The snow had gone, and the frost-bleached prairie lay steaming under the warm April sun, when Carrie Leland pulled her team up on the crest of a low rise. The waggon she drove, a light vehicle of four high wheels with a shallow, box-like body, had been made especially for her. It was hung on comfortable springs, and the harness and horses matched it. There were few broncho teams on the prairie to compare with hers. They were young, but Carrie liked a mettlesome beast, and Leland had carefully chosen and broken them.
It was the same with everything he had given her. Only the best that could be had seemed good enough for her, and at times she almost resented his generosity. Save when he lost his temper, which happened not infrequently, she could not put him in the wrong, and she often felt that it would be easier for her if she could charge him with neglect, or had something to forgive him. He was gravely considerate for her comfort, but it was very seldom that he went any further. While this should have pleased her, she was not quite sure that it did.
On the morning in question, Eveline Annersly, whohad been at Prospect a month now, sat beside her rejoicing in the sunshine and rush of warm wind. She had reached the age when one looks for little and makes the most of what comes, and the warmth and freshness of the morning delighted her. The prospect would also in all probability have had its attractions for any one with eyes to see and a nature that could respond to the reawakening pulse of life in the land.
Round three-fourths of the horizon the bleached prairie, tinged now with sunny ochre, melted into the sweep of lustrous blue, but in the foreground the sod was gemmed with little crocus-like flowers and already flecked here and there with creeping green. All this was waste and virgin, but on the fourth side tall bands of golden stubble, and belts of ashes where golden stubble had once been, were narrowed down by the steaming chocolate-tinted clods of the plough's upturning. Grain ran up in long rippled ridges from Prospect, where the birches gleamed silver, across the wide dip of basin and over its fringing rise, into the luminous blueness of the sky. That was man's work, and man at Prospect worked unusually hard, for it was not his part there to plough where others had also sown, but to grapple with the wilderness, and subdue it, in fulfilment of the charge given him when the waters dried. The wilderness was there, leagues of it, but it required a stout heart and a steadfast toil to break it and cover it with red-gold wheat when wheat was a drug upon a falling market.
Eveline Annersly, faded and frail, was dainty still. As she sat smiling in the waggon, with the sunlight lying warm on her beautiful hands, she was a part of the colour scheme in her soft, grey-tinted draperies.Some women of the cities would have been a blotch on it. She was the figure of tranquil autumn when the wealth of fruits had gone, but her companion with the crimson lips and dusky eyes was spring, when as yet Nature is only stirring and has not awakened to riotous life at the burning kiss of the sun. Eveline Annersly realised this vaguely, and at times felt a thrill of concern, for she knew there was fire beneath that cold exterior. When the awakening should come, much would depend upon whether the sudden untrammelled growth of the girl's nature would cling for warmth and shelter to the man who was her husband.
In the meanwhile, she watched the toiling teams coming on across grey grass and golden stubble in echelon. Men sat above the horses' heads on the driving-seats of the big gang-ploughs, and from amidst the curling brown clods came the twinkling flash of steel. The men had brown faces, and some of them bare, brown arms. Sun and wind had burned and beaten them and their garments to the colour of the soil they sprang from. They seemed almost a part of it, as they and the patient beasts did their share in the great, harmonious scheme which in return for the sweat of effort gives man bread to eat. This was not English farming, mixed and variable, but an unlocking of Nature's long-stored wealth in mile-long furrows that should fling the golden wheat by trainload and shipload on the markets of the world. Even Eveline Annersly, who was not greatly interested in agriculture, could realise that.
"It is a tremendous farm," she said. "We have nothing like it in England. The length of those furrows appeals to one's imagination. How big is it, Carrie?"
The girl smiled a trifle languidly. "I really don't know," she said. "Charley has told me, but I never could remember things like that. He seems rather proud of having broken—I believe that is the right word—most of it out of the prairie. In fact, he is easily content. To break so many acres every year seems his one object in life. I don't think it's anybody's. Presumably, it's a question of temperament. My husband appears to like his occupation, and absorbs himself in it."
"Which, of course, is just as you would have it?"
The girl made a little half-petulant gesture. "Oh," she said, "I suppose so. I naturally did not expect Charley Leland and I would have many mutual interests when I married him. It would have been in several respects a trifle ridiculous. Still, he is, in his own way, very good to me."
"So I should have fancied"; and Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "Did it ever occur to you that he might have expected a good deal from you?"
A flicker of colour showed in Carrie's cheek. "In that case, he, at least, shows no sign that he misses anything. As you know, we scarcely see him for two or three days together every now and then. I believe these teams are in the field by six in the morning, and it usually is dark when he comes in again."
"I wonder if you quite realise the restraint and self-denial implied by a life of that kind? After all, your husband is probably no fonder of wearing himself out than most other men. Presumably he has a purpose, or finds it necessary."
She stopped a moment, and smiled in a curious fashion as she glanced at her companion. "I suppose you have heard that they are building a new peach-house and vinery at Barrock-holme?"
A bright crimson spot burned for a moment in Carrie's cheek. "I hadn't," she said, with a trace of bitterness. "Jimmy, of course, never writes, and even Alice seems to have forgotten me. In fact, I don't suppose there is one of them who ever gives me a thought now. Aunt Eveline, you are to stay here for ever so long."
Mrs. Annersly nodded reassuringly. "Of course, my dear," she said. "As you perhaps know, it is a good deal your father's fault that I am reduced to living on my friends, and I really think some of the money he is spending on the peach-houses should have come to me. I have been inclined to wonder where he got it."
Carrie Denham was usually reposeful, but a trace of the confusion she felt showed itself in her face. Eveline Annersly understood her as well as she understood herself, and, being aware of this, she stood less upon her guard.
"Oh," she said, "I think you know. It is a little hard to bear, isn't it? Have they always been the same?"
"One would almost fancy so. Henry Annersly was well off when he married me, and everybody knows I have scarcely a penny. Where the rest has gone only Branscombe Denham knows, though I'm not even sure that he does. No doubt he didn't intend to lose it, but money won't stay with him. And he never even writes to you?"
Carrie laid a hand upon her arm. "Aunt," she said, "stay with us altogether. Charley likes you—and I can't let you go."
The little lady's eyes grew gentle, but there was a faint smile in them. "My dear, I think I know what you are feeling, but, after all, you deserve it, and I'm not so very sorry for you. I'm going to make your husband stop and speak to me."
Their team stood stamping impatiently on the virgin sod, as Leland came up foremost of the long line of men and beasts. He was sitting upright on the driving-seat of a great machine, dressed in an old blue-jean shirt that was open at his sunburnt throat, with a wide grey hat on his head. His arms were bare to the elbow, corded, hard, and brown, and his face was the deep colour of the clods that rolled away in long waves beneath the three-fold shares. Four splendid horses plodded in front of him, and the stain of the soil and the same stamp of enduring strength was on him and them. He pulled the team up, and, springing down, came towards the waggon with his hat in his hand.
