"Oh, and you struck him, you struck him like a dog!"

"I've suffered more for that than I hurt him, Frances—it's been like fire in my heart!"

"I pray to God it will burn up your wicked pride!"

"We believed him, mother and I believed him, in spite of what Chance said. Oh, if you'd only come back then, Frances, this thing wouldn't have happened!"

"I can't see what good that would have done," said Frances, wearily; "there are others who don't believe him. They'd have got him some time, just like they got him—in a coward's underhanded way, never giving him a chance for his life."

"We went to Meander this morning thinking we'd catch father there before he left. We wanted to tell him about Mr. Macdonald, and get him to drop this feud. If we could have seen him I know he'd have done what we asked, for he's got the noblest heart in the world!"

Whatever Frances felt on the noble nature of Saul Chadron she held unexpressed. She did not feel that it fell to her duty to tell Nola whose hand had struck Macdonald down, although she believed that the cattleman's daughter deserved whatever pain and humiliation the revelation might bring. For it was as plain as if Nola had confessed it in words that she had much more than a friendly feeling of gratitude for the foeman of her family.

Her heart was as unstable as mercury, it seemed. Frances despised her for her fickleness, scorned her for the mean face of friendship over the treachery of her soul. Not that she regretted Major King. Nola was free to take him and make the most of him. But she was not to come in as a wedge to rive her from this man.

Let her pay her debt of gratitude in something else than love. Living or dead, Alan Macdonald was not for Nola Chadron. Her penance and her tears, her meanings and sobs and her broken heart, even that, if it should come, could not pay for the humiliation and the pain which that house had brought upon him.

"When did it happen?" asked Nola, the gust of her weeping past.

"This morning, early."

"Who did it—how did it happen? You got away from Chance—you said it wasn't Chance."

"We got away from that gang yesterday; this happened this morning, miles from that place."

"Who was it? Why don't you tell me, Frances?"

They were standing at Macdonald's side. A little spurt of flame among the ends of wood in the chimney threw a sudden illumination over them, and played like water over a stone upon Macdonald's face, then sank again, as if it had been plunged in ashes. Frances remained silent, her vindictiveness, her hardness of heart, against this vacillating girl dying away as the flame had died. It was not her desire to hurt her with that story of treachery and cowardice which must leave its stain upon her name for many a year.

"The name of the man who shot him is a curse and a blight on this land, a mockery of every holy human thought. I'll not speak it."

Nola stared at her, horror speaking from her eyes. "He must be a monster!"

"He is the lowest of the accursed—a coward!" Frances said.

Nola shuddered, standing silently by the couch a little while. Then: "But I want to help you, Frances, if you'll let me."

"There's nothing that you can do. I'm waiting for Mrs. Mathews and the doctor from the agency."

"You can go up and rest until they come, Frances, you look so tired and pale. I'll watch by him—you can tell me what to do, and I'll call you when they come."

"No; I'll stay until—I'll stay here."

"Oh, please go, Frances; you're nearly dead on your feet."

"Why do you want me to leave him?" Frances asked, in a flash of jealous suspicion. She turned to Nola, as if to search out her hidden intention.

"You were asleep in your chair when I came in, Frances," Nola chided her, gently.

Again they stood in silence, looking down upon the wounded man. Frances was resentful of Nola's interest in him, of her presence in the room. She was on the point of asking her to leave when Nola spoke.

"If he hadn't been so proud, if he'd only stooped to explain things to us, to talk to us, even, this could have been avoided, Frances."

"What could he have said?" Frances asked, wondering, indeed, what explanation could have lessened his offense in Saul Chadron's eyes.

"If I had known him, I would have understood," Nola replied, vaguely, in soft low voice, as if communing with herself.

"You! Well, perhaps—perhaps even you would have understood."

"Look—he moved!"

"Sh-h-h! your talking disturbs him, Nola. Go to bed—you can't help me any here."

"And leave him all to you!"

The words flashed from Nola, as if they had sprung out of her mouth before her reason had given them permission to depart.

"Of course with me; he's mine!"

"If he's going to die, Frances, can't I share him with you till the end—can't I have just a little share in the care of him here with you?"

Nola laid her hand on Frances' arm as she pleaded, turning her white face appealingly in the dim light.

"Don't talk that way, girl!" said Frances, roughly; "you have no part in him at all—he is nothing to you."

"He is all to me—everything to me! Oh, Frances! If you knew, if you knew!"

"What? If I knew what?" Frances caught her arm in fierce grip, and shook her savagely.

"Don't—don't—hurt me, Frances!" Nola cringed and shrank away, and lifted her arms as if to ward a blow.

"What did you mean by that? Tell me—tell me!"

"Oh, the way it came to me, the way it came to me as he carried me in his arms and sang to me so I wouldn't be afraid!" moaned Nola, her face hidden in her hands. "I never knew before what it was to care for anybody that way—I never, never knew before!"

"You can't have this man, nor any share in him, living or dead! I gave up Major King to you; be satisfied."

"Oh, Major King!"

"Poor shadow that he is in comparison with a man, he'll have to serve for you. Living or dead, I tell you, this man is mine. Now go!"

Nola was shaking again with sudden gust of weeping. She had sunk to the floor at the head of the couch, a white heap, her bare arms clasping her head.

"It breaks my heart to see him die!" she moaned, rocking herself in her grief like a child.

And child Frances felt her to be in her selfishness, a child never denied, and careless and unfeeling of the rights of others from this long indulgence. She doubted Nola's sincerity, even in the face of such demonstrative evidence. There was no pity for her, and no softness.

"Get up!" Frances spoke sternly—"and go to your room."

"He must not be allowed to die—he must be saved!" Nola reached out her hands, standing now on her knees, as if to call back his struggling soul.

"Belated tears will not save him. Get up—it's time for you to go."

Nola bent forward suddenly, her hair sweeping the wounded man's face, her lips near his brow. Frances caught her with a sound in her throat like a growl, and flung her back.

"You'll not kiss him—you'll never kiss him!" she said.

Nola sprang up, not crying now, but hot with sudden anger.

"If you were out of the way he'd love me!"

"Love you! you little cat!"

"Yes, he'd love me—I'd take him away from you like I've taken other men! He'd love me, I tell you—he'd love me!"

Frances looked at her steadily a moment, contempt in her eloquent face. "If you have no other virtue in you, at least have some respect for the dying," she said.

"He's not dying, he'll not die!" Nola hotly denied. "He'll live—live to love me!"

"Go! This room—"

"It's my house; I'll go and come in it when I please."

"I'm a prisoner in it, not a guest. I'll force you out of the room if I must. This disgraceful behavior must end, and end this minute. Are you going?"

"If you were out of the way, he'd love me," said Nola from the door, spiteful, resentful, speaking slowly, as if pressing each word into Frances' brain and heart; "if you were out of the way."



CHAPTER XXI

THE MAN IN THE DOOR

When the doctor from the agency arrived at dawn, hours after Mrs. Mathews, he found everything done for the wounded man that skill and experience could suggest. Mrs. Mathews had carried instruments, antiseptics, bandages, with her, and she had no need to wait for anybody's directions in their use. So the doctor, who had been reinforced by the same capable hands many a time before, took a cup of hot coffee and rode home.

Mrs. Mathews moved about as quietly as a nun, and with that humility and sense of self-effacement that comes of penances and pains, borne mainly for others who have fallen with bleeding feet beside the way.

She was not an old woman, only as work and self-sacrifice had aged her. Her abundant black hair—done up in two great braids which hung in front of her shoulders, Indian-wise, and wrapped at their ends with colored strings—was salted over with gray, but her beautiful small hands were as light and swift as any girl's. Good deeds had blessed them with eternal youth, it seemed.

