She went out, but Eveline Annersly sat a while thoughtfully by the open window. What she had expected had at last come to pass, and she had the satisfaction which does not always attend the efforts of the matrimonial schemer; for there was no longer any doubt that Carrie Leland loved her husband. Once more, as Nature will often have it, like haddrawn to unlike, with a fusion of discordant qualities in indissoluble and harmonious union, that what the one lacked the other might supply. The pair she had brought together were no longer two but one, which, while she was quite aware that it did not always happen, was, when it did, like the springing up of the wheat—a mystery and a miracle.
Eveline Annersly was old enough to know that there are many mysteries, but that by love alone man may come nearest to their comprehension.
Then she remembered that it was getting late, and, leaving the window open, for the night was hot and still, sought her room, and in another half-hour was sound asleep. She had slept several hours, when she was awakened by a queer sound that seemed to come from outside through the open door. It was a dull noise, which, accustomed as she had grown to the beat of hoofs, suggested a company of mounted men riding up out of the prairie. The sound kept increasing, until she could have fancied that it was made by a regiment, and then suddenly swelled into the roar of a brigade of cavalry going by on the gallop. The house seemed to reel as under a blow, the doors swung to with a crash, and there was a clatter of things hurled down in the adjoining room. Then she rose and flung on a dressing-gown, and, crossing the room, stopped when she had clutched the door handle, almost afraid to open it, bewildered by the indescribable tumult. At last a gleam of light appeared between the chinks. Mustering courage to open the door, she saw Carrie standing in the room, half dressed, with a candle in her hand. That was just for a moment, for the feeble gleam went out, and shegroped her way through black darkness towards the girl.
"What is it?" she gasped.
"The hail!" said Carrie, hoarsely. "Come with me. We must shut the window quick."
It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered, and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white.
"Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and Charley ruined."
It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach of surf-rolled stones.
The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage; so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury,and, shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her.
"Will the house stand?" she gasped.
The girl's laugh rang harshly through the roar of the hail. "I don't know. What does that matter, anyway? Can't you understand? The wheat will all be cut down. I have ruined Charley."
Then there was a lull for a minute or two, and Carrie, reaching up a hand, gripped her companion's arm.
"Did you ever hear how much I cost my husband?" she said.
Terrified as she was, Eveline Annersly started at the question. It was not expressed delicately, but, after all, there was no doubt that the girl's marriage had been more or less a matter of bargaining. "Of course not," she said.
"I don't know, either, but I'm sure it was ever so much," and Carrie's fingers trembled on her arm, though her eyes were fierce. "In one way, I am glad it was. I like to feel that he was willing to offer everything that was his for me. It isn't in the least degrading to belong to Charley Leland, however I came into his possession. Not in the least. How could it be? Still, once it seemed horrible even to think of it."
She stopped a minute with a little indrawing of her breath. "Besides, I am glad in another way, because, if he is really ruined, I am going to get all I cost himback again. Jimmy and my father would call it a loan."
Eveline Annersly was distinctly startled, though she understood that all restraint had been flung aside, and Carrie Leland had responded to the influence of this storm that had brought her face to face with a crisis in her husband's affairs, the raw human nature in her had come uppermost, and she was for the time being merely a woman with primitive passions raised, ready to fight for her mate. It was, her companion recognised, a thing that not infrequently happened—a part, indeed, of Nature's scheme that had a higher warrant; but, for all that, she was sensible again that there was in the girl's set face something from which people of fastidious temperament, who had never felt the strain, might feel inclined to shrink.
"Carrie," she said, "the thing is out of the question. They are your father and brother. You cannot force them into an open rupture. You must put it out of your mind."
The girl gripped her arm cruelly. "One must choose sometimes, and I am my husband's flesh and blood. Once that seemed a curious fancy, repugnant too, but it is real now—one of the great real things to Charley and me."
Eveline Annersly said nothing, and the wind beat upon the house as the girl went on. "Aunt," she said, "before Charley is ruined, I will make them repay the loan. They would have to if I insisted, for they would never dare let me tell that tale."
Once more her laugh rang harshly through the uproar of the hail. "Oh," she said, "Charley wouldpour out his blood for me, and what do I owe my father and Jimmy but a badge of shame?"
She was shaking with passion and very white in face. Eveline Annersly at last realised how deeply the shame had bitten before love had come to lessen the smart of it. The girl's temperament had been, as she knew, distinctly virginal, and it was, perhaps, not astonishing, under the circumstances, that she had at first shrunk from her husband almost with hatred, and certainly with instinctive repulsion. Indeed, it was clear to Eveline Annersly that had not Leland been what he was, a man accustomed to restraint, she would in all probability have continued to hate him until one of them died. Yet the contrast between the girl who had always borne herself with a chilling serenity at Barrock-holme and the passionate woman who crouched at her side was a very wonderful thing.
Then suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the hail commenced to die away. It no longer roared upon the shingles, but sank in a long diminuendo, drawing further and further away across the prairie. There was a deep impressive stillness as it ceased altogether.
Carrie rose abruptly. "I'm going out," she said in a strained voice. "Are you coming too?"
Eveline Annersly had little wish to go. The storm had left her shaken and unwilling to move, but she forced herself to get up, for it seemed that Carrie might have need of her. So they went out together. There was now a little light in the sky, and the bluff showed up black and sharp against it. The air was fresh and chill. Carrie, however, noticed nothing asshe moved swiftly through the wheat, through the melting ice that lay thickly upon the sod. Other shadowy figures were also moving in the same direction, and there was a murmur of voices when at last she stopped.
"It's Mrs. Leland," said somebody, and the group of men drew back a little.
Then Carrie caught her breath with a sob, for the tall wheat had gone, and, so far as she could see, ruin was spread across the belt of ploughing. The green blades lay smashed and torn upon the beaten soil. The crop had vanished under the dread reaping of the hail. The light was growing clearer, and it seemed to Eveline Annersly, who remembered how the roar had suggested the beat of horses' hoofs, that instead of a brigade of cavalry, an army division, with guns and transport, had passed that way through the grain. Then something in the fancy struck her as especially apposite, and she turned to Carrie, who stood rigid, as though turned to stone.
"Look!" she said; "it isn't everywhere the same."
A man came up, and she recognised him as Gallwey. He apparently heard her, for he beckoned to them.
"Will you come forward, Mrs. Leland?" he said. "We have a good deal to be thankful for."
They went with him a hundred yards or so. Then Carrie gasped at what she saw in the growing light of dawn.
"Oh," she cried joyously, "it hasn't reached the rest of it!"
