Chapter 2

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."

Flora Schuyler opened the piano, and Hetty smiled at Cheyne as she took her place; but the man made a little gesture of negation when Mrs. Schuyler would have rung for lights.

"Wouldn't it be nicer as it is?" he said.

Hetty nodded, and there was silence before the first chords rang softly through the room. Though it may have been that the absence of necessity to strive and stain her daintiness amidst the press was responsible for much, Hetty Torrance's voice had failed to win her fame; but she sang and played better than most well-trained amateurs. Thus there was no rustle of drapery or restless movements until the last low notes sank into the stillness. Then the girl glanced at the man who had unobtrusively managed to find a place close beside her.

"You know what that is?" she said.

Carolina Schuyler laughed. "Jake knows everything!"

"Yes," said the man quietly. "A nocturne. You were thinking of something when you played it."

"The sea," said Flora Schuyler, "when the moon is on it. Was that it, Hetty?"

"No," said Miss Torrance, who afterwards wondered whether it would have made a great difference if she had not chosen that nocturne. "It was the prairie when the stars are coming out over Cedar Range. Then it seems bigger and more solemn than the sea. I can see it now, wide and grey and shadowy, and so still that you feel afraid to hear yourself breathing, with the last smoky flush burning on its northern rim. Now, you may laugh at me, for you couldn't understand. When you have been born there, you always love the prairie."

Then with a little deprecatory gesture she touched the keys again. "It will be different this time."

Cheyne glanced up sharply during the prelude, and then, feeling that the girl's eyes were upon him, nodded as out of the swelling harmonies there crept the theme. It suggested the tramp of marching feet, but there was a curious unevenness in its rhythm, and the crescendo one of the listeners looked for never came. The room was almost dark now, but none of those who sat there seemed to notice it as they listened to the listless tramp of marching feet. Then the harmonies drowned it again, and Hetty looked at Cheyne.

"Now," she said, "can you tell me what that means?"

Cheyne's voice seemed a trifle strained, as though the music had troubled him. "I know the march, but the composer never wrote what you have played to-night," he said. "It was--may mine be defended from it!--the shuffle of beaten men. How could you have felt what you put into the music?"

"No," said Hetty. "Your men could never march like that. It was footsteps going west, and I could not have originated their dragging beat. I have heard it."

There was a little silence, until Cheyne said softly, "One more."

"Then," said Hetty, "you will recognize this."

The chords rang under her fingers until they swelled into confused and conflicting harmonies that clashed and jarred upon the theme. Their burden was strife and struggle and the anguish of strain, until at last, in the high clear note of victory, the theme rose supreme.

"Yes," said Flora Schuyler, "we know that. We heard it with the Kaiser in Berlin. Only one man could have written it; but his own countrymen could not play it better than you do. A little overwhelming. How did you get down to the spirit of it, Hetty?"

Lights were brought in just then, and they showed that the girl's face was a trifle paler than usual, as closing the piano, she turned, with a little laugh, upon the music-stool.

"Oh!" she said, "I don't quite know, and until to-night it always cheated me. I got it at the depot--no, I didn't. It was there I felt the marching, and Larry brought the prairie back to me; but I couldn't have seen what was in the last music, because it hasn't happened yet."

"It will come?" said Flora.

"Yes," said Hetty, "wherever those weary men are going to."

"And to every one of us," said Cheyne, with a curious graveness they afterwards remembered. "That is, the stress and strain--it is the triumph at the end of it only the few attain."

Once more there was silence, and it was a relief when the unemotional Mrs. Schuyler rose.

"Now," she said, and her voice, at least, had in it the twang of the country, "you young folks have been solemn quite long enough. Can't you talk something kind of lively?"

They did what they could, and--for Cheyne could on occasion display a polished wit--light laughter filled the room, until Caroline Schuyler, perhaps not without a motive, suggested a stroll on the lawn. If there was dew upon the grass none of them heeded it, and it was but seldom anyone enjoyed the privilege of pacing that sod when Mr. Schuyler was at home. Every foot had cost him many dollars, and it remained but an imperfect imitation of an English lawn. There was on the one side a fringe of maples, and it was perhaps by Mrs. Schuyler's contrivance that eventually Hetty found herself alone with Cheyne in their deeper shadow. It was not, however, a surprise to her, for she had seen the man's desire and tacitly fallen in with it. Miss Torrance had discovered that one seldom gains anything by endeavouring to avoid the inevitable.

