The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 32

Grant shook his head. "No," he said. "It seems to me that argument has quite frequently accounted for a good deal of meanness. It is tolerably presumptuous for any man to consider himself indispensable."

"Well," said Breckenridge, divided between anger and approval, "I have found out already that it's seldom any use trying to convince you, but each time you made this round I've driven with you, and it's quite obvious that if one of us crossed the bridge it would suit the purpose. Now, I don't think the Sheriff could rake up very much against me."

Grant laid his hand on the lad's shoulder. "I'm going to cross the bridge, but I don't purpose that either of us should fall into the Sheriff's clutches," he said. "You saw what Jardine's gla.s.s had gone down to?"

Breckenridge nodded. "It dropped like that before the last blizzard we had."

Grant turned and looked about him, and Breckenridge s.h.i.+vered as he followed his gaze. They had driven out from behind the rise now and a bitter wind met them in the face. There was not very much of it as yet, but all feeling seemed to die out of the lad's cheeks under it, and it brought a little doleful moaning out of the darkness. Behind them stars shone frostily in the soft indigo, but elsewhere a deepening obscurity was creeping up across the prairie, and sky and snow were blurred and merged one into the other.

"There's one meaning to that," said Grant. "We'll have snow in an hour or two, and when it comes it's going to be difficult to see anything. In the meanwhile, we'll drive round by Busby's and get our supper while the cow-boys cool. The man who hangs around a couple of hours doing nothing in a frost of this kind is not to be relied upon when he's wanted in a hurry."

He flicked the horses, and in half an hour the pair were sitting in a lonely log-house beside a glowing stove while its owner prepared a meal.

Two other men with bronzed faces sat close by, and Breckenridge fancied he had never seen his comrade so cheerful. His cares seemed to have fallen from him, his laugh had a pleasant ring, and there was something in his eyes which had not been there for many weary months. Breckenridge wondered whether it could be due to anything Miss Torrance had said to him, but kept his thoughts to himself, for that was a subject upon which one could not ask questions.

In the meanwhile, Clavering and the Sheriff found the time pa.s.s much less pleasantly--on the bluff. The wind that whistled through it grew colder as one by one the stars faded out, and there was a mournful wailing amidst the trees. Now and then, a shower of twigs came rattling down from branches dried to brittleness by the frost, and the Sheriff brushed them off disgustedly, as, huddling lower in the sleigh from which the horses had been taken out, he packed the robes round him. He had lived softly, and it would have suited him considerably better to have spent that bitter evening in the warmth and security of Clavering's ranch.

"No sign of him yet?" he said, when Christopher Allonby and Clavering came up together. "Larry will stay at home to-night. He has considerably more sense than we seem to have."

"I have seen nothing," said Allonby, who, in the hope of restoring his circulation, had walked up the trail. "Still, the night is getting thicker, and n.o.body could make a sleigh out until it drove right up to him."

"If Larry did come, you could hear him," said the Sheriff.

Allonby lifted his hand, and, as if to supply the answer, with a great thras.h.i.+ng of frost-nipped twigs the birches roared about them. The blast that lashed them also hurled the icy dust of snow into the Sheriff's face.

"I don't know," said the lad. "n.o.body could hear very much through that."

"Ugh!" said the Sheriff. "We will have a blizzard on us before long, and Government pay doesn't warrant one taking chances of that kind. Aren't we playing a fool's game, Clavering?"

Clavering laughed somewhat unpleasantly. "There are other emoluments attached to your office which should cover a little inconvenience," he said. "Now, I fancy I know Larry Grant better than the rest of you, and it would take quite a large-sized blizzard to keep him at home when he had anything to do. Once you put him out of the way it will make things a good deal more pleasant for everybody. Larry is the one man with any brains the homesteaders have in this part of the country, and while they would make no show without him, we can expect nothing but trouble while he's at liberty. It seems to me that warrants our putting up with a little unpleasantness."

