will hurt them to let go. It’s not their land, and was only lent them. Now I’m no fonder of trouble than any other man, but this country fed and taught me, and kept me two years in Europe looking round, and I’d feel mean if I took everything and gave it nothing back. Muller will understand me. Do you, Breckenridge?”

The English lad laughed. “Oh, yes; though I don’t know that any similar obligation was laid on myself. The country I came from had apparently no use for a younger son at all, and it was kicks and snubs it usually bestowed on me; but if there’s a row on hand I’m quite willing to stand by you and see it through. My folks will, however, be mildly astonished when they hear I’ve turned reformer.”

Grant nodded good-humouredly, for he was not a fanatic, but an American with a firm belief in the greatness of his country’s destiny, who, however, realized that faith alone was scarcely sufficient.

“Well,” he said, “if it’s trouble you’re anxious for, it’s quite likely you’ll find it here. Nobody ever got anything worth having unless he fought for it, and we’ve taken on a tolerably big contract. We’re going to open up this state for any man who will work for it to make a living in, and substitute its constitution for the law of the cattle-barons.”

“Der progress,” said Muller, “she is irresistible.”

Breckenridge laughed. “From what I was taught, it seems to me that she moves round in rings. You start with the luxury of the few, oppression, and brutality, then comes revolution, and worse things than you had before, progress growing out of it that lasts for a few generations until the few fittest get more than their fair share of wealth and control, and you come back to the same point again.”

Muller shook his head. “No,” he said, “it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on der volute is nod constant.”

“On the top?” said Breckenridge. “Principalities and powers, traditional and aristocratic, or monetary. Well, it seems to me they squeeze progress down tolerably flat between them occasionally. Take our old cathedral cities and some of your German ones, and, if you demand it, I’ll throw their ghettos in. Then put the New York tenements or most of the smaller western towns beside them, and see what you’ve arrived at.”

“No,” said Muller tranquilly. “Weight above she is necessary while der civilization is incomblete, but der force is from der bottom. It is all time positive and primitive, for it was make when man was make at der beginning.”

Grant nodded. “Well,” he said, “our work’s waiting right here. What other men have done in the Dakotas and Minnesota we are going to do. Nature has been storing us food for the wheat plant for thousands of years, and there’s more gold in our black soil than was ever dug out of Mexico or California. Still, you have to get it out by ploughing, and not by making theories. Breckenridge, you will stay with me; but you’ll want a house to live in, Muller.”

Muller drew a roll of papers out of his pocket, and Grant, who took them from him, stared in wonder. They were drawings and calculations relating to building with undressed lumber, made with Teutonic precision and accuracy.

“I have,” said Muller, “der observation make how you build der homestead in this country.”

“Then we’ll start you in to-morrow,” said Grant. “You’ll get all the lumber you want in the birch bluff, and I’ll lend you one or two of the boys I brought in from Michigan. There’s nobody on this continent handier with the axe.”

Muller nodded and refilled his pipe, and save for the click of the fräulein’s needles there was once more silence in the bare room. She had not spoken, for the knitting and the baking were her share, and the men whose part was the conflict must be clothed and fed. They knew it could not be evaded, and, springing from the same colonizing stock, placid Teuton with his visions and precision in everyday details, eager American, and adventurous Englishman, each made ready for it in his own fashion. Free as yet from passion, or desire for fame, they were willing to take up the burden that was to be laid upon them; but only the one who knew the least awaited it joyously. Others had also the same thoughts up and down that lonely land, and the dusty cars were already bringing the vanguard of the homeless host in. They were for the most part quiet and resolute men, who asked no more than leave to till a few acres of the wilderness, and to eat what they had sown; but there were among them others of a different kind—fanatics, outcasts, men with wrongs—and behind them the human vultures who fatten on rapine. As yet, the latter found no occupation waiting them, but their sight was keen, and they knew their time would come.

It was a week later, and a hot afternoon, when Muller laid the big crosscut saw down on the log he was severing and slowly straightened his back. Then he stood up, red and very damp in face, a burly, square-shouldered man, and, having mislaid his spectacles, blinked about him. On three sides of him the prairie, swelling in billowy rises, ran back to the horizon; but on the fourth a dusky wall of foliage followed the crest of a ravine, and the murmur of water came up faintly from the creek in the hollow. Between himself and its slender birches lay piled amidst the parched and dusty grass, and the first courses of a wooden building, rank with the smell of sappy timber, already stood in front of him. There was no notch in the framing that had not been made and pinned with an exact precision. In its scanty shadow his daughter sat knitting beside a smouldering fire over which somebody had suspended a big blackened kettle. The crash of the last falling trunk had died away, and there was silence in the bluff; but a drumming of hoofs rose in a sharp staccato from the prairie.

“Now,” said Muller quietly, “I think the chasseurs come.”

The girl looked up a moment, noticed the four mounted figures that swung over the crest of a rise, and then went on with her knitting again. Still, there was for a second a little flash in her pale blue eyes.

The horsemen came on, the dust floating in long wisps behind them, until, with a jingle of bridle and stirrup, they pulled up before the building. Three of them were bronzed and dusty, in weather-stained blue shirts, wide hats, and knee-boots that fitted them like gloves; and there was ironical amusement in their faces. Each sat his horse as if he had never known any other seat than the saddle; but the fourth was different from the rest. He wore a jacket of richly embroidered deerskin, and the shirt under it was white; while he sat with one hand in a big leather glove resting on his hip. His face was sallow and his eyes were dark.

“Hallo, Hamburg!” he said, and his voice had a little commanding ring. “You seem kind of busy.”

Muller blinked at him. He had apparently not yet found his spectacles, but he had in the meanwhile come upon his axe, and now stood very straight, with the long haft reaching to his waist.

“Ja,” he said. “Mine house I build.”

“Well,” said the man in the embroidered jacket, “I fancy you’re wasting time. Asked anybody’s leave to cut that lumber, or put it up?”

“Mine friend,” said Muller, smiling, “when it is nod necessary I ask nodings of any man.”

“Then,” said the horseman drily, as he turned to his companions, “I fancy that’s where you’re wrong. Boys, we’ll take him along in case Torrance would like to see him. I guess you’ll have to walk home, Jim.”

A man dismounted and led forward his horse with a wrench upon the bridle that sent it plunging. “Get your foot in the stirrup, Hamburg, and I’ll hoist you up,” he said.

Muller stood motionless, and the horseman in deerskin glancing round in his direction saw his daughter for the first time. He laughed; but there was something in his black eyes that caused the Teuton’s fingers to close a trifle upon the haft of the axe.

“You’ll have to get down, Charlie, as well as Jim,” he said. “Torrance has his notions, or Coyote might have carried Miss Hamburg that far as well. Sorry to hurry you, Hamburg, but I don’t like waiting.”

Muller stepped back a pace, and the axe-head flashed as he moved his hand; while, dazzled by the beam it cast, the half-tamed broncho rose with hoofs in the air. Its owner smote it on the nostrils with his fist, and the pair sidled round each other—the man with his arm drawn back, the beast with laid-back ears—for almost a minute before they came to a standstill.

“Mine friend,” said Muller, “other day I der pleasure have. I mine house have to build.”

“Get up,” said the stockrider. “Ever seen anybody fire off a gun?”

Muller laughed softly, and glanced at the leader. “Der rifle,” he said drily. “I was at Sedan. To-day it is not convenient that I come.”

“Hoist him up!” said the leader, and once more, while the other man moved forward, Muller stepped back; but this time there was an answering flash in his blue eyes as the big axe-head flashed in the sun.

“I guess we’d better hold on,” said another man. “Look there, Mr. Clavering.”

He pointed to the bluff, and the leader’s face darkened as he gazed, for four men with axes were running down the slope, and they were lean and wiry, with very grim faces. They were also apparently small farmers or lumbermen from the bush of Michigan, and Clavering knew such men usually possessed a terrible proficiency with the keen-edged weapon, and stubbornness was native in them. Two others, one of whom he knew, came behind them. The foremost stopped, and stood silent when the man Clavering recognized signed to them, but not before each had posted himself strategically within reach of a horseman’s bridle.

“You might explain, Clavering, what you and your cow-boys are doing here,” he said.

Clavering laughed. “We are going to take your Teutonic friend up to the Range. He is cutting our fuel timber with nobody’s permission.”

“No,” said Grant drily; “he has mine. The bluff is on my run.”

“Did you take out timber rights with your lease?” asked Clavering.

“No, I hadn’t much use for them. None of my neighbours hold any either. But the bluff is big enough, and I’ve no objection to their cutting what billets they want. Still, I can’t have them driving out any other friends of mine.”

Clavering smiled ironically. “You have been picking up some curious acquaintances, Larry; but don’t you think you had better leave this thing to Torrance? The fact is, the cattle-men are not disposed to encourage strangers building houses in their country just now.”

“I had a notion it belonged to this State. It’s not an unusual one,” said Grant.

Clavering shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, it sounds better that way. Have it so. Still, it will scarcely pay you to make yourself unpopular with us, Larry.”

“Well,” said Grant drily, “it seems to me I’m tolerably unpopular already. But that’s not quite the point. Take your boys away.”

Clavering flung his hand up in half-ironical salutation, but as he was about to wheel his horse a young Englishman whose nationality was plainly stamped upon him seized his bridle.

“Not quite so fast!” he said. “It would be more fitting if you got down and expressed your regrets to the fräulein. You haven’t heard Muller’s story yet, Larry.”

“Let go,” said Clavering, raising the switch he held. “Drop my bridle or take care of yourself!”

“Come down,” said Breckenridge.

The switch went up and descended hissing upon part of an averted face; but the lad sprang as it fell, and the next moment the horse rose almost upright with two men clinging to it; one of them, whose sallow cheeks were livid now, swaying in the saddle. Then Grant grasped the bridle that fell from the rider’s hands, and hurled his comrade backwards, while some of the stockriders pushed their horses nearer, and the axe-men closed in about them.

Hoarse cries went up. “Horses back! Pull him off! Give the Britisher a show! Leave them to it!”

It was evident that a blunder would have unpleasant results, for Clavering, with switch raised, had tightened his left hand on the bridle Grant had loosed again, while a wicked smile crept into his eyes, and the lad stood tense and still, with hands clenched in front of him, and a weal on his young face. Grant, however, stepped in between them.

“We’ve had sufficient fooling, Breckenridge,” he said. “Clavering, I’ll give you a minute to get your men away, and if you can’t do it in that time you’ll take the consequences.”

Clavering wheeled his horse. “The odds are with you, Larry,” he said. “You have made a big blunder, but I guess you know your own business best.”

He nodded, including the fräulein, with an easy insolence that yet became him, touched the horse with his heel, and in another moment he and his cow-boys were swinging at a gallop across the prairie. Then, as they dipped behind a rise, those who were left glanced at one another. Breckenridge was very pale, and one of his hands was bleeding where Clavering’s spur had torn it.

“It seems that we have made a beginning,” he said hoarsely. “It’s first blood to them, but this will take a lot of forgetting, and the rest may be different.”

Grant made no answer, but turned and looked at Muller, who stood very straight and square, with a curious brightness in his eyes.

“Are you going on with the contract? There is the girl to consider,” said Grant.

“COME DOWN!”—Page 47.

“Ja,” said the Teuton. “I was in der Vosges, and der girl is also Fräulein Muller.”

“Boys,” said Grant to the men from Michigan, “you have seen what’s in front of you, and you’ll probably have to use more than axes before you’re through. Still, you have the chance of clearing out right now. I only want willing men behind me.”

One of the big axe-men laughed scornfully, and there was a little sardonic grin in the faces of the rest.

“There’s more room for us here than there was in Michigan, and now we’ve got our foot down here we’re not going back again,” he said. “That’s about all there is to it. But when our time comes, the other men aren’t going to find us slacker than the Dutchman.”

Grant nodded gravely. “Well,” he said very simply, “I guess the Lord who made this country will know who’s in the right and help them. They’ll need it. There’s a big fight coming.”

Then they went back to their hewing in the bluff, and the Fräulein Muller went on with her knitting.

V

HETTY COMES HOME

It was an afternoon of the Indian summer, sunny and cool, and the maples about the Schuyler villa flamed gold and crimson against a sky of softest blue, when Hetty Torrance sat reflectively silent on the lawn. Flora Schuyler sat near her, with a book upside down upon her knee.

“You have been worrying about something the last few weeks,” she said.

“Is that quite unusual?” asked Hetty. “Haven’t a good many folks to worry all the time?”

Flora Schuyler smiled. “Just finding it out, Hetty? Well, I have noticed a change, and it began the day you waited for us at the depot. And it wasn’t because of Jake Cheyne.”

“No,” said Hetty reflectively. “I suppose it should have been. Have you heard from him since he went away?”

“Lily Cheyne had a letter with some photographs, and she showed it to me. It’s a desolate place in the sage bush he’s living in, and there’s not a white man, except the boys he can’t talk to, within miles of him, while from the picture I saw of his adobe room I scarcely think folks would have it down here to keep hogs in. Jake Cheyne was fastidious, too, and there was a forced cheerfulness about his letter which had its meaning, though, of course, he never mentioned you.”

Hetty flushed a trifle. “Flo, I’m sorry. Still, you can’t blame me.”

“No,” said Miss Schuyler, “though there was a time when I wished I could. You can’t help being pretty, but it ought to make you careful when you see another of them going that way again.”

Hetty made a little impatient gesture. “If there ever is another, he’ll be pulled up quite sharp. You don’t think their foolishness, which spoils everything, is any pleasure to me. It’s too humiliating. Can’t one be friends with a nice man without falling in love with him?”

“Well,” said Miss Schuyler drily, “it depends a good deal on how you’re made; but it’s generally risky for one or the other. Still, perhaps you might, for I have a fancy there’s something short in you. Now, I’m going to ask you a question. Is it thinking of the other man that has made you restless? I mean the one we saw at the depot?”

Hetty laughed outright. “Larry? Why, as I tried to tell you, he has always been just like a cousin or a brother to me, and doesn’t want anything but his horses and cattle and his books on political economy. Larry’s quite happy with his ranching, and his dreams of the new America. Of course, they’ll never come to anything; but when you can start him talking they’re quite nice to listen to.”

Flora Schuyler shook her head. “I wouldn’t be too sure. That man is in earnest, and the dreams of an earnest American have a way of coming true. You have known him a long while, and I’ve only seen him once, but that man will do more than talk if he ever has the opportunity. He has the quiet grit one finds in the best of us—not the kind that make the speeches—and some Englishmen, in him. You can see it in his eyes.”

“Then,” said Hetty, with a little laugh, “come back with me to Cedar, and if you’re good you shall have him. It isn’t everybody I’d give Larry to.”

There was a trace of indignation in Flora Schuyler’s face. “I fancy he would not appreciate your generosity, and there’s a good deal you have got to find out, Hetty,” she said drily. “It may hurt you when you do. But you haven’t told me yet what has been worrying you.”

