It was a hot morning when Sergeant Stimson and Corporal Payne rode towards the railroad across the prairie. The grassy levels rolled away before them, white and parched, into the blue distance, where willow grove and straggling bluff floated on the dazzling horizon, and the fibrous dust rose in little puffs beneath the horses’ feet, until Stimson pulled his beast up in the shadow of the birches by the bridge, and looked back towards Silverdale. There, wooden homesteads girt about with barns and granaries rose from the whitened waste, and behind some of them stretched great belts of wheat. Then the Sergeant, understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain, nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and the slackness that comes, when hope has gone, to beaten men.
“They will reap this year—a handful of cents on every bushel,” he said. “A fine gentleman is Colonel Barrington, but some of them will be thankful there’s a better head than the one he has at Silverdale.
“Yes, sir,” said Corporal Payne, who wore the double chevrons for the first time, and surmised that his companion’s observations were not without their purpose.
Stimson glanced at the bridge. “Good work,” he said. “It will save them dollars on every load they haul in. A gambler built it! Do they teach men to use the axe in Montana saloons?”
The corporal smiled and waited for what he felt would come. He was no longer the hot-blooded lad who had come out from the old country, for he had felt the bonds of discipline, and been taught restraint and silence on the lonely marches of the prairie.
“I have,” he said tentatively, “fancied there was something a little unusual about the thing.”
Stimson nodded, but his next observation was apparently quite unconnected with the topic. “You were a raw colt when I got you, Payne, and the bit galled you now and then, but you had good hands on a bridle, and somebody who knew his business had taught you to sit a horse in the old country. Still, you were not as handy with brush and fork at stable duty.”
The bronze seemed to deepen in the corporal’s face, but it was turned steadily toward his officer. “Sir,” he said, “has that anything to do with what you were speaking of?”
Stimson laughed softly. “That depends, my lad. Now, I’ve taught you to ride straight and to hold your tongue. I’ve asked you no questions, but I’ve eyes in my head, and it’s not without a purpose you’ve been made corporal. You’re the kind they give commissions to now and then—and your folks in the old country never raised you for a police trooper.”
“Can you tell me how to win one?” asked the corporal, and Stimson noticed the little gleam in his eyes.
“There’s one road to advancement, and you know where to find the trooper’s duty laid down plain,” he said with a dry smile. “Now, you saw Lance Courthorne once or twice back there in Alberta?”
“Yes, sir; but never close to.”
“And you knew Farmer Witham?”
Payne appeared thoughtful. “Of course I met him a few times on the prairie, always on horseback, with his big hat on; but Witham is dead—that is, I heard him break through the ice.”
The men’s eyes met for a moment, and Stimson smiled curiously. “There is,” he said, “still a warrant out for him. Now, you know where I am going, and while I am away you will watch Courthorne and his homestead. If anything curious happens there you will let me know. The new man has instructions to find you any duty that will suit you.”
The corporal looked at his officer steadily, and again there was comprehension in his eyes. Then he nodded. “Yes, sir. I have wondered whether, if Shannon could have spoken another word that night, it would have been Witham the warrant was issued for.”
Stimson raised a restraining hand. “My lad,” he said dryly, “the police trooper who gets advancement is the one that carries out his orders and never questions them until he can show that they are wrong. Then he uses a good deal of discretion. Now you know your duty?”
“Yes, sir,” said Payne, and Stimson shaking his bridle cantered off across the prairie.
Then, seeing no need to waste time, the corporal rode towards Courthorne’s homestead and found its owner stripping a binder. Pieces of the machine lay all around him, and from the fashion in which he handled them it was evident that he was capable of doing what the other men at Silverdale left to the mechanic at the settlement. Payne wondered, as he watched him, who had taught the gambler to use spanner and file.
“I will not trouble you if you are busy, Mr. Courthorne; but if you would give me the returns the Bureau ask for, it would save me riding round again,” he said.
“I’m afraid I can’t,” said Witham. “You see, I haven’t had the papers.”
