"You'd better go back--there's goin' to be a fight!" he said, a look of shocked concern in his big wild eyes.

"Do you see them? Where--"

"There they are!"--he clutched her arm, leaning and pointing--"and there's a bunch of fellers comin' to meet 'em that they don't see! I tell you there's goin' to be a fight!"

CHAPTER XIX

"I BEAT HIM TO IT"

The last dash of that long ride was only a whirlwind of emotions to Frances. It was a red streak. She did not know what became of the boy; she left him there as she lashed her horse past him on the last desperate stretch.

The two forces were not more than half a mile apart, the cavalry just mounting at the ruins of a homestead where she knew they had stopped for breakfast at the well. A little band of outriders was setting off, a scouting party under the lead of Chadron, she believed. Macdonald's men, their prisoners under guard between two long-strung lines of hors.e.m.e.n, were proceeding at a trot. Between the two forces the road made a long curve. Here it was bordered by brushwood that would hide a man on horseback.

When Frances broke through this screen which had hidden the cavalry from Macdonald, she found the cavalcade halted, for Macdonald had seen her coming down the hill. She told him in few words what her errand to him was, Tom La.s.siter and those who rode with him at the head of the column pressing around.

The question and mystification in Macdonald's face at her coming cleared with her brisk words. There was no wonder to him any more in her being there. It was like her to come, winging through the night straight to him, like a dove with a message. If it had been another woman to take up that brave and hardy task, then there would have been marvel in it. As it was, he held out his hand to her, silently, like one man to another in a pa.s.s where words alone would be weak and lame.

"I was looking for Chadron to come with help and attempt a rescue, and I was moving to forestall him, but we were late getting under way.

They"--waving his hand toward the prisoners--"held out until an hour ago."

"You must think, and think fast!" she said. "They're almost here!"

"Yes. I'm going ahead to meet them, and offer to turn these prisoners over to Major King. They'll have no excuse for firing on us then."

"No, no! some other way--think of some other way!"

He looked gravely into her anxious, pleading eyes. "Why, no matter, Frances. If they've come here to do that, they'll do it, but this way they'll have to do it in the open, not by a trick."

"I'll go with you," she said.

"I think perhaps--"

"I'll go!"

Macdonald turned to La.s.siter in a few hurried words. She pressed to his side as the two rode away alone to meet the troops, repeating as if she had been denied:

"I'll go!"

There was a dash of hoofs behind them, and a man who rode like a sack of bran came bouncing up, excitement over his large face.

"What's up, Macdonald--where're you off to?" he inquired.

Macdonald told him in a word, riding forward as he spoke. He introduced the stranger as a newspaper correspondent from Chicago, who had arrived at the homesteaders' camp the evening past.

"So they got troops, did they?" the newspaper man said, riding forward keenly. "Yes, they told me down in Cheyenne they'd put that trick through. Here they come!"

Macdonald spurred ahead, holding up his right hand in the Indian sign of peace. Major King was riding with Chadron at the head of the vanguard. They drew rein suddenly at sight of what appeared to be such a formidable force at Macdonald's back, for at that distance, and with the dimness of the scattering mist, it appeared as if several hundred hors.e.m.e.n were approaching.

Distrustful of Chadron, fearing that he might induce Major King to shoot Macdonald down as he sat there making overtures of peace, Frances rode forward and joined him, the correspondent coming jolting after her in his horn-riding way. After a brief parley among themselves Chadron and King, together with three or four officers, rode forward. One remained behind, and halted the column as it came around the brushwood screen at the turn of the road.

Major King greeted Frances as he rode up, scowling in high dignity.

Chadron could not cover his surprise so well as Major King at seeing her there, her horse in a sweat, her habit torn where the brambles had s.n.a.t.c.hed at her in her hard ride to get ahead of the troops. He gave her a cold good-morning, and sat in the att.i.tude of a man p.r.i.c.king up his ears as he leaned a little to peer into the ranks of the force ahead.

The homesteaders had come to a halt a hundred yards behind Macdonald; about the same distance behind Major King and his officers the cavalry had drawn up across the road. Major King sat in brief silence, as if waiting for Macdonald to begin. He looked the homesteader captain over with severe eyes.

"Well, sir?" said he.

"We were starting for Meander, Major King, to deliver to the sheriff fifty men whom we have taken in the commission of murder and arson,"

Macdonald replied, with dignity. "Up to a few minutes ago we had no information that martial law had superseded the civil in this troubled country, but since that is the case, we will gladly turn our prisoners over to you, with the earnest request that they be held, collectively and individually, to answer for the crimes they have committed here."

"Them's my men, King--they've got 'em there!" said Chadron, boiling over the brim.

"This expedition has come to the relief of certain men, attacked and surrounded in the discharge of their duty by a band of cattle thieves of which you are the acknowledged head," replied Major King.

"Then you have come on a mistaken errand, sir," Macdonald told him.

"I have come into this lawless country to restore order and insure the lives and safety of property of the people to whom it belongs."

"The evidence of these hired raiders' crimes lies all around you, Major King," Macdonald said. "These men swept in here in the employ of the cattle interests, burned these poor homes, and murdered such of the inhabitants as were unable to fly to safety in the hills ahead of them. We are appealing to the law; the cattlemen never have done that."

"Say, Mr. Soldier, let me tell you something"--the newspaper correspondent, to whom one man's dignity was as much as another's, kicked his horse forward--"these raiders that b.l.o.o.d.y-handed Chadron sent in here have murdered children and women, do you know that?"

"Who in the h.e.l.l are you?" Chadron demanded, bristling with rage, whirling his horse to face him.

"This is Chadron," Macdonald said, a little flash of humor in his eyes over Chadron's hearing the truth about himself from an unexpected source.

"Well, I'm glad I've run into you, Chadron; I've got a little list of questions to ask you," the correspondent told him, far from being either impressed or cowed. "Neel is my name, of the _Chicago Tribune_, I've--"

"You'd just as well keep your questions for another day--you'll send nothing out of here!" said Major King, sharply.

Neel looked across his nose at King with triumphant leer.

"I've sent out something, Mr. Soldier-man," said he; "it was on the wire by midnight last night, rushed to Meander by courier, and it's all over the country this morning. It's a story that'll give the other side of this situation up here to the war department, and it'll make this whole nation climb up on its hind legs and howl. Murder? Huh, murder's no name for it!"

Chadron was growling something below his breath into King's ear.

"Forty-three men and boys--look at them, there they are--rounded up fifty of the cutthroats the Drovers' a.s.sociation rushed up here from Cheyenne on a special train to wipe the homesteaders out," Neel continued, rising to considerable heat in the partisanship of his new light. "Five dollars a day was the hire of that gang, and five dollars bonus for every man, woman, or baby that they killed! Yes, I've got signed statements from them, Chadron, and I'd like to know what you've got to say, if anything?"

"Disarm that rabble," said Major King, speaking to a subordinate officer, "and take charge of the men they have been holding."

"Sir, I protest--" Macdonald began.

"I have no words to waste on you!" Major King cut him off shortly.

"I'd play a slow hand on that line, King, and a careful one, if I were you," advised Neel. "If you take these men's guns away from them they'll be at the mercy of Chadron's brigands. I tell you, man, I know the situation in this country!"