The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  “I noticed when she smiles she seems to change,” he said. “It’s like puttin’ bow to the strings. A fiddle’s a glum kind of a thing till you wake it up; she’s that way, I reckon.”

  “Well, git ready for dinner—or lunch, as Nola calls it—they’ll be starved by this time, ridin’ all the way from the post in this chilly wind. I’m mighty afraid we’re goin’ to have some weather before long.”

  “Can’t put it off much longer,” Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the sudden cold grew so sharp that a man’s banjo strings broke in the tense contraction. That had happened to him more than once, and it only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his face and soap his hair.

  They passed a very pleasant afternoon at the ranchhouse, in spite of Mrs. Chadron’s uneasiness on account of their defenseless state. At that season Chadron and his neighbors could not draw very heavily on their scattered forces following the divided herds spread out over the vast territory for the winter grazing.

  The twenty men gathered in a hurry-call by Chadron to avenge the defeat of Chance Dalton, who had in their turn been met and unexpectedly repulsed by the homesteaders, as Chadron had related in his own way to Colonel Landcraft, were lying in camp several miles up the river. That is, all that were left of them fit for duty after the fight. A good many of them were limping, and would limp for many a day.

  They were waiting the arrival of the troops, which they expected with the same confidence Mrs. Chadron had held before Nola brought her an explanation that covered the confusion of refusal.

  Neither of the young women knew of the tiff between the colonel and Chadron, for the colonel was a man who kept his family apart from his business. Chadron had not seen fit to uncover his humiliation to his daughter, but had told her that he was acting on the advice of Colonel Landcraft in sending to his friends in Cheyenne for men to put down the uprising of rustlers himself.

  So there were comfortable enough relations between them all at the ranch as the day bent to evening and the red sunset changed to gray. Banjo played for them, as he had done that other afternoon, and sang his sentimental songs in voice that quavered in the feeling passages. Chadron had not left anybody to guard the house, because he knew very well that Macdonald considered nothing beyond defense, and that he would as quickly burn his own mother’s roof above her head as he would set torch to that home by the riverside.

  “Sing us that dreamy one, Banjo,” Nola requested, “the one that begins ‘Come sit by my side little—’ you know the one I mean.”

  A sentimental tenderness came into Banjo’s face. He turned his head so that he could look out of the window into the thickening landscape beyond the corral gate, gray and mysterious and unfriendly now as a twilight sea. Nola touched Frances’ arm to prime her for the treat.

  “Watch his face,” she whispered, smiling behind her hand.

  Banjo struck the chords of his accompaniment; the sentimental cast of his face deepened, until it seemed that he was about to come to tears. He sang:

  Come sit by my side litt-ul dau-ling,

  And lay your brown head on my breast,

  Whilse the angels of twilight o-round us

  Are singing the flow-ohs to rest.

  Banjo must have loved many ladies in many lands, for that is the gift and the privilege of the troubadour. Now he seemed calling up their vanished faces out of the twilight as he sang his little song. What feeling he threw into the chorus, what shaking of the voice, what soft sinking away of the last notes, the whang of the banjo softened by palm across the strings!

  The chorus:

  O, what can be sweet-o than dreaming

  Tho dream that is on us tonight!

  Pre-haps do you know litt-ul dau-ling,

  Tho future lies hidded from sight.

  There was a great deal more of that song, which really was not so bad, the way Banjo sang it, for he exalted it on the best qualities that lived in his harmless breast; not so bad that way, indeed, as it looks in print. Frances could not see where the joke at the little musician’s expense came in, although Nola was laughing behind his unsuspecting back as the last notes died.

  Mrs. Chadron wiped her eyes. “I think it’s the sweetest song that ever was sung!” she said, and meant it, every word.

  Banjo said nothing at all, but put away his instrument with reverent hands, as if no sound was worthy to come out of it after that sweet agony of love.

  Mrs. Chadron got up, in her large, bustling, hospitable way, sentimentally satisfied, and withal grossly hungry.

