It was very dark amidst the birches where Trooper Shannon sat motionless in his saddle, gazing down into the denser blackness of the river hollow. The stream ran deep below the level of the prairie, as the rivers of that country usually do, and the trees, which there alone found shelter from the winds, straggled, gnarled and stunted, up either side of the steep declivity. Close behind the trooper a sinuous trail seamed by ruts and the print of hoofs stretched away across the empty prairie. It forked on the outskirts of the bluff, and one arm dipped steeply to the river where, because the stream ran slow just there and the bottom was firm, a horseman might cross when the water was low, and heavy sledges make the passage on the ice in winter time. The other arm twisted in and out among the birches towards the bridge, but that detour increased the distance to any one travelling north or south by two leagues or so.
The ice, however was not very thick as yet, and Shannon, who had heard it ring hollowly under him, surmised that while it might be possible to lead a laden horse across, there would be some risk attached to the operation. For that very reason, and although his opinion had not been asked, he agreed with Sergeant Stimson that the whisky-runners would attempt the passage. They were men who took the risks as they came, and that route would considerably shorten the journey it was especially desirable for them to make at night, while it would, Shannon fancied, appear probable to them that if the police had word of their intentions they would watch the bridge. Between it and the frozen ford the stream ran faster, and the trooper decided that no mounted man could cross the thinner ice.
It was very cold as well as dark, for although the snow, which usually precedes the frost in that country, had not come as yet, it was evidently not far away, and the trooper shivered in the blasts from the pole which cut through fur and leather with the keenness of steel. The temperature had fallen steadily since morning, and now there was a presage of a blizzard in the moaning wind and murky sky. If it broke and scattered its blinking whiteness upon the roaring blast there would be but little hope for any man or beast caught shelterless in the empty wilderness, for it is beyond the power of anything made of flesh and blood to withstand that cold.
Already a fine haze of snow swirled between the birch twigs every now and then, and stung the few patches of the trooper’s unprotected skin as though they had been pricked with red-hot needles. It, however, seldom lasted more than a minute, and when it whirled away, a half-moon shone down for a moment between smoky clouds. The uncertain radiance showed the thrashing birches rising from the hollow, row on row, struck a faint sparkle from the ice beneath them, and then went out, leaving the gloom intensified. It was evident to Shannon that his eyes would not be much use to him that night, for which reason he kept his ears uncovered at the risk of losing them, but though he had been born in the bush and all the sounds of the wilderness had for him a meaning, hearing did not promise to be of much assistance. The dim trees roared about him with a great thrashing of twigs, and when the wilder gusts had passed there was an eery moaning, through which came the murmur of leagues of tormented grasses. The wind was rising rapidly, and it would, he fancied, drown the beat of approaching hoofs as well as any cry from his comrades.
Four of them were hidden amidst the birches where the trail wound steeply upwards through the bluff across the river, two on the nearer side not far below, and Trooper Shannon’s watch would serve two purposes. He was to let the rustlers pass him it they rode for the ford, and then help to cut off the retreat of any who escaped the sergeant, while if they found the ice too thin for loaded beasts or rode towards the bridge, a flash from his carbine would bring his comrades across in time to join the others who were watching that trail. It had, as usual with Stimson’s schemes, all been carefully thought out and the plan was eminently workable, but unfortunately for the grizzled sergeant a better brain than his had foreseen the combination.
In the meanwhile the lad felt his limbs grow stiff and almost useless, and a lethargic numbness blunt the keenness of his faculties as the heat went out of him. He had more than usual endurance, and utter cold, thirst, and the hunger that most ably helps the frost, are not infrequently the portion of the wardens of the prairie; but there is a limit to what man can bear, and the troopers who watched by the frozen river that night had almost reached it. Shannon could not feel the stirrups with his feet. One of his ears was tingling horribly as the blood that had almost left it resumed its efforts to penetrate the congealing flesh, while the mittened hands he beat upon his breast fell solidly on his wrappings without separate motion of the fingers. Once or twice the horse stamped fretfully, but a touch of hand and heel quieted him, for though the frozen flesh may shrink, unwavering obedience is demanded equally from man and beast enrolled in the service of the North-West police.
“Stiddy now,” said the lad, partly to discover if he still retained the power of speech. “Sure ye know the order that was given me, and if it’s a funeral that comes of it the Government will bury ye.”
He sighed as he beat his hands upon his breast again, and when a flicker of moonlight smote a passing track of brightness athwart the tossing birches his young face was very grim. Like many another trooper of the North-West police, Shannon had his story, and he remembered the one trace of romance that had brightened his hard, bare life that night as he waited for the man who had dissipated it.
When Larry Blake moved West from Ontario, Shannon, drawn by his sister’s dark eyes, followed him, and took up a Government grant of prairie sod. His dollars were few, but he had a stout heart and two working oxen, and nothing seemed impossible while Ailly Blake smiled on him, and she smiled tolerably frequently, for Shannon was a well-favoured lad. He had worked harder than most grown men could do, won one good harvest, and had a few dollars in the bank when Courthorne rode up to Blake’s homestead on his big black horse. After that, all Shannon’s hopes and ambitions came down with a crash; and the day he found Blake grey in face with shame and rage he offered Sergeant Stimson his services. Now he was filled with an unholy content that he had done so, for he came of a race that does not forget an injury, and had sufficient cause for a jealous pride in the virtue of its women. He and Larry might have forgiven a pistol shot, but they could not forget the shame.
Suddenly he stiffened to attention, for though a man of the cities would probably have heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, he caught a faint rhythmic drumming which might have been made by a galloping horse. It ceased, and he surmised, probably correctly, that it was Trooper Payne returning. It was, however, his business to watch the forking of the trail, and when he could only hear the thrashing of the birches, he moved his mittened hand from the bridle, and patted the restive horse. Just then the bluff was filled with sound as a blast that drove a haze of snow before it roared down. It was followed by a sudden stillness that was almost bewildering, and when a blink of moonlight came streaming down, Trooper Shannon grabbed at his carbine, for a man stood close beside him in the trail. The lad, who had neither seen nor heard him come, looked down on the glinting barrel of a Marlin rifle and saw a set white face behind it.
“Hands up!” said a hoarse voice. “Throw that thing down,”
Trooper Shannon recognized it, and all the fierce hate he was capable of flamed up. It shook him with a gust of passion, and it was not fear that caused his stiffened fingers to slip upon the carbine. It fell with a rattle, and while he sat still, almost breathless and livid in face, the man laughed a little.
“That’s better; get down,” he said.
Trooper Shannon swung himself from the saddle, and alighted heavily as a flung-off sack would have done, for his limbs refused to bend. Still it was not from lack of courage that he obeyed, and during one moment he had clutched the bridle with the purpose of riding over his enemy. He had, however, been taught to think for himself swiftly and shrewdly from his boyhood up, and realized instinctively that if he escaped scathless the ringing of the rifle would warn the rustlers who, he surmised, were close behind. He was also a police trooper broken to the iron bond of discipline, and if a bullet from the Marlin was to end his career, he determined it should, if possible, also terminate his enemy’s liberty. The gust of rage had gone, and left him with the cold vindictive cunning the Celt who has a grievous injury to remember is also capable of, and there was contempt in his voice as he turned to Courthorne quietly.
