IIITHE 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 drainageof 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 mediæval 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.
“He did,” said Torrance grimly. “Still, for ’most two years I kept a curb on my temper. Then one evening I told him he had to choose right then between his fancies and me. I could have no dealings with any man who talked as he did.”
“Do you remember any of it?” asked another man.
“Yes,” said Torrance. “His father’s friends were standing in the way of progress. Land that would feed a thousand families was keeping us in luxury no American was entitled to. This was going to be the poor man’s country, and the plough was bound to come!”
Clavering laughed softly, and there were traces of ironical amusement in the faces of the rest. Very similar predictions had more than once been flung at them, and their possessions were still, they fancied, secure to them.They, however, became grave again, and it was evident that Larry Grant had hitherto been esteemed by them.
“If it had been any one else, we could have put our thumb on him right now,” said one. “Still, I don’t quite figure it would work with Larry. There are too many folks who would stand in with him.”
There was a little murmur of approbation, and Clavering laughed. “Buy him off,” he said tentatively. “We have laid out a few thousand dollars in that way before.”
Some of the men made gestures of decided negation, and Torrance looked at the speaker a trifle sternly.
“No, sir,” he said. “Larry may be foolish, but he’s one of us.”
“Then,” said somebody, “we’ve got to give him time. Let it pass. You have something to tell us, Torrance?”
Torrance signed to one of them. “You had better tell them, Allonby.”
A grey-haired man stood up, and his fingers shook a little on the table. “My lease has fallen in, and the Bureau will not renew it,” he said. “I’m not going to moan about my wrongs, but some of you know what it cost me to break in that place of mine. You have lived on the bitter water and the saleratus bread, but none of you has seen his wife die for the want of the few things he couldn’t give her, as I did. I gave the nation my two boys when the good times came, and they’re dead—buried in their uniform both of them—and now, when I’d laid out my last dollar on the ranch, that the one girl I’ve left me might have something when I’d gone, the Government will take it away from me. Gentlemen, is it my duty to sit down quietly?”
There was a murmur, and the men looked at one another with an ominous question in their eyes, until Torrance raised his hand.
“The land’s not open to location. I guess they’re afraid of us, and Allonby’s there on toleration yet,” he said. “Gentlemen, we mean to keep him just where he is, because when he pulls out we will have to go too. But this thing has to be done quietly. When the official machinery moves down here it’s because we pull the strings, and we have got to have the law upon our side as far as we can. Well, that’s going to cost us money, and we want a campaign fund. I’ll give Allonby a cheque for five hundred dollars in the meanwhile, if he’ll be treasurer; but as we may all be fixed as he is presently, we’ll want a good deal more before we’re through. Who will follow me?”
Each of them promised five hundred, and then looked at Clavering, who had not spoken. One of them also fancied that there was for a moment a trace of embarrassment in his face; but he smiled carelessly.
“The fact is, dollars are rather tight with me just now,” he said. “You’ll have to wait a little if I’m to do as much as the rest of you. I am, however, quite willing.”
“I’ll lend you them,” said Torrance. “Allonby, I’ll make that cheque a thousand. You have got it down?”
Allonby accepted office, and one of the other men rose up. “Now it seems to me that Torrance is right, and with our leases expired or running out, we’re all in the same tight place,” he said. “The first move is to get every man holding cattle land from here to the barren country to stand in, and then, one way or another, we’ll freeze out the homesteaders. Well, then, we’ll constitute ourselves a committee, with Torrance as head executive, and as we want to know just what the others are doing, my notion is that he should start off to-morrow and rideround the country. If there are any organizations ready, it might suit us to affiliate with them.”
It was agreed to, and Clavering said, “It seems to me, sir, that the first question is, ‘Could we depend upon the boys if we wanted them?’”
Torrance strode to an open window and blew a silver whistle. Its shrill note had scarcely died away when a mounted man came up at a gallop, and a band of others in haste on foot. They stopped in front of the window, picturesque in blue shirts and long boots, sinewy, generously fed, and irresponsibly daring.
