The Cattle-Baron's Daughter Part 51

Miss Schuyler smiled. "Well," she said, "that--alone--would not be such a very serious offence."

The crimson showed plainer in Hetty's cheek and there was a faint ring in her voice. "Flo," she said, "don't make me angry--I can't bear it to-night. Something is going to happen--I can feel it is--and you don't know my father even yet. He is so horribly quiet, and I'm afraid of as well as sorry for him. It is a long while ago, but he looked just as he does now--only not quite so grim--during my mother's last illness. Oh, I know there is something worrying him, and he will not tell me--though he was always kind before, even when he was angry. Flo, this horrible trouble can't go on for ever!"

Hetty had commenced bravely, but she faltered as she proceeded, and Miss Schuyler, who saw her distress, had risen and was standing with one hand on her shoulder when the maid came in. She cast a hasty glance at her mistress, and appeared, Flora Schuyler fancied, embarra.s.sed, and desirous of concealing it.

"Mr. Torrance will excuse you coming down again," she said. "He may have some of the Sheriff's men and one or two of the cow-boys in, and would sooner you kept your room. Are you likely to want me in the next half-hour?"

"No," said Hetty. "No doubt you are anxious to find out what is going on."

The maid went out, and Miss Schuyler fixed anxious eyes on her companion.

"What is the matter with the girl, Hetty?" she asked.

"I don't know. Did you notice anything?"

"Yes. I think she had something on her mind. Any way, she was unexplainably anxious to get away from you."

Hetty smiled somewhat bitterly. "Then she is only like the rest. Everybody at Cedar is anxious about something now."

Flora Schuyler rose, and, flinging the curtains behind her, looked out at the night. The moon was just showing through a rift in the driving cloud, and she could see the bluff roll blackly down to the white frothing of the river. She also saw a shadowy object slipping through the gloom of the trees, and fancied it was a woman; but when another figure appeared for a moment in the moonlight the first one came flitting back again.

"I believe the girl has gone out to meet somebody in the bluff," she said.

Hetty made a little impatient gesture. "It doesn't concern us, any way."

Miss Schuyler sat down again and made no answer, though she had misgivings, and five or ten minutes pa.s.sed silently, until there was a tapping at the door, and the maid came in, very white in the face. She clutched at the nearest chair-back, and stood still, apparently incapable of speech, until, with a visible effort, she said: "Somebody must go and send him away. He is waiting in the bluff."

Hetty rose with a little scream, but Flora Schuyler was before her, and laid her hand upon the maid's arm.

"Now, try to be sensible," she said sternly. "Who is in the bluff?"

The girl s.h.i.+vered. "It is not my fault--I didn't know what they wanted until the Sheriff came. I tried to tell him, but Joe saw me. Go right now, and send him away."

Hetty was very white and trembling, but Flora Schuyler nipped the maid's arm.

"Keep quiet, and answer just what we ask you!" she said. "Who is in the bluff?"

"Mr. Grant," said the girl, with a gasp. "But don't ask me anything. Send him away. They'll kill him. Oh, you are hurting me!"

Flora Schuyler shook her. "How did he come there?"

"I took Miss Torrance's letter, and wrote the rest of it. I didn't know they meant to do him any harm, but they made me write. I had to--he said he would marry me."

The maid writhed in an agony of fear, but she stood still s.h.i.+vering when Hetty turned towards her with a blanched face that emphasized the ominous glow in her dark eyes.

"You wicked woman!" she said. "How dare you tell me that?"

"I mean Mr. Clavering. Oh----!"

The maid stopped abruptly, for Flora Schuyler drove her towards the door.

"Go and undo your work," she said. "Slip down at the back of the bluff."

"I daren't--I tried," and the girl quivered in Miss Schuyler's grasp. "If I could have warned him I would not have told you; but Joe saw me, and I was afraid. I told him to come at nine."

It was evident that she was capable of doing very little just then, and Flora Schuyler drew her out into the corridor.

"Go straight to your room and stay there," she said, and closing the door, glanced at Hetty. "It is quite simple. This woman has taken your note-paper and written Larry. He is in the bluff now, and I think she is right. Your friends mean to make him prisoner or shoot him."