"No," said Gallwey, "we are on the dividing line. I don't know how many bushels it has reaped, but,by comparison, it is not enough to worry about. A little wonderful. Still, I believe it's not unusual, and I have seen very much the same thing once before."
"Is there no more of the wheat damaged?" asked Carrie, and there was still a tension in her voice.
"Not a blade," said Gallwey. "I've been all round."
Then all the strength seemed to leave the girl. Moving shakily, with her hand on Eveline Annersly's arm, she turned towards the house, as the pearly greyness crept into the eastern sky. Eveline Annersly said nothing, for she could feel that her companion was trembling, and hear her catch her breath. Carrie stopped when they reached the homestead, and looked eastward with tear-dimmed eyes.
"Ah," she said, "I wonder why this favour was shown me. I felt I had ruined Charley a little while ago."
Then she pulled herself together. "Aunt Eveline," she said softly, "did you ever hate and despise yourself?"
Eveline Annersly said nothing, but she smiled with comprehension in her eyes, for she understood what was in Carrie Leland's mind.
The night was still dark, and there was not then or afterwards any sign of hail when Sergeant Grier halted his little force under the Blackfoot Ridge. There were, in all, eight of them, excellently mounted, and most of them rode with a magazine rifle slung across their shoulders. In front of them a deep ravine wound away into the Ridge, which, though sometimes called a mountain, consisted of a long, broken rise, perhaps two hundred feet above the level of the rest of the prairie. Stunted birches, and, where the grounds were moister, a dense growth of willows, clothed its sides. Behind the first rise lay a rolling, deeply fissured plateau, lined here and there with trees. It stretched away before them, a black and shadowy barrier, and Sergeant Grier sat with his hand upon his hip, looking at it reflectively.
"I guess your news can be relied on, Mr. Leland?" he said.
Leland patted his fidgeting horse. "I wouldn't have worried you with it unless I had felt tolerably sure," he said. "Two waggons, driven by strangers, passed through the Cannersly settlement three days ago. Idon't know what was in them, but they were full of something, and I have my notion as to what it was. The same night four men, who asked about those waggons, rode into Cannersly. They stayed there just five minutes, and that appeared significant to me."
The Sergeant sat silent a moment, and then turned to the rest.
"Boys," he said, "I've been worrying the thing out most of the way. The whisky boys have friends round Barber, and they'd get pack-horses there. West of the settlement, the folks are shy of them, and it's easy figuring they'd push on to get up north, beyond my reach. Well, it would cost them a day to work a traverse round the mountain, and that's why I'm putting down my stake on their coming through. There's only one good trail, and we're here to block it; but a man who knew the way might bring them out by the Willow Coulee. I guess it's not more than two miles away." He raised his voice a little. "Trooper Standish, you and Tom Gallwey will ride up the coulee, and lie by in the old herder's hut. If you hear anything, a shot will bring us in at a gallop. Trooper Cornet, you'll push on straight ahead for half an hour with Mr. Custer, and hide your horses clear of the trail. I guess once the boys get into the mountain they're going to have some trouble getting out again."
The troopers saluted, and four shadowy men melted into the darkness. When they passed out of hearing, the Sergeant swung himself from the saddle.
"Lead your horses well back among the trees, boys, and tether them," he said. "Then we'll camp downhere. I figure we're not going to see the whisky boys before the morning."
They did his bidding. Presently Leland and one or two of the others lay down among the first of the birches. The Sergeant sat close by, with his back to one of the trees, his pipe in his hand.
"It's 'bout time we got in a blow," he said. "Things are going bad, and, with the new country opening up north, I can't get more men. Now, we wouldn't be long running off the regular whisky men; the trouble is that every blamed tough between here and the frontier is standing in with them, and, unless you catch him out at night, you've nothing to show against him. When he comes home, he's a harmless settlement loafer, or an industrious pre-emptor. A good year would kill the thing, but I guess there's more in whisky than wheat, at present figures."
"There's more in running off horses," said one of the others. "The boys get them for nothing, and I've lost three of mine. How much have they taken out of you altogether, Charley?"
"Most of four or five thousand dollars, one way or another, and I have a notion they've not done with me yet. In fact, it seems to me that either the whisky boys or I will have to get out of this part of the prairie."
The Sergeant nodded. "It will be the whisky boys," he said. "You can bluff the law for awhile, if you're smart enough, but it's quite hard to keep it up, and the first mistake you make, it's got you sure. In another way, Mr. Leland's right. I'd have done nothing with my few troopers if he hadn't brought you in. We have nothing to raise trouble over—a fewsteers and horses missing, a grass fire raised. They're things that happen all the time. The whisky boys know it as well as I do, and, since I can't get more troopers, it means that what is done must be done by you. They know that, too, and it's running up quite a big account against the man who's leading you."
There was a little murmur of concurrence, and Leland laughed.
"Well," he said, "there's aper contraclaim, and I fancy it's going to be settled by-and-bye. I've had about enough to pull against this season, and I don't feel kind towards the men who have made it harder still for me."
Though he calmly filled his pipe, one or two of those who heard him fancied that the reckoning he looked forward to would be a somewhat grim one when it came. Leland of Prospect was, as they were aware, not the man to submit patiently to an injury, and his quietness had its significance. Still, he was only one man, and his enemies were many—men who struck shrewdly in the dark, and left no sign to show who they were. None of those who rode with him envied their unofficial leader.
In the meantime, Gallwey and the young trooper picked their way along the edge of the bluff. The night was dark and hazy, and there were no stars in the sky. The smoke of a big grass fire drifted in a grey mist athwart the sweep of the plain. Now and then a crimson blaze leapt up and faded on the horizon, and the still air was heavy with the smell of burning. It was advisable to ride cautiously, for there were a good many badger-holes, and here and therethe ground was seamed by a watercourse. Brittle branches occasionally snapped in the dense silence.
"I guess I could hear myself a mile away," the trooper said. "Still, that horse of yours is making row enough for a squadron."
Gallwey did not contradict him, for, as it happened, the horse just then blundered into a little watercourse and plunged down the slope of it with a great smashing of undergrowth. Gallwey contrived to avoid a fall. With some noise they scrambled up the other side, though this time Trooper Standish made an effort to control his indignation.
"I guess you would report me if I told you what I think of you," he said.
Still, they made the coulee without mishap, and the trooper checked his horse as they rode into it. It opened up before them, a black and shadowy hollow, with little streamlets trickling through. Dim trees rolled up its sides, blurred masses against the sky above. Save the soft splash of the stream, no sound broke the stillness.
