The Rustler of Wind River

by Ogden, George W

  But it was neither the scent of fire nor the red eye of it winking on the hill that at length gave her despairing heart a fresh handful of hope—nothing less indeed than the aroma of boiling coffee. It had such a feeling of comfort and welcome, of domesticity and peace in it that she felt as if she approached a door with a friend standing ready to take her horse.

  Her horse was not insensible to the cheer that somebody was brewing for himself in that wild place. She felt him quicken under her, and put up his head eagerly, and go forward as if he was nearing home. She wondered how far the smell of coffee would carry, and subsequent experience was a revelation on that point.

  She had entered the hills, tracking back that wavering scent of coffee, which rose fresh and sudden now, and trailed away the next moment to the mere color of a smell. Now she had it, now she lost it, as she wound over rugged ridges and through groves of quaking-asp and balm of Gilead trees, always mounting among the hills, her eager horse taking the way without guidance, as keen on the scent as she.

  It must have taken her an hour to run down that coffee pot. Morning was coming among the fading stars when she mounted a long ridge, the quick striding of her horse indicating that there was something ahead at last, and came upon the camp fire, the coffee, and the cook, all beside a splintered gray rock that rose as high as a house out of the barrenness of the hill.

  The coffee-maker was a woman, and her pot was of several gallons’ capacity. She was standing with the cover of the boiler in one hand, a great spoon in the other, her back half bent over her beverage, in the position that the sound of Frances’ coming had struck her. She did not move out of that alert pose of suspicion until Frances drew rein within a few feet of her and gave her good-morning. When the poor harried creature saw that the visitor was a woman, her fright gave place to wonder.

  Frances introduced herself without parley, and made inquiry for Macdonald.

  “Why, bless your heart, you don’t aim to tell me you rode all the way from the post in the night by yourself?” the simple, friendly creature said. “Well, Mr. Macdonald and most of the men they’ve left to take them scoun’rels sent in here by the cattlemen to murder all of us over to the jail at Meander.”

  “How long have they been gone?”

  “Why, not so very long. I reckon you must ’a’ missed meetin’ ’em by a hair.”

  “I’ve got to catch up with them, right away! Is there anybody here that can guide me?”

  “My son can, and he’ll be glad. He’s just went to sleep back there in the tent after guardin’ them fellers all night. I’ll roust him out.”

  The pioneer woman came back almost at once, and pressed a cup of her coffee upon Frances. Frances took the tin vessel eagerly, for she was chilled from her long ride. Then she dismounted to rest her horse while her guide was getting ready, and warm her numb feet at the fire. She told the woman how the scent of her coffee had led her out of her groping like a beacon light on the hill.

  “It’s about three miles from here down to the valley,” the woman said. “Coffee will carry on the mornin’ air that way.”

  “Do you think your son—?”

  “He’s a-comin’,” the woman replied.

  The boy came around the rock, leading a horse. He was wide awake and alert, bare-footed, bareheaded, and without a coat. He leaped nimbly onto his bare-backed beast, and Frances got into her saddle as fast as her numb limbs would lift her.

  As she road away after the recklessly riding youth, she felt the hope that she had warmed in her bosom all night paling to a shadow. It seemed that, circumstances were ranging after a chart marked out for them, and that her own earnest effort to interfere could not turn aside the tragedy set for the gray valley below her.

  Morning was broadening now; she could see her guide distinctly even when he rode many rods ahead. Dawn was the hour for treacherous men and deeds of stealth; Chadron would be on the way again before now, with the strength of the United States behind him to uphold his outlawed hand.

  When they came down into the valley there was a low-spreading mist over the gray sage, which lent a warmth to the raw morning wind. There was a sense of indistinctness through the mist which was an ally to Chadron. Ten rods away, even in the growing morning, it would have been impossible to tell a cowboy from a cavalryman.

  Here a haystack smoldered in what had been a farmstead yard; its thin blue smoke wavered up in the morning, incense over the dead hope of the humble heart that had dreamed it had found a refuge in that spot. At the roadside a little farther on the burned ruins of a cabin lay. It had stood so near the wheel track that the heat of its embers was warm on Frances’ face as she galloped by. The wire fence was cut between each post, beyond splicing or repair; the shrubs which some home-hungry woman had set in her dooryard were trampled; the well curb was overthrown.

  Over and over again as they rode that sad picture was repeated. Destruction had swept the country, war had visited it. Side by side upon the adjoining lines many of the homesteaders had built their little houses, for the comfort of being near their kind. In the corner of each quarter section on either side of the road along the fertile valley, a little home had stood three days ago. Now all were gone, marked only by little heaps of embers which twinkled a dying glow in the breath of the morning wind.

  Day was spreading now. From the little swells in the land as she mounted them Frances could see the deeper mist hovering in the low places, the tops of tall shrubs and slender quaking-asp showing above it as if they stood in snow. The band of sunrise was broadening across the east; far down near the horizon a little slip of lemon-rind moon was faltering out of sight.

