The Cattle-Baron's Daughter

In the meanwhile, Allonby and his nephew sat with Torrance and Clavering, and one or two of the older men, in his office room. Clavering had just finished speaking when Allonby answered Torrance’s questioning glance.

“I have no use for beating round the bush,” he said. “Dollars are getting scarce with me, and, like some of my neighbours, I had to sell out a draft of stock. The fact that I’m throwing them on the market now is significant.”

One of the men nodded. “Allonby has put it straight,” he said. “I was over fixing things with the station agent, and he is going to send the first drafts through to Omaha in one lot if two of his biggest locomotives can haul the cars. Still, if Clavering has got hold of the right story, how the devil did the homestead-boys hear of it?”

Clavering glanced at Torrance with a little sardonic smile on his lips. “I don’t quite know, but a good many of our secrets have been leaking out.”

“You’re quite sure you are right, Clavering?” somebody asked.

“Yes. The information is worth the fifty dollars I paid for it. The homestead-boys mean to run that stock train through the Bitter Creek bridge. As you know, it’s a good big trestle, and it is scarcely likely we would get a head of stock out of the wreck alive.”

There were angry ejaculations and the faces round the table grew set and stern. Some of the men had seen what happens when a heavy train goes through a railroad trestle.

“It’s devilish!” said Allonby. “Larry is in the thing?”

“Well,” said Clavering drily, “it appears the boys can’t do anything unless they have an order from their executive, and the man who told me declared he had seen one signed by him. Still, one has to be fair to Larry, and it is quite likely some of the foreign Reds drove him into it. Any way, if we could get that paper – and I think I can – it would fix the affair on him.”

Torrance nodded. “Now we have the cavalry here, it would be enough to have him shot,” he said. “Well, this is going to suit us. But there must be no fooling. We want to lay hands upon them when they are at work on the trestle.”

The other men seemed doubtful, and Allonby made a protest. “It is by no means plain how it’s going to suit me to have my steers run through the bridge,” he said. “I can’t afford it.”

Clavering laughed. “You will not lose one of them,” he said. “Now, don’t ask any questions, but listen to me.”

There were objections to the scheme he suggested, but he won over the men who raised them, and when all had been arranged and Allonby had gone back to his other guests, Clavering appeared satisfied and Torrance very grim. Unfortunately, however, they had not bound Christopher Allonby to silence, and when he contrived to find a place near Miss Schuyler and Hetty he could not refrain from mentioning what he had heard. This was, however, the less astonishing since the cattle-barons’ wives and daughters shared their anxieties and were conversant with most of what happened.

“You have a kind of belief in the homestead-boys, Hetty?” he said.

“Yes, but everybody knows who I belong to.”

“Of course! Well, I guess you are not going to have any kind of belief in them now. They’re planning to run our big stock train through the Bitter Creek bridge.”

Hetty turned white. “They would never do that. Their leaders would not let them.”

“No?” said Allonby. “I’m sorry to mention it, but it seems they have Larry’s order.”

A little flush crept into Flora Schuyler’s face, but Hetty’s grew still more colourless and her dark eyes glowed. Then she shook her shoulders, and said with a scornful quietness, “Larry would not have a hand in it to save his life. There is not a semblance of truth in that story, Chris.”

Allonby glanced up in astonishment, but he was youthful, and that Hetty could have more than a casual interest in her old companion appeared improbable to him.

“It is quite a long time since you and Larry were on good terms, and no doubt he has changed,” he said. “Any way, his friends are going to try giant powder on the bridge, and if we are fortunate Cheyne will get the whole of them, and Larry, too. Now, we’ll change the topic, since it does not seem to please you.”

He changed it several times, but his companions, though they sat and even smiled now and then, heard very few of his remarks.

“I’m going,” he said at last, reproachfully. “I am sorry if I have bored you, but it is really quite difficult to talk to people who are thinking about another thing. It seems to me you are both in love with somebody, and it very clearly isn’t me.”

He moved away, and for a moment Hetty and Miss Schuyler did not look at one another. Then Hetty stood up.

“I should have screamed if he had stayed any longer,” she said. “The thing is just too horrible – but it is quite certain Larry does not know. I have got to tell him somehow. Think, Flo.”