"Quite improving!" said Allonby, who was not in the best of temper just then. "One could almost wonder if you had any personal grudge against the man, Clavering. You are so astonis.h.i.+ngly disinterested when you talk of him. Now, if I didn't like a man I'd make an opportunity of telling him."

Clavering laughed. "You're young, Chris, or you wouldn't worry about folks' motives when their efforts suit you. What are the men doing?"

"Freezing, and grumbling!" said Allonby. "They've made up their minds to get Larry this time or we wouldn't have kept them here. It's the horses I'm anxious about. They seem to know what is coming, and they're going to give us trouble."

"A fool's game!" repeated the Sheriff, with a s.h.i.+ver. "Got any of those cigars with you, Clavering? If I'm to stay here, I have to smoke."

Clavering threw him the case and turned away with Allonby. They went down through the bluff together and stood a few moments looking up the trail.

It led downwards towards them, a streak of faintly s.h.i.+ning whiteness, through the gloom of the trees, and the wind that set the branches thras.h.i.+ng whirled powdery snow into their faces, though whether this came down from the heavens or was uplifted from the frozen soil they did not know. With eyes dimmed and tingling cheeks, they moved back again amidst the birches; but even there it was bitterly cold, and Allonby was glad to turn his face from the wind a moment as they stopped to glance at the tethered horses. They were stamping impatiently, while the man on watch, who would have patted one of them, sprang backwards when the beast lashed out at him.

"If Larry doesn't come soon, I guess we're going to find it hard to keep them here," he said. "They're 'most pulling the branches they're hitched to off the trees."

Allonby nodded. "Larry would be flattered if he knew the trouble you and I were taking over him, Clavering," he said. "It's also the first time I've seen you worry much about this kind of thing."

"What kind of thing?"

"Citizen's duty! I think that's the way you put it?"

Clavering laughed. "If you want to be unpleasant, Chris, can't you try a different line? That one's played out. It's too cold to quarrel."

"I don't feel pleasant," said Allonby. "In fact, I don't like this thing, any way. Before Larry got stuck with his notions he was a friend of mine."

"If the boys don't get too cold to shoot it's quite likely he will be n.o.body's friend to-morrow," said Clavering cruelly. "We'll go round and look at them."

They went back into the trail once more, and the icy gusts struck through them as they plodded up it; but they found no man keeping watch beside it, as there should have been. The cow-boys had drawn back for shelter among the trees, and Clavering, who found them stamping and s.h.i.+vering, had some difficulty in getting them to their posts again. They had been there two hours, and the cold was almost insupportable.

"I guess it's no use," said Allonby. "As soon as we have gone on every boy will be back behind his tree, and I don't know that anybody could blame them. Any way I'm 'most too cold for talking."

They went back together, and, while the cow-boys, who did as Allonby had predicted, slowly froze among the trees, rolled themselves in the sleigh-robes and huddled together. It was blowing strongly now, and a numbing drowsiness had to be grappled with as the warmth died out of them.

At last when a few feathery flakes came floating down, the Sheriff shook himself with a sleepy groan.

"There is not a man living who could keep me here more than another quarter of an hour," he said. "Are the boys on the look-out by the trail, Allonby?"

"They were," said the lad drowsily. "I don't know if they're there now, and it isn't likely. Clavering can go and make sure if he likes to, but if anyone wants me to get up, he will have to lift me."

Neither Clavering nor the Sheriff appeared disposed to move, and it was evident that both had abandoned all hope of seeing Larry Grant that night.

Ten minutes that seemed interminable pa.s.sed, and the white flakes that whirled about them grew thicker between the gusts and came down in a bewildering rush. The Sheriff shook the furs off him and stood up with a groan.

"Tell them to bring the horses. I have had quite enough," he said.

Allonby staggered to his feet, and reeled into the wood. There was a hoa.r.s.e shouting, and a trampling of hoofs that was drowned in a roar of wind, and when that slackened a moment a faint cry went up.

"Hallo!" said the Sheriff; "he's coming."

Then, n.o.body quite remembered what he did. Here and there a man struggled with a plunging horse in the darkness of the wood, and one or two blundered into each other and fell against the trunks as they ran on foot.