“Boys,” he said, “you’ve been told there’s a change coming, and by and by this country will have no more use for you. Now, if any folks came here and pulled our boundaries up to let the mean whites from back east in, what are you going to do?”
There was a burst of hoarse laughter. “Ride them down,” said one retainer, with the soft blue eyes of a girl and a figure of almost matchless symmetry.
“Grow feathers on them,” said another. “Ride them back to the railroad on a rail.”
“I scarcely think that would be necessary,” said Torrance quietly. “Still, you’d stand behind the men who pay you?”
There was a murmur that expressed a good deal, though it was inarticulate, and a man stood forward.
“You’ve heard them, sir,” he said. “Well, we’ll do just what you want us to. This is the cattle-baron’s country, and we’re here. It’s good enough for us, and if it means lots of trouble we’re going to stay here.”
Torrance raised his hand, and when the men moved away turned with a little grim smile to his guests. “They’ll be quite as good as their word,” he said.
Then he led them back to the table, and when thedecanter had gone round, one of the younger men stood up.
“We want a constitution, gentlemen, and I’ll give you one,” he said. “The Cedar District Stockraisers’ Committee incorporated to-day with for sole object the defence of our rights as American citizens!”
Clavering rose with the others, but there was a little ironical smile in his eyes as he said, “If necessary against any unlawful encroachments made by the legislature!”
Torrance turned upon him sternly. “No, sir!” he said. “By whatever means may appear expedient!”
The glasses were lifted high, and when they had laid them down the men rode away, though only one or two of them realized the momentous issues which they and others had raised at about much the same time. They had not, however, met in conclave too soon, for any step that man makes forward towards a wider life is usually marked by strife, and the shadow of coming trouble was already upon the land. It had deepened little by little, and the cattle-barons had closed their eyes, as other men who have held the reins have done since the beginning, until the lean hands of the toilers fastened upon them, and fresh horrors added to an ancient wrong were the price of liberty that was lost again. They had done good service to their nation, with profit to themselves, and would not see that the times were changing and that the nation had no longer need of them.
Other men, however, at least suspected it, and there was an expectant gathering one hot afternoon in the railroad depot of a little wooden town where Grant stood waiting for the west-bound train. There was little to please the eye about the station, and still less about the town. Straight out of the great white levels ran the glistening track, and an unsightly building of wood and iron rosefrom the side of it, flanked by a towering water-tank. A pump rattled under it, and the smell of creosote was everywhere. Cattle corrals ran back from the track, and beyond them sun-rent frame houses roofed with cedar shingles straggled away on the one hand, paintless, crude, and square. On the other, a smear of trail led the dazzled vision back across the parched levels to the glancing refraction on the horizon, and the figure of a single horseman showing dimly through a dust cloud emphasized their loneliness. The town was hot and dusty, its one green fringe of willows defiled by the garbage the citizens deposited there, and the most lenient stranger could have seen no grace or beauty in it. Yet, like many another place of the kind, it was destined to rise to prosperity and fame.
The depot was thronged that afternoon. Store and hotel keeper, citizens in white shirts and broadcloth, jostled blue-shirted cattle men, while here and there a petty politician consulted with the representative of a Western paper. The smoke of cigars drifted everywhere, and the listless heat was stirred by the hum of voices eager and strident. It was evident that the assembly was in an expectant mood, and there was a murmur of approbation when one newspaper man laid hold of Grant.
“I couldn’t light on you earlier, but ten minutes will see us through,” he said. “We’ll make a half-page of it if you’ll let me have your views. New epoch in the country’s history! The small farmer the coming king! A wood-cut of the man who brought the first plough in.”
Larry Grant laughed a little. “There are quite a few ahead of me, and if you spread my views the barons would put their thumb on you and squeeze you flat,” he said. “On the other hand, it wouldn’t suit me if you sent them anything I told you to publish.”
The man appeared a trifle embarrassed. “The rights of the Press are sacred in a free country, sir,” he said.
“Well,” said Grant drily, “although I hope it will be, this country isn’t quite free yet. I surmise that you don’t know that the office of your contemporary farther east was broken into a few hours ago, and an article written by a friend of mine pulled out of the press. The proprietor was quietly held down upon the floor when he objected. You will hear whether I am right or wrong to-morrow.”