She wore a gray dress, sprinkled over with twinkling little Indian gauds and bits of finery such as the squaws love. This barbaric adornment seemed unaccountable in the general sobriety of her dress, for not a jewel, save her wedding-ring alone, adorned her. Frances did not marvel that she felt so safe in this gentle being's presence, safe for herself, safe for the man who was more to her than her own soul.

When the doctor had come and gone, Mrs. Mathews pressed Frances to retire and sleep. She spoke with soft clearness, none of that hesitation in her manner that Frances had marked on the day that they rode up and surrounded her where the Indians were waiting their rations of beef.

"You know how it happened—who did it?" Frances asked. She was willing to leave him with her, indeed, but reluctant to go until she had given expression to a fear that hung over her like a threat.

"Banjo told me," Mrs. Mathews said, nodding her graceful little head.

"I'm afraid that when Chadron comes home and finds him here, he'll throw him out to die," Frances whispered. "I've been keeping Mr. Macdonald's pistols ready to—to—make a fight of it, if necessary. Maybe you could manage it some other way."

Frances was on her knees beside her new friend, her anxiety speaking from her tired eyes, full of their shadows of pain. Mrs. Mathews drew her close, and smoothed back Frances' wilful, redundant hair with soothing touch. For a little while she said nothing, but there was much in her delicate silence that told she understood.

"No, Chadron will not do that," she said at last. "He is a violent, blustering man, but I believe he owes me something that will make him do in this case as I request. Go to sleep, child. When he wakes he'll be conscious, but too weak for anything more than a smile."

Frances went away assured, and stole softly up the stairs. The sun was just under the hill; Mrs. Chadron would be stirring soon. Nola was up already, Frances heard with surprise as she passed her door, moving about her room with quick step. She hesitated there a moment, thinking to turn back and ask Mrs. Mathews to deny her the hospital room. But such a request would seem strange, and it would be difficult to explain. She passed on into the room that she had lately occupied. Soothed by her great confidence in Mrs. Mathews, she fell asleep, her last waking hope being that when she stood before Alan Macdonald's couch again it would be to see him smile.

Frances woke toward the decline of day, with upbraidings for having yielded to nature's ministrations for so long. Still, everything must be progressing well with Alan Macdonald, or Mrs. Mathews would have called her. She regretted that she hadn't something to put on besides her torn and soiled riding habit to cheer him with the sight of when he should open his eyes to smile.

Anxious as she was, and fast as her heart fluttered, she took time to arrange her hair in the way that she liked it best. It seemed warrant to her that he must find her handsomer for that. People argue that way, men in their gravity as well as women in their frivolity, each believing that his own appraisement of himself is the incontestable test, none rightly understanding how ridiculous pet foibles frequently make us all.

But there was nothing ridiculous in the coil of serene brown hair drawn low against a white neck, nor in the ripples of it at the temples, nor in the stately seriousness of the face that it shadowed and adorned. Frances Landcraft was right, among thousands who were wrong in her generation, in her opinion of what made her fairer in the eyes of men.

Her hand was on the door when a soft little step, like a wind in grass, came quickly along the hall, and a light hand struck a signal on the panel. Frances knew that it was Mrs. Mathews before she flung the door open and disclosed her. She was dressed to take the road again, and Frances drew back when she saw that, her blood falling away from her heart. She believed that he stood in need of her gentle ministrations no longer, and that she had come to tell her that he was dead.

Mrs. Mathews read her thought in her face, and shook her head with an assuring smile. She entered the room, still silent, and closed the door.

"No, he is far from dead," she said.

"Then why—why are you leaving?"

"The little lady of the ranch has stepped into my place—but you need not be afraid for yours." Mrs. Mathews smiled again as she said that. "He asked for you with his first word, and he knows just how matters stand."

The color swept back over Frances' face, and ran down to hide in her bosom, like a secret which the world was not to see. Her heart leaped to hear that Maggie had been wrong in her application of the rule that applies to men in general when death is blowing its breath in their faces.

"But that little Nola isn't competent to take care of him—she'll kill him if she's left there with him alone!"

"With kindness, then," said Mrs. Mathews, not smiling now, but shaking her head in deprecation. "A surgeon is here, sent back by Major King, he told me, and he has taken charge of Mr. Macdonald, along with Miss Chadron and her mother. I have been dismissed, and you have been barred from the room where he lies. There's a soldier guarding the door to keep you away from his side."

"That's Nola's work," Frances nodded, her indignation hot in her cheek, "she thinks she can batter her way into his heart if she can make him believe that I am neglecting him, that I have gone away."

"Rest easy, my dear, sweet child," counseled Mrs. Mathews, her hand on Frances' shoulder. "Mr. Macdonald will get well, and there is only one door to his heart, and somebody that I know is standing in that."

"But he—he doesn't understand; he'll think I've deserted him!" Frances spoke with trembling lips, tears darkling in her eyes.

"He knows how things stand; I had time to tell him that before they ousted me. I'd have taken time to tell him, even if I'd had to—pinch somebody's ear."

The soft-voiced little creature laughed when she said that. Frances felt her breath go deeper into her lungs with the relief of this assurance, and the threatening tears came falling over her fresh young cheeks. But they were tears of thankfulness, not of suspense or pain.

Frances did not trouble the soldier at the door to exercise his unwelcome and distasteful authority over her. But she saw that he was there, indeed, as she went out to give Mrs. Mathews farewell at the door.

Nola came pattering to her as she turned back in the house again to find Maggie, for her young appetite was clamoring. Nola's eyes were round, her face set in an expression of shocked protest.

"Isn't this an outrage, this high-handed business of Major King's?" She ran up all flushed and out of breath, as if she had been wrestling with her indignation and it had almost obtained the upper hand.

"What fresh tyranny is he guilty of?" Frances inquired, putting last night's hot words and hotter feelings behind her.

"Ordering a soldier to guard the door of Mr. Macdonald's room, with iron-clad instructions to keep you away from him! He sent his orders back by Doctor Shirley—isn't it a petty piece of business?"

"Mrs. Mathews told me. At least you could have allowed her to stay."

"I?" Nola's eyes seemed to grow. She gazed and stared, injury, disbelief, pain, in her mobile expression. "Why, Frances, I didn't have a thing to do with it, not a thing! Mother and I protested against this military invasion of our house, but protests were useless. The country is under martial law, Doctor Shirley says."

"How did Major King know that Mr. Macdonald had been brought here? He rode away without giving any instructions for his disposal or care. I believe he wanted him to die there where he fell."

"I don't know how he came to hear it, unless the lieutenant here sent a report to him. But I ask you to believe me, Frances"—Nola put her hand on Frances' arm in her old wheedling, stroking way—"when I tell you I hadn't anything to do with it. In spite of what I said last night, I hadn't. I was wild and foolish last night, dear; I'm sorry for all of that."

"Never mind," Frances said.

"Don't you worry, we'll take care of him, mother and I. Major King's orders are that you're not to leave this house, but I tell you, Frances, if I wanted to go home I'd go!"

"So would I," returned Frances, with more meaning in her manner of speaking than in her words. "Does Major King's interdiction extend to the commissary? Am I going to be allowed to eat?"

"Maggie's got it all ready; I ran up to call you." Nola slipped her arm round Frances' waist and led her toward the kitchen, where Maggie had the table spread. "You'll not mind the kitchen? The house is so upset by those soldiers in it that we have no privacy left."

"Prisoners and pensioners should eat in the kitchen," Frances returned, trying to make a better appearance of friendliness for Nola than she carried in her heart.

Maggie was full of apologies for the poor service and humble surroundings. "It is the doings of miss," she whispered, in her native sibilant Mexican, when Nola found an excuse to leave Frances alone at her meal.

"It doesn't matter, Maggie; you eat in the kitchen, both of us are women."

"Yes, and some saints' images are made of lead, some of gold."

"But they are all saints' images, Maggie."

