"Thank you," said King, in cold hauteur.

Chadron's eyes were lighting with the glitter of revenge. He sat grinding his bridle-reins in his gloved hand, as if he had the bones of the nesters in his palm at last.

"You will proceed, with the rescued party under guard, to Meander,"

continued Major King to his officer, speaking as if he had plans for his own employment aside from the expedition. "There, Mr. Chadron will furnish transportation to return them whence they came."

"I'll furnish--" began Chadron, in amazement at this unexpected turn.

"Transportation, sir," completed Major King, in his cold way.

"These men should be held to the civil authorities for trial in this county, and not set free," Macdonald protested, indignant over the order.

Major King ignored him. He was still looking at Chadron, who was almost choking on his rage.

"h.e.l.l! Do you mean to tell me the whole d.a.m.n thing's goin' to fizzle out this way, King? I want something done, I tell you--I want something done! I didn't bring you up here--"

"Certainly not, sir!" snapped King.

"My orders to you--" Chadron flared.

"It happens that I am not marching under your orders at--"

"The h.e.l.l you ain't!" Chadron exploded.

"It's an outrage on humanity to turn those scoundrels loose, Major King!" Neel said. "Why, I've got signed statements, I tell you--"

"Remove this man to the rear!" Major King addressed a lieutenant, who communicated the order to the next lowest in rank immediately at hand, who pa.s.sed it on to two troopers, who came forward briskly and rode the protesting correspondent off between them.

Other troopers were collecting the arms of the homesteaders, a proceeding which Macdonald witnessed with a sick heart. Frances, sitting her horse in silence through all that had pa.s.sed, gave him what comfort and hope she could express with her eyes.

"Detail a patrol of twenty men," Major King continued his instructions to his officer, "to keep the roads and disarm all individuals and bands encountered."

"That don't apply to my men!" declared Chadron, positively. In his face there was a dark threat of disaster for Major King's future hopes of advancement.

"It applies to everybody as they come," said King. "Troops have come in here to restore order, and order will be restored."

Chadron was gaping in amazement. That feeling in him seemed to smother every other, even his hot rage against King for this sudden shifting of their plans and complete overthrow of the cattlemen's expectations of the troops. The one little comfort that he was to get out of the expedition was that of seeing his raiders taken out of Macdonald's hands and marched off to be set free.

Macdonald felt that he understood the change in King. The major had come there full of the intention of doing Chadron's will; he had not a doubt of that. But murder, even with the faint color of excuse that they would have contrived to give it, could not be done in the eyes of such a witness as Frances Landcraft. Subserviency, a bending of dignity even, could not be stooped to before one who had been schooled to hold a soldier's honor his most precious endowment.

Major King had shown a hand of half-fairness in treating both sides alike. That much was to his credit, at the worst. But he had not done it because he was a high-souled and honorable man. His eyes betrayed him in that, no matter how stern he tried to make them. The coming of that fair outrider in the night had turned aside a great tragedy, and saved Major King partly to himself, at least, and perhaps wholly to his career.

Macdonald tried to tell her in one long and earnest look all this. She nodded, seeming to understand.

"You've double-crossed me, King," Chadron accused, in the flat voice of a man throwing down his hand. "I brought you up here to throw these nesters off of our land."

"The civil courts must decide the ownership of that," returned King, sourly. "Disarm that man!" He indicated Macdonald, and turned his horse as if to ride back and join his command.

The lieutenant appeared to feel that it would be no lowering of his dignity to touch the weapons of a man such as Macdonald's bearing that morning had shown him to be. He approached with a smile half apologetic. Chadron was sitting by on his horse watching the proceeding keenly.

"Pardon me," said the officer, reaching out to receive Macdonald's guns.

A swift change swept over Macdonald's face, a flush dyeing it to his ears. He sat motionless a little while, as if debating the question, the young officer's hand still outstretched. Macdonald dropped his hand, quickly, as if moved to shorten the humiliation, to the buckle of his belt, and opened it with deft jerk. At that moment Chadron, ten feet away, slung a revolver from his side and fired.