  But there was no sight, no sound, of anybody in the road ahead. She spurred up beside her guide and asked him if there was any other way that they might have taken. No, he said; they would have to go that way, for there was only one fordable place in the river for many miles. He pointed to the road, fresh-turned by many hoofs, and clamped his lean thighs to his bare horse, galloping on.

  “We’ll take a cut acrosst here, and maybe head ’em off,” he said, dashing away through the stirrup-high sage, striking close to the hills again, and into rougher going.

  The ache of the most intense anxiety that she ever had borne was upon Frances; hope was only a shred in her hand. She believed now that all her desperate riding must come to nothing in the end.

  She never had been that long in the saddle before in her life. Her body was numb with cold and fatigue; she felt the motion of her horse, heard its pounding feet in regular beat as it held to its long, swinging gallop, but with the detached sense of being no party to it. All that was sharp in her was the pain of her lost struggle. For she expected every moment to hear firing, and to come upon confusion and death at the next lift of the hill.

  In their short cut across the country they had mounted the top of a long, slender ridge, which reached down into the valley like a finger. Now her guide pulled up his horse so suddenly that it slid forward on stiff legs, its hoofs plowing the loose shale.

  “You’d better go back—there’s goin’ to be a fight!” he said, a look of shocked concern in his big wild eyes.

  “Do you see them? Where—”

  “There they are!”—he clutched her arm, leaning and pointing—“and there’s a bunch of fellers comin’ to meet ’em that they don’t see! I tell you there’s goin’ to be a fight!”

  * * *

  CHAPTER XIX

  “I BEAT HIM TO IT”

  The last dash of that long ride was only a whirlwind of emotions to Frances. It was a red streak. She did not know what became of the boy; she left him there as she lashed her horse past him on the last desperate stretch.

  The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off, a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald’s men, their prisoners under guard between two long
-strung lines of horsemen, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a man on horseback.

  When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to him was, Tom Lassiter and those who rode with him at the head of the column pressing around.

  The question and mystification in Macdonald’s face at her coming cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like one man to another in a pass where words alone would be weak and lame.

  “I was looking for Chadron to come with help and attempt a rescue, and I was moving to forestall him, but we were late getting under way. They”—waving his hand toward the prisoners—“held out until an hour ago.”

  “You must think, and think fast!” she said. “They’re almost here!”

  “Yes. I’m going ahead to meet them, and offer to turn these prisoners over to Major King. They’ll have no excuse for firing on us then.”

  “No, no! some other way—think of some other way!”

  He looked gravely into her anxious, pleading eyes. “Why, no matter, Frances. If they’ve come here to do that, they’ll do it, but this way they’ll have to do it in the open, not by a trick.”

  “I’ll go with you,” she said.

  “I think perhaps—”

  “I’ll go!”

  Macdonald turned to Lassiter in a few hurried words. She pressed to his side as the two rode away alone to meet the troops, repeating as if she had been denied:

  “I’ll go!”

  There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face.

  “What’s up, Macdonald—where’re you off to?” he inquired.

  Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who had arrived at the homesteaders’ camp the evening past.

  “So they got troops, did they?” the newspaper man said, riding forward keenly. “Yes, they told me down in Cheyenne they’d put that trick through. Here they come!”

  Macdonald spurred ahead, holding up his right hand in the Indian sign of peace. Major King was riding with Chadron at the head of the vanguard. They drew rein suddenly at sight of what appeared to be such a formidable force at Macdonald’s back, for at that distance, and with the dimness of the scattering mist, it appeared as if several hundred horsemen were approaching.

  Distrustful of Chadron, fearing that he might induce Major King to shoot Macdonald down as he sat there making overtures of peace, Frances rode forward and joined him, the correspondent coming jolting after her in his horn-riding way. After a brief parley among themselves Chadron and King, together with three or four officers, rode forward. One remained behind, and halted the column as it came around the brushwood screen at the turn of the road.

  Major King greeted Frances as he rode up, scowling in high dignity. Chadron could not cover his surprise so well as Major King at seeing her there, her horse in a sweat, her habit torn where the brambles had snatched at her in her hard ride to get ahead of the troops. He gave her a cold good-morning, and sat in the attitude of a man pricking up his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force ahead.

  The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald; about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if waiting for Macdonald to begin. He looked the homesteader captain over with severe eyes.

  “Well, sir?” said he.

  “We were starting for Meander, Major King, to deliver to the sheriff fifty men whom we have taken in the commission of murder and arson,” Macdonald replied, with dignity. “Up to a few minutes ago we had no information that martial law had superseded the civil in this troubled country, but since that is the case, we will gladly turn our prisoners over to you, with the earnest request that they be held, collectively and individually, to answer for the crimes they have committed here.”