"Hetty," he said quietly, "I think you know why I have come to-night?"

The girl stood very still and silent for a space of seconds, and afterwards wondered whether she made the decision then, or what she had seen and heard since she entered the depot had formed it for her.

"Yes," she said slowly. "I am so sorry!"

Cheyne laid his hand upon her arm, and his voice trembled a little. "Don't be too hasty, Hetty," he said. "I would not ask you for very much just now, but I had ventured to fancy you could in time grow fond of me. I know I should have waited, but I am going away to-morrow, and I only want you to give me a promise to take away with me."

It was with a visible effort the girl lifted her head and looked at him. "I feel horribly mean, Jake, but I can't," she said. "I ought to have made you realize that long ago, but I liked you, and, you see, I didn't quite know. I thought if I waited a little I might be more sure of what I felt for you!"

"Then," said the man, a trifle hoarsely, "give me what you can now and I will be patient."

Hetty turned half way from him and closed one hand. The man was pleasant to look upon, in character and disposition all she could desire, and she had found a curious content in his company. Had that day passed as other days had done, she might have yielded to him, but she had been stirred to the depths of her nature during the last few hours, and Flora Schuyler's warning had been opportune. She had, as she had told him, a liking for Jackson Cheyne, but that, she saw very clearly now, was insufficient. Destiny had sent Larry Grant, with the associations that clung about him, into the depot.

"No," she said, with a little tremble in her voice, "it wouldn't be honest or fair to you. I am not half good enough for you."

The man smiled somewhat mirthlessly, but his voice was reproachful. "You always speak the truth, Hetty. My dear, knowing what the best of us are, I wonder how I dared to venture to ask you to share your life with me."

Hetty checked him with a little gesture. "Can't you understand?" she said. "The girl who sang to you now and then isn't me. I am selfish, discontented, and shallow, and if you hadn't heard me sing or play you would never have thought of me. There are people who sing divinely, and are--you see, I have met them with the mask off--just horrible."

"Hetty," said Cheyne, "I can't allow anyone to malign you, even if it's yourself, and if you have any faults, my dear, I'll take them with the rest. In fact, I would be glad of one or two. They would only bring you a little nearer to me."

The girl lifted her hand and silenced him. "Jake," she said appealingly, "please take your answer and go away. If I could only be fond of you in the right way I would, but I can't, you see. It is not my fault--it isn't in me."

The man recognized the finality in her tone, but, feeling that it was useless, made a last endeavour.

"I'm going away to-morrow," he said. "You might think differently when I come back again."

The girl's voice quivered a little. "No," she said. "I have to be straightforward now, and I know you will try to make it easier for me, even if I'm hurting you. It's no use. I shall think the same, and by and by you'll get over this fancy, and wonder what you ever saw in me."

The man smiled curiously. "I am afraid it will take me a lifetime," he said.

In another moment he had gone, and Hetty turned, a trifle flushed in face, towards the house across the lawn.

"He took it very well--and I shall never find anyone half so nice again," she said.

It was half an hour later, and Miss Torrance had recovered at least her outward serenity, when one of Mrs. Schuyler's neighbours arrived. She brought one or two young women, and a man, with her. The latter she presented to Mrs. Schuyler.

"Mr. Reginald Clavering," she said. "He's from the prairie where Miss Torrance's father lives, and is staying a day or two with us. When I heard he knew Hetty I ventured to bring him over."

Mrs. Schuyler expressed her pleasure, and--for they had gone back to the lighted room now--Hetty presently found herself seated face to face with the stranger. He was a tall, well-favoured man, slender, and lithe in movement, with dark eyes and hair, and a slightly sallow face that suggested that he was from the South. It also seemed fitting that he was immaculately dressed, for there was a curious gracefulness about him that still had in it a trace of insolence. No one would have mistaken him for a Northerner.

