The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

Harold Bindloss

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.