Where the Trail Divides | Page 9

time the Scotchman hesitated. "All except one family," he qualified.
"There was but one family there." Landor was not observing the company collectively now. "You mean to tell me Sam Rowland did not go?"
"Yes."
"That you--men here went off and left him and his wife and little girl alone at this time?" The questioner's eyelids were closing ominously. "You come here with that story and ask me to let you inside?"
McPherson was no coward. His short legs spread belligerently, his shoulders squared.
"We're here," he announced laconically.
"I observe." Just a shade closer came the tightened eyelids. "Moreover, strange to say, I'm glad to see you." He leaned forward involuntarily; his breath came quick. "It gives me the opportunity, sir, to tell you to your face that you're a damned coward." In spite of an obvious effort at repression, the great veins of the speaker's throat swelled visibly. "A damned coward, sir!"
"What! You call me--"
"Men! Gentlemen!"
"Don't worry." Swift as had come the burst of passion, Landor was himself again; curt, all-seeing, self-sufficient, "There'll be no blood shed." Early as it was, a crowd had collected now, and, as he had done with the newcomers, he addressed them collectively, authoratively. "When I fight it will not be with one who abandons a woman and a child at a time like this.... God! it makes a man's blood boil. I've known the Rowlands for ten years, long before the kid came." Cold as before he had been flaming, he faced anew the travel-stained group. "Out of my sight, every one of you, and thank your coward stars I'm not in command here. If I were, not a man of you would ever get inside this stockade--not if the Santees scalped you before my eyes."
For a second there was silence, inaction.
"But Rowland wouldn't come," protested a voice. "We tried--"
"Not a word. If you were too afraid of your skin to bring them in, there are others who are not." Vital, magnetic, born leader of men, he turned to the waiting spectators. "It may be too late now,--I'm afraid it is; but if Sam Rowland is alive, I'm going to bring him here. Who's with me? Who's willing to make the ride back to Sioux Falls?"
"Who?" It was another rancher, surnamed Crosby, hatchet-faced, slow of speech, who spoke, "Ain't that question a bit superfluous, pard? We're all with you--that is, as many as you want, I reckon. None of us ain't cats, so we can't croak but once--and that might as well be now as ten years from now."
"All right." Hardened frontiersman, Landor took the grammar and the motive alike for granted. "Get your horses and report here. The first twenty to return, go."
From out the group of newcomers one man emerged. It was McPherson.
"Who'll lend me a horse?" he queried.
No man gave answer. Already the group had separated.
For a moment the Scotchman halted, grim-jawed, his legs an inverted V; then silent as they, equally swiftly, he followed.
Very soon, almost unbelievably soon, they began to trickle back. Not in ignorance of possibilities in store did they come. They had no delusions concerning the red brother, these frontiersmen. Nor in the hot adventurous blood of youth did they respond. One and all were middle-aged men; many had families. All save Landor were strangers to the man they went to seek. Yet at a moment's call they responded; as they took it for granted others would respond were they in need. Had they been conscious of the fact, the action was magnificent; but of it they were not conscious. They but answered an instinct: the eternal brotherhood of the frontier. Far away in his well-policed, steam-heated abode urban man listens to the tale of unselfishness, and, supercilious, smiles. We believe what we have ourselves felt, we humans. First of all to come was lean-faced Crosby, one cheek swelled round with a giant quid. Close at his heels followed Trapper Conway: grizzled, parchment-faced veteran, who alone had followed the Missouri to its source and, stranger to relate, had alone returned with his scalp. Then came Landor himself, the wiry little mustang he rode all but blanketed under the big army saddle. Following him, impassive, noncommittal as though an event of the recent past had not occurred, came McPherson, drew up in place beside the leader. All-seeing, Crosby spat appreciatively, but Landor gave never a glance. Following came not one but many riders; a half dozen, a score,--enough to make up the allotment, and again. In silence they came, grim-faced, more grimly accoutred. All manner of horseflesh was represented: the broncho, the mustang, the frontier scrub, the thoroughbred; all manner of apparel, from chaperajos to weather-beaten denim; but, saddled or saddleless, across the neck of every beast stretched the barrel of a long rifle, at the hip of every rider hung a