“Trooper Bacon told me he had given them to you.”
“I don’t seem to remember it,” said Witham.
Payne laughed. “One forgets things when he is busy. Still, you had them—because you signed for them.”
Witham looked up suddenly, and in another moment smiled; but he was a trifle too late, for Payne had seen his astonishment, and that he was now on guard.
“Well,” he said, “I haven’t got them now. Send me a duplicate. You have, no doubt, some extra forms at the outpost.”
Payne decided that the man had never had the documents, but was too clever to ask any questions or offer explanations that might involve him. It was evident he knew that somebody had personated him, and the fact sent a little thrill through the corporal; he was at least on the trail.
“I’ll bring you one round the next time I’m in the neighbourhood,” he said; and Witham sat still with the spanner lying idle in his hand when he rode away.
He realized that Courthorne had taken the papers, and his face grew anxious as well as grim. The harvest was almost ready now, and a little while would see it in. Then his work would be over; but he had of late felt a growing fear lest something, that would prevent its accomplishment, might happen in the meanwhile. Then almost fiercely he resumed the stripping of the machine.
An hour or two later Dane rode up, and sat still in his saddle looking down on Witham with a curious smile in his face.
“I was down at the settlement and found a curious story going round,” he said. “Of course, it had its humorous aspect, but I don’t know that the thing was quite discreet. You see, Barrington has once or twice had to put a stern check on the indulgence in playfulness of that kind by some of the younger men, and you are becoming an influence at Silverdale.”
“You naturally believed what you heard. It was in keeping with what you have seen of me?”
Dane’s eyes twinkled. “I didn’t want to, and I must admit that it isn’t. Still, a good many of you quiet men are addicted to occasionally astonishing our friends, and I can’t help a fancy that you could do that kind of thing as well as most folks, if it pleased you. It fact, there was an artistic finish to the climax that suggested your usual thoroughness.”
“It did?” said Witham grimly, remembering his recent visitor and one or two of Courthorne’s Albertan escapades. “Still, as I’m afraid I haven’t the dramatic instinct, do you mind telling me how?”
Dane laughed. “Well, it is probable there are other men who would have kissed the girl, but I don’t know that it would have occurred to them to smash a decanter on the irate lover’s head.”
Witham felt his finger tingle for a grip on Courthorne’s throat. “And that’s what I’ve been doing lately? You, of course, concluded that after conducting myself in an exemplary fashion an astonishing time it was a trifling lapse?”
“Well,” said Dane dryly. “As I admitted, it appeared somewhat out of your usual line; but when I heard that a man from the settlement had been ejected with violence from your homestead, what could one believe?”
“Colonel Barrington told you that!”
“No,” said Dane; “you know he didn’t. Still, he had a hired man riding a horse he’d bought, and I believe—though it is not my affair—Maud Barrington was there. Now, of course, one feels diffident about anything that may appear like preaching, but you see a good many of us are following you, and I wouldn’t like you to have many little lapses of that kind while I am backing you. You and I have done with these frivolities some time ago, but there are lads here they might appeal to. I should be pleased if you could deny the story.”
Witham’s face was grim. “I’m afraid it would not suit me to do as much just now,” he said. “Still, between you and me, do you believe it likely that I would fly at that kind of game?”
Dane laughed softly. “Well,” he said, “tastes differ, and the girl is pretty, while, you know, after all they’re very much the same. We have, however, got to look at the thing sensibly, and you admit you can’t deny it.”
“I told you it wouldn’t suit me.”
“Then there is a difference?”
Witham nodded. “You must make the best of that, but the others may believe exactly what they please. It will be a favour to me if you remember it.”
Dane smiled curiously. “Then I think it is enough for me, and you will overlook my presumption. Courthorne, I wonder now and then when I shall altogether understand you!”
“The time will come,” said Witham dryly, to hide what he felt; for his comrade’s simple avowal had been wonderfully eloquent. Then Dane touched his horse with his heel and rode away.