“No,” said Hetty, with a little wistful smile. “Well, I’m going to. It’s hard to own to, but I’m a failure. I fancied I could make everybody listen to my singing, and I would come here. Well, I came, and found out that my voice would never bring me fame, and for a time it hurt me horribly. Still, I couldn’t go back just then, and when you and your mother pressed me I stayed. I knew what you expected, and I disappointed you. Perhaps I was too fastidious, but there were none of them that really pleased me. Then I began to see that I was only spoiling nicer girls’ chances and trying the patience of everybody.”

“Hetty!” said Flora Schuyler, but Miss Torrance checked her.

“Wait until I’m through. Then it became plain to me that while I’d been wasting my time here the work I was meant for was waiting at Cedar. The old man who gave me everything is very lonely there, and he and Larry have been toiling on while I flung ’most what a ranch would cost away on lessons and dresses and fripperies, which will never be any good to me. Still, I’m an American, too, and now, when there’s trouble coming, I’m going back to the place I belong to.”

“You are doing the right thing now,” said Flora Schuyler.

Hetty smiled somewhat mirthlessly. “Well,” she said, “because it’s hard, I guess I am; but there’s one thing would make it easier. You will come and stay with me. You don’t know how much I want you; and New York in winter doesn’t suit you. You’re pale already. Come and try our clear, dry cold.”

Eventually Miss Schuyler promised, and Hetty rose. “Then it’s fixed,” she said. “I’ll write the old man a dutiful letter now, while I feel like doing it well.”

The letter was duly written, and, as it happened, reached Torrance as he sat alone one evening in his great bare room at Cedar Range. Among the papers on the table in front of him were letters from the cattle-men’s committees, which had sprung into existence every here and there, and Torrance apparently did not find them reassuring, for there was care in his face. It had become evident that the big ranchers’ rights were mostly traditional, and already, in scattered detachments, the vanguard of the homesteaders’ host was filing in. Here and there they had made their footing good; more often, by means not wholly constitutional, their outposts had been driven in; but it was noticeable that Torrance and his neighbours still believed them no more than detachments, and had not heard the footsteps of the rest. Three years’ residence in that land had changed the aliens into American citizens, but a lifetime of prosperity could scarcely efface the bitterness they had brought with them from the east, while some, in spite of their crude socialistic aspirations, were drilled men who had herded the imperial legions like driven cattle into Sedan. More of native birth, helots of the cities, and hired hands of the plains, were also turning desiring eyes upon the wide spaces of the cattle country, where there was room for all.

Torrance opened his letter and smiled somewhat drily. It was affectionate and not without its faint pathos, for Hetty had been stirred when she wrote; but the grim old widower felt no great desire for the gentle attentions of a dutiful daughter just then.

“We shall be at Cedar soon after you get this,” he read among the rest. “I know if I had told you earlier you would have protested you didn’t want me, just because you foolishly fancied I should be lonely at the Range; but I have been very selfish, and you must have been horribly lonely too; and one of the nicest girls you ever saw is coming to amuse you. You can’t help liking Flo. Of course I had to bring a maid; but you will have to make the best of us, because you couldn’t stop us now if you wanted to.”

It was noticeable that Torrance took the pains to confirm this fact by reference to a railroad schedule, and, finding it incontrovertible, shook his head.

“Three of them,” he said.

Then he sat still with the letter in his hand, while a trace of tenderness crept into his face, which, however, grew grave again, until there was a tapping at the door, and Clavering came in.

“You seem a trifle worried, sir, and if you’re busy I needn’t keep you long,” he said. “I just wanted to hand you a cheque for the subscription you paid for me.”

“Sit down,” said Torrance. “Where did you get the dollars from?”

Clavering appeared almost uneasy for a moment, but he laughed. “I’ve been thinning out my cattle.”

“That’s not a policy I approve of just now. We’ll have the rabble down upon us as soon as we show any sign of weakening.”

Clavering made a little deprecatory gesture. “It wasn’t a question of policy. I had to have the dollars. Still, you haven’t told me if you have heard anything unpleasant from the other committees.”

Torrance appeared thoughtful. He suspected that Clavering’s ranch was embarrassed, and the explanation was plausible.

“No,” he said. “It was something else. Hetty is on her way home, and she is bringing another young woman and a maid with her. They will be here before I can stop them. Still, I could, if it was necessary, send them back.”

Clavering did not answer for a moment, though Torrance saw the faint gleam in his dark eyes, and watched him narrowly. Then he said, “You will find a change in Miss Torrance, sir. She has grown into a beautiful young woman, and has, I fancy, been taught to think for herself in the city; you could not expect her to come back as she left the prairie. And if anything has induced her to decide that her place is here, she will probably stay.”

“You’re not quite plain. What could induce her?”

Clavering smiled, though he saw that the shot had told. “It was astonishing that Miss Torrance did not honour me with her confidence. A sense of duty, perhaps, although one notices that the motives of young women are usually a trifle involved. It, however, appears to me that if Miss Torrance makes up her mind to stay, we are still quite capable of guarding our women from anxiety or molestation.”

“Yes,” said Torrance grimly. “Of course. Still, we may have to do things we would sooner they didn’t hear about or see. Well, you have some news?”

Clavering nodded. “I was in at the railroad, and fifty Dakota men came in on the cars. I went round to the hotel with the committee, and, though it cost some dollars to fix the thing, they wouldn’t take them in. The boys, who got kind of savage, found a pole and drove the door in, but we turned the Sheriff, who had already sworn some of us in, loose on them. Four or five men were nastily clubbed, and one of James’s boys was shot through the arm, while I have a fancy that the citizens would have stood in with the other crowd; but seeing they were not going to get anything to eat there, they held up a store, and as we told the man who kept it how their friends had sacked Regent, he fired at them. The consequence is that the Sheriff has some of them in jail, and the rest are camped down on the prairie. We hold the town.”

“Through the Sheriff?”

Clavering laughed. “He’ll earn his pay. Has it struck you that this campaign is going to cost us a good deal? Allonby hasn’t much left in hand already.”

“Oh, yes,” said the older man, with a little grim smile. “If it’s wanted I’ll throw my last dollar in. Beaten now and we’re beaten for ever. We have got to win.”

Clavering said nothing further, though he realized, perhaps more clearly than his leader, that it was only by the downfall of the cattle-men the small farmer could establish himself, and, when he had handed a cheque to Torrance, went out.

It was three days later when Hetty Torrance rose from her seat in a big vestibule car as the long train slackened speed outside a little Western station. She laughed as she swept her glance round the car.

“Look at it, Flo,” she said; “gilding and velvet and nickel, all quite in keeping with the luxury of the East. You are environed by civilization still; but once you step off the platform there will be a difference.”

Flora Schuyler, who noticed the little flush in her companion’s face, glanced out of the dusty window, for the interior of the gently-rocking car, with its lavish decoration and upholstery, was not new to her, and the first thing that caught her eye was the miscellaneous deposit of rubbish, old boots, and discarded clothing, amidst the willows that slowly flitted by. Then she saw a towering water-tank, wooden houses that rose through a haze of blowing dust, hideous in their unadornment, against a crystalline sky, and a row of close-packed stock-cars which announced that they were in the station.

It seemed to be thronged with the populace, and there was a murmur, apparently of disappointed expectancy, when, as the cars stopped, the three women alone appeared on the platform. Then there was a shout for the conductor, and somebody said, “You’ve no rustlers aboard for us?”

“No,” said the grinning official who leaned out from the door of the baggage-car. “The next crowd are waiting until they can buy rifles to whip you with.”

Hoarse laughter followed, and somebody said, “Boys, your friends aren’t coming. You can take your band home again.”

Then out of the clamour came the roll of a drum, and, clear and musical, the ringing of bugles blown by men who had marched with Grant and Sherman when they were young. The effect was stirring, and a cheer went up, for there were other men present in whom the spirit which, underlying immediate issues, had roused the North to arms was living yet; but it broke off into laughter when, one by one, discordant instruments and beaten pans joined in. The din, however, ceased suddenly, when somebody said, “Hadn’t you better let up, boys, or Torrance will figure you sent the band for him?”

Miss Schuyler appeared a trifle bewildered, the maid frightened; but Hetty’s cheeks were glowing.

“Flo,” she said, “aren’t you glad you came? The boys are taking the trail. We’ll show you how we stir the prairie up by and by!”

Miss Schuyler was very doubtful as to whether the prospect afforded her any pleasure; but just then a grey-haired man, dressed immaculately in white shirt and city clothes, kissed her companion, and then, taking off his hat, handed her down from the platform with ceremonious courtesy. He had a grim, forceful face, with pride and command in it, and Miss Schuyler, who felt half afraid of him then, never quite overcame the feeling. She noticed, however, that he paid equal attention to the terrified maid.

“It would be a duty to do our best for any of Hetty’s friends who have been so kind to her in the city, but in this case it’s going to be a privilege, too,” he said. “Well, you will be tired, and they have a meal waiting you at the hotel. This place is a little noisy to-day, but we’ll start on the first stage of your journey when you’re ready.”

He gave Miss Schuyler his arm, and moved towards the thickest of the crowd, which, though apparently slightly hostile, made way for him. Here and there a man drove his fellows back, and one, catching up a loose plank, laid it down for the party to cross the rail switches on. Torrance turned to thank him, but the man swept his hat off with a laugh.

“I wouldn’t worry; it wasn’t for you,” he said. “It’s a long while since we’ve seen anything so pretty as Miss Torrance and the other one.”

Flora Schuyler flushed a little, but Hetty turned to the speaker with a sparkle in her eyes.

“Now,” she said, “that was ’most worth a dollar, and if I didn’t know what kind of man you were, I’d give it you. But what about Clarkson’s Lou?”

There was a laugh from the assembly, and the man appeared embarrassed.

“Well,” he said slowly, “she went off with Jo.”

Miss Torrance nodded sympathetically. “Still, if she knew no better than that, I wouldn’t worry. Jo had a cast in his eye.”

The crowd laughed again, and Flora Schuyler glanced at her companion with some astonishment as she asked, “Do you always talk to them that way?”

“Of course,” said Hetty. “They’re our boys—grown right here. Aren’t they splendid?”

Miss Schuyler once more appeared dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of those who followed them.

“Hold on a few minutes, boys, and down with that flag,” he said.

Then a tawdry banner was lowered suddenly between two poles, but not before Miss Torrance had seen part of the blazoned legend. Its unvarnished forcefulness brought a flush to her companion’s cheek.

“Dad,” she asked more gravely, “what is it all about?”

Torrance laughed a little. “That,” he said, “is a tolerably big question. It would take quite a long while to answer it.”

They had a street to traverse, and Hetty saw that it was filled with little knots of men, some of whom stared at her father, though as she passed their hats came off. Miss Schuyler, on her part, noticed that most of the stores were shut, and felt that she had left New York a long way behind as she glanced at the bare wooden houses cracked by frost and sun, rickety plank walks, whirling wisps of dust, and groups of men, splendid in their lean, muscular symmetry and picturesque apparel. There was a boldness in their carriage, and a grace that approached the statuesque in every poise. Still, she started when they passed one wooden building where blue-shirted figures with rifles stood motionless in the verandah.

“The jail,” said Torrance, quietly. “The Sheriff has one or two rioters safe inside there.”

They found an indifferent meal ready at the wooden hotel, and when they descended in riding dress a wagon with their baggage was waiting outside the door, while a few mounted men with wide hats and bandoliers came up with three saddle-horses. Torrance bestowed the maid in the light wagon, and, when the two girls were mounted, swung himself into the saddle. Then, as they trotted down the unpaved street, Hetty glanced at him and pointed to the dusty horsemen.

“What are the boys for?” she asked.

Torrance smiled grimly. “I told you we had our troubles. It seemed better to bring them, in case we had any difficulty with Larry’s friends.”

“Larry’s friends?” asked Hetty, almost indignantly.

Torrance nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You have seen a few of them. They were carrying the flag with the inscription at the depot.”

Hetty asked nothing further, but Flora Schuyler noticed the little flash in her eyes, and as they crossed the railroad track the clear notes of the bugles rose again and were followed by a tramp of feet. Glancing over their shoulders the girls could see men moving in a body, with the flag they carried tossing amidst the dust. They were coming on in open fours, and when the bugles ceased deep voices sent a marching song ringing across the wooden town.

Hetty’s eyes sparkled; the stockriders seemed to swing more lightly in their saddles, and Flora Schuyler felt a little quiver run through her. Something that jingling rhythm and the simple words expressed but inarticulately stirred her blood, as she remembered that in her nation’s last great struggle the long battalions had limped on, ragged and footsore, singing that song.

“Listen,” said Hetty, while the colour crept into her face. “Oh, I know it’s scarcely music, and the crudest verse; but it served its purpose, and is there any nation on earth could put more swing and spirit into the grandest theme?”

Torrance smiled somewhat drily, but there was a curious expression in his face. “Some of those men are drawing their pension, but they’re not with us,” he said. “It’s only because we have sent in all the boys we can spare that the Sheriff, who has their partners in his jail, can hold the town.”

A somewhat impressive silence followed this, and Flora Schuyler glanced at Hetty when they rode out into the white prairie with two dusty men with bandoliers on either flank.

VI

THE INCENDIARY

Events of no apparent moment have extensive issues now and then, and while cattle-man and homesteader braced themselves for the conflict which they felt would come, the truce might have lasted longer but for the fact that one night Muller slept indifferently in the new house he had built. He was never quite sure what made him restless, or prompted him to open and lean out of his window; and, when he had done this, he saw and heard nothing unusual for a while.

On one hand the birch bluff rose, a dusky wall, against the indigo of the sky, and in front of him the prairie rolled away, silent and shadowy. There was scarcely a sound but the low ripple of the creek, until, somewhere far off in the distance, a coyote howled. The drawn-out wail had in it something unearthly, and Muller, who was by no means an imaginative man, shivered a little. The deep silence of the great empty land emphasized by the sound reacted upon him and increased his restlessness.

Scarcely knowing why he did so, except that he felt he could not sleep, he slipped on a few garments, and moved softly to the door, that he might not disturb his daughter. There was no moon when he went out, but the stars shone clearly in the great vault of blue, and the barns and stables he had built rose black against the sky. Though Grant had lent him assistance and he had hewn the lumber on the spot, one cannot build a homestead and equip it for nothing, and when he had provided himself with working horses, Muller had sunk the last of his scanty capital in the venture. It was perhaps this fact which induced him to approach the stable, moving noiselessly in his slippers, and glance within.

The interior was black and shadowy, but there was no doubting the fact that the beasts were moving restlessly. Muller went in, holding his breath as he peered about him, and one broncho backed away as he approached its stall. Muller patted it on the flank, and the horse stood still, as though reassured, when it recognized him, which was not without its meaning. He listened, but hearing nothing groped round the stable, and taking a hayfork went out as softly as he had entered, and took up his post in the deepest shadow, where he commanded outbuildings and house. There was, he knew, nobody but Grant dwelling within several leagues of him, and as yet property was at least as safe in that country as it was in Chicago or New York; but as he leaned, impassively watchful, against the wall, he remembered an episode which had happened a few weeks earlier.

