"Sir, I can sympathize with you in your unfortunate business, but if I had millions of my own at stake under similar conditions I would be powerless to employ, on my own initiative, the forces of the United States army to drive those brigands away."

Chadron looked at him hard, his hat on his head, where it had remained all the time, his eyes staring in unspeakable surprise.

"The h.e.l.l you would!" said he.

"You and your neighbors surely can raise enough men to crush the scoundrels, and hang their leader to a limb," the colonel suggested.

"Call out your men, Chadron, and ride against him. I never took you for a man to squeal for help in a little affair like this."

"He's got as many as a hundred men organized, maybe twice that"--Chadron multiplied on the basis of damage that his men had suffered--"and my men tell me he's drillin' 'em like soldiers."

"I'm not surprised to hear that," nodded the colonel; "that man Macdonald's got it in him to do that, and fight like the devil, too."

"A gang of 'em killed three of my men a couple of days ago when I sent 'em up there to his shack to investigate a little matter, and Macdonald shot my foreman up so bad I guess he'll die. I tell you, man, it's a case for troopers!"

"What has the sheriff and the rest of you done to restore order?"

"I took twenty of my men up there yisterday, and a bunch of Sam Hatcher's from acrosst the river was to join us and smoke that wolf out of his hole and hang his d.a.m.n hide on his cussed bob-wire fence.

But h.e.l.l! they was ditched in around that shack of his'n, I tell you, gentlemen, and he peppered us so hard we had to streak out of there. I left two of my men, and Hatcher's crew couldn't come over to help us, for them d.a.m.n rustlers had breastworks throwed up over there and drove 'em away from the river. They've got us shut out from the only ford in thirty miles."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned!" said the colonel, warming at this warlike news.

"Macdonald's had the gall to send me notice to keep out of that country up the river, and to run my cattle out of there, and it's my own land, by G.o.d! I've been grazin' it for eighteen years!"

"It looks like a serious situation," the colonel admitted.

"Serious!" There was scorn for the word and its weakness in Chadron's stress. "It's h.e.l.l, I tell you, when a man can't set foot on his own land!"

"Are they all rustlers up there in the settlement? are there no honest homesteaders among them who would combine with you against this wild man and his unlawful followers?" the colonel wanted to know.

"Not a man amongst 'em that ain't cut the brand out of a hide,"

Chadron declared. "They've been nestin' up there under that man Macdonald for the last two years, and he's the brains of the pack. He gits his rake-off out of all they run off and sell. Me and the other cattlemen we've been feedin' and supportin' 'em till the drain's gittin' more'n we can stand. We've got to put 'em out, like a fire, or be eat up. We've got to hit 'em, and hit 'em hard."

"It would seem so," the colonel agreed.

"It's a state of war, I tell you, colonel; you're free to use your troops in a state of war, ain't you? Twenty-five troopers, with a little small cannon"--Chadron made ill.u.s.tration of the caliber that he considered adequate for the business with his hands--"to knock 'em out of their ditches so we could pick 'em off as they scatter, would be enough; we can handle the rest."

"If there is anything that I can do for you in my private capacity, I am at your command," offered Colonel Landcraft, with official emptiness, "but I regret that I am powerless to grant your request for troops. I couldn't lift a finger in a matter like this without a department order; you ought to understand that, Chadron."

"Oh, if that's all that's bitin' you, go ahead--I'll take care of the department," Chadron told him, with the relieved manner of one who had seen a light.

"Sir!"

If Chadron had proposed treason the colonel could not have compressed more censure into that word.

"That's all right," Chadron a.s.sured him, comfortably; "I've got two senators and five congressmen back there in Washington that jigger when I jerk the gee-string. You can cut loose and come into this thing with a free hand, and go the limit, the department be d.a.m.ned if they don't like it!"

Colonel Landcraft's face was flaming angrily. He snapped his dry old eyelids like flints over the steel of his eyes, and stood as straight as the human body could be drawn, one hand on his sword hilt, the other pointing a trembling finger at Chadron's face.

"You cattlemen run this state, and one or two others here in the Northwest, I'm aware of that, Chadron. But there's one thing that you don't run, and that's the United States army! I don't care a d.a.m.n how many congressmen dance to your tune, you're not big enough to move even one trooper out of my barracks, sir! That's all I've got to say to you."

