The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 30

Hetty asked one or two leading questions, but the man had evidently nothing more to tell, and when he went out, the two girls looked at one another in silence. Hetty's eyes were anxious and her face more colourless than usual.

"Flo," she said sharply, "are we thinking the same thing?"

"I don't know," said Miss Schuyler. "You have not told me your notions yet. Still, this is clear to both of us, Mr. Clavering expects to meet somebody at the Cedar Bluff, and your father is to bring two or three men with him. The question is, what could they be wanted for?"

"No," said Hetty, with a little quiver in her voice, "it is who they expect to meet. You know what day this is?"

"Wednesday."

Once more there was silence for a few seconds, but the thoughts of the two girls were unconcealed now, and when she spoke Hetty closed her hand.

"Think, Flo. There must be no uncertainty." Miss Schuyler slipped out of the room and when she came back she brought an envelope, splashed with red wax, on a blotting-pad.

"There's the key. All is fair--in war!" she said.

A pink tinge crept into Hetty's cheeks, and a sparkle into her eyes as she looked at her companion.

"Don't make me angry with you, Flo," she said. "We can't read it."

"No?" said Miss Schuyler quietly, holding up the pad. "Now I think we can.

This is another manifestation of the superiority of the masculine mind.

Give me your hand-gla.s.s, Hetty."

"Of course," said Hetty, with a little gasp. "Still--it's horribly mean."

There was a slightly contemptuous hardness in Flora Schuyler's eyes. "If you let the man who rides by the bluff on Wednesdays fall into Clavering's hands, it would be meaner still."

The next moment Hetty was out of the room, and Miss Schuyler sat down with a face that had grown suddenly weary. But it betrayed nothing when Hetty came back with the gla.s.s, and when she held up the blotter in hands that were perfectly steady, they read:

"I have fixed it with the Sheriff. Clavering's boys had, as you guessed, been watching for Larry on the wrong day; but now we have found out it is Wednesday we'll make sure of him. If you care to come around to the bluff about six that night, you will probably see us seize him; but if you would sooner stand out in this case, it wouldn't count. We don't expect any difficulty."

Hetty flushed crimson. "Flo," she said, "it was the letter arranging his own arrest he brought me back."

"That is not the point," said Miss Schuyler sharply. "What are you going to do?"

Hetty laughed mockingly. "You and I are going to drive over to the Newcombes and stay the night. You get nervous when my father is away. But we are not going there quite straight; and you had better put your warmest things on."

An hour later two of the best horses in Torrance's stable drew the lightest sleigh up to the door, and Miss Schuyler turned with a smile to the remonstrating housekeeper.

"Nothing would induce me to stay here another night when Mr. Torrance was away," she said. "You can tell him that, if he is vexed with Hetty, and you needn't worry. We will be safe at Mrs. Newcombe's before an hour is over."

The housekeeper shook her head. "I guess not. It's a league round by the bridge, and you couldn't find the other trail in the dark."

Miss Schuyler laughed. "Then, look at the time, and we'll let you know when we get there," she said.

Hetty whipped the team, and with a whirling of dusty snow beneath the runners, they swept away. Both sat silent, until the beat of hoofs rang amidst the trees as they swept through the gloom of the big bluff at a gallop, and Hetty laughed excitedly.

"Hold fast, Flo. You did that very well; but we have our alibi to prove, and are not going near the bridge," she said.

She flicked the horses, and the trees swept away behind them and the long white levels rolled back faster yet to the drumming hoofs. The rush of cold wind stung Miss Schuyler's face like the lash of a whip, her eyes grew hazy, and she held the furs about her as she swayed with the lurching of the sleigh. Darkness was closing in when they came to the forking of the trail, and, with a little cry of warning, Hetty lashed the team. The lurches grew sharper, and Miss Schuyler gasped now and then as she felt the sleigh swing rocking down a long declivity. Scattered birches raced up out of it, and the hammering beat of hoofs swelled into a roar as it rolled along a thicker belt of trees.

They rose higher and higher, a dusky wall athwart the way, and Miss Schuyler felt for a better hold for her feet, and grasped the big strapped robe as she looked in vain for any opening. That team had done nothing for more than a week, and there was no stinting of oats and maize at Cedar.

Hetty, however, did not attempt to hold them, but sat swaying to the jolting, leaning forward as the shadowy barrier rushed up towards them, until, before she quite realized how they got there, Miss Schuyler found herself hurled forward down what appeared to be a steadily sloping tunnel.

Dim trees swept by and drooping boughs lashed at her. Now and then there was a sharp crackling or a sickening lurch, and still they sped on furiously, until a faint white s.h.i.+ning appeared ahead.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"The river," said Hetty. "Hold fast! There's a piece like a toboggan-leap quite near."

