Chapter 4

It was a week later, and a hot afternoon, when Muller laid the big crosscut saw down on the log he was severing and slowly straightened his back. Then he stood up, red and very damp in face, a burly, square-shouldered man, and, having mislaid his spectacles, blinked about him. On three sides of him the prairie, swelling in billowy rises, ran back to the horizon; but on the fourth a dusky wall of foliage followed the crest of a ravine, and the murmur of water came up faintly from the creek in the hollow. Between himself and its slender birches lay piled amidst the parched and dusty grass, and the first courses of a wooden building, rank with the smell of sappy timber, already stood in front of him. There was no notch in the framing that had not been made and pinned with an exact precision. In its scanty shadow his daughter sat knitting beside a smouldering fire over which somebody had suspended a big blackened kettle. The crash of the last falling trunk had died away, and there was silence in the bluff; but a drumming of hoofs rose in a sharp staccato from the prairie.

"Now," said Muller quietly, "I think the chasseurs come."

The girl looked up a moment, noticed the four mounted figures that swung over the crest of a rise, and then went on with her knitting again. Still, there was for a second a little flash in her pale blue eyes.

The horsemen came on, the dust floating in long wisps behind them, until, with a jingle of bridle and stirrup, they pulled up before the building. Three of them were bronzed and dusty, in weather-stained blue shirts, wide hats, and knee-boots that fitted them like gloves; and there was ironical amusement in their faces. Each sat his horse as if he had never known any other seat than the saddle; but the fourth was different from the rest. He wore a jacket of richly embroidered deerskin, and the shirt under it was white; while he sat with one hand in a big leather glove resting on his hip. His face was sallow and his eyes were dark.

"Hallo, Hamburg!" he said, and his voice had a little commanding ring. "You seem kind of busy."

Muller blinked at him. He had apparently not yet found his spectacles, but he had in the meanwhile come upon his axe, and now stood very straight, with the long haft reaching to his waist.

"Ja," he said. "Mine house I build."

"Well," said the man in the embroidered jacket, "I fancy you're wasting time. Asked anybody's leave to cut that lumber, or put it up?"

"Mine friend," said Muller, smiling, "when it is nod necessary I ask nodings of any man."

"Then," said the horseman drily, as he turned to his companions, "I fancy that's where you're wrong. Boys, we'll take him along in case Torrance would like to see him. I guess you'll have to walk home, Jim."

A man dismounted and led forward his horse with a wrench upon the bridle that sent it plunging. "Get your foot in the stirrup, Hamburg, and I'll hoist you up," he said.

Muller stood motionless, and the horseman in deerskin glancing round in his direction saw his daughter for the first time. He laughed; but there was something in his black eyes that caused the Teuton's fingers to close a trifle upon the haft of the axe.

"You'll have to get down, Charlie, as well as Jim," he said. "Torrance has his notions, or Coyote might have carried Miss Hamburg that far as well. Sorry to hurry you, Hamburg, but I don't like waiting."

Muller stepped back a pace, and the axe-head flashed as he moved his hand; while, dazzled by the beam it cast, the half-tamed broncho rose with hoofs in the air. Its owner smote it on the nostrils with his fist, and the pair sidled round each other--the man with his arm drawn back, the beast with laid-back ears--for almost a minute before they came to a standstill.

"Mine friend," said Muller, "other day I der pleasure have. I mine house have to build."

"Get up," said the stockrider. "Ever seen anybody fire off a gun?"

Muller laughed softly, and glanced at the leader. "Der rifle," he said drily. "I was at Sedan. To-day it is not convenient that I come."

"Hoist him up!" said the leader, and once more, while the other man moved forward, Muller stepped back; but this time there was an answering flash in his blue eyes as the big axe-head flashed in the sun.

"I guess we'd better hold on," said another man. "Look there, Mr. Clavering."