  “Supper’ll be about ready now, children,” she said, putting her sock away in its basket, “and while you two are primpin’ I’ll run down to the bunkhouse and take some chicken broth to Chance that Maggie made him.”

  “Oh, poor old Chance!” Nola pitied, “I’ve been sitting here enjoying myself and forgetting all about him. I’ll take it down to him, mother—Banjo he’ll come with me.”

  Banjo was alert on the proposal, and keen to go. He brought Nola’s coat at her mother’s suggestion, for the evening had a feeling of frost in it, and attended her to the kitchen after the chicken broth as gallantly as if he wore a sword.

  Mrs. Chadron came back from her investigations in the kitchen in a little while to Frances, who waited alone before the happy little fire in the chimney. She sighed as she resumed her rocking-chair by the window, and crossed her seldom idle hands over her comfortably inelegant front.

  “It’ll be some little time before supper’s ready to set down to,” she announced regretfully. “Maggie’s makin’ stuffed peppers, and they’re kind of slow to bake. We can talk.”

  “Of course,” Frances agreed, her mind running on the hope that had brought her to the ranch; the hope of seeing Macdonald, and appealing to him in pity’s name for peace.

  “That thievin’ Macdonald’s to blame for Chance, our foreman, losin’ the use of his right hand,” Mrs. Chadron said, with asperity. “Did Nola tell you about the fight they had with him?”

  “Yes, she told me about it as we came.”

  “It looks like the devil’s harnessed up with that man, he does so much damage without ever gittin’ hurt himself. He had a crowd of rustlers up there with him when Chance went up there to trace some stock, and they up and killed three of our cowboys. Ain’t it terrible?”

  “It is terrible!” Frances shuddered, withholding her opinion on which side the terror lay, together with the blame.

  “Then Saul went up there with some more of the men to burn that Macdonald’s shack and drive him off of our land, and they run into a bunch of them rustlers that Macdonald he’d fetched over there, and two more of our men was killed. It looks like a body’s got to fight night and day for his rights now, since them nesters begun to come in here. Well, we was here first, and Saul says we’ll be here last. But I think it’s plumb scan’lous the way them rustlers bunches together and fights. They never was known to do it before, and they wouldn’t do it now if it wasn’t for that black-hearted thief, Macdonald!”

  “Did you ever see him?” Frances asked.

  “No, I never did, and don’t never want to!”

  “I just asked you because he doesn’t look like a bad man.”

  “They say he sneaked in here the night of Nola’s dance, but I didn’t see him. Oh, what ’m I tellin’ you? Course you know that—you danced with him!”

  “Yes,” said Frances, neither sorry nor ashamed.

  “But you wasn’t to blame, honey,” Mrs. Chadron comforted, “you didn’t know him from Adamses off ox.”

  Frances sat leaning forward, looking into the fire. The light of the blaze was on her face, appealingly soft and girlishly sweet. Mrs. Chadron laid a hand on her hair in motherly caress, moved by a tenderness quite foreign to the vindictive creed which she had pronounced against the nesters but a
little while before.

  “I’m afraid you’re starved, honey,” she said, in genuine solicitude, thus expressing the nearest human sympathy out of her full-feeding soul.

  “I’m hungry, but far from starving,” Frances told her, knowing that the confession to an appetite would please her hostess better than a gift. “When do you expect Mr. Chadron home?”

  “I don’t know, honey, but you don’t need to worry; them rustlers can’t pass our men Saul left camped up the valley.”

  “I wasn’t thinking of that; I’m not afraid.”

  Mrs. Chadron chuckled. “Did I tell you about Nola?” she asked. Then, answering herself, before Frances could more than turn her head inquiringly; “No, of course, I never. It was too funny for anything!”

  “What was it?” Frances asked, in girlish eagerness. Mrs. Chadron’s smile was reflected in her face as she sat straight, and turned expectantly to her hostess.

