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Updated: July 17, 2025
Go back to your wild riding, Macdonald, and try to live an honest man." Macdonald stood with his head bent, brows gathered in stubborn expression of resistance. Colonel Landcraft could read in his face that there was no surrender, no acknowledgment of defeat, in that wild rider's heart.
On the other balance there was Frances Landcraft, taller by half a head, soldierly, too, as became her lineage, in the manner of lifting her chin in what seemed a patrician scorn of small things such as a lady should walk the world unconscious of. The brown in her hair was richer than the clear agate of her eyes; it rippled across her ear like the scroll of water upon the sand.
"Where's my daughter, Chadron, you cutthroat! Where's Miss Landcraft? If the lightest hair of her head has suffered, by God! I'll burn this house to the sills!" Colonel Landcraft stood before Chadron in his worn regimentals, his old campaign hat turned back from his forehead as if he had been riding in the face of a wind. Macdonald, looking up at Frances from his couch, spoke to her with his eyes.
Nature seemed to lend a hand to him, he made crops in spite of the cattlemen, and was prospering. He had taken root and appeared determined to remain, and the others were taking deep root with him, and the free, wide range was coming under the menace of the fence and the lowly plow. That was the condition of things in those fair autumn days when Prances Landcraft returned to the post.
"Maybe your bluffin' goes with some people, but it don't go with me. You git to hell out of here!" "In your place and time I'll talk to you, you sneaking hound!" Colonel Landcraft answered, throwing Chadron one blasting look. "Take off that sword, surrender those arms! You are under arrest." This to Major King, who stood scowling, watching the colonel as if to ward an attack.
"You're deceived in your estimation of the fellow, Miss Landcraft," the major returned, red to the eyes in his offended dignity. "I arrived at the ranch not an hour ago, detailed to escort you back to the post. Will you have the kindness to mount at once, please?" He stepped forward to give her a hand into the saddle.
"Where was you aimin' to go so early?" asked one of them, laying hand on her bridle. "I'm the daughter of Colonel Landcraft, commanding officer at Fort Shakie, and I'm going home," she answered, as placidly and good-humoredly as if it might be his regular business to inquire.
You're not fit to wear it," said he. Chadron had drawn away from the door of Macdonald's room a little, and stood apart from Major King with his wife and daughter. The cattleman had attempted no defense, had said no word. In the coming of Colonel Landcraft, full of authority, strong and certain of hand, Chadron appeared to know that his world was beginning to tumble about his ears.
Fatal infatuation, said the married ladies at the post, knowing, as everybody knew in the service, that Major King was betrothed to Frances Landcraft, the colonel's daughter.
Neither of the young women knew of the tiff between the colonel and Chadron, for the colonel was a man who kept his family apart from his business. Chadron had not seen fit to uncover his humiliation to his daughter, but had told her that he was acting on the advice of Colonel Landcraft in sending to his friends in Cheyenne for men to put down the uprising of rustlers himself.
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