The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 47

Grant was looking at the door and did not see the man move back half-way up the stairs as silently as he came.

Once more a hoa.r.s.e shout rose from outside: "Open that door before we break it in!"

For a moment or two, as if to give point to the warning, the door creaked and rattled as the axe-heads beat upon it, and then the din ceased suddenly, for Grant, who recognized the voice, raised his hand.

"Open it for them," he said, so loudly that he could be heard outside.

Breckenridge was almost glad to obey. It would have pleased him better to have taken his place, rifle in hand, with the cook on the stairway, but since Grant had evidently determined not to oppose the a.s.sailants'

entrance by violence, it was a relief to do anything that would terminate the suspense. Still, his heart throbbed painfully as he seized the bolt, and he glanced round once more in what he felt was futile protest. Grant, who evidently saw what he was thinking in his face, only smiled a little and signed with his hand.

Breckenridge drew the bolt, and sprang backwards as the door swung open.

Men with axes and rifles showed up in the light; but while here and there an axe flashed back a twinkling gleam, or a face shone white, the rest was blurred and shadowy, and he could only see hazy figures moving against the blackness of the night. His companion was standing alone in the middle of the hall, motionless and impa.s.sive, with nothing in his hands.

"Now," he said, in a voice that jarred on Breckenridge's ears, "the door is open. What do you want?"

"We want you," said one of the men outside.

"Then, I'll come out and talk to you," said Grant.

Breckenridge laid a restraining hand upon his arm, but he shook it off, and moving forward stopped just outside the threshold. The lad could not see his face, but he noticed that he stood very straight, with his head thrown back a trifle, and that one or two of those without edged farther into the shadowy crowd. Glancing behind him, he also saw the cook leaning forward on the stairway with the rifle glinting in his hands.

"Well?" said Grant, and his voice rang commandingly.

"We have come for the dollars," said a man. "We want them, and they're ours."

"Then, you must ask your committee for them. They are not in my house."

"Bluff!" said somebody; and an angry clamour broke out.

"Hand them out," cried one voice, "before we burn the place for you."

Larry swung up one hand commandingly, and Breckenridge felt a thrill of pride when, as if in tribute to his comrade's fearlessness, a sudden silence followed. Larry stood alone, statuesque in poise, with arm stretched out in the face of the hostile crowd, and once more the respect the men had borne him a.s.serted itself.

"You will listen to me, boys, and it may be the last time I shall speak to you," he said. "You know that right back from the beginning I have done the best I could for you, and now I feel it in me that if you will wait just a little longer the State will do more than I could ever do. Can't you understand that if you go round destroying railroad-trestles, shooting cattle, and burning ranches, you are only playing into the hand of your enemies, and the very men in the legislature who would, if you kept your patience, make your rights sure to you, will be forced to turn the cavalry loose on you? Can't you sit tight another month or two, instead of throwing all we have fought for away?"

The silence that followed the speech lasted for a s.p.a.ce of seconds, and then, when Breckenridge hoped Grant might still impose prudence upon the crowd, there were murmurs of doubt and suspicion. They grew rapidly louder, and a man stepped out from the rest.

"The trouble is that we don't believe in you, Larry," he said. "You were with us solid one time, but that was before the cattle-barons bought you."

A derisive laugh followed, and when Grant turned a little Breckenridge saw his face. The bronze in it had faded, and left paler patches, that seemed almost grey, while the lad, who knew his comrade's pride and uprightness, fancied he could guess how that taunt, made openly, had wounded him.

"Well," he said, very slowly, "I can only hope you will have more confidence in your next leader; but I am on the list of the executive still, and if the house was full of dollars I wouldn't give you one of them with which to make trouble that you'll most surely be sorry for. Any way, those I had are safe in a place where, while your committee keep their heads, you will not lay hands on them."

A shout of disbelief was followed by uproar, through which there broke detached cries: "Pull him down! He has them all the time! Pound them out of him! Burn the place down for a warning to the cattle-men!"

They died away when one of the men, with emphatic gestures, demanded attention. Moving out from the rest, he turned to Grant. "You have rifles and cartridges here, and after all, those are what we want the most.

Now--and it's your last chance--hand them out."

"No," said Grant.

The man made a little gesture of resignation. "Boys," he said, "you will have to go in and take them."