"The kitchen will be brighter from this day," Maggie declared, in the extravagant way of her race, only meaning more than usually carries in a Castilian compliment.

She backed away from the table, never having it in her delicate nature to be so rude as to turn her back upon her guest, and admired Frances from a distance. The sun was reaching through a low window, moving slowly up the cloth as if stealing upon the guest to give her a good-night kiss.

"Ah, miss!" sighed Maggie, her hands clasped as in adoration, "no wonder that he lives with a well in his body. He has much to live for, and that is the truth from a woman's lips."

"It is worth more because of its rarity, then, Maggie," Frances said, warming over with blushes at this ingenuous praise. "Do they let you go into his room?"

"The door is open to the servant," Maggie replied, with solemn nod.

"It is closed to me—did you know?"

"I know. Miss tells you it is orders from some captain, some general, some soldier I do not know what"—a sweeping gesture to include all soldiers, great and small and far away—"but that is a lie. It came out of her own heart. She is a traitor to friendship, as well as a thief."

"Yes, I believed that from the beginning, Maggie."

"This house of deceit is not a place for me, for even servant that I am, I am a true servant. But I will not lie for a liar, nor be traitor for one who deceives a friend. I shall go from here. Perhaps when you are married to Mr. Macdonald you will have room in your kitchen for me?"

"We must not build on shadows, Maggie."

"And there is that Alvino, a cunning man in a garden. You should see how he charms the flowers and vegetables—but you have seen, it is his work here, all this is his work."

"If there is ever a home of my own—if it ever comes to that happiness—"

"God hasten the day!"

"Then there will be room for both of you, Maggie."

Frances rose from the table, and stood looking though the window where the sun's friendly hand had reached in to caress her a few minutes gone. There was no gleam of it now, only a dull redness on the horizon where it had fallen out of sight, the red of iron cooling upon the anvil.

"In four weeks he will be able to kneel at the altar with you," said Maggie, making a clatter with the stove lids in her excitement, "and in youth that is only a day. And I have a drawn piece of fine linen, as white as your bosom, that you must wear over your heart on that day. It will bring you peace, far it was made by a holy sister and it has been blessed by the bishop at Guadalupe."

"Thank you, Maggie. If that day ever comes for me, I will wear it."

Maggie came nearer the window, concern in her homely face, and stood off a little respectful distance.

"You want to be with him, you should be there at his side, and I will open the door for you," she said.

"You will?" Frances started hopefully.

"Once inside, no man would lift a hand to put you out."

"But how am I going to get inside, Maggie, with that sentry at the door?"

"I have been thinking how it could be done, miss. Soon it will be dark, and with night comes fear. Miss is with him now; she is there alone."

Frances turned to her, such pain in her face as if she had been stabbed.

"Why should you go over that again? I know it!" she said, crossly. "That has nothing to do with my going into the room."

"It has much," Maggie declared, whispering now, treasuring her plot. "The old one is upstairs, sleeping, and she will not wake until I shake her. Outside the soldiers make their fires and cook, and Alvino in the barn sings 'La Golondrina'—you hear him?—for that is sad music, like his soul. Very well. You go to your room, but leave the door open to let a finger in. When it is just creeping dark, and the soldiers are eating, I will run in where the one sits beside the door. My hair will be flying like the mane of a wild mare, my eyes bi-i-i-g—so. In the English way I will shout 'The rustlers, the rustlers! He ees comin'—help, help!' When you hear this, fly to me, quick, like a soul set free. The soldier at the door will go to see; miss will come out; I will stand in the door, I will draw the key in my hand. Then you will fly to him, and lock the door!"

"Why, Maggie! what a general you are!"

"Under the couch where he lies," Maggie hurried on, her dark eyes glowing with the pleasure of this manufactured romance, "are the revolvers which he wore, just where we placed them last night. I pushed them back a little, quite out of sight, and nobody knows. Strap the belt around your waist, and defy any power but death to move you from the man you love!"

"Maggie, you are magnificent!"

"No," Maggie shook her head, sadly, "I am the daughter of a peon, a servant to bear loads. But"—a flash of her subsiding grandeur—"I would do that—ah, I would have done that in youth—for the man of my heart. For even a servant in the back of a house has a heart, dear miss."

Frances took her work-rough hands in her own; she pressed back the heavy black hair—mark of a vassal race—from the brown forehead and looked tenderly into her eyes.

"You are my sister," she said.

Poor Maggie, quite overcome by this act of tenderness, sank to her knees, her head bowed as if the bell had sounded the elevation of the host.

"What benediction!" she murmured.

"I will go now, and do as you have said."

"When it is a little more dark," said Maggie, softly, looking after her tenderly as she went away.

Frances left her door ajar as Maggie had directed, and stood before the glass to see if anything could be done to make herself more attractive in his eyes. It did not seem so, considering the lack of embellishments. She turned from the mirror sighing, doubtful of the success of Maggie's scheme, but determined to do her part in it, let the result be what it might. Her place was there at his side, indeed; none had the right to bar her his presence.

The joy of seeing him when consciousness flashed back into his shocked brain had been stolen from her by a trick. Nola had stood in her place then. She wondered if that slow smile had kindled in his eyes at the sight of her, or whether they had been shadowed with bewilderment and disappointment. It was a thing that she should never know.

She heard Mrs. Chadron leave her room and pass heavily downstairs. Hope sank lower as she descended; it seemed that their simple plot must fail. Well, she sighed, at the worst it could only fail. As she sat there waiting while twilight blended into the darker waters of night, she reflected the many things which had overtaken her in the two days past. Two incidents stood out above all the haste, confusion, and pain which gave her sharp regret. One was that her father had parted from her to meet his life's heaviest disappointment with anger and unforgiving heart; the other that the shot which she had aimed at Saul Chadron had been cheated of its mark.

There came a trampling of hoofs from the direction of the post, unmistakably cavalry. She strained from the window to see, but it was at that period between dusk and dark when distant objects were tantalizingly indefinite. Nothing could be made of the number, or who came in command. But she believed that it must be Major King's troops returning from escorting the raiders to Meander.

Of course there would be no trying out of Maggie's scheme now. New developments must come of the arrival of Major King, perhaps her own removal to the post. Surely he could not sustain an excuse that she was dangerous to his military operations now.

Doors opened, and heavy feet passed the hall. Presently all was a tangle of voices there, greetings and warm words of welcome, and the sound of Mrs. Chadron weeping on her husband's breast for joy at his return.

Nola's light chatter rose out of the sound of the home-coming like a bright thread in a garment, and the genteel voice of Major King blended into the bustle of welcome with its accustomed suave placidity. Frances felt downcast and lonely as she listened to them, and the joyous preparations for refreshing the travelers which Mrs. Chadron was pushing forward. They had no regard, no thought it seemed, for the wounded man who lay with only the thickness of a door dividing him from them.

She was moved with concern, also, regarding Chadron's behavior when he should learn of Macdonald's presence in that house. Would Nola have the courage to own her attachment then, and stand between the wrath of her father and his wounded enemy?

She was not to be spared the test long. There was the noise of Chadron moving heavily about, bestowing his coat, his hat, in their accustomed places. He came now into the dining-room, where the sentinel kept watch at Macdonald's door. Frances crept softly, fearfully, into the hall and listened.

Chadron questioned the soldier, in surprise. Frances heard the man's explanation of his presence before the door given in low voice, and in it the mention of Macdonald's name. Chadron stalked away, anger in the sound of his step. His loud voice now sounded in the room where the others were still chattering in the relief of speech after long silence. Now he came back to the guarded door, Nola with him; Mrs. Chadron following with pleading words and moanings.

"Dead or alive, I don't care a damn! Out of this house he goes this minute!" Chadron said.

"Oh, father, surely you wouldn't throw a man at death's door out in the night!"

It was Nola, lifting a trembling voice, and Frances could imagine her clinging to his arm.

