in me at all.”
“Very well; set your beautiful red wig straight and then tell me why you wanted to come here among your enemies. It seems to me a hardy challenge, a most unnecessary risk.”
46
“No risk is unnecessary that brings me to you,” he said, his voice trembling in earnestness. “I dared to come because I hoped to meet you on equal ground.”
“You’re a bold man—in more ways than one.” She shook her head as in rebuke of his temerity.
“But you don’t believe I’m a thief,” said he, conclusively.
“No; I have made public denial of it.” She laughed lightly, but a little nervously, an uneasiness over her that she could not define.
“An angel has risen to plead for Alan Macdonald, then!”
“Why should you need anybody to plead for you if there’s no truth in their charges? What is a man like you doing in this wild place, wasting his life in a land where he isn’t wanted?”
They had turned into a path that branched beyond the lanterns. The white gravel from the river bars with which it was paved glimmered among the shadowy shrubs. Macdonald unclasped his plaid from his shoulders and transferred it to hers. She drew it round her, wrapping her arms in it like a squaw, for the wind was coming chill from the mountains now.
“It is soon said,” he answered, quite willingly. “I am not hiding under any other man’s name—the one they call me by here is my own. I was a ‘son of a family,’ as they say in Mexico, and looked for distinction, if not glory, in the diplomatic service. Four 47 years I grubbed, an under secretary in the legation at Mexico City, then served three more as consul at Valparaiso. An engineer who helped put the railroad through this country told me about it down there when the rust of my inactive life was beginning to canker my body and brain. I threw up my chance for diplomatic distinction and came off up here looking for life and adventure, and maybe a copper mine. I didn’t find the mine, but I’ve had some fun with the other two. Sometimes I’d like to lose the adventure part of it now—it gets tiresome to be hunted, after a while.”
“What else?” she asked, after a little, seeing that he walked slowly, his head up, his eyes far away on the purple distances of the night, as if he read a dream.
“I settled in this valley quite innocently, as others have done, before and after me, not knowing conditions. You’ve heard it said that I’m a rustler—”
“King of the rustlers,” she corrected.
“Yes, even that. But I am not a rustler. Everybody up here is a rustler, Miss Landcraft, who doesn’t belong to, or work for, the Drovers’ Association. They can’t oust us by merely charging us with homesteading government land, for that hasn’t been made a statutory crime yet. They have to make some sort of a charge against us to give the color of justification to the crimes they practice on us, and rustler is the worst one in the cattlemen’s dictionary. It stands ahead of murder and arson in 48 this country. I’m not saying there are no rustlers around the edges of these big ranches, for there are some. But if there are any among the settlers up our way we don’t know it—and I think we’d pretty soon find out.”
They turned and walked back toward the house.
“I don’t see why you should trouble about it; this plainly isn’t your place,” she said.
“First, I refused to be driven out by Chadron and the rest because the thing got on my mettle. I knew that I was right, and that they were simply stealing the public domain. Then, as I hung on, it became apparent that there was a man’s work cut out for somebody up here. I’ve taken the ready-made job.”
“Tell me about it.”
“There’s a monstrous injustice being practiced, systematically and cruelly, against thousands of homeless people who come to this country in innocent hope every year. They come here believing it’s the great big open-handed West they’ve heard so much about, carrying everything with them that they own. They cut the strings that hold them to the things they know when they face this way, and when they try to settle on the land that is their inheritance, this copper-bottomed combination of stockmen drives them out. If they don’t go, they shoot them. You’ve heard of it.”
“Not just that way,” said she, thoughtfully.
“No, they never shoot anybody but a rustler, the 49 way the world hears of it,” said he, in resentment. “But they’ll hear another story on the outside one of these days. I’m in this fight up to the eyes to break the back of this infernal combination that’s choking this state to death. It’s the first time in my life that I ever laid my hand to anything for anybody but myself, and I’m going to see it through to daylight.”
“But there must be millions behind the cattlemen, Mr. Macdonald.”
“There are. It seems just about hopeless that a handful of ragged homesteaders ever can make a stand against them. But they’re usurping the public domain, and they’ll overreach themselves one of these days. Chadron has title to this homestead, but that’s every inch of land that he’s got a legal right over. In spite of that, he lays the claim of ownership to the land fifteen miles north of here, where I’ve nested. He’s been telling me for more than two years that I must clear out.”
“You could give it up, and go back to your work among men, where it would count,” she said.
“There are things here that count. I couldn’t put a state on the map—an industrial and progressive one, I mean—back home in Washington, or sitting with my feet on the desk in some sleepy consulate. And I’m going to put this state on the map where it belongs. That’s the job that’s cut out for me here, Miss Landcraft.”
He said it without boast, but with such a stubborn 50 note of determination that she felt something lift within her, raising her to the plane of his aspirations. She knew that Alan Macdonald was right about it, although the thing that he would do was still dim in her perception.
“Even then, I don’t see what a ranch away off up here from anywhere ever will be worth to you, especially when the post is abandoned. You know the department is going to give it up?”
“And then you—” he began in consternation, checking himself to add, slowly, “no, I didn’t know that.”
“Perhaps in a year.”
“It can’t make much difference in the value of land up this valley, though,” he mused. “When the railroad comes on through—and that will be as soon as we break the strangle hold of Chadron and men like him—this country will develop overnight. There’s petroleum under the land up where I am, lying shallow, too. That will be worth something then.”
The music of an old-style dance was being played. Now the piping cowboy voice of some range cavalier rose, calling the figures. The two in the garden path turned with one accord and faced away from the bright windows again.
“They’ll be unmasking at midnight?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“I’m afraid I can’t go in again, then. The hour of my enchantment is nearly at its end.”
51
“You shouldn’t have come,” she chided, yet not in severity, rather in subdued admiration for his reckless bravery. “Suppose they—”
“Mac! O Mac!” called a cautious, low voice from a hydrangea bush close at hand.
“Who’s there?” demanded Macdonald, springing forward.
“They’re onto you, Mac,” answered the voice from the shrub, “they’re goin’ to do you hurt. They’re lookin’ for you now!”
There was a little rustling in the leaves as the unseen friend moved away. The voice was the voice of Banjo Gibson, but not even the