The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

“If you will wait here I’ll try to get some wood,” he said.

He went out and tethered the horses, and when his footsteps died away, Miss Schuyler shivering crept closer to Hetty, who flung an arm about her.

“It’s awful, Flo – and it’s my fault,” she said. Then she sighed. “It would all be so different if Larry was only here.”

“Still,” said Flora Schuyler, “Mr. Clavering has really behaved very well; most men would have shown just a little temper.”

“I almost wish he had – it would have been so much easier for me to have kept mine and overlooked it graciously. Flo, I didn’t mean to be disagreeable, but it’s quite hard to be pleasant when one is in the wrong.”

It was some time before Clavering came back with an armful of birch branches, and a suspiciously reddened gash in one of his moccasins – for an axe ground as the Michigan man grinds it is a dangerous tool for anyone not trained to it to handle in the dark. In ten minutes he had a great fire blazing, and the shivering girls felt their spirits revive a little under the cheerful light and warmth. Then, he made a seat of the branches close in to the hearth and glanced at them anxiously.

“If you keep throwing wood on, and sit there with the furs wrapped round you, you will be able to keep the cold out until I come back,” he said.

“Until you come back!” said Hetty, checking a little cry of dismay. “Where are you going?”

“To bring a sleigh.”

“But Allonby’s is nearly eight miles away. You could not leave us here three hours.”

“No,” said Clavering gravely. “You would be very cold by then. Still, you need not be anxious. Nothing can hurt you here; and I will come, or send somebody for you, before long.”

Hetty sat very still while he drew on the fur mittens he had removed to make the fire. Then, she rose suddenly.

“No,” she said. “It was my fault – and we cannot let you go.”

Clavering smiled. “I am afraid your wishes wouldn’t go quite as far in this case as they generally do with me. You and Miss Schuyler can’t stay here until I could get a sleigh from Allonby’s.”

He turned as he spoke, and was almost out of the shanty before Hetty, stepping forward, laid her hand upon his arm.

“Now I know,” she said. “It is less than three miles to Muller’s, but the homestead-boys would make you a prisoner if you went there. Can’t you see that would be horrible for Flo and me? It was my wilfulness that made the trouble.”

Clavering very gently shook off her grasp, and Miss Schuyler almost admired him as he stood looking down upon her companion with the flickering firelight on his face. It was a striking face, and the smile in the dark eyes became it. Clavering had shaken off his furs, and the close-fitting jacket of dressed deerskin displayed his lean symmetry, for he had swung round in the entrance to the shanty and the shadows were black behind him.

“I think the fault was mine. I should not have been afraid of displeasing you, which is what encourages me to be obstinate now,” he said. “One should never make wild guesses, should they, Miss Schuyler?”

He had gone before Hetty could speak again, and a few moments later the girls heard a thud of hoofs as a horse passed at a gallop through the wood. They stood looking at each other until the sound died away, and only a little doleful wind that sighed amidst the birches and the snapping of the fire disturbed the silence. Then, Hetty sat down and drew Miss Schuyler down beside her.

“Flo,” she said, with a little quiver in her voice, “what is the use of a girl like me? I seem bound to make trouble for everybody.”

“It is not an unusual complaint, especially when one is as pretty as you are,” said Miss Schuyler. “Though I must confess I don’t quite understand what you are afraid of, Hetty.”

“No?” said Hetty. “You never do seem to understand anything, Flo. If he goes to Muller’s the homestead-boys, who are as fond of him as they are of poison, might shoot him, and he almost deserves it. No, of course, after what he is doing for us, I don’t mean that. It is the meanness that is in me makes me look for faults in everybody. He was almost splendid – and he has left his furs for us – but he mayn’t come back at all. Oh, it’s horrible!”

Hetty’s voice grew indistinct, and Flora Schuyler drew the furs closer about them, and slipped an arm round her waist. She began to feel the cold again, and the loneliness more, while, even when she closed her eyes, she could not shut out the menacing darkness in front of her. Miss Schuyler was from the cities, and it was not her fault that, while she possessed sufficient courage of a kind, she shrank from the perils of the wilderness. She would have found silence trying, but the vague sounds outside, to which she could attach no meaning, were more difficult to bear. So she started when a puff of wind set the birch twigs rattling or something stirred the withered leaves, and once or twice a creaking branch sent a thrill of apprehension through her and she almost fancied that evil faces peered at her from the square gap of blackness. Now and then, a wisp of pungent smoke curled up and filled her eyes, and little by little she drew nearer to the fire with a physical craving for the warmth of it and an instinctive desire to be surrounded by its brightness, until Hetty shook her roughly by the arm.

“Flo,” she said, “you are making me almost as silly as you are, and that capote – it’s the prettiest I have seen you put on – is burning. Sit still, or I’ll pinch you – hard.”