"It was only an hour ago I found we were so near, and I insisted upon coming across at once," he said. "You have changed a good deal since you left the prairie."

"Yes," said the girl drily. "Is it very astonishing? You see, we don't spend half our time on horseback here. You didn't expect to find me a sharp-tongued Amazon still?"

Clavering laughed as he looked at her, but the approval of what he saw was a trifle too evident in his black eyes.

"Well," he said languidly, "you were our Princess then, and there was only one of your subjects' homage you never took kindly to. That was rough on him, because he was at least as devoted as the rest."

"That," said the girl, with a trace of acerbity, "was because he tried to patronize me. Even if I haven't the right to it, I like respect."

Clavering made a little gesture, and the deference in it was at least half sincere. "You command it, and I must try to make amends. Now, don't you want to hear about your father and the Range?"

"No," said Hetty. "I had a talk with Larry to-day."

"In New York?"

"Yes. At the depot. He is going back to-morrow. You seem astonished?"

Clavering appeared thoughtful. "Well, it's Chicago he usually goes to."

"Usually?" said Hetty. "I scarcely remember him leaving Fremont once in three years."

Clavering laughed. "Then he leaves it a good deal more often now. A man must have a little diversion when he lives as we do, and no doubt Larry feels lonely. You are here, and Heloise Durand has gone away."

Hetty understood the implication, for she had some notion how the men who spent months together in the solitude of the prairie amused themselves in the cities. Nor had she and most of her neighbours wholly approved of the liberal views held by Heloise Durand. She had, however, an unquestioning belief in Larry, and none in the man beside her.

"I scarcely think you need have been jealous of him," she said. "Larry wasn't Miss Durand's kind, and he couldn't be lonely. Everybody was fond of him."

Clavering nodded. "Of course! Still, Larry hasn't quite so many friends lately."

"Now," said Hetty with a little flash in her eyes, "when you've told me that you have got to tell the rest. What has he been doing?"

"Ploughing!" said Clavering drily. "I did what I could to restrain him, but nobody ever could argue with Larry."

Hetty laughed, though she felt a little dismay. It was then a serious affair to drive the wheat furrow in a cattle country, and the man who did it was apt to be regarded as an iconoclast. Nevertheless, she would not show that she recognized it.

"Well," she said, "that isn't very dreadful. The plough is supreme in the Dakotas and Minnesota now. Sooner or later it has got to find a place in our country."

"Still, that's not going to happen while your father lives."

The girl realized the truth of this, but she shook her head. "We're not here to talk wheat and cattle, and I see Flo Schuyler looking at us," she said. "Go across and make yourself agreeable to the others for the honour of the prairie."

Clavering went; but he had left an unpleasant impression behind him, as he had perhaps intended, while soon after he took his departure Flora Schuyler found her friend alone.

"So you sent Jake away!" she said.

"Yes," said Hetty. "I don't know what made me, but I felt I had to. I almost meant to take him."

Flora Schuyler nodded gravely. "But it wasn't because of that man Clavering?"

"It was not," said Hetty, with a little laugh. "Don't you like him? He is rather a famous man back there on the prairie."

Flora Schuyler shook her head. "No," she said; "he reminded me of that Florentine filigree thing. It's very pretty, and I bought it for silver, but it isn't."

"You think he's that kind of man?"

"Yes," said Miss Schuyler. "I wouldn't take him at face value. The silver's all on top. I don't know what is underneath it, and would sooner somebody else found out."

III

THE CATTLE-BARONS

It was a still, hot evening when a somewhat silent company of bronze-faced men assembled in the big living room of Cedar Range. It was built of birch trunks, and had once, with its narrow windows and loopholes for rifle fire, resembled a fortalice; but now cedar panelling covered the logs, and the great double casements were filled with the finest glass. They were open wide that evening. Around this room had grown up a straggling wooden building of dressed lumber with pillars and scroll-work, and, as it stood then, flanked by its stores and stables, barns and cattle-boys' barracks, there was no homestead on a hundred leagues of prairie that might compare with it.