It was two or three weeks later when Witham, being requested to do so, drove over to attend one of the assemblies at Silverdale Grange. It was dark when he reached the house, for the nights were drawing in; but because of the temperature, few of the great oil lamps were lighted, and the windows were open wide. Somebody had just finished singing when he walked into the big general room, and he would have preferred another moment to make his entrance, but disdained to wait. He, however, felt a momentary warmth in his face when Miss Barrington, stately as when he had first seen her in her rustling silk and ancient laces, came forward to greet him with her usual graciousness. He knew that every eye was upon them, and guessed why she had done so much.
What she said was of no moment, but the fact that she had received him without sign of coldness was eloquent, and the man bent very respectfully over the little white hand. Then he stood straight and square for a moment and met her eyes.
“Madam,” he said, “I shall know who to come to when I want a friend.”
Afterwards he drifted towards a group of married farmers and their wives, who, except for that open warranty, might have been less cordial to him; and presently, though he was never quite sure how it came about, found himself standing beside Maud Barrington. She smiled at him and then glanced towards one of the open windows, outside which one or two of the older men were sitting.
“The room is very hot,” said Witham tentatively.
“Yes,” said the girl, “I fancy it would be cooler in the hall.”
They passed out together into the shadowy hall, but a little gleam of light from the doorway behind them rested on Maud Barrington as she sat down. She looked inquiringly at the man as though in wait for something.
“It is distinctly cooler here,” he said.
Maud Barrington laughed impatiently. “It is,” she said.
“Well,” said Witham, with a little smile. “I will try again. Wheat has made another advance lately.”
The girl turned towards him with a little sparkle in her eyes. Witham saw it, and the faint shimmer of the pearls upon the whiteness of her neck and then moved his head so that he looked out upon the dusky prairie.
“Pshaw!” she said. “You know why you were brought here to-night.”
Witham admired her courage, but did not turn round, for there were times when he feared his will might fail him. “I fancy I know why your aunt was so gracious to me. Do you know that her confidence almost hurts me.”
“Then why don’t you vindicate it and yourself? Dane would be your mouthpiece, and two or three words would be sufficient.”
Witham made no answer for a space. Somebody was singing in the room behind them, and through the open window he could see the stars in the soft indigo above the great sweep of prairie. He noticed them vacantly, and took a curious impersonal interest in the two dim figures standing close together outside the window. One was a young English lad, and the other a girl in a long white dress. What they were doing there was no concern of his, but any trifle that diverted his attention a moment was welcome in that time of strain, for he had felt of late that exposure was close at hand, and was fiercely anxious to finish his work before it came. Maud Barrington’s finances must be made secure before he left Silverdale, and he must remain at any cost until the wheat was sold.
Then he turned slowly towards her. “It is not your aunt’s confidence that hurts me the most.”
The girl looked at him steadily, the colour a trifle plainer in her face, which she would not turn from the light, and a growing wonder in her eyes.
“Lance,” she said, “we both know that it is not misplaced. Still, your impassiveness does not please us.”
Witham groaned inwardly, and the swollen veins showed on his forehead. His companion had leaned forward a little, so that she could see him, and one white shoulder almost touched his own. The perfume of her hair was in his nostrils, and when he remembered how cold she had once been to him, a longing that was stronger than the humiliation that came with it grew almost overwhelming. Still, because of her very trust in him, there was a wrong he could not do, and it dawned on him that a means of placing himself beyond further temptation was opening to him. Maud Barrington, he knew, would have scanty sympathy with an intrigue of the kind Courthorne’s recent adventure pointed to.
“You mean, why do I not deny what you have no doubt heard?” he said. “What could one gain by that if you had heard the truth?”
Maud Barrington laughed softly. “Isn’t the question useless?”
“No,” said Witham, a trifle hoarsely now.
The girl touched his arm almost imperiously as he turned his head again.
“Lance,” she said, “men of your kind need not deal in subterfuge. The wheat and the bridge you built speak for you.”
