The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

“I wonder if you know how much you have done for me?”

Hetty smiled and allowed her fingers to remain in his grasp. “Then, you have heard nothing of this?” she said.

“No,” said the man. “But Hetty – ”

Again the girl checked him with a gesture. “And I need not ask you whether you would have had a hand in it?”

Grant laughed a little scornful laugh that was more eloquent than many protestations. “No,” he said, “you needn’t. I think you know me better than that, Hetty?”

“Yes,” said the girl softly. “You couldn’t have had anything to do with that kind of meanness. Larry, how was it they did not tell you?”

She felt the grasp of the man’s fingers slacken and saw his arm fall to his side. His face changed suddenly, growing stern and set, until he turned his head away. When he looked round again the weariness was once more plain in it, and she almost fancied he had checked a groan.

“You have brought me back to myself,” he said. “Only a few seconds ago I could think of nothing but what you had done for me. I think I was almost as happy as a man could be, and now – ”

Hetty laid her hand on his shoulder. “And now? Tell me, Larry.”

“No,” said the man. “You have plenty of troubles of your own.”

The grasp of the little hand grew tighter, and when Grant looked up he saw the girl smiling down on him half-shyly, and yet, as it were, imperiously.

“Tell me, dear,” she said.

Larry felt his heart throb, and his resolution failed him. He could see the girl’s eyes, and their compelling tenderness.

“Well,” he said, huskily, “what I have dreaded has come. The men I have given up everything for have turned against me. No, you must not think I am sorry for what I have done, and it was right then; but they have listened to some of the crazy fools from Europe and are letting loose anarchy. I and the others – the sensible Americans – have lost our hold on them, and yet it was we who brought them in. We took on too big a contract – and I’m most horribly afraid, Hetty.”

The light had almost gone, but his face still showed drawn and white and Hetty bent down nearer him.

“Put your hand in mine, Larry,” she said softly. “I have something to tell you.”

The man obeyed her, wondering, while a thrill ran through him as the mittened fingers closed upon his own.

“Hetty,” he said, “I have only brought trouble on everyone. I’m not fit to speak to you.”

“No,” said the girl, with a throb in her voice. “You have only done what very few other men would have dared to do, and many a better girl than I am would be proud to be fond of you. Now listen, Larry. For years you were ever so good to me, and I was too mean and shallow and selfish even to understand what you were giving me. I fancied I had a right to everything you could do. But come nearer, Larry.”

She drew him closer to her, until his garments pressed the horse’s flank and the blanket skirt she wore, and leaned down still further with her hand upon his shoulder.

“I found out, dear, and now I want you to forgive me and always love me.”

The grasp on her hand became compelling, and she moved her foot from the stirrup as the man’s arm reached upwards towards her waist. Had she wished she could not have helped herself; as she slipped from the saddle the arm closed round her and it was several seconds before she and Grant stood a pace apart, with tingling blood, looking at one another. There was no sign of Flora Schuyler, they were alone, enfolded in the silence of the bluff.

“It is wonderful,” he said. “I can’t even talk, Hetty. I want to realize it.”

Hetty laughed but there was a note in her voice that set the man’s heart beating furiously. “Yes, it is wonderful it should come to me,” she said. “No, you needn’t look round, Larry. There is nothing and nobody that counts now except you and me. I am just beginning to understand your patience, and how hard I must have been to you.”

“I waited a long time,” he said. “It was worth while. Even the troubles I felt crushing me seem very little now. If they were only over, and there was nothing to come between you and me!”

“Larry,” the girl said very softly, “are you sure they need do that? It has been so horrible lately, and I can’t even sleep at night for thinking of the risks that you are taking.”

Grant closed one hand, but it was too dark now for Hetty to see his face, and she was glad of it.

“You mean – ” he said hoarsely, and stopped.

“Just this,” her voice almost a whisper. “I am frightened of it all, and when you want me I will come to you. No, wait just a little. I could never marry the man who was fighting against my father and the people I belong to, while, now I know what you are, I could never ask him to go back on what he felt was right; but, Larry, the men you did so much for have turned against you, and the things they are doing are not right, and would never please you. Can’t we go away and leave the trouble behind us? Nobody seems to want us now.”