  “Them’s my men, King—they’ve got ’em there!” said Chadron, boiling over the brim.

  “This expedition has come to the relief of certain men, attacked and surrounded in the discharge of their duty by a band of cattle thieves of which you are the acknowledged head,” replied Major King.

  “Then you have come on a mistaken errand, sir,” Macdonald told him.

  “I have come into this lawless country to restore order and insure the lives and safety of property of the people to whom it belongs.”

  “The evidence of these hired raiders’ crimes lies all around you, Major King,” Macdonald said. “These men swept in here in the employ of the cattle interests, burned these poor homes, and murdered such of the inhabitants as were unable to fly to safety in the hills ahead of them. We are appealing to the law; the cattlemen never have done that.”

  “Say, Mr. Soldier, let me tell you something”—the newspaper correspondent, to whom one man’s dignity was as much as another’s, kicked his horse forward—“these raiders that bloody-handed Chadron sent in here have murdered children and women, do you know that?”

  “Who in the hell are you?” Chadron demanded, bristling with rage, whirling his horse to face him.

  “This is Chadron,” Macdonald said, a little flash of humor in his eyes over Chadron’s hearing the truth about himself from an unexpected source.

  “Well, I’m glad I’ve run into you, Chadron; I’ve got a little list of questions to ask you,” the correspondent told him, far from being either impressed or cowed. “Neel is my name, of the Chicago Tribune, I’ve—”

  “You’d just as well keep your questions for another day—you’ll send nothing out of here!” said Major King, sharply.

  Neel looked across his nose at King with triumphant leer.

  “I’ve sent out something, Mr. Soldier-man,” said he; “it was on the wire by midnight last night, rushed to Meander by courier, and it’s all over the country this morning. It’s a story that’ll give the other side of this situation up here to the war department, and it’ll make this whole nation climb up on its hind legs and howl. Murder? Huh, murder’s no name for it!”

  Chadron was growling something below his breath into King’s ear.

  “Forty-three men and boys—look at them, there they are—rounded up fifty of the cutthroats the Drovers’ Association rushed up here from Cheyenne on a special train to wipe the homesteaders out,” Neel continued, rising to considerable heat in the partisanship of his new light. “Five dollars a day was the hire of that gang, and five dollars bonus for every man, woman, or baby that they killed! Yes, I’ve got signed statements from them, Chadron, and I’d like to know what you’ve got to say, if anything?”

  “Disarm that rabble,” said Major King, speaking to a subordinate officer, “and take charge of the men they have been holding.”

  “Sir, I protest—” Macdonald began.

  “I have no words to waste on you!” Major King cut him off shortly.

  “I’d play a slow hand on that line, King, and a careful one, if I were you,” advised Neel. “If you take these men’s guns away from them they’ll be at the mercy of Chadron’s brigands. I tell you, man, I know the situation in this country!”

  “Thank you,” said King, in cold hauteur.

  Chadron’s eyes were lighting with the glitter of revenge. He sat grinding his bridle-reins in his gloved hand, as if he had the bones of the nesters in his palm at last.

  “You will proceed, with the rescued party under guard, to Meander,” continued Major King to his officer, speaking as if he had
plans for his own employment aside from the expedition. “There, Mr. Chadron will furnish transportation to return them whence they came.”

  “I’ll furnish—” began Chadron, in amazement at this unexpected turn.

  “Transportation, sir,” completed Major King, in his cold way.

  “These men should be held to the civil authorities for trial in this county, and not set free,” Macdonald protested, indignant over the order.

  Major King ignored him. He was still looking at Chadron, who was almost choking on his rage.

  “Hell! Do you mean to tell me the whole damn thing’s goin’ to fizzle out this way, King? I want something done, I tell you—I want something done! I didn’t bring you up here—”

  “Certainly not, sir!” snapped King.

  “My orders to you—” Chadron flared.

  “It happens that I am not marching under your orders at—”

  “The hell you ain’t!” Chadron exploded.

  “It’s an outrage on humanity to turn those scoundrels loose, Major King!” Neel said. “Why, I’ve got signed statements, I tell you—”

  “Remove this man to the rear!” Major King addressed a lieutenant, who communicated the order to the next lowest in rank immediately at hand, who passed it on to two troopers, who came forward briskly and rode the protesting correspondent off between them.

  Other troopers were collecting the arms of the homesteaders, a proceeding which Macdonald witnessed with a sick heart. Frances, sitting her horse in silence through all that had passed, gave him what comfort and hope she could express with her eyes.

  “Detail a patrol of twenty men,” Major King continued his instructions to his officer, “to keep the roads and disarm all individuals and bands encountered.”

  “That don’t apply to my men!” declared Chadron, positively. In his face there was a dark threat of disaster for Major King’s future hopes of advancement.

  “It applies to everybody as they come,” said King. “Troops have come in here to restore order, and order will be restored.”