There was a pallor in Macdonald's weathered face, as if somebody near and dear to himself was in extreme peril.

"She may never see home again," he said. Then quickly: "Which way did he go, do you know?"

She told him what she knew, not omitting the lost horseshoe. Tom La.s.siter bent in his saddle with eagerness as she mentioned that particular, and ran his eyes over the road like one reading the pages of a book.

"There!" he said, pointing, "I've been seein' it all the way down, Alan. He was headin' for the hills."

Frances could not see the print of the shoeless hoof, nor any peculiarity among the scores of tracks that would tell her of Nola's abductor having ridden that far along the road. She flushed as the thought came to her that this was a trick to throw her attention from themselves and the blame upon some fict.i.tious person, when they knew whose hands were guilty all the time. The men were leaning in their saddles, riding slowly back on their trail, talking in low voices and sharp exclamations among themselves. She spurred hotly after them.

"Mr. Chadron hasn't come home yet," she said, addressing Macdonald, who sat straight in his saddle to hear, "but they expect him any hour.

If you'll say how much you're going to demand, and where you want it paid, I'll carry the word to him. It might hurry matters, and save her mother's life."

"I'm sorry you repeated that," said Macdonald, touching his hat in what he plainly meant a farewell salute. He turned from her and drew Tom La.s.siter aside. In a moment he was riding back again the way that he had come.

Frances looked at the unaccountable proceeding with the eyes of doubt and suspicion. She did not believe any of them, and had no faith in their mysterious trackings and whisperings aside, and mad gallopings off to hidden ends. As for Tom La.s.siter and his companions, they ranged themselves preparatory to continuing their journey.

"If you're goin' our way, colonel's daughter," said Tom, gathering up his bridle-reins, "we'll be proud to ride along with you."

Frances was looking at the dust-cloud that rose behind Macdonald. He was no longer in sight.

"Where has he gone?" she inquired, her suspicion growing every moment.

"He's gone to find that cowman's child, young lady, and take her home to her mother," Tom replied, with dignity. He rode on. She followed, presently gaining his side.

"Is there such a man as Mark Thorn?" she asked after a little, looking across at La.s.siter with sly innuendo.

"No, there ain't no man by that name, but there's a devil in the shape of a human man called that," he answered.

"Is he--what does he do?" She reined a little nearer to La.s.siter, feeling that there was little harm in him apart from the directing hand.

"He hires out to kill off folks that's in the way of the cattlemen at so much a head, miss; like some hires out to kill off wolves. The Drovers' a.s.sociation hires him, and sees that he gits out of jail if anybody ever puts him in, and fixes it up so he walks safe with the blood of no knowin' how many innocent people on his hands. That's what Mark Thorn does, ma'am. Chadron brought him in here a couple of weeks ago to do some killin' off amongst us homesteaders so the rest 'd take a scare and move out. He give that old devil a list of twenty men he wanted shot, and Alan Macdonald's got that paper. His own name's at the top of it, too."

"Oh!" said she, catching her breath sharply, as if in pain. Her face was white and cold. "Did he--did he--kill anybody here?"

"He killed my little boy; he shot him down before his mother's eyes!"

Tom La.s.siter's guttered neck was agitated; the muscles of his bony jaw knotted as he clamped his teeth and looked straight along the road ahead of him.

"Your little boy! Oh, what a coward he must be!"

"He was a little tow-headed feller, and he had his mother's eyes, as blue as robins' eggs," said Tom, his reminiscent sorrow so poignant that tears sprung to her eyes in sympathy and plashed down unheeded and unchecked. "He'd 'a' been fifteen in November. Talkin' about fightin', ma'am, that's the way some people fights."

"I'm sorry I said that, Mr. La.s.siter," she confessed, hanging her head like a corrected child.

"He can't hear you now," said Tom.

They rode on a little way. Tom told her of the other outrages for which Thorn was accountable in that settlement. She was amazed as deeply as she was shocked to hear of this, for if any word of it had come to the post, it had been kept from her. Neither was it ever mentioned in Chadron's home.