There was a cold dew on the man’s forehead the girl could not see. “And your father?” he said.

“I would never help anyone against him, as I told you,” said the girl. “Still, there are times when his bitterness almost frightens me. It is hard to admit it, even to you, but I can’t convince myself that he and the others are not mistaken, too. I can’t believe any longer that you are wrong, dear. Besides, though he says very little, I feel he wants me to marry Clavering.”

“Clavering?” said Larry.

“Yes,” said Hetty, with a shiver. “I dislike him bitterly – and I should be safe with you.”

Grant held out his hands. “Then, you must come, my dear. One way or other the struggle will soon be over now, and if I have to go out an outcast I can still shelter you.”

The girl drew back a pace. “I can’t turn against my own people – but yours have turned on you. That makes it easier. If you will take me, dear, we will go away.”

Grant turned from her, and ground his heel into the snow. He had already given up almost everything that made life bright to him, but he had never felt the bitterness he did at that moment, when he realized that another and heavier sacrifice was demanded of him.

“Hetty,” he said slowly, “can’t you understand? I and the others brought the homesteaders in; this land has fed me and given me all I have, and now I can’t go back on it and them. I would not be fit to marry you if I went away.”

The words were very simple, but the man’s voice betrayed what he felt. Hetty understood, and the pride she had no lack of came to the rescue.

“Yes,” she said with a little sob, “Larry you are right. You will forgive me, dear, for once more tempting you. Perhaps it will all come right by and by. And now I must go.”

There was a crackle of brittle twigs, and Grant dimly saw Miss Schuyler riding towards them. Reaching out, he took Hetty’s hands and drew her closer.

“There is just one thing you must promise me, my dear,” he said. “If your father insists on your listening to Clavering, you will let me know. Then I will come to Cedar for you, and there are still a few Americans who have not lost confidence in their leader and will come with me. Nothing must make you say yes to him.”

“No,” said Hetty simply. “If I cannot avoid it any other way, I will send for you. I can’t wait any longer – and here is Flo.”

Larry stooped; but before she laid her foot in the hand he held out for her to mount by, Hetty bent her head swiftly, and kissed him.

“Now,” she said softly, “do you think I could listen to Clavering? You will do what you have to, and I will wait for you. It is hard on us both, dear; but I can’t help recognizing my duty, too.”

Larry lifted her to the saddle, and she vanished into the gloom of the birches before he could speak to Miss Schuyler, who wheeled her horse and followed her. A few minutes more and he was riding towards Fremont as fast as his horse could flounder through the slushy snow, his face grown set and resolute again, for he knew he had difficult work to do.

“I don’t quite know what has come over you, Larry,” Breckenridge said an hour or two later with a puzzled look at Grant as he lifted his eyes from the writing pad on his knee. “I haven’t seen you so obviously contented for months, and yet the work before us may be grim enough. The most unpleasant point about it is that Clavering must have got hold of one of your warrant forms. It was a mistake to trust anybody with one not filled in.”

“Well, I feel that way too,” Grant confessed, “and at the same time I’m desperately anxious. We are going to have trouble with the boys right along the line, and there is no man living can tell what will happen if any of them go down in an affair with the cavalry.”

“It wouldn’t be difficult to guess what the consequences would be if they cut the track just before the stock train came through. You are quite sure they have not changed their minds again?”

“Yes,” said Larry quietly. “I bluffed it out of Harper. He would have taken a hand in, and only kicked when it came to taking lives. More of the others cleared out over that point, too, and as the rest were half-afraid of some of those who objected giving them away, they changed their plans; but it seems quite certain they mean to pull the rails up at the bend on the down grade by the bunch grass hollow. It is fortunate, any way. Cheyne and his cavalry will be watching the bridge, you see; but you had better get ready. I’ll have the last instructions done directly, and it will be morning before you are through.”

Breckenridge poured himself out a big cup of coffee from the jug on the stove, put on a black leather jacket, and went out to the stable. When he came back, Grant handed him a bundle of notes.