He had been overtaken by a band of stockriders when fording the creek with his daughter, and one who loitered behind them reined his horse in and spoke to the girl. Muller never knew what his words had been; but he saw the sudden colour in the fräulein’s face, and seized the man’s bridle. An altercation ensued, and when the man rejoined his comrades, who apparently did not sympathize with him, his bridle hand hung limp and the farmer was smiling as he swung a stick. Muller attached no especial importance to the affair; but Grant, who did not tell him so, differed in this when he heard of it. He knew that the cattle-rider is usually rather chivalrous than addicted to distasteful gallantries.

In any case, Muller heard nothing for a while, and felt tempted to return to his bed when he grew chilly. He had, however, spent bitter nights stalking the franc tireurs in the snow, and the vigilance taught and demanded by an inflexible discipline had not quite deserted him, though he was considerably older and less nimble now. At last, however, a dim, moving shadow appeared round a corner of the building, stopped a moment, and then slid on again towards the door. So noiseless was it that Muller could almost have believed his eyes had deceived him until he heard the hasp rattle. Still, he waited until the figure passed into the stable, and then very cautiously crept along the wall. Muller was not so vigorous as he had been when proficiency in the use of the bayonet had been drilled into him; but while his fingers tightened on the haft of the fork he fancied that he had still strength enough to serve his purpose. He had also been taught to use it to the best advantage.

He straightened himself a little when he stood in the entrance and looked about him. There was a gleam of light in the stable now, for a lantern stood upon a manger and revealed by its uncertain glimmer a pile of prairie hay, with a kerosene-can upon it, laid against the logs. Muller was not wholly astonished, but he was looking for more than that, and the next moment he saw a shadowy object apparently loosing the nearest horse’s halter. It was doubtless a merciful deed, but it was to cost the incendiary dear; for when, perhaps warned by some faint sound, he looked up suddenly, he saw a black figure between him and the door.

On the instant he dropped the halter, and the hand that had held it towards his belt; but, as it happened, the horse pinned him against the stall, and his opportunity had passed when it moved again. Muller had drawn his right leg back with his knee bent a trifle, and there was a rattle as he brought the long fork down to the charge. Thus, when the man was free the deadly points twinkled in a ray from the lantern within a foot of his breast. It was also unpleasantly evident that a heave of the farmer’s shoulder would bury them in the quivering flesh.

“Hands oop!” a stern voice said.

The man delayed a second. The butt of the pistol that would equalize the affair was almost within his grasp, and Muller stood in the light, but he saw an ominous glint in the pale blue eyes and the farmer’s fingers tighten on the haft. There was also a suggestive raising of one shoulder; and his hands went up above his head. Muller advanced the points an inch or two, stiffening his right leg, and smiled grimly. The other man stared straight in front of him with dilated eyes, and a little grey patch growing larger in either cheek.

“Are you going to murder me, you condemned Dutchman?” he said.

“Yes,” said Muller tranquilly, “if you der movement make. So! It is done without der trouble when you have der bayonet exercise make.”

The points gleamed as they swung forward, and the man gasped; but they stopped at the right second, and Muller, who had hove his burly form a trifle more upright, sank back again, bringing his foot down with a stamp. The little demonstration was more convincing than an hour of argument.

“Well,” said the man hoarsely, “I’m corralled. Throw that thing away, and I’ll give you my pistol.”

Muller laughed, and then raised his great voice in what was to the other an unknown tongue. “Lotta,” he said, “Come quick, and bring the American rifle.”

There was silence for perhaps five minutes, and the men watched each other, one white in the face and quivering a little, his adversary impassive as a statue, but quietly observant. Then there was a patter of hasty footsteps, and the fräulein stood in the lantern light with a flushed, plump face and somewhat scanty dress. She apparently recognized the man, and her colour deepened, but that was the only sign of confusion she showed; and it was evident that the discipline of the fatherland had not been neglected in Muller’s household.

“Lotta,” he said in English, “open der little slide. You feel der cartridge? Now, der butt to der shoulder, und der eye on der sight, as I have teach you. Der middle of him is der best place. I shout, und you press quite steady.”

He spoke with a quiet precision that had its effect; and, whatever the girl felt, she obeyed each command in rotation. There was, however, one danger which the stranger realized, and that was that with an involuntary contraction of the forefinger she might anticipate the last one.

“She’ll shoot me before she means to,” he said, with a little gasp. “Come and take the condemned pistol.”

“Der middle of him!” said Muller tranquilly. “No movement make, you!”

Dropping the fork he moved forward, not in front of the man, but to his side, and whipped the pistol from his belt.

“One turn make,” he said. “So! Your hand behind you. Lotta, you will now a halter get.”

The girl’s loose bodice rose and fell as she laid down the rifle, but she was swift, and in less than another minute Muller had bound his captive’s hands securely behind his back and cross-lashed them from wrist to elbow. He inspected the work critically and then nodded, as if contented.

“SHE’LL SHOOT ME BEFORE SHE MEANS TO.”—Page 66.

“Lotta,” he said, “put der saddle on der broncho horse. Then in der house you der cordial find, und of it one large spoonful mit der water take. My pipe you bring me also, und then you ride for Mr. Grant.”

The girl obeyed him; and when the drumming of horse-hoofs died away Muller sat down in front of his prisoner, who now lay upon a pile of prairie hay, and with his usual slow precision lighted his big meerschaum. The American watched him for a minute or two, and then grew red in the face as a fit of passion shook him.

“You condemned Dutchman!” he said.

Muller laughed. “Der combliment,” he said, “is nod of much use to-night.”

It was an hour later when Grant and several horsemen arrived, and he nodded as he glanced at the prisoner.

“I figured it was you. There’s not another man on the prairie mean enough for this kind of work,” he said, pointing to the kerosene-can. “You didn’t even know enough to do it decently, and you’re about the only American who’d have let an old man tie his hands.”

The prisoner winced perceptibly. “Well,” he said hoarsely, glancing towards the hayfork, rifle, and pistol, which still lay at Muller’s feet, “if you’re astonished, look at the blamed Dutchman’s armoury.”

“I’ve one thing to ask you,” Grant said sternly. “It’s going to pay you to be quite straight with me. Who hired you?”

There was defiance in the incendiary’s eyes, but Grant was right in his surmise that he was resolute only because that of the two fears which oppressed him he preferred to bear the least.

“You can ask till you get sick of it, but you’ll get nothing out of me,” he said.

“Take him out,” said Grant. “Put him on to the led horse. If you’ll come round to my place for breakfast, I’ll be glad to see you, Muller.”

“I come,” said Muller. “Mit der franc tireur it is finish quicker, but here in der Republic we reverence have for der law.”

Grant laughed a little. “Well,” he said drily, “I’m not quite sure.”

He swung himself to the saddle, swept off his hat to the girl, who stood with the lantern light upon her in the doorway, smiling but flushed, and shook his bridle. Then there was a jingle that was lost in the thud of hoofs, and the men vanished into the shadowy prairie. Half an hour later the homestead was once more dark and silent; but three men sent out by Grant were riding at a reckless gallop across the great dusky levels, and breakfast was not finished when those whom they had summoned reached Fremont ranch.

They were young men for the most part, and Americans, though there were a few who had only just become so among them, and two or three whose grim faces and grey hair told of a long struggle with adversity. They were clad in blue shirts and jean, and the hard brown hands of most betokened a close acquaintance with plough stilt, axe, and bridle, though here and there one had from his appearance evidently lived delicately. All appeared quietly resolute, for they knew that the law which had given them the right to build their homes upon that prairie as yet left them to bear the risks attached to the doing of it. Hitherto, the fact that the great ranchers had made their own laws and enforced them had been ignored or tacitly accepted by the State.

When they were seated, one of the men deputed to question the prisoner, stood up. “You can take it that there’s nothing to be got out of him,” he said.

“Still,” said another, “we know he is one of Clavering’s boys.”

There was a little murmur, for of all the cattle-barons Clavering was the only man who had as yet earned his adversaries’ individual dislike. They were prepared to pull down the others because their interests, which they had little difficulty in fancying coincided with those of their country, demanded it; but Clavering, with his graceful insolence, ironical contempt of them, and thinly-veiled pride, was a type of all their democracy anathematized. More than one of them had winced under his soft laugh and lightly spoken jibes, which rankled more than a downright injury.

“The question is what we’re going to do with him,” said a third speaker.

Again the low voices murmured, until a man stood up. “There’s one cure for his complaint, and that’s a sure one, but I’m not going to urge it now,” he said. “Boys, we don’t want to be the first to take up the rifle, and it would make our intentions quite as plain if we dressed him in a coat of tar and rode him round the town. Nobody would have any use for him after that, and it would be a bigger slap in Clavering’s face than anything else we could do to him.”

Some of the men appeared relieved, for it was evident they had no great liking for the sterner alternative; and there was acclamation until Grant rose quietly at the head of the table.

“I’ve got to move a negative,” he said. “It would be better if you handed him to the Sheriff.”

There was astonishment in most of the faces, and somebody said, “The Sheriff! He’d let him go right off. The cattle-men have got the screw on him.”

“Well,” said Larry quietly, “he has done his duty so far, and may do it again. I figure we ought to give him the chance.”

Exclamations of dissent followed, and a man with a grim, lean face stood up. He spoke tolerable English, but his accent differed from that of the rest.

“The first man put it straight when he told you there was only one cure—the one they found out in France a hundred years ago,” he said. “You don’t quite realize it yet. You haven’t lived as we did back there across the sea, and seen your women thrust off the pavement into the gutter to make room for an officer, or been struck with the sword-hilt if you resented an insult before your fellow citizens. Will you take off your hats to the rich men who are trampling on you, you republicans, and, while they leave you the right of speech, beg them to respect your rights and liberties? Do that, and sit still a little, and they’ll fasten the yoke we’ve groaned under on your necks.”

“I don’t know that it isn’t eloquent, but it isn’t business,” said somebody.

The man laughed sardonically. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said. “I’m trying to show you that if you want your liberties you’ve got to fight for them, and your leader doesn’t seem to know when, by hanging one man, he can save a hundred from misery. It’s not the man who laid the kindling you’re striking at, but, through him, those who employed him. Let them see you’ll take your rights without leave of them. They’ve sent you warning that if you stay here they’ll burn your homesteads down, and they’re waiting your answer. Hang their firebug where everyone can see him, in the middle of the town.”

It was evident that the men were wavering. They had come there with the law behind them, but, from their youth up, some following visions that could never be realized, had hated the bureaucrat, and the rest, crippled by the want of dollars, had fought with frost and drought and hail. It was also plain that they felt the capture of the incendiary had given them an opportunity. Then, when a word would have turned the scale, Grant stood up at the head of the table, very resolute in face.

“I still move a negative and an amendment, boys,” he said. “First, though that’s not the most important, because I’ve a natural shrinking from butchering an unarmed man. Secondly, it was not the cattle-men who sent him, but one of them, and just because he meant to draw you on it would be the blamedest bad policy to humour him. Would Torrance, or Allonby, or the others, have done this thing? They’re hard men, but they believe they’re right, as we do, and they’re Americans. Now for the third reason: when Clavering meant to burn Muller’s homestead, he struck at me, guessing that some of you would stand behind me. He knew your temper, and he’d have laughed at us as hot-blooded rabble—you know how he can do it—when he’d put us in the wrong. Well, this time we’ll give the law a show.”

There was discussion, but Larry sat still, saying nothing further, with a curious gravity in his face, until a man stood up again.

“We think you’re right,” he said. “Still, there’s a question. What are you going to do if they try again?”

“Strike,” said Larry quietly. “I’ll go with you to the hanging of the next one.”

Nothing more was said, and the men rode away with relief in their faces, though three of them, girt with rifle and bandolier, trotted behind the wagon in which the prisoner sat.

VII

LARRY PROVES INTRACTABLE

It was some little time after her arrival at Cedar Range when Miss Torrance, who took Flora Schuyler with her, rode out across the prairie. There were a good many things she desired to investigate personally, and, though a somewhat independent young woman, she was glad that the opportunity of informing Torrance of her intention was not afforded her, since he had ridden off somewhere earlier in the day. It also happened that although the days were growing colder she arrayed herself fastidiously in a long, light skirt, which she had not worn since she left Cedar, and which with the white hat that matched it became her better than the conventional riding attire. Miss Schuyler naturally noticed this.

“Is it a garden party we are going to?” she asked.

Hetty laughed. “We may meet some of our neighbours, and after staying with you all that while in New York I don’t want to go back on you. I had the thing specially made in Chicago for riding in.”

Miss Schuyler was not quite satisfied, but she made no further comment, and there was much to occupy her attention. The bleached plain was bright with sunshine and rolled back into the distance under an arch of cloudless blue, while the crisp, clear air stirred her blood like an elixir. They swept up a rise and down it, the colour mantling in their faces, over the long hollow, and up a slope again, until, as the white grass rolled behind her, Flora Schuyler yielded to the exhilaration of swift motion, and, flinging off the constraint of the city, rejoiced in the springy rush of the mettlesome beast beneath her. Streaming white levels, the blue of the sliding sky, the kiss of the wind on her hot cheek, and the roar of hoofs, all reacted upon her until she laughed aloud when she hurled her half-wild broncho down a slope.

“This is surely the finest country in the world,” she said.

The words were blown behind her, but Hetty caught some of them, and, when at last she drew bridle where a rise ran steep and seamed with badger-holes against the sky, nodded with a little air of pride.

“Oh, yes, and it’s ours. All of it,” she said. “Worth fighting for, isn’t it?”

Flora Schuyler laughed a little, but she shook her head. “It’s a pity one couldn’t leave that out. You would stay here with your men folk if there was trouble?”

Hetty looked at her with a little flash in her eyes. “Why, of course! It’s our country. We made it, and I’d go around in rags and groom the boys’ horses if it would help them to whip out the men who want to take it from us.”

Flora Schuyler smiled a trifle drily. “The trouble is that when we fall out, one is apt to find as good Americans as we are, and sometimes the men we like the most, standing in with the opposition. It has happened quite often since the war.”

Hetty shook her bridle impatiently. “Then, of course, one would not like them any longer,” she said.

Nothing more was said until they crossed the ridge above them, when Hetty pulled her horse up. Across the wide levels before her advanced a line of dusty teams, the sunlight twinkling on the great breaker ploughs they hauled, while the black loam rolled in softly gleaming waves behind them. They came on with slow precision, and in the forefront rolled a great machine that seamed and rent the prairie into triple furrows.

“What are they doing there? Do they belong to you?” asked Miss Schuyler.

The flush the wind had brought there turned to a deeper crimson in Hetty’s usually colourless face. “To us!” she said, and her voice had a thrill of scorn. “They’re homesteaders. Ride down. I want to see who’s leading them.”

She led the way with one little gloved hand clenched on the dainty switch she held; but before she reached the foremost team the man who pulled it up sprang down from the driving-seat of the big machine. A tall wire fence, with a notice attached to it, barred his way. The other ploughs stopped behind him, somebody brought an axe, and Hetty set her lips when the glistening blade whirled high and fell. Thrice it flashed in the sunlight, swung by sinewy arms, and then, as the fence went down, a low, half-articulate cry rose from the waiting men. It was not exultant, but there was in it the suggestion of a steadfast purpose.

