The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

“No,” said Grant drily; “he has mine. The bluff is on my run.”

“Did you take out timber rights with your lease?” asked Clavering.

“No, I hadn’t much use for them. None of my neighbours hold any either. But the bluff is big enough, and I’ve no objection to their cutting what billets they want. Still, I can’t have them driving out any other friends of mine.”

Clavering smiled ironically. “You have been picking up some curious acquaintances, Larry; but don’t you think you had better leave this thing to Torrance? The fact is, the cattle-men are not disposed to encourage strangers building houses in their country just now.”

“I had a notion it belonged to this State. It’s not an unusual one,” said Grant.

Clavering shrugged his shoulders. “Of course, it sounds better that way. Have it so. Still, it will scarcely pay you to make yourself unpopular with us, Larry.”

“Well,” said Grant drily, “it seems to me I’m tolerably unpopular already. But that’s not quite the point. Take your boys away.”

Clavering flung his hand up in half-ironical salutation, but as he was about to wheel his horse a young Englishman whose nationality was plainly stamped upon him seized his bridle.

“Not quite so fast!” he said. “It would be more fitting if you got down and expressed your regrets to the fräulein. You haven’t heard Muller’s story yet, Larry.”

“Let go,” said Clavering, raising the switch he held. “Drop my bridle or take care of yourself!”

“Come down,” said Breckenridge.

The switch went up and descended hissing upon part of an averted face; but the lad sprang as it fell, and the next moment the horse rose almost upright with two men clinging to it; one of them, whose sallow cheeks were livid now, swaying in the saddle. Then Grant grasped the bridle that fell from the rider’s hands, and hurled his comrade backwards, while some of the stockriders pushed their horses nearer, and the axe-men closed in about them.

Hoarse cries went up. “Horses back! Pull him off! Give the Britisher a show! Leave them to it!”

It was evident that a blunder would have unpleasant results, for Clavering, with switch raised, had tightened his left hand on the bridle Grant had loosed again, while a wicked smile crept into his eyes, and the lad stood tense and still, with hands clenched in front of him, and a weal on his young face. Grant, however, stepped in between them.

“We’ve had sufficient fooling, Breckenridge,” he said. “Clavering, I’ll give you a minute to get your men away, and if you can’t do it in that time you’ll take the consequences.”

Clavering wheeled his horse. “The odds are with you, Larry,” he said. “You have made a big blunder, but I guess you know your own business best.”

He nodded, including the fräulein, with an easy insolence that yet became him, touched the horse with his heel, and in another moment he and his cow-boys were swinging at a gallop across the prairie. Then, as they dipped behind a rise, those who were left glanced at one another. Breckenridge was very pale, and one of his hands was bleeding where Clavering’s spur had torn it.

“It seems that we have made a beginning,” he said hoarsely. “It’s first blood to them, but this will take a lot of forgetting, and the rest may be different.”

Grant made no answer, but turned and looked at Muller, who stood very straight and square, with a curious brightness in his eyes.

“Are you going on with the contract? There is the girl to consider,” said Grant.

“Ja,” said the Teuton. “I was in der Vosges, and der girl is also Fräulein Muller.”

“Boys,” said Grant to the men from Michigan, “you have seen what’s in front of you, and you’ll probably have to use more than axes before you’re through. Still, you have the chance of clearing out right now. I only want willing men behind me.”

One of the big axe-men laughed scornfully, and there was a little sardonic grin in the faces of the rest.

“There’s more room for us here than there was in Michigan, and now we’ve got our foot down here we’re not going back again,” he said. “That’s about all there is to it. But when our time comes, the other men aren’t going to find us slacker than the Dutchman.”

Grant nodded gravely. “Well,” he said very simply, “I guess the Lord who made this country will know who’s in the right and help them. They’ll need it. There’s a big fight coming.”

Then they went back to their hewing in the bluff, and the Fräulein Muller went on with her knitting.

V

HETTY COMES HOME

It was an afternoon of the Indian summer, sunny and cool, and the maples about the Schuyler villa flamed gold and crimson against a sky of softest blue, when Hetty Torrance sat reflectively silent on the lawn. Flora Schuyler sat near her, with a book upside down upon her knee.

“You have been worrying about something the last few weeks,” she said.

“Is that quite unusual?” asked Hetty. “Haven’t a good many folks to worry all the time?”

Flora Schuyler smiled. “Just finding it out, Hetty? Well, I have noticed a change, and it began the day you waited for us at the depot. And it wasn’t because of Jake Cheyne.”

“No,” said Hetty reflectively. “I suppose it should have been. Have you heard from him since he went away?”

