The windows were open wide, and when a little breeze from the darkening river came up across the lawn, Hetty languidly raised her head. The coolness was grateful, the silken cushions she reclined amidst luxurious, but the girl’s eyes grew thoughtful as they wandered round the room, for that evening the suggestion of wealth in all she saw jarred upon her mood. The great city lay not very far away, sweltering with its crowded tenement houses under stifling heat; and she could picture the toilers who herded there, gasping for air. Then her fancy fled further, following the long emigrant train as it crawled west from side-track to side-track, close packed with humanity that was much less cared for than her father’s cattle.
She had often before seen the dusty cars roll into a wayside depot to wait until the luxurious limited passed, and the grimy faces at the windows, pale and pinched, cunning, or coarsely brutal, after the fashion of their kind, had roused no more than a passing pity. It was, however, different that night, for Grant’s words had roused her to thought, and she wondered with a vague apprehension whether the tramp of weary feet she had listened to would once more break in upon her sheltered life. Larry had foreseen changes, and he was usually right. Then she brushed these fancies into the background, for she had still a decision to make. Captain Cheyne would shortly arrive, and she knew what he came to ask. He was also a personable man, and, so far as the Schuylers knew, without reproach, while Hetty had seen a good deal of him during the past twelve months. She admitted a liking for him, but now that the time had come to decide, she was not certain that she would care to spend her life with him. As a companion, he left nothing to be desired, but, as had happened already with another man with whom Miss Torrance had been pleased, that position did not appear to content him; and she had misgivings about contracting a more permanent bond. It was almost a relief when Miss Schuyler came in.
“Stand up, Hetty. I want to look at you,” she said.
Miss Torrance obeyed and stood before her, girlishly slender in her long dress, though there was an indefinite suggestion of imperiousness in her dark eyes.
“Will I pass?” she asked.
Flora Schuyler surveyed her critically and then laughed. “Yes,” she said. “You’re pretty enough to please anybody, and there’s a style about you that makes it quite plain you were of some importance out there on the prairie. Now you can sit down again, because I want to talk to you. Who’s Larry Grant?”
“Tell me what you think of him.”
Miss Schuyler pursed her lips reflectively. “Well,” she said, “he’s not New York. Quite a good-looking man, with a good deal in him, but I’d like to see him on horseback. Been in the cavalry? You’re fond of them, you know.”
“No,” said Hetty, “but he knows more about horses than any cavalry officer. Larry’s a cattle-baron.”
“I never quite knew what the cattle-barons were, except that your father’s one, and they’re mostly rich,” said Miss Schuyler.
Hetty’s eyes twinkled. “I don’t think Larry’s very rich. They’re the men or the sons of them, who went west when the prairie belonged to the Indians and the Blackfeet, Crows, and Crees made them lots of trouble. Still, they held the land they settled on, and covered it with cattle, until the Government gave it to them, ’most as much as you could ride across in a day, to each big rancher.”
“Gave it to them?”
Hetty nodded. “A lease of it. It means the same thing. A few of them, though I think it wasn’t quite permitted, bought other leases in, and out there a cattle-baron is a bigger man than a railroad king. You see, he makes the law – all there is – as well as supports the industry, for there’s not a sheriff in the country dares question him. The cattle-boys are his retainers, and we’ve a squadron of them at the Range. They’d do just what Torrance of Cedar told them, whatever it was, and there are few men who could ride with them in the U. S. Cavalry.”
“Then,” said Flora Schuyler, “if the Government ever encouraged homesteading in their country they’d make trouble.”
Hetty laughed. “Yes,” she said drily, “I guess they would, but no government dares meddle with us.”
“Well,” said Flora Schuyler, “you haven’t told us yet who Larry is. You know quite well what I mean.”
Hetty smiled. “I called him my partner when I was home. Larry held me on my first pony, and has done ’most whatever I wanted him ever since. Fremont isn’t very far from the Range, and when I wanted to ride anywhere, or to have a new horse broken, Larry was handy.”
Miss Schuyler appeared reflective, but there was a bond of confidence between the two, and the reserve that characterizes the Briton is much less usual in that country.
“It always seemed to me, my dear, that an arrangement of that kind is a little rough on the man, and I think this one is too good to spoil,” she said.
Hetty coloured a trifle, but she smiled. “It is all right with Larry. He never expected anything.”
“No?” said Flora Schuyler. “He never tried to make love to you?”
The tinge of colour grew a trifle deeper in Hetty’s cheek. “Only once, and I scarcely think he meant it. It was quite a long while ago, and I told him he must never do it again.”
“And since then he has tamed your horses, and bought you all the latest songs and books – good editions in English art bindings. It was Larry who sent you those flowers when we could scarcely get one?”
Hetty for some reason turned away her head. “Don’t you get things of that kind?”
A trace of gravity crept into Flora Schuyler’s blue eyes, which were unusually attractive ones. “When they come too often I send them back,” she said. “Oh, I know I’m careless now and then, but one has to do the square thing, and I wouldn’t let any man do all that for me unless I was so fond of him that I meant to marry him. Now I’m going to talk quite straight to you, Hetty. You’ll have to give up Larry by and by, but if you find that’s going to hurt you, send the other man away.”
“You don’t understand,” and there was a little flash in Hetty’s dark eyes. “Larry’s kind to everyone – he can’t help it; but he doesn’t want me.”
Flora Schuyler gravely patted her companion’s arm. “My dear, we don’t want to quarrel, but you’ll be careful – to please me. Jake Cheyne is coming, and you might be sorry ever after if you made a mistake to-night.”
Hetty made no answer, and there was silence for a space while the light grew dimmer, until the sound of voices rose from without, and she felt her heart beat a trifle faster than usual, when somebody said, “Captain Cheyne!”
Then there was a rustle of draperies and Mrs. Schuyler, thin, angular, and considerably more silent than is customary with women of her race, came in, with her younger daughter and a man in her train. The latter bore the stamp of the soldier plainly, but there was a distinction in his pose that was not the result of a military training. Then as he shook hands with Flora Schuyler the fading light from the window fell upon his face, showing it clean cut from the broad forehead to the solid chin, and reposeful instead of nervously mobile. His even, low-pitched voice was also in keeping with it, for Jackson Cheyne was an unostentatious American of culture widened by travel, and, though they are not always to be found in the forefront in their own country, unless it has need of them, men of his type have little to fear from comparison with those to be met with in any other one.
He spoke when there was occasion, and was listened to, but some time had passed before he turned to