“Sure it’s your turn now,” he said. “The last time I put my mark on the divil’s face of ye.”
Courthorne laughed wickedly. “It was a bad day’s work for you; I haven’t forgotten yet,” he said. “I’m only sorry you’re not a trifle older, but it will teach Sergeant Stimson the folly of sending a lad to deal with me. Well, walk straight into the bush, and remember that the muzzle of the rifle is scarcely three feet behind you!”
Trooper Shannon did so with black rage in his heart, and his empty hands at his sides. He was a police trooper and a bushman born, and knew that the rustlers’ laden horses would find some difficulty in remounting the steep trail and could not escape to left or right once they were entangled amidst the trees. Then it would be time to give the alarm, and go down with a bullet in his body, or by some contrivance evade the deadly rifle and come to grips with his enemy. He also knew Lance Courthorne, and, remembering how the lash had seamed his face, expected no pity. One of them it was tolerably certain would have set out on the long trail before the morning, but they breed grim men in the bush of Ontario, and no other kind ride very long with the wardens of the prairie.
“Stop where you are,” said Courthorne presently. “Now then, turn round. Move a finger or open your lips, and I’ll have great pleasure in shooting you. In the meanwhile you can endeavour to make favour with whatever saint is honoured by the charge of you.”
Shannon smiled in a fashion that resembled a snarl as once more a blink of moonlight shone down upon them, and in place of showing apprehension, his young white face, from which the bronze had faded, was venomous.
“And my folks were Orange, but what does that matter now?” said he. “There’ll be one of us in——to-morrow, but for the shame ye put on Larry ye’ll carry my mark there with ye.”
Courthorne looked at him with a little glow in his eyes. “You haven’t felt mine yet,” he said. “You will probably talk differently when you do.”
It may have been youthful bravado, but Trooper Shannon laughed. “In the meanwhile,” he said, “I’m wondering why you’re wearing an honest man’s coat and cap. Faith, if he saw them on ye, Witham would burn them.”
Courthorne returned no answer and the moonlight went out, but they stood scarcely three feet apart, and one of them knew that any move he made would be followed by the pressure of the other’s finger on the trigger. He, however, did not move at all, and while the birches roared about them they stood silently face to face, the man of birth and pedigree with a past behind him and blood already upon his head, and the raw lad from the bush, his equal before the tribunal that would presently judge their quarrel.
In the meanwhile Trooper Shannon heard a drumming of hoofs that grew steadily louder before Courthorne apparently noticed the sound, and his trained ears told him that the rustlers’ horses were coming down the trail. Now they had passed the forking, and when the branches ceased roaring again he knew they had floundered down the first of the declivity, and it would be well to wait a little until they had straggled out where the trail was narrow and deeply rutted. No one could turn them hastily there, and the men who drove them could scarcely escape the troopers who waited them, if they blundered on through the darkness of the bush. So five breathless minutes passed, Trooper Shannon standing tense and straight with every nerve tingling as he braced himself for an effort, Courthorne stooping a little with forefinger on the trigger, and the Marlin rifle at his hip. Then through a lull there rose a clearer thud of hoofs. It was lost in the thrashing of the twigs as a gust roared down again, and Trooper Shannon launched himself like a panther upon his enemy.
He might have succeeded, and the effort was gallantly made, but Courthorne had never moved his eyes from the shadowy object before him, and even as it sprang, his finger contracted further on the trigger. There was a red flash and because he fired from the hip the trigger guard gashed his mitten. He sprang sideways, scarcely feeling the bite of the steel, for the lad’s hand brushed his shoulder. Then there was a crash as something went down heavily amidst the crackling twigs. Courthorne stooped a little, panting in the smoke that blew into his eyes, jerked the Marlin lever, and, as the moon came through again, had a blurred vision of a white, drawn face that stared up at him still with defiance in its eyes. He looked down into it as he drew the trigger once more.
Shannon quivered a moment, and then lay very still, and it was high time for Courthorne to look to himself, for there was a shouting in the bluff, and something came crashing through the undergrowth. Even then his cunning did not desert him, and flinging the Marlin down beside the trooper, he slipped almost silently in and out among the birches and swung himself into the saddle of a tethered horse. Unlooping the bridle from a branch, he pressed his heels home, realizing as he did it that there was no time to lose, for it was evident that one of the troopers was somewhat close behind him, and others were coming across the river. He knew the bluff well, and having no desire to be entangled in it was heading for the prairie, when a blink of moonlight showed him a lad in uniform riding at a gallop between him and the crest of the slope. It was Trooper Payne, and Courthorne knew him for a very bold horseman.
Now, it is possible that had one of the rustlers, who were simple men with primitive virtues as well as primitive passions, been similarly placed, he would have joined his comrades and taken his chance with them, but Courthorne kept faith with nobody unless it suited him, and was equally dangerous to his friends and enemies. Trooper Shannon had also been silenced for ever, and if he could cross the frontier unrecognized, nobody would believe the story of the man he would leave to bear the brunt in place of him. Accordingly he headed at a gallop down the winding trail, while sharp orders and a drumming of hoofs grew louder behind him, and hoarse cries rose in front. Trooper Payne was, it seemed, at least keeping pace with him, and he glanced over his shoulder as he saw something dark and shadowy across the trail. It was apparently a horse from which two men were struggling to loose its burden.
Courthorne guessed that the trail was blocked in front of it by other loaded beasts, and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him and the edge of the bluff cutting off his road to the prairie. It was evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs, and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them. There alone remained the river. It ran fast below him, and the ice was thin, and for just a moment he tightened his grip on the bridle.
“We’ve got you!” a hoarse voice reached him. “You’re taking steep chances if you go on.”
Courthorne swung off from the trail. There was a flash above him, something whirred through the twigs above his head, and the horse plunged as he drove his heels in.
“One of them gone for the river,” another shout rang out, and Courthorne was crashing through the undergrowth straight down the declivity, while thin snow whirled about him, and now and then he caught the faint glimmer flung back by the ice beneath.
Swaying boughs lashed him, his fur cap was whipped away, and he felt that his face was bleeding, but there was another crackle close behind him, for Trooper Payne was riding as daringly, and he carried a carbine. Had he desired it Courthorne could not turn. The bronco he bestrode was madly excited and less than half broken, and it is probable no man could have pulled him up just then. It may also have been borne in upon Courthorne, that he owed a little to those he had left behind him in the old country, and he had not lost his pride. There was, it seemed, no escape, but he had at least a choice of endings, and with a little breathless laugh he rode straight for the river.
It was with difficulty Trooper Payne pulled his horse up on the steep bank a minute later. A white haze was now sliding down the hollow between the two dark walls of trees, and something seemed to move in the midst of it while the ice rang about it. Then, as the trooper pitched up his carbine, there was a crash that was followed by a horrible floundering and silence again. Payne sat still, shivering a little in his saddle until the snow that whirled about him blotted out all the birches, and a roaring blast came down.
He knew there was now nothing that he could do. The current had evidently sucked the fugitive under, and, dismounting, he groped his way up the slope, leading the horse by the bridle, and only swung himself into the saddle when he found the trail again. A carbine flashed in front of him, two dim figures went by at a gallop, and a third one flung an order over his shoulder as he passed.