"You are going to the railroad?" he said.
"Yes," said Mrs. Annersly. "Carrie wants some things, but I understand we are to stay the night at Mrs. Custer's on the way."
"Well," said Leland, "I may see you there. There are some new harrows and seeders I have to wire about, but I don't expect to get in until daylight to-morrow."
"You are going to drive all night?"
"I may get an hour's sleep before I go. You see, I have to be back by noon to-morrow. Our summeris short, and there is a good deal to do. The grain that goes in late is quite often frozen."
He pointed as if in explanation to the great sweep of furrows that ran back narrowing all the way to where Prospect nestled like a doll's house beneath its bluff. With a great trampling, two other teams came up just then. They went by amidst a ripping and crackling of fibres as the prairie opened up beneath the gleaming shares, and Leland nodded with a little quiet smile.
"Oh, yes," he said; "little time to do it in, and a good deal to do. Some of us were born to feel that way."
"Not all," said Eveline Annersly. "There are, as you know, men who waste their substance to while the day away. You are not that sort. Perhaps it's fortunate for you."
Leland smiled again. "I don't quite know. There's a great order and system that runs things, though I can't quite get the hang of it—I haven't time. Every man works in this country, as all Nature does. Those little grasses have been ten thousand years building up the black loam I'm making wheat of. The mallard, the brent goose, and the sandhill crane—you can see them coming up from the south in their skeins and wedges all day long—have to hunt their food from the shores of the Caribbean to the Pole. Well, one feels there must be a balance struck some day, and the men who don't do anything are having the soft things now."
He laughed good-humouredly, and stroked one of the horses that turned its head to nibble affectionately at his shoulder. "I'll be sorry for this by and by,but you have a habit of making me give myself away."
"Then we will be practical. Are you going to sow all that ploughing?"
"I am. I expect to break two hundred acres more. There are folks who want the wheat, and we'll feed the world some day."
"But wheat is going down."
"It is," and Leland's face grew a trifle hard. "No bottom to the market, apparently. That's why I'm buying new machines and cutting things down and down. We must have everything that can save or earn a dollar at Prospect now."
Carrie Leland was struck by something in her husband's face. It was a comely face, as well as forceful, clean-skinned in spite of its deepness of tint, and there was a clearness in the steady eyes that is only seen in those of such men as he. There was also in his features a suggestion of endurance and optimism that, in fact, was strongest in the time of stress and struggle. Sun and wind, fruitful soil and barren, nipping frosts, drought and devastating hail, all these were things to be grappled with or profited by with equal willingness. He and his kind in new countries give without stint all they have been given, from the sweat of tense effort each and every day to the smiling courage that cuts down hours of rest and goes on sowing when seasons are adverse and markets fall away; and there is, in turn, usually set upon them plainly the symbol of man's dominion over the material world. The patient beasts that toiled with him recognised it, and again one of them muzzled his shoulder and caught at his arm.
"And," said Mrs. Annersly, "if the market still goes down?"
Leland laughed an optimist's soft laugh. "Then we will go under, I and the rest. That is, for a time. Nothing can stop us long, and we will start again. Carrie, I am thankful, is provided for."
He struck the horse with the palm of his hand. "I have been keeping you, and there is a good deal to do."
The big team stamped and strained; he swung himself into the driving-seat, and, with a crackling of fibres, the great plough rolled away. Mrs. Annersly smiled as Carrie shook the reins.
"If I were twenty years younger, I almost think I should fall in love with your husband," she said. "There is a breadth of view and forcefulness Reggie Urmston could never attain even in his simplicity, and his egotism becomes him. It's the quiet assurance of a man who knows what he can do, and rather thinks that he is doing a good bit. He takes all the risk, and you are provided for. Carrie, do you know what that man gave, or lent—it's much the same thing—to your father?"
"No," said Carrie, with the spot of colour once more in her cheek. "He would never tell me, and how could I ask him? It is a hateful subject—why should you mention it?"
Mrs. Annersly looked out over the prairie, a curious smile in her eyes.
"Your husband is cutting down even his hours of sleep," she said. "He is driving in forty miles to the railroad when his work is done to-night, while Branscombe Denham is building peach-houses at Barrock-holme."
Carrie flushed crimson, and flicked the team with the whip. "You," she said, "are the only friend I have, and yet you sometimes take a curious pleasure in tormenting me. Do you expect me to turn against my own flesh and blood?"
"We have it on good authority that the wife should cleave to her husband, and they are one. There are, of course, people nowadays, and probably always have been, who think they know better."
The girl caught her breath. "Ah," she said, "you don't quite understand. If he were in difficulties I would face them with him cheerfully, but he would never let me. It was not said in bitterness, but when he told you I was provided for, it hurt me. Why should I be safe, who helped to ruin him?"
Eveline Annersly glanced at her with gravely questioning eyes. "My dear, I rather fancy you have almost thrown a great treasure away."
"Whether the thing was of great value I do not know, and it is scarcely likely I shall ever know. I certainly threw it just as far as I was able to, and, though I do not know whether I was wise or not, it is done, and there is no use in being sorry."
Then she swung the whip again, and sent the light waggon flying headlong down a long grassy slope. Mrs. Annersly found it advisable to hold on, and in any case she had said her say. Her words must lie with the rest she had dropped, until in due time they should bear their fruit. Eveline Annersly was old enough to be somewhat of an optimist too.
In the meanwhile, Leland went on with his ploughing, and, save for an hour's halt at noon to rest the teams, and for the six o'clock supper, toiled until a wondrous green transparency, through which the pale stars peeped, hung over the prairie. Then, when the cold clear air was invigorating as wine, he led the weary beasts to the stables, and, after walking stiffly to the homestead, flung himself into a chair, aching and drowsy.
"Jake," he said to the man who was busy in the room, "I'll want some coffee in an hour or so. Make it black and strong."
Then Gallwey came in, and they sat for an hour going over a file of accounts from which Leland made extracts on a sheet. He laid it down at last, and pointed to a bundle of papers on a dusty shelf.
"I was worrying over them before I slept last night, and I'm no wiser now," he said. "The one thing certain is that wheat is going down, and what it will touch next harvest is rather more than any man can tell. One has too many climates from California to New Zealand to reckon with. If we stop right now and sow, we'd come out just clear as the market stands. I had expected to have quite a pile in hand, but with the drop in values the bank balance against me needed considerable meeting."