XXIII

HETTY’S AVOWAL

The dusk Hetty had anxiously waited for was creeping across the prairie when she and Miss Schuyler pulled up their horses in the gloom of the birches where the trail wound down through the Cedar bluff. The weather had grown milder and great clouds rolled across the strip of sky between the branches overhead, while the narrow track amidst the whitened trunks was covered with loose snow. There was no frost, and Miss Schuyler felt unpleasantly clammy as she patted her horse, which moved restively now and then, and shook off the melting snow that dripped upon her; but Hetty seemed to notice nothing. She sat motionless in her saddle with the moisture glistening on her furs, and the thin white steam from the spume-flecked beast floating about her, staring up the trail, and when she turned and glanced over her shoulder her face showed white and drawn.

“He must be coming soon,” she said, and Miss Schuyler noticed the strained evenness of her voice. “Yes, of course he’s coming. It would be too horrible if we could not find him.”

“Jake Cheyne and his cavalry boys would save the bridge,” said Flora Schuyler, with a hopefulness she did not feel.

Hetty leaned forward and held up her hand, as though to demand silence that she might listen, before she answered her.

“There are some desperate men among the homestead-boys, and if they found out they had been given away they would cut the track in another place,” she said. “If they didn’t and Cheyne surprised them, they would fire on his troopers and Larry would be blamed for it. He would be chased everywhere with a price on his head, and anyone he wouldn’t surrender to could shoot him. Flo, it is too hard to bear, and I’m afraid.”

Her voice failed her, and Miss Schuyler, who could find no words to reassure her, was thankful that her attention was demanded by her restive horse. The strain was telling on her, too, and, with less at stake than her companion, she was consumed by a longing to defeat the schemes of the cattle-men, who had, it seemed to her with detestable cunning, decided not to warn the station agent, and let the great train go, that they might heap the more obloquy upon their enemies. The risk the engineer and brakesmen ran was apparently nothing to them, and she felt, as Hetty did, that Larry was the one man who could be depended on to avert bloodshed. Yet there was still no sign of him.

“If he would only come!” she said.

There was no answer. Loose snow fell with a soft thud from the birch branches, and there was a little sighing amidst the trees. It was rapidly growing darker, but Hetty sat rigidly still in her saddle, with her hand clenched on the bridle. Five long minutes passed. Then, she turned suddenly, exultation in her voice.

“Flo,” she said, “he’s coming!”

Miss Schuyler could hear nothing for another minute or two, and then, when a faint sound became audible through the whispering of the trees, she wondered how her companion could be sure it was the fall of hoofs, or that the horse was not ridden by a stranger. But there was no doubt in Hetty’s face, and Flora Schuyler sighed as she saw it relax and a softness creep into the dark eyes. She had seen that look in the faces of other women and knew its meaning.

The beat of hoofs became unmistakable, and she could doubt no longer that a man was riding down the trail. He came into sight in another minute, a shadowy figure swinging to the stride of a big horse, with the line of a rifle-barrel across his saddle, and then, as he saw them, rode up at a gallop, scattering the snow.

“Hetty!” he said, a swift flush of pleasure sweeping his face, and Miss Schuyler set her lips as she noticed that he did not even see her.

Hetty gathered up her bridle, and wheeled her horse. “Ride into the bluff – quick,” she said. “Somebody might see us in the trail.”

Larry did as he was bidden, and when the gloom of the trees closed about them, sprang down and looped his bridle round a branch. Then, he stood by Hetty’s stirrup, and the girl could see his face, white in the faint light the snow flung up. She turned her own away when she had looked down on it.

“I have had an anxious day, but this makes up for everything,” he said. “Now – and it is so long since I have seen you – can’t we, for just a few minutes, forget our troubles?”

He held out his hand, as though to lift her down, but the girl turned her eyes on him and what he saw in them checked him suddenly.

“No,” she said, with a tremor in her voice, “we can’t get away from them. You must not ask any question until you have heard everything!”

She spoke with a swift conciseness that omitted no point and made the story plain, for there was a high spirit in the girl, and a tangible peril that could be grappled with had a bracing effect on her. Grant’s face grew intent as he listened, and Hetty, looking down, could see the firmer set of his lips, and the glint in his eyes. The weariness faded out of it, and once more she recognized the alert, resourceful, and quietly resolute Larry she had known before the troubles came. He turned swiftly and clasped her hand.

“I wonder if you know how much you have done for me?”

Hetty smiled and allowed her fingers to remain in his grasp. “Then, you have heard nothing of this?” she said.

“No,” said the man. “But Hetty – ”

Again the girl checked him with a gesture. “And I need not ask you whether you would have had a hand in it?”

Grant laughed a little scornful laugh that was more eloquent than many protestations. “No,” he said, “you needn’t. I think you know me better than that, Hetty?”