“Go back. The Sergeant’s hurt and Shannon has got a bullet in him.”
Trooper Payne had surmised as much already, and went back as fast as he could ride, while the beat of hoofs grew fainter down the trail. Ten minutes later he drew bridle close by a man who held a lantern, and saw Sergeant Stimson sitting very grim in face on the ground. It transpired later that his horse had fallen and thrown him, and it was several weeks before he rode again.
“You lost your man?” he said. “Get down.”
Payne dismounted. “Yes, sir, I fancy he is dead,” he said. “He tried the river, and the ice wouldn’t carry him. I saw him ride away from here just after the first shot, and fancied he fired at Shannon. Have you seen him, sir?”
The other trooper moved his lantern, and Payne gasped as he saw a third man stooping, with the white face of his comrade close by his feet. Shannon appeared to recognize him, for his eyes moved a little and the grey lips fell apart. Then Payne turned his head aside while the other trooper nodded compassionately in answer to his questioning glance.
“I’ve sent one of the boys to Graham’s for a wagon,” said the Sergeant. “You saw the man who fired at him?”
“Yes, sir,” said Trooper Payne.
“You knew him?” and there was a ring in the Sergeant’s voice.
“Yes, sir,” said the trooper. “At least he was riding Witham’s horse, and had on the old, long coat of his.”
Sergeant Stimson nodded, and pointed to the weapon lying with blackened muzzle at his feet. “And I think you could recognize that rifle? There’s F. Witham cut on the stock of it.”
Payne said nothing, for the trooper signed to him.
“I fancy Shannon wants to talk to you,” he said.
The lad knelt down, slipped one arm about his comrade’s neck, and took the mittened hand in his own. Shannon smiled up at him feebly.
“Witham’s horse and his cap,” he said, and then stopped, gasping horribly.
“You will remember that, boys,” said the Sergeant.
Payne could say nothing. Trooper Shannon and he had ridden through icy blizzard and scorching heat together, and he felt his manhood melting as he looked down into his dimming eyes. There was a curious look in them which suggested a strenuous endeavour and an appeal, and the lips moved again.
“It was,” said Shannon, and moved his head a little on Payne’s arm, apparently in an agony of effort.
Then the birches roared about them, and drowned the feeble utterance, while, when the gust passed, all three, who had not heard what preceded it, caught only one word—“Witham.”
Trooper Shannon’s eyes closed, and his head fell back, while the snow beat softly in to his upturned face, and there was a very impressive silence, intensified by the moaning of the wind, until the rattle of wheels came faintly down the trail.
The long train was slackening speed and two whistles rang shrilly through the roar of wheels when Miss Barrington laid down the book with which she had beguiled her journey of fifteen hundred miles, and rose from her seat in a corner of the big first-class car. The car was sumptuously upholstered, and its decorations tasteful as well as lavish, but just then it held no other passenger, and Miss Barrington smiled curiously as she stood, swaying a little, in front of the mirror at one end of it, wrapping her furs about her. There was, however, a faint suggestion of regret in the smile, and the girl’s eyes grew grave again, for the soft cushions, dainty curtains, gleaming gold and nickel, and equable temperature formed a part of the sheltered life she was about to leave behind her, and there would, she knew, be a difference in the future. Still, she laughed again as, drawing a little fur cap well down upon her broad, white forehead, she nodded at her own reflection.
“One cannot have everything, and you might have stayed there and revelled in civilization if you had liked,” she said.
Crossing to the door of the portico she stood a moment with fingers on its handle, and once more looked about her. The car was very cosy, and Maud Barrington had all the average young woman’s appreciation of the smoother side of life, although she had also the capacity, which is by no means so common, for extracting the most it had to give from the opposite one. Still, it was with a faint regret she prepared to complete what had been a deed of renunciation. Montreal, with its gaieties and luxuries, had not seemed so very far away while she was carried West amid all the comforts artizans who were also artists could provide for the traveller, but once that door closed behind her she would be cut adrift from it all, and left face to face with the simple, strenuous life of the prairie.
Maud Barrington had, however, made her mind up some weeks ago; and when the lock closed with a little clack that seemed to emphasize the fact that the door was shut, she had shaken the memories from her, and was quietly prepared to look forward instead of back. It also needed some little courage, for, as she stood with the furs fluttering about her on the lurching platform, the cold went through her like a knife, and the roofs of the little prairie town rose up above the willows the train was now crawling through. The odours that greeted her nostrils were the reverse of pleasant, and glancing down with the faintest shiver of disgust, her eyes rested on the litter of empty cans, discarded garments, and other even more unsightly things which are usually dumped in the handiest bluff by the citizens of a springing Western town. They have, for the most part, but little appreciation of the picturesque, and it would take a good deal to affect their health.
Then the dwarfed trees opened out, and flanked by two huge wheat elevators and a great water tank, the prairie city stood revealed. It was crude and repellent, devoid of anything that could please the most lenient eye, for the bare frame houses rose with their rough boarding weathered and cracked by frost and sun, hideous almost in their simplicity, from the white prairie. Paint was apparently an unknown luxury, and pavement there was none, though a rude plank platform straggled some distance above the ground down either side of the street, so that the citizens might not sink knee-deep in the mire of the spring thawing. Here and there a dilapidated wagon was drawn up in front of a store, but with a clanging of the big bell the locomotive rolled into the little station, and Maud Barrington looked down upon a group of silent men who had sauntered there to enjoy the one relaxation the desolate place afforded them.
There was very little in their appearance to attract the attention of a young woman of Miss Barrington’s upbringing. They had grave, bronzed faces, and wore, for the most part, old fur coats stained here and there with soil. Nor were their mittens and moccasins in good repair, but there was a curious steadiness in their gaze which vaguely suggested the slow, stubborn courage that upheld them through the strenuous effort and grim self-denial of their toilsome lives. They were small wheat-growers who had driven in to purchase provisions or inquire the price of grain, and here and there a mittened hand was raised to a well-worn cap, for most of them recognized Miss Barrington of Silverdale Grange. She returned their greetings graciously, and then swung herself from the platform, with a smile in her eyes as a man came hastily and yet, as it were, with a certain deliberation in her direction.
He was elderly, but held himself erect, while his furs, which were good, fitted him in a fashion which suggested a uniform. He also wore boots which reached half-way to the knee, and were presumably lined to resist the prairie cold, which few men at that season would do, and scarcely a speck of dust marred their lustrous exterior, while as much of his face as was visible beneath the great fur cap was lean and commanding. Its salient features were the keen and somewhat imperious grey eyes and long, straight nose, while something in the squareness of the man’s shoulders and his pose set him apart from the prairie farmers and suggested the cavalry officer. He was, in fact, Colonel Barrington, founder and autocratic ruler of the English community of Silverdale, and had been awaiting his niece somewhat impatiently. Colonel Barrington was invariably punctual, and resented the fact that the train had come in an hour later than it should have done.
“So you have come back to us. We have been longing for you, my dear,” he said. “I don’t know what we should have done had they kept you in Montreal altogether.”
Maud Barrington smiled, though there was a brightness in her eyes and a faint warmth in her cheek, for the sincerity of her uncle’s welcome was evident.