"Nobody here, anyway," he said. "We'll push on for the herder's hut. It was built when the Scotchman who had Lister's ranch put sheep on the mountain, but the timber wolves got most of them, and he let up. It's 'bout the only place in this country where there are any wolves, and the agent didn't think it worth while to mention it when he gave his lease out. I guess you don't have timber wolves in Scotland."
Gallwey said they didn't. He made no further observations, for his horse fell into the stream with a loud splash. After this they pushed on up the couleeas silently as they could, until Trooper Standish pulled his horse up.
"We're here," he said. "That looks like the hut. We'll get down and hitch up the horses at the back of it."
Gallwey made out a shadowy mass among the birches, and swung himself out of the saddle as his comrade did. It was not what Sergeant Grier would have done, but Gallwey knew nothing of vedette duty, and Standish was very young. He had hitched his bridle round a branch when the latter turned to him.
"We may as well go in and make ourselves comfortable," he said. "If the whisky boys come down this way, it's a sure thing that we'll hear them."
They turned back towards the door of the hut, Gallwey a few paces behind the trooper, who thrust the door open. Gallwey could barely see him, for they were in the deep shadow of the trees. Just after Standish strolled in, there came the sound of a scuffle out of the darkness. Then there was a crash, a cry, and the thud of a heavy fall.
Gallwey stood fumbling with his pistol-holster, which, as it happened, was buttoned down. The button fitted tightly, and he was clumsy in his haste. As he tore at it, he heard a sound behind him, and was swinging round when a pair of sinewy arms were wound round him. He struggled furiously, reaching back with one foot for his assailant's leg, and succeeded in so far that he and the unseen man came down heavily together. The other man, however, was uppermost, and when somebody else came running up, Gallwey lay still.
"Let him up!" said the last arrival; and when herose shakily, his assailant jerked one arm behind him.
"Walk right into the shanty before you get hurt," he said.
Gallwey did it, since there was apparently no other course open to him. The way the man held his arm was excruciatingly painful. Somebody struck a sulphur match, and, lighting a lantern, held it up. It showed two more men, busily engaged in holding Trooper Standish, who kicked and struggled valiantly on the floor. Then the third man laid down the lantern, and, taking up a rifle, prodded the trooper with the butt of it. It was no gentle, perfunctory prodding.
"Let up and lie still before you're made. You're going to get it hard if you move again," he said, and turned to Gallwey. "Sit right down yonder."
Gallwey, who fancied that his expostulations would not be listened to, did as he was bidden. His holster was buttoned down still, and he did not think he could get it open without attracting undesirable attention. Presently one of the men unclasped the belt it was fastened to and flung it aside, while Gallwey, recognising that a conciliatory attitude was advisable, nearly laughed as he looked at Trooper Standish. The lad still lay flat upon the earthen floor, flushed in face, and hurled a stream of vitriolic compliments at his captors. One of them grinned broadly, but did not move his hands from the trooper's arms.
"Now," he said, "if one of you will pass me that pack-rope we'll tie him up."
It took two of them to accomplish it. During the operation, Trooper Standish contrived to kick oneof them where it seemed to hurt. Still, they did tie him, and the lad lay still, breathless with fury, with wrists bound behind him, his ankles lashed together. Then the men turned to Gallwey.
"I guess your hands will be enough. Hold them out!" said one.
Gallwey did it without protesting, which, it was evident, would be of very little use. While one of the men went out of the hut, another watched him.
"Nobody's going to hurt you if you sit quite still," he said.
Gallwey sat flat on the floor, a position far from comfortable, while Standish, who now lay with his head turned from him, did not move at all. Then another man went out, leaving only one, who stood on guard with nothing in his hand. In spite of certain notions, there are, after all, very few pistols to be seen in the West, and though a good many men have rifles they keep them because game is plentiful. It was, perhaps, ten minutes later when a beat of hoofs grew louder down the coulee, until, though the door was shut, Gallwey could hear what seemed to be a line of loaded pack-animals going by. He glanced at his jailer, who smiled sardonically.
"I guess you're not quite smart enough to play this game," he said. "You're from Prospect, aren't you?"
Gallwey said he was a servant of Leland's.
"That's all right," said the man. "It's kind of lucky you aren't his partner. We have nothing in particular against you, but, when we get hold of Charley Leland, we'll fix him differently."
Gallwey did not answer him. The last horse had gone by when one of the men outside flung the door open.
"We have to get up and hustle," he said. "What are you going to do with them?"
"I don't quite know," said his comrade. "We might lash this one up as we have the trooper, and leave them here. They couldn't chew that pack-rope through. You have got their horses?"
The other man said he had, and Gallwey broke in.
"We couldn't get very far without our horses, and you wouldn't be taking any risk by leaving us as we are," he said. "It's quite evident that I couldn't loose the trooper, and to be tied up so you can't move at all is abominably uncomfortable."
The outlaw laughed. "Well," he said, "you have some sense in you, and, as you haven't made us any trouble, I'll put a short hobble on you. Hold your feet out."
Gallwey did so, and the man busied himself for a minute or two with a piece of rope. It was evident that he was acquainted with the secure hitches used in lashing a load on the pack-saddle.
"Now," he said, "you might jerk yourself along half a mile in the hour if you were careful, though it's quite as likely you'd come down on your nose. Anyway, by the time you find the Sergeant, we'll be quite a few leagues away. That's about all, I think. Good-night to you."
He went out; and, as they heard him ride away, the trooper, wriggling round, looked up.
"Can you get out?" he said.
"Yes," said Gallwey; "I think I could, though it's rather more than probable that I shall fall over in attempting it. Under the circumstances, half a mile an hour would, I fancy, be an excellent pace."
"Still, you've got to try it," said the trooper. "Get up right away, and go for the Sergeant."
Gallwey endeavoured to do so, managing to get out of the door before the rope jerked him off his feet. He fell over a good many times descending the coulee, stopping to rest for a minute or two on each occasion. Still he persevered, and made some progress. Dawn was in the sky when a farmer caught sight of him. He and his companions had just decided that Leland's informant had deceived him, or that the rustlers had gone another way, after all, when a weird figure moved out of the gloom beneath the bluff. They could not see it clearly, for there was only a faint grey light as yet, but it seemed to be moving in a most extraordinary fashion. "Well," said one of them, "I never saw a man walk quite like that. It is a man, anyway. There aren't any bears on the prairie."
He broke off abruptly, for the mysterious object toppled over and vanished altogether.
"It might have crawled into a hole," said another man. "No, the blamed thing's getting up again. Anyway, it's like a man. I'm going along."
