No matter for the justice of the homesteaders' cause, and the sincerity of their leader, neither of which she doubted or questioned, the weight of numbers and resources would be on the side of the cattlemen. It could result only in the homesteaders being driven from their insecure holdings after the sacrifice of many lives. If she could see Macdonald, and appeal to him to put down this foolish, even though well-intended strife, something might result.

It was an inconsequential turmoil, it seemed to her, there in that sequestered land, for a man like Alan Macdonald to squander his life upon. If he stood against the forces which Chadron had gone to summon, he would be slain, and the abundant promise of his life wasted like water on the sand.

"I'll go with you, Nola," she said, rising from the table in quick decision.

CHAPTER XII

"THE RUSTLERS!"

"I've stood up for that man, and I've stood by him," said Banjo Gibson, "but when a man shoots a friend of my friend he ain't no friend of mine. I'm done with him; I won't never set a boot-heel inside of his door ag'in."

Banjo was in Mrs. Chadron's south sitting-room, with its friendly fireplace and homely things, including Mrs. Chadron and her apparently interminable sock. Only now it was a gray sock, designed not for the mighty foot of Saul, but for Chance Dalton, lying on his back in the bunkhouse in a fever growing out of the handling that he had gone through at Macdonald's place.

Banjo had arrived at the ranch the previous evening. He was sitting now with his fiddle on his knee, having gone through the repertory most favored by his hostess, with the exception of "Silver Threads."

That was an afternoon melody, Banjo maintained, and one would have strained his friendship and shaken his respect if he had insisted upon the musician putting bow to it in the morning hours.

"Yes," sighed Mrs. Chadron, "it was bad enough when he just shot cowboys, but when it come to Chance we felt real grieved. Chance he ain't much to look at, but he's worth his weight in gold on the ranch."

"Busted his right arm all to pieces, they tell me?"

"Right here." Mrs. Chadron marked across her wrist with her knitting needle, and shook her head in heavy sadness.

"That'll kind of spile him, won't it?"

"Well, Saul says it won't make so much difference about him not havin'

the use of his hand on that side if it don't break his nerve. A man loses confidence in himself, Saul says, most always when he loses the hand or arm he's slung his gun with all his life. He takes the notion that everybody's quicker'n he is, and just kind of slinges back and drops out of the game."

"Do you expect Saul he'll come back here with them soldiers he went after?"

"I expect he'll more'n likely order 'em right up the river to clear them rustlers out before he stops or anything," she replied, in high confidence.

"The gall of them low-down brand-burners standin' up to fight a man on his own land!" Banjo's indignation could not have been more pointed if he had been a lord of many herds himself.

"There comes them blessed girls!" reported Mrs. Chadron from her station near the window. Banjo crossed over to see, his fiddle held to his bosom like an infant. Nola and Frances were nearing the gate.

"That colonel girl she's a up-setter, ain't she?" Banjo admired.

"She's as sweet as locus' blooms," Mrs. Chadron declared, unstintingly.

"But she's kind of distant; nothing friendly and warm-hearted like your little Nola, mom."

"She's a little cool to strangers, but when she knows a body she comes out."

Banjo nodded, drawing little whispers of melody from his fiddle-strings by fingering them against the neck.

"I noticed when she smiles she seems to change," he said. "It's like puttin' bow to the strings. A fiddle's a glum kind of a thing till you wake it up; she's that way, I reckon."

"Well, git ready for dinner--or lunch, as Nola calls it--they'll be starved by this time, ridin' all the way from the post in this chilly wind. I'm mighty afraid we're goin' to have some weather before long."

"Can't put it off much longer," Banjo agreed, thinking of the hardship of being caught out in one of those sweeping blizzards, when the sudden cold grew so sharp that a man's banjo strings broke in the tense contraction. That had happened to him more than once, and it only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his face and soap his hair.

They pa.s.sed a very pleasant afternoon at the ranchhouse, in spite of Mrs. Chadron's uneasiness on account of their defenseless state. At that season Chadron and his neighbors could not draw very heavily on their scattered forces following the divided herds spread out over the vast territory for the winter grazing.

The twenty men gathered in a hurry-call by Chadron to avenge the defeat of Chance Dalton, who had in their turn been met and unexpectedly repulsed by the homesteaders, as Chadron had related in his own way to Colonel Landcraft, were lying in camp several miles up the river. That is, all that were left of them fit for duty after the fight. A good many of them were limping, and would limp for many a day.

They were waiting the arrival of the troops, which they expected with the same confidence Mrs. Chadron had held before Nola brought her an explanation that covered the confusion of refusal.

Neither of the young women knew of the tiff between the colonel and Chadron, for the colonel was a man who kept his family apart from his business. Chadron had not seen fit to uncover his humiliation to his daughter, but had told her that he was acting on the advice of Colonel Landcraft in sending to his friends in Cheyenne for men to put down the uprising of rustlers himself.

So there were comfortable enough relations between them all at the ranch as the day bent to evening and the red sunset changed to gray.

Banjo played for them, as he had done that other afternoon, and sang his sentimental songs in voice that quavered in the feeling pa.s.sages.

Chadron had not left anybody to guard the house, because he knew very well that Macdonald considered nothing beyond defense, and that he would as quickly burn his own mother's roof above her head as he would set torch to that home by the riverside.

"Sing us that dreamy one, Banjo," Nola requested, "the one that begins 'Come sit by my side little--' you know the one I mean."

A sentimental tenderness came into Banjo's face. He turned his head so that he could look out of the window into the thickening landscape beyond the corral gate, gray and mysterious and unfriendly now as a twilight sea. Nola touched Frances' arm to prime her for the treat.

"Watch his face," she whispered, smiling behind her hand.

Banjo struck the chords of his accompaniment; the sentimental cast of his face deepened, until it seemed that he was about to come to tears.

He sang:

Come sit by my side litt-ul dau-ling, And lay your brown head on my breast, Whilse the angels of twilight o-round us Are singing the flow-ohs to rest.

Banjo must have loved many ladies in many lands, for that is the gift and the privilege of the troubadour. Now he seemed calling up their vanished faces out of the twilight as he sang his little song. What feeling he threw into the chorus, what shaking of the voice, what soft sinking away of the last notes, the whang of the banjo softened by palm across the strings!

The chorus:

O, what can be sweet-o than dreaming Tho dream that is on us tonight!

Pre-haps do you know litt-ul dau-ling, Tho future lies hidded from sight.

There was a great deal more of that song, which really was not so bad, the way Banjo sang it, for he exalted it on the best qualities that lived in his harmless breast; not so bad that way, indeed, as it looks in print. Frances could not see where the joke at the little musician's expense came in, although Nola was laughing behind his unsuspecting back as the last notes died.

Mrs. Chadron wiped her eyes. "I think it's the sweetest song that ever was sung!" she said, and meant it, every word.

Banjo said nothing at all, but put away his instrument with reverent hands, as if no sound was worthy to come out of it after that sweet agony of love.

Mrs. Chadron got up, in her large, bustling, hospitable way, sentimentally satisfied, and withal grossly hungry.

"Supper'll be about ready now, children," she said, putting her sock away in its basket, "and while you two are primpin' I'll run down to the bunkhouse and take some chicken broth to Chance that Maggie made him."

"Oh, poor old Chance!" Nola pitied, "I've been sitting here enjoying myself and forgetting all about him. I'll take it down to him, mother--Banjo he'll come with me."

Banjo was alert on the proposal, and keen to go. He brought Nola's coat at her mother's suggestion, for the evening had a feeling of frost in it, and attended her to the kitchen after the chicken broth as gallantly as if he wore a sword.