“Yes,” she said, “I have come back. It was very pleasant in the city, and they were all kind to me; but I think, henceforward, I would sooner stay with you on the prairie.”
Colonel Barrington patted the hand he drew through his arm, and there was a very kindly smile in his eyes as they left the station and crossed the tract towards a little, and by no means very comfortable, wooden hotel. He stopped outside it.
“I want to see the horses put in and get our mail,” he said. “Mrs. Jasper expects you, and will have tea ready.”
He disappeared behind the wooden building, and his niece standing a moment on the veranda watched the long train roll away down the faint blur of track that ran west to the farthest verge of the great white wilderness. Then with a little impatient gesture she went into the hotel.
“That is another leaf turned down, and there is no use in looking back; but I wonder what is written on the rest,” she said.
Twenty minutes later she watched Colonel Barrington cross the street with a bundle of letters in his hand. She fancied that his step was slower than it had been, and that he seemed a trifle preoccupied and embarrassed; but he spoke with quiet kindliness when he handed her into the waiting sleigh, and the girl’s spirits rose as they swung smoothly northwards behind two fast horses across the prairie. It stretched away before her, ridged here and there with a dusky birch bluff or willow grove under a vault of crystalline blue. The sun that had no heat in it struck a silvery glitter from the snow, and the trail swept back to the horizon a sinuous blue-grey smear, while the keen, dry cold and sense of swift motion set the girl’s blood stirring. After all, it seemed to her, there were worse lives than those the Western farmers led on the great levels under the frost and sun.
Colonel Barrington watched her with a little gleam of approval in his eyes. “You are not sorry to come back to this and Silverdale?” he said, sweeping his mittened hand vaguely round the horizon.
“No,” said the girl, with a little laugh. “At least, I shall not be sorry to return to Silverdale. It has a charm of its own, for while one is occasionally glad to get away from it, one is even more pleased to come home again. It is a somewhat purposeless life our friends are leading yonder in the cities. I, of course, mean the women.”
Barrington nodded. “And some of the men! Well, we have room here for the many who are going to the devil in the old country for the lack of something worth while to do; though I am afraid there is considerably less prospect than I once fancied there would be of their making money.”
His niece noticed the gravity in his face, and sat thoughtfully silent for several minutes, while, with the snow hissing beneath it, the sleigh nipped into and swung out of a hollow.
Colonel Barrington had founded the Silverdale settlement ten years earlier, and gathered about him other men with a grievance who had once served their nation, and the younger sons of English gentlemen who had no inclination for commerce, and found that lack of brains and capital debarred them from either a political or military career. He had settled them on the land, and taught them to farm, while, for the community had prospered at first when Western wheat was dear, it had taken ten years to bring home to him the fact that men who dined ceremoniously each evening and spent at least a third of their time in games and sport, could not well compete with the grim bushmen from Ontario, or the lean Dakota ploughmen, who ate their meals in ten minutes and toiled at least twelve hours every day.
Colonel Barrington was slow to believe that the race he sprang from could be equalled and much less beaten at anything, while his respect for and scrupulous observance of insular traditions had cost him a good deal, and left him a poorer man than he had been when he founded Silverdale. Maud Barrington had been his ward, and he still directed the farming of a good many acres of wheat land which she now held in her own right. The soil was excellent, and would in all probability have provided one of the Ontario men with a very desirable revenue, but Colonel Barrington had no taste for small economies.
“I want to hear all the news,” said the girl. “You can begin at the beginning—the price of wheat. I fancied, when I saw you, it had been declining.”
Barrington sighed a little. “Hard wheat is five cents down, and I am sorry I persuaded you to hold your crop. I am very much afraid we shall see the balance the wrong side again next half-year.”
Maud Barrington smiled curiously. There was no great cause for merriment in the information given her, but it emphasized the contrast between the present and the careless life she had lately led when her one thought had been how to extract the greatest pleasure from the day. One had frequently to grapple with the problems arising from scanty finances at Silverdale.
“It will go up again,” she said. “Is there anything else?”
Barrington’s face grew a trifle grim as he nodded. “There is; and while I have not much expectation of an advance in prices, I have been worrying over another affair lately.”
His niece regarded him steadily. “You mean, Lance Courthorne?”
“Yes,” said Barrington, who flicked the near horse somewhat viciously with the whip. “He is also sufficient to cause any man with my responsibilities anxiety.”
Maud Barrington looked thoughtful. “You fancy he will come to Silverdale?”
Barrington appeared to be repressing an inclination towards vigorous speech with some difficulty, and a little glint crept into his eyes. “If I could by any means prevent it, the answer would be, No. As it is, you know that, while I founded it, Silverdale was one of Geoffrey Courthorne’s imperialistic schemes, and a good deal of the land was recorded in his name. That being so, he had every right to leave the best farm on it to the man he had disinherited, especially as Lance will not get a penny of the English property. Still, I do not know why he did so, because he never spoke of him without bitterness.”
“Yes,” said the girl, while a little flush crept into her face. “I was sorry for the old man. It was a painful story.”
Colonel Barrington nodded. “It is one that is best forgotten—and you do not know it all. Still, the fact that the man may settle among us is not the worst. As you know, there was every reason to believe that Geoffrey intended all his property at Silverdale for you.”
“I have much less right to it than his own son, and the colonial cure is not infrequently efficacious,” said Miss Barrington. “Lance may, after all, quieten down, and he must have some good qualities.”
The Colonel’s smile was very grim. “It is fifteen years since I saw him at Westham, and they were not much in evidence then. I can remember two little episodes, in which he figured, with painful distinctness, and one was the hanging of a terrier which had in some way displeased him. The beast was past assistance when I arrived on the scene, but the devilish pleasure in the lad’s face sent a chill through me. In the other, the gardener’s lad flung a stone at a blackbird on the wall above the vinery, and Master Lance, who, I fancy, did not like the gardener’s lad, flung one through the glass. Geoffrey, who was angry, but had not seen what I did, haled the boy before him, and Lance looked him in the face and lied with the assurance of an ambassador. The end was that the gardener, who was admonished, cuffed the innocent lad. These, my dear, are somewhat instructive memories.”
“I wonder,” said Maud Barrington, glancing out across the prairie which was growing dusky now, “why you took the trouble to call them up for me?”
The Colonel smiled dryly. “I never saw a Courthorne who could not catch a woman’s eye, or had any undue diffidence about making the most of the fact; and that is partly why they have brought so much trouble on everybody connected with them. Further, it is unfortunate that women are not infrequently more inclined to be gracious to the sinner who repents, when it is worth his while, than they are to the honest man who has done no wrong. Nor do I know that it is only pity which influences them. Some of you take an exasperating delight in picturesque rascality.”
Miss Barrington laughed, and fearlessly met her uncle’s glance. “Then you don’t believe in penitence?”
“Well,” said the Colonel dryly, “I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen. There are, my dear, plenty of them still.”
Barrington spoke almost fiercely, and then flushed through his tan, when the girl, looking into his eyes, smiled a little. “Yes,” she said, “I can believe it, because I owe a good deal to one of them.”