  “The other evening when she and her father was comin’ home from the postoffice over at the agency they run acrosst that sneak Macdonald, afoot in the road, guns so thick on him you couldn’t count ’em. Saul asked him what he was skulkin’ around down this way for, and the feller he was kind of sassy about it, and tried to pass Nola and go on. He had the gall to tip his hat to her, just like she was low enough to notice a brand-burner! Well, she give him a larrup over the face with her whip that cut the hide! He took hold of her bridle to shove her horse out of the way so he could run, I reckon, and she switched him till he squirmed like a puppy-dog! I laughed till I nearly split when Saul told me!”

  Mrs. Chadron surrendered again to her keen appreciation of the humor in that situation. Frances felt now that she understood the attitude of the cattlemen toward the homesteaders as she never had even sensed it before. Here was this motherly woman, naturally good at heart and gentle, hardened and blinded by her prejudices until she could discuss murder as a thing desired, and the extirpation of a whole community as a just and righteous deed.

  There was no feeling of softness in her breast for the manful strivings of Alan Macdonald to make a home in that land, not so much for himself—for it was plain that he would grace a different world to far better advantage—but for the disinherited of the earth. To Mrs. Chadron he was a thing apart from her species, a horrible, low, grisly monster, to whom the earth should afford no refuge and man no hiding-place. There was no virtue in Alan Macdonald; his fences had killed his right to human consideration.

  In a moment Mrs. Chadron was grave again. She put out her hand in that gentle, motherly way and touched Frances’ hair, smoothing it from her forehead, pleased with the irrepressible life of it which sprung it back after the passage of her palm like water in a vessel’s wake.

  “I let on to you a little while ago that I wasn’t uneasy, honey,” she said, “but I ain’t no hand at hidin’ the truth. I am uneasy, honey, and on pins, for I don’t trust them rustlers. I’m afraid they’ll hear that Saul’s gone, and come sneakin’ down here and burn us out before morning, and do worse, maybe. I don’t know why I’ve got that feelin’, but I have, and it’s heavy in me, like raw dough.”

  “I don’t believe they’d do anything like that,” Frances told her.

  “Oh, you don’t know ’em like we do, honey, the low-down thieves! They ort to be hunted like wolves and shot, wherever they’re found.”

  “Some of them have wives and children, haven’t they?” Frances asked, thinking aloud, as she sat with her chin resting in her hand.

  “Oh, I suppose they litter like any other wolves,” Mrs. Chadron returned, unfeelingly.

  “Si a tu ventana llega una paloma,” sang Maggie in the kitchen, the snapping of the oven door coming in quite harmoniously as she closed it on the baking peppers. Mrs. Chadron sighed.

  “Tratala con cariña que es mi persona,” sounded Maggie, a degree louder. Mrs. Chadron sat upright, with a new interest in life apart from her uneasy forebodings about the rustlers. Maggie was in the dining-room, spreading the cloth. The peppers were coming along.

  Somebody burst into the kitchen; uncertain feet came across it; a cry broke Maggie’s song short as she jingled the silver in place on the cloth. Banjo Gibson stumbled into the room where the low fire twinkled in the chimney, reeling on his legs, his breath coming in groans.

  Maggie was behind him, holding the door open; the light from the big lamp on the dining-table fell on the musician, who weaved there as if he might fall. His hat was off, blood was in his eyes and over his face from a wound at the edge of his hair.

  “Nola—Nola!” he gasped.

  Mrs. Chadron, already beside him, laid hold of him now and shook him.

  “Tell it, you little devil—tell it!” she screamed.

  Frances, with gentler hand, drew Banjo from her.

  “What’s happened to Nola?” she asked.

  “The rustlers!” he said, his voice falling away in horror.

  “The rustlers!” Mrs. Chadron groaned, her arms lifted above her head. She ran in wild distraction into the dining-room, now back to the chimney to take down a rifle that hung in its case on a deer prong over the mantel.

  “Nola, Nola!” she called, running out into the garden. Her wild voice came back from there in a moment, crying her daughter’s name in agony.

  Banjo had sunk to the floor, his battered face held in his hands.