"Not after what he's done for us, Saul—not after what he's done!" Mrs. Chadron sounded almost tearful in her pleading. "Why, he brought Nola home—didn't you know that, Saul? He brought her home all safe and sound!"

"Yes, he stole her to make that play!" Chadron said, either still deceived, or still stubborn, but in any case full of bitterness.

"I'll never believe that, father!" Nola spoke braver than Frances had expected of her. "But friend or enemy, common charity, common decency, would—"

"Common hell! Git away from in front of that door! I'm goin' to throw his damned carcass out of this house—I can't breathe with that man in it!"

"Oh, Saul, Saul! don't throw the poor boy out!" Mrs. Chadron begged.

"Will I have to jerk you away from that door by the hair of the head? Let me by, I tell you!"

Frances ran down stairs blindly, feeling that the moment for her interference, weak as it might be, and ineffectual, had come. Now Major King was speaking, his voice sounding as if he had placed himself between Chadron and the door.

"I think you'd better listen to your wife and daughter, Chadron. The fellow can't harm anybody—let him alone."

"No matter for the past, he's our guest, father, he's—"

"Hell! Haven't they told you fool women the straight of it yet? I tell you I had to shoot him to save my own life—he was pullin' a gun on me, but I beat him to it!"

"Oh Saul, my Saul!" Mrs. Chadron moaned.

"Was it you that—oh, was it you!" There was accusation, disillusionment, sorrow—and more than words can define—in Nola's voice. Frances waited to hear no more. In a moment she was standing in the open door beside Nola, who blocked it against her father with outstretched arms.

Chadron was facing his wife, his back to Frances as she passed.

"Yes, it was me, and all I'm sorry for is that I didn't finish him on the spot. Here, you fellers"—to some troopers who crowded about the open door leading to the veranda—"come in here and carry out this cot."

But it wasn't their day to take orders from Chadron; none of them moved. Frances touched Nola's arm; she withdrew it and let her pass.

Macdonald, alone in the room, had lifted himself to his elbow, listening. Frances pressed him back to his pillow with one hand, reaching with the other under the cot for his revolvers. Her heart jumped with a great, glad bound, as if it had leaped from death to safety, when she touched the weapons. A cold steadiness settled over her. If Saul Chadron entered that room, she swore in her heart that she would kill him.

"Don't interfere with me, King," said Chadron, turning again to the door, "I tell you he goes, alive or dead. I can't breathe—"

"Stop where you are!" Frances rose from her groping under the cot, a revolver in her hand.

Chadron, who had laid hold of Nola to tear her from the door, jumped like a man startled out of his sleep. In the heat of his passion he had not noticed one woman more or less.

"Oh, it's you, is it?" he said, catching himself as his hand reached for his gun.

"Frances will take him away as soon as he's able to be moved," said Nola, pleading, fearful, her eyes great with the terror of what she saw in Frances' face.

"Yes, she'll go with him, right now!" Chadron declared. "I'll give you just ten seconds to put down that gun, or I'll come in there and take it away from you! No damn woman—"

A loud and impatient summons sounded on the front door, drowning Chadron's words. He turned, with an oath, demanding to know who it was. Frances, still covering him with her steady hand, heard hurrying feet, the door open, and Mrs. Chadron exclaiming and calling for Saul. The man at the door had entered, and was jangling his spurs through the hall in hasty stride. Chadron stood as if frozen in his boots, his face growing whiter than wounded, blood-drained Macdonald's on his cot of pain.

Now the sound of the newcomer's voice rose in the hall, loud and stern. But harsh as it was, and unfriendly to that house, the sound of it made Frances' heart jump, and something big and warm rise in her and sweep over her; dimming her eyes with tears.

"Where's my daughter, Chadron, you cutthroat! Where's Miss Landcraft? If the lightest hair of her head has suffered, by God! I'll burn this house to the sills!"



CHAPTER XXII

PAID

Colonel Landcraft stood before Chadron in his worn regimentals, his old campaign hat turned back from his forehead as if he had been riding in the face of a wind. Macdonald, looking up at Frances from his couch, spoke to her with his eyes. There was satisfaction in them, a triumphant glow. She moved a step toward the door, and the colonel, seeing her there, rushed to her and clasped her against his dusty breast.

"Standing armed against you in your own house, before your own wife and daughter!" said he, turning like the old tiger that he was upon Chadron again. "And in the presence of an officer of the United States Army—my daughter, armed to protect herself! By heaven, sir! you've disgraced the uniform you wear!"

Major King, scowling darkly, dropped his hand in suggestive gesture to his sword. Colonel Landcraft, his slight, bony old frame drawn up to its utmost inch, marched to him, fire in his eye.

"Unbuckle that sword! You're not fit to wear it," said he.

Chadron had drawn away from the door of Macdonald's room a little, and stood apart from Major King with his wife and daughter. The cattleman had attempted no defense, had said no word. In the coming of Colonel Landcraft, full of authority, strong and certain of hand, Chadron appeared to know that his world was beginning to tumble about his ears.

Now he stepped forward to interpose in behalf of his tool and co-conspirator, in one last big bluff. Major King fell back a stride before the charge of the infuriated old colonel, which seemed to have a threat of personal violence in it, the color sinking out of his face, his hand still on his sword.

"What authority have you got to come into my house givin' orders?" Chadron wanted to know. "Maybe your bluffin' goes with some people, but it don't go with me. You git to hell out of here!"

"In your place and time I'll talk to you, you sneaking hound!" Colonel Landcraft answered, throwing Chadron one blasting look. "Take off that sword, surrender those arms! You are under arrest." This to Major King, who stood scowling, watching the colonel as if to ward an attack.

"By whose authority do you make this demand?" questioned Major King, insolently. "I am not aware that any command—"

Colonel Landcraft turned his back upon him and strode to the open door, through which the dismounted troopers could be seen standing back a respectful distance in the shaft of light that fell through it. At his appearance there, at the sight of that old battered hat and familiar uniform, the men lifted a cheer. Little tyrant that he was, hard-handed and exacting, they knew him for a soldier and a man. They knew, too, that their old colonel had not been given a square deal in that business, and they were glad to see him back.

The colonel acknowledged the greeting with a salute, his old head held prouder at that moment than he ever had carried it in his life.

"Sergeant Snow!" he called.

The sergeant hurried forward, stepped out into the light, came up at salute with the alacrity of a man who found pleasure in the service to be demanded of him.

"Bring a detail of six men into this room, disarm Major King, and place him under guard."

The colonel wheeled again to face Chadron and King.

"I am not under the obligation of explaining my authority to enter this house to any man," said he, "but for your satisfaction, madam, and in deference to you, Miss Chadron, I will tell you that I was recalled by the department on my way to Washington and sent back to resume command of Fort Shakie."

Chadron was biting his mustache like an angry horse mouthing the bit. In the background a captain and two lieutenants, who had arrived with Chadron and King, stood doubtful, it seemed, of their part in that last act of the cattleman's rough melodrama.

Frances had returned to Macdonald's side, fearful that the excitement might bring on a hemorrhage in his wound. She stood soothing him with low, soft, and unnecessary words, unconscious of their tenderness, perhaps, in the stress of her anxiety. But that they were appreciated was evident in the slow-stealing smile that came over his worn, rugged face like a breaking sun.

Major King surrendered his arms to the sergeant with a petulant, lofty shrug of his shoulders.

"I'm not through with you yet, you old cuss!" said Chadron. "I never started out to git a man but what I got him, and I'll git you. I'll—"

Chadron's voice caught in his throat. He stood there looking toward the outside door, drawing his breath like a man suffocating. Stealthily his hand moved toward his revolver, while his wife and daughter, even Frances, struck by a thrill of some undefined terror, leaned and looked as Chadron was looking, toward the open door.