The ring in the girl’s voice belied the smile, and the speech was warranted; for, dogmatic, domineering, and vindictive as he was apt to be occasionally, the words he had used applied most fitly to Colonel Barrington. His word at least had never been broken, and had he not adhered steadfastly to his own rigid code, he would have been a good deal richer man than he was then. Nor did his little shortcomings, which were burlesqued virtues, and ludicrous now and then, greatly detract from the stamp of dignity which, for speech was his worst point, sat well upon him. He was innately conservative to the backbone, though since an ungrateful Government had slighted him, he had become an ardent Canadian, and in all political questions aggressively democratic.
“My dear, I sometimes fancy I am a hypercritical old fogey!” he said, and sighed a little, while once more the anxious look crept into his face. “Just now I wish devoutly I was a better business man.”
Nothing more was said for a little, and Miss Barrington watched the crimson sunset burn out low down on the prairie’s western rim. Then the pale stars blinked out through the creeping dusk, and a great silence and an utter cold settled down upon the waste. The muffled thud of hoofs, and the crunching beneath the sliding steel, seemed to intensify it, and there was a suggestion of frozen brilliancy in the sparkle flung back by the snow. Then a coyote howled dolefully in a distant bluff, and the girl shivered as she shrank down further amidst the furs.
“Forty degrees of frost,” said the Colonel. “Perhaps more. This is very different from the cold of Montreal. Still, you’ll see the lights of Silverdale from the crest of the next rise.”
It was, however, an hour before they reached them, and Miss Barrington was almost frozen when the first square loghouse rose out of the prairie. It and others that followed it flitted by, and then, flanked by a great birch bluff, with outlying barns, granaries and stables, looming black about it against a crystalline sky, Silverdale Grange grew into shape across their way. Its rows of ruddy windows cast streaks of flickering orange down the trail, the baying of dogs changed into a joyous clamour when the Colonel reined in his team, half-seen men in furs waved a greeting, and one who risked frost-bite, with his cap at his knee, handed Miss Barrington from the sleigh and up the veranda stairway.
She had need of the assistance, for her limbs were stiff and almost powerless, and she gasped a little when she passed into the drowsy warmth and brightness of the great log-walled hall. The chilled blood surged back tingling to her skin, and swaying with a creeping faintness she found refuge in the arms of a grey-haired lady who stooped and kissed her gently. Then the door swung to, and she was home again in the wooden grange of Silverdale, which stood far remote from any civilization but its own on the frozen levels of the great white plain.
It was late at night, and outside the prairie lay white and utterly silent under the Arctic cold, when Maud Barrington, who glanced at it through the double windows, flung back the curtains with a little shiver, and turning towards the fire, sat down on a little velvet footstool beside her aunt’s knee. She had shaken out the coils of lustrous brown hair which flowed about her shoulders glinting in the light of the shaded lamp, and it was with a little gesture of physical content she stretched her hands towards the hearth. A crumbling birch log still gleamed redly amidst the feathery ashes, but its effect was chiefly artistic, for no open fire could have dissipated the cold of the prairie, and a big tiled stove brought from Teutonic Minnesota furnished the needful warmth.
The girl’s face was partly in shadow, and her figure foreshortened by her pose, which accentuated its rounded outline and concealed its willowy slenderness; but the broad white forehead and straight nose became visible when she moved her head a trifle, and a faintly humorous sparkle crept into the clear brown eyes. Possibly Maud Barrington looked her best just then, for the lower part of the pale-tinted face was a trifle too firm in its modelling.
“No, I am not tired, aunt, and I could not sleep just now,” she said. “You see, after leaving all that behind one, one feels, as it were, adrift, and it is necessary to realize one’s self again.”
The little silver-haired lady who sat in the big basket chair smiled down upon her and laid a thin white hand that was still beautiful upon the gleaming hair.
“I can understand, my dear, and am glad you enjoyed your stay in the city, because sometimes when I count your birthdays, I can’t help a fancy that you are not young enough,” she said. “You have lived out here with two old people who belong to the past too much.”
The girl moved a little, and swept her glance slowly round the room. It was small and scantily furnished, though great curtains shrouded door and window, and here and there a picture relieved the bareness of the walls, which were panelled with roughly-dressed British-Columbian cedar. The floor was of redwood, diligently polished and adorned, not covered, by one or two skins brought by some of Colonel Barrington’s younger neighbours from the Rockies. There were two basket-chairs and a plain, redwood table; but in contrast to them a cabinet of old French workmanship stood in one corner bearing books in dainty bindings, and two great silver candlesticks. The shaded lamp was also of the same metal, and the whole room with its faint resinous smell conveyed, in a fashion not uncommon on the prairie, a suggestion of taste and refinement held in check by the least comparative poverty. Colonel Barrington was a widower who had been esteemed a man of wealth, but the founding of Silverdale had made a serious inroad on his finances. Even yet, though he occasionally practised it, he did not take kindly to economy.
“Yes,” said the girl, “I enjoyed it all—and it was so different from the prairie.”
There was comprehension, and a trace of sympathy, in Miss Barrington’s nod. “Tell me a little, my dear,” she said. “There was not a great deal in your letters.”
Her niece glanced dreamily into the sinking fire as though she would call up the pictures there. “But you know it all—the life I have only had glimpses of. Well, for the first few months I almost lost my head, and was swung right off my feet by the whirl of it. It was then I was, perhaps, just a trifle thoughtless.”
The while-haired lady laughed softly. “It is difficult to believe it, Maud.”
The girl shook her head reproachfully. “I know what you mean, and perhaps you are right, for that was what Twoinette insinuated,” she said. “She actually told me that I should be thankful I had a brain since I had no heart. Still, at first I let myself go, and it was delightful—the opera, the dances, and the covered skating rink with the music and the black ice flashing beneath the lights. The whirr of the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain. Yes, I think I was really young while it lasted.”
“For a month,” said the elder. “And after?”
“Then,” said the girl slowly, “it all seemed to grow a trifle purposeless, and there was something that spoiled it. Twoinette was quite angry, and I know her mother wrote you—but it was not my fault, aunt. How was I, a guileless girl from the prairie, to guess that such a man would fling the handkerchief to me?”
The evenness of tone and entire absence of embarrassment was significant. It also pointed to the fact that there was a closer confidence between Maud Barrington and her aunt than often exists between mother and daughter, and the elder lady stroked the lustrous head that rested against her knee with a little affectionate pride.
“My dear, you know you are beautiful, and you have the cachet that all the Courthornes wear. Still, you could not like him. Tell me about him.”
Maud Barrington curled herself up further. “I think I could have liked him, but that was all,” she said. “He was nice to look at and did all the little things gracefully; but he had never done anything else, never would, and, I fancy, had never wanted to. Now, a man of that kind would very soon pall on me, and I should have lost my temper trying to waken him to his responsibilities.”
“And what kind of man would please you?”
Maud Barrington’s eyes twinkled, but the fact that she answered at all was a proof of the sympathy between herself and the questioner. “I do not know that I am anxious any of them should,” she said. “But, since you ask, he would have to be a man first: a toiling, striving animal, who could hold his own amidst his fellows wherever he was placed. Secondly, one would naturally prefer a gentleman, though I do not like the word, and one would fancy the combination a trifle rare, because brains and birth do not necessarily tally, and the man educated by the struggle for existence is apt to be taught more than he ever would be at Oxford or in the army. Still, men of that stamp forget a good deal, and learn so much that is undesirable, you see. In fact, I only know one man who would have suited me, and he is debarred by age and affinity—but, because we are so much alike, I can’t help fancying that you once knew another.”