He pointed to the bluff, and the leader's face darkened as he gazed, for four men with axes were running down the slope, and they were lean and wiry, with very grim faces. They were also apparently small farmers or lumbermen from the bush of Michigan, and Clavering knew such men usually possessed a terrible proficiency with the keen-edged weapon, and stubbornness was native in them. Two others, one of whom he knew, came behind them. The foremost stopped, and stood silent when the man Clavering recognized signed to them, but not before each had posted himself strategically within reach of a horseman's bridle.

"You might explain, Clavering, what you and your cow-boys are doing here," he said.

Clavering laughed. "We are going to take your Teutonic friend up to the Range. He is cutting our fuel timber with nobody's permission."

"No," said Grant drily; "he has mine. The bluff is on my run."

"Did you take out timber rights with your lease?" asked Clavering.

"No, I hadn't much use for them. None of my neighbours hold any either. But the bluff is big enough, and I've no objection to their cutting what billets they want. Still, I can't have them driving out any other friends of mine."

Clavering smiled ironically. "You have been picking up some curious acquaintances, Larry; but don't you think you had better leave this thing to Torrance? The fact is, the cattle-men are not disposed to encourage strangers building houses in their country just now."

"I had a notion it belonged to this State. It's not an unusual one," said Grant.

Clavering shrugged his shoulders. "Of course, it sounds better that way. Have it so. Still, it will scarcely pay you to make yourself unpopular with us, Larry."

"Well," said Grant drily, "it seems to me I'm tolerably unpopular already. But that's not quite the point. Take your boys away."

Clavering flung his hand up in half-ironical salutation, but as he was about to wheel his horse a young Englishman whose nationality was plainly stamped upon him seized his bridle.

"Not quite so fast!" he said. "It would be more fitting if you got down and expressed your regrets to the fraeulein. You haven't heard Muller's story yet, Larry."

"Let go," said Clavering, raising the switch he held. "Drop my bridle or take care of yourself!"

"Come down," said Breckenridge.

The switch went up and descended hissing upon part of an averted face; but the lad sprang as it fell, and the next moment the horse rose almost upright with two men clinging to it; one of them, whose sallow cheeks were livid now, swaying in the saddle. Then Grant grasped the bridle that fell from the rider's hands, and hurled his comrade backwards, while some of the stockriders pushed their horses nearer, and the axe-men closed in about them.

Hoarse cries went up. "Horses back! Pull him off! Give the Britisher a show! Leave them to it!"

It was evident that a blunder would have unpleasant results, for Clavering, with switch raised, had tightened his left hand on the bridle Grant had loosed again, while a wicked smile crept into his eyes, and the lad stood tense and still, with hands clenched in front of him, and a weal on his young face. Grant, however, stepped in between them.

"We've had sufficient fooling, Breckenridge," he said. "Clavering, I'll give you a minute to get your men away, and if you can't do it in that time you'll take the consequences."

Clavering wheeled his horse. "The odds are with you, Larry," he said. "You have made a big blunder, but I guess you know your own business best."

He nodded, including the fraeulein, with an easy insolence that yet became him, touched the horse with his heel, and in another moment he and his cow-boys were swinging at a gallop across the prairie. Then, as they dipped behind a rise, those who were left glanced at one another. Breckenridge was very pale, and one of his hands was bleeding where Clavering's spur had torn it.

"It seems that we have made a beginning," he said hoarsely. "It's first blood to them, but this will take a lot of forgetting, and the rest may be different."

Grant made no answer, but turned and looked at Muller, who stood very straight and square, with a curious brightness in his eyes.

"Are you going on with the contract? There is the girl to consider," said Grant.

"Ja," said the Teuton. "I was in der Vosges, and der girl is also Fraeulein Muller."

"Boys," said Grant to the men from Michigan, "you have seen what's in front of you, and you'll probably have to use more than axes before you're through. Still, you have the chance of clearing out right now. I only want willing men behind me."

One of the big axe-men laughed scornfully, and there was a little sardonic grin in the faces of the rest.

"There's more room for us here than there was in Michigan, and now we've got our foot down here we're not going back again," he said. "That's about all there is to it. But when our time comes, the other men aren't going to find us slacker than the Dutchman."

