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Updated: June 17, 2025
"If you'll be good enough to tell me what your veiled accusations point to, Miss Landcraft, then I can answer you by either yes or no." She unbent so far as to relate briefly what she believed they knew better than herself already. But behind her high air as she talked there was a secret warm feeling for the strength of this man.
On the afternoon of the day following Nola Chadron's ball, when Major King returned to Frances the glove that Alan Macdonald had carried away from the garden, Colonel Landcraft was a passenger on the mail stage from Meander to the post. The colonel had been on official business to the army post at Cheyenne.
It seemed a pleasant place of quiet beauty that bright September morning, and a pity to give it up by and by to dust and desolation; a place where men and women might be happy, but for the gnawing fire of ambition in their hearts. Mrs. Colonel Landcraft was not going.
Macdonald stood, hat in hand, the last sunbeams of that day over his fair tangled hair, the smoke of his conflict on his face, the tender light of a man's most sacred fire in his eyes. When Major King delivered Frances his punctilious military observance made her home-coming nothing less to Colonel Landcraft, they found that grizzled warrior in an electrical state of excitement.
But a true man did not run away under fire, nor a brave one block out a task and then shudder and slink away, when he stood off and saw the immensity of the thing that he had undertaken. Besides all these considerations, which in themselves formed insuperable reasons against retreat, there had been some big talk into the ear of Frances Landcraft. There was no putting down what he had begun.
The night raids upon their fields would continue, the slanders against them would spread and grow. Colonel Landcraft believed him to be what malicious report had named him; there was not a doubt of that. And what Frances thought of him since that misadventure of the glove, it was not hard to guess.
"Yes, but they go shooting sheriffs," she protested. "They'll not be doing so much careless and easy shooting around here since Colonel Brigadier-General Landcraft and that sounds more like his size, too gave them a rubdown with the iron hand. The cattle barons' day is over; their sun went down when Mark Thorn brought the holy scare to Saul Chadron's door." "Father is of the same opinion.
Colonel Landcraft smiled, looking from one to the other of them, and a softness came into his face. He took Major King's hand and carried it to join Frances', and she, in her softness for her father, allowed it to remain in the young soldier's grasp. "There is one gleam of joy in the sundown of my life," the colonel said, "and that is in seeing my daughter pledged to a soldier.
Were they not there as beggars to receive bounty from the government's hand? "Oh, there's Mrs. Mathews!" said Nola, with the eagerness of a child who has found a quail's nest in the grass. She was off at an angle, like a hunter on the scent. Colonel Landcraft and his guest followed with equal rude eagerness, and the others swept after them, Frances alone hanging back.
But there resulted a clucking, which brought the colonel to the portal frowning and alert, warming in the expectation of having somebody whom he might dress down at last. "Colonel Landcraft, I beg the favor of a word in private," said the stranger at the door. The colonel opened the door wider, and peered sharply at the visitor, a frown gathering on his unfriendly face.
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