"Stop, and go away," said Hetty hoa.r.s.ely. "I am going to him."

Flora Schuyler placed her back to the door, and raised her hand. "No," she said, very quietly. "It would be better if I went in place of you. Sit down, and don't lose your head, Hetty!"

Hetty seized her arm. "You can't--how could I let you? Larry belongs to me. Let me go. Every minute is worth ever so much."

"There are twenty of them yet. He has come too early," said Flora Schuyler, with a glance at the clock. "Any way, you must understand what you are going to do. It was Clavering arranged this, but your father knew what he was doing and I think he knows everything. If you leave this house to-night, Hetty, everybody will know you warned Larry, and it will make a great difference to you. It will gain you the dislike of all your friends and place a barrier between you and your father which, I think, will never be taken away again!"

Hetty laughed a very bitter laugh, and then grew suddenly quiet.

"Stand aside, Flo," she said. "n.o.body but Larry wants me now."

Miss Schuyler saw that she was determined, and drew aside. "Then," she said, with a little quiver in her voice, "because I think he is in peril you must go, my dear. But we must be very careful, and I am coming with you as far as I dare."

She closed the door, and then her composure seemed to fail her as they went out into the corridor; and it was Hetty who, treading very softly, took the lead. Flitting like shadows, they reached the head of the stairway, and stopped a moment there, Hetty's heart beating furiously. The pa.s.sage beneath them was shadowy, but a blaze of light and a jingle of gla.s.ses came out of the half-opened door of the hall, where Torrance sat with his guests; and while they waited, they heard his voice and recognized the vindictive ring in it. Hetty trembled as she grasped the bannister.

"Flo," she said, "they may come out in a minute. We have got to slip by somehow."

They went down the stairway with skirts drawn close about them, in swift silence, and Hetty held her breath as she flitted past the door. There was a faint swish of draperies as Flora Schuyler followed her, but the murmur of voices drowned it; and in another minute Hetty had opened a door at the back of the building. Then, she gasped with relief as she felt the cold wind on her face, and, with Miss Schuyler close behind her, crept through the shadow of the house towards the bluff. When the gloom of the trees closed about them, she clutched her companion's shoulder.

"No," she said hoa.r.s.ely, "not that way. Joe is watching there. We must go right through the bluff and down the opposite side of it."

They floundered forward, sinking ankle-deep in withered leaves and clammy mould, tripping over rotting branches that ripped their dresses, and stumbling into dripping undergrowth. There was no moon now, and it was very dark, and more than once Flora Schuyler valiantly suppressed the scream that would have been a vast relief to her, and struggled on as silently as she could behind her companion; but it seemed to her that anybody a mile away could have heard them. Then, a little trail led them out of the bluff on the opposite side to the house, and the roar of the river grew louder as they hastened on, still in the gloom of the trees, until something a little blacker than the shadows behind it grew into visibility; and when it moved a little, Flora Schuyler touched Hetty's arm.

"Yes," she said. "It is Larry. If I didn't know the kind of man he is, I would not let you go. Kiss me, Hetty."

Hetty stood still a second, for she understood, and then very quietly put both hands on Flora Schuyler's shoulders and kissed her.

"It can't be very wrong; and you have been a good friend, Flo," she said.

She turned, and Flora Schuyler, standing still, saw her slim figure flit across a strip of frost-bleached sod as the moon shone through.

XXIX

HETTY DECIDES

It was in a pale flash of silvery light that Larry saw the girl against the gloom of the trees. The moaning of the birches and roar of the river drowned the faint sound her footsteps made, and she came upon him so suddenly, statuesque and slender in her trailing evening dress and etherealized by the moonlight, that as he looked down on the blanched whiteness of her upturned face, emphasized by the dusky hair, he almost fancied she had materialized out of the harmonies of the night. For a moment he sat motionless, with the rifle glinting across his saddle, and a tightening grip of the bridle as the big horse flung up its head, and then, with a sudden stirring of his blood, moved his foot in the stirrup and would have swung himself down if Hetty had not checked him.