Hetty sat still and looked at them, a little sparkle in her dark eyes, and a crimson spot in either cheek, while the laces that hung from her neck across the bodice of the white dress rose and fell. It occurred to Flora Schuyler that she had never seen her companion look half so well, and she waited with strained expectancy for what should follow, realizing, with the dramatic instinct most women have, who the man with the axe must be. He turned slowly, straightening his back and stood for a moment erect and statuesque, with the blue shirt open at his bronzed neck and the great axe gleaming in his hand; and Hetty gasped. Miss Schuyler’s surmise was verified, for it was Larry Grant.

“Larry,” said her companion, and her voice had a curious ring, “what are you doing here?”

The man, who appeared to ignore the question, swung off his wide hat. “Aren’t you and Miss Schuyler rather far from home?” he asked.

Flora Schuyler understood him when, glancing round, she noticed the figure of a mounted man forced up against the skyline here and there. Hetty, however, had evidently not seen them.

“I want an answer, please,” she said.

“Well,” said Larry gravely, “I was cutting down that fence.”

“Why were you cutting it down?” persisted Miss Torrance.

“It was in the way.”

“Of what?”

Grant turned and pointed to the men, sturdy toilers starved out of bleak Dakota and axe-men farmers from the forests of Michigan. “Of these, and the rest who are coming by and by,” he said. “Still, I don’t want to go into that; and you seem angry. You haven’t offered to shake hands with me, Hetty.”

Miss Torrance sat very still, one hand on the switch, and another on the bridle, looking at him with a little scornful smile on her lips. Then she glanced at the prairie beyond the severed fence.

“That land belongs to my friends,” she said.

Grant’s face grew a trifle wistful, but his voice was grave. “They have had the use of it, but it belongs to the United States, and other people have the right to farm there now. Still, that needn’t make any trouble between you and me.”

“No?” said the girl, with a curious hardness in her inflection; but her face softened suddenly. “Larry, while you only talked we didn’t mind; but no one fancied you would have done this. Yes, I’m angry with you. I have been home ’most a month, and you never rode over to see me; while now you want to talk politics.”

Grant smiled a trifle wearily. “I would sooner talk about anything else; and if you ask him, your father will tell you why I have not been to the range. I don’t want to make you angry, Hetty.”

“Then you will give up this foolishness and make friends with us again,” said the girl, very graciously. “It can’t come to anything, Larry, and you are one of us. You couldn’t want to take away our land and give it to this rabble?”

Hetty was wholly bewitching, as even Flora Schuyler, who fancied she understood the grimness in the man’s face, felt just then. He, however, looked away across the prairie, and the movement had its significance to one of the company, who, having less at stake, was the more observant. When he turned again, however, he seemed to stand very straight.

“I’m afraid I can’t,” he said.

“No?” said Hetty, still graciously. “Not even when I ask you?”

Grant shook his head. “They have my word, and you wouldn’t like me to go back upon what I feel is right,” he said.

Hetty laughed. “If you will think a little, you can’t help seeing that you are very wrong.”

Again the little weary smile crept into Grant’s face. “One naturally thinks a good deal before starting in with this kind of thing, and I have to go through. I can’t stop now, even to please you. But can’t we still be friends?”

For a moment there was astonishment in the girl’s face, then it flushed, and as her lips hardened and every line in her slight figure seemed to grow rigid, she reminded Miss Schuyler of the autocrat of Cedar Range.

“You ask me that?” she said. “You, an American, turning Dutchmen and these bush-choppers loose upon the people you belong to. Can’t you see what the answer must be?”

Grant did apparently, for he mutely bent his head; but there was a shout just then, and when one of the vedettes on the skyline suddenly moved forward he seized Miss Torrance’s bridle and wheeled her horse.

“Ride back to the Range,” he said sharply, “as straight as you can. Tell your father that you met me. Let your horse go, Miss Schuyler.”

As he spoke he brought his hand down upon the beast’s flank and it went forward with a bound. The one Flora Schuyler rode flung up its head, and in another moment they were sweeping at a gallop across the prairie. A mile had been left behind before Hetty could pull her half-broken horse up; but the struggle that taxed every sinew had been beneficial, and she laughed a trifle breathlessly.

“I’m afraid I lost my temper; and I’m angry yet,” she said. “It’s the first time Larry wouldn’t do what I asked him, and it was mean of him to send us off like that, just when one wanted to put on all one’s dignity.”

Miss Schuyler appeared thoughtful. “I fancy he did it because it was necessary. Didn’t it strike you that you were hurting him? That is a good man and an honest one, though, of course, he may be mistaken.”

“He must be,” said Hetty. “Now I used to think ever so much of Larry, and that is why I got angry with him. It isn’t nice to feel one has been fooled. How can he be good when he wants to take our land from us?”

Flora Schuyler laughed. “You are quite delightful, Hetty, now and then. You have read a little, and been taught history. Can’t you remember any?”

“Oh yes,” said Hetty, with a little thoughtful nod. “Still, the men who made the trouble in those old days were usually buried before anyone was quite sure whether they were right or not. Try to put yourself in my place. What would you do?”

There was a somewhat curious look in Miss Schuyler’s blue eyes. “I think if I had known a man like that one as long as you have done, I should believe in him—whatever he did.”

“Well,” said Hetty gravely, “if you had, just as long as you could remember, seen your father and his friends taking no pleasure, but working every day, and putting most of every dollar they made back into the ranch, you would find it quite difficult to believe that the man who meant to take it from them now they were getting old and wanted to rest and enjoy what they had worked for was doing good.”

Flora Schuyler nodded. “Yes,” she said, “I would. It’s quite an old trouble. There are two ways of looking at everything, and other folks have had to worry over them right back to the beginning.”

Then she suddenly tightened her grasp on the bridle, for the ringing of a rifle rose, sharp and portentous, from beyond the rise. The colour faded in her cheek, and Hetty leaned forward a trifle in her saddle, with lips slightly parted, as though in strained expectancy. No sound now reached them from beyond the low, white ridge that hemmed in their vision but a faint drumming of hoofs. Then Flora Schuyler answered the question in her companion’s eyes.

“I think it was only a warning,” she said.

She wheeled her horse and they rode on slowly, hearing nothing further, until the Range rose from behind the big birch bluff. Torrance had returned when they reached it, and Hetty found him in his office room.

“I met Larry on the prairie, and of course I talked to him,” she said. “I asked him why he had not been to the Range, and he seemed to think it would be better if he did not come.”

Torrance smiled drily. “Then I guess he showed quite commendable taste as well as good sense. You are still decided not to go back to New York, Hetty?”

“Yes,” said the girl, with a little resolute nod. “You see, I can’t help being young and just a little good-looking, but I’m Miss Torrance of Cedar all the time.”

Torrance’s face was usually grim, but it grew a trifle softer then. “Hetty,” he said, “they taught you a good many things I never heard of at that Boston school, but I’m not sure you know that all trade and industry is built upon just this fact: what a man has made and worked hard for is his own. Would anyone put up houses or raise cattle if he thought his neighbours could take them from him? Now there’s going to be trouble over that question here, and, though it isn’t likely, your father may be beaten down. He may have to do things that wouldn’t seem quite nice to a dainty young woman, and folks may denounce him; but it’s quite plain that if you stay here you will have to stand in with somebody.”

The girl, who was touched by the unusual tenderness in his eyes, sat down upon the table, and slipped an arm about his neck.

“Who would I stand in with but you?” she said. “We’ll whip the rustlers out of the country, and, whether it sounds nice at the time or not, you couldn’t do anything but the square thing.”

Torrance kissed her gravely, but he sighed and his face grew stern again when she slipped out of the room.

“There will not be many who will come through this trouble with hands quite clean,” he said.

It was during the afternoon, and Torrance had driven off again, when, as the two girls were sitting in the little room which was set apart for them, a horseman rode up to the Range, and Flora Schuyler, who was nearest the window, drew back the curtain.

“That man should sit on horseback always,” she said; “he’s quite a picture.”

Hetty nodded. “Yes,” she said. “Still, you told me you didn’t like him. It’s Clavering. Now, I wonder what he put those things on for—he doesn’t wear them very often—and whether he knew my father wasn’t here.”

Clavering would probably have attracted the attention of most young women just then, for he had dressed himself in the fashion the prairie stockriders were addicted to, as he did occasionally, perhaps because he knew it suited him. He had artistic perceptions, and could adapt himself harmoniously to his surroundings, and he knew Hetty’s appreciation of the picturesque. His sallow face showed clean cut almost to feminine refinement under the wide hat, and the blue shirt which clung about him displayed his slender symmetry. It was, however, not made of flannel, but apparently of silk, and the embroidered deerskin jacket which showed the squareness of his shoulders, was not only daintily wrought, but had evidently cost a good many dollars. His loose trousers and silver spurs were made in Mexican fashion: but the boldness of the dark eyes, and the pride that revealed itself in the very pose of the man, redeemed him from any taint of vanity.

He sat still until a hired man came up, then swung himself from the saddle, and in another few moments had entered the room with his wide hat in his hand.

“You find us alone,” said Hetty. “Are you astonished?”

“I am content,” said Clavering. “Why do you ask me?”

“Well,” said Hetty naïvely, “I fancied you must have seen my father on the prairie, and could have stopped him if you had wanted to.”

There was a little flash in Clavering’s dark eyes that was very eloquent. “The fact is, I did. Still, I was afraid he would want to take me along with him.”

Hetty laughed. “I am growing up,” she said. “Three years ago you wouldn’t have wasted those speeches on me. Well, you can sit down and talk to Flora.”

Clavering did as he was bidden. “It’s a time-honoured question,” he said. “How do you like this country?”

“There’s something in its bigness that gets hold of one,” said Miss Schuyler. “One feels free out here on these wide levels in the wind and sun.”

Clavering nodded, and Flora Schuyler fancied from his alertness that he had been waiting for an opportunity. “It would be wise to enjoy it while you can,” he said. “In another year or two the freedom may be gone, and the prairie shut off in little squares by wire fences. Then one will be permitted to ride along a trail between rows of squalid homesteads flanked by piles of old boots and provision-cans. We will have exchanged the stockrider for the slouching farmer with a swarm of unkempt children and a slatternly, scolding wife then.”

“You believe that will come about?” asked Miss Schuyler, giving him the lead she felt he was waiting for.

Clavering looked thoughtful. “It would never come if we stood loyally together, but—and it is painful to admit it—one or two of our people seem quite willing to destroy their friends to gain cheap popularity by truckling to the rabble. Of course, we could spare those men quite well, but they know our weak points, and can do a good deal of harm by betraying them.”

“Now,” said Hetty, with a sparkle in her eyes, “you know quite well that if some of them are mistaken they will do nothing mean. Can’t they have their notions and be straight men?”

“It is quite difficult to believe it,” said Clavering. “I will tell you what one or two of them did. There was trouble down at Gordon’s place fifty miles west, and his cow-boys whipped off a band of Dutchmen who wanted to pull his fences down. Well, they came back a night or two later with a mob of Americans, and laid hands on the homestead. We are proud of the respect we pay women in this country, Miss Schuyler, but that night Mrs. Gordon’s and her daughters’ rooms were broken into, and the girls turned out on the prairie. It was raining, and I believe they were not even allowed to provide themselves with suitable clothing. Of course, nothing of that kind could happen here, or I would not have told you.”

Hetty’s voice was curiously quiet as she asked, “Was nothing done to provoke them?”

“Yes,” said Clavering, with a dry smile, “Gordon shot one of them; but is it astonishing? What would you expect of an American if a horde of rabble who held nothing sacred poured into his house at night? Oh, yes, he shot one of them, and would have given them the magazine, only that somebody felled him with an axe. The Dutchman was only grazed, but Gordon is lying senseless still.”

There was an impressive silence, and the man sat still with the veins on his forehead a trifle swollen and a glow in his eyes. His story was also accurate, so far as it went; but he had, with a purpose, not told the whole of it.

“You are sure there were Americans among them?” asked Hetty, very quietly.

“They were led by Americans. You know one or two of them.”

“No,” said Hetty, almost fiercely. “I don’t know. But Larry wasn’t there?”

Clavering shook his head, but there was a curious incisiveness in his tone. “Still, we found out that his committee was consulted and countenanced the affair.”

“Then Larry wasn’t at the meeting,” said Miss Torrance. “He couldn’t have been.”

Clavering made her a little and very graceful inclination. “One would respect such faith as yours.”

Miss Schuyler, who was a young woman of some penetration, deftly changed the topic, and Clavering came near to pleasing her, but he did not quite succeed, before he took his departure. Then Hetty glanced inquiringly at her companion.

Flora Schuyler nodded. “I know just what you mean, and I was mistaken.”

“Yes?” said Hetty. “Then you like him?”

Miss Schuyler shook her head. “No. I fancied he was clever, and he didn’t come up to my expectations. You see, he was too obvious.”

“About Larry?”

“Yes. Are you not just a little inconsistent, Hetty?”

Miss Torrance laughed. “I don’t know,” she said. “I am, of course, quite angry with Larry, but nobody else has a right to abuse him.”

Flora Schuyler said nothing further, and while she sat in thoughtful silence Clavering walked down the hall with Hetty’s maid. He was a well-favoured man, and the girl was vain. She blushed when he looked down on her with a trace of admiration in his smile.

“You like the prairie?” he said.

She admitted that she was pleased with what she had seen of it, and Clavering’s assumed admiration became bolder.

“Well, it’s a good country, and different from the East,” he said. “There are a good many more dollars to be picked up here, and pretty women are quite scarce. They usually get married right off to a rancher. Now I guess you came out to better yourself. It takes quite a long time to get rich down East.”

The girl blushed again, and when she informed him that she had a crippled sister who was a charge on the family, Clavering smiled as he drew on a leather glove.

“You’ll find you have struck the right place,” he said. “Now I wonder if you could fix a pin or something in this button shank. It’s coming off, you see.”

The girl did it, and when he went out found a bill lying on the table where he had been standing. The value of it somewhat astonished her, but after a little deliberation she put it in her pocket.

“If he doesn’t ask for it when he comes back I’ll know he meant me to keep it,” she said.

VIII

THE SHERIFF

Miss Schuyler had conjectured correctly respecting the rifle-shot which announced the arrival of a messenger; a few minutes after the puff of white smoke on the crest of the rise had drifted away, a mounted man rode up to Grant at a gallop. His horse was white with dust and spume, but his spurs were red.

“Railroad district executive sent me on to let you know the Sheriff had lost your man,” he said.

“Lost him,” said Grant.

“Well,” said the horseman, “put it as it pleases you, but, as he had him in the jail, it seems quite likely he let him go.”

There was a growl from the teamsters who had clustered round, and Grant’s face grew stern. “He was able to hold the two homesteaders Clavering’s boys brought him.”

“Oh, yes,” said the other, “he has them tight enough. You’ll remember one of the cattle-boys and a storekeeper got hurt during the trouble, and our men are not going to have much show at the trial Torrance and the Sheriff are fixing up!”

“Then,” said Grant wearily, “we’ll stop that trial. You will get a fresh horse in my stable and tell your executive I’m going to take our men out of jail, and if it suits them to stand in they can meet us at the trail forks, Thursday, ten at night.”