“You will see every man gets one and tell him all he wants to know. I dare not put down too much in black and white. They are to be round at the rise behind the depot at six Thursday night.”

“You believe they will come?”

“Yes,” Grant said firmly. “They are good men, and I’m thankful there are still so many of them, because just now they are all that is standing between this country and anarchy.”

Breckenridge smiled a little, but his voice was sympathetic. “Well,” he said, “I am glad, on my own account, too. It’s nicer to have the chances with you when you have to reckon with men of the kind we are going to meet, but I shall not be sorry when this trouble’s through. It is my first attempt at reforming and a little of it goes a long way with me. I don’t know that there is a more thankless task than trying to make folks better off than they want, or deserve, to be.”

He went out with a packet of messages, and Grant sat still, with care in his face, staring straight in front of him.

XXIV

THE STOCK TRAIN

It was almost unpleasantly hot in the little iron-roofed room at the railroad depot, and the agent, who flung the door open, stood still a minute or two blinking into the darkness. A big lamp that flickered in the wind cast an uncertain gleam upon the slushy whiteness under foot, and the blurred outline of a towering water-tank showed dimly through the sliding snow. He could also just discern the great locomotive waiting on the side-track, and the sibilant hiss of steam that mingled with the moaning of the wind whirling a white haze out of the obscurity. Beyond the track, and showing only now and then, the lights of the wooden town blinked fitfully; on the other hand and behind the depot was an empty waste of snow-sheeted prairie. The temperature had gone up suddenly, but the agent shivered as he felt the raw dampness strike through him, and, closing the door, took off and shook his jacket and sat down by the stove again.

He wore a white shirt of unusually choice linen, with other garments of fashionable city cut, for a station agent is a person of importance in the West, and this one was at least as consequential as most of the rest. He had finished his six o’clock supper at the wooden hotel a little earlier; and as the next train going west would not arrive for two or three hours, he took out a rank cigar, and, placing his feet upon a chair, prepared to doze the time away, though he laid a bundle of accounts upon his knee, in case anyone should come in unexpectedly. This, however, was distinctly improbable on such a night.

The stove flung out a drowsy heat, and it was not long before his eyes grew heavy. He could still hear the wailing of the wind and the swish of the snow that whirled about the lonely building, and listened for a while with tranquil contentment; for the wild weather he was not exposed to enhanced the comfort of the warmth and brightness he enjoyed. Then, the sounds grew less distinct and he heard nothing at all until he straightened himself suddenly in his chair as a cold draught struck him. A few flakes of snow also swept into the room and he saw that the door was open.

“Hallo!” he called. “Wait there a moment. I guess this place doesn’t belong to you.”

A man who looked big and shapeless in his whitened furs signed to somebody outside without answering, and four or five other men in fur caps and snow-sprinkled coats came in. They did not seem to consider it necessary to wait for permission, and it dawned upon the agent that something unusual was about to happen.

“We have a little business to put through,” said one.

“Well,” said the agent brusquely, “I can’t attend to you now. You can come back later – when the train comes in.”

One of the newcomers smiled sardonically, and the agent recognized two of his companions. They were men of some importance in that country, who had, however joined the homestead movement and were under the ban of the company’s chief supporters, the cattle-barons. There was accordingly no inducement to waste civility on them; but he had an unpleasant feeling that unnecessary impertinence would not be advisable.

“It has got to be put through now,” said the first of them, with a little ring in his voice. “We want a locomotive and a calaboose to take us to Boynton, and we are quite willing to pay anything reasonable.”

“It can’t be done. We have only the one loco here, and she is wanted to shove the west-bound train up the long grade to the hills.”

“I guess that train will have to get through alone to-night,” said another man.

The agent got up with an impatient gesture. “Now,” he said, “I don’t feel like arguing with you. You can’t have the loco.”

“No?” said the homesteader, with a little laugh. “Well, I figure you’re mistaken. We have taken charge of her already and only want the bill. If you don’t believe me, call your engineer.”

The agent strode to the door, and there was a momentary silence after he called, “Pete!”

Then, a shout came out of the sliding snow: “I can’t come.”