"It certainly did. I was a trifle astonished when you cabled me to arrange for the credit at Winnipeg. You were, in view of your usual habits, singularly extravagant for once."
"I was," and Leland laughed somewhat harshly. "Still, under the circumstances, it wasn't quite unnatural. Anyway, we have wiped it out, and it has crippled me for the next campaign."
Gallwey asked no injudicious questions, but he wondered how his comrade, who had distinctly inexpensive tastes, had got rid of all the money he had apparently spent in England. Mrs. Leland was not an extravagant woman, so far as he was aware.
"The question is, how we should meet a further drop," he said.
"That's not very difficult, unless the drop is too big. We have for fixed charges the upkeep of this homestead, besides wages, and the feeding of the boys we can't do without, and the working horses. That's not going to alter more than a little, anyway. Well, we have the seed, and there are broken horses on the run, so it's going to cost us just a few teamsters' wages, and the threshing to put oats in on as many extra acres as we can break. You see, we get a bigger crop on much the same cost."
"And the fall breaking?"
"Wheat," said Leland. "Every acre."
Gallwey drew in his breath. He knew his comrade's boldness, but this was almost incredible. Cautious men were already holding their hand, but Leland purposed to sow more freely than ever.
"It will be a huge crop," he said. "About the biggest that was ever raised in this country. Now, of course, within a margin, there's a good deal in your notion in increasing the ratio of production to dead charges, but, after all, you can't sow a third as much again without its costing you something. Well, if the price drops far enough to make that a loss?"
Leland laughed again. "Then," he said, "it will be one of the biggest smashes ever known in this country; but nobody's going to lose very much whenthey've taken the land and stock from me. It's tolerably steep chances, but they're all on me."
Gallwey's uneasiness showed itself in his face. The magnitude of the risk almost dismayed him, but while he sat silent Leland made a little gesture.
"Tell Jake to bring that coffee in, and see the waggon's ready," he said. "I'll be off, and let the team go easy. They'll put me on to the wire at the depot at five o'clock when the stopping freight comes through. I should be back by noon. You'll start every man as usual."
He drank the bitter coffee to keep himself awake, and climbed into his waggon, while Gallwey shook his head as he watched him jolt away into the shadowy prairie.
"It's a big thing, almost too big for any other man," he said. "It was the confounded bank balance against him that drove him into it. I wonder how he spent all that money, or if Mrs. Leland knows."
There were two breakfasts served in the Occidental Hotel, which, dilapidated and weather-scarred, stands at the foot of the unpaved street of a desolate little town beside the railroad track. Most men commence their work early in the prairie country, so the first meal was laid at six; but there was another from eight to nine when a train came in. This was a somewhat unusual concession to the needs of the few passengers who alighted there, because throughout most of the Northwest no self-respecting hotel cook would prepare a meal out of the fixed hours, not even for a cabinet minister or a railroad director. Nor would the proprietor vary a dish, for in his estimation what suffices the plainsman is quite good enough for anybody else.
The table had just been cleared when a small and select company of men who had nothing in particular to do pulled their chairs up to the stove, on which as many of them as could find room put their feet. It had not been lighted that morning, or black-leaded for many days, but habit was strong in them. There are, even in countries where most men are hard workers, a few who spend their lives lounging on hotel verandahs and sitting round the stove. Nobody unused to it would, in all probability, have cared to linger there, for there are few places of entertainment so wholly desolate and uninviting as the general room of the average prairie hotel.
Its walls were obviously made of dressed boards, and had even borne a coat of paint at one time; but they were bare and dirty now. Two lonely German oleographs of more than usually barbaric type hung on rusty nails. Cigar-ends and burnt matches littered the uncarpeted floor. Benches without backs to them ran along either side of the uncovered table. The rest of the furniture consisted of the rusty stove and a few chairs, which the loungers monopolised. Two of the group wore store-clothing, with trousers so tight that one wondered how they ever got them on, and two wore blue jean in sad need of patching. They had rough, dark faces, relieved by no sign of amiability or unusual intelligence; but they could talk. Loafers and tramps usually can.
Outside the open window, bright sunshine flooded the verandah, and fell upon the bare frame-houses across the way. A couple of light waggons, with the mire of the spring thawing not yet washed off them, passed clattering and jolting among the ruts. The streets of a prairie town usually resemble a morass when the frost breaks up. When they had gone, a police trooper swung by on a spume-flecked horse, with the dust of several leagues' journey thick on his trim uniform. Then there was silence again until one of the loungers looked up from the greasy paper he was reading.
"Wheat still going down," he said. "There's no bottom to the market, or, if it had one, it's dropped out. Our boss farmers are going to feel it if things go on like this; but nobody's going to be sorry for them. They figure they own the country already."
"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going up," said another man.
The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt.
"Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That, and nothing else."
"Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remaining comrade, and the others grinned.
A vindictive gleam crept into the man's eyes. "Well," he said, "I've no use for being bossed by that kind of man, and one day I up and told him what I thought of him. There was considerable trouble before I walked out. Anyway, between the market and the English girl he's married, he's fixed just now."
"She's flinging his money away?" asked somebody.
"With both hands, and too stuck on herself to be civil to him. They're made like that in the Old Country. Leland's no more to her than the hired man, one of the boys told me."
"Well, why'd she marry him?"
"For his money. That's a good enough reason, and it's quite likely there was another one. Girls like her have got to marry somebody over there, and the men with money are kind of particular. I guess it'snot astonishing. If you got hold of an English paper, it's full of their goings-on."
"That's all right," said one of the others in tight store-clothes. "Still, until they're married, they've got to be careful. Afterwards, it don't so much matter. Unless all's quite straight, buyers hold off, and the figure comes down."
"It's quite easy guessing that's what was wrong with Mrs. Leland. What else would a girl with her looks make sure of him for? Charley Leland comes along with his money, and they plant her right on to him. It's even betting she goes off with another man if the market breaks him."
He stopped abruptly as his neighbour drove an elbow into his ribs, and his mouth gaped open as he dropped his feet from the stove. Then the others moved uneasily in their chairs, for a man stood in the doorway regarding them with a singularly unpleasant smile.
"Stand right up, Jasper, you—hog!" he said.
Jasper sat still, glancing at the others, as though he felt that, while none of them appeared in any haste to do so, it was their duty to support him, until one evidently remembered that there were, after all, four of them.
"He's sitting where he is, Charley Leland," he said. "Nobody asked you to hang round listening, and if you don't like our talk you can go outside again."
Leland showed no sign of having heard him. "Get up," he said, "and tell them you're a liar."
Jasper sat still. He was tolerably active and muscular, or he would never have worked at Prospect. But there was a dangerous look in Leland's eyes. Hisquiet incisiveness was portentous. Realising that his comrades expected something of him, Jasper managed to retort.