Macdonald rocked in his saddle as Frances leaped to the ground and ran to his side. He wilted forward, his hat falling, and crumpled into her arms. The lieutenant relieved her of her b.l.o.o.d.y burden, and eased Macdonald to the ground.

Major King came riding back. At his sharp command troopers surrounded Chadron, who sat with his weapon still poised, like one gazing at the mark at which he had fired, the smoke of his shot around him.

"In a second he'd 'a' got me! but I beat him to it, by G.o.d! I beat him to it!" he said.

Macdonald's belt had slipped free of his body. With its burden of cartridges and its two long pistols it lay at Frances' feet. She stooped, a little sound in her throat between a sob and a cry, jerked one of the guns out, wheeled upon Chadron and fired. The lieutenant struck up her arm in time to save the cattleman's life. The blow sent the pistol whirling out of her hand.

"They will go off that way, sometimes," said the young officer, with apology in his soft voice.

The soldiers closed around Chadron and hurried him away. A moment Major King sat looking at Macdonald, whose blood was wasting in the roadside dust from a wound in his chest. Then he flashed a look into Frances' face that had a sneer of triumph in it, wheeled his horse and galloped away.

In a moment the lieutenant was summoned, leaving Frances alone between the two forces with Macdonald. She did not know whether he was dead.

She dropped to her knees in the dust and began to tear frantically at his shirt to come to the wound. Tom La.s.siter came hurrying up with others, denouncing the treacherous shot, swearing vengeance on the cowardly head that had conceived so murderous a thing.

La.s.siter said that he was not dead, and set to work to stem the blood.

It seemed to Frances that the world had fallen away from her, leaving her alone. She stood aside a little, her chin up in her old imperious way, her eyes on the far hills where the tender sunlight was just striking among the white-limbed aspen trees. But her heart was bent down to the darkness of despair.

She asked no questions of the men who were working so earnestly after their crude way to check that precious stream; she stood in the activity of pa.s.sing troopers and escorted raiders insensible of any movement or sound in all the world around her. Only when Tom La.s.siter stood from his ministrations and looked at her with understanding in his old weary eyes she turned her face back again, slowly resolute, to see if he had died.

Her throat was dry. It took an effort to bring a sound from it, and then it was strained and wavering.

"Is he--dead?"

"No, miss, he ain't dead," Tom answered. But there was such a shadow of sorrow and pain in his eyes that tears gushed into her own.

"Will--will--"

Tom shook his head. "The Lord that give him alone can answer that," he said, a feeling sadness in his voice.

The troops had moved on, save the detail singled for police duty.

These were tightening girths and tr.i.m.m.i.n.g for the road again a little way from the spot where Macdonald lay. The lieutenant returned hastily.

"Miss Landcraft, I am ordered to convey you to Alamito Ranch--under guard," said he.

Banjo Gibson, held to be harmless and insignificant by Major King, had been set free. Now he came up, leading his horse, shocked to the deepest fibers of his sensitive soul by the cowardly deed that Saul Chadron had done.

"It went clean through him!" he said, rising from his inspection of Macdonald's wound. And then, moved by the pain in Frances' tearless eyes, he enlarged upon the advantages of that from a surgical view.

"The beauty of a hole in a man's chest like that is that it lets the pizen dreen off," he told her. "It wouldn't surprise me none to see Mac up and around inside of a couple of weeks, for he's as hard as old hick'ry."

"Well, I'm not going to Alamito Ranch and leave him out here to die of neglect, orders or no orders!" said she to the lieutenant.

The young officer's face colored; he plucked at his new mustache in embarra.s.sment. Perhaps the prospect of carrying a handsome and dignified young lady in his arms for a matter of twenty-odd miles was not as alluring to him as it might have been to another, for he was a slight young man, only a little while out of West Point. But orders were orders, and he gave Frances to understand that in diplomatic and polite phrasing.