What the man would have answered did not appear, for just then somebody shouted, and a trail of smoke swept up above the rim of the prairie. It rose higher and whiter, something that flashed dazzlingly grew into shape beneath it, and there was a curious silence when the dusty cars rolled into the little station. It was followed by a murmur as an elderly man in broad white hat and plain store clothing, and a plump, blue-eyed young woman, came out upon the platform of a car. He wore a pair of spectacles and gazed about him in placid inquiry, until Grant stepped forward. Then he helped the young woman down, and held out a big, hard hand.
“Mr. Grant?” he said.
Grant nodded, and raised his hat to the girl. “Yes,” he said. “Mr. Muller?”
“Ja,” said the other man. “Also der fräulein Muller.”
There was a little ironical laughter from the crowd. “A Dutchman,” said somebody, “from Chicago. They raise them there in the sausage machine. The hogs go in at one end, and they rake the Dutchmen out of the other.”
Muller looked round inquiringly, but apparently failed to discover the speaker.
“Dot,” he said, “is der chestnut. I him have heard before.”
There was good-humoured laughter—for even when it has an animus an American crowd is usually fair; and in the meanwhile five or six other men got down from a car. They were lean and brown, with somewhat grim faces, and were dressed in blue shirts and jean.
“Well,” said one of them, “we’re Americans. Got any objections to us getting off here, boys?”
Some of the men in store clothing nodded a greeting, but there were others in wide hats, and long boots with spurs, who jeered.
“Brought your plough-cows along?” said one, and the taunt had its meaning, for it is usually only the indigent and incapable who plough with oxen.
“No,” said one of the newcomers. “We have horses back yonder. When we want mules or cowsteerers, I guess we’ll find them here. You seem to have quite a few of them around.”
A man stepped forward, jingling his spurs, with his jacket of embroidered deerskin flung open to show, though this was as yet unusual, that he wore a bandolier. Rolling back one loose sleeve he displayed a brown arm with the letters “C. R.” tattooed within a garter upon it. “See this. You’ve heard of that mark before?” he said.
“Cash required!” said the newcomer, with a grin. “Well, I guess that’s not astonishing. It would be a blame foolish man who gave you credit.”
“No, sir,” said the stockrider. “It’s Cedar Range, and there’s twenty boys and more cattle than you could count in a long day carrying that brand. It will be a cold day when you and the rest of the Dakotas start kicking against that outfit.”
There was laughter and acclamation, in the midst ofwhich the cars rolled on; but in the meanwhile Grant had seized the opportunity to get a gang-plough previously unloaded from a freight-car into a wagon. The sight of it raised a demonstration, and there were hoots, and cries of approbation, while a man with a flushed face was hoisted to the top of a kerosene-barrel.
“Boys,” he said, “there’s no use howling. We’re Americans. Nobody can stop us, and we’re going on. You might as well kick against a railroad; and because the plough and the small farmer will do more for you than even the locomotive did, they have got to come. Well, now, some of you are keeping stores, and one or two I see here baking bread and making clothes. Which is going to do the most for your trade and you, a handful of rich men, who wouldn’t eat or wear the things you have to sell, owning the whole country, or a family farming on every quarter section? A town ten times this size wouldn’t be much use to them. Well, you’ve had your cattle-barons, gentlemen most of them; but even a man of that kind has to step out of the track and make room when the nation’s moving on.”
He probably said more, but Grant did not hear him, for he had as unostentatiously as possible conveyed Muller and the fräulein into a wagon, and had horses led up for the Dakota men. They had some difficulty in mounting, and the crowd laughed good-humouredly, though here and there a man flung jibes at them; while one, jolting in his saddle as his broncho reared, turned to Grant with a little deprecatory gesture.
“In our country we mostly drive in wagons, but I’ll ride by the stirrup and get down when nobody sees me,” he said. “The beast wouldn’t try to climb out this way if there wasn’t something kind of prickly under his saddle.”