Grant still stood motionless and unyielding on his threshold, but he had only a moment's grace, for the men outside surged on again, and one swung a rifle-b.u.t.t over him. Breckenridge saw his comrade seize it, and had sprung to his side when a rifle flashed on the stairway behind him and a man cried out and fell. The next instant another rifle-b.u.t.t whirled, and Grant, reeling sideways, went down and was trampled on.

Breckenridge ran towards the rifle still lying in the hall, but before he could reach it there was a roar of voices and a rush of feet, and the men who poured in headlong were upon him. Something hard and heavy smote him in the face, and as he reeled back gasping there was another flash on the stairway. His head struck something, and he was never sure of what happened during the next half-hour.

When, feeling very dizzy, Breckenridge raised himself in the corner where he had been lying, the hall was empty save for two huddled figures in the doorway, and while he blinked at them in a half-dazed fas.h.i.+on, it seemed to him that a red glare, which rose and fell, shone in. He could also smell burning wood, and saw dim wreaths of smoke drive by outside. His hearing was not especially acute just then, but he fancied that men were trampling, and apparently dragging furniture about, all over the building.

Then, as his scattered senses came back to him, he rose feebly to his feet, and finding to his astonishment that he still possessed the power of locomotion, walked unevenly towards the motionless objects in the doorway.

One of them, as he expected, was Grant, who was lying very white and still, just as he had fallen.

"Larry," Breckenridge said, and s.h.i.+vered at the sound of his own voice.

"Larry!"

But there was no answer, and Breckenridge sat down by Grant's side with a little groan, for his head swam once more and he felt a horrible coldness creeping over him. How long he sat there, while the smoke that rolled in from outside grew denser, he did not know; but by and by he was dimly conscious that the men were coming down the stairway. They cl.u.s.tered about him, and one of them, stooping over the injured homesteader, signed to his comrades.

"Put him into the wagon, and start off at once," he said.

Three or four men came out from the rest, and when they shuffled away with their burden, the one who seemed to be leader pointed to Grant as he turned to Breckenridge.

"He would have it, and the thump on the head he got would have put an end to most men," he said. "Still, I don't figure you need worry about burying him just yet, and I want a straight answer. Are those dollars in the house?"

Breckenridge sat blinking at him a moment, and then very shakily dragged himself to his feet, and stood before the man, with one hand clenched. His face was white and drawn and there was a red smear on his forehead.

"If you would not believe the man who lies there, will you take my word?"

he said unevenly. "He told you they were not."

"I guess he spoke the truth," said somebody. "Any way, we can't find them.

Well, what is to be done with him?"

Breckenridge, who was not quite himself, laughed bitterly. "Leave him where he is, and go away. You have done enough," he said. "He gave you all he had--and I know, as no other man ever will, what it cost him--and this is how you have repaid him."

Some of the men looked confused, and the leader made a deprecatory gesture. "Any way, we'll give you a hand to put him where you want."

Breckenridge waved him back fiercely. "I am alone; but none of you shall lay a hand on him while I can keep you off. If you have left any life in him, the touch of your fingers would hurt him more than anything."

The other man seemed to have a difficulty in finding an answer, and while he stared at Breckenridge there was a trample of hoofs in the mire outside, and a shout. Breckenridge could not catch its meaning, but the men about him streamed out of the hall and he could hear them mounting in haste. As the rapid beat of hoofs gradually died away, looking up at a sound, he saw the cook bending over his comrade. The man, seeing in his eyes the question he dared not ask, shook his head.

"No, I guess they haven't killed him," he said. "Kind of knocked all the senses out of him; and now I've let the rest out, we'll get him to bed."

"The rest?" Breckenridge asked bewildered.

The man nodded. "Yes," he said, "I guess I got one or two of the homestead-boys, and then Charley and I lit out through a back window, and slipped round to see why the stockboys weren't coming. It was quite simple. The blame firebugs had put a man with a rifle at the door of their sleeping shed."

Three or four other men trooped in somewhat sheepishly, though, as the cook had explained, it was not their fault they had arrived after the fight was over; and while they carried their master upstairs Breckenridge thought he heard another beat of hoofs. He paid no great attention to it, but when Larry had been laid on the bed glanced towards the window at the streaks of flame breaking through the smoke that rolled about a birch-log building.

"What can be done?" he said.

"I don't know that we can do anything," answered the cook. "The fire has got too good a holt, but it's not likely to light anything else the way the wind is. It was one of them blame Chicago rustlers put the firestick in."