"No," said Tom, when she mentioned that, "it ain't the kind of news the cattlemen spreads around. But if we shoot one of them in defendin'

our own, the news runs like a pe-rairie fire. They call us rustlers, and come ridin' up to swipe us out. Well, they's goin' to be a change."

"But if Chadron brought that terrible man in here, why should the horrible creature turn against him?" she asked, doubt and suspicion grasping the seeming fault in La.s.siter's tale.

"Chadron refused to make settlement with him for the killin' he done because he didn't git Macdonald. Thorn told Alan that with his own b.l.o.o.d.y tongue."

La.s.siter retailed to her eager ears the story of Macdonald's capture of Thorn, and his fight with Chadron's men when they came to set the old slayer free, as La.s.siter supposed.

"They turned him loose," said he, "and you know now what I meant when I said Chadron's chickens has come home to roost."

"Yes, I know now." She turned, and looked back. Remorse was heavy on her for the injustice she had done Macdonald that day, and shame for her sharp words bowed her head as she rode at old Tom La.s.siter's hand.

"He'll run the old devil down ag'in," Tom spoke confidently, as of a thing that admitted no dispute, "and take that young woman home if he finds her livin'. Many thanks he'll git for it from them and her. Like as not she'll bite the hand that saves her, for she's a cub of the old bear. Well, let me tell you, colonel's daughter, if she was to live a thousand years, and pray all her life, she wouldn't no more than be worthy at the end to wash that man's feet with her tears and dry 'em on her hair, like that poor soul you've read about in the Book."

Frances slowed her horse as if overcome by a sudden indecision, and turned in her saddle to look back again. Again she had let him go away from her misunderstood, his high pride hurt, his independent heart too lofty to bend down to the mean adjustment to be reached through argument or explanation. One must accept Alan Macdonald for what his face proclaimed him to be. She knew that now. He was not of the mean-spirited who walk among men making apology for their lives.

"He's gone on," said La.s.siter, slowing his horse to her pace.

"I'm afraid I was hasty and unjust," she confessed, struggling to hold back her tears.

"Yes, you was," said La.s.siter, frankly, "but everybody on the outside is unjust to all of us up here. We're kind of outcasts because we fence the land and plow it. But I want to tell you, Macdonald's a man amongst men, ma'am. He's fed the poor and lifted up the afflicted, and he's watched with us beside our sick and prayed with us over our dead.

We know him, no matter what folks on the outside say. Well, we'll have to spur up a little, ma'am, for we're in a hurry to git back."

They approached the point where the road to the post branched.

"There's goin' to be fightin' over here if Chadron tries to drive us out," Tom said, "and we know he's sent for men to come in and help him try it. We don't want to fight, but men that won't fight for their homes ain't the kind you'd like to ride along the road with, ma'am."

"Maybe the trouble can be settled some other way," she suggested, thinking again of the hope that she had brought with her to the ranch the day before.

"When we bring the law in here, and elect officers to see it put in force for every man alike, then this trouble it'll come to an end.

Well, if you ever feel like we deserve a good word, colonel's daughter, we'd be proud to have you say it, for the feller that stands up for the law and the Lord and his home agin the cattlemen in this land, ma'am, he's got a hard row to hoe. Yes, we'll count any good words you might say for us as so much gold. 'And the Levite, thou shalt not forsake him, for he hath no part nor inheritance with thee.'"

Tom's voice was slow and solemn when he quoted that Mosaic injunction.

The appeal of the disinherited was in it, and the pain of lost years.

It touched her like a sorrow of her own. Tears were on her cheeks again as she parted from him, giving him her hand in token of trust and faith, and rode on toward the ranchhouse by the river.

CHAPTER XIV

WHEN FRIENDS PART

Banjo had returned, with fever in his wound. Mrs. Chadron was putting horse liniment on it when Frances entered the sitting-room where the news of the tragedy had visited them the night past.

"I didn't go to the post--I saw some men in the road and turned back,"

Frances told them, sinking down wearily in a chair before the fire.