"Oh, go home!" he said. "I guess you've plenty of trouble there without making any here."
In another moment Leland had crossed the room and swung him to his feet. Nobody was very clear about what happened during the next few seconds. There is, however, a certain animal courage in every man who has lived by bodily toil, and Jasper, who had also a vindictive temper, did all he could. When he had once felt Leland's hand, he clinched with him, and, reeling locked together, they fell with a crash against the table and overturned one of the benches. Then, gasping, panting, floundering, and striking when they could, they went swaying towards the door, while Jasper's friends howled encouragingly, and men, attracted by the uproar, ran out of the opposite store. Foot by foot they neared the verandah, and when Leland, gasping with passion, made a supreme effort, they staggered out into it.
There was a crowd below it now, and they set up a shout as Leland's grasp sank lower down the other man's hollowing back. Jasper, it seemed, was not altogether a favourite of theirs. After that there was silence for another moment or two, while the two men swayed and strained with scuffling feet, until one of them suddenly relaxed his hold, and, reeling backwards, plunged down the verandah stairway. He struck a rail as he did it, and, overturning, came down headlong in the unpaved street. Somebody dragged him to his feet, and he stood still a moment, hatless, with the dust upon his flushed face, and his jacketrent, gasping with futile rage. Then he slunk away through the gap that was opened up for him.
Leland leant somewhat heavily on the rails above. The veins were swollen on his forehead, blood trickled down his chin from one of his bleeding lips, and his face was dark with rage. Altogether, he was not exactly an attractive spectacle. Raising himself stiffly, he disappeared into the hotel, from which three other men made their way with as much haste as was compatible with any show of dignity. A light waggon had stopped unnoticed just outside the crowd.
A few minutes earlier Carrie Leland and Mrs. Annersly had driven across the railroad track on their way to the dry-goods store, and, as the waggon jolted in the ruts, the girl pointed to the town with a little gesture of repugnance.
"Could one well imagine anything less attractive than this?" she said. "Still, I believe the desolate place is looked upon as a rising city, and they are actually proud of it."
Eveline Annersly glanced up the single street with a twinkle in her eyes. It somewhat resembled a ploughed field, though the ruts and ridges the wheels had made were crumbling into dust. Above it ran a rickety sidewalk of planks, by means of which foot passengers could escape the mire in spring; and crude frame-houses, destitute of paint or any attempt at adornment, rose from that in turn. The fronts of most of them were carried sufficiently high to hide the pitch of sloped roof, so that they resembled squares of timber pierced by little windows. Above the topmost of the latter there usually ran a blatant but half-obliterated commendation of the wares sold within,for in the rising prairie town every house is, as a rule, either a store or a hotel.
"Well," she said, "one could scarcely call it picturesque, but we have colliery and other industrial villages at home that are not very far behind it."
Carrie laughed. "Still, we have the grace to attempt to justify them on the score of necessity, while they hold this place up as a model and a sign of progress. It is a barbarous country."
"Including Prospect, too?"
"Of course! Still, Prospect makes no pretence of civilisation. It is part of the prairie, and nobody could expect much from it."
"Or of those who dwell in it?"
A little tinge of colour showed in the girl's cheek. "Well," she said with faint scorn, "I don't mind admitting that, too. They are a distinctly primitive people."
Mrs. Annersly said nothing further. She had her fancies respecting the reason for the girl's bitterness, and did not think that her marriage accounted for all of it. This was, in a way, as she would have it. She sat silent until Carrie pulled the team up close to the dry-goods store. A crowd was collecting in front of it, and they could get no further. While they sat there, a clamour broke out, and amidst a sound of scuffling, two men reeled across the verandah of the hotel opposite them. Their faces were not at first visible, and Carrie smiled contemptuously when the crowd encouraged them as they grappled with each other.
"That," she said, "is evidently considered the correct thing when Western gentlemen have a differenceof opinion. You will notice that nobody makes any attempt to put an end to it. After all, since they cannot keep their brutality under restraint, there is something to be said for the use of pistols."
In another moment one of the men brought his fist down with a dull thud upon the other's half-concealed face, and a little spark of scornful anger crept into the girl's eyes.
"It is a little disgusting, but we cannot get on without driving over somebody, and it would be a trifle absurd to have to go away again," she said. "What brutes men of their kind are!"
"Still, there is something to admire in their brutality," said her companion. "That man has both lips cut open. One would have fancied the blow would have stunned him, but he seems to be disregarding it, and is holding on."
She stopped a moment, with a little catching of her breath. "Ah," she said, "there will be no more of it."
One of the men loosed his hold and reeled down the stairway. Then for the first time they saw the face of the other clearly as he leant upon the rails. It was not wholly pleasant to look at, for there was passion in it, and blood trickled from the swollen lips. Carrie's hands tightened convulsively on the reins as she urged the team forward. Her cheeks were almost colourless, but she met Eveline Annersly's eyes steadily, and her voice had a bitter ring in it.
"Yes," she said, "it is my husband. No doubt his comrades would expect me to be pleased with him."
She stopped a moment and pulled the team up again. "I wonder if you can guess what it will costme to go into that store, but I am going. After all, it would be a little absurd for Charley Leland's wife to be particular."
Mrs. Annersly's face was compassionate. "My dear," she said, "he had probably a reason for it."
"Of course!" said Carrie, languidly. "No doubt they differed over the points of a steer, or one of them was too attentive to the waiting-maid. I believe they have two at the Occidental."
She swung herself down, ignoring the hand of a man who had seized the reins, and, when Mrs. Annersly had descended, went into the big store. She was perfectly conscious that everybody was watching her, but she made her purchases with a cold serenity, and then drove away. She did not inquire for Leland, and was unaware that the object on the verge of the prairie was his waggon. Had she known it, she would have held her team in a little, for she had not the least desire to overtake him. This, however, was scarcely likely, for it was a long way to Prospect, and she intended to break the journey for an hour or so at an outlying farm to which the trail turned off in a league or two.
In the meanwhile, Leland drove on as fast as his weary team could go, until he reached the crossing of the ravine where Sergeant Grier had waylaid the outlaws. The trail dipped in sharp twists between the birches into the hollow, and he had raised himself a trifle on the driving-seat to swing the team round a bend when one side of the waggon dropped suddenly beneath him. In another moment he went out headlong, and, coming down heavily on his shoulder, lay as he fell, half dazed for a time. When he pulled hisscattered senses together, he saw that the team had stopped and that one of the waggon wheels lay not far away from him. He rose with difficulty, feeling very sore and very dizzy, but, finding that he could walk, picked the wheel up. The brass cap of the hub had gone, and so had the nut which locked the bush on the axle. He had put a new one on not long before, and felt sure it had not come off of itself, as he remembered how tightly it had fitted. Still, it was evident that, if anybody had loosened it, the sudden strain upon the wheels as the waggon swung round the bend might have jarred it off, even after it had held that far.