They all went together. A few minutes later, they came upon Gallwey sitting in the grass. He had lost his hat, and there was a good deal of dust and grass and leaves on him. He sat still, smiling somewhat feebly.
"I don't suppose my appearance is exactly prepossessing, but that's not my fault, and I'm unusually pleased to see you, boys," he said. "As you may have surmised, the Sergeant's little plan didn't quite workout as it should have done. I'll try to tell you about it if you'll take these ropes off."
Sergeant Grier, coming up at this juncture, made several observations that are unrecordable, but after the first outbreak, he put a check on his temper.
"They have come out ahead again," he said. "Well, it's quite likely we'll get straight with them yet, and 'bout all we can do now is to pick up their trail."
But they could find no trail, for, as little dew falls on a cloudy night, the grass was dry and dusty by sunrise. They spent most of that day riding about in twos and threes, but nobody at the scattered farms where they made inquiries had seen a single outlaw. They and their whisky had apparently vanished altogether.
The nights were growing longer, dusk was creeping up from the eastward across the leagues of whitened grass an hour earlier than it had done when they cut the hay. Leland stood outside the homestead door with a few newly opened letters in his hand. The waggon of the man who had brought them was just then lurching over the crest of the rise, and Carrie stood watching it, near her husband's side. His face was a trifle sombre, but he smiled when she glanced at him inquiringly.
"From my broker in Winnipeg," he said. "He doesn't know what to make of the market, and I can't blame him. Wheat's lower than I ever remember it, but the bears are still working their hardest to hammer prices down. In a month or so they'll have the whole wheat of the West flung into the market to make it easier for them; but they don't seem to have it quite so much their own way as I had expected. One could almost fancy that somebody was buying quietly. Anyway, there's a man willing to take most of my crop off me, when it's ready, at a little under to-day's nominal figure. You see, the Prospect hard red's first-grade for milling."
"If you sold, how would you stand?" asked Carrie.
"Very close to ruin. The cattle run would certainly have to go, but that wouldn't count so much. It's less than half stocked now."
"Why can't you hold?"
"The trouble is that all accounts must be met at harvest, and I've got to have at least five thousand dollars to wipe out the most pressing ones. The rest might be carried over at a stiff interest. Then there are wages, harvesting and threshing. Besides, if I held the grain up, I'd be taking a big risk. It may go down another two or three cents or even more, when every man west of Winnipeg rushes his crop in, and that would turn me out upon the prairie."
"Still, you mean to hold?" Carrie looked at him steadily, with a little gleam in her eyes.
"I almost think I do."
Carrie laid her hand upon his arm. The faint flush in her cheeks was born of pride. "Well," she said, "that pleases me. It is like you, Charley. Hold it, dear, every bushel, and, before you yield an inch, let them break you if they can."
She turned abruptly and glanced at the tall wheat which rolled back, dusky green with faint opal gleams in it, across the great level and over the swell of rise into the smoky crimson that lingered in the western' sky.
"It's yours," she said proudly. "You made it grow, and do you think I don't know what it has cost you? You have gone without sleep for it, and worn yourself to skin and bone. Perhaps you have always worked hard, but, I think, never quite so cruelly hard as you have done this year."
She stopped and gazed fondly on him. Then she went on.
"Oh," she said, "I understand—everything. Charley, dear, it isn't without a reason you are so thin and gaunt and brown, and your hands—the hands that have done so much for me—are hard and scarred. Still, I want them to hold on to what is yours. You have made the splendid wheat grow, and you won't let anybody rob you of it now."
Leland smiled, though it was evident that he was stirred.
"Well," he said, "it would be a little easier to stop them doing it if I knew where to get five thousand dollars, which is one thousand pounds. Of course, I owe a great deal more, but with that in hand to settle the odd accounts that must be met, I needn't force my wheat on the market for a month or so."
"Oh," said Carrie with a little laugh, "there will not be the least difficulty about the money. I am going to give it to you—two thousand pounds if you want it."
Leland stared at her in evident astonishment. "My dear, I never knew you had so much, and, if you have, it must be every penny that belongs to you. I couldn't let you strip yourself of everything for me."
"What have you been doing ever since I came to Prospect? Still, that doesn't matter. You must humour me. Do you think, after all you have done, I could stand by and see you ruined when there was anything that belonged to me? Charley, you must use this money. Can't you see that you must, if it's only to show that you have forgiven me?"
She turned swiftly, and threw an arm about hisshoulder. "If you don't, you will almost make me hate you again. You don't want that? Then you will make no more silly objections. We are going into this fight together."
Leland made a little gesture of surrender. "Well," he said slowly, "since you have made your mind up, I can't say no. I don't think it would be much use, anyway. But it will be a big risk, my dear."
"But," said Carrie, "that is one of the things that appeal to me. Still, it's all decided. You shall have a cheque for ten thousand dollars. That's right, isn't it? Now tell me what is in the rest of the letters."
She drew back from him a little. When Leland looked at her smilingly, a faint flush crept into her cheek again.
"Oh," she said, "I know what you are thinking. I always do. Still, you see, it isn't entirely my fault that I'm different from the girl you married. And now tell me about the other letters."
Leland handed her one of them with an illuminated device at the top of it. "It's an annual function, one of the biggest in Winnipeg, and women attend it. Everybody with a stake in the country will be there, and they want to make me a steward. My broker's on the committee, and Prospect is rather a big farm, you see. I am requested to bring Mrs. Leland along with me."
Carrie's eyes brightened. After all, it was lonely at Prospect, and she had played her part in two London seasons. Now and then she felt a longing to move among people of her own station again, and the prospect of attending the function was undeniably attractive. Her dresses would not be out of fashionyet, and, after the long months on the dusty prairie, it would be delightful to appear for once attired becomingly at a brilliant assembly. There were also eminent names upon the invitation, and she felt that, apart from any pleasure she might derive, it would be a source of satisfaction to see her husband among the notables of the land.
"You would like to go?" he asked.
"I would like it better than anything."
Leland appeared thoughtful. "I would like to see you there. You could put on the bracelet I saw you with and the crescent in your hair."
"No," said Carrie, who looked away from him, "I think I would sooner go very plainly—that is, if I could go at all."
The trace of eagerness in her voice was not lost upon the man, and he stood silent a moment before he made a little resolute gesture.
"Well," he said, "we'll go. It's the first little pleasure of that kind I have been able to offer you, and I daresay Gallwey will see the guards ploughed just as well as I could."
"There is some reason why you shouldn't go, after all?" and Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You are too busy."