Grant’s face was a trifle grim when he saw that more ofthe horses were inclined to behave similarly, but he flicked his team with the whip, and there was cheering and derision when, with a drumming of hoofs and rattle of wheels, wagons and horsemen swept away into the dust-cloud that rolled about the trail.
“This,” he said, “is only a little joke of theirs, and they’ll go a good deal further when they get their blood up. Still, I tried to warn you what you might expect.”
“So!” said Muller, with a placid grin. “It is noding to derfranc tireurs. I was in der chase of Menotti among der Vosges. Also at Paris.”
“Well,” said Grant drily, “I’m ’most afraid that by and by you’ll go through very much the same kind of thing again. What you saw at the depot is going on wherever the railroad is bringing the farmers in, and we’ve got men in this country who’d make first-gradefranc tireurs.”
IVMULLER STANDS FAST
The windows of Fremont homestead were open wide, and Larry Grant sat by one of them in a state of quiet contentment after a long day’s ride. Outside, the prairie, fading from grey to purple, ran back to the dusky east, and the little cool breeze that came up out of the silence and flowed into the room had in it the qualities of snow-chilled wine. A star hung low to the westward in a field of palest green, and a shaded lamp burned dimly at one end of the great bare room.
By it the Fräulein Muller, flaxen-haired, plump, and blue-eyed, sat knitting, and Larry’s eyes grew a trifle wistful when he glanced at her. It was a very long while since any woman had crossed his threshold, and the red-cheeked fräulein gave the comfortless bachelor dwelling a curiously homelike appearance. Nevertheless, it was not the recollection of its usual dreariness that called up the sigh, for Larry Grant had had his dreams like other men, and Miss Muller was not the woman he had now and then daringly pictured sitting there. Her father, perhaps from force of habit, sat with a big meerschaum in hand, by the empty stove, and if his face expressed anything at all it was phlegmatic content. Opposite him sat Breckenridge, a young Englishman, lately arrived from Minnesota.
“What do you think of the land, now you’ve seen it?” asked Grant.
Muller nodded reflectively. “Der land is good. It is der first-grade hard wheat she will grow. I three hundred and twenty acres buy.”
“Well,” said Grant, “I’m willing to let you have it; but I usually try to do the square thing, and you may have trouble before you get your first crop in.”
“Und,” said Muller, “so you want to sell?”
Grant laughed. “Not quite; and I can’t sell that land outright. I’ll let it to you while my lease runs, and when that falls in you’ll have the same right to homestead a quarter or half section for nothing as any other man. In the meanwhile, I and one or two others are going to start wheat-growing on land that is ours outright, and take our share of the trouble.”
“Ja,” said Muller, “but dere is much dot is not clear to me. Why you der trouble like?”
“Well,” said Grant, “as I’ve tried to tell you, it works out very much like this. It was known that this land was specially adapted to mixed farming quite a few years ago, but the men who ran their cattle over it never drove a plough. You want to know why? Well, I guess it was for much the same reason that an association of our big manufacturers bought up the patents of an improved process, and for a long while never made an ounce of material under them, or let any one else try. We had to pay more than it was worth for an inferior article that hampered some of the most important industries in the country, and they piled up the dollars in the old-time way.”
“Und,” said Muller, “dot is democratic America!”
“Yes,” said Grant. “That is the America we mean to alter. Well, where one man feeds his cattle, fifty could plough and make a living raising stock on a smaller scale, and the time’s quite close upon us when they will; but the cattle-men have got the country, and it will hurt them tolet go. It’s not their land, and was only lent them. Now I’m no fonder of trouble than any other man, but this country fed and taught me, and kept me two years in Europe looking round, and I’d feel mean if I took everything and gave it nothing back. Muller will understand me. Do you, Breckenridge?”
The English lad laughed. “Oh, yes; though I don’t know that any similar obligation was laid on myself. The country I came from had apparently no use for a younger son at all, and it was kicks and snubs it usually bestowed on me; but if there’s a row on hand I’m quite willing to stand by you and see it through. My folks will, however, be mildly astonished when they hear I’ve turned reformer.”
Grant nodded good-humouredly, for he was not a fanatic, but an American with a firm belief in the greatness of his country’s destiny, who, however, realized that faith alone was scarcely sufficient.