That question could wait. Rolling the wheel downhill, he attempted to put it on the hub. An unloaded prairie waggon is usually so light that a strong man can lift one side of it, but Leland was badly shaken by his fall. Indeed, he sat down more than once, gasping and dripping with perspiration, before he accomplished it. It was a mighty task for any man to attempt after a long day's ploughing, a night spent upon the trail, and a sixty-mile drive.
Although he was bothered with a distressing headache, and found that a branch had scored his cheek, nevertheless, when he had fitted on another nut from the tool-box in the waggon, he drove ahead, reaching Prospect almost as worn out as the team. Still, after a bite of food, he climbed up into the driving-seat of the big gang-plough. Summer is short in the Northwest, and the wheat that goes in late runs a risk of freezing, so he needed in his struggle the efforts of every man he could get. He drove the threefold furrow through the ripping sod until at last the coppersun dipped below the prairie's verge. Then, leaving his team to the men, he went back to the house, too weary to carry himself erect. The birches swayed in a cold green transparency, the crisp air had vim in it, but the weary man noticed nothing as he plodded, heavy-eyed, through the crackling stubble.
He had just finished his lonely supper, and was sitting, dressed as when he came in, with the dust of the journey on him, and smears of the soil upon his heavy boots and leggings, when his wife, who apparently did not know he was there, entered the room. She started a little as she saw him, and Leland drowsily raised his hand to the raw red scar on his face. He had not remembered that his lips were twice their natural size and very unpleasant to look at, though they pained him.
"It doesn't amount to much," he said deprecatingly. "I've been too busy to fix it. I got thrown out of my waggon."
Carrie became rigidly erect, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes.
"That is really a little unnecessary," she said coldly. "I didn't presume to trouble you with any inquiries."
Leland looked at her, as though puzzled, with half-closed eyes. "They wouldn't have been unnatural in the case of a man who was flung headlong out of his waggon."
"One excuse will no doubt serve as well as another. The difficulty is that I happen to have some idea as to how you got your injuries."
The man rose wearily. "I have the pleasure of telling you that I was thrown out coming down the ravine."
"And I," said Carrie coldly, "was at the settlement at the time you furnished everybody with that interesting spectacle on the hotel verandah. I don't wish to be unduly fastidious, but hitherto, so far as I know, at least you have not taken the trouble to deceive me wilfully."
Leland turned towards her with his cut lips pressed together, and his scarred face grim and hard, making a little gesture of weariness.
"Well," he said, "I guess it doesn't matter. I don't suppose I could make you think anything but hard of me."
He stopped a minute, and then laughed. "I have faced the world alone so far, and held my own with it. I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn't go on doing it."
"I believe that is, after all, what most men have to do," said Carrie. "I shall endeavour to be as small a burden on you as I can manage."
Then she turned and left him; but, as had happened on other occasions, her heart smote her in spite of her anger, for he looked shaken and very weary and lonely in the big, desolate room.
The warm spring day was over. In that land of contrasts, where there is no slow melting of season into season, it is often hot while the last snow-drifts linger in the shadows of the bluffs. Carrie and Mrs. Annersly were sitting by an open window of Carrie's sitting-room. The sun had gone, but, as usual at that season, a filmy curtain of green overhung the vast sweep of prairie that had shaken off its hues of white and grey for the first faint colour of spring. Above hung a pale, sickle moon, and down the long slope, over which the harrow-torn furrows ran, lines of men and weary teams were plodding home. Round the rest of that half of the horizon, the prairie melted into the distance imperceptibly—vast, mysterious, shadowy, under a great tense silence—while the little chilled breeze that came up had in it the properties of an elixir.
The thin-faced woman who lay in Carrie's big chair was not looking at the prairie. She had watched the pageant of the seasons too often before, and to her and her husband they had usually meant only a variation in the ceaseless struggle which had left its markon both of them. In that country, man has to contend with drought, and harvest frost, and devastating hail, for it is only by mighty effort and long endurance that the Western farmer wrests his bare living from the soil. When seasons are adverse, and they frequently are, a heavy share of the burden falls upon the woman, too.
Mrs. Custer had borne hers patiently, but her face, which still showed traces of refinement, was worn, and her hands and wrists were rough and red. While Thomas Custer toiled out in the frost and sunshine from early dawn to dusk to profit by the odd fat year, or more often, if it might by feverish work be done, to make his losses good, she cooked and washed and baked for him and the boys, a term that locally signifies every male attached to the homestead. She had also made her own dresses, as well as some of her husband's clothes, and darned and patched the latter with cotton flour-bags. Yet the ceaseless struggle had not embittered her, though it had left her weary. Perhaps it is the sunshine, or something in the clean cold airs from the vast spaces of the wilderness, for man holds fast to his faith and courage in that land of cloudless skies.
It was the rich, dark curtains, the soft carpet one's feet sank into, the dainty furniture, the odds and ends of silver, and the few good etchings at which the faded woman glanced with wistful appreciation. She had been accustomed to such things once, but that was long ago, and she had never seen on the prairie anything like Carrie Leland's room. With a wee, contented smile she turned to the girl.
"It was so good of you to have me here, although ifTom's sister from Traverse hadn't promised to look after him I couldn't have come," she said. "It is three years since I have been away, and to know that one has nothing to do for a whole week is almost too delightful now."
Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "I'm rather afraid that some of us have that consolation, if it is one, all our lives," she said. "They keep you busy at the Range?"
"From morning to night; and now we must work harder than ever, with one of the boys in Montreal and wheat going down. One feels inclined to wonder sometimes if the folks who buy our cheap flour would think so much of the quarter-dollar on the sack if they knew what it costs us."
She stopped a moment with a little wistful smile. "I'm afraid this is going to be a particularly lean year for a good many of us. Last year I was busy, though I had a Scandinavian maid, but I shall be single-handed now, and the grocery bill must come down, too. It's quite hard to pare it any closer when everything you take off means extra work, and, with it all, the boys must be fed."
Mrs. Annersly glanced at Carrie, who, for some reason, did not meet her gaze.
"I think you mentioned that you came from Montreal," she said. "You must have found it very different on the prairie."
"I certainly did. I had never done anything useful or been without all the money I wanted when I married Tom Custer, who had gone out a year earlier. My friends were against it, and they would probably have been more so had they seen the Range as it wasthen. The house had three rooms to it, and one was built of sod, while all the first summer the rain ran in. Still we made out together, and got on little by little, struggling for everything. A new stove or set of indurated ware meant weeks of self-denial. Now I seem to have been pinching a lifetime, though I am only forty; but Tom was always kind, and I do not think I have ever been sorry."