The man nodded. “I’m tolerably played out, but I’ll start back right now,” he said.

He rode off towards the homestead, and Grant turned to the rest. “Jake, you’ll take the eastern round; Charley, you’ll ride west. Give them the handful of oats at every shanty to show it’s urgent. They’re to be at Fremont in riding order at nine to-morrow night.”

In another ten minutes the men were riding hard across the prairie, and Grant, with a sigh, went on with his ploughing. It would be next year before he could sow, and whether he would ever reap the crop was more than any man in that region would have ventured to predict. He worked however, until the stars were out that night and commenced again when the red sun crept up above the prairie rim the next day; but soon after dusk mounted men rode up one by one to Fremont ranch. They rode good horses, and each carried a Winchester rifle slung behind him when they assembled, silent and grim, in the big living-room.

“Boys,” said Grant quietly, “we have borne a good deal, and tried to keep the law, but it is plain that the cattle-men, who bought it up, have left none for us. Now, the Sheriff, who has the two homesteaders safe, has let the man we sent him go.”

There was an ominous murmur and Grant went on. “The homesteaders, who only wanted to buy food and raised no trouble until they were fired on, will be tried by the cattle-men, and I needn’t tell you what kind of chance they’ll get. We pledged ourselves to see they had fair play when they came in, and there’s only one means of getting it. We are going to take them from the Sheriff, but there will be no fighting. We’ll ride in strong enough to leave no use for that. Now, before we start, are you all willing to ride with me?”

Again a hoarse murmur answered him, and Grant, glancing down the row of set faces under the big lamps, was satisfied.

“Then we’ll have supper,” he said quietly. “It may be a long while before any of us gets a meal again.”

It was a silent repast. As yet the homesteaders, at least in that district, had met contumely with patience and resisted passively each attempt to dislodge them, though it had cost their leader a strenuous effort to restrain the more ardent from the excesses some of their comrades farther east had already committed; but at last the most peaceful of them felt that the time to strike in turn had come. They mounted when supper was over and rode in silence past willow bluff and dusky rise across the desolate waste. The badger heard the jingle of their bridles, and now and then a lonely coyote, startled by the soft drumming of the hoofs, rose with bristling fur and howled; but no cow-boy heard their passage, or saw them wind in and out through devious hollows when daylight came. Still, here and there an anxious woman stood, with hazy eyes, in the door of a lonely shanty, wondering whether the man she had sent out to strike for the home he had built her would ever ride back again. For they, too, had their part in the struggle, and it was perhaps the hardest one.

It was late at night when they rode into the wooden town. Here and there a window was flung open; but the night was thick and dark, and there was little to see but the dust that whirled about the dimly flitting forms. That, however, was nothing unusual, for of late squadrons of stockriders and droves of weary cattle had passed into the town; and a long row of shadowy frame houses had been left behind before the fears of any citizen were aroused. It was, perhaps, their silent haste that betrayed the horsemen, for they rode in ordered ranks without a word, as men who have grim business in hand, until a hoarse shout went up. Then a pistol flashed in the darkness in front of them, doors were flung open, lights began to blink, and a half-seen horseman came on at a gallop down the shadowy street. He pulled his horse up within a pistol-shot from the homesteaders, and sat still in his saddle staring at them.

“You’ll have to get down, boys, or tell me what you want,” he said. “You can’t ride through here at night without a permit.”

There was a little ironical laughter, and somebody asked, “Who’s going to stop us?”

“The Sheriff’s guard,” said the horseman. “Stop right where you are until I bring them.”

“Keep clear,” said Grant sternly, “or we’ll ride over you. Forward, boys!”

There was a jingle of bridles, and the other man wheeled his horse as the heels went home. Quick as he was, the foremost riders were almost upon him, and as he went down the street at a gallop the wooden houses flung back a roar of hoofs. Every door was open now and the citizens peering out. Lights flashed in the windows, and somebody cried, “The rustler boys are coming!”

Other voices took up the cry; hoots of derision mingled with shouts of greeting, but still, without an answer, the men from the prairie rode on, Grant peering into the darkness as he swung in his saddle at the head of them. He saw one or two mounted men wheel their horses, and more on foot spring clear of the hoofs, and then the flash of a rifle beneath the black front of a building. A flagstaff ran up into the night above it, and there were shadowy objects upon the verandah. Grant threw up a hand.

“We’re here, boys,” he said.

Then it became evident that every man’s part had been allotted him, for while the hindmost wheeled their horses, and then sat still, with rifles across their saddles, barring the road by which they had come, the foremost pressed on, until, pulling up, they left a space behind them and commanded the street in front. The rest dismounted, and while one man stood at the heads of every pair of horses, the rest clustered round Grant in the middle of the open space. The jail rose dark and silent before them, and for the space of a moment or two there was an impressive stillness. It was broken by a shout from one of the rearguard.

“There’s quite a crowd rolling up. Get through as quick as you can!”

Grant stood forward. “We’ll give you half a minute to send somebody out to talk to us, and then we’re coming in,” he said.

The time was almost up before a voice rose from the building: “Who are you, any way, and what do you want?”

“Homesteaders,” was the answer. “We want the Sheriff.”

“Well,” said somebody, “I’ll tell him.”

Except for a growing clamour in the street behind there was silence until Breckenridge, who stood near Grant touched him,

“I don’t want to meddle, but aren’t we giving them an opportunity of securing their prisoners or making their defences good?” he said.

“That’s sense, any way,” said another man. “It would be ’way better to go right in now, while we can.”

Grant shook his head. “You have left this thing to me, and I want to put it through without losing a man. Men don’t usually back down when the shooting begins.”

Then a voice rose from the building: “You wanted the Sheriff. Here he is.”

A shadowy figure appeared at a window, and there was a murmur from Grant’s men.

“He needn’t be bashful,” said one of them. “Nobody’s going to hurt him. Can’t you bring a light, so we can see him?”

A burst of laughter followed, and Grant held up his hand. “It would be better, Sheriff; and you have my word that we’ll give you notice before we do anything if we can’t come to terms.”

It seemed from the delay that the Sheriff was undecided, but at last a light was brought, and the men below saw him standing at the window with an anxious face, and behind him two men with rifles, whose dress proclaimed them stockriders. He could also see the horsemen below, as Grant, who waited until the sight had made its due impression, had intended that he should. There were a good many of them, and the effect of their silence and the twinkling of light on their rifles was greater than that of any uproar would have been.

“Now you can see me, you needn’t keep me waiting,” said the Sheriff, with an attempt at jauntiness which betrayed his anxiety. “What do you want?”

“Two of your prisoners,” said Grant.

“I’m sorry you can’t have them,” said the Sheriff. “Hadn’t you better ride home again before I turn the boys loose on you?”

But his voice was not quite in keeping with his words, and it would have been wiser if he had turned his face aside.

“It’s a little too far to ride back without getting what we came for,” said Grant quietly. “Now, we have no great use for talking. We want two homesteaders, and we mean to get them; but that will satisfy us.”

“You want nobody else?”

“No. You can keep your criminals, or let them go, just as it suits you.”

There was a laugh from some of the horsemen, which was taken up by the crowd and swelled into a storm of cries. Some expressed approval, others anger, and the Sheriff stepped backwards.

“Then,” he said hoarsely, “if you want your friends, you must take them.”

The next moment the window shut with a bang, and the light died out, leaving the building once more in darkness.

“Get to work,” said Grant. “Forward, those who are going to cover the axe-men!”

There was a flash from the verandah, apparently in protest and without intent to hurt, for the next moment a few half-seen objects flung themselves over the balustrade as the men with the axes came up, and others with rifles took their places a few paces behind them. Then one of the horsemen shouted a question.

“Let them pass,” said Grant.

The door was solid and braced with iron, but those who assailed it had swung the axe since they had the strength to lift it, and in the hands of such men it is a very effective implement. The door shook and rattled as the great blades whirled and fell, each one dropping into the notch the other had made; the men panted as they smote; the splinters flew in showers.

“Holding out still!” gasped one of them. “There’s iron here. Get some of the boys to chop that redwood pillar, and we’ll drive it down.”

There was an approving murmur, but Grant grasped the man by the shoulder. “No,” he said. “We haven’t come to wreck the town. I’ve another plan if you’re more than two minutes getting in.”

The axes whirled faster, and at last a man turned breathlessly. “Get ready, boys,” he said. “One more on the bolt head, Jake, and we’re in!”

A brawny man twice whirled the hissing blade about his head, and as he swung forward with both hands on the haft with a dull crash the wedge of tempered steel clove the softer metal. The great door tilted and went down, and Breckenridge sprang past the axe-men through the opening. His voice came back exultantly out of the shadowy building. “It was the old country sent you the first man in!”

The men’s answer was a shout as they followed him, with a great trampling down the corridor, but the rest of the building was very silent, and nobody disputed their passage until at last a man with grey hair appeared with a lantern behind an iron grille.

“Open that thing,” said somebody.

The man smiled drily. “I couldn’t do it if I wanted to. I’ve given my keys away.”

One or two of the homesteaders glanced a trifle anxiously behind them. The corridor was filling up, and it dawned upon them that if anything barred their egress they would be helpless.

“Then what are you stopping for?” asked somebody.

“It’s in my contract,” said the jailer quietly. “I was raised in Kentucky. You don’t figure I’m scared of you?”

“No use for talking,” said a man. “You can’t argue with him. Go ahead with your axes and beat the blamed thing in.”

It cost them twenty minutes’ strenuous toil; but the grille went down, and two of the foremost seized the jailer.

“Let him go,” said Grant quietly. “Now, we can’t fool time away with you. Where’s the Sheriff?”

“I don’t quite know,” said the jailer, and the contempt in his voice answered the question.

Grant laughed a little. “Well,” he said, “I guess he’s sensible. Now, what you have got to do is to bring out the two homesteaders as quick as you can.”

“I told you I couldn’t do it,” said the other man.

“You listen to me. We are going to take those men out, if we have to pull this place to pieces until we find them. That, it’s quite plain, would let the others go, and you would lose the whole of your prisoners instead of two of them. Tell us where you put them, and you can keep the rest.”

“That’s square?”

“Oh, yes,” said Grant. “There are quite enough men of their kind loose in this country already.”

“Straight on,” said the jailer. “First door.”

They went on in silence, but there was a shout when somebody answered their questions from behind a door, which a few minutes later tottered and fell beneath the axes. Then, amidst acclamation, they led two men out, and showed them to the jailer.

“You know them?” said Grant. “Well, you can tell your Sheriff there wasn’t a cartridge in the rifles of the men who opened his jail. He’ll come back when the trouble’s over, but it seems to me the cattle-men have wasted a pile of dollars over him.”

He laughed when a question met them as they once more trampled into the verandah.

“Yes,” he said. “The boys are bringing them!”

Two horses were led forward, and the released men swung themselves into the saddle. There was a hasty mounting, and when the men swung into open fours a shout went up from the surging crowd.

“They have taken the homesteaders out. The Sheriff has backed down.”

A roar followed that expressed approbation and disgust; it was evident that the sympathies of the citizens were divided. In the momentary silence Grant’s voice rang out:

“Sling rifles! Keep your order and distance! Forward, boys!”

Again a hoarse cry went up, but there was only applause in it now, for the crowd recognized the boldness of the command and opened out, pressing back against the houses as the little band rode forward. Their silence was impressive, but the leader knew his countrymen, for, while taunts and display would have courted an onset, nobody seemed anxious to obstruct the men who sat unconcernedly in their saddles, with the rifles which alone warranted their daring disdainfully slung behind them.

On they went past clusters of wondering citizens, shouting sympathizers, and silent cattle-men, until there was a hoot of derision, and, perhaps in the hope of provoking a conflict in which the rest would join, a knot of men pushed out into the street from the verandah of the wooden hotel. Grant realized that a rash blow might unloose a storm of passion and rouse to fury men who were already regretting their supineness.

“Keep your pace and distance!” he commanded.

Looking straight in front of them, shadowy and silent, the leading four rode on, and once more the crowd melted from in front of them. As the last of the band passed through the opening that was made for them a man laughed as he turned in his saddle.

“We can’t stay any longer, boys, but it wasn’t your fault. It’s a man you want for Sheriff,” he said.

“No talking there! Gallop!” said Grant, and the horsemen flitted across the railroad track, and with a sinking thud of hoofs melted into the prairie. They had accomplished their purpose, and the cattle-men, going back disgustedly to remonstrate with the Sheriff, for a while failed to find him.

IX

THE PRISONER

The prairie was shining white in the moonlight with the first frost when Torrance, Hetty, and Miss Schuyler drove up to Allonby’s ranch. They were late in arriving and found a company of neighbours already assembled in the big general room. It was panelled with cedar from the Pacific slope, and about the doors and windows were rich hangings of tapestry, but the dust was thick upon them and their beauty had been wasted by the moth. Tarnished silver candlesticks and lamps which might have come from England a century ago, and a scarred piano littered with tattered music, were in keeping with the tapestry; for signs of taste were balanced by those of neglect, while here and there a roughly patched piece of furniture conveyed a plainer hint that dollars were scanty with Allonby. He was from the South, a spare, grey-haired man, with a stamp of old-fashioned dignity, and in his face a sadness not far removed from apathy and which, perhaps, accounted for the condition of his property.

His guests, among whom were a number of young men and women, were, however, apparently light-hearted, and had whiled away an hour or two with song and badinage. A little removed from them, in a corner with the great dusty curtain of a window behind her, sat Hetty Torrance with Allonby’s nephew and daughter. Miss Allonby was pale and slight and silent; but her cousin united the vivacity of the Northerner with the distinction that is still common in the South, and—for he was very young—Hetty found a mischievous pleasure in noticing his almost too open admiration for Flora Schuyler, who sat close beside them. A girl was singing indifferently, and when she stopped, Miss Allonby raised her head as a rhythmical sound became audible through the closing chords of the piano.

“Somebody riding here in a hurry!” she said.

It was significant that the hum of voices which followed the music ceased as the drumming of hoofs grew louder; the women looked anxious and the men glanced at one another. Tidings brought in haste were usually of moment then. Torrance, however, stood up and smiled at the assembly.

“I guess some of those rascally rustlers have been driving off a steer again,” he said. “Can’t you sing us something, Clavering?”

Clavering understood him, and it was a rollicking ballad he trolled out with verve and spirit; but still, though none of the guests now showed it openly, the anxious suspense did not abate, and by and by Miss Allonby smiled at the lad beside her somewhat drily.

“Never mind the story, Chris. I guess we know the rest. That man is riding hard, and you are as anxious as any of us,” she said.

A minute or two later there was a murmur of voices below, and Allonby went out. Nobody appeared to notice this, but the hum of somewhat meaningless talk which followed and the strained look in one or two of the women’s faces had its meaning. Every eye was turned towards the doorway until Allonby came back and spoke with Torrance apart. Then he smiled reassuringly upon his guests.

“You will be pleased to hear that some of our comrades have laid hands upon one of the leaders in the attack upon the jail,” he said. “They want to lodge him here until they can send for the Sheriff’s posse, and of course I could only agree. Though the State seems bent on treating us somewhat meanly, we are, I believe, still loyal citizens, and I feel quite sure you will overlook any trifling inconvenience the arrival of the prisoner may cause you.”

