CHAPTER XIII
THE TRAIL AT DAWN
Frances stopped at the high wire fence along the river bank. It was dark there between the shrubs of the garden on one hand and the tall willows on the other, but nothing moved in them but her own leaping heart. She called Mrs. Chadron, running along the fence as she cried her name.
Mrs. Chadron answered from the barn. Frances found her saddling a horse, while Maggie"s husband, an old Mexican with a stiff leg, muttered prayers in his native tongue as he tightened the girths on another.
Mrs. Chadron was for riding in pursuit of Nola"s abductors, although she had not mounted a horse in fifteen years. There was no man about the place except crippled old Alvino, and wounded Dalton lying in the men"s quarters near at hand. Neither of them was serviceable in such an emergency, and Banjo, willing as he would be, seemed too badly hurt to be of any use.
Frances pressed her to dismiss this intention. Even if they knew which way to ride, it would be a hopeless pursuit.
"There"s only one way to go--towards the rustlers" settlement," Mrs.
Chadron grimly returned.
She was over her hysterical pa.s.sion now, and steadied down into a state of desperate determination to set out after the thieves and bring Nola back. She did not know how it was to be accomplished, but she felt her strength equal to any demand in the pressure of her despair. She was lifting her foot to the stirrup, thinly dressed as she was, her head bare, the rifle in her hand, when Frances took her by the arm.
"You can"t go alone with Alvino, Mrs. Chadron."
"I"ve got to go, I tell you--let loose of me!"
She shook off Frances" restraining hand and turned to her horse again.
With her hand on the pommel of the saddle she stopped, and turned to Alvino.
"Go and fetch me Chance"s guns out of the bunkhouse," she ordered.
Alvino hitched away, swinging his stiff leg, with laborious, slow gait.
"You couldn"t do anything against a crowd of desperate men--they might kill you!" Frances said.
"Let "em kill me, then!" She lifted her hand, as if taking an oath.
"They"ll pay for this trick--every man, woman, and child of them"ll bleed for what they"ve done to me tonight!"
"Let Alvino go to the camp up the river where Mr. Chadron left the men, and tell them; they can do more than you."
"You couldn"t drive him alone out of sight of the lights in the house with fire. He"d come back with some kind of a lie before he"d went a mile. I"ll go to "em myself, honey--I didn"t think of them."
"I"ll go with you."
"Wait till Alvino comes with them guns--I can use "em better than I can a rifle. Oh, why don"t the man hurry!"
"I"ll run down and see what--"
But Alvino came around the corral at that moment. He had stopped to light a lantern, in his peculiar Mexican mode of estimating the importance of time and occasion, and came flashing it in short, violent arcs as he swayed to swing his jointless leg.
Frances led out the other horse and was waiting to mount when Alvino came panting up, the belt with its two revolvers over his arm. Mrs.
Chadron jerked it from him with something hard and sharp on her tongue like a curse. Banjo Gibson came into the circle of light, a bandage on his head.
"I didn"t even see "em. They knocked me down, and when I come to she was gone!"
Banjo"s voice was full of self-censure, and his feet were weak upon the ground. He began to talk the moment the light struck him, and when he had finished his little explanation he was standing beside Mrs.
Chadron"s saddle.
"Go to the house and lie down, Banjo," Mrs. Chadron said; "I ain"t time to fool with you!"
"Are you two aimin" to go to the post after help?" Banjo steadied himself on his legs by clinging to the horse"s mane as he spoke.
"We"re goin" up the river after the men," Mrs. Chadron told him.
"No, I"ll go after the men; that"s a man"s job," Banjo insisted. "I know right where they"re camped at, you couldn"t find "em between now and morning."
There was no arguing Banjo out of it, no brushing the little man aside. He was as firm as a man three times his weight, and he took Mrs. Chadron by the arm, like a son, and led her away from the horse with a manner at once so firm and yet considerate that it softened her stern heart and plunged her into tears.
"If you bring Nola back to me I"ll give her to you, Banjo! I"ll give her to you!" she sobbed, as she belted him with Chance Dalton"s guns.
"If any reward in this world could drive me through h.e.l.l fire to lay my hands on it, you"ve named it," he said.
Frances saw that Mrs. Chadron could be reasoned with now, and she was grateful to Banjo for his opportune arrival. For the night was vast and unfriendly over that empty land, and filled with a thousand shudderful dangers. She was afraid of it, afraid to leave the lights of the house behind her and ride out into it, no matter for all the peril that poor little Nola might be facing in that cruel hour.
Banjo rode away. They stood clinging to each other in the dim circle of Alvino"s lantern-light, listening to his horse until the distance m.u.f.fled its feet on the road.
Frances was chilled with the horror of that brigandish act. Every movement of the wind in the bushes made her skin crinkle and creep; every sound of animals in barn and corral was magnified into some new danger. Mrs. Chadron was in far worse state, with reason, certainly, for being so. Now that the stimulation of her first wild outburst had been exhausted, she stood wilted and weak, shivering with her hands over her eyes, moaning and moaning in piteous low wail.
Frances took the lantern from old Alvino"s shaking hand.
"Let"s go and look for their tracks," she suggested, forcing a note of eagerness into her words, "so we can tell the men, when they come back to pick up the trail, how many there were and which way they went."
"Oh, if Chance was only able to go after them, if he was only able!"
Mrs. Chadron wailed, following Frances as she hurried along the wire fence that cut the garden from the river.
"It was somebody that knowed the lay of the land," Mrs. Chadron said, "for that gate down there back of the house is open. That"s the way they come and went--somebody that knowed the lay of the land."
Frances felt her heart die within her as the recollection of another night in that garden flashed like red fire in her mind. There was a picture, as she stopped with closed eyes, struck cold and shuddering by a fear she dared not own, of one flying, bent into the shadows, along the garden path toward that gate. Someone who knew the "lay of the land!"
"Did you hear something?" Mrs. Chadron whispered, leaning close to her where she had stopped, stock-still, as if she had struck a wall.
"I thought I--I--saw something," Frances answered, in faint, sick voice.
The white gate was swinging as the invaders had left it, and in the soft ground beyond it they found tracks.
"Only one man!" said Mrs. Chadron, bending over.
"There"s only one track," said Frances, her breath so feeble, her heart laboring so weakly that she believed that she must die.
Alvino came up, and took the lead in tracking, with the aptness for that trick that goes with primitive minds such as his. Even in the farthest glimmer of the light he could pick up the trail, and soon he led them to the willows where the ravisher"s horse had been concealed.
"One shoe was lost," said he, pointing, "left one, hind foot."