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Updated: May 4, 2025
Frances felt that there was no necessity for waking her out of that much-needed repose, for the plan that she had formulated within the past few minutes did not include an appeal for Mrs. Chadron's assistance in it. Experience told her that Mrs. Chadron would accept unquestioningly the arrangements and orders of her husband, in whom her faith was boundless and her confidence without bottom.
She expected now to hear explosions from within her father's sacred place, and when the sound failed to reach her she concluded that some subordinate hand had opened the door to Chadron's summons. "I'll hurry" Nola dashed into her own room, finishing from the door "I want to catch him before he goes and find out what's wrong."
Then she rose and dressed herself in her saddle garb again, and went tiptoeing past Mrs. Chadron's door. Since going to bed Mrs. Chadron bad not stirred. She seemed to have plunged over the precipice of sleep and to be lying stunned at the bottom.
It was almost terrifying to her to think of that. She ran down the stairs and stood listening at his closed door. That was not his voice, that heavy growl, that animal note. Saul Chadron's; no other. Her mother came in through the front door, weeping, and clasped Frances in her arms as she stood there, shadowy in the light of the dim hall lamp. "He is gone!" she said. Frances did not speak.
"Oh, that man! that man!" cried Nola, in fearful, wild scream. Mrs. Chadron clasped her in her arms and turned her defiant face toward the man in the door. He was standing just as he had stood when they first saw him, silent, still; as grim as the shadow of Saul Chadron's sins. The soldiers who stood around Major King looked on with puzzled eyes; Colonel Landcraft frowned.
"Yes, I intended to stay, Mr. Chadron; I didn't come out to tell you that." She looked round at the admiring faces, too plainly expressive of their approbation, some of them, and plucked Chadron's sleeve. "Bend down I want to tell you something," she said, in low, quick voice. Chadron stooped, his hand lightly on her shoulder, in attitude of paternal benediction.
"I lost Thorn's trail that first day," he returned, "and then things began to get so hot for us up the valley that I had to drop the search and get those people back to safety ahead of Chadron's raid. Yesterday afternoon we caught a man trying to get through our lines and down into the valley. He was a half-breed trapper who lives up in the foothills, carrying a note down to Chadron.
Thorn turned on him, a savage, smothered noise in his throat. "You can say that because you owe me money, but you know it's a damn lie! If you didn't owe me money, I'd make you swaller it with hot lead!" "You're talkin' a little too free for a man of your trade, Mark." While Chadron's tone was tolerant, even friendly, there was an undercurrent of warning, even threat, in his words.
"It wasn't Macdonald, it was Mark Thorn," she whispered. Chadron's face displayed no surprise, shadowed no deeper concern. Only there was a flitting look of perplexity in it as he sat upright in his saddle again. "Who is he?" he asked. "Don't you know?" She watched him closely, baffled by his unmoved countenance.
That had happened to him more than once, and it only seemed to sharpen the pleasure of being snowed in at a place like Alamito, where the kitchen was fat and the hand of the host free. He smiled as he turned to the kitchen to wash his face and soap his hair. They passed a very pleasant afternoon at the ranchhouse, in spite of Mrs. Chadron's uneasiness on account of their defenseless state.
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