It broke off with significant suddenness, and the agent turned to the man who had first spoken. “You are going to be sorry for this, Mr. Grant,” he said and then tried to slip away, but one of the others pulled the door to and stood with his back to it while Grant, smiling, said, “I’m quite willing to take my chances. Have the stock-cars passed Perry’s siding?”

“I don’t know,” said the agent.

“Then, hadn’t you better call them up and see? We are giving you the first chance of doing it out of courtesy, but one of us is a good operator.”

“I was on the Baltimore and Ohio road,” said one man. “You needn’t play any tricks with me.”

The agent sat down at the telegraph instrument, and looked up when it rapped out an answer to his message.

“Stock train left Birch Hollow. No sign of her yet.”

“That’s all right,” said the man who had served the B. and O. “Tell them to side-track her for half an hour, anyway, after your loco comes through. It’s necessary. Don’t worry ’bout any questions, but tell them to keep us a clear road, now.”

The agent, who saw that the other man was prepared to do the work himself, complied, and the latter once more nodded when the instrument clicked out the answer.

“Make out your bill,” said Grant, taking a wallet from his pocket.

“No,” said the agent; “we’re going to have the law of you.”

Grant laughed. “It strikes me there is very little law in this country now, and your company would a good deal sooner have the dollars than a letter telling them you had let us take one of their locomotives away from you.”

“That,” said the agent reflectively, “sounds quite sensible. Well, I’ll take the dollars. It doesn’t commit us to anything.”

The bills were counted over, and as the men went out Grant turned in the doorway. “It would not be advisable for you to wire any of the folks along the line to stop us,” he said. “We are going through to Boynton as fast as your engineer can shove his loco along, and if anybody switched us into a side-track it would only mean the smashing up of a good deal of the company’s property.”

He had gone out in another moment, and, in a few more, climbed into the locomotive cab, while somebody coupled on a calaboose in the rear. Then, he showed the engineer several bills and the agent’s receipt together.

“If you can hold your tongue and get us through to Boynton five minutes under the mail schedule time, the dollars are yours,” he said.

The engineer looked doubtful for a moment, then, his eyes twinkling, he took the bills.

“Well,” he said, “you’ve got the agent’s receipt, and the rest is not my business. Sit tight, and we’ll show you something very like flying to-night.”

Another man flung open the furnace door, a sudden stream of brightness flashed out as he hurled in coal, the door shut with a clang, and there was a whirr of slipping wheels as the engineer laid his hand on the lever. The great locomotive panted, and Grant, staring out through the glasses, saw a blinking light slide back to them. Then, the plates beneath him trembled, the hammering wheels got hold, and the muffled clanging and thudding swelled into a rhythmic din. The light darted past them, the filmy whiteness which had streamed down through the big headlamp’s glare now beat in a bewildering rush against the quivering glass, and the fan-shaped blaze of radiance drove on faster through the snow.

Five minutes passed, and Grant, who held a watch in his hand, glanced at the engineer as the blaze whirled like a comet along the clean-cut edge of a dusky bluff.

“You’ll have to do better,” he said.

“Wait till we have got her warmed up,” said the man, who stood quietly intent, his lean hand on the throttle. “Then you’ll see something.”

Grant sat down on a tool-locker, took out his cigar-case, and passed it to Breckenridge who sat opposite him. Breckenridge’s face was eager and there was an unusual brightness in his eyes, for he was young and something thrilled within him in unison with the vibration of the great machine. There was, however, very little to see just then beyond the tense, motionless figure of the man at the throttle and the damp-beaded face of another forced up in the lurid glare from the furnace door. A dim whiteness lashed the glasses, and when Breckenridge pressed his face to one of them the blaze of radiance against which the smoke-stack was projected blackly only intensified the obscurity they were speeding through.

Still, there was much to feel and hear – the shrill wail of the wind that buffeted their shelter, the bewildering throb and quiver of the locomotive which, with its suggestion of Titanic effort, seemed to find a response in human fibre, pounding and clashing with their burden of strain, and the roar of the great drivers that rose and fell like a diapason. Perhaps Breckenridge, who was also under a strain that night, was fanciful, but it seemed to him there was hidden in the medley of sound a theme or motive that voiced man’s domination over the primeval forces of the universe, and urged him to the endurance of stress, and great endeavour. It was, for the most part, vague and elusive; but there were times when it rang exultingly through the subtly harmonious din, reminding him of Wagnerian music.

