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Updated: June 17, 2025
"I've busted in on you, colonel, because my business is business, not a mess of reportin' and signin' up on nothing, like your fool army doin's." Chadron clamped with clicking spurs across the severe bare floor as he made this announcement, the frown of his displeasure in having been stopped at the door still dark on his face. "I'm waiting your pleasure, sir," Colonel Landcraft returned, stiffly.
Chadron, who presented him with pride, came into the room where the young ladies waited with impatience the waning of the daylight hours. Banjo acknowledged the honor of meeting Miss Landcraft with extravagant words, which had the flavor of a manual of politeness and a ready letter-writer in them.
"I have the honor to report the safe return of the detachment dispatched to Alamito Ranch for the convoy of Miss Landcraft," he said. Colonel Landcraft returned the salute, and stood stiffly while his officer spoke. "Very well, sir," said he.
"Will you let me explain?" Colonel Landcraft stood out of the doorway; Macdonald entered. "I'll make a light," said the colonel, lowering the window-shades before he struck the match. When he had the flame of the student's lamp on top of his desk regulated to conform to his exactions, the colonel faced about suddenly. "I am listening, sir."
Miss Landcraft perhaps has placed her heart somewhere else." "She has no right to act with such treachery to me and you, sir," the colonel said. "I'll not have it! Where else, sir who?" "Spare me the humiliation of informing you," begged Major King, with averted face, with sorrow in his voice. "Oh, you slanderous coward!" Frances assailed him with scorn of word and look.
It was said that he would be a brigadier-general before he reached forty. On the major's side, was the ambition to strengthen his political affiliations by alliance with a family of patrician strain, together with the money that his bride would bring, for Colonel Landcraft was a weighty man in this world's valued accumulations. So the match had been arranged.
Macdonald understood what it meant, and whose hand was behind the slaying of those home-makers of the wilderness. It was not a new procedure in the cattle barons' land; this scourge had been fore-shadowed in that list of names which Frances Landcraft had given him. The word had gone out to them to be on guard. Now death had begun to leap upon them from the roadside grass.
Banjo Gibson was before the fire, his ears red, his cheeks redder, just in from a brisk ride over from the post. His instruments lay beside him on the floor, and he was limbering his fingers close to the blaze. "Yes, he's a brigamadier now," said he. "Brigadier-General Landcraft," said she, musingly, looking away into the grayness of the day; "well, maybe he deserves it.
"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.
"You came to me because you have magnified your importance in this country until you believe you're the entire nation," the colonel replied, very hot and red. Chadron made no answer to that. He turned toward the military door, but Colonel Landcraft would not permit his unsanctified feet, great as they were and free to come and go as they liked in other places, to pass that way.
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