“Lily Cheyne had a letter with some photographs, and she showed it to me. It’s a desolate place in the sage bush he’s living in, and there’s not a white man, except the boys he can’t talk to, within miles of him, while from the picture I saw of his adobe room I scarcely think folks would have it down here to keep hogs in. Jake Cheyne was fastidious, too, and there was a forced cheerfulness about his letter which had its meaning, though, of course, he never mentioned you.”

Hetty flushed a trifle. “Flo, I’m sorry. Still, you can’t blame me.”

“No,” said Miss Schuyler, “though there was a time when I wished I could. You can’t help being pretty, but it ought to make you careful when you see another of them going that way again.”

Hetty made a little impatient gesture. “If there ever is another, he’ll be pulled up quite sharp. You don’t think their foolishness, which spoils everything, is any pleasure to me. It’s too humiliating. Can’t one be friends with a nice man without falling in love with him?”

“Well,” said Miss Schuyler drily, “it depends a good deal on how you’re made; but it’s generally risky for one or the other. Still, perhaps you might, for I have a fancy there’s something short in you. Now, I’m going to ask you a question. Is it thinking of the other man that has made you restless? I mean the one we saw at the depot?”

Hetty laughed outright. “Larry? Why, as I tried to tell you, he has always been just like a cousin or a brother to me, and doesn’t want anything but his horses and cattle and his books on political economy. Larry’s quite happy with his ranching, and his dreams of the new America. Of course, they’ll never come to anything; but when you can start him talking they’re quite nice to listen to.”

Flora Schuyler shook her head. “I wouldn’t be too sure. That man is in earnest, and the dreams of an earnest American have a way of coming true. You have known him a long while, and I’ve only seen him once, but that man will do more than talk if he ever has the opportunity. He has the quiet grit one finds in the best of us – not the kind that make the speeches – and some Englishmen, in him. You can see it in his eyes.”

“Then,” said Hetty, with a little laugh, “come back with me to Cedar, and if you’re good you shall have him. It isn’t everybody I’d give Larry to.”

There was a trace of indignation in Flora Schuyler’s face. “I fancy he would not appreciate your generosity, and there’s a good deal you have got to find out, Hetty,” she said drily. “It may hurt you when you do. But you haven’t told me yet what has been worrying you.”

“No,” said Hetty, with a little wistful smile. “Well, I’m going to. It’s hard to own to, but I’m a failure. I fancied I could make everybody listen to my singing, and I would come here. Well, I came, and found out that my voice would never bring me fame, and for a time it hurt me horribly. Still, I couldn’t go back just then, and when you and your mother pressed me I stayed. I knew what you expected, and I disappointed you. Perhaps I was too fastidious, but there were none of them that really pleased me. Then I began to see that I was only spoiling nicer girls’ chances and trying the patience of everybody.”

“Hetty!” said Flora Schuyler, but Miss Torrance checked her.

“Wait until I’m through. Then it became plain to me that while I’d been wasting my time here the work I was meant for was waiting at Cedar. The old man who gave me everything is very lonely there, and he and Larry have been toiling on while I flung ’most what a ranch would cost away on lessons and dresses and fripperies, which will never be any good to me. Still, I’m an American, too, and now, when there’s trouble coming, I’m going back to the place I belong to.”

“You are doing the right thing now,” said Flora Schuyler.

Hetty smiled somewhat mirthlessly. “Well,” she said, “because it’s hard, I guess I am; but there’s one thing would make it easier. You will come and stay with me. You don’t know how much I want you; and New York in winter doesn’t suit you. You’re pale already. Come and try our clear, dry cold.”

Eventually Miss Schuyler promised, and Hetty rose. “Then it’s fixed,” she said. “I’ll write the old man a dutiful letter now, while I feel like doing it well.”

The letter was duly written, and, as it happened, reached Torrance as he sat alone one evening in his great bare room at Cedar Range. Among the papers on the table in front of him were letters from the cattle-men’s committees, which had sprung into existence every here and there, and Torrance apparently did not find them reassuring, for there was care in his face. It had become evident that the big ranchers’ rights were mostly traditional, and already, in scattered detachments, the vanguard of the homesteaders’ host was filing in. Here and there they had made their footing good; more often, by means not wholly constitutional, their outposts had been driven in; but it was noticeable that Torrance and his neighbours still believed them no more than detachments, and had not heard the footsteps of the rest. Three years’ residence in that land had changed the aliens into American citizens, but a lifetime of prosperity could scarcely efface the bitterness they had brought with them from the east, while some, in spite of their crude socialistic aspirations, were drilled men who had herded the imperial legions like driven cattle into Sedan. More of native birth, helots of the cities, and hired hands of the plains, were also turning desiring eyes upon the wide spaces of the cattle country, where there was room for all.

Torrance opened his letter and smiled somewhat drily. It was affectionate and not without its faint pathos, for Hetty had been stirred when she wrote; but the grim old widower felt no great desire for the gentle attentions of a dutiful daughter just then.