Leaning forward, he touched Grant’s knee. “Larry, it’s bracing. The last few months were making me a little sick of everything – but this gets hold of one.” Grant smiled, but Breckenridge saw how weary his bronzed face showed in the dim lantern light. “There was a time, two or three years ago, when I might have felt it as you seem to do,” he said. “I don’t seem to have any feeling but tiredness left me now.”

“You can’t let go,” said Breckenridge.

“No,” and Grant sighed, “not until the State takes hold instead of me, or the trouble’s through.”

Breckenridge said nothing further, and Grant sat huddled in a corner with the thin blue cigar-smoke curling about him. He knew it was possible he was taking a very heavy risk just then, since the homesteaders might have changed their plans again; and his task was a double one, for he had not only to save the stock train, but prevent an encounter between his misguided followers and the cavalry. So there was silence between them while, lurching, rocking, roaring, the great locomotive sped on through the night, until the engineer, turning half-round, glanced at Grant.

“Is she making good enough time to suit you? Perry’s siding is just ahead, and we’ll be on the Bitter Creek trestle five minutes after that,” he said.

Grant rose and leaned forward close to the glasses. He could see nothing but the radiance from the headlamp whirling like a meteor through the filmy haze; but the fierce vibration of everything, and the fashion in which the snow smote the glasses, as in a solid stream, showed the pace at which they were travelling. He looked round and saw that Breckenridge’s eyes were fixed upon him. His comrade’s voice reached him faint and strained through the hammering of the wheels.

“You feel tolerably sure Harper was right about the bridge?”

Grant nodded. “I do.”

“What if he was mistaken, and they meant to try there after all? There are eight of us.”

“We have got to take the risk,” said Grant very quietly, “and it is a big responsibility; but if the boys got their work in and fell foul of Cheyne, we would have half the State ablaze.”

He signed for silence, and Breckenridge stared out through the glasses, for he feared his face would betray him, and fancied he understood the burden that was upon the man who, because it seemed the lesser evil, was risking eight men’s lives.

As he watched, a blink of light crept out of the snow, grew brighter, and swept back to them. Others appeared in a cluster behind it, a big water-tank flashed by, and the roar of wheels and scream of whistle was flung back by a snow-covered building. Then, as Breckenridge glanced to the opposite side, the blaze of another headlamp dazzled his eyes and he had a blurred vision of a waiting locomotive and a long row of snow-smeared cars. In another second cars and station had vanished as suddenly as they had sprung up out of the night, and they were once more alone in the sliding snow. Breckenridge drew a breath of relief.

“There’s the stock train, any way. And now for the bridge!” he said.

“That was the easiest half of it. Muller was there – I saw him – and he could have warned the agent at the last minute,” Grant answered.

Neither of them said anything further, but Breckenridge felt his heart beat faster as the snow whirled by. The miles were slipping behind them, and he was by no means so sure as Larry was that no attempt would be made upon the bridge. His fancy would persist in picturing the awful leap into the outer darkness through the gap in the trestle, and he felt his lips and forehead grow a trifle colder and his flesh shrink in anticipation of the tremendous shock. He looked at Grant; the latter’s face was very quiet, and had lost its grimness and weariness – there was almost a suggestion of exaltation in it.

“We are almost on the bridge now,” he said.

The engineer nodded, and the next moment Breckenridge, who had been watching the light of the headlamp flash along the snow beside the track, saw it sweep on, as it were, through emptiness. Then, he heard a roar of timber beneath him, and fancied he could look down into a black gulf through the filmy snow. He knew it was a single track they were speeding over, and that the platform of the calaboose behind them overhung the frozen river far below.

He set his lips and held his breath for what seemed a very long time, and then, with a sigh of relief, sank back into his seat as he felt by the lessening vibration, that there was frozen soil under them. But in spite of himself the hands he would have lighted a cigar with shook, and the engineer who looked round glanced at him curiously.