"I'm not quite sure there is. I expect it's mostly fancy, but a man gets into the way of thinking that when there's anything of consequence to be done he should see it done himself. Now those fire-guards"—and he pointed to a belt of furrows that cut off the homestead from the prairie—"are the regulation width, but I was thinking of doubling them. The grass istinder-dry, and the oats will soon be ripe enough to burn."
"Ah," said Carrie, "you think the rustlers might try again?"
Leland smiled drily. "Well," he said, "grass-fires are in no way unusual at this season."
Carrie guessed what he was thinking as he looked in silence out across the ripening wheat. As she gazed at the vast sweep of grain, she, too, was stirred with the pride of possession and accomplishment. She longed now for the glitter of the assembly, for conversation as one of them with men and women of culture and station, with a fervour which in all probability any one who had lived, as she had, on the lonely prairie levels would quite understand. But, with a little sigh, she crushed the longing down.
"Then," she said quietly, "we will stay here, Charley."
Leland appeared irresolute. "After all, we wouldn't be so very long away."
"No," said Carrie, firmly. "There is a lot against you, and you mustn't leave a single advantage to the enemy."
Leland stooped and kissed her. "Well, I guess you're right—still, I think I know what you're going to do without for me."
Nothing more was said, but it was not needed, for there was perfect understanding between them as they went into the house together.
It was early next morning when Leland harnessed four horses to the big gang-plough, and, as there was moonlight that night, he still sat behind another four until long after the red sun went down. There wereother men he could have bidden to do the work for him, but he knew the odds against him, and meant to do it himself thoroughly. It was also careful ploughing, and not done in haste, as is most usual in the West, for throughout most of it the clods ran dead smooth and level, without a break to let the grass tussocks through. Their sides, gleaming from contact with the polished steel, were laid towards the prairie, presenting to it a serried phalanx of good, black loam; but where the sod was unusually friable, Leland got down to toil with the spade.
A grass-fire needs very little to help it. A tuft or two of dry grass projecting from a half-turned clod will suffice, and the flame will sometimes creep in and out between and across the ridges, wherever a few withered stalks may lie. Leland knew he had not done with the rustlers yet, and it was advisable to take due precautions. The standard guard-furrows were considered quite enough by most of his neighbours, who, indeed, now and then neglected to plough them. But he had a good deal at stake, and meant, in so far as it was permitted him, to make quite sure.
He went round the wheat and oats, and then spent several days ripping odd strips here and there across the prairie in the track of the prevalent winds. It was fiercely hot weather, but he was busy every hour from dawn to dusk, and at nights his men grinned as they mentioned it. Charley Leland was getting very afraid of fire, they said. When he was satisfied with the ploughing, he had the axes and grub-hoes ground, and set the men to work cutting out the smaller growth of willows of underbrush in the strip of birches that stretched close up to the homesteadfrom the bluff. When Gallwey, who had other duties, found him busy at it the first morning, he smiled a little.
"I suppose it's really necessary. If not, it would be a considerable waste of time," he said.
"Well," said Leland, drily, "I almost think it is. A good deal of this stuff is tinder-dry, and you can't plough through the bluff. I don't know if you have ever seen a bad fire in the underbrush? You can't beat it out, as you can now and then when it's in the grass."
Gallwey looked thoughtful. "All this points to one thing. You feel tolerably satisfied that the rustlers will make another attempt?"
"It's a sure thing." Leland straightened himself a little, with a lean, brown hand clenched on the haft of the big axe. "Before the snow is on the ground, I or the whisky boys will have had to quit this prairie. I don't want it to be me."
Then he turned away abruptly, and, whirling the great blade high, buried it at a stroke in a dry and partly rotten birch. His comrade smiled. He had seen Leland's face, and there was something vaguely portentous in the flash of whirling steel and the crash of the blow. Charley Leland, he knew, could wait and take precautions, but it was also evident that when the time came, he could strike in a somewhat impressive fashion.
Leland worked on for several more days, and then one night Carrie and he stood outside of the door of the homestead, watching a great pile of underbrush blazing furiously. The man smiled as he turnedto his companion. His hands were blackened, and his old blue-jean garments singed.
"Well," he said, "I guess I've done what I can. I had to do it, anyway, since you lent me that two thousand pounds. If the market would only stiffen, you'd get your money back with an interest that would astonish people in England."
He broke off for a moment with a curious little laugh. "My dear," he said, "you and I should have been in Winnipeg to-night."
Carrie said nothing, but the firelight was on her face when she looked up at her husband, and once more he was satisfied.
It was growing dusk, of a thick, hot evening, when Leland at last pulled up his jaded horses, and, turning in the iron saddle, raised his hand in signal. Behind him, a drawn-out line of machines and plodding teams were moving on at measured distances, binder after binder, half-hidden by the tall oats that went down before them with a harsh crackle. Where they passed, men toiled hard among the flung-out sheaves, and the trampling of weary horses, rasp and tinkle of the knives, and the clash of the binders' wooden arms rang far across the great dusky plain. The sounds of strenuous activity had risen since the sun first crept up above the vast sweep of grass, and continued through the burning heat of the day; but now they ceased suddenly, and men, stripped to coarse blue shirt and trousers of dusty jean, wiped their dripping faces, and straightened their aching backs before they loosed the teams. Their hoarse voices came up to Leland, with the clatter of flung-down poles and the tramp of horses among the stubble, as he got down from his binder.
Men toil hard at harvest the world over, but, perhaps, nowhere is the work so fierce, or demands so much from those engaged in it, as on the wide levels which stretch back from the wheat lands of Western Canada into the Dakotas across the border. There flesh and blood must keep pace with unwearying machines, the latest and most ingenious that man's brain can conceive. The reaper has gone, the binder that is a year or two out of date is broken up, and, while the machine does more and more, the strength of the men who serve and drive it remains the same. For all that, none of them can afford to be left behind. They have no use for the incompetent in that country, and, though at times the pace is apt to kill, man must strain overtaxed muscle and sinew in the tense effort to keep up with wooden arms that never ache, and with clashing steel. The toilers are, for the most part, well paid and generously fed, and they give all that is in them, from pride of manhood, and in some degree from sheer necessity. The ban that is still a privilege has never been lifted yet, and, while wheat may glut the markets and flour be cheap, it is alone by the sweat of somebody's strenuous effort that man has bread to eat.
Leland was aching all over, but that was, of course, nothing new to him, and he turned to Gallwey, who was standing close by, when a man came up to lead his team away.
