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Under the direction of Frances, Maggie had placed a cot in Mrs. Chadron's favored sitting-room with the fireplace. There Macdonald lay in clean sheets, a blaze on the hearth, and Maggie was washing his wound with hot water, groaning in the pity which is the sweetest part of the women of her homely race. "I think that he will live, miss," she said hopefully.
"I couldn't very well ask anybody else to go after her," he admitted, with a modest reticence that amounted almost to being ashamed. "After I made sure that we had Chadron's raiders cooped up where they couldn't get out, I went up and got her. Thorn wasn't there, nobody but the Indian woman, the 'breed's wife. She was the jailer a regular wildcat of a woman."
Major King had seen his promised reward withdrawn through her intervention, and had made a play of being fair to both sides in the controversy, except that he kept one hand on Chadron's shoulder, so to speak, in making martyrs of those bloody men whom he had sent there to burn and kill.
You ain't goin' " "To Californy; startin' from here as soon as my horse blows a spell and eats his last feed at your feed box, mom. I've got to make it to Meander to ketch the mornin' train." "Oh, Banjo! you don't tell me!" Tears gushed to Mrs. Chadron's eyes, used to so much weeping now, and her lips trembled as she pressed them hard to keep back a sob.
Lassiter retailed to her eager ears the story of Macdonald's capture of Thorn, and his fight with Chadron's men when they came to set the old slayer free, as Lassiter supposed. "They turned him loose," said he, "and you know now what I meant when I said Chadron's chickens has come home to roost." "Yes, I know now." She turned, and looked back.
"But they'll kill you Mrs. Chadron can't hold them back she doesn't want to hold them back for she's full of Chadron's lies about you. Your horse is worn out you can't outrun them." "How many are there besides the five I saw?" "Only Dalton, and he's supposed to be crippled." "Oh, well," he said, easily, as if only five whole men and a cripple didn't amount to so much, taken all in the day's work.
Chadron's dark face was blacker for the spreading flood of resentful blood; he pointed with his heavy quirt at Thorn, as if to impress him with a sense of the smallness of his wickedness, which men would not credit against the cattlemen's word, even if he should publish it abroad.
"What in the hell're you up to now?" he demanded, without regard for his companion, who was accustomed, well enough, to his explosions and expletives. Macdonald gravely lifted his hand to his hat, his eyes meeting Nola's for an instant, Chadron's challenge unanswered. Nola's face flared at this respectful salutation as if she had been insulted.
He was not a man, only the blighted and cursed husk of a man, indeed, but doubly dangerous for his irresponsibility, for his atrophied small understanding. Twenty miles lay between the prisoner and the doubtful security of the jail at Meander, and most of the distance was through the grazing lands within Chadron's bounds.
Frances could hear her weeping now, and Chadron's heavy voice rising in command as she came to the outer door. Chadron was in the saddle again, and there was hurrying among his men at barn and corral as they put on bridles which they had jerked off, and tightened girths and gathered up dangling straps.
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