Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: July 17, 2025
You are a brigand and a thief, sir this act of barbaric impetuosity in itself condemns you no civilized man would have the effrontery to force himself into my presence in such a manner and make this insane demand." "I am exercising a gentleman's prerogative, Colonel Landcraft." "You are a vulture aspiring to soar among eagles, sir!"
Then flinging away his official stiffness, he met Frances half-way as she ran to meet him, and enfolded her to his breast, just as if his dry old heart knew that she had come to him through perils. Breathlessly she told him the story, leaving no word unsaid that would mount to the credit of Alan Macdonald. Colonel Landcraft was as hot as blazing straw over the matter.
Macdonald," she said, her face as serious as his own. "I thought it might be a subscription list for a church, or something, and that you might want it." "Thank you, Miss Landcraft," said he, his voice low-modulated, his manner easy.
"In the first place," said he, speaking slowly, "there are no cattle thieves among the homesteaders in the settlement up the river, Miss Landcraft. I have told you this before. Here, I want you to meet some of them, and judge for yourself." He beckoned to Tom Lassiter and the three with him, and they joined him there before her.
Smallness of stature, disappointment in his ambition for preferment, and a natural narrowness of soul, had turned Colonel Landcraft into a military martinet of the most pronounced character. He was the grandfather of colonels in the service, rank won in the old Indian days. That he was not a brigadier-general was a circumstance puzzling only to himself.
"If I live six months longer the world beyond these mountains will know," was all that Macdonald said, taking up the papers which he had submitted to the colonel, and placing them again in his pocket. Colonel Landcraft shook his head doubtfully. "Running off other men's cattle never will do it, Macdonald."
But murder, even with the faint color of excuse that they would have contrived to give it, could not be done in the eyes of such a witness as Frances Landcraft. Subserviency, a bending of dignity even, could not be stooped to before one who had been schooled to hold a soldier's honor his most precious endowment. Major King had shown a hand of half-fairness in treating both sides alike.
Landcraft being a strict militarist, and always serving the colonel's coffee with her own hand throwing up a framework of speculation on her own account. Perhaps if she should go to the ranch she might be in some manner instrumental in bringing this needless warfare to a pacific end.
When they passed out of her hearing, she rode on, slowly, and with caution. She was frontiersman enough to keep her direction by the north star Colonel Landcraft had seen to that particular of her education himself but Polaris would not tell her which way to go to find Alan Macdonald and his dusty men standing their vigil over their cooped-up enemies.
He questioned what good there was to be got out of it, for him or those for whom he had taken up the burden, for many a weary year to come. The gloom of the situation bore heavily upon him; he felt the uselessness of his fight. He recalled the words of Frances Landcraft: "There must be millions behind the cattlemen."
Word Of The Day
Others Looking