The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 22

"Aren't you through with those songs yet, Clavering?" he said.

"I'm afraid I have made Miss Torrance tired," said Clavering. "Still, we have music enough left us for another hour or two."

"Then why can't you stay on over to-morrow and get a whole night at it? I want you just now."

Clavering glanced at Hetty, and, though she made no sign, fancied that she was not quite pleased with her father.

"Am I to tell him I will?" he asked.

Hetty understood what prompted him, but she would not commit herself. "You will do what suits you," she said. "When my father asks any one to Cedar I really don't often make myself unpleasant to him."

Clavering's eyes twinkled as he walked towards the older man, while Hetty crossed the room to where Miss Schuyler sat. Both apparently became absorbed in the books Clavering had brought, but they could hear the conversation of the men, and it became evident later that one of them listened. Torrance had questions to ask, and Clavering answered them.

"Well," he said, "I had a talk with Purbeck which cost us fifty dollars.

His notion was that the Bureau hadn't a great deal to go upon if they meant to do anything further about dispossessing us. In fact, he quite seemed to think that as the legislature had a good many other worries just now, it would suit them to let us slide. He couldn't recommend anything better than getting our friends in the lobbies to keep the screw on them until the election."

Torrance looked thoughtful. "That means holding out for another six months, any way. Did you hear anything at the settlement?"

"Yes. Fleming wouldn't sell the homestead-boys anything after they broke in his store. Steele's our man, and it was Carter they got their provisions from. Now, Carter had given Jackson a bond for two thousand dollars when he first came in, and as he hadn't made his payments lately, and we have our thumb on Jackson, the Sheriff has closed down on his store. He'll be glad to light out with the clothes he stands in when we're through with him."

Torrance nodded grim approval. "Larry wouldn't sit tight."

"No," said Clavering. "He wired right through to Chicago for most of a carload of flour and eatables, but that car got billed wrong somehow, and now they're looking for her up and down the side-tracks of the Pacific slope. Larry's men will be getting savage. It is not nice to be hungry when there's forty degrees of frost."

Torrance laughed softly. "You have fixed the thing just as I would."

Then his daughter stood up with a little flush in her face. "You could not have meant that, father?" she said.

"Well," said Torrance, drily, "I quite think I did, but there's a good deal you can't get the hang of, Hetty--and it's getting very late."

He looked at his daughter steadily, and Flora Schuyler looked at all of them, and remembered the picture--Torrance sitting lean and sardonic with the lamplight on his face, Clavering watching the girl with a curious little smile, and Hetty standing very slim and straight, with something in the poise of her shapely head that had its meaning to Miss Schuyler. Then with a "Good-night" to Torrance, and a half-ironical bend of the head to Clavering, she turned to her companion, and they went out together before he could open the door for them.

Five minutes later Hetty tapped at Miss Schuyler's door. The pink tinge still showed in her cheeks, and her eyes had a suspicious brightness in them.

"Flo," she said, "you'll go back to New York right off. I'm sorry I brought you here. This place isn't fit for you."

"I am quite willing, so long as you are coming too."

"I can't. Isn't that plain? This thing is getting horrible--but I have to see it through. It was Clavering fixed it, any way."

"Put it away until to-morrow," Flora Schuyler advised. "It will be easier to see whether you have any cause to be angry then."

Hetty turned towards her with a flash in her eyes. "I know just what you mean, and it would be nicer just to look as if I never felt anything, as some of those English folks you were fond of did; but I can't. I wasn't made that way. Still, I'm not going to apologize for my father. He is Torrance of Cedar, and I'm standing in with him--but if I were a man I'd go down and whip Clavering. I could almost have shaken him when he wanted to stay here and tried to make me ask him."

"Well," said Flora Schuyler, quietly, "I am going to stay with you; but I don't quite see what Clavering has done."

"No?" said Hetty. "Aren't you just a little stupid, Flo? Now, he has made me ashamed--horribly--and I was proud of the men we had in this country.

He's starving the women and the little children; there are quite a few of them lying in freezing shanties and sod-huts out there in the snow. It's just awful to be hungry with the temperature at fifty below."

Miss Schuyler s.h.i.+vered. It was very warm and cosy sitting there, behind double cas.e.m.e.nts, beside a glowing stove; but there had been times when, wrapped in costly furs and great sleigh-robes and generously fed, she had felt her flesh shrink from the cold of the prairie.

