The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

“Now,” said the girl drily, “I know why you and my father haven’t got on. Your opinions wouldn’t please him, Larry.”

“No,” said the man, with a trace of embarrassment, “I don’t think they would; and that’s just why we’ve got to convince him and the others that what we want to do is for the good of the country.”

Hetty Torrance laughed. “It’s going to be hard. No man wants to believe anything is good when he sees it will take quite a pile of dollars out of his pocket.”

The man said nothing, and Hetty fancied he was not desirous of following up the topic, while as they sat silent a big locomotive backed another great train of emigrant cars in. Then the tramp of feet commenced again, and once more a frowsy host of outcasts from the overcrowded lands poured into the depot. Wagons piled with baggage had preceded them, but many dragged their pitiful belongings along with them, and the murmur of their alien voices rang through the bustle of the station. Hetty Torrance was not unduly fanciful, but those footsteps caused her, as she afterwards remembered, a vague concern. She believed, as her father did, that America was made for the Americans; but it was evident that in a few more years every unit of those incoming legions would be a citizen of the Republic, with rights equal to those enjoyed by Torrance of Cedar Range. She had seen that as yet the constitution gave no man more than he could by his own hand obtain; but it seemed not unlikely that some, at least, of those dejected, unkempt men had struck for the rights of humanity that were denied them in the older lands with dynamite and rifle.

Then, as the first long train of grimy cars rolled out close packed with their frowsy human freight, a train of another kind came in, and two young women in light dresses swung themselves down from the platform of a car that was sumptuous with polished woods and gilding. Miss Torrance rose as she saw them, and touched her companion.

“Come along, Larry, and I’ll show you two of the nicest girls you ever met,” she said.

The man laughed. “They would have been nicer if they hadn’t come quite so soon,” he said.

He followed his companion and was duly presented to Miss Flora and Miss Caroline Schuyler. “Larry Grant of Fremont Ranch,” said Miss Torrance. “Larry is a great friend of mine.”

The Misses Schuyler were pretty. Carolina, the younger, pale, blue-eyed, fair-haired and vivacious; her sister equally blonde, but a trifle quieter. Although they were gracious to him, Grant fancied that one flashed a questioning glance at the other when there was a halt in the conversation. Then, as if by tacit agreement, they left him alone a moment with their companion, and Hetty Torrance smiled as she held out her hand.

“I can’t keep them waiting, but you’ll come and see me,” she said.

“I am going home to-morrow,” said the man. “When are you coming, Hetty?”

The girl smiled curiously, and there was a trace of wistfulness in her eyes. “I don’t quite know. Just now I fancy I may not come at all, but you will not forget me, Larry.”

The man looked at her very gravely, and Hetty Torrance appeared to find something disconcerting in his gaze, for she turned her head away.

“No,” he said, and there was a little tremor in his voice, “I don’t think I shall forget you. Well, if ever you grow tired of the cities you will remember the lonely folks who are longing to have you home again back there on the prairie.”

Hetty Torrance felt her fingers quiver under his grasp, but the next moment he had turned away, and her companions noticed there was a faint pink tinge in her cheeks when she rejoined them. But being wise young women, they restrained their natural inquisitiveness, and asked no questions then.

In the meanwhile Grant, who watched them until the last glimpse of their light dresses was lost in the crowd, stood beside the second emigrant train vacantly glancing at the aliens who thronged about it. His bronzed face was a trifle weary, and his lips were set, but at last he straightened his shoulders with a little resolute movement and turned away.

“I have my work,” he said, “and it’s going to be quite enough for me.”

II

HETTY TAKES HEED

It was evening when Hetty Torrance sat alone in a room of Mrs. Schuyler’s house at Hastings-on-the-Hudson. The room was pretty, though its adornment was garish and somewhat miscellaneous, consisting as it did of the trophies of Miss Schuyler’s European tour. A Parisian clock, rich in gilded scroll work to the verge of barbarity, contrasted with the artistic severity of one or two good Italian marbles, while these in turn stood quaintly upon choice examples of time-mellowed English cabinet-work. There was taste in them all, but they suffered from the juxtaposition, which, however, was somewhat characteristic of the country. Still, Miss Schuyler had not spoiled the splendid parquetrie floor of American timber.

The windows were open wide, and when a little breeze from the darkening river came up across the lawn, Hetty languidly raised her head. The coolness was grateful, the silken cushions she reclined amidst luxurious, but the girl’s eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed with humanity that was much less cared for than her father’s cattle.

She had often before seen the dusty cars roll into a wayside depot to wait until the luxurious limited passed, and the grimy faces at the windows, pale and pinched, cunning, or coarsely brutal, after the fashion of their kind, had roused no more than a passing pity. It was, however, different that night, for Grant’s words had roused her to thought, and she wondered with a vague apprehension whether the tramp of weary feet she had listened to would once more break in upon her sheltered life. Larry had foreseen changes, and he was usually right. Then she brushed these fancies into the background, for she had still a decision to make. Captain Cheyne would shortly arrive, and she knew what he came to ask. He was also a personable man, and, so far as the Schuylers knew, without reproach, while Hetty had seen a good deal of him during the past twelve months. She admitted a liking for him, but now that the time had come to decide, she was not certain that she would care to spend her life with him. As a companion, he left nothing to be desired, but, as had happened already with another man with whom Miss Torrance had been pleased, that position did not appear to content him; and she had misgivings about contracting a more permanent bond. It was almost a relief when Miss Schuyler came in.