Grant nodded gravely. "Well," he said very simply, "I guess the Lord who made this country will know who's in the right and help them. They'll need it. There's a big fight coming."

Then they went back to their hewing in the bluff, and the Fraeulein Muller went on with her knitting.

V

HETTY COMES HOME

It was an afternoon of the Indian summer, sunny and cool, and the maples about the Schuyler villa flamed gold and crimson against a sky of softest blue, when Hetty Torrance sat reflectively silent on the lawn. Flora Schuyler sat near her, with a book upside down upon her knee.

"You have been worrying about something the last few weeks," she said.

"Is that quite unusual?" asked Hetty. "Haven't a good many folks to worry all the time?"

Flora Schuyler smiled. "Just finding it out, Hetty? Well, I have noticed a change, and it began the day you waited for us at the depot. And it wasn't because of Jake Cheyne."

"No," said Hetty reflectively. "I suppose it should have been. Have you heard from him since he went away?"

"Lily Cheyne had a letter with some photographs, and she showed it to me. It's a desolate place in the sage bush he's living in, and there's not a white man, except the boys he can't talk to, within miles of him, while from the picture I saw of his adobe room I scarcely think folks would have it down here to keep hogs in. Jake Cheyne was fastidious, too, and there was a forced cheerfulness about his letter which had its meaning, though, of course, he never mentioned you."

Hetty flushed a trifle. "Flo, I'm sorry. Still, you can't blame me."

"No," said Miss Schuyler, "though there was a time when I wished I could. You can't help being pretty, but it ought to make you careful when you see another of them going that way again."

Hetty made a little impatient gesture. "If there ever is another, he'll be pulled up quite sharp. You don't think their foolishness, which spoils everything, is any pleasure to me. It's too humiliating. Can't one be friends with a nice man without falling in love with him?"

"Well," said Miss Schuyler drily, "it depends a good deal on how you're made; but it's generally risky for one or the other. Still, perhaps you might, for I have a fancy there's something short in you. Now, I'm going to ask you a question. Is it thinking of the other man that has made you restless? I mean the one we saw at the depot?"

Hetty laughed outright. "Larry? Why, as I tried to tell you, he has always been just like a cousin or a brother to me, and doesn't want anything but his horses and cattle and his books on political economy. Larry's quite happy with his ranching, and his dreams of the new America. Of course, they'll never come to anything; but when you can start him talking they're quite nice to listen to."

Flora Schuyler shook her head. "I wouldn't be too sure. That man is in earnest, and the dreams of an earnest American have a way of coming true. You have known him a long while, and I've only seen him once, but that man will do more than talk if he ever has the opportunity. He has the quiet grit one finds in the best of us--not the kind that make the speeches--and some Englishmen, in him. You can see it in his eyes."

"Then," said Hetty, with a little laugh, "come back with me to Cedar, and if you're good you shall have him. It isn't everybody I'd give Larry to."

There was a trace of indignation in Flora Schuyler's face. "I fancy he would not appreciate your generosity, and there's a good deal you have got to find out, Hetty," she said drily. "It may hurt you when you do. But you haven't told me yet what has been worrying you."

"No," said Hetty, with a little wistful smile. "Well, I'm going to. It's hard to own to, but I'm a failure. I fancied I could make everybody listen to my singing, and I would come here. Well, I came, and found out that my voice would never bring me fame, and for a time it hurt me horribly. Still, I couldn't go back just then, and when you and your mother pressed me I stayed. I knew what you expected, and I disappointed you. Perhaps I was too fastidious, but there were none of them that really pleased me. Then I began to see that I was only spoiling nicer girls' chances and trying the patience of everybody."

"Hetty!" said Flora Schuyler, but Miss Torrance checked her.

"Wait until I'm through. Then it became plain to me that while I'd been wasting my time here the work I was meant for was waiting at Cedar. The old man who gave me everything is very lonely there, and he and Larry have been toiling on while I flung 'most what a ranch would cost away on lessons and dresses and fripperies, which will never be any good to me. Still, I'm an American, too, and now, when there's trouble coming, I'm going back to the place I belong to."