The smile in Miss Barrington’s face, which was still almost beautiful as well as patient, became a trifle wistful.
“There are few better men than my brother, though he is not clever,” she said and dropped her voice a little. “As to the other, he died in India—beside his mountain gun—long ago.”
“And you have never forgotten? He must have been worth it—I wonder if loyalty and chivalric faith belong only to the past,” said the girl, reaching up a rounded arm and patting her aunt’s thin hand. “And now we will be practical. I fancied the head of the settlement looked worried when he met me, and he is not very proficient at hiding his feelings.”
Miss Barrington sighed. “I am afraid that is nothing very new, and with wheat steadily falling and our granaries full, he has cause for anxiety. Then the fact that Lance Courthorne has divided your inheritance and is going to settle here has been troubling him.”
“The first is the lesser evil,” said the girl, with a little laugh. “I wore very short frocks when I last saw Lance in England, and so far as I can remember he had the face of an angel and the temper of a devil. But did not my uncle endeavour to buy him off, and—for I know you have been finding out things—I want you to tell me all about him.”
“He would not take the money,” said Miss Barrington, and sat in thoughtful silence a space. Then, and perhaps she had a reason, she quietly recounted Courthorne’s Canadian history so far as her brother’s agents had been able to trace it, not omitting, dainty in thought and speech as she was, one or two incidents which a mother might have kept back from her daughter’s ears. Still, it was very seldom that Miss Barrington made a blunder. There was a faint pinkness in her face when she concluded, but she was not surprised when, with a slow, sinuous movement, the girl rose to her feet. Her cheeks were very slightly flushed, but there was a significant sparkle in her eyes.
“Oh,” she said, with utter contempt. “How sickening! Are there men like that?”
There was a little silence, emphasized by the snapping in the stove, and if Miss Barrington had spoken with an object she should have been contented. The girl was imperious in her anger, which was caused by something deeper than startled prudery.
“It is,” said the little white-haired lady, “all quite true. Still, I must confess that my brother and myself were a trifle astonished at the report of the lawyer he sent to confer with Lance in Montana, One would almost have imagined that he had of late been trying to make amends.”
The girl’s face was very scornful. “Could a man with a past like that ever live it down.”
“We have a warrant for believing it,” said Miss Barrington quietly, as she laid her hand on her companion’s arm. “My dear, I have told you what Lance was, because I felt it was right that you should know; but none of us can tell what he may be, and if the man is honestly trying to lead a different life, all I ask is that you should not wound him by any manifest suspicion. Those who have never been tempted can afford to be merciful.”
Maud Barrington laughed somewhat curiously. “You are a very wise woman, aunt, but you are a little transparent now and then,” she said. “At least, he shall have a fair trial without prejudice or favour—and if he fails, as fail he will, we shall find the means of punishing him.”
“We?” said the elder lady a trifle maliciously.
The girl nodded as she moved towards the doorway, and then turned a moment with the folds of the big red curtain flung behind her. It forced up the sweeping lines of a figure so delicately moulded that its slenderness was scarcely apparent, for Maud Barrington still wore a long, sombre dress that had assisted in her triumphs in the city. It emphasized the clear pallor of her skin and the brightness of her eyes, as she held herself very erect in a pose which, while assumed in mockery, had yet in it something that was almost imperial.
“Yes,” she said. “We. You know who is the power behind the throne at Silverdale, and what the boys call me. And now, good night. Sleep well, dear.”
She went out, and Miss Barrington sat very still gazing, with eyes that were curiously thoughtful, into the fire. “Princess of the Prairie—and it fits her well,” she said, and then sighed a little. “And if there is a trace of hardness in the girl it may be fortunate. We all have our troubles—and wheat is going down.”
In the meanwhile, late as it was, Colonel Barrington and his chief lieutenant, Gordon Dane, sat in his log-walled smoking-room talking with a man he sold his wheat through in Winnipeg. The room was big and bare. There were a few fine heads of antelope upon the walls, and beneath them an armoury of English-made shot guns and rifles, while a row of riding crops, silver-mounted, and some handled with ivory, stood in a corner. All these represented amusement, while two or three treatises on veterinary surgery and agriculture lying amidst English stud-books and racing records, presumably stood for industry. The comparison was significant, and Graham, the Winnipeg wheat-broker, noticed it as he listened patiently to the views of Colonel Barrington, who nevertheless worked hard enough in his own fashion. Unfortunately, it was rather the fashion of the English gentleman than that common on the prairie.
“And now,” he said, with a trace of the anxiety he had concealed in his eyes, “I am open to hear what you can do for me.”
Graham smiled a little. “It isn’t very much, Colonel. I’ll take all your wheat off you at three cents down.”
Now Barrington did not like the broker’s smile. It savoured too much of equality; and, though he had already unbent as far as he was capable of doing, he had no great esteem for men of business. Nor did it please him to be addressed as “Colonel.”
“That,” he said coldly, “is out of the question, I would not sell at the last market price. Besides, you have hitherto acted as my broker.”
Graham nodded. “The market price will be less than what I offered you in a week, and I could scarcely sell your wheat at it to-day. I was going to hold it myself, because I can occasionally get a little more from one or two millers who like that special grade. Usual sorts I’m selling for a fall. Quite sure the deal wouldn’t suit you?”
Barrington lighted a fresh cigar, though Graham, noticed that he had smoked very little of the one he flung away. This was, of course, a trifle, but it is the trifles that count in the aggregate upon the prairie, as they not infrequently do elsewhere.
“I fancy I told you so,” he said.
The broker glanced at Dane, who was a big, bronzed man, and, since Barrington could not see him, shook his head deprecatingly.
“You can consider that decided, Graham,” he said. “Still, can you as a friendly deed give us any notion of what to do? As you know, farming, especially at Silverdale, costs money, and the banks are demanding an iniquitous interest just now, while we are carrying over a good deal of wheat.”
Graham nodded. He understood why farming was unusually expensive at Silverdale, and was, in recollection of past favours, inclined to be disinterestedly friendly.
“If I were you I would sell right along for forward delivery at a few cents under the market.”
“It is a trifle difficult to see how that would help us,” said Barrington, with a little gesture of irritation, for it almost seemed that the broker was deriding him.
“No!” said the man from Winnipeg, “on the contrary, it’s quite easy. Now I can predict that wheat will touch lower prices still before you have to make delivery, and it isn’t very difficult to figure out the profit on selling a thing for a dollar and then buying it, when you have to produce it at ninety cents. Of course, there is a risk of the market going against you, but you could buy at the first rise, and you’ve your stock to dole out in case anybody cornered you.”
“That,” said Dane thoughtfully, “appears quite sensible. Of course, it’s a speculation, but presumably we couldn’t be much worse off than we are. Have you any objections to the scheme, sir.”