She flung herself backwards as the lace-like birch twigs smote her furs; and when one of the horses stumbled Miss Schuyler with difficulty stifled a cry. The beast, however, picked up its stride again, there was a lurch, and the rocking sleigh appeared to leap clear of the snow. A crash followed, and they were flying out of the shadow again across a strip of faintly s.h.i.+ning plain with another belt of dusky trees rolling back towards them. Beyond them, low in the soft indigo, a pale star was s.h.i.+ning. Hetty glanced at it as she shook the reins, and once more something in her laugh stirred Miss Schuyler.

"I know when that star comes out," she said. "If Larry's only there we can warn him and make our ride on time."

In another minute they were in among the trees, and Hetty, springing down, plodded through the loose snow at the horses' heads, urging them with hand and voice up the incline which wound tortuously into the darkness. Now and then, one of them stumbled, and there was a great trampling of hoofs, but the girl's mittened hand never loosed its grasp; and it was with a little breathless run she clutched the sleigh and swung herself in when the team swept out on the level again. Still, at least a minute had pa.s.sed before she had the horses in hand. The trail forked again somewhere in the dimness they were flas.h.i.+ng through, and it was difficult to see the dusky smear at all.

A lurch that flung Miss Schuyler against her showed that Hetty had found the turning; and a little later, with a struggle, she checked the team, and they slid behind one of the low, rolling rises that seamed the prairie here and there. There was no wind in the hollow behind it and a great stillness under the high vault of blue studded with twinkling stars. The dim whiteness of a long ridge cut sharply against it, and the pale colouring and frosty glitter conveyed the suggestion of pitiless cold.

Flora Schuyler s.h.i.+vered, and drew the furs closer round her.

"Is this the place?" she asked.

"Yes," said Hetty, with a little gasp. "If we don't meet him here he will have pa.s.sed or gone by the other trail, and it will be too late to stop him. Can you hear anything, Flo?"

Miss Schuyler strained her ears, but, though the horses were walking now, she could hear nothing. The deep silence round them was emphasized by the soft trample of the hoofs and thin jingle of steel that seemed unreal and out of place there in the wilderness of snow and stars.

"No," she said, in a strained voice; "I can hear nothing at all. It almost makes one afraid to listen."

They drove slowly for a minute or two, and then Hetty pulled up the team.

"I can't go on, and it is worse to stand still," she said. "Flo, if he didn't stop--and he wouldn't--they would shoot him. He must be coming.

Listen. There's a horrible buzzing in my ears--I can't hear at all."

Miss Schuyler listened for what appeared an interminable time, and wondered afterwards that she had borne the tension without a sign. The great stillness grew overwhelming now the team had stopped, and there was that in the utter cold and sense of desolation that weighed her courage down. She felt her insignificance in the face of that vast emptiness and destroying frost, and wondered at the rashness of herself and Hetty and Larry Grant who had ventured to believe they could make any change in the great inexorable scheme of which everything that was to be was part. Miss Schuyler was not fanciful, but during the last hour she had borne a heavy strain, and the deathly stillness of the northwestern waste under the Arctic frost is apt to leave its impress on the most unimaginative.

Suddenly very faint and far off, a rhythmic throbbing crept out of the darkness, and Flora Schuyler, who, fearing her ears had deceived her at first, dared not speak, felt her chilled blood stir when Hetty flung back her head.

"Flo--can't you hear it? Tell me!"

Miss Schuyler nodded, for she could not trust her voice just then; but the sound had grown louder while she listened and now it seemed flung back by the rise. Then, she lost it altogether as Hetty shook the reins and the sleigh went on again. In a few minutes, however, there was an answer to the thud of hoofs, and another soft drumming that came quivering through it sank and swelled again. By and by a clear, musical jingling broke in, and at last, when a moving object swung round a bend of the rise, a voice that rang harsh and commanding reached them.

"Pull right up there, and wait until we see who you are," it said.

"Larry!" cried Hetty; and the second time her strained voice broke and died away. "Larry!"

It was less than a minute later when a sleigh stopped close in front of them, and, leaving one man in it, Grant sprang stiffly down. It took Hetty a minute or two more to make her warning plain, and Miss Schuyler found it necessary to put in a word of amplification occasionally. Then, Grant signed to the other man.

"Will you drive Miss Schuyler slowly in the direction she was going, Breckenridge?" he said. "Hetty, I want to talk to you, and can't keep you here."

Hetty was too cold to reflect, and, almost before she knew how he had accomplished it, found herself in Grant's sleigh and the man piling the robes about her. When he wheeled the horses she was only conscious that he was very close to her and that Breckenridge and Miss Schuyler were driving slowly a little distance in front of them. Then, glancing up, as though under compulsion, she saw that Grant was looking down upon her.

"It is not what I meant to tell you, but doesn't this remind you of old times, Hetty?" he said.