Outside, on the one hand, the prairie rolled away in long billowy rises, a vast sea of silvery grey, for the grass that had been green a month or two was turning white again, and here and there a stockrider showed silhouetted, a dusky mounted figure against the paling flicker of saffron that still lingered upon the horizon. On the other, a birch bluff dipped to the Cedar River, which came down faintly chilled with the Rockies' snow from the pine forests of the foothills. There was a bridge four miles away, but the river could be forded beneath the Range for a few months each year. At other seasons it swirled by, frothing in green-stained flood, swollen by the drainage of snowfield and glacier, and there was no stockrider at the Range who dared swim his horse across.

Sun and wind had their will with the homestead, for there was little shelter from icy blizzard and scorching heat at Cedar; but though here and there the frame-boarding gaped and the roof-shingles were rent, no man accustomed to that country could fail to notice the signs of careful management and prosperity. Corrals, barns, and stables were the best of their kind; and, though the character of all of them was not beyond exception, in physique and fitness for their work it would have been hard to match the sinewy men in blue shirts, wide hats, and long boots, then watering their horses at the ford. They were as daring and irresponsible swashbucklers as ever rode out on mediaeval foray, and, having once sold their allegiance to Torrance of Cedar, and recognized that he was not to be trifled with, were ready to do without compunction anything he bade them.

In the meanwhile Torrance sat at the head of the long table, with Clavering of Beauregard at his right hand. His face was bronzed and resolute, and the stamp of command sat plainly upon him. There was grey in his dark hair, and his eyes were keen and black, with a little glint in them; but, vigorous as he still seemed, the hand on the table was smooth and but slightly tinted by the sun, for Torrance was one who, in the language of that country, did his work, which was usually arduous, with his gloves on. He was dressed in white shirt and broadcloth, and a diamond of price gleamed in the front of the former.

His guests were for the most part younger, and Clavering was scarcely half his age: but when they met in conclave something usually happened, for the seat of the legislature was far away, and their will considerably more potent thereabouts than the law of the land. Sheriff, postmaster, railroad agent, and petty politician carried out their wishes, and as yet no man had succeeded in living in that region unless he did homage to the cattle-barons. They were Republicans, admitting in the abstract the rights of man, so long as no venturesome citizen demanded too much of them; but they had discovered that in practice liberty is usually the prerogative of the strong. Still, they had done their nation good service, for they had found the land a wilderness and covered it with cattle, so that its commerce fed the railroads and supported busy wooden towns. Some of the older men had disputed possession with the Indian, and most of them in the early days, enduring thirst and loneliness and unwearying toil, had held on stubbornly in the face of ruin by frost and drought and hail. It was not astonishing that as they had made that land--so they phrased it--they regarded it as theirs.

There were eight of them present, and for a time they talked of horses and cattle as they sipped their wine, which was the choicest that France could send them; and it is also probable that no better cigars ever came from Cuba than those they smoked. By and by, however, Torrance laid his aside.

"It's time we got down to work," he said. "I sent for ten of you, and eight have come. One sent valid excuses, and one made no answer."

"Larry Grant," said Clavering. "I guess he was too busy at the depot bringing a fat Dutchman and a crowd of hard-faced Dakota ploughboys in."

There was a little murmur of astonishment which, had the men been different, would not have been quite free from consternation, for it was significant news.

"You're quite sure?" asked Torrance, and his face was stern.

"Well," said Clavering languidly, "I saw him, and bantered him a little on his prepossessing friends. Asked him why, when he was at it, he didn't go to Manitoba for Canadians. Larry didn't take it nicely."

"I'm sorry," said one of the older men. "Larry is one of us, and the last man I'd figure on committing that kind of meanness would be the son of Fremont Grant. Quite sure it's not a fit of temper? You have not been worrying him, Torrance?"

Torrance closed one hand. "Grant of Fremont was my best friend, and when he died I 'most brought the lad up as a son. When he got hold of his foolish notions it hurt me considerably, and I did what I could to talk him out of them."

There was a little smile in the faces of some of the men, for Torrance's draconic fashion of arguing was known to them.

"You put it a little too straight, and he told you something that riled you," said one.