“Well,” he said, “if it’s trouble you’re anxious for, it’s quite likely you’ll find it here. Nobody ever got anything worth having unless he fought for it, and we’ve taken on a tolerably big contract. We’re going to open up this state for any man who will work for it to make a living in, and substitute its constitution for the law of the cattle-barons.”
“Der progress,” said Muller, “she is irresistible.”
Breckenridge laughed. “From what I was taught, it seems to me that she moves round in rings. You start with the luxury of the few, oppression, and brutality, then comes revolution, and worse things than you had before, progress growing out of it that lasts for a few generations until the few fittest get more than their fair share of wealth and control, and you come back to the same point again.”
Muller shook his head. “No,” he said, “it is nod der ring, but der elastic spiral. Der progress she march, it is true, round und round, but she is arrive always der one turn higher, und der pressure on der volute is nod constant.”
“On the top?” said Breckenridge. “Principalities and powers, traditional and aristocratic, or monetary. Well, it seems to me they squeeze progress down tolerably flat between them occasionally. Take our old cathedral cities and some of your German ones, and, if you demand it, I’ll throw their ghettos in. Then put the New York tenements or most of the smaller western towns beside them, and see what you’ve arrived at.”
“No,” said Muller tranquilly. “Weight above she is necessary while der civilization is incomblete, but der force is from der bottom. It is all time positive and primitive, for it was make when man was make at der beginning.”
Grant nodded. “Well,” he said, “our work’s waiting right here. What other men have done in the Dakotas and Minnesota we are going to do. Nature has been storing us food for the wheat plant for thousands of years, and there’s more gold in our black soil than was ever dug out of Mexico or California. Still, you have to get it out by ploughing, and not by making theories. Breckenridge, you will stay with me; but you’ll want a house to live in, Muller.”
Muller drew a roll of papers out of his pocket, and Grant, who took them from him, stared in wonder. They were drawings and calculations relating to building with undressed lumber, made with Teutonic precision and accuracy.
“I have,” said Muller, “der observation make how you build der homestead in this country.”
“Then we’ll start you in to-morrow,” said Grant. “You’ll get all the lumber you want in the birch bluff, and I’ll lend you one or two of the boys I brought in from Michigan. There’s nobody on this continent handier with the axe.”
Muller nodded and refilled his pipe, and save for the click of the fräulein’s needles there was once more silence in the bare room. She had not spoken, for the knitting and the baking were her share, and the men whose part was the conflict must be clothed and fed. They knew it could not be evaded, and, springing from the same colonizing stock, placid Teuton with his visions and precision in everyday details, eager American, and adventurous Englishman, each made ready for it in his own fashion. Free as yet from passion, or desire for fame, they were willing to take up the burden that was to be laid upon them; but only the one who knew the least awaited it joyously. Others had also the same thoughts up and down that lonely land, and the dusty cars were already bringing the vanguard of the homeless host in. They were for the most part quiet and resolute men, who asked no more than leave to till a few acres of the wilderness, and to eat what they had sown; but there were among them others of a different kind—fanatics, outcasts, men with wrongs—and behind them the human vultures who fatten on rapine. As yet, the latter found no occupation waiting them, but their sight was keen, and they knew their time would come.
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, ranback 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 thechasseurscome.”
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 fräulein. 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 hiscomrade 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 fräulein, 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.
“COME DOWN!”—Page 47.
“COME DOWN!”—Page 47.
“Ja,” said the Teuton. “I was in der Vosges, and der girl is also Fräulein 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 Fräulein Muller went on with her knitting.
VHETTY 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 thingwould 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 oldwidower 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 werenastily 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 willowsthat 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 theprospect 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.”
He gave Miss Schuyler his arm, and moved towards the thickest of the crowd, which, though apparently slightly hostile, made way for him. Here and there a man drove his fellows back, and one, catching up a loose plank, laid it down for the party to cross the rail switches on. Torrance turned to thank him, but the man swept his hat off with a laugh.
“I wouldn’t worry; it wasn’t for you,” he said. “It’s a long while since we’ve seen anything so pretty as Miss Torrance and the other one.”