“Doesn’t he put it just a little curiously?” suggested Flora Schuyler.

“Well,” said Christopher Allonby, “it really isn’t nice to have one of our few pleasant evenings spoiled by this kind of thing.”

“You don’t understand. I am quite pleased with your uncle, but there’s something that amuses me in the idea of jailing one’s adversary from patriotic duty.”

Christopher Allonby smiled. “There’s a good deal of human nature in most of us, and it’s about time we got even with one or two of them.”

“Find out about it, Chris,” said Miss Allonby; “then come straight back and tell us.”

The young man approached a group of his elders who were talking together, and returned by and by.

“It was done quite smartly,” he said. “One of the homestead boys who had fallen out with Larry came over to us, and I fancy it was Clavering fixed the thing up with him. The boys didn’t know he had deserted them, and the man he took the oats to believed in him.”

“I can’t remember you telling a tale so one could understand it, Chris,” said Miss Allonby. “Why did he take the oats to him?”

The lad laughed. “They have their committees and executives, and when a man has to do anything they send a few grains of oats to him. One can’t see much use in it, and we know ’most everything about them; but it makes the thing kind of impressive, and the rustler fancied our boy was square when he got them. He was to ride over alone and meet somebody from one of the other executives at night in a bluff. He went, and found a band of cattle-boys waiting for him. I believe he hadn’t a show at all, for the man who went up to talk to him grabbed his rifle, but it seems he managed to damage one or two of them.”

“You don’t know who he is?” asked Miss Allonby; and Flora Schuyler noticed a sudden intentness in Hetty’s eyes.

“No,” said the lad, “but the boys will be here with him by and by, and I’m glad they made quite sure of him, any way.”

Hetty’s eyes sparkled. “You can’t be proud of them! It wasn’t very American.”

“Well, we can’t afford to be too particular, considering what we have at stake; though it might have sounded nicer if they had managed it differently. You don’t sympathize with the homestead boys, Miss Torrance?”

“Of course not!” said Hetty, with a little impatient gesture. “Still, that kind of meanness does not appeal to me. Even the men we don’t like would despise it. They rode into the town without a cartridge in their rifles, and took out their friends in spite of the Sheriff, while the crowd looked on.”

“It was Larry Grant fixed that, and ’tisn’t every day you can find a man like him. It ’most made me sick when I heard he had gone over to the rabble.”

“You were a friend of his?” asked Flora Schuyler.

“Oh, yes;” and a little shadow crept into Allonby’s face. “But, that’s over now. When a man goes back on his own folks there’s only one way of treating him, and it’s not going to be nice for Larry if we can catch him. We’re in too tight a place to show the man who can hurt us most much consideration.”

Hetty turned her head a moment, and then changed the subject, but not before Flora Schuyler noticed the little flush in her cheek. The music, laughter, and gay talk began again, and if anyone remembered that while they chased their cares away grim men who desired their downfall toiled and planned, no sign of the fact was visible.

Twenty minutes passed, and then the thud of hoofs once more rose from the prairie. It swelled into a drumming that jarred harsh and portentous through the music, and Hetty’s attention to the observations of her companions became visibly less marked. One by one the voices also seemed to sink, and it was evidently a relief to the listeners when a girl rose and closed the piano. Somebody made an effort to secure attention to a witty story, and there was general laughter, but it also ceased, and an impressive silence followed. Out of it came the jingle of bridles and trampling of hoofs, as the men outside pulled up, followed by voices in the hall, and once more Allonby went out.

“They’re right under this window,” said his nephew. “Slip quietly behind the curtains, and I think you can see them.”

Flora Schuyler drew the tapestry back, the rest followed her and Christopher Allonby flung it behind them, so that it shut out the light. In a moment or two their eyes had become accustomed to the change, and they saw a little group of mounted men close beneath. Two of them dismounted, and appeared to be speaking to some one at the door, but the rest sat with their rifles across their saddles and a prisoner in front of them. His hat was crushed and battered, his jacket rent, and Flora Schuyler fancied there was a red trickle down his cheek; but his face was turned partly away from the window, and he sat very still, apparently with his arms bound loosely at the wrists.

“All these to make sure of one man, and they have tied his hands!” she said.

Hetty noticed the ring in her companion’s voice, and Allonby made a little deprecatory gesture.

“It’s quite evident they had too much trouble getting him to take any chances of losing him,” he said. “I wish the fellow would turn his head. I fancy I should know him.”

A tremor ran through Hetty for she also felt she recognized that tattered figure. Then one of the horsemen seized the captive’s bridle, and the man made a slight indignant gesture as the jerk flung off his hands. Flora Schuyler closed her fingers tight.

“If I were a man I should go down and talk quite straight to them,” she said.

The prisoner was sitting stiffly now, but he swayed in the saddle when one of the cattle-men struck his horse and it plunged. He turned his head as he did so, and the moonlight shone into his face. It was very white, and there was a red smear on his forehead. Hetty gasped, and Flora Schuyler felt her fingers close almost cruelly upon her arm.

“It’s Larry!” she said.

Christopher Allonby nodded. “Yes, we have him at last,” he said. “Of course, one feels sorry; but he brought it on himself. They’re going to put him into the stable.”

The men rode forward, and when they passed out of sight Hetty slipped back from behind the curtain, and, sat down, shivering as she looked up at Miss Schuyler.

“I can’t help it, Flo. If one could only make them let him go!”

“You need not let any of them see it,” said Miss Schuyler, sharply. “Sit quite still here and talk to me. Now, what right had those men to arrest him?”

The warning was sufficient. Hetty shook out her dress and laughed, though her voice was not steady.

“It’s quite simple,” she said. “The Sheriff can call out any citizen to help him or send any man off after a criminal in an emergency. Of course, being a responsible man he stands in with us, and in times like these the arrangement suits everybody. We do what seems the right thing, and the Sheriff is quite pleased when we tell him.”

Flora Schuyler smiled drily. “Yes. It’s delightfully simple. Still, wouldn’t it make the thing more square if the other men had a good-natured Sheriff, too?”

“Now you are laughing at me. The difference is that we are in the right.”

“And Larry, of course, must be quite wrong!”

“No,” said Hetty, “he is mistaken. Flo, you have got to help me—I’m going to do something for him. Try to be nice to Chris Allonby. They’ll send him to take care of Larry.”

Miss Schuyler looked steadily at her companion. “You tried to make me believe you didn’t care for the man.”

A flush stole into Hetty’s cheek, and a sparkle to her eyes. “Can’t you do a nice thing without asking questions? Larry was very good to me for years, and—I’m sorry for him. Any way, it’s so easy. Chris is young, and you could fool any man with those big blue eyes if he let you look at him.”

Flora Schuyler made a half-impatient gesture, and then, sweeping her dress aside, made room for Christopher Allonby. She also succeeded so well with him that when the guests had departed and the girls came out into the corral where he was pacing up and down, he flung his cigar away and forsook his duty to join them. It was a long ride to Cedar Range, and Torrance had decided to stay with Allonby until morning.

“It was very hot inside—they would put so much wood in the stove,” said Hetty. “Besides, Flo’s fond of the moonlight.”

“Well,” said Allonby, “it’s quite nice out here, and I guess Miss Schuyler ought to like the moonlight. It’s kind to her.”

Flora Schuyler laughed as they walked past the end of the great wooden stable together. “If you look at it in one sense, that wasn’t pretty. You are guarding the prisoner?”

“Yes,” said the lad, with evident diffidence. “The boys who brought him here had ’bout enough of him, and they’re resting, while ours are out on the range. I’m here for two hours any way. It’s not quite pleasant to remember I’m watching Larry.”

“Of course!” and Miss Schuyler nodded sympathetically. “Now, couldn’t you just let us talk to him? The boys have cut his forehead, and Hetty wanted to bring him some balsam. I believe he used to be kind to her.”

Allonby looked doubtful, but Miss Schuyler glanced at him appealingly—and she knew how to use her eyes—while Hetty said:

“Now, don’t be foolish, Chris. Of course, we had just to ask your uncle, but he would have wanted to come with us and would have asked so many questions, while we knew you would tell nobody anything. You know I can’t help being sorry for Larry, and he has done quite a few nice things for you, too.”

“Miss Schuyler is going with you?”

“Of course,” and Hetty smiled mischievously as she glanced at her companion. “Still, you needn’t be jealous, Chris. I’ll take the best care she doesn’t make love to him.”

Flora Schuyler looked away across the prairie, which was not quite what one would have expected from a young woman of her capacities; but the laughing answer served to banish the lad’s suspicions, and he walked with them towards the door. Then he stopped, and when he drew a key from an inner pocket Hetty saw something twinkle in the moonlight at his belt.

“Chris,” she said, “stand still for a minute and shut your eyes quite tight.”

The lad did as he was bidden, for a few years ago he had been the complaisant victim of Hetty’s pleasantries, and felt a light touch on his lips. Then, there was a pluck at his belt, and Hetty was several yards away when he made a step forward with his eyes wide open. She was laughing at him, but there was a pistol in her hand.

“It was only my fingers, Chris, and Flo wasn’t the least nearer than she is now,” she said. “If you dared to think anything else, you would make me too angry. We’ll bring this thing back to you in five minutes, but you wouldn’t have us go in there quite defenceless. Now you walk across the corral, and wait until we tell you.”

Allonby was very young, and somewhat susceptible. Hetty was also very pretty, and, he fancied, Miss Schuyler even prettier still; but he had a few misgivings, and when they went in closed the lower half of the door and set his back to it.

“No,” he said decisively, “I’m staying right here.”

The girls made no demur, but when they had crossed a portion of the long building Miss Schuyler touched her companion. “I’ll wait where I am,” she said drily, “you will not want me.”

Hetty went on until she came to where the light of a lantern shone faintly in a stall. A man sat there with his hands still bound and a wide red smear upon his forehead. His face flushed suddenly as he glanced at her, but he said nothing.

“I’m ever so sorry, Larry,” said the girl.

The man smiled, though it was evident to Hetty, whose heart beat fast, that it was only by an effort he retained his self-control.

“Well,” he said, “it can’t be helped, and it was my fault. Still, I never suspected that kind of thing.”

Hetty coloured. “Larry, you mustn’t be bitter—but it was horribly mean. I couldn’t help coming—I was afraid you would fancy I was proud of them.”

“No,” he said, sternly. “I couldn’t have fancied that. There was nothing else?”

“Your head. It is horribly cut. We saw you from the window, and I fancied I could tie it up for you. You wouldn’t mind if I tried, Larry? I have some balsam here, and I only want a little water.”

For a moment Grant’s face was very expressive, but once more he seemed to put a check upon himself, and his voice was almost too even as he pointed to the pitcher beside him. “There is some ready. Your friends don’t treat their prisoners very well.”

The girl winced a little, but dipping her handkerchief in the pitcher she laved his forehead, and then would have laid the dressing on it; but he caught her hand.

“No,” he said, “take mine instead.”

“You needn’t be quite too horrid, Larry,” and there was a quiver in her voice. “It wouldn’t hurt you very much to take a little thing like that from me.”

Grant smiled very gravely. “I think you had better take mine. If they found a lady’s handkerchief round my head, Allonby’s folks would wonder how it got there.”

Hetty did as he suggested, and felt a curious chagrin when he failed to look at her. “I used to wonder, Larry, how you were able to think of everything,” she said. “Now I have brought you something else; but you must promise not to hurt anybody belonging to Allonby with it.”

Grant laughed softly, partly to hide his astonishment, when he saw a pistol laid beside him.

“I haven’t grown bloodthirsty, Hetty,” he said. “Where did you get it?”

“It was Chris Allonby’s. Flo and I fooled him and took it away. It was so delightfully easy. But you will keep it?”

He shook his head. “Just try to think, Hetty.”

Hetty’s cheeks flushed. “You are horribly unkind. Can’t you take anything from me? Still—you—have got to think now. If I let you go, you will promise not to make any more trouble for my father and Allonby, or anybody?”

Grant only looked at her with an odd little smile, but the crimson grew deeper in Hetty’s cheek. “Oh, of course you couldn’t. I was sorry the last time I asked you,” she said. “Larry, you make me feel horribly mean; but you would not do anything that would hurt them, unless it was quite necessary?”

“No,” said the man drily, “I don’t think I’m going to have an opportunity.”

“You are. I came to let you go. It will be quite easy. Chris is quite foolish about Flo.”

Grant shook his head. “Doesn’t it strike you that it would be very rough on Chris?”

Hetty would not look at him, and her voice was very low. “If anyone must be hurt, I would sooner it was Chris than you.”

He did not answer for a moment, and the girl, watching him in sidelong fashion, saw the grim restraint in his face, which grew almost grey in patches.

“It is no use, Hetty,” he said very quietly. “Chris would tell them nothing. There is no meanness in his father or him; but that wouldn’t stop him thinking. Now, you will know I was right to-morrow. Take him back his pistol.”

“Larry,” said the girl, with a little quiver in her voice, “you are right again—I don’t quite know why you were friends with me.”

Grant smiled at her. “I haven’t yet seen the man who was fit to brush the dust off your little shoes; but you don’t look at these things quite as we do. Now Chris will be getting impatient. You must go.”

Hetty turned away from him, and while the man felt his heart throbbing painfully and wondered whether his resolution would support him much longer, stood very still with one hand clenched. Then she moved back towards him swiftly, with a little smile.

“There is a window above the beams, where they pitch the grain-bags through,” she said. “Chris will go away in an hour or so, and the other man will only watch the door. There are horses in the corral behind the barn, and I’ve seen you ride the wickedest broncho without a saddle.”

She whisked away before the man, who felt a little, almost caressing, touch upon his arm; and heard something drop close beside him with a rattle, could answer, and in less than a minute later smiling at Chris Allonby gave him back his pistol.

“Do you know I was ’most afraid you were going to make trouble for me?” he said.

“But if I had you wouldn’t have told.”

The lad coloured. “You have known me quite a long time, Hetty.”

Hetty laughed, but there was a thrill in her voice as she turned to Miss Schuyler. “Now,” she said, “you know the kind of men we raise on the prairie.”

As they moved away together, Flora Schuyler cast a steady, scrutinizing glance at her companion. “I could have told you, Hetty,” she said.

“Yes,” said Hetty, with a little nod. “He wouldn’t go, and I feel so mean that I’m not fit to talk to you or anybody. But wait. You’ll hear something before to-morrow.”

It was not quite daylight when Miss Schuyler was awakened by a murmur of voices and a tramp of feet on the frozen sod. Almost at the same moment the door of her room opened, and a slim, white figure glided towards the window. Flora Schuyler stood beside it in another second or two, and felt that the girl whose arm she touched was trembling. The voices below grew louder, and they could see two men come running from the stable, while one or two others were flinging saddles upon the horses brought out in haste.

“He must have got away an hour ago,” said somebody. “The best horse Allonby had in the corral isn’t there now.”