She lay still, nestling luxuriously in the softly padded chair, and through her worn face and hard hands the blurred stamp of refinement once more shone. It was twenty years since she had turned away from the brighter side of life, and, though she did not expect compassion, Eveline Annersly felt sorry for her. There was also a certain thoughtfulness in Carrie Leland's expression, which seemed to suggest that a comparison was forced upon her. Both of them realised that the wilderness is not subdued without a cost. Woman, it seemed, had her part in the tense struggle, too, and Mrs. Custer was one of the many of whom it can be said: "They also serve."
"Have you ever been home since you were married?" asked Carrie.
"Once," said Mrs. Custer, with a faint shadow in her face. "I never went again. The others were not the same, or perhaps I had changed, for they did not seem to understand me. My younger sisters were growing up, and they thought only of dances, sleigh-rides and nights on the toboggan-slides, as I suppose I did once. My dresses looked dowdy beside theirs, too, and they told me I was getting too serious. I felt myself a stranger in the house where I was born. One, it seems, loses touch so soon."
Again she stopped and laughed. "One night something was said that hurt me, and I think I lay awake and cried for hours as I realised that I could never quite bridge the gulf that had opened up between the rest and me. Then I remembered that Tom, who had worked harder than ever to raise the wheat that sent me there, wanted me always—and I went back to him."
Her voice fell a little, and Carrie was touched by the faint thrill in it. She had seen Thomas Custer, a plain, somewhat hard-featured and silent man, and yet this woman, who she fancied had once been almost beautiful, had willingly worn out her freshness in coarse labour for him. Then a tiny flush crept into her face as she remembered that she, too, had a husband, one who gave her everything, and for whom she seldom had even a smile. She was not innately selfish. Indeed, she had shown herself capable of sacrifice. As she sat unobserved in the growing shadow, she sighed. She wondered whether they still remembered her at Barrock-holme, for, if they did, they had seldom written, and she reflected sadly that she had not Mrs. Custer's consolation, since there was nobody else who wanted her.
"You really believe this is going to be a lean year?" she said.
"I am afraid so. Still, it is scarcely likely to trouble you, except that your husband will have a good deal to face. Tom isn't sure he was wise in sowing so much, with wheat going down, and it seems he considered it necessary to quarrel with the rustlers, too. They are rather vindictive people, and it's a little astonishing they have left him alone, though Tom thinksthey or their friends had something to do with what happened to his waggon. He met him driving home the day he was thrown out, and told me that Charley, who had evidently had a bad fall, looked very shaky."
Carrie started. "He was thrown out of his waggon?"
"Of course! Didn't he tell you? Well, perhaps he would be afraid of its worrying you. It would be like Charley Leland, and here I have been giving him away."
Carrie was troubled by an unpleasant sense of confusion as she remembered that her husband had really told her, and what her attitude had been; but Mrs. Custer had more to say.
"Charley Leland is going to have his hands full this year. The fall in wheat is bad enough, and it is quite likely the rustlers will make trouble for him. Then he must fall out with a man at the settlement, who Tom says is in league with them. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that, though I almost think it was the only thing he could do."
Carrie, seeing Mrs. Annersly look up sharply, controlled herself by force of will.
"Would you mind telling me why you think that?" she asked calmly.
Mrs. Custer appeared to be looking at her in astonishment. "You don't know? He hasn't told you that, either?"
"No," said Carrie quietly, "he certainly hasn't."
The woman in the big chair sat silent for several moments, and then made a little deprecatory gesture. "Even if your husband doesn't thank me for telling you, I think you ought to know. It appears fromwhat Tom heard, two or three of the loungers at the hotel were talking about you. Charley came into the verandah and heard them."
"Ah," said Carrie, with a sharpness in her voice that suggested pain, "so that was how it came about. No doubt half the people in the settlement know what they were saying?"
Once more Mrs. Custer appeared to consider. Like most of his friends, she believed in Charley Leland, and it was, of course, not astonishing that she was aware that his relations with his wife were not exactly all they should be. This to some extent roused her resentment, and, though she was inclined to like Carrie, she had half-consciously taken up her husband's cause against her.
"My dear," she said, "I scarcely think I could tell you, and I really don't believe many people know. Still, neither your husband nor the others appear to have noticed that the inner door of the room was open, and the man who keeps the hotel heard them. He told Tom that he wouldn't have expected anything else from Charley Leland."
Carrie leant forward a little in her chair. "I want you to tell me exactly what they said. It is right to my husband and myself that I should know."
"Then you will forgive me if it hurts you. They said you had only married him for his money, and he was no more to you than one of the teamsters. There was a little more I couldn't mention."
There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, and Carrie knew, dark as it now was, that Mrs. Annersly was furtively watching her.
"Ah," she said, "then my husband came in?"
Mrs. Custer laughed softly. "I believe the loquacious gentleman was very sorry for himself before Charley had done with him."
"Thank you," said Carrie, thoughtfully. "Now I think we will change the subject. Could you manage to light the lamp, Aunt Eveline? I can't very well get past you."
Mrs. Annersly, lighting the lamp, craftily led their visitor to talk of Montreal; for she thought Carrie had suffered enough for the present.
In the meanwhile, Leland, who had been driving the harrows all day, and had just come in, sat with Gallwey in the big room below. He had a blackened pipe in his hand, and his face was thoughtful. His torn jacket and coarse blue shirt fell away to the elbow from one almost blackened and splendidly corded arm. The man, like most of his neighbours at that season, was usually too weary with more than twelve hours' labour to change his clothes when he came in, for which there was, indeed, no great reason, since he seldom saw his wife or Mrs. Annersly in the brief hour between his work and sleep.
"Wheat's down another cent, with sellers prevailing," he said, pointing to several newspapers on the table. "It's 'most a pity I had fixed up to put in the big crop. Things are quiet in Russia, and that means a good crop; they've had rain in California, and the kind of season they wanted in Argentina, India, and Australia. It seems to me the whole thing's going to turn on the States' crop this year. From what I've been reading here, they're a little scared about sowing in the Dakotas and Minnesota. They'd swamp out all the markets if wheat jumped up just now."
"It shows very little sign of doing it," said Gallwey. "Things are going to be a little serious as it is. A short crop in the States would give values a fillip, but the trouble is that if they have frost or hail we are likely to get it, too."
Leland smiled drily. "Well," he said, "if the market doesn't stiffen, we can only go under. It would hurt to give up Prospect, but it could be done. In the meanwhile, I've been wondering about that waggon. It took me quite a while to screw the lock-nut on with the big box-spanner, and the thing never loosened of itself."