  “My God! they took her!” he groaned. “The rustlers, they took her, and I couldn’t lift a hand!”

  Frances beckoned to Maggie, who had followed her mistress to the kitchen door.

  “Give him water; stop the blood,” she ordered sharply.

  In a moment she had dashed out after Mrs. Chadron, and was running frantically along the garden path toward the river.

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIII

  THE TRAIL AT DAWN

  Frances stopped at the high wire fence along the river bank. It was dark there between the shrubs of the garden on one hand and the tall willows on the other, but nothing moved in them but her own leaping heart. She called Mrs. Chadron, running along the fence as she cried her name.

  Mrs. Chadron answered from the barn. Frances found her saddling a horse, while Maggie’s husband, an old Mexican with a stiff leg, muttered prayers in his native tongue as he tightened the girths on another.

  Mrs. Chadron was for riding in pursuit of Nola’s abductors, although she had not mounted a horse in fifteen years. There was no man about the place except crippled old Alvino, and wounded Dalton lying in the men’s quarters near at hand. Neither of them was serviceable in such an emergency, and Banjo, willing as he would be, seemed too badly hurt to be of any use.

  Frances pressed her to dismiss this intention. Even if they knew which way to ride, it would be a hopeless pursuit.

  “There’s only one way to go—towards the rustlers’ settlement,” Mrs. Chadron grimly returned.

  She was over her hysterical passion now, and steadied down into a state of desperate determination to set out after the thieves and bring Nola back. She did not know how it was to be accomplished, but she felt her strength equal to any demand in the pressure of her despair. She was lifting her foot to the stirrup, thinly dressed as she was, her head bare, the rifle in her hand, when Frances took her by the arm.

  “You can’t go alone with Alvino, Mrs. Chadron.”

  “I’ve got to go, I tell you—let loose of me!”

  She shook off Frances’ restraining hand and turned to her horse again. With her hand on the pommel of the saddle she stopped, and turned to Alvino.

  “Go and fetch me Chance’s guns out of the bunkhouse,” she ordered.

  Alvino hitched away, swinging his stiff leg, with laborious, slow gait.

  “You couldn’t do anything against a crowd of desperate men—they might kill you!” Frances said.

  “Let ’em kill me, then!” She lifted her hand, as if taking an oath. “They’ll pay for this trick—every man, woman, and child of them’ll bleed for what they’ve done to me tonight!”r />
  “Let Alvino go to the camp up the river where Mr. Chadron left the men, and tell them; they can do more than you.”

  “You couldn’t drive him alone out of sight of the lights in the house with fire. He’d come back with some kind of a lie before he’d went a mile. I’ll go to ’em myself, honey—I didn’t think of them.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “Wait till Alvino comes with them guns—I can use ’em better than I can a rifle. Oh, why don’t the man hurry!”

  “I’ll run down and see what—”

  But Alvino came around the corral at that moment. He had stopped to light a lantern, in his peculiar Mexican mode of estimating the importance of time and occasion, and came flashing it in short, violent arcs as he swayed to swing his jointless leg.

  Frances led out the other horse and was waiting to mount when Alvino came panting up, the belt with its two revolvers over his arm. Mrs. Chadron jerked it from him with something hard and sharp on her tongue like a curse. Banjo Gibson came into the circle of light, a bandage on his head.

  “I didn’t even see ’em. They knocked me down, and when I come to she was gone!”

  Banjo’s voice was full of self-censure, and his feet were weak upon the ground. He began to talk the moment the light struck him, and when he had finished his little explanation he was standing beside Mrs. Chadron’s saddle.

  “Go to the house and lie down, Banjo,” Mrs. Chadron said; “I ain’t time to fool with you!”

  “Are you two aimin’ to go to the post after help?” Banjo steadied himself on his legs by clinging to the horse’s mane as he spoke.

  “We’re goin’ up the river after the men,” Mrs. Chadron told him.

  “No, I’ll go after the men; that’s a man’s job,” Banjo insisted. “I know right where they’re camped at, you couldn’t find ’em between now and morning.”