"You are doing the right thing now," said Flora Schuyler.

Hetty smiled somewhat mirthlessly. "Well," she said, "because it's hard, I guess I am; but there's one thing would make it easier. You will come and stay with me. You don't know how much I want you; and New York in winter doesn't suit you. You're pale already. Come and try our clear, dry cold."

Eventually Miss Schuyler promised, and Hetty rose. "Then it's fixed," she said. "I'll write the old man a dutiful letter now, while I feel like doing it well."

The letter was duly written, and, as it happened, reached Torrance as he sat alone one evening in his great bare room at Cedar Range. Among the papers on the table in front of him were letters from the cattle-men's committees, which had sprung into existence every here and there, and Torrance apparently did not find them reassuring, for there was care in his face. It had become evident that the big ranchers' rights were mostly traditional, and already, in scattered detachments, the vanguard of the homesteaders' host was filing in. Here and there they had made their footing good; more often, by means not wholly constitutional, their outposts had been driven in; but it was noticeable that Torrance and his neighbours still believed them no more than detachments, and had not heard the footsteps of the rest. Three years' residence in that land had changed the aliens into American citizens, but a lifetime of prosperity could scarcely efface the bitterness they had brought with them from the east, while some, in spite of their crude socialistic aspirations, were drilled men who had herded the imperial legions like driven cattle into Sedan. More of native birth, helots of the cities, and hired hands of the plains, were also turning desiring eyes upon the wide spaces of the cattle country, where there was room for all.

Torrance opened his letter and smiled somewhat drily. It was affectionate and not without its faint pathos, for Hetty had been stirred when she wrote; but the grim old widower felt no great desire for the gentle attentions of a dutiful daughter just then.

"We shall be at Cedar soon after you get this," he read among the rest. "I know if I had told you earlier you would have protested you didn't want me, just because you foolishly fancied I should be lonely at the Range; but I have been very selfish, and you must have been horribly lonely too; and one of the nicest girls you ever saw is coming to amuse you. You can't help liking Flo. Of course I had to bring a maid; but you will have to make the best of us, because you couldn't stop us now if you wanted to."

It was noticeable that Torrance took the pains to confirm this fact by reference to a railroad schedule, and, finding it incontrovertible, shook his head.

"Three of them," he said.

Then he sat still with the letter in his hand, while a trace of tenderness crept into his face, which, however, grew grave again, until there was a tapping at the door, and Clavering came in.

"You seem a trifle worried, sir, and if you're busy I needn't keep you long," he said. "I just wanted to hand you a cheque for the subscription you paid for me."

"Sit down," said Torrance. "Where did you get the dollars from?"

Clavering appeared almost uneasy for a moment, but he laughed. "I've been thinning out my cattle."

"That's not a policy I approve of just now. We'll have the rabble down upon us as soon as we show any sign of weakening."

Clavering made a little deprecatory gesture. "It wasn't a question of policy. I had to have the dollars. Still, you haven't told me if you have heard anything unpleasant from the other committees."

Torrance appeared thoughtful. He suspected that Clavering's ranch was embarrassed, and the explanation was plausible.

"No," he said. "It was something else. Hetty is on her way home, and she is bringing another young woman and a maid with her. They will be here before I can stop them. Still, I could, if it was necessary, send them back."

Clavering did not answer for a moment, though Torrance saw the faint gleam in his dark eyes, and watched him narrowly. Then he said, "You will find a change in Miss Torrance, sir. She has grown into a beautiful young woman, and has, I fancy, been taught to think for herself in the city; you could not expect her to come back as she left the prairie. And if anything has induced her to decide that her place is here, she will probably stay."

"You're not quite plain. What could induce her?"

Clavering smiled, though he saw that the shot had told. "It was astonishing that Miss Torrance did not honour me with her confidence. A sense of duty, perhaps, although one notices that the motives of young women are usually a trifle involved. It, however, appears to me that if Miss Torrance makes up her mind to stay, we are still quite capable of guarding our women from anxiety or molestation."