"I don't think it did. The last time you drove in to the settlement, your waggon was standing probably four or five hours behind the Occidental. I think I'd try to find out if anybody borrowed one of Porter's spanners when I went in again. How long was it after you threw Jasper out, when you drove away?"
"About five minutes."
"Well, it's quite possible he did it before. I suppose you haven't asked yourself how Jasper makes a living. He never seems to be doing anything, and I believe it isn't difficult to buy whisky at the settlement. Thanks to our beneficent legislature, whoever keeps it makes an excellent profit."
Leland's face grew a trifle harder, and he closed one brown hand. "The same thing struck me, and I guess you're right. It seems I have a good deal against me this year. The market would have been bad enough without the rustlers."
Gallwey rose and laid a hand on his shoulder. "You can count on me, Charley, whatever comes along. There are others, too. It isn't only the whisky menwho feel they have to get even with you. You'll get what you like to ask for, teams, men to harvest for you, and, though it's scarce in this country, even money."
He turned away a trifle abruptly, and Leland felt a thrill of gratitude. He had many friends on the prairie, and knew the worth of them, though it did not occur to him that he had done quite sufficient to warrant their good-will. Just then he was most clearly sensible that there was much against him.
Presently Carrie came in, looking very dainty and alluring in an evening gown. She had not yet discarded all the social conventions to which she had been accustomed at Barrock-holme. Leland felt a stirring of his blood as he looked at her. He rose and stood waiting, as she watched him gravely, a faint flush in her cheeks.
"Charley," she said, and he thought how seldom she used his name, "I have a difficult thing to do, but it would not be honest to shirk it. I must ask you to forgive me for what I said when you told me about the waggon."
"Why?"
The colour grew in the girl's face. "Mrs. Custer has told me that her husband saw you."
Leland smiled somewhat bitterly. "You find it easier to believe Tom Custer than me?"
"Please wait. What could I think when you told me? I was at the settlement that morning, and saw your cut lips when you stood on the verandah."
The man started a little, but he promptly recovered from his astonishment, and looked at her with twinkling eyes.
"Now I understand," he said. "You were a little disgusted with me. The men you are used to wouldn't have thrown any one they couldn't agree with out of a hotel."
"No. Still, there are cases when the provocation may be too strong for one."
"It is quite often that way with me. I'm afraid I am a little short in temper."
He leant upon the table, as though he had nothing more to say, and Carrie recognised that he did not mean to tell her what had led up to the outbreak. Whether this was due to pride or generosity she did not know, but the fact made its impression upon her. Her husband was, it seemed, sure enough of his own purposes to disregard what others thought of him; but there was a certain sting in the reflection. A desire on his part to stand well in her estimation would have been more gratifying. Still, she overcame the slight sense of mortification.
"You haven't told me what the provocation was," she said.
"No," said Leland, with a little quiet smile. "It wouldn't be quite the thing to worry you with an explanation every time I lose my temper. I do it now and then."
"Ah," said Carrie, "don't you care, then, what I think of you? Still, in this case, I needn't ask you. Mrs. Custer told me that, too. That is why I felt I must ask you to forgive me for presuming to blame you. I want to be just, and I was in my wilfulness horribly far from being so."
"You want to be just? That was the only reason?"
The girl saw the tension in his face, and stood silent,swayed by a whirl of confused sensations. She would not admit there was another reason, though something in her nature clamoured for a breaking down of the restraint between them. She had looked down on this man and wantonly wounded him, while he had shown her what she realised was a splendid generosity and borne her scorn in silence. It was once more his independent silence that troubled her, and she felt just then that she would sooner have had him compel her to acknowledge that he was not what she had striven to think him.
"Well," he said, a trifle sadly, "I suppose I must not expect too much."
The girl's heart smote her. She knew just what he wanted her to say, but she could not say it, and yet she meant to do all she had undertaken.
"There is a little more, and it must be said," she said. "I know part, at least, of what those men said of me."
She stopped, and, holding herself rigidly, though one hand which she had laid on the table quivered a little, looked at him steadily.
"If I could only prove them wrong, but I can't," she said.
A deep flush crept into Leland's face, and the veins rose swollen on his forehead, while he grasped her shoulder almost roughly.
"Do you know what you are saying?" he asked.
"That I married you because we were poor at Barrock-holme. It was a horrible wrong I did you—and you have made me ashamed."
The relief that swept into the man's face somewhat puzzled her, but she had seen the anger and suspensein it a moment earlier, and her heart throbbed painfully. After all, though she did not understand what had troubled him, it seemed that he did care very much indeed.
"My dear," he said quietly, "if you think you have done me any wrong, it is wiped out now. Perhaps, some day, you will go a little further than you have done to-night, and I must try to wait for it. That is all I have to say, and this is becoming a little painful to both of us."
He turned slowly away, and Carrie moved towards the door, but, when she reached it, she stopped and looked back at him.
"One can be a little too generous now and then," she said.
Then the door closed, and Leland stood still, leaning on the table, with thoughtful eyes.
"I don't know if that was a lead or not, and I don't seem able to think just now," he said. "I'm not running Prospect, it's driving me, and I'm ground down mind and body by the load of wheat I'm carrying."
The brief spring was merging suddenly, earlier even than usual, into summer, and it was a still, oppressive night when Leland sat, somewhat grim in face, in a mortgage and land broker's office at the railroad settlement. The little, dusty room, with its litter of papers and survey prints, was very hot, and Leland, who had just come in from the dusk, was a trifle dazed by the light the kerosene lamp flung down. He had in his hand two or three letters the broker had given him, and glanced at one of them moodily, only with difficulty fixing his attention on it. He had toiled with feverish activity that spring, and at last the strain was telling, for his head ached, and he felt limp and weary. It had, too, been dry weather ever since he put the first plough into the ground, and that night there was an oppressive tension in the atmosphere.
Macartney, the land-broker, sat opposite him, a gaunt, keen-eyed man, with a thin jacket over his white shirt. Leland knew him for an upright man, though nobody is supposed to be particularly scrupulous in the business he followed.
"You are looking a little played out," he said. "I can give you some ice and soda, but it's partly due to your own efforts that I've nothing else. Whisky can, I believe, be had, but, in the face of the fall in land and wheat, the figure the few men want who venture to keep it is prohibitive."
He filled a tumbler from the fountain on the side-table, and dropped in a lump of ice. Leland drained it thirstily.
"I've been round since sun-up, and have driven forty miles," he said, putting down the empty glass. "I guess it's the weather, for a thing of that kind shouldn't have troubled me. Not a blade of wheat up yet, and the seed-beds all clods and dust. There are very few of us going to escape the frost in the fall."