A tall, gaunt, dark shaggy man was standing there, an old flapping hat drooping over his scowling eyes. He was a man with a great branching mustache, and the under lid of one eye was drawn down upon his cheek in a little point, as if caught by a surgical hook and held ready for the knife; a man who bent forward from the middle, as if from long habit of skulking under cover of low-growing shrubs; an evil man, whose foul soul cried of bloody deeds through every feature of his leering face.

"Oh, that man! that man!" cried Nola, in fearful, wild scream.

Mrs. Chadron clasped her in her arms and turned her defiant face toward the man in the door. He was standing just as he had stood when they first saw him, silent, still; as grim as the shadow of Saul Chadron's sins.

The soldiers who stood around Major King looked on with puzzled eyes; Colonel Landcraft frowned. Macdonald from his cot could not see the door, but he felt the sharp striking of those charged seconds. Chadron moved to one side a little, his fixed eyes on the man in the door, his hand nearer his revolver now; so near that his fingers touched it, and now it was in his hand with a sudden bright flash into the light.

Two shots in that quiet room, one following the other so closely that they seemed but a divided one; two shots, delivered so quickly after Nola's awful scream that no man could whip up his shocked nerves to obedience fast enough to interpose. Saul Chadron pitched forward, his hands clutching, his arms outspread, and fell dead, his face groveling upon the floor. Outside, the soldiers lifted Mark Thorn, a bullet through his heart.



CHAPTER XXIII

TEARS IN THE NIGHT

They buried Saul Chadron next day in a corner of the garden by the river. And there was the benediction of tender autumn sunshine over the place where they laid him down, away from the turmoil of his life, and the tangle of injustices that he left behind.

But there was none to come forward and speak for the body of Mark Thorn. The cowboys hid him in the sage at the foot of a butte, as men go silently and shadow-like to bury away a shame.

There seemed to be a heart-soreness over the ranchhouse by the river as night fell upon it again. Saul Chadron had been a great and noble man to some who wept in its silent rooms as the gloaming deepened into darkness over the garden, where the last leaves of autumn were tugging at their anchorage to sail away. Even Frances Landcraft in her vigil beside Macdonald's cot felt pity for Chadron's fall. She regretted, at least, that he had not gone out of life more worthily.

Colonel Landcraft had gone up the river to carry a new message to the homesteaders whose houses lay in ashes. He had ridden to tell them that they could build in security and live in peace. The surgeon had returned to the post, but was coming again tomorrow. Behind him he had left the happy assurance that Macdonald would live.

Macdonald himself had added his own brave word to bear out the doctor's prediction, as far as Frances would permit him to speak. That was not above ten words, whispered into her ear, inclined low to hear. When he attempted to go beyond that, soft warm fingers made a latch upon his lips.

Mrs. Chadron came down a little after dark, and whispered at the door. Macdonald was sleeping, and Frances went softly to tell her.

"Nola's askin' for you," Mrs. Chadron told her, "she's all heartbroke and moanin' in her bed. If you'll go to her, and comfort her a little, honey, I'll take as good care of him as if he was my own."

Frances was touched by the appeal for sympathy. She could picture Nola, little fashioned by nature or her life's experiences to bear grief, shuddering and sobbing alone in the dark, and her heart went out to her in all its generosity and large forgivingness.

Nola's room was dark for all except the night sky at her window. Frances stood a moment in her door, listening, believing from the silence that she must have gone to sleep.

"Nola," she whispered, softly.

A little shivering sob was the answer. Frances went in, and closed the door. Nola was lying face downward on her pillow, like a child, and Frances found on putting out her comforting hand that the fickle little lady's bolster was wet with tears. She sat on the bedside and tried gently to turn Nola's face toward her. That brought on a storm of tears and moanings, and agonized burrowing of her face into the pillow.

"Oh, I feel so mean and wicked!" she cried. "If I hadn't been so deceitful and treacherous and—and—and everything, maybe all this sorrow wouldn't have come to us!"

Frances said nothing. She had found one hot hand, tear-wet from lying under Nola's cheek, and this she held tenderly, feeling it best to let the tears of penitence purge the sufferer's soul in their world-old way. After a time Nola became quieter. She shifted in the bed, and moved over to give Frances more room, and put up her arms to draw her friend down for the kiss of forgiveness which she knew would not be denied.

Afterwards she sat up in bed, and brushed her hair back from her throbbing forehead with her palms.

"Oh, it aches and aches—so!" she said.

"I'll bind a cold towel around it, dear; that always used to ease it, you remember?"

"Not my head, Frances—my heart, my heart!"

It was better so, Frances understood. Penitence that brings only a headache is like plating over brass; it cannot long conceal the baseness of the thing that lies beneath.

"Time is the only remedy for that, Nola," she said, her own words slow and sad.

"Do you think I've sinned past forgiveness because I—because—I love him?" Nola's voice trembled with earnestness.

"He is free, to love and be loved as it may fall, Nola. I told you he was mine, but I thought then that I was claiming him from death. He will live. He never has asked me to marry him; maybe he never will. When he recovers, he may turn to you—who can tell?"

"No, it's only you that he thinks of, Frances. When I was watching by him he opened his eyes, and you should have seen the look in them when he saw me instead of you. He struggled to sit up and look for you, and he called your name, sharp and frightened, as if he thought somebody had taken you away from him forever."

Frances did not need that assurance to quiet any fear of his loyalty. She had spoken the truth, only because it was the truth, but not to give Nola hope. For hope she knew there was not any, nor any love, to come to Nola out of that man's heart.

"We'll not talk of it," Frances said.

"I must, I can't let anything stand between us, Frances. If I'd been fair, all the way through—but I wasn't. I wasn't fair about Major King, and I wasn't fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me! He'd never love me, never in a million years!"

Frances said nothing. But she was beginning to doubt the sincerity of Nola's repentance. There, under the shadow of her bereavement, she could think of nothing but the hopelessness of love.

"But I didn't want you to come up just to pet me and be good to me, Frances—I wanted to give you something."

Nola felt under her pillow, and groped for Frances' hand, in which she placed a soft something with a stub of a feather in it.

"I have no right to keep it," said Nola. "Do you know what it is?"

"Yes, I know."

Much of the softness which Frances had for the highland bonnet was in her voice as she replied, and the little bonnet itself was being nestled against her cheek, as a mother cuddles a baby's hand.

"The best that's in me goes out to that man," said Nola solemnly—and truthfully, Frances knew—"but I wouldn't take him from you now, Frances, even if I could. I don't want to care for him, I don't want to think of him. I just want to think of poor father lying out there under the ground."

"It's best for you to think of him."

"Only a day ago he was alive and warm, like you and me, and now he's dead! Mother never will want to leave this place again now, and I don't feel like I want to either. I just want to lie down and die—oh, I just want to die!"

Pity for herself brought Nola's tears gushing again, and her choking sobs into her throat. Her voice was hoarse from her lamentations; there seemed to be only sorrow for her in every theme. Frances held her shivering slim body in her supporting arm, and Nola's face bent down upon her shoulder. It seemed that her renunciation was complete, her regeneration undeniable. But Frances knew that a great flood of tears was required to put out the fire of passion in a woman's heart. One spark, one little spark, might live through the deluge to spring into the heat of the past under the breath of memory.

Again the heaving breast grew calm, and the tear-wet face was lifted to shake back the fallen hair.

"This has emptied everything out for me," Nola sighed. "I'm going to be serious in everything, with everybody, after this. Do you suppose Mrs. Mathews would let me help her over at the mission—if I went to her meek and humble and asked her?"

"If she saw that it would help you, she would, Nola."

"Just think how lonesome it will be here when the post's abandoned and everybody but the Indians gone! You'll be away—maybe long before that—and I'll not see anybody but Indians and cowboys from year's beginning to year's end. Oh, it will be so dreary and lonesome here!"