Hetty’s grip had a salutary effect, and Miss Schuyler, shaking off her vague terrors, smiled a trifle tremulously.

“I wish you would,” she said. “Your fingers are real, any way. I can’t help being foolish, Hetty – and is the thing actually burning?”

Hetty laughed. “I guessed that would rouse you – but it is,” she said. “I have made my mind up, Flo. If he doesn’t come in an hour or so, we’ll go to Muller’s, too.”

Miss Schuyler was by no means sure that this would please her, but she said nothing and once more there was a silence she found it difficult to bear.

In the meanwhile, Clavering, whose foot pained him, was urging the Badger to his utmost pace. He rode without saddle or stirrups, which, however, was no great handicap to anyone who had spent the time he had in the cattle country, and, though it was numbingly cold and he had left his furs behind him, scarcely felt the frost, for his brain was busy. He knew Hetty Torrance, and that what he had done would count for much with her; but that was not what had prompted him to make the somewhat perilous venture. Free as he was in his gallantries, he was not without the chivalrous daring of the South his fathers came from, and Hetty was of his own caste. She, at least, would have been sure of deference from him, and, perhaps, have had little cause for complaint had he married her. Of late the admiration he felt for her was becoming tinged with a genuine respect.

He knew that the homesteaders, who had very little cause to love him, were in a somewhat dangerous mood just then, but that was of no great moment to him. He had a cynical contempt for them, and a pride which would have made him feel degraded had he allowed any fear of what they might do to influence him. He had also, with less creditable motives, found himself in difficult positions once or twice already, and his quickly arrogant fearlessness had enabled him to retire from them without bodily hurt or loss of dignity.

The lights of Muller’s homestead rose out of the prairie almost before he expected to see them, and a few minutes later he rode at a gallop up to the door. It opened before he swung himself down, for the beat of hoofs had carried far, and when he stood in the entrance, slightly dazed by the warmth and light, there was a murmur of wonder.

“Clavering!” said somebody, and a man he could not clearly see laid a hand on his shoulder.

He shook the grasp off contemptuously, moved forward a pace or two, and then sat down blinking about him. Muller sat by the stove, a big pipe in hand, looking at him over his spectacles. His daughter stood behind him knitting tranquilly, though there was a shade more colour than usual in her cheeks, and a big, grim-faced man stood at the end of the room with one hand on a rifle that hung on the wall. Clavering instinctively glanced over his shoulder, and saw that another man now stood with his back to the door.

“You have come alone?” asked the latter.

“Oh, yes,” said Clavering unconcernedly. “You might put my horse in, one of you. If I could have helped it, I would not have worried you, but my sleigh got damaged and Miss Torrance and another lady are freezing in the Bitter Creek bluff, and I know you don’t hurt women.”

“No,” said the man dropping his hand from the rifle, with a little unpleasant laugh. “We haven’t got that far yet, though your folks are starving them.”

“Well,” said Clavering, “I’m going to ask you to send a sledge and drive them back to Cedar or on to Allonby’s.”

The men exchanged glances. “It’s a trick,” said one.

“So!” said Muller. “Der ambuscade. Lotta, you ride to Fremont, und Larry bring. I show you how when we have drubbles mit der franc tireurs we fix der thing.”

Clavering exclaimed impatiently. “You have no time for fooling when there are two women freezing in the bluff. Would I have come here, knowing you could do what you liked with me, if I had meant any harm to you?”

“That’s sense, any way,” said one of the men. “I guess if he was playing any trick, one of us would be quite enough to get even with him. You’ll take Truscott with you, Muller, and get out the bob-sled.”

Muller nodded gravely. “I go,” he said. “Lotta, you der big kettle fill before you ride for Larry. We der bob-sled get ready.”

“You are not going to be sorry,” said Clavering. “This thing will pay you better than farming.”

The man by the door turned with a hard laugh. “Well,” he said, “I guess we’d feel mean for ever if we took a dollar from you!”

Clavering ignored the speech. “Do you want me?” he said, glancing at Muller.

“No,” said the man, who now took down the rifle from the wall. “Not just yet. You’re going to stop right where you are. The boys can do without me, and I’ll keep you company.”

Ten minutes later the others drove away, and, with a significant gesture, Clavering’s companion laid the rifle across his knees.

XXI

CLAVERING APPEARS RIDICULOUS

There was silence in the log-house when the men drove away, and Clavering, who sat in a corner, found the time pass heavily. A clock ticked noisily upon the wall, and the stove crackled when the draughts flowed in; but this, he felt, only made the stillness more exasperating. The big, hard-faced bushman sat as motionless as a statue and almost as expressionless, with a brown hand resting on the rifle across his knees, in front of a row of shelves which held Miss Muller’s crockery. Clavering felt his fingers quiver in a fit of anger as he watched the man, but he shook it from him, knowing that he would gain nothing by yielding to futile passion.