"But they have Mr. Grant to help them," she said.

Even in her agitation Hetty was struck by something which suggested unquestioning faith in her companion's tone.

"You believe he could do something," she said.

"Of course! You know him better than I do, Hetty."

"Well," said Hetty, "though he has made me vexed with him, I am proud of Larry; and there's just one thing he can't do. That is, to see women and children hungry while he has a dollar to buy them food with. Oh, I know who was going to pay for the provisions that came from Chicago that Clavering got the railroad men to send the wrong way, and if Larry had only been with us he would have been splendid. As it is, if he feeds them in spite of Clavering, I could 'most forgive him everything."

"Are you quite sure that you have a great deal to forgive?"

Hetty, instead of resenting the question, stretched out her hand appealingly. "Don't be clever, Flo. Come here quite close, and be nice to me. This thing is worrying me horribly; and I'm ashamed of myself and--of everybody. Oh, I know I'm a failure. I couldn't sing to please folks and I sent Jake Cheyne away, while now, when the trouble's come, I'm too mean even to stand behind my father as I meant to do. Flo, you'll stay with me.

I want you."

Miss Schuyler, who had not seen Hetty in this mood before, petted her, though she said very little, for she felt that the somewhat unusual abas.e.m.e.nt might, on the whole, be beneficial to her companion. So there was silence in the room, broken only by the snapping of the stove and the faint moaning of the bitter wind about the lonely building, while Miss Schuyler sat somewhat uncomfortably on the arm of Hetty's chair with the little dusky head pressed against her shoulder. Hetty could not see her face or its gravity might have astonished her. Miss Schuyler had not spoken quite the truth when, though she had only met him three times, she admitted that Hetty knew Larry Grant better than she did. In various places and different guises Flora Schuyler had seen the type of manhood he stood for, but had never felt the same curious stirring of sympathy this grave, brown-faced man had aroused in her.

A hound bayed savagely, and Hetty lifted her head. "Strangers!" she said.

"Bowie knows all the cattle-boys. Who can be coming at this hour?"

The question was not unwarranted, for it was close on midnight, but Flora Schuyler did not answer. She could hear nothing but the moan of the wind, the ranch was very still, until once more there came an angry growl. Then, out of the icy darkness followed the sound of running feet, a hoa.r.s.e cry, and a loud pounding at the outer door.

Hetty stood up, trembling and white in the face, but very straight. "Don't be frightened, Flo," she said. "We'll whip them back to the place they came from."

"Who is it?" asked Miss Schuyler.

Again the building rang to the blows upon the outer door; but Hetty's voice was even, and a little contemptuous.

"The rustlers!" she said.

There was a trampling below, and a corridor beneath the girls vibrated with the footsteps of hurrying men, while Torrance's voice rose faintly through the din; a very unpleasant silence, until somebody rapped upon the door. Flora Schuyler felt her heart throbbing painfully, and gasped when Torrance looked in. His lean face was very stern.

"Put the lamp out, and sit well away from the window," he said.

"No," said Hetty in a voice Miss Schuyler had not heard before; "we are coming down."

Torrance considered for a second, and then smiled significantly as he glanced at his daughter's face. "Well, you would be 'most as safe down there--and I guess it was born in you," he said.

The girls followed him down the cedar stairway and into the hall. A lamp burning very low stood on a table in one corner, but the big room was dim and shadowy, and the girls could scarcely see the five or six men standing near, not in front of, one open window. Framed by its log casing the white prairie faded into the dimness under a smear of indigo sky. Here and there a star shone in it with intense brilliancy, and though the great stove roared in the draught it seemed to Miss Schuyler that a destroying cold came in. Already she felt her hands grow numb.

"Where are the boys, Hetty?" she asked.

"In at the railroad, most of them. One or two at the back. Now, I'll show you how to load a rifle, Flo."

Miss Schuyler followed her to the table, where several rifles were lying beside a big box of cartridges, and Hetty took one of them up.

"You push this slide back, and drop the cartridge in," she said. "Now it has gone into this pipe here, and you drop in another. Get hold, and push them in until you can't get in any more. Why--it can't hurt you--your hands are shaking!"