"There's work up the river in the homesteaders' settlement, Nola; there's suffering to be relieved, and bereaved hearts to be comforted. There's your work, it seems to me, for you and those nearest to you are to blame for the desolation of those poor homes, excuse it as charitably as we may."

Frances felt a shudder run through the girl's body as her arm clasped the pliant waist.

"Why, Frances! You can't mean that! They're terrible—just think what they've done—oh, the underhanded thieves! By the law of the range it's my fight now, instead of my work to help them!"

"The law of the range isn't the law any longer here, Nola, and it never will be again. Alan Macdonald has done the work that he put his lone hand to. You have no quarrel with anybody, child, no feud to carry on to a bloody end. Put it out of your mind. If you are sincere in your heart, and truly penitent, you can prove it best by beginning to do good in the place where your house has done a terrible, sad wrong."

"They started it!" said Nola, vindictively, the lifelong hatred for those who encroached upon the range so deep in her breast, it seemed, that the soil of her life must come away on its roots.

"There's no use talking to you about it, then," said Frances, coldly.

Nola seemed hurt by her tone. She began to cry again, and plead her cause in moaning, broken words. "It's our country, we were here first—father always said that!"

"I know."

"But I don't blame Mr. Macdonald, they deceived him, the rustlers deceived him and told him lies. He didn't belong to this country, he couldn't know at first, or understand. Frances"—she put her hand on her friend's shoulder, and lifted her head as if trying to pierce the dark and look into her eyes—"don't you know how it was with him? He was too much of a man to turn his back on them, even when he found he was on the wrong side. A man like him must have understood it our way."

"What he has done in this country calls for no excuse," returned Frances, loftily.

"In your eyes and mine he wouldn't need any excuse for anything he might do," said Nola, with a sagacity unexpected. "We love him, and we'd love him, right or wrong. Well"—a sigh—"you've got a right to love him, and I haven't. I wouldn't try to make him care for me now if I could, for I'm different; I'm all emptied out."

"It takes more than you've gone through to empty a human life, Nola. But you have no right to love him; honor and honesty are in the way, friendship not considered at all. You'll spring up in the sun again after a little while, like fresh grass that's trodden on, just as happy and light-hearted as before. Let me have this one without any more interference—there are plenty in the world that you would stand heart-high to with your bright little head, just as well as Alan Macdonald."

"I can't give him up, the thought of him, and the longing for him, without regret, Frances; I can't!"

"I wouldn't have you do it. I want you to have regret, and pain—not too deep nor too lasting, but some corrective pain. Now, go to sleep."

Frances pressed her back to the pillow, and touched her head with light caress.

"Frances," she whispered, a new gladness dawning in her voice, "I'll go and see those poor people, and try to help them—if they'll let me. Maybe we were wrong—partly, anyhow."

"That's better," Frances encouraged.

"And I'll try not to care for him, or think about him, even one little bit."

Frances bent and kissed her. Nola's arms clung to her neck a little, holding her while she whispered in her ear.

"For I'm going to be different, I'm going to be good—abso-lutely good!"



CHAPTER XXIV

BANJO FACES INTO THE WEST

"You don't tell me? So the old colonel's got what his heart's been pinin' for many a year. Well, well!"

Mrs. Chadron was beside her window in her favored rocker again, less assertive of bulk in her black dress, not so florid of face, and with lines of sadness about her mouth and eyes. A fire was snapping in the chimney, for the gray sky was driving a bitter wind, and the first snowflakes of winter were straying down.

Banjo Gibson was before the fire, his ears red, his cheeks redder, just in from a brisk ride over from the post. His instruments lay beside him on the floor, and he was limbering his fingers close to the blaze.

"Yes, he's a brigamadier now," said he.

"Brigadier-General Landcraft," said she, musingly, looking away into the grayness of the day; "well, maybe he deserves it. Fur as I'm concerned, he's welcome to it, and I'm glad for Frances' sake."

"He's vinegar and red pepper, that old man is! Takin' him up both sides and down the middle, as the feller said, I reckon the colonel—or brigamadier, I guess they'll call him now—he's about as good as they make 'em. I always did have a kind of a likin' for that old feller—he's something like me."

"It was nice of you to come over and tell me the news, anyhow, Banjo; you're always as obligin' and thoughtful as you can be."

"It's always been a happiness and a pleasure, mom, and I've come a good many times with news, sad and joyful, to your door. But I reckon it'll be many a long day before I come ridin' to Alamito with news ag'in; many a long, long day."

"What do you mean, Banjo? You ain't goin'—"

"To Californy; startin' from here as soon as my horse blows a spell and eats his last feed at your feed box, mom. I've got to make it to Meander to ketch the mornin' train."

"Oh, Banjo! you don't tell me!" Tears gushed to Mrs. Chadron's eyes, used to so much weeping now, and her lips trembled as she pressed them hard to keep back a sob. "You're the last friend of the old times, the last face outside of this house belongin' to the old days. When you're gone my last friend, the very last one I care about outside of my own, 'll be gone!"

Banjo cleared his throat unsteadily, and looked very hard at the fire for quite a spell before he spoke.

"The best of friends must part," he said.

"Yes, they must part," she admitted, her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, her voice muffled behind it.

"But they ain't no use of me stayin' around in this country and pinin' for what's gone, and starvin' on the edge," said Banjo, briskly. "Since you've sold out the cattle and the boys is all gone, scattered ever-which-ways and to Texas, and the homesteaders is comin' into this valley as thick as blackbirds, it ain't no place for me. I don't mix with them kind of people, I never did. You've give it all up to 'em, they tell me, but this homestead, mom?"

"All but the homestead," she sighed, her tears checked now, her eyes on the farthest hill, where she had watched the crest many and many a time for Saul to rise over it, riding home from Meander.

"You hadn't ort to let it go," said he, shaking his sad head.

"I couldn't'a'held it, the lawyers and Mr. Macdonald told me that. It's public land, Banjo, it belongs to them folks, I reckon. But we was here first!" A futile sigh, a regretful sigh, a sigh bitter with old recollections.

"I reckon that's so, down to the bottom of it, but you folks made this country what it was, and by rights it's yourn. Well, I stopped in to say good-bye to the old brigamadier-colonel over at the post as I come through. He tells me Alan and that little girl of hisn that stuck to him and stood up for him through thick and thin 're goin' to be married at Christmas time."

"Then they'll be leavin', too," she said.

"No, they're goin' to build on his ranch up the river and stay here, and that old brigamadier-colonel he's goin' to take up land next to 'em, or has took it up, one of the two, and retire from the army when they're married. He says this country's the breath of his body and he couldn't live outside of it, he's been here so long."

"Well, well!" said she, her face brightening a little at the news.

"How's Alan by now?"

"Up and around—he's goin' to leave us in the morning."

"Frances here?" he asked.

"No, she went over home this morning—I thought maybe you met her—but she's comin' back for him in the morning."

Banjo sat musing a little while. Then—

"Yes, you'll have neighbors, mom, plenty of 'em. A colony of nesters is comin' here, three or four hundred of 'em, they tell me, all ready to go to puttin' up schoolhouses and go to plowin' in the spring. And they're goin' to run that hell-snortin' railroad right up this valley. I reckon it'll cut right along here somewheres a'past your place."

"Yes, changes'll come, Banjo, changes is bound to come," she sighed.

"All over this country, they say, the nesters'll squat now wherever they want to, and nobody won't dast to take a shot at 'em to drive 'em off of his grass. They put so much in the papers about this rustlers' war up here that folks has got it through 'em the nesters ain't been gittin' what was comin' to 'em. The big ranches 'll all be split up to flinders inside of five years."

"Yes, the cattle days is passin', along with the folks that was somebody in this country once. Well, Banjo, we had some good times in the old days; we can remember them. But changes will come, we must expect changes. You don't need to pack up and go on account of that. I ain't goin' to leave."