“Stand up, Hetty. I want to look at you,” she said.

Miss Torrance obeyed and stood before her, girlishly slender in her long dress, though there was an indefinite suggestion of imperiousness in her dark eyes.

“Will I pass?” she asked.

Flora Schuyler surveyed her critically and then laughed. “Yes,” she said. “You’re pretty enough to please anybody, and there’s a style about you that makes it quite plain you were of some importance out there on the prairie. Now you can sit down again, because I want to talk to you. Who’s Larry Grant?”

“Tell me what you think of him.”

Miss Schuyler pursed her lips reflectively. “Well,” she said, “he’s not New York. Quite a good-looking man, with a good deal in him, but I’d like to see him on horseback. Been in the cavalry? You’re fond of them, you know.”

“No,” said Hetty, “but he knows more about horses than any cavalry officer. Larry’s a cattle-baron.”

“I never quite knew what the cattle-barons were, except that your father’s one, and they’re mostly rich,” said Miss Schuyler.

Hetty’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t think Larry’s very rich. They’re the men or the sons of them, who went west when the prairie belonged to the Indians and the Blackfeet, Crows, and Crees made them lots of trouble. Still, they held the land they settled on, and covered it with cattle, until the Government gave it to them, ’most as much as you could ride across in a day, to each big rancher.”

“Gave it to them?”

Hetty nodded. “A lease of it. It means the same thing. A few of them, though I think it wasn’t quite permitted, bought other leases in, and out there a cattle-baron is a bigger man than a railroad king. You see, he makes the law – all there is – as well as supports the industry, for there’s not a sheriff in the country dares question him. The cattle-boys are his retainers, and we’ve a squadron of them at the Range. They’d do just what Torrance of Cedar told them, whatever it was, and there are few men who could ride with them in the U. S. Cavalry.”

“Then,” said Flora Schuyler, “if the Government ever encouraged homesteading in their country they’d make trouble.”

Hetty laughed. “Yes,” she said drily, “I guess they would, but no government dares meddle with us.”

“Well,” said Flora Schuyler, “you haven’t told us yet who Larry is. You know quite well what I mean.”

Hetty smiled. “I called him my partner when I was home. Larry held me on my first pony, and has done ’most whatever I wanted him ever since. Fremont isn’t very far from the Range, and when I wanted to ride anywhere, or to have a new horse broken, Larry was handy.”

Miss Schuyler appeared reflective, but there was a bond of confidence between the two, and the reserve that characterizes the Briton is much less usual in that country.

“It always seemed to me, my dear, that an arrangement of that kind is a little rough on the man, and I think this one is too good to spoil,” she said.

Hetty coloured a trifle, but she smiled. “It is all right with Larry. He never expected anything.”

“No?” said Flora Schuyler. “He never tried to make love to you?”

The tinge of colour grew a trifle deeper in Hetty’s cheek. “Only once, and I scarcely think he meant it. It was quite a long while ago, and I told him he must never do it again.”

“And since then he has tamed your horses, and bought you all the latest songs and books – good editions in English art bindings. It was Larry who sent you those flowers when we could scarcely get one?”

Hetty for some reason turned away her head. “Don’t you get things of that kind?”

A trace of gravity crept into Flora Schuyler’s blue eyes, which were unusually attractive ones. “When they come too often I send them back,” she said. “Oh, I know I’m careless now and then, but one has to do the square thing, and I wouldn’t let any man do all that for me unless I was so fond of him that I meant to marry him. Now I’m going to talk quite straight to you, Hetty. You’ll have to give up Larry by and by, but if you find that’s going to hurt you, send the other man away.”

“You don’t understand,” and there was a little flash in Hetty’s dark eyes. “Larry’s kind to everyone – he can’t help it; but he doesn’t want me.”

Flora Schuyler gravely patted her companion’s arm. “My dear, we don’t want to quarrel, but you’ll be careful – to please me. Jake Cheyne is coming, and you might be sorry ever after if you made a mistake to-night.”

Hetty made no answer, and there was silence for a space while the light grew dimmer, until the sound of voices rose from without, and she felt her heart beat a trifle faster than usual, when somebody said, “Captain Cheyne!”

Then there was a rustle of draperies and Mrs. Schuyler, thin, angular, and considerably more silent than is customary with women of her race, came in, with her younger daughter and a man in her train. The latter bore the stamp of the soldier plainly, but there was a distinction in his pose that was not the result of a military training. Then as he shook hands with Flora Schuyler the fading light from the window fell upon his face, showing it clean cut from the broad forehead to the solid chin, and reposeful instead of nervously mobile. His even, low-pitched voice was also in keeping with it, for Jackson Cheyne was an unostentatious American of culture widened by travel, and, though they are not always to be found in the forefront in their own country, unless it has need of them, men of his type have little to fear from comparison with those to be met with in any other one.

He spoke when there was occasion, and was listened to, but some time had passed before he turned to Mrs. Schuyler. “I wonder if it would be too great a liberty if I asked Miss Torrance to give us some music,” he said. “I am going away to-morrow to a desolate outpost in New Mexico, and it will be the last time for months that I shall have a treat of that kind.”