"If you'll put the saddle on Coureur, Tom, and bring him out, I'd be obliged," he said. "I'll sit here and smoke a pipe before I ride out to meet Carrie and Mrs. Annersly. They should be well on their way from Custer's now."
Gallwey ventured to expostulate with him. "I believe I heard Mrs. Leland tell you not to come; and if you are going to start again at four o'clock to-morrow, one would fancy you had done about enough," he said. "I'm quite sure I have."
"Well," said Leland, "I want a look round, anyway. There has been a good deal of smoke about most of the day, and there's a big grass-fire, or probably more than one, somewhere out on the prairie. The wind's freshening, too."
That, at least, was evident, for a rush of hot breeze came up out of the growing darkness, and during the last few hours the sun had been hidden by driving haze. Gallwey, who felt the wind upon his dusty cheek, turned and glanced down the long row of sheaves which ridged the edge of the prairie, for he guessed what his comrade was thinking. Behind the oats there rolled long, rippling waves of wheat, and, though they were dusky now, the daylight would have shown that they were tinted with bronze and gold. The tall stems were hot still, and the prairie sod was white and thick with fibrous dust.
"Everything is about as safe as you could make it," he said. "We have good guards, and you ploughed check-furrows outside of them."
"I did," said Leland, drily. "I cut them across the track of the usual winds. This one's an exception, and I have seen a fire jump guards that were 'most as wide. There would be trouble if a spark got in among the stubble, and I'm taking no chances just now."
Gallwey made a little gesture of concurrence as he once more glanced down the long rows of sheaves. The stubble stood among them knee-high and abovethe strip of ploughing that cut it off from the prairie, for straw has no great value in that country.
"Well," he said, "I daresay you are right. It's a little hard to see how a fire could get in, but, after all, one can never make quite sure of anything."
He went away, and when he came back with the horse, Leland, swinging himself stiffly into the saddle, rode out across the rise into the silent prairie. Half an hour had passed before he met the waggon, but he then turned back with it, checking his lively horse as Carrie's team, which had travelled a considerable distance that day, plodded slowly through tussocky grass up a slope. There are places where the prairie runs dead level from horizon to horizon, but here and there it lifts in long, gentle rises, as the ocean does when the swell of a past gale disturbs its oily surface. Often the change is imperceptible until one comes to the dip where the incline softly falls away again. As they crossed the ridge, Carrie pulled the horses up and gazed about her.
"It's a trifle impressive. No sky, and darkness on the unseen earth. There are only the fires moving in a void," she said.
The others did not answer, though they were in sympathy with her. Thick darkness hid the prairie, and they on the crest of the ridge seemed utterly alone in an immeasurable immensity of space. Somewhere in the midst of it were long smears of crimson light that seized the eye with their suggestion of distance as they flung themselves aloft when the waggon crossed a rise. Still, the rise remained invisible, and, as Carrie had said, the fires seemed to be movingthrough a great emptiness. It was curiously and almost hauntingly impressive.
"I suppose they can't be near Prospect?" she said.
Leland turned his face to the wind, which was filled with the smell of burning. "The nearest should be most of a league away from the homestead," he said. "It's fortunate it is. That fire's an unusually big one."
There was silence again for a minute or two, while they watched the moving radiance, and then Carrie stood up suddenly.
"Prospect should be straight in front of us over the horses' heads," she said.
"Almost. You couldn't see it. The rise hides the house."
"Ah!" said Carrie, with a little gasp. "Then there's another light behind it. Something low and little that twinkles like a star."
Leland shook his bridle and touched the horse with his heel. "Take your own time," he said hoarsely. "I'm going on. I'm afraid you'll have light enough before you're home."
In another moment he had vanished into the darkness, and they heard a drumming of hoofs grow fainter as he rode towards Prospect at a furious gallop. For a while there was nothing he could see, but when he swept across the last rise, and the lights of Prospect twinkled close in front of him, he made out a little patch of radiance beyond them on the prairie. It was evident to him that nobody at the homestead, which stood lower, would see it. Then he struck the horse again, and was riding by the stables at a wild gallop when a voice hailed him.
"That you, Mr. Leland?" it said.
Leland, remembering what instructions he had given the watcher, shouted and pulled up his horse with a struggle.
"Turn out the boys!" he said. "Get them along to the south side of the oats with the wet grain bags and shovels. Tom Gallwey's in the house?"
The unseen man said he was; and in another minute Leland, who rode on, swung himself down at the homestead door. Gallwey, who had apparently heard him coming, ran out.
"Bring me my old Marlin, and get yours," said Leland. "There's a fire-bug getting his work in to windward of us on the prairie."
Gallwey disappeared, but came back with two rifles in less than a minute. Leland, who had let the horse go, turned to him.
"We're going on foot to get that fellow if we can," he said. "I guess the boys will know what to do."
Gallwey considered that this was probable, for grass-fires are common at that season, and Leland had more than once explained exactly what the part of each would be in case one approached the homestead. He and his comrade accordingly set off through the bluff at a steady run, though Gallwey twice fell over an unseen obstacle, while, when they came out, there were two moving lines of fire, small as yet, but growing, on the prairie behind it. It was also evident that the hot wind would bring them down upon the oats. Leland, however, did not head for either blaze, but for a point some distance to the left of the one farthest off.
"That man means to make quite sure," he said."He'll figure he's as safe as he was when he started the first fire, since we've shown no sign of seeing it."
"I suppose there is a man," gasped Gallwey.
Leland seemed to laugh, though he was running hard. "Well," he said breathlessly, "it's quite a usual thing for one fire to come along in weather like this, but it's rather too much of a coincidence when two of them start in the same place, while, when you see a third one too, it's enough to make one anxious for a good grip of the man who's lighting them."
"I can't see a third."
Leland swung his arm up, and appeared to be pointing in front of him. "You're going to. Go on slow, but be ready to run when you see a twinkle. The one thing to remember is that you have a rifle."
He turned off and vanished, while Gallwey pulled up to a walk. There was a very big fire a league or so away, and two small ones behind him which were extending rapidly, but all the rest of the prairie was wrapped in utter darkness. When he turned, after glancing at the wide blaze of radiance, he could not see a yard in front of him. Where his comrade was he did not know, but he fancied his object was to place the incendiary between the two of them when he betrayed himself by the third blaze. Gallwey was, however, not quite sure there would be a third blaze, while it appeared not improbable that if the man still lingered, he might hear them.