"I've made up my mind. I'm beginnin' to feel tight in the chist already for lack of air."

Both sat silent a little while. Banjo's elbows were across his knees, his face lifted toward the window. The wind was falling, and there was a little breaking among the low clouds, baring a bit of blue sky here and there. Banjo viewed this brightening of the day with gladness.

"I guess it's passin'," he said, going to the window and peering round as much of the horizon as he could see, "it wasn't nothing but a little shakin' out of the tablecloth after breakfast."

"I'm glad of it, for I don't think it's good luck to start out on a trip in a storm. That there Nola she's out in it, too."

"Gone up the river?"

"Yes. It beats all how she's takin' up with them people, and them with her. She's even bought lumber with her own money to help some of 'em build."

"She's got a heart like a dove," he sighed.

"As soft as a puddin'," Mrs. Chadron nodded.

"But I never could git to it." Banjo sighed again.

Mrs. Chadron shook her head, with an expression of sadness for his failure which was deeper than any words she knew.

"The loss of her pa bore down on her terrible; she's pinin' and grievin' too hard for a body so young. I hear her cryin' and moanin' in the night sometimes, and I know it ain't no use goin' to her, for I've tried. She seems to need something more than an old woman like me can give, but I don't know what it is."

"Maybe she needs a change—a change of air," Banjo suggested, with what vague hope only himself could tell.

"Maybe, maybe she does. Well, you're goin' to take a change of air, anyhow, Banjo. But what're you goin' to do away out there amongst strangers?"

"I was out there one time, five years ago, and didn't seem to like it then. But since I've stood off and thought it over, it seems to me that's a better place for me than here, with my old friends goin' or gone, and things changin' this a-way. Out there around them hop and fruit ranches they have great times at night in the camps, and a man of my build can keep busy playin' for dances. I done it before, and they took to me, right along."

"They do everywheres, Banjo."

"Some don't," he sighed, watching out of the window in the direction that Nola must come.

"She's not likely to come back before morning—I think she aims to go to the post tonight and stay with Frances," she said, reading his heart in his face.

"Maybe it's for the best," said Banjo.

"I guess everything that comes to us is for the best, if we knew how to take it," she said. "Well, you set there and be comfortable, and I'll stir Maggie up and have her make you something nice for dinner. After that I want you to play me the old songs over before you go. Just to think I'll never hear them songs no more breaks my heart, Banjo—plumb breaks my heart!"

As she passed Banjo she laid her hand on his head in a manner of benediction, and tears were in her eyes.

The sun was out again when they had finished lunch, coaxing autumn on into November at the peril of frosted toes. Mrs. Chadron had brightened considerably, also. Even bereavement and sorrow could not shake her fealty to chili, and now it was rewarding her by a rubbing of her old color in her face as she sat by the window and waited for Banjo to tune his instruments for the parting songs.

Her workbasket was beside her, the bright knitting-needles in the unfinished sock. It never would be completed now, she knew, but she kept it by her to cry over in the twilight hours, when thoughts of Saul came over her with their deep-harrowing pangs.

Banjo sang the touching old ballads over to her appreciative ear, watching the shadows outside, as he played, for three o'clock. That was the hour set for him to go. "Silver Threads" was saved for the end, and when its last strain died Mrs. Chadron's face was hidden in her hands. She was rocking gently, her handkerchief fallen to the floor.

Banjo put his bow in its place in the lid of the case, the rosin in its little box. But the fiddle he still held on his knee, stroking its smooth back with loving hand, as if he would soothe Mrs. Chadron's regrets and longings and back-tugging pains by that vicarious caress. So he sat petting his instrument, and after a little she looked at him, her eyes red, and tear-streaks on her face.

"Don't put it away just yet, Banjo," she requested; "there's another one I want you to sing, and that will be the last. It's the saddest one you play—one that I couldn't stand one time—do you remember?" Banjo remembered; he nodded. "I can stand it now, Banjo; I want to hear it now."

Banjo drew bow again, no more words on either side, and began his song:

All o-lone and sad he left me, But no oth-o's bride I'll be; For in flow-os he bedecked me, In tho cottage by tho sea.

When he finished, Mrs. Chadron's head was bent upon her arm across the little workstand where her basket stood. Her shoulders were moving in piteous convulsions, but no sound of crying came from her. Banjo knew that it was the hardest kind of weeping that tears the human heart.

He put away his fiddle, and strapped the case. Then he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder.

"I'll have to be saddlin' up, mom," said he, his own voice thick, "and I'll say adios to you now."

"Good-bye, Banjo, and may God bless you in that country you're goin' to so fur away from the friends you used to know!"

Banjo's throat moved as he gulped his sorrow. "I'll not come back in the house, but I'll wave you good-bye from the gate," said he.

"I had hopes you might change your mind, Banjo," she said, as she took his hand and held it a little while.

"If I could'a'got to somebody's heart that I've pined for many a day, I would'a'changed my mind, mom. But it wasn't to be."

"It wasn't to be, Banjo," she said, shaking her head. "I don't think she'll ever marry—she's changed, she's so changed!"

"Well, adios to you, mom, and the best of luck."

"Adios, Banjo, boy; good-bye!"

She waited at the window for him to pass the gate. He appeared there leading his horse, and bent to examine the girths before putting foot to the stirrup. She hoped that he was coming back, to tell her that he could not find it in his heart to go. But no; the change that was coming over the cattle country was like an unfriendly wind to the little troubadour. His way was staked into the west where new ties waited him, where new hearts were to be won. He mounted, turned to the window, waved his hat and rode away.

Mrs. Chadron sat in her old place and watched him until he passed beyond the last hill line and out of her sight. Her last glimpse of him had been in water lines through tears. Now she reached for her basket and took out her unfinished knitting. Broken off there, like her own life it was, she thought, never to be completed as designed. The old days were done; the promise of them only partly fulfilled. She was bidding farewell to more than Banjo, parting with more than friends.

"Good-bye, Banjo," she murmured, looking dimly toward the farthest hill; "adios!"



CHAPTER XXV

"HASTA LUEGO"

Frances came into the room as fresh as a morning-glory. Her cheeks were like peonies, and the fire of her youth and strength danced in her happy eyes. Macdonald rose to greet her, tall, gaunt, and pale from the drain that his wound had made upon his life. He had been smoking before the fireplace, and he reached up now to put his pipe away on the manteltree.

"And how are things at the post?" he asked, as she stood before him in her saddle dress, her sombrero pressing down her hair, her quirt swinging by its thong from her gloved wrist.

Before replying she intercepted the hand that was reaching to stow the pipe away, pressed it firmly back, inserted the stem between his close lips.

"In this family, the man smokes," she said.

His slow smile, which was reward enough to her for all the trouble that it took to wake it, twinkled in his eyes like someone coming to the window with a light.

"Then the piece of a man will go ahead and smoke," said he, drawing a chair up beside his own and leading her to it with gentle pressure upon her hand.

"Has Mrs. Chadron been overfeeding you while I was gone? Did she give you chili?"

"She offered me chili, in five different dishes, which I, remembering the injunction, regretfully put aside."

"Well, they're coming with the ambulance, I rode on ahead, and you'll soon be beyond the peril of chili." She smiled as she looked up into his face, and the smile broadened into an outright laugh when she saw the little flitting cloud of vexation there.

"I could well enough ride," said he.

"The doctor says you could not."

"I'm as fit for the saddle this minute as I ever was in my life," he declared.

She made no reply to that in words. But there was tender pity in her caressing eyes as they measured the weakness of his thin arms, wasted down to tendon and bone now, it seemed. He would ride to the post, she knew very well, if permitted, and come through it without a murmur. But the risk would be foolish, no matter what his pride must suffer by going in a wagon.