They were dazed with cold, and the snow, that seemed to cut their cheeks, was in their eyes.

Allonby, however, saw that Clavering was mounted, and the horse he rode apparently going round and round with him, while by and by he found himself in the saddle. He was leaning low over the horse's neck, with one moccasined foot in the stirrup and the other hanging loose, while the branches lashed at him, when something dark and shapeless came flying down the trail.

He heard a hoa.r.s.e shout and a rifle flashed, but the wind drowned the sound and before he was in the trail the sleigh, which was what he supposed the thing to be, had flashed by. One cannot handily fit spurs to moccasins, and, as his hands were almost useless, it was some time before he induced the horse, which desired to go home uphill, to take the opposite direction. Then, he was off at a gallop, with a man whom he supposed to be Clavering in front of him, and the Sheriff, who seemed to be shouting instructions, at his side. Allonby did not think that anybody heard them, but that was of no great moment to him then, for the trail was narrow and slippery here and there, and he was chiefly concerned with the necessity of keeping clear of his companion. He could not see the sleigh now and scarcely fancied that anybody else did, but he could hear the beat of hoofs in front of him when the wind sank a trifle, and rode on furiously down-hill at a gallop. The horse had apparently yielded to its terror of the storm, and Allonby had more than a suspicion that, had he wanted to, he could neither have turned it nor pulled it up.

Clavering still held in front of him, but the Sheriff was dropping back a little, and the lad did not know whether any of the rest were following.

He was, however, certain that, barring a fall, a mounted man could overtake a sleigh, and that the up grade beyond the bridge would tell on the beasts that dragged a weight behind them. So while the snow whirled past him and the dim trees flashed by, he urged on the beast until he heard the bridge rattle under him and felt the pace slacken--the trail had begun to lead steeply up out of the hollow.

The horse was flagging a little by the time they reached the crest of the rise, and for a few moments Allonby saw nothing at all. The roar of the trees deafened him, and the wind drove the snow into his eyes. Then, as he gasped and shook it from him when the gust had pa.s.sed, he dimly made out something that moved amidst the white haze and guessed that it was Clavering. If that were so, he felt it was more than likely that the sleigh was close in front of him. A few minutes later he had come up with the man whose greater weight was telling, and while they rode stirrup to stirrup and neck by neck, Allonby fancied there was something dim and shadowy in front of them.

Clavering shouted as he dropped behind, and Allonby who failed to catch what he said was alone, blinking at the filmy whiteness, through which he had blurred glimpses of the object ahead, now growing more distinct. He could also, when the wind allowed it, hear the dull beat of hoofs. How long it took him to overtake it he could never remember; but at last the sleigh was very close to him, and he shouted. There was no answer; but Allonby, who could scarcely hear his own voice, did not consider this astonis.h.i.+ng, and tried again. Still no answer came back, and, coming up with the sleigh at every stride, he dragged the b.u.t.t of his sling rifle round and fumbled at the strap with a numbed and almost useless hand.

He could see the back of the sleigh, but nothing else, and lurching perilously in the saddle he got the rifle in his hand; but, cold and stiffened as he was, he dared not loose his grasp on the bridle, and so, with the b.u.t.t at his hip, he raced up level with the sleigh. Then, the horse, perhaps edged off the beaten trail into the snow outside it, blundered in its stride, and the rifle, that fell as the lad swayed, was left behind. He had both hands on the bridle the next moment, and leaning down sideways fancied there was n.o.body in the sleigh. It took him a second or two to make quite sure of it, and at least a minute more before he brought the horse to a standstill in the trail. By that time the sleigh had swept on into the sliding whiteness. Wheeling his horse, Clavering rode out of the snow and pulled up in evident astonishment.

"Have you let him get away?" he gasped.

"He wasn't there," said Allonby.

"Not there! I saw him and another man when they drove past us in the bluff."

"Well," said Allonby, "I'm quite certain there's n.o.body in that sleigh now."