For five minutes he walked straight on, or, at least, he fancied so. It seemed to be getting darker, for the air was thick with drifting smoke, and there was no moon. Then a pale twinkle leapt up in front of him, and that was all he could be certain of, for,since there was no horizon, it might have been, for all that he could tell, either above him or beneath. It was a feeble blink of light that presently went out again. Still, he had his direction now, and his heart beat a good deal faster than usual as he went on at a run, until the pale blaze sprang up a second time. Then he dropped swiftly, and crouched with one foot under him and the rifle in his left hand, watching the radiance increase. He could see the taller tussocks of grass between him and the fire now, and drew in his breath, pitching the rifle forward with his elbow on his knee, when a black figure became faintly visible behind it.
He could not see the sights, but the man who shoots duck on the sloos, handles the rifle in that country much as one uses a double-barrel, and Gallwey felt that the chances were in favour of his driving a forty-four bullet into the black figure by the fire. Still, something in him recoiled from doing so without, at least, a warning, and he raised his voice.
"Stand still!" he said; "I have you covered." It is possible that the man did not believe him, and made a swift calculation of the chances against him. In any case, he vanished incontinently, and it was a moment or two too late when Gallwey's rifle flashed. He felt the jar of the butt on his shoulder, but, as usual, heard no report. He was listening for the whine of the bullet and the thud which would tell him whether it had reached its mark. He did not hear that either, and, slamming down the slide, fired again at a venture. Then he heard a drumming of hoofs, and rose to his feet. It would be Leland's turn now, and he fancied his comrade would, at least,have endeavoured to place the man between himself and the fire. It was certain that there was nothing to be gained by running after a man upon a horse.
While he stood still, he saw a little pale flash, and heard the ringing of a rifle. The flash appeared again, and this time was followed by a cry and a heavy crash. Gallwey ran as fast as he could in the direction whence it seemed to come, and in another few minutes stopped beside a big, shapeless object that was moving convulsively on the grass. He made out his comrade stooping over it.
"Get hold!" said Leland. "The horse is done for, but he has the man pinned down under him."
Then it became apparent that another object, which had a certain human semblance, lay among the horse's legs, and a faint voice rose from it.
"Hump yourselves, before he rolls over and smashes me all up," it said.
Gallwey was not sure what his comrade did, but he laid hold of what seemed to be the man's arm, and, as the horse rolled a little, succeeded in dragging him clear of it. He let him go and stood looking down on him stupidly.
"Leg's broke!" gasped the man. "The beast fell on me."
"Well," said Leland, drily, "it will save us some trouble. You're not going to walk very far like that, and, when we get the fire under control, we'll see what can be done for you. It's your own fault that you'll have to wait a little."
Then he swung round to Gallwey. "Back to the guard-furrows for your life."
Gallwey fancied that he had never run quite sohard before, but, when he reached the strip of ploughing between stubble and prairie, Leland was already there, shouting breathlessly to the men spread out along it. Not far away a wavy wall of fire was moving down on them out of the prairie, and there were two more some distance to the left, though it would evidently be a little while before the last of them rolled up. Already a thick and acrid vapour whirled among the oats, and, when it melted a little, and a brighter blaze sprang up, he could see the men's tense faces and the curious rigidity of their attitudes.
Then there was a trampling of hoofs, and, turning, he saw Carrie Leland pull her plunging team up in the midst of the smoke. She stood up on the front of the waggon, and a flickering blaze of radiance showed that she was dripping with water. A pile of wet bags lay behind her.
"Throw them out, boys," she said. "There are more of them waiting."
In another moment Leland ran up and seized the near horse's head, as the beast kicked and plunged in the stinging smoke.
"Go home, and leave the team to one of the boys," he said.
Carrie laughed, standing bolt upright, the fire-light on her face, the reins in her hands.
"No," she said; "they're wanted, and do you think we can't drive in England? Get the bags out as fast as you can, boys."
The warning seemed necessary, for one of the horses' forelegs left the ground, and the other's hind hoofs crashed against the front of the waggon. ThenLeland was almost swung off his feet, and Carrie laughed again.
"Let them go. I'll hold them if you're quick," she said.
She dropped into the driving-seat with her feet braced against the board, and the men made what haste they could, while the frantic team kicked and plunged and backed the waggon in among them. Gallwey was stirred to admiration as he watched the tense, shapely figure, braced against the strain upon the reins, that was now and then forced up by the fire and lost again.
Then a thick wreath of blinding smoke whirled down on them, and Carrie cried out as she swung the whip. There was a thud of hoofs and a rattle, the men leapt aside, and the waggon plunged into the vapour, as Gallwey said afterwards, like a thunderbolt.
There was silence for a minute, the tense silence that precedes a struggle, when the waggon lurched away, and the men stood still, intent and at a strain, blinking at the fire. The wind had lulled, and the smoke went almost straight up, shining luminously in the red glare. Beneath it, a wavy line of flame rolled on across the prairie, licking up the parched grass as it came. As it happened, the grass thereabouts was higher than usual. Unless there is a gale behind it, a grass-fire does not move with much celerity, and that night the one that menaced Leland's crop seemed inordinately slow to those who watched it. Indeed, one or two of them found it strangely hard to stand still while it rolled down on them, which, in cases of the kind, is by no means an unusual thing. Action of any kind, even purposeless action, is a relief to men under strain.
There was, however, in the meanwhile, nothing that they could do, and they commenced to growl inarticulately as they glanced at one another with fierce, set faces. Here and there one of them twisted the end of the wet bag he held, to give him a firmer grip, or fidgeted aimlessly with his shovel. The rest frowned and coughed, for which there was someexcuse, or stood woodenly still, according to their temperament. Leland, however, swung round towards the row of binders that stood half buried among the oats.
"That's one thing we overlooked, and they have got to take their chances now," he said. "We couldn't get a team to face the smoke, and nobody could harness them if we did. If they're burned, we're going to have trouble to get the harvest in."
Gallwey, who stood near him, made a sign of agreement. Every binder in the country was in use just then, for, since machines are remodelled yearly, implement dealers stock no more than they expect to sell, and let on hire any by chance left upon their hands. It was accordingly evident that, if these were burned, his comrade could not replace them, and, in face of the wages usually paid, nobody could garner the harvests of the Northwest without the binder, which not only cuts the grain, but ties it into sheaves. It is by saving costly labour alone that the prairie farmer pours his wheat into the markets of the East, and retains a small margin for himself, in spite of fifteen hundred miles railway haulage, and three thousand by sea. It is the gang-plough and the automatic binder that have opened up the prairie.
"You couldn't get another anywhere in time to be of use," he said.
Leland, however, now laughed harshly. "Well," he said, "after all, I needn't worry about them. It's no great comfort, but I'm not likely to want them if they're burnt. In that case, there'll be no crop to harvest."
