He proceeded swiftly, but cautiously, watching for his man. But Mark Thorn did not appear to be abroad in that part of the country. Until sundown Macdonald walked unchallenged, when he struck the highway a short distance south of the point where the trail leading to Fort Shakie branched from it.

Saul Chadron and his daughter Nola came riding out of the Fort Shakie road, their horses in that tireless, swinging gallop which the animals of that rare atmosphere can maintain for hours. As he rode, Chadron swung his quirt in unison with the horse's undulations, from side to side across its neck, like a baton. He sat as stiff and solid in his saddle as a carved image. Nola came on neck and neck with him, on the side of the road nearer Macdonald.

Macdonald was carrying a rifle in addition to his side arms, and he was a dusty grim figure to come upon suddenly afoot in the high road.

Chadron pulled in his horse and brought it to a stiff-legged stop when he saw Macdonald, who had stepped to the roadside to let them pa.s.s.

The old cattleman's high-crowned sombrero was pinched to a peak; the wind of his galloping gait had pressed its broad brim back from his tough old weathered face. His white mustache and little dab of pointed beard seemed whiter against the darkness of pa.s.sion which mounted to his scowling eyes.

"What in the h.e.l.l're you up to now?" he demanded, without regard for his companion, who was accustomed, well enough, to his explosions and expletives.

Macdonald gravely lifted his hand to his hat, his eyes meeting Nola's for an instant, Chadron's challenge unanswered. Nola's face flared at this respectful salutation as if she had been insulted. She jerked her horse back a little, as if she feared that violence would follow the invasion of her caste by this fallen and branded man, her pliant waist weaving in graceful balance with every movement of her beast.

Macdonald lowered his eyes from her blazingly indignant face. Her horse was slewed across the narrow road, and he considered between waiting for them to ride on and striking into the shoulder-high sage which grew thick at the roadside there. He thought that she was very pretty in her fairness of hair and skin, and the lake-clear blueness of her eyes. She was riding astride, as all the women in that country rode, dressed in wide pantaloonish corduroys, with twinkling little silver spurs on her heels.

"What're you prowlin' down here around my place for?" Chadron asked, spurring his horse as he spoke, checking its forward leap with rigid arm, which made a commotion of hoofs and a cloud of dust.

"This is a public highway, and I deny your right to question my motives in it," Macdonald returned, calmly.

"Sneakin' around to see if you can lay hands on a horse, I suppose,"

Chadron said, leaning a little in towering menace toward the man in the road.

Macdonald felt a hot surge of resentment rise to his eyes, so suddenly and so strongly that it dimmed his sight. He shut his mouth hard on the words which sprang into it, and held himself in silence until he had command of his anger.

"I'm hunting," said he, meeting Chadron's eye with meaning look.

"On foot, and waitin' for dark!" the cattleman sneered.

"I'm going on foot because the game I'm after sticks close to the ground. There's no need of naming that game to you--you know what it is."

Macdonald spoke with cutting severity. Chadron's dark face reddened under his steady eyes, and again the big rowels of his spurs slashed his horse's sides, making it bound and trample in threatening charge.

"I don't know anything about your d.a.m.n low business, but I'll tell you this much; if I ever run onto you ag'in down this way I'll do a little huntin' on my own accord."

"That would be squarer, and more to my liking, than hiring somebody else to do it for you, Mr. Chadron. Ride on--I don't want to stand here and quarrel with you."

"I'm goin' to clear you nesters out of there up the river"--Chadron waved his hand in the direction of which he spoke--"and put a stop to your rustlin' before another month rolls around. I've stood your fences up there on my land as long as I'm goin' to!"

"I've never had a chance to tell you before, Mr. Chadron"--Macdonald spoke as respectfully as his deep detestation of the cattleman would allow--"but if you've got any other charge to bring against me except that of homesteading, bring it in a court. I'm ready to face you on it, any day."

"I carry my court right here with me," said Chadron, patting his revolver.

"I deny its jurisdiction," Macdonald returned, drawing himself up, a flash of defiance in his clear eyes.

Chadron jerked his head in expression of lofty disdain.

"Go on! Git out of my sight!" he ordered.

"The road is open to you," Macdonald replied.

"I'm not goin' to turn my back on you till you're out of sight!"

Chadron bent his great owlish brows in a scowl, laid his hand on his revolver and whirled his horse in the direction that Macdonald was facing.