Barrington laid down his cigar, and glanced with astonished severity at the speaker. “Unfortunately, I have. We are wheat growers, and not wheat stock jugglers. Our purpose is to farm, and not swindle and lie in the wheat pits for decimal differences. I have a distinct antipathy to anything of the kind.”
“But, sir,” said Dane, and Barrington stopped with a gesture.
“I would,” he said, “as soon turn gambler. Still, while it has always been a tradition at Silverdale that the head of the settlement’s lead is to be followed, that need not prevent you putting on the gloves with the wheat-ring blacklegs in Winnipeg.”
Dane blushed a little under his tan, and then smiled as he remembered the one speculative venture his leader had indulged in, for Colonel Barrington was a somewhat hot-tempered and vindictive man. He made a little gesture of deprecation as he glanced at Graham, who straightened himself suddenly in his chair.
“I should not think of doing so in face of your opinion, sir,” he said. “There is an end to the thing, Graham!”
The broker’s face was a trifle grim. “I gave you good advice out of friendship, Colonel, and there are men with dollars to spare who would value a hint from me,” he said. “Still, as it doesn’t seem to strike you the right way, I’ve no use for arguing. Keep your wheat—and pay bank interest if you want any help to carry over.”
“Thanks,” said Dane quietly. “They charge tolerably high, but I’ve seen what happens to the man who meddles with the mortgage-broker.”
Graham nodded. “Well, as I’m starting out at six o’clock, it’s time I was asleep,” he said. “Good-night to you, Colonel.”
Barrington shook hands with Graham, and then sighed a little when he went out. “I believe the man is honest, and he is a guest of mine, or I should have dressed him down,” he said. “I don’t like the way things are going, Dane; and the fact is we must find accommodation somewhere, because now I have to pay out so much on my ward’s account to that confounded Courthorne, it is necessary to raise more dollars than the banks will give me. Now, there was a broker fellow wrote me a very civil letter.”
Dane, who was a thoughtful man, ventured to lay his hand upon his leader’s arm. “Keep yourself and Miss Barrington out of those fellows’ clutches, at any cost,” he said.
Barrington shook off his hand and looked at him sternly. “Are you not a trifle young to adopt that tone?” he asked.
Dane nodded. “No doubt I am, but I’ve seen a little of mortgage jobbing. You must try to overlook it. I did not mean to offend.”
He went out, and, while Colonel Barrington sat down before a sheaf of accounts, sprang into a waiting sleigh. “It’s no use; we’ve got to go through,” he said to the lad who shook the reins, “Graham made a very sensible suggestion, but our respected leader came down on him, as he did on me. You see, one simply can’t talk to the Colonel; and it’s unfortunate Miss Barrington didn’t marry that man in Montreal.”
“I don’t know,” said the lad. “Of course, there are not many girls like Maud Barrington, but is it necessary she should go outside Silverdale?”
Dane laughed. “None of us would be old enough for Miss Barrington when we were fifty. The trouble is, that we spend half our time in play, and I’ve a notion it’s a man, and not a gentleman dilettante, she’s looking for.”
“Isn’t that a curious way of putting it?” asked his companion.
Dane nodded. “It may be the right one. Woman is as she was made, and I’ve had more than a suspicion lately that a little less refinement would not come amiss at Silverdale. Anyway, I hope she’ll find him, for it’s a man with grit and energy, who could put a little desirable pressure on the Colonel occasionally, we’re all wanting. Of course, I’m backing my leader, though it’s going to cost me a good deal, but it’s time he had somebody to help him.”
“He would never accept assistance,” said the lad thoughtfully. “That is, unless the man who offered it was, or became by marriage, one of the dynasty.”
“Of course,” said Dane. “That’s why I’m inclined to take a fatherly interest in Miss Barrington’s affairs. It’s a misfortune we’ve heard nothing very reassuring about Courthorne.”
Farmer Witham crossed the frontier without molestation and spent one night in a little wooden town, where several people he did not speak to apparently recognized him. Then he pushed on southwards, and passed a week in the especially desolate settlement he had been directed to. A few dilapidated frame houses rose out of the white wilderness beside the broad, beaten trail, and, for here the prairie rolled south in long rises like the wakes of a frozen sea, a low wooden building on the crest of one cut the skyline a league away. It served as outpost for a squadron of United States cavalry, and the troopers daily maligned the Government which had sent them into that desolation on police duty.
There was nothing else visible but a few dusky groves of willows and dazzling snow. The ramshackle wooden hotel was rather more than usually badly kept and comfortless, and Witham, who had managed to conciliate his host, felt relieved one afternoon when the latter flung down the cards disgustedly.
“I guess I’ve had enough,” he said. “Playing for stakes of this kind isn’t good enough for you!”
Witham laughed a little to hide his resentment, as he said, “I don’t quite understand.”
“Pshaw!” said the American with a contemptuous gesture. “Three times out of four I’ve spoiled your hand, and if I didn’t know that black horse I’d take you for some blamed Canadian rancher. You didn’t handle the pictures that way when you stripped the boys to the hide at Regent, Mr. Courthorne?”
“Regent?” said Witham.
The hotel-keeper laughed. “Oh yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t go back there too soon, anyway. The boys seem quite contented, and I don’t figure they would be very nice to you. Well, now, I’ve no use for fooling with a man who’s too proud to take my dollars, and I’ve a pair of horses just stuffed with wickedness in the stable. There’s not much you don’t know about a beast, anyway, and you can take them out a league or two if you feel like it.”
Witham, who had grown very tired of his host, was glad of any distraction, especially as he surmised that while the man had never seen Courthorne, he knew rather more than he did himself about his doings. Accordingly, he got into the sleigh that was brought out by and by, and enjoyed the struggle with the half-tamed team which stood with ears laid back, prepared for conflict. Oats had been very plentiful, and prices low that season. Witham, who knew at least as much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down the trail behind him. It led straight beneath the leafless branches, and was beaten smooth and firm; while Witham, who had noticed already that whenever he strayed any distance from the hotel there was a mounted cavalryman somewhere, in the vicinity, shook the reins.
The team swung into faster stride, the cold wind whistled past him, and the snow whirled up from beneath the runners; but while he listened the rhythmic drumming behind him also quickened a little. Then a faintly musical jingle of steel accompanied the beat of hoofs, and Witham glanced about him with a little laugh of annoyance. The dusk was creeping across the prairie, and a pale star or two growing into brilliancy in the cloudless sweep of indigo.
“It’s getting a trifle tiresome. I’ll find out what the fellow wants,” he said.
Wheeling the team, he drove back the way he came, and, when a dusky object materialized out of the shadows beneath the birches, swung the horses right across the trail. The snow lay deep on either side of it just there, with a sharp crust upon its surface, which rendered it inadvisable to take a horse round the sleigh. The mounted man accordingly drew bridle, and the jingle and rattle betokened his profession, though it was already too dark to see him clearly.
“Hallo!” he said. “Been buying this trail up, stranger?”
“No,” said Witham quietly, though he still held his team across the way. “Still, I’ve got the same right as any other citizen to walk or drive along it without anybody prowling after me, and just now I want to know if there is a reason I should be favoured with your company.”
The trooper laughed a little. “I guess there is. It’s down in the orders that whoever’s on patrol near the settlement should keep his eye on you. You see, if you lit out of here we would want to know just where you were going to.”