Then Hetty sat down laughing excitedly, and let her head fall back on Flora Schuyler’s shoulder when she felt the warm girdling of her arm. In another moment she was crying and gasping painfully.

“He has got away. The best horse in the corral! Ten times as many of them couldn’t bring him back,” she said.

“Hetty,” said Miss Schuyler decisively, “you are shivering all through. Go back at once. He is all right now.”

The girl gasped again, and clung closer to her companion. “Of course,” she said. “You don’t know Larry. If they had all the Cedar boys, too, he would ride straight through them.”

X

ON THE TRAIL

Grant and Breckenridge sat together over their evening meal. Outside the frost was almost arctic, but there was wood in plenty round Fremont ranch, and the great stove diffused a stuffy heat. The two men had made the round of the small homesteads that were springing up, with difficulty, for the snow was too loose and powdery to bear a sleigh, and now they were content to lounge in the tranquil enjoyment of the rest and warmth that followed exposure to the stinging frost.

At last Breckenridge pushed his plate aside, and took out his pipe.

“You must have put a good many dollars into your ploughing, Larry, and the few I had have gone in the same way,” he said. “You see, it’s a long while until harvest comes round, and a good many unexpected things seem to happen in this country. To be quite straight, is there much probability of our getting any of those dollars back?”

Grant smiled. “I think there is, though I can’t be sure. The legislature must do something for us sooner or later, while the fact that the cattle-men and the Sheriff have left us alone of late shows that they don’t feel too secure. Still, there may be trouble. A good many hard cases have been coming in.”

“The cattle-men would get them. It’s dollars they’re wanting, and the other men have a good many more than we have. By the way, shouldn’t the man with the money you are waiting for turn up to-night?”

Grant nodded. A number of almost indigent men—small farmers ruined by frost in Dakota, and axe-men from Michigan with growing families—had settled on the land in his neighbourhood, and as every hand and voice might be wanted, levies had been made on the richer homesteaders, and subscribed to here and there in the cities, for the purpose of enabling them to continue the struggle.

“We want the dollars badly,” he said. “The cattle-men have cut off our credit at the railroad stores, and there are two or three of the Englishmen who have very little left to eat at the hollow. You have seen what we have sent out from Fremont, and Muller has been feeding quite a few of the Dutchmen.”

He stopped abruptly, and Breckenridge drew back his chair. “Hallo!” he said. “You heard it, Larry?”

Grant had heard the windows jar, and a sound that resembled a faint tap. “Yes,” he said quietly. “I may have been mistaken, but it was quite like a rifle shot.”

They were at the door in another moment, shivering as the bitter cold met them in the face; but there was now no sound from the prairie, which rolled away before them white and silent under the moonlight. Then, Breckenridge flung the door to, and crossed over to the rack where a Marlin rifle and two Winchesters hung. He pressed back the magazine slide of one of them, and smiled somewhat grimly at Grant.

“Well,” he said, “we can only hope you’re wrong. Where did you put the book I was reading?”

Grant, who told him, took out some accounts, and they lounged in big hide chairs beside the stove for at least half an hour, though it was significant that every now and then one of them would turn his head as though listening, and become suddenly intent upon his task again when he fancied his companion noticed him. At last Breckenridge laughed.

“It’s all right, Larry. There—is—somebody coming. It will be the man with dollars, and I don’t mind admitting that I’ll be glad to see him.”

Five minutes later the door opened and Muller came in. He looked round him inquiringly.

“Quilter is not come? I his horse in der stable have not seen,” he said.

“No,” said Grant sharply. “He would pass your place.”

Muller nodded. “He come in und der supper take. Why is he not here? I, who ride by der hollow, one hour after him start make.”

Breckenridge glanced at Grant, and both sat silent for a second or two. Then the former said, “I’m half afraid we’ll have to do without those dollars, Mr. Muller. Shall I go round and roll the boys up, Larry?”

Grant only nodded, and, while Breckenridge, dragging on his fur coat, made for the stable, took down two of the rifles and handed one to Muller.

“So!” said the Teuton quietly. “We der trail pick up?”

In less than five minutes the two were riding across the prairie towards Muller’s homestead at the fastest pace attainable in the loose, dusty snow, while Breckenridge rode from shanty to shanty to call out the men of the little community which had grown up not far away. It was some time later when he and those who followed him came up with his comrade and Muller. The moon still hung in the western sky and showed the blue-grey smear where horse-hoofs had scattered the snow. It led straight towards a birch bluff across the whitened prairie, and Breckenridge stooped in his saddle and looked at it.

“Larry,” he said sharply, “there were two of them.”

“Yes,” said Grant. “Only one left Muller’s.”

Breckenridge asked nothing further, but it was not the first time that night he felt a shiver run through him. He fell behind, but he heard one of the rest answer a question Grant put to him.

“Yes,” he said. “The last man was riding a good deal harder than the other fellow.”

Then there was silence, save for the soft trampling of hoofs, and Breckenridge fancied the others were gazing expectantly towards the shadowy blurr of the bluff, which rose a trifle clearer now against the skyline. He felt, with instinctive shrinking, that their search would be rewarded there in the blackness beneath the trees. The pace grew faster. Men glanced at their neighbours now and then as well as ahead, and Breckenridge felt the silence grow oppressive as the bluff rose higher. The snow dulled the beat of hoofs, and the flitting figures that rode with him passed on almost as noiselessly as the long black shadows that followed them. His heart beat faster than usual when, as they reached the birches, Grant raised his hand.

“Ride wide and behind me,” he said. “We’re going to find one of them inside of five minutes.”

There was an occasional crackle as a rotten twig or branch snapped beneath the hoofs. Slender trees slid athwart the moonlight, closed on one another, and opened out, and still, though the snow was scanty and in places swept away, Grant and a big Michigan bushman rode straight on. Breckenridge, who was young, felt the tension grow almost unendurable. At last, when even the horses seemed to feel their masters’ uneasiness, the leader pulled up, and with a floundering of hoofs and jingle of bridles the line of shadowy figures came to a standstill.

“Get down, boys, and light the lantern. Quilter’s here,” he said.

Breckenridge dismounting, looped his bridle round a bough, and by and by stood peering over the shoulders of the clustering men in front of him. The moonlight shone in between the birches, and something dusky and rigid lay athwart it in the snow. One man was lighting a lantern, and though his hands were mittened he seemed singularly clumsy. At last, however, a pale light blinked out, and under it Breckenridge saw a white face and shadowy head, from which the fur cap had fallen.

“Yes,” said somebody, with a suspicion of hoarseness, “that’s Quilter. It’s not going to be much use; but you had better go through his pockets, Larry!”

Grant knelt down, and his face also showed colourless in the lantern light as, with the help of another man, he gently moved the rigid form. Then, opening the big fur-coat he laid his hand on a brown smear on the deerskin jacket under it.

“One shot,” he said. “Couldn’t have been more than two or three yards off.”

“Get through,” said the bushman grimly. “The man who did it can’t have more than an hour’s start of us, any way, and from the trail he left his horse is played out.”

In a minute or two Grant stood up with a little shiver. “You have got to bring out a sledge for him somehow, Muller,” he said. “Boys, the man who shot him has left nothing, and the instructions from our other executives would be worth more to the cattle-men than a good many dollars.”

A WHITE FACE AND SHADOWY HEAD, FROM WHICH THE FUR CAP HAD FALLEN.—Page 114.

“Well,” said the big bushman, “we’re going to get that man if we have to pull down Cedar Range or Clavering’s place before we do it. Here’s his trail. That one was made by Quilter’s horse.”

It scarcely seemed appropriate, and the whole scene was singularly undramatic, and in a curious fashion almost unimpressive; but Breckenridge, who came of a reticent stock, understood. Unlike the Americans of the cities, these men were not addicted to improving the occasion, and only a slight hardening of their grim faces suggested what they felt. They were almost as immobile in the faint moonlight as that frozen one with the lantern flickering beside it in the snow. Yet Breckenridge long afterwards remembered them.

Two men went back with Muller and the rest swung themselves into the saddle, and reckless of the risk to beast and man brushed through the bluff. Dry twigs crackled beneath them, rotten bough and withered bush went down, and a murmur went up when they rode out into the snow again. It sounded more ominous to Breckenridge than any clamorous shout. Then, bridles were shaken and heels went home as somebody found the trail, and the line tailed out farther and farther as blood and weight began to tell. The men were riding so fiercely now, that a squadron of United States cavalry would scarcely have turned them from the trail. Breckenridge laughed harshly as he and Grant floundered down into a hollow, stirrup by stirrup and neck to neck.

“I should be very sorry for any of the cattle-boys we came upon to-night,” he said.

Grant only nodded, and just then a shout went up from the head of the straggling line, and a man waved his hand.

“Heading for the river!” he said. “We’ll find him in the timber. He can’t cross the ice.”

The line divided, and Grant and Breckenridge rode on with the smaller portion, while the rest swung wide to the right. In front of them the Cedar flowed through its birch-lined gully as yet but lightly bound with ice, and Breckenridge guessed that the men who had left them purposed cutting off the fugitive from the bridge. It was long before the first dim birches rose up against the sky, and the white wilderness was very still and the frost intense when they floundered into the gloom of the bluff at the hour that man’s vitality sinks to its lowest. Every crackle of a brittle branch rang with horrible distinctness, and now and then a man turned in his saddle and glanced at his neighbour when from the shadowy hollow beneath them rose the sound of rending ice. The stream ran fast just there, and there had been but a few days’ frost.

They rode at a venture, looking about them with strained intentness, for they had left the guiding trail behind them now. Suddenly a faint cry came out of the silence followed by a beat of hoofs that grew louder every second, until it seemed to swell into a roar. Either there was clearer ground in the bluff, or the rider took his chances blindly so long as he made haste.

The men spread out at a low command, and Breckenridge smiled mirthlessly as he remembered the restrained eagerness with which he had waited outside English covers when the quarry was a fox. He could feel his heart thumping furiously, and his mittened hands would tremble on the bridle. It seemed that the fugitive kept them waiting a horribly long while.

Then, there was a shout close by him, Grant’s horse shot forward and he saw a shadowy object flash by amidst the trees. Hand and heel moved together, and the former grew steady again as he felt the spring of the beast under him and the bitter draught upon his cheek. His horse had rested, and the fugitive’s was spent. Where he was going he scarcely noticed, save that it was down hill, for the birches seemed flying up to him, and the beast stumbled now and then. He was only sure that he was closing with the flying form in front of him.

The trees grew blurred together; he had to lean forward to evade the thrashing branches. His horse was blundering horribly, the slope grew steeper still, the ground beneath the dusty snow and fallen leaves was granite hard; but he was scarcely a length away, a few paces more would bring him level, and his right hand was stretched out for a grip of the stranger’s bridle.

A hoarse shout came ringing after him, and Breckenridge fancied it was a warning. The river was close in front and only thinly frozen yet, but he drove his heels home again. If the fugitive could risk the passage of the ice, he could risk it, too. There was another sound that jarred across the hammering of the hoofs, a crash, and Breckenridge was alone, struggling with his horse. They reeled, smashing through withered bushes and striking slender trees, but at last he gained the mastery, and swung himself down from the saddle. Already several mounted men were clustered about something, while just before he joined them there was another crash, and a little thin smoke drifted among the trees. Then, he saw one of them snap a cartridge out of his rifle, and that a horse lay quivering at his feet. A man stood beside it, and Grant was speaking to him, but Breckenridge scarcely recognized his voice.

“We want everything you took from Quilter, the papers first,” he said. “Light that lantern, Jake, and then the rest stand round. I want you to notice what he gives me.”

The man, saying nothing, handed him a crumpled packet, and Grant, tearing it open, passed the cover to the rest.

“You know that writing?” he said.

There was a murmur of assent, and Grant took a paper from those in his hand, and gave it to a man who held it up in the blinking light of the lantern. “Now,” he said, “we want to make sure the dollars he took from Quilter agree with it. Hand them over.”

The prisoner took a wallet from his pocket and passed it across. “I guess there’s no use in me objecting. You’ll find them there,” he said.

“Count them,” said Grant to the other man. “Two of you look over his shoulder and tell me if he’s right.”

It took some little time, for the man passed the roll of bills to a comrade, who, after turning them over, replaced them in the wallet.

“Yes, that’s right, boys; it’s quite plain, even if we hadn’t followed up his trail. Those dollars and documents were handed Quilter.”

Grant touched Breckenridge. “Get up and ride,” he said. “They’ll send us six men from each of the two committees. We’ll be waiting for them at Boston’s when they get there. Now, there’s just another thing. Look at the magazine of that fellow’s rifle.”

A man took up the rifle, and snapped out the cartridges into his hand. “Usual 44 Winchester. One of them gone,” he said. “He wouldn’t have started out after Quilter without his magazine full.”

The man rubbed the fringe of his deerskin jacket upon the muzzle, and then held it up by the lantern where the rest could see the smear of the fouling upon it.

“I guess that’s convincing, but we’ll bring the rifle along,” he said.

Grant nodded and turned to the prisoner as a man led up a horse. “Get up,” he said. “You’ll have a fair trial, but if you have any defence to make you had better think it over. You’ll walk back to Hanson’s, Jake.”

The prisoner mounted, and they slowly rode away into the darkness which, now the moon had sunk, preceded the coming day.

It was two days later when Breckenridge, who had ridden a long way in the meanwhile, rejoined them at a lonely ranch within a day’s journey of the railroad. Twelve men, whose bronzed faces showed very intent and grave under the light of the big lamp, sat round the long bare room, and the prisoner at the foot of a table. Grant stood at the head of it, with a roll of dollar bills and a rifle in front of him.

“Now,” he said, “you have heard the testimony. Have you anything to tell us?”

“Well,” said the prisoner, “I guess it wouldn’t be much use. Hadn’t you better get through with it? I don’t like a fuss.”

Grant signed to the men, who silently filed out, and returned within a minute. “The thing’s quite plain,” said one of them. “He killed Quilter.”

Grant turned to the prisoner. “There’s nothing that would warrant our showing any mercy, but if you have anything to urge we’ll listen now. It’s your last opportunity. You were heading for one of the cattle-men’s homesteads?”

The man smiled sardonically. “I’m not going to talk,” he said. “I guess I can see your faces, and that’s enough for me.”

Grant stood up and signed to a man, who led the prisoner away. Then, he looked at the others questioningly, and a Michigan axe-man nodded.

“Only one thing,” he said. “It has to be done.”

There was an approving murmur, and Grant glanced along the row of stern faces. “Yes,” he said, “the law will do nothing for us—the cattle-men have bought it up; but this work must be stopped. Well, I guess you like what lies before us as little as I do, but if it warns off the others—and there are more of his kind coming in—it’s the most merciful thing.”

Once more the low murmur ran through the silence of the room; Grant raised his hand and a man brought in the prisoner. He looked at the set faces, and made a little gesture of comprehension.

“I guess you needn’t tell me,” he said. “When is it to be?”

“To-morrow,” said Grant, and it seemed to Breckenridge that his voice came from far away. “At the town—as soon as there is light enough to see by.”

The prisoner turned without a word, and when he had gone the men, as if prompted by one impulse, hastened out of the room, leaving Grant and Breckenridge alone. The former sat very still at the head of the table, until Breckenridge laid his hand on his shoulder.