Macdonald did not answer. He turned from Chadron, something in his act of going that told the cattleman he was above so mean suspicion on his part. Nola shifted her horse to let him pa.s.s, her elbows tight at her sides, scorn in her lively eyes.

Again Macdonald's hand went to his hat in respectful salute, and again he saw that flash of anger spread in the young woman's cheeks. Her fury blazed in her eyes as she looked at him a moment, and a dull color mounted in his own face as he beheld her foolish and unjustified pride.

Macdonald would have pa.s.sed her then, but she spurred her horse upon him with sudden-breaking temper, forcing him to spring back quickly to the roadside to escape being trampled. Before he could collect himself in his astonishment, she struck him a whistling blow with her long-thonged quirt across the face.

"You dog!" she said, her clenched little white teeth showing in her parted lips.

Macdonald caught the bridle and pushed her horse back to its haunches, and she, in her reckless anger, struck him across the hand in sharp quick blows. Her conduct was comparable to nothing but that of an ill-bred child striking one whose situation, he has been told, is the warrant of his inferiority.

The struggle was over in a few seconds, and Macdonald stood free of the little fury, a red welt across his cheek, the back of his hand cut until the blood oozed through the skin in heavy black drops. Chadron had not moved a hand to interfere on either side. Only now that the foolish display of Nola's temper was done he rocked in his saddle and shook the empty landscape with his loud, coa.r.s.e laugh.

He patted his daughter on the shoulder, like a hunter rewarding a dog.

Macdonald walked away from them, the only humiliation that he felt for the incident being that which he suffered for her sake.

It was not so much that a woman had debased herself to the level of a savage, although that hurt him, too, but that her blows had been the expression of the contempt in which the lords of that country held him and his kind. Bullets did not matter so much, for a man could give them back as hot as they came. But there was no answer, as he could see it in that depressing hour, for such a feudal a.s.sertion of superiority as this.

It was to the work of breaking the hold of this hard-handed aristocracy which had risen from the gra.s.s roots in the day of its arrogant prosperity--a prosperity founded on usurpation of the rights of the weak, and upheld by murder--that he had set his soul. The need of hastening the reformation never had seemed greater to him than on that day, or more hopeless, he admitted in his heart.

For hour by hour the work ahead of him appeared to grow greater.

Little could be expected, judging by the experiences of the past few days, from those who suffered most. The day of extremest pressure in their poor affairs was being hastened by the cattlemen, as Chadron's threat had foretold. Would they when the time came to fight do so, or harness their lean teams and drive on into the west? That was the big question upon which the success or the failure of his work depended.

As he had come down from the hillside out of the sunshine and peace to meet shadow and violence, so his high spirits, hopes, and intentions seemed this bitter hour steeped in sudden gloom. In more ways than one that evening on the white river road, Alan Macdonald felt that he was afoot and alone.

CHAPTER IX

BUSINESS, NOT COMPANY

Saul Chadron was at breakfast next morning when Maggie the cook appeared in the dining-room and announced a visitor for the senor boss. Maggie's eyes were bulging, and she did a great deal of pantomime with her shapely shoulders to express her combined fright, disgust, and indignation.

Chadron looked up from his ham and eggs, with a considerable portion of the eggs on the blade of his knife, handle-down in one fist, his fork standing like a lightning rod in the other, and asked her who the man was and what he wanted at that hour of the day. Chadron was eating by lamplight, and alone, according to his thrifty custom of slipping up on the day before it was awake, as if in the hope of surprising it at a vast disadvantage to itself, after his way of handling men and things.

"_Es un extranjero_," replied Maggie, forgetting her English in her excitement.

"Talk white man, you old sow!" Chadron growled.

"He ees a es-trenger, I do not knowed to heem."

"Tell him to go to the barn and wait, I'll be out there in a minute."

"He will not a-goed. I told to heem--whee!" Maggie clamped her hands to her back as if somebody had caught her in a ticklish spot, as she squealed, and jumped into the room where the grand duke of the cattlemen's n.o.bility was taking his refreshment.

Chadron had returned to his meal after ordering her to send his visitor to the barn. He was swabbing his knife in the fold of a pancake when Maggie made that frightful, shivering exclamation and jumped aside out of the door. Now he looked up to reprove her, and met the smoky eyes of Mark Thorn peering in from the kitchen.