Macartney nodded sympathetically. "If I come out a hundred cents on the dollar when harvest's over, it's rather more than I expect," he said. "My stake's in land and wheat, and I couldn't unload anything except at a smart loss just now. In the circumstances, it seems to me that Bruce is making you a reasonable offer."
"I'm not likely to raise on it from anybody else," and Leland frowned as he glanced at the letter. "Still, if I let him have the cattle, I can't stock the ranch again. They should have cleared me quite a few thousand dollars, if I could have held on, and sold them fat in the fall."
"If I were in your place and could hold on, I would. Still, you have to have some money in hand. The banks won't look at land, and I couldn't raise you anything on mortgage except at a crippling interest."
"That's just my trouble, I haven't got any cash."
The broker glanced at him reflectively. "Well," he said, "it's not my business, but you must have had a pile last year. Of course, you were over in the Old Country, but you could afford it, and you never struck me as an extravagant man."
Leland smiled in a somewhat wry fashion. "I don't quite think I am, but that's not the question. I've got to have the money to go on with, and, as you say, I couldn't get it on a mortgage that wouldn't ruin me. Tell Bruce he can have the cattle, and, if he'll let me know when he wants them, we'll round them up for him. It's that or nothing, but I stand to lose 'most enough on the run to break me this year."
"From what you told me, if you hang on to the run, you'll have to let Prospect go."
Leland's face hardened. "Well," he said, "I guess I would, and that, if it has to be, is going to hurt me. If I stood as I did last fall, I could carry over, but now the market and the season are both against me. But I must be getting home. You'll fix it up with Bruce?"
The ostler from the Occidental was waiting outside with a hired horse, and Leland, swinging himself wearily into the saddle, rode down the unpaved street. A blaze of light shone out from the verandah of the little hotel, and he could hear the laughter of those inside and the hum of merry voices. Further on, somebody was playing a fiddle in a house the door and windows of which stood wide open. He sighed a little as he rode by. A year ago, he would have spent the night there or at the hotel, taking his part in the pointed badinage with keen enjoyment. His good-humour had been infectious then, and everybodyhad had a pleasant word for him; but things were different now.
The market was going against him, the season was getting more unpropitious. If ruin could be staved off, it would be only by unceasing toil and Spartan self-denial. After working from sunrise, he had driven forty miles that afternoon, and there was the same distance still to be covered in the saddle. He might count himself fortunate if he reached Prospect in time for barely two hours' sleep before he must set about his work again. He had never spared himself, and he had no thought of doing so now, when every effort he could make was urgently necessary. Branscombe Denham's creditors had been, if not satisfied, at least pacified for a time with the money that would have seen him through, and Leland, who knew his man, smiled grimly as he recalled that Denham had termed it a loan.
There was nobody in the rutted street, the stores were closed, and only a single light burned in the little wooden shed beside the railroad track. The place seemed deadly desolate, and Leland, whose physical weariness had reacted on his mind, shrank for once from the greater loneliness, as he rode out into the silent, empty waste. Save when the blue sheet-lightning fell with a sudden blaze, black darkness rested heavily upon the night. The drumming of his horse's hoofs rose with a jarring distinctness, the air was thick and hot, and the smell of sun-scorched earth was in his nostrils. A light, fibrous dust settled on his perspiring face.
The sod, green no longer, was turning white before its season, and broad cracks seamed its surface fromwant of moisture. He could remember only one or two springs that had been like this; and they, he recalled, had broken many a prairie farmer. Seed will not germinate under such conditions, and the prairie summer is usually quite short enough to ripen the crops. There was nobody to observe him, so he bent under the strain, riding slackly in his weariness, with all the vigour gone out of him. What his thoughts were, he could never quite remember. Indeed, he was not sure that he had had any definite thoughts at all, being conscious only of utter lassitude and dejection.
The horse started in alarm whenever the blue radiance flashed athwart the prairie, showing here and there a clump of willows, or a birch bluff etched black against the brightness. Then darkness followed, and he felt his way by the sound the hoofs made on the sun-baked soil of the trail. He was astonished, on making the big bluff by the ravine, to hear a beat of hoofs among the trees he had not seen until he rode into the midst of them. There were evidently a good many horses, and it flashed upon him that only the rustlers would be riding that way in a body and at that hour of night. He had no pistol, nothing in fact, but a heavy riding quirt. This he grasped by the thinner end as he rode on. In his present mood, he would not have left the trail had he known absolutely that the outlaws had come there in search of him.
They were hidden in the blackness, but he could hear them calling to their horses as they climbed the trail out of the hollow, and he stiffened himself a little, shifting his hand on the bridle, and feeling for a firmer grip with his knees. As he did so, the gapbetween the trunks was filled with a blue flash, and he could plainly see the white faces of the foremost of the outlaws. The light lasted long enough to show that men and beasts were dripping with wet. Then a curious thing happened. Leland's grasp of the riding quirt suddenly relaxed, and he checked his horse.
"You have had rain, boys?" he said.
"A shower," said a startled man, who had seen him for an instant. "More of it to the westwards—the creek's rising."
There was another blue flash, and Leland's horse plunged. As he swayed in his saddle, two, at least, of the others saw his face; but they stood still in the black darkness that followed, and he rode through the midst of them with a firm grasp on the bridle. Then he gave the startled horse the rein. A confused clamour rose from the blackness behind him as he swept across the bridge, and he felt that whimsical chance alone had saved him. Had he planned his moves with definite purpose, the thing he had done would have been impossible.
Reining in when he reached the level beyond the ravine, he sat listening. There was no sound of pursuit. As a big, warm drop splashed upon one hand, he started nervously. Then from out the silence came a soft murmur that rose in sharp crescendo. Suddenly a rush of rain smote his perspiring face. The patter swelled into a roar, and a heavy, steamy smell like that of a hothouse rose from the drinking earth. Leland felt his pulse quicken as the warm deluge washed his cares away. Its value could be calculated in hard cash, for it saved his wheat.
He rode for a while bareheaded, with the watertrickling over him. Though he was physically very weary, the lassitude and dejection melted out of him. There was no longer a tension in the atmosphere, and he was an optimist again, vaguely thankful for the things he had and the strength to grapple with those against him. With that, a great tenderness towards his wife swept over him like a wave, and he remembered, not her scorn and bitter words, but that there was so much she must miss at Prospect. He had left her alone, neglected, while he thought only of his work, and, even though she cared nothing for him, he might in many ways have made her life pleasanter. He could, he reflected, do it yet, for ruin seemed remote, now the wheat was saved. The rain still beat his clothing flat against his tired limbs, but he rode on almost light-heartedly, with the mire splashing high about him, welcoming every drop.