“Shake it off, Larry. You couldn’t have done anything else,” he said.

“No,” said Grant, with a groan. “Still, I could have wished this duty had not been laid on me.”

When they next stood side by side the early daylight was creeping across the little railroad town, and Breckenridge, whose young face was white, shivered with more than the bitter cold. He never wished to recall it, but the details of that scene would return to him—the square frame houses under the driving snow-cloud, the white waste they rose from, the grim, silent horsemen with the rifles across their saddles, and the intent faces beyond them in the close-packed street. He saw the prisoner standing rigidly erect in a wagon drawn up beside a towering telegraph-pole, and heard a voice reading hoarsely.

A man raised his hand, somebody lashed the horses, the wagon lurched away, a dusky object cut against the sky, and Breckenridge turned his eyes away. A sound that might have been a groan or murmur broke from the crowd and the momentary silence that followed it was rent by the crackle of riflery. After that, Breckenridge only recollected riding across the prairie amidst a group of silent men, and feeling very cold.

In the meanwhile the citizens were gazing at a board nailed to the telegraph-pole: “For murder and robbery. Take warning! Anyone offending in the same way will be treated similarly!”

XI

LARRY’S ACQUITTAL

A warm wind from the Pacific, which had swept down through the Rockies’ passes, had mitigated the Arctic cold, and the snow lay no more than thinly sprinkled upon the prairie. Hetty Torrance and Miss Schuyler were riding up through the birch bluff from the bridge of the Cedar. It was dim among the trees, for dusk was closing in, the trail was rough and steep, and Hetty drew bridle at a turn of it.

“I quite fancied we would have been home before it was dark, and my father would be just savage if he knew we were out alone,” she said. “Of course, he wouldn’t have let us go if he had been at Cedar.”

Flora Schuyler looked about her with a shiver. The wind that shook the birches had grown perceptibly colder: the gloom beneath them deepened rapidly, and there was a doleful wailing amidst the swinging boughs. Beyond the bluff the white wilderness, sinking into dimness now, ran back, waste and empty, to the horizon. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and the loneliness of the prairie is most impressive when night is closing down.

“Then one could have wished he had been at home,” she said.

Perhaps Hetty did not hear her plainly, for the branches thrashed above them just then. “Oh, that’s quite right. Folks are not apt to worry much over the things they don’t know about,” she said.

“It was not your father I was sorry for,” Flora Schuyler said sharply. “The sod is too hard for fast riding, and it will be ’most an hour yet before we get home. I wish we were not alone, Hetty.”

Hetty sighed. “It was so convenient once!” she said. “Whenever I wanted to ride out I had only to send for Larry. It’s quite different now.”

“I have no doubt Mr. Clavering would have come,” said Miss Schuyler.

“Oh, yes,” Hetty agreed. “Still, I’m beginning to fancy you were right about that man. Like a good many more of them, he’s quite nice at a distance; but there are men who should never let anyone get too close to them.”

“You have had quite a few opportunities of observing him at a short distance lately.”

Hetty laughed, but there was a trace of uneasiness in her voice. “I could wish my father didn’t seem quite so fond of him. Oh—there’s somebody coming!”

Instinctively she wheeled her horse into the deeper shadow of the birches and Miss Schuyler followed. There was no habitation within a league of them, and though the frost, which put a period to the homesteaders’ activities, lessened the necessity for the cattle-barons’ watchfulness, unpleasant results had once or twice attended a chance encounter between their partisans. It was also certain that somebody was coming, and Hetty felt her heart beat as she made out the tramp of three horses. The vultures the struggle had attracted had, she knew, much less consideration for women than the homesteaders or cattle-boys.

“Hadn’t we better ride on?” asked Miss Schuyler.

“No,” said Hetty; “they would most certainly see us out on the prairie. Back your horse quite close to mine. If we keep quiet they might pass us here.”

Her voice betrayed what she was feeling, and Flora Schuyler felt unpleasantly apprehensive as she urged her horse farther into the gloom. The trampling came nearer, and by and by a man’s voice reached her.

“Hadn’t you better pull up and get down?” it said. “I’m not much use at tracking, but somebody has been along here a little while ago. You see, there are only three of us!”

“They’re homesteaders, and they’ve found our trail,” exclaimed Hetty, with a little gasp of dismay.

There was scarcely an opening one could ride through between the birches behind them, and it was evident that the horsemen could scarcely fail to see them the moment they left their shelter. One of them had already dismounted, and was apparently stooping beside the prints the horse-hoofs had left where a little snow had sifted down upon the trail. Hetty heard his laugh, and it brought her a great relief.

“I don’t think you need worry, Breckenridge. There were only two of them.”

Hetty wheeled her horse. “It’s Larry,” she said.

A minute later he saw them, and, pulling up, took off his hat; but Flora Schuyler noticed that he ventured on no more than this.

“It is late for you to be out alone. You are riding home?” he said.

“Of course!” said Hetty with, Miss Schuyler fancied, a chilliness which contrasted curiously with the relief she had shown a minute or two earlier.

“Well,” said Grant quietly, “I’m afraid you will have to put up with our company. There are one or two men I have no great opinion of somewhere about this prairie. This is Mr. Breckenridge, and as the trail is rough and narrow, he will follow with Miss Schuyler. I presume you don’t mind riding with him, although, like the rest of us, he is under the displeasure of your friends the cattle-barons?”

Miss Schuyler looked at him steadily. “I don’t know enough of this trouble to make sure who is right,” she said. “But I should never be prejudiced against any American who was trying to do what he felt was the work meant for him.”

“Well,” said Grant, with a little laugh, “Breckenridge will feel sorry that he’s an Englishman.”

Miss Schuyler turned to the young man graciously, and the dim light showed there was a twinkle in her eyes.

“That,” she said, “is the next best thing. Since you are with Mr. Grant you no doubt came out to this country because you thought we needed reforming, Mr. Breckenridge?”

The lad laughed as they rode on up the trail with Grant and Hetty in front of them, and Muller following.

“No,” he said. “To be frank, I came out because my friends in the old one seemed to fancy the same thing of me. When they have no great use for a young man yonder, they generally send him to America. In fact, they send some of them quite a nice cheque quarterly so long as they stay there. You see, we are like the hedgehogs, or your porcupines, if you grow them here, Miss Schuyler.”

Flora Schuyler smiled. “You are young, or you wouldn’t empty the magazine all at once in answer to a single shot.”

“Well,” said Breckenridge, “so are you. It is getting dark, but I have a notion that you are something else too. The fact I mentioned explains the liberty.”

Flora shook her head. “The dusk is kind. Any way, I know I am years older than you. There are no little girls in this country like the ones you have been accustomed to.”

“Now,” said Breckenridge, “my sisters and cousins are, I firmly believe, a good deal nicer than those belonging to most other men; but, you see, I have quite a lot of them, and any one so favoured loses a good many illusions.”

In the meantime Hetty, who, when she fancied he would not observe it, glanced at him now and then, rode silently beside Grant until he turned to her.

“I have a good deal to thank you for, Hetty, and—for you know I was never clever at saying the right thing—I don’t quite know how to begin. Still, in the old times we understood just what each other meant so well that talking wasn’t necessary. You know I’m grateful for my liberty and would sooner take it from you than anybody else, don’t you?”

Hetty laid a restraint upon herself, for there was a thrill in the man’s voice, which awakened a response within her. “Wouldn’t it be better to forget those days?” she said. “It is very different now.”

“It isn’t easy,” said Grant, checking a sigh. “I ’most fancied they had come back the night you told me how to get away.”

Hetty’s horse plunged as she tightened its bridle in a fashion there was no apparent necessity for. “That,” she said chillingly, “was quite foolish of you, and it isn’t kind to remind folks of the things they had better not have done. Now, you told us the prairie wasn’t safe because of some of your friends.”

“No,” said Grant drily, “I don’t think I did. I told you there were some men around I would sooner you didn’t fall in with.”

“Then they must be your partisans. There isn’t a cattle-boy in this country who would be uncivil to a woman.”

“I wish I was quite sure. Still, there are men coming in who don’t care who is right, and only want to stand in with the men who will give them the most dollars or let them take what they can. We have none to give away.”

“Larry,” the girl said hotly, “do you mean that we would be glad to pay them?”

“No. But they will most of them quite naturally go over to you, which will make it harder for us to get rid of them. We have no use for men of that kind in this country.”

“No?” said the girl scornfully. “Well, I fancied they would have come in quite handy—there was a thing you did.”

“You heard of that?”

“Yes,” very coldly. “It was a horrible thing.”

Grant’s voice changed to a curious low tone. “Did you ever see me hurt anything when I could help it in the old days, Hetty?”

“No. One has to be honest; I remember how you once hurt your hand taking a jack-rabbit out of a trap.”

“And how you bound it up?”

“Well,” said Hetty, “I don’t know, after the work you have done with it, that I should care to do that now.”

“There are affairs you should never hear of and I don’t care to talk about with you,” Grant said, very quietly, “but since you have mentioned this one you must listen to me. Just as it is one’s duty to give no needless pain to anything, so there is an obligation on him to stop any other man who would do it. Is it wrong to kill a grizzly or a rattlesnake, or merciful to leave them with their meanness to destroy whatever they want? Now, if you had known a quiet American who did a tolerably dangerous thing because he fancied it was right, and found him shot in the back, and the trail of the man who crept up behind him and killed him for a few dollars, would you have let that man go?”

Hetty ignored the question. “The man was your friend.”

“Well,” said Grant slowly, “he had done a good deal for me, but that would not have counted for very much with any one when we made our decision.”

“No?” And Hetty glanced at him with a little astonishment.

Grant shook his head. “No,” he said. “We had to do the square thing—that and nothing more; but if we had let that man go, he would, when the chance was given him, have done what he did again. Well, it was—horrible; but there was no law that would do the work for us in this country then.”

Hetty shivered, but had there been light enough Grant would have seen the relief in her face, and as it was his pulse responded to the little quiver in her voice. Why it was she did not know, but the belief in him which she had once cherished suddenly returned to her. In the old days the man she had never thought of as a lover could, at least, do no wrong.

“I understand.” Her voice was very gentle. “There must be a good deal of meanness in me, or I should have known you only did it because you are a white man, and felt you had to. Oh, of course, I know—only it’s so much easier to go round another way so you can’t see what you don’t want to. Larry, I’m sorry.”

Grant’s voice quivered. “The only thing you ever do wrong, Hetty, is to forget to think now and then; and by and by you will find somebody who is good enough to think for you.”

The girl smiled. “He would have to be very patient, and the trouble is that if he was clever enough to do the thinking he wouldn’t have the least belief in me. You are the only man, Larry, who could see people’s meannesses and still have faith in them.”

“I am a blunderer who has taken up a contract that’s too big for him,” Grant said gravely. “I have never told anyone else, Hetty, but there are times now and then when, knowing the kind of man I am, I get ’most sick with fear. All the poor men in this district are looking to me, and, though I lie awake at night, I can’t see how I’m going to help them when one trace of passion would let loose anarchy. It’s only right they’re wanting, that is, most of the Dutchmen and the Americans—but there’s the mad red rabble behind them, and the bitter rage of hard men who have been trampled on, to hold in. It’s a crushing weight we who hold the reins have got to carry. Still, we were made only plain farmer men, and I guess we’re not going to be saddled with more than we can bear.”

He had spoken solemnly from the depths of his nature, and all that was good in the girl responded.

“Larry,” she said softly, “while you feel just that I think you can’t go wrong. It is what is right we are both wanting, and—though I don’t know how—I feel we will get it by and by, and then it will be the best thing for homestead-boys and cattle-barons. When that time comes we will be glad there were white men who took up their load and worried through, and when this trouble’s worked out and over there will be nothing to stop us being good friends again.”

“Is that quite out of the question now?”

“Yes,” said Hetty simply. “I am sorry, but, Larry, can’t you understand? You are leading the homestead-boys, and my father the cattle-barons. First of all I’ve got to be a dutiful daughter.”

“Of course,” he agreed. “Well, it can’t last for ever, and we can only do the best we can. Other folks had the same trouble when the boys in Sumter fired the starting gun—North and South at each other’s throats, and both Americans!”

Hetty decided that she had gone sufficiently far, and turned in her saddle. “What is the Englishman telling you, Flo?” she asked.

Miss Schuyler laughed. “He was almost admitting that the girls in this country are as pretty as those they raise in the one he came from.”

“Well,” said Breckenridge, “if it was daylight I’d be sure.”

Grant fancied that it was not without a purpose his companion checked her horse to let the others come up, and, though it cost him an effort, acquiesced. His laugh was almost as ready as that of the rest as they rode on four abreast, until at last the lights of Cedar Range blinked beside the bluff. Then, they grew suddenly silent again as Muller, who it seemed remembered that he had been taught by the franc tireurs, rode past them with his rifle across his saddle. They pulled up when his figure cut blackly against the sky on the crest of a rise, and Hetty’s laugh was scarcely light-hearted.

“You have been very good, and I am sorry I can’t ask you to come in,” she said. “Still, I don’t know that it’s all our fault; we are under martial law just now.”

Grant took off his hat and wheeled his horse, and when the girls rode forward sat rigid and motionless, watching them until he saw the ray from the open door of Cedar Range. Then, Muller trotted up, and with a little sigh he turned homewards across the prairie.

About the same time Richard Clavering lay smoking, in a big chair in the room where he kept his business books and papers. He wore, among other somewhat unusual things, a velvet jacket, very fine linen, and on one of his long, slim fingers a ring of curious Eastern workmanship. Clavering was a man of somewhat expensive tastes, and his occasional visits to the cities had cost him a good deal, which was partly why an accountant, famous for his knowledge of ranching property, now sat busy at a table. He was a shrewd, direct American, and had already spent several days endeavouring to ascertain the state of Clavering’s finances.

“Nearly through?” the rancher asked, with a languidness which the accountant fancied was assumed.

“I can give you a notion of how you stand, right now,” he answered. “You want me to be quite candid?”

“Oh, yes,” said Clavering, with a smile of indifference. “I’m in a tight place, Hopkins?”

“I guess you are—any way, if you go on as you’re doing. You see what I consider it prudent to write off the value of your property?”

Clavering examined the paper handed him with visible astonishment. “Why have you whittled so much off the face value?”

“Just because you’re going to have that much taken away from you by and by.”

Clavering’s laugh was quietly scornful. “By the homestead-boys?”

“By the legislature of this State. The law is against you holding what you’re doing now.”

“We make what law there is out here.”

“Well,” said Hopkins, coolly, “I guess you’re not going to do it long. You know the maxim about fooling the people. It can’t be done.”

“Aren’t you talking like one of those German socialists?”

“On the contrary. I quite fancy I’m talking like a business man. Now, you want to realize on those cattle before the winter takes the flesh off them, and extinguish the bank loan with what you get for them.”

Clavering’s face darkened. “That would strip the place, and I’d have to borrow to stock again.”

“You’d have to run a light stock for a year or two.”

“It wouldn’t suit me to do anything that would proclaim my poverty just now,” said Clavering.