The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

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.