It seemed to Gallwey that this was probable enough. The oats stood half as high again as most of those he had seen in England, on thick, flinty stems that had dried and yellowed under a scorching sun, while behind them rolled the wheat that was almost as ripe. There had been no rain for days, and very little dew, and now, when a fierce, hot wind was driving down the fire on them, the whole crop seemed ready for the burning. The guard-furrows would check the flame, but they could not stop the sparks, and sheaves and tall stubble lay spread like tinder for them to fall among.
Then once more the wind descended, and a long wreath of smoke, blotting out everything, drove on. A great shower of sparks blew forward out of the midst of it, and, when it was rent aside, there sprang up a great crackling blaze. It leapt forward with a roar, and then broke up, running low among the grass, while the smoke whirled past the men, choking and blinding them, thicker than ever.
"Stand by!" cried Leland. "There's the first! Beat it out! Hold on! Don't crowd in on them!"
His voice was lost in the crackle of the fire, and that was the last intelligible thing he said for some time. A further hail of sparks came out of the smoke, and a blaze sprang up among the stubble. It spread, even while two men fell upon it with wet grain bags, but flickered out when a third reinforced them with a shovel. Then it grew intolerably hot, and the action became general.
The fire was almost up to the guard-furrows, and a rain of burning particles blew on before it. Incipient blazes broke out where they fell, and menfought them savagely in the blinding smoke. Now and then they fell over each other, and one here and there was struck by his comrade's shovel, but nobody heeded that. Epithets that at other times would have been answered by the clenched fist passed unnoticed; and choking, gasping, whirling bag or shovel, they fought on. Now and then the smoke thinned a little, and the fierce red light beat upon their dripping faces and bowed figures, only to fade into a confused opacity again that made but faintly visible the forms flitting like phantoms amidst the vapour. Here and there a man cried out, but nobody heard what he said, and his feeble voice was drowned in the crackle of the flame. Leland appeared to be wherever the fire was fiercest, once knocking Gallwey down as he came floundering through the stubble towards a spreading blaze.
Then the fire rolled up to the edge of the ploughing, a wall of flame, perhaps a hundred yards from end to end, leaping up with a mad roaring; then it stopped and fell away. The sparks dropped short, too, in a lulling of the wind, and what, by contrast, seemed black darkness rushed down upon that part of the prairie. Then there was an impressive silence, and men, half dazed by the heat and effort, wiped their streaming faces, and looked round in search of their invisible neighbours.
None of them knew how long this lasted, but, though they had won so far, the fight was not yet over. Presently the smoke that streamed past them was torn aside again, and a red light shone along the line. The second fire was coming on, and there was still another behind. The flickering radiance showedthe dusky figures that leant upon the shovel-hafts or shook out the half-dried bags. Here and there it also showed a blackened face, surmounted by frizzled hair.
Gallwey, as it happened, found himself close to Leland, and looked at the latter with a little sardonic smile, not knowing that he himself was not much more prepossessing in his outward appearance. Leland's wide hat hung shapelessly over his blackened face. There was a charred gap in the front brim, as well as several big holes in his jean jacket, which was badly rent. Blood was trickling from one of his hands.
"I don't know if I did that myself, or if somebody hit me with a shovel," he said. "Anyway, when I fell down, one or two of them ran over me."
Then he turned fiercely towards the moving fires. "The next one's bigger. If the wind would only drop!"
Gallwey, who fancied by the way the smoke drove past them that there was very little chance of it, coughed. "It's evidently not going to. If we had only a little water, one could be more content. I feel as if there was not a drop of moisture anywhere in me."
One or two of the others heard him, and cries went up.
"Water!" said somebody. "Is there any?"
"I'm 'most as dry as this bag. It will blaze next time," said another man. "My jacket's singed to tinder, too. How're we going to do when our clothes start burning?"
Leland stood up where the rest could dimly see him on the spoke of a binder wheel.
"You should have thought of that before, boys," he said. "Anyway, you'll have to hold out until the thing's over. It's too far to the homestead, and nobody could bring up a team."
Just then a man further back along the line flung out a pointing hand.
"Well," he said, "I guess that looks as if somebody was trying."
The sound of a trampling in the stubble rose through the crackle of the fire, and a half-frantic team and a waggon materialised out of the vapour. A slim, dimly-seen figure swayed with the jolting upon the driving-seat, and, when the watchers saw another apparently clinging to the load behind, a confused shouting broke out.
"Wet bags and water. Get hold of the beasts, some of you. It's Mrs. Leland. She's a daisy!"
There was a rush of shadowy figures towards the waggon, and every man was wanted, for the team would not stand still. Blackened hands clutched at rein, head-stall, harness, whatever they could get a finger on, and the terror-stricken animals, borne down by sheer weight, could not make off with nearly a dozen men hanging on to them. The rest swarmed about the waggon, where Carrie still sat with the light of the fire on her, while Jake, the cripple, hurled down dripping bags, and strove to wriggle out a water barrel. They got it down between them, and Carrie made a sign to Leland, who was struggling amidst the press.
"That will do!" he said. "Stand clear, boys. Carrie, don't come back."
Then there was a sudden scattering of the crowd, a clatter and a trampling of stubble, and once more waggon and team were lost in the darkness and driving smoke. After that, men surged about the barrel, striving to dip their hats in it. It was a little while before they were satisfied, and then one of them waved his dripping hat as though to enforce attention.
"Boys," he said, "I guess it's not every woman would have got that team here, and it's not Mrs. Leland's fault there's only water in the barrel. You can blame that on your legislature. Anyway, you were glad to get it, and I never struck a farm where they fixed the hired man better than Leland of Prospect and his wife do. That's why, now the other fire's coming along, it's up to every man to see them through."
There were some laughter and shouts of approval, and the shadowy figures trooped away to meet the second fire. It was fiercer than the first, but, though some burned their clothing and odd patches of their limbs, they overcame first it and then the smaller one that came behind it. Then Leland, who called Gallwey and two of the men, strode away through the darkness to where he had left the outlaw. They found the horse without much difficulty, and it was dead; but there was no longer any sign of the man. When they shouted, it happened—very much as they had expected—that nobody answered them.
"I guess the whisky boys must have played the 'possum on you," said one of the men.
Gallwey laughed a little as he turned to his comrade. "Well," he said reflectively in his cleanestEnglish, "considering everything, it's almost a pity one of us didn't think it worth while to examine his leg. You see, he couldn't very well have walked off if it had really been broken."
Leland, who had perhaps some excuse for being consumed with vindictive fury, swung round on him.