Flora Schuyler flushed a little, but Hetty turned to the speaker with a sparkle in her eyes.
“Now,” she said, “that was ’most worth a dollar, and if I didn’t know what kind of man you were, I’d give it you. But what about Clarkson’s Lou?”
There was a laugh from the assembly, and the man appeared embarrassed.
“Well,” he said slowly, “she went off with Jo.”
Miss Torrance nodded sympathetically. “Still, if sheknew no better than that, I wouldn’t worry. Jo had a cast in his eye.”
The crowd laughed again, and Flora Schuyler glanced at her companion with some astonishment as she asked, “Do you always talk to them that way?”
“Of course,” said Hetty. “They’re our boys—grown right here. Aren’t they splendid?”
Miss Schuyler once more appeared dubious, and made no answer; but she noticed that the man now preceded them, and raised his hand when they came up with the band, which had apparently halted to indulge in retort or badinage with some of those who followed them.
“Hold on a few minutes, boys, and down with that flag,” he said.
Then a tawdry banner was lowered suddenly between two poles, but not before Miss Torrance had seen part of the blazoned legend. Its unvarnished forcefulness brought a flush to her companion’s cheek.
“Dad,” she asked more gravely, “what is it all about?”
Torrance laughed a little. “That,” he said, “is a tolerably big question. It would take quite a long while to answer it.”
They had a street to traverse, and Hetty saw that it was filled with little knots of men, some of whom stared at her father, though as she passed their hats came off. Miss Schuyler, on her part, noticed that most of the stores were shut, and felt that she had left New York a long way behind as she glanced at the bare wooden houses cracked by frost and sun, rickety plank walks, whirling wisps of dust, and groups of men, splendid in their lean, muscular symmetry and picturesque apparel. There was a boldness in their carriage, and a grace that approached the statuesque in every poise. Still, she started when theypassed one wooden building where blue-shirted figures with rifles stood motionless in the verandah.
“The jail,” said Torrance, quietly. “The Sheriff has one or two rioters safe inside there.”
They found an indifferent meal ready at the wooden hotel, and when they descended in riding dress a wagon with their baggage was waiting outside the door, while a few mounted men with wide hats and bandoliers came up with three saddle-horses. Torrance bestowed the maid in the light wagon, and, when the two girls were mounted, swung himself into the saddle. Then, as they trotted down the unpaved street, Hetty glanced at him and pointed to the dusty horsemen.
“What are the boys for?” she asked.
Torrance smiled grimly. “I told you we had our troubles. It seemed better to bring them, in case we had any difficulty with Larry’s friends.”
“Larry’s friends?” asked Hetty, almost indignantly.
Torrance nodded. “Yes,” he said. “You have seen a few of them. They were carrying the flag with the inscription at the depot.”
Hetty asked nothing further, but Flora Schuyler noticed the little flash in her eyes, and as they crossed the railroad track the clear notes of the bugles rose again and were followed by a tramp of feet. Glancing over their shoulders the girls could see men moving in a body, with the flag they carried tossing amidst the dust. They were coming on in open fours, and when the bugles ceased deep voices sent a marching song ringing across the wooden town.
Hetty’s eyes sparkled; the stockriders seemed to swing more lightly in their saddles, and Flora Schuyler felt a little quiver run through her. Something that jingling rhythm and the simple words expressed but inarticulatelystirred her blood, as she remembered that in her nation’s last great struggle the long battalions had limped on, ragged and footsore, singing that song.
“Listen,” said Hetty, while the colour crept into her face. “Oh, I know it’s scarcely music, and the crudest verse; but it served its purpose, and is there any nation on earth could put more swing and spirit into the grandest theme?”
Torrance smiled somewhat drily, but there was a curious expression in his face. “Some of those men are drawing their pension, but they’re not with us,” he said. “It’s only because we have sent in all the boys we can spare that the Sheriff, who has their partners in his jail, can hold the town.”
A somewhat impressive silence followed this, and Flora Schuyler glanced at Hetty when they rode out into the white prairie with two dusty men with bandoliers on either flank.