"Have you heard the news from Meander?" she inquired.

"No, news comes slowly to Alamito Ranch, and will come slower now that Banjo is gone, Mrs. Chadron says. What's been happening at Meander?"

"They held their conventions there last week to nominate county officers, and what do you think? They've nominated you for something, for—for what do you suppose?"

"Nominated me? Who's nominated me?"

"Oh, one party or the other began it, and the other indorsed you, for—oh, it's—"

"For what, Frances?" he asked, laughter in his eyes at her unaccountable way of holding back on the secret.

"Why, for sheriff!" said she, with magnificent scorn.

Macdonald leaned back in his chair and laughed, the first audible sound of merriment that she ever had heard come from those stern lips. She looked at him with reproach.

"It should have been governor, the very least they could have done, decently!" She was full of feeling on the subject of what she believed to be his undervaluation.

Macdonald took her hand, the laughter dying out of his sober face.

"That's all in the different ways of looking at a man, palomita," he said to her.

"But you look bigger than sheriff to anybody!" she replied, indignation large in her heart.

"In this country, Frances, a sheriff is a pretty sizable man," he said, his thoughtful eyes on the fire, "about the biggest man they can conceive, next only to the president himself. Up here in the cattle country the greatness of men is dimmed, their magnitude being measured by appreciable results. The offices of lawmaker, governor, and such as the outside world invest with their peculiar dignity, are incidental, indefinite—all but negative, here. It's different with a sheriff. He's the man who comes riding with his guns at his side; they can see him perform. All the law that they know centers in him; all branches of government, as they understand his powers. Yes, a sheriff is something of a figure in this county, Frances, and to be nominated for that office by one party and indorsed by another is just about the biggest compliment a man can receive."

"But surely, Alan, you'll not accept it?"

"Why, I think so," he returned, thoughtfully. "I think I'd be worth more to this county as sheriff than I would be as—as governor, let us say."

"Yes, but they go shooting sheriffs," she protested.

"They'll not be doing so much careless and easy shooting around here since Colonel—Brigadier-General Landcraft—and that sounds more like his size, too—gave them a rubdown with the iron hand. The cattle barons' day is over; their sun went down when Mark Thorn brought the holy scare to Saul Chadron's door."

"Father is of the same opinion. Do you know, Alan, the whole story about that horrible old man Thorn is in the eastern papers?"

"Is it possible?"

"With a Cheyenne date-line," she nodded, "the whole story—who hired him to skulk and kill, and a list of his known crimes. Father says if there was anything lacking in the fight you made on the cattlemen, this would finish them. It's a terrible story—poor Nola read it, and learned for the first time her father's connection with Thorn. She's humiliated and heartbroken over it all."

"With sufficient reason," he nodded.

"She's afraid her mother will hear of it in some way."

"She'll find it out in time, Frances; a thing like that walks on a man's grave."

"It will not matter so much after a while, after her first grief settles."

"Did Nola come back with you?"

"No, she went on to take some things to poor old Mrs. Lassiter. She never has recovered from the loss of her son—it's killing her by inches, Tom says. And you considering that office of sheriff!" She turned to him with censorious eyes as she spoke, as if struck with a pain of which he was the cause. "I tell you, you men don't know, you don't know! It's the women that suffer in all this shooting and killing—we are the ones that have to bear the sorrows in the night and watch through the uncertain days!"

"Yes," said he gently, "the poor women must bear most of this world's pain. That is why God made them strong above all his created things."

They sat in silence, thinking it over between them. Outside there was sunshine over the brown rangeland; within there dwelt the lifting confidence that their feet had passed the days of trouble and were entering the bounds of an enlarging peace.

"And Major King?" said he.

"Father has relented, as I knew he would, out of regard for their friendship of the past, and will not bring charges based on Major King's plottings with Chadron."

"It's better that way," he nodded. "Do you suppose there's nothing between him and Nola?"

"I think she'll have him after her grief passes, Alan."

"Better than he deserves," said he. "There's a lump of gold in that little lady's heart, Frances."

"There is, Alan; I'm glad to hear you say that." There was moisture in her tender eyes.

"There was something in that man, too," he reflected. "It's unfortunate that he allowed his desire to humiliate you and me to drive him into such folly. If he'd only have held those brigands here for the civil authorities, as I requested, we could have forgotten the rest."

"Yes, father says that would have saved him in his eyes, in spite of his scheming with Chadron against your life, and against father's honor and all that he holds sacred. But it's done, and he's genuinely despised in the service for it. And there's the ambulance coming over the hill."

"Ambulance for me!" said he, in disgust of his slow mending.

"Be glad that it isn't—oh, I shouldn't say that!"

"I am," said he, nodding his slow, grave head.

"We'll have to say good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," said she, bustling around, or making a show of doing so to hide the tears which had sprung into her eyes at the thought that it might have been a different sort of conveyance coming to Alamito to take Alan Macdonald away.

"And to Alamito," said he, looking out into the frost-stricken garden with a tenderness in his eyes. "I shall always have a softness in my heart for Alamito, because it gave me you. That garden out there yielded me the dearest flower that any garden ever gave a man"—he took her hands, and folded them above his heart—"a flower with a soul in it to keep it alive forever."

She bowed her head as he spoke, as if receiving a benediction.

"I hate saying good-bye to Mrs. Chadron," she said, her voice trembling, "for she'll cry, and I'm afraid I'll cry, too."

"It will not be farewell, only hasta luego[A] we can assure her of that. We'll be neighbors to her, for this is home, dear heart, this is our val paraiso."

"Our valley of paradise," she nodded, her hands reaching up to his shoulders and clinging there a moment in soft caress, "our home!"

His arm about her shoulders, he faced her to the window, and pointed to the hills, asleep now in their brown winter coat behind a clear film of smoky blue.

"I stood up there one evening, weighted down with guns and ammunition, hunting and hunted in the most desperate game I ever played," he said. "The sun was low over this valley, and Alamito was a gleam of white among the autumn gold. I was tired, hungry, dusty, thirsty and sore, and my heart was all but dead in its case. That was after you had sent me away from the post, scorned and half despised."

"Don't rebuke me for that night now, Alan," she pleaded, turning her pained eyes to his. "I have suffered for my injustice."

"It wasn't injustice, it was discipline, and it was good for both of us. We must come to confidence through misunderstandings and false charges very frequently in this life. Never mind that; I was telling you about that evening on the side of the hill. I had been sitting with my back to a rock, watching the brush for Mark Thorn, but I was thinking more of you than of him. For he meant only death, and you were life. But I thought that I had lost you that day."

She drew nearer to him as they stood, in the unequivocal consolation of her presence, in the most comforting refutation of that sad hour's dark forebodings.

"I thought that, until I stood up and started down the slope to go my lone-handed way. The sun struck me in the face then, and it was yellow over the valley, and the wind was glad. I knew then, when I looked out over it, that it held something for me, that it was my country, and my home. The lines of gray old Joaquin Miller came to me, and lifted my heart in a new vision. I said them over to myself:

Lo! these are the isles of the watery miles That God let down from the firmament. Lo! Duty and Love, and a true man's trust; Your forehead to God and your feet in the dust—

only, there were two lines which I did not repeat, I dared not repeat, even in my heart. My vision halted short of their fulfillment."

"What are the words—do you remember them?" she asked.

"Yes; I can repeat them now, for my vision is broader, it is a better dream:

Lo! Duty and Love, and a sweet babe's smiles, And there, O friend, are the Fortunate Isles."

He pressed her closer, and kissed her hair. They stood, unmindful of the waiting ambulance, their vision fusing in the blue distances of the land their hearts held dear. It was home.

"Come on, Alan"—she started from her reverie and drew him by the hand—"there's Mrs. Chadron on the porch, waiting for hasta luego."

"For hasta luego," said he.

——- [A] For a little while.

THE END