Chadron stood a little while, glowering at the colonel. It enraged him to be blocked in that manner by a small and inconsequential man. This he felt Colonel Landcraft to be, measured against his own strength and importance in that country. Himself and the other two big cattlemen in that section of the state lorded it over an area greater than two or three of the old states where the slipping heritage of individual liberty was born. Now here was a colonel in his way; one little old gray colonel!

"All right," Chadron said at length, charging his words with what he doubtless meant to be a significant foreboding, measuring Colonel Landcraft with contemptuous eye. "I can call out an army of my own. I came to you because we pay you fellers to do what I'm askin' of you, and because I thought it'd save me time. That's all."

"You came to me because you have magnified your importance in this country until you believe you're the entire nation," the colonel replied, very hot and red.

Chadron made no answer to that. He turned toward the military door, but Colonel Landcraft would not permit his unsanctified feet, great as they were and free to come and go as they liked in other places, to pa.s.s that way. He frowned at Major King, who had stood by in silence all the time, like a good soldier, his eyes straight ahead. Major King touched Chadron's arm.

"This way, sir, if you please," he said.

Chadron started out, wrathfully and noisily. Half-way to the door he turned, his dark face sneering in contemptuous scorn.

"Yes, you're one h.e.l.l of a colonel!" he said.

Major King was holding the door open; Chadron swung his big body around to face it, and pa.s.sed out. Major King saluted his superior officer and followed the cattleman into the hall, closing the sacred door behind him on the wrathful little old soldier standing beside his desk. King extended his hand, sympathy in gesture and look.

"If I was in command of this post, sir, you'd never have to ask twice for troops," he said.

Chadron's sudden interest seemed to give him the movement of a little start. His grip on the young officer's hand tightened as he bent a searching look into his eyes.

"King, I believe you!" he said.

Nola came pattering down the stairs. Chadron stood with open arms, and swallowed her in them as she leaped from the bottom tread. Major King did not wait to see her emerge again, rosy and lip-tempting. There was unfinished business within the colonel's room.

A few minutes later Nola, excited to her finger-ends, was retailing the story of the rustlers' uprising to Frances.

"Mother's all worked up over it; she's afraid they'll burn us out and murder us, but of course we'd clean them up before they'd ever get _that_ far down the river."

"It looks to me like a very serious situation for everybody concerned," Frances said. "If your father brings in the men that you say he's gone to Meander to telegraph for, there's going to be a lot of killing done on both sides."

"Father says he's going to clean them out for good this time--they've cost us thousands of dollars in the past three years. Oh, you can't understand what a low-down bunch of scrubs those rustlers are!"

"Maybe not," Frances said, giving it up with a little sigh.

"I've got to go back to mother this morning, right away, but that little fuss up the river doesn't need to keep you from going home with me as you promised, Frances."

"I shouldn't mind, but I don't believe father will want me to go out into your wild country. I really want to go--I want to look around in your garden for a glove that I lost there on the night of the ball."

"Oh, why didn't you tell me?" Nola's face seemed to clear of something, a shadow of perplexity, it seemed, that Frances had seen in it from time to time since her coming there. She looked frankly and reprovingly at Frances.

"I didn't miss it until I was leaving, and I didn't want to delay the rest of them to look for it. It really doesn't matter."

"It's a wonder mother didn't find it; she's always prowling around among the flowers," said Nola, her eyes fixed in abstracted stare, as if she was thinking deeply of something apart from what her words expressed.

What she was considering, indeed, was that her little scheme of alienation had failed. Major King, she told herself, had not returned the glove to Frances. For all his lightness in the matter, perhaps he cared deeply for Frances, and would be more difficult to wean than she had thought. It would have to be begun anew. That Frances was ignorant of her treachery, as she now fully believed, made it easier. So the little lady told herself, surveying the situation in her quick brain, and deceiving herself completely, as many a shrewder schemer than she, when self-entangled in the devious plottings of this life.

On the other hand there sat Frances across the table--they were breakfasting alone, Mrs. Landcraft being a strict militarist, and always serving the colonel's coffee with her own hand--throwing up a framework of speculation on her own account. Perhaps if she should go to the ranch she might be in some manner instrumental in bringing this needless warfare to a pacific end. Intervention at the right time, in the proper quarter, might accomplish more than strife and bloodshed could bring out of that one-sided war.