“I am,” said Witham, “a Canadian citizen, and I came out here for quietness.”
“Well,” said the other, “you’re an American too. Anyway, when you were in a tight place down in Regent there, you told the boys so. Now, no sensible man would boast of being a Britisher unless it was helping him to play out his hand.”
Witham kept his temper. “I want a straight answer. Can you tell me what you and the boys are trailing me for?”
“No,” said the trooper. “Still, I guess our commander could. If you don’t know of any reason, you might ask him.”
Witham tightened his grip on the reins. “I’ll ride back with you to the outpost now.”
The trooper shook his bridle, and trotted behind the sleigh, while, as it swung up and down over the billowy rises of the prairie, Witham became sensible of a curious expectancy. The bare, hopeless life he had led seemed to have slipped behind him, and though he suspected that there was no great difference between his escort and a prisoner’s guard, the old love of excitement he once fancied he had outgrown for ever awoke again within him. Anything that was different from the past would be a relief, and the man who had for eight long years of strenuous toil practised the grimmest self-denial wondered with a quickening of all his faculties what the future, that could not be more colourless, might have in store for him.
It was dark, and very cold, when they reached the wooden building, but Witham’s step was lighter, and his spirits more buoyant than they had been for some months when, handing the sleigh over to an orderly, he walked into the guard-room, where bronzed men in uniform glanced at him curiously. Then he was shown into a bare, log-walled hall, where a young man in blue uniform with a weather-darkened face was writing at a table.
“I’ve been partly expecting a visit,” he said. “I’m glad to see you, Mr. Courthorne.”
Witham laughed with a very good imitation of the outlaw’s recklessness, and wondered the while because it cost him no effort. He who had, throughout the last two adverse seasons, seldom smiled at all, and then but grimly, experienced the same delight in an adventure that he had done when he came out to Canada.
“I don’t know that I can return the compliment just yet,” he said. “I have one or two things to ask you.”
The young soldier smiled good-humouredly, as he flung a cigar case on the table. “Oh, sit down and shake those furs off,” he said. “I’m not a worrying policeman, and we’re white men, anyway. If you’d been twelve months in this forsaken place you’d know what I’m feeling. Take a smoke, and start in with your questions when you feel like it.”
Witham lighted a cigar, flung himself down in a hide chair, and stretched out his feet towards the stove. “In the first place, I want to know why your boys are shadowing me. You see, you couldn’t arrest me unless our folks in the Dominion had got their papers through.”
The officer nodded. “No. We couldn’t lay hands on you, and we only had orders to see where you went to when you left this place, so the folks there could corral you if they got the papers. That’s about the size of it at present, but, as I’ve sent a trooper over to Regent, I’ll know more to-morrow.”
Witham laughed. “It may appear a little astonishing, but I haven’t the faintest notion why the police in Canada should worry about me. Is there any reason you shouldn’t tell me?”
The officer looked at him thoughtfully. “Bluff? I’m quite smart at it myself,” he said.
“No,” and Witham shook his head. “It’s a straight question. I want to know.”
“Well,” said the other, “it couldn’t do much harm if I told you. You were running whisky a little while ago, and, though the folks didn’t seem to suspect it, you had a farmer or a rancher for a partner—it appears he has mixed up things for you.”
“Witham?” and the farmer turned to roll the cigar which did not need it between his fingers.
“That’s the man,” said his companion. “Well, though I guess it’s no news to you, the police came down upon your friends at a river-crossing, and farmer Witham put a bullet into a young trooper, Shannon, I fancy.”
Witham sat upright, and the blood that surged to his forehead sank from it suddenly, and left his face grey with anger.
“Good Lord!” he said hoarsely. “He killed him?”
“Yes, sir,” said the officer, “Killing’s not quite the word, because one shot would have been enough to free him of the lad, and the rancher fired twice into him. They figured, from the way the trooper was lying and the footprints, that he meant to finish him.”
The farmer’s face was very grim as he said, “They were sure it was Witham?”
“Yes,” and the soldier watched him curiously. “Anyway, they were sure of his horse, and it was Witham’s rifle. Another trooper nearly got him, and he left it behind him. It wasn’t killing, for the trooper don’t seem to have had a show at all, and I’m glad to see it makes you kind of sick. Only that one of the troopers allows he was trailing you at a time which shows you had no hand in the thing, you wouldn’t be sitting there smoking that cigar.”
It was almost a minute before Witham could trust his voice. Then he said slowly, “And what do they want me for?”
“I guess they don’t quite know whether they do or not,” said the officer. “They crawl slow in Canada. In the meanwhile they wanted to know where you were, so they could take out papers if anything turned up against you.”
“And Witham?” said the farmer.
“Got away with a trooper close behind him. The rest of them had headed him off from the prairie, and he took to the river. Went through the ice and drowned himself, though as there was a blizzard nobody quite saw the end of him, and in case there was any doubt they’ve got a warrant out. Farmer Witham’s dead, and if he isn’t he soon will be, for the troopers have got their net right across the prairie, and the Canadians don’t fool time away as we do when it comes to hanging anybody. The tale seems to have worried you.”
Witham sat rigidly still and silent for almost a minute. Then he rose up with a curious little shake of his shoulders.
“And farmer Witham’s dead. Well he had a hard life. I knew him rather well,” he said. “Thank you for the story. On my word this is the first time I’ve heard it, and now it’s time I was going.”
The officer laughed a little. “Sit right down again. Now, there’s something about you that makes me like you, and as I can’t talk to the boys, I’ll give you the best supper we can raise in the whole forsaken country, and you can camp here until to-morrow. It’s an arrangement that will meet the views of everybody, because I’ll know whether the Canadians want you or not in the morning.”
Witham did not know what prompted him to agree, but it all seemed part of a purpose that impelled him against his reasoning will, and he sat still beside the stove while his host went out to give orders respecting supper and the return of the sleigh. He was also glad to be alone for a while, for now and then a fit of anger shook him as he saw how he had been duped by Courthorne. He had heard Shannon’s story, and, remembering it, could fancy that Courthorne had planned the trooper’s destruction with a devilish cunning that recognized by what means the blame could be laid upon a guiltless man. Witham’s face became mottled with grey again as he realized that if he revealed his identity he had nothing but his word to offer in proof of his innocence.
Still, it was anger and not fear that stirred him, for nobody could arrest a man who was dead, and there was no reason that would render it undesirable for him to remain so. His farm would, when sold, realize the money borrowed upon it, and the holder of the mortgage had received a profitable interest already. Had the unforeseen not happened, Witham would have held out to the end of the struggle, but now he had no regret that this was out of the question. Fate had been too strong for him as farmer Witham, but it might deal more kindly with him as the outlaw Courthorne. He could also make a quick decision, and when the officer returned to say that supper was ready, he rose with a smile.
They sat down to a meal that was barbaric in its simplicity and abundance, for men live and eat in Homeric fashion in the North-West, while when the green tea was finished and the officer pushed the whisky across, his guest laughed as he filled his glass.
“Here’s better fortune to farmer Witham!” he said.
The officer stared at him. “No, sir,” he said “If the old folks taught me aright, Witham’s in——”