"Yes," said Torrance grimly. "Of course. Still, we may have to do things we would sooner they didn't hear about or see. Well, you have some news?"

Clavering nodded. "I was in at the railroad, and fifty Dakota men came in on the cars. I went round to the hotel with the committee, and, though it cost some dollars to fix the thing, they wouldn't take them in. The boys, who got kind of savage, found a pole and drove the door in, but we turned the Sheriff, who had already sworn some of us in, loose on them. Four or five men were nastily clubbed, and one of James's boys was shot through the arm, while I have a fancy that the citizens would have stood in with the other crowd; but seeing they were not going to get anything to eat there, they held up a store, and as we told the man who kept it how their friends had sacked Regent, he fired at them. The consequence is that the Sheriff has some of them in jail, and the rest are camped down on the prairie. We hold the town."

"Through the Sheriff?"

Clavering laughed. "He'll earn his pay. Has it struck you that this campaign is going to cost us a good deal? Allonby hasn't much left in hand already."

"Oh, yes," said the older man, with a little grim smile. "If it's wanted I'll throw my last dollar in. Beaten now and we're beaten for ever. We have got to win."

Clavering said nothing further, though he realized, perhaps more clearly than his leader, that it was only by the downfall of the cattle-men the small farmer could establish himself, and, when he had handed a cheque to Torrance, went out.

It was three days later when Hetty Torrance rose from her seat in a big vestibule car as the long train slackened speed outside a little Western station. She laughed as she swept her glance round the car.

"Look at it, Flo," she said; "gilding and velvet and nickel, all quite in keeping with the luxury of the East. You are environed by civilization still; but once you step off the platform there will be a difference."

Flora Schuyler, who noticed the little flush in her companion's face, glanced out of the dusty window, for the interior of the gently-rocking car, with its lavish decoration and upholstery, was not new to her, and the first thing that caught her eye was the miscellaneous deposit of rubbish, old boots, and discarded clothing, amidst the willows that slowly flitted by. Then she saw a towering water-tank, wooden houses that rose through a haze of blowing dust, hideous in their unadornment, against a crystalline sky, and a row of close-packed stock-cars which announced that they were in the station.

It seemed to be thronged with the populace, and there was a murmur, apparently of disappointed expectancy, when, as the cars stopped, the three women alone appeared on the platform. Then there was a shout for the conductor, and somebody said, "You've no rustlers aboard for us?"

"No," said the grinning official who leaned out from the door of the baggage-car. "The next crowd are waiting until they can buy rifles to whip you with."

Hoarse laughter followed, and somebody said, "Boys, your friends aren't coming. You can take your band home again."

Then out of the clamour came the roll of a drum, and, clear and musical, the ringing of bugles blown by men who had marched with Grant and Sherman when they were young. The effect was stirring, and a cheer went up, for there were other men present in whom the spirit which, underlying immediate issues, had roused the North to arms was living yet; but it broke off into laughter when, one by one, discordant instruments and beaten pans joined in. The din, however, ceased suddenly, when somebody said, "Hadn't you better let up, boys, or Torrance will figure you sent the band for him?"

Miss Schuyler appeared a trifle bewildered, the maid frightened; but Hetty's cheeks were glowing.

"Flo," she said, "aren't you glad you came? The boys are taking the trail. We'll show you how we stir the prairie up by and by!"

Miss Schuyler was very doubtful as to whether the prospect afforded her any pleasure; but just then a grey-haired man, dressed immaculately in white shirt and city clothes, kissed her companion, and then, taking off his hat, handed her down from the platform with ceremonious courtesy. He had a grim, forceful face, with pride and command in it, and Miss Schuyler, who felt half afraid of him then, never quite overcame the feeling. She noticed, however, that he paid equal attention to the terrified maid.

"It would be a duty to do our best for any of Hetty's friends who have been so kind to her in the city, but in this case it's going to be a privilege, too," he said. "Well, you will be tired, and they have a meal waiting you at the hotel. This place is a little noisy to-day, but we'll start on the first stage of your journey when you're ready."