Part 42 (2/2)

”We'll not talk of it,” Frances said.

”I must, I can't let anything stand between us, Frances. If I'd been fair, all the way through--but I wasn't. I wasn't fair about Major King, and I wasn't fair this time. I was fool enough to think that if you were out of the way for a little while I could make him love me!

He'd never love me, never in a million years!”

Frances said nothing. But she was beginning to doubt the sincerity of Nola's repentance. There, under the shadow of her bereavement, she could think of nothing but the hopelessness of love.

”But I didn't want you to come up just to pet me and be good to me, Frances--I wanted to give you something.”

Nola felt under her pillow, and groped for Frances' hand, in which she placed a soft something with a stub of a feather in it.

”I have no right to keep it,” said Nola. ”Do you know what it is?”

”Yes, I know.”

Much of the softness which Frances had for the highland bonnet was in her voice as she replied, and the little bonnet itself was being nestled against her cheek, as a mother cuddles a baby's hand.

”The best that's in me goes out to that man,” said Nola solemnly--and truthfully, Frances knew--”but I wouldn't take him from you now, Frances, even if I could. I don't want to care for him, I don't want to think of him. I just want to think of poor father lying out there under the ground.”

”It's best for you to think of him.”

”Only a day ago he was alive and warm, like you and me, and now he's dead! Mother never will want to leave this place again now, and I don't feel like I want to either. I just want to lie down and die--oh, I just want to die!”

Pity for herself brought Nola's tears gus.h.i.+ng again, and her choking sobs into her throat. Her voice was hoa.r.s.e from her lamentations; there seemed to be only sorrow for her in every theme. Frances held her s.h.i.+vering slim body in her supporting arm, and Nola's face bent down upon her shoulder. It seemed that her renunciation was complete, her regeneration undeniable. But Frances knew that a great flood of tears was required to put out the fire of pa.s.sion in a woman's heart.

One spark, one little spark, might live through the deluge to spring into the heat of the past under the breath of memory.

Again the heaving breast grew calm, and the tear-wet face was lifted to shake back the fallen hair.

”This has emptied everything out for me,” Nola sighed. ”I'm going to be serious in everything, with everybody, after this. Do you suppose Mrs. Mathews would let me help her over at the mission--if I went to her meek and humble and asked her?”

”If she saw that it would help _you_, she would, Nola.”

”Just think how lonesome it will be here when the post's abandoned and everybody but the Indians gone! You'll be away--maybe long before that--and I'll not see anybody but Indians and cowboys from year's beginning to year's end. Oh, it will be so dreary and lonesome here!”

”There's work up the river in the homesteaders' settlement, Nola; there's suffering to be relieved, and bereaved hearts to be comforted.

There's your work, it seems to me, for you and those nearest to you are to blame for the desolation of those poor homes, excuse it as charitably as we may.”

Frances felt a shudder run through the girl's body as her arm clasped the pliant waist.

”Why, Frances! You can't mean that! They're terrible--just think what they've done--oh, the underhanded thieves! By the law of the range it's my fight now, instead of my work to help them!”

”The law of the range isn't the law any longer here, Nola, and it never will be again. Alan Macdonald has done the work that he put his lone hand to. You have no quarrel with anybody, child, no feud to carry on to a b.l.o.o.d.y end. Put it out of your mind. If you are sincere in your heart, and truly penitent, you can prove it best by beginning to do good in the place where your house has done a terrible, sad wrong.”

”They started it!” said Nola, vindictively, the lifelong hatred for those who encroached upon the range so deep in her breast, it seemed, that the soil of her life must come away on its roots.

”There's no use talking to you about it, then,” said Frances, coldly.

Nola seemed hurt by her tone. She began to cry again, and plead her cause in moaning, broken words. ”It's our country, we were here first--father always said that!”

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