“Still——” persisted Witham, and the girl checked him with a smile.
“I fancy you are wasting time,” she said. “Now, I wonder whether, when you were in England, you ever saw a play founded on an incident in the life of a once famous actor. At the time it rather appealed to me. The hero, with a chivalric purpose, assumed various shortcomings he had really no sympathy with—but while there is, of course, no similarity beyond the generous impulse between the cases, he did not do it clumsily. It is, however, a trifle difficult to understand what purpose you could have, and one cannot help fancying that you owe a little to Silverdale and yourself.”
It was a somewhat daring parallel; for Witham, who dare not look at his companion and saw that he had failed, knew the play.
“Isn’t the subject a trifle difficult?” he asked.
“Then,” said Maud Barrington, “we will end it. Still, you promised that I should understand—a good deal—when the time came.”
Witham nodded gravely. “You shall,” he said.
Then, somewhat to his embarrassment, the two figures moved further across the window, and as they were silhouetted against the blue duskiness, he saw that there was an arm about the waist of the girl’s white dress. He became sensible that Maud Barrington saw it too, and then that, perhaps to save the situation, she was smiling. The two figures, however, vanished, and a minute later a young girl in a long white dress came in and stood still, apparently dismayed, when she saw Maud Barrington. She did not notice Witham, who sat further in the shadow. He, however, saw her face suddenly crimson.
“Have you been here long?” she asked.
“Yes,” said Maud Barrington, with a significant glance towards the window. “At least ten minutes. I am sorry, but I really couldn’t help it. It was very hot in the other room, and Allender was singing.”
“Then,” said the girl, with a little tremor in her voice, “you will not tell?”
“No,” said Maud Barrington. “But you must not do it again.”
The girl stooped swiftly and kissed her, then recoiled with a gasp when she saw the man, but Maud Barrington laughed.
“I think,” she said, “I can answer for Mr. Courthorne’s silence. Still, when I have an opportunity, I am going to lecture you.”
Witham turned with a twinkle he could not quite repress in his eyes, and with a flutter of her dress the girl whisked away.
“I’m afraid this makes me an accessory, but I can only neglect my manifest duty, which would be to warn her mother,” said Maud Barrington.
“Is it a duty?” asked Witham, feeling that the further he drifted away from the previous topic, the better it would be for him.
“Some people would fancy so,” said his companion. “Lily will have a good deal of money by and by, and she is very young. Atterly has nothing but an unprofitable farm; but he is an honest lad, and I know she is very fond of him.”
“And would that count against the dollars?”
Maud Barrington laughed a little. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I think it would if the girl is wise. Even now such things do happen; but I fancy it is time I went back again.”
She moved away, but Witham stayed where he was until the lad came in with a cigar in his hand.
“Hallo, Courthorne!” he said. “Did you notice anybody pass the window a little while ago?”
“You are the first come in through it,” said Witham dryly. “The kind of things you wear admit of climbing.”
The lad glanced at him with a trace of embarrassment.
“I don’t quite understand you; but I meant a man,” he said. “He was walking curiously, as if he was half asleep, but he slipped round the corner of the building, and I lost him.”
Witham laughed. “There’s a want of finish in the tale, but you needn’t worry about me. I didn’t see a man.”
“There’s rather less wisdom than usual in your remarks to-night; but I tell you I saw him,” said the lad.
He passed on, and a minute later there was a cry from the inner room. “It’s there again! Can’t you see the face at the window?”
Witham was in the larger room next moment, and saw, as a startled girl had evidently done, a face that showed distorted and white to ghastliness through the window. He also recognized it, and running back through the hall was outside in another few seconds. Courthorne was leaning against one of the casements as though faint with weakness or pain, and collapsed when Witham dragged him backwards into the shadow. He had scarcely laid him down when the window was opened and Colonel Barrington’s shoulders showed black against the light.
“Come outside alone, sir,” said Witham. Barrington did so, and Witham stood so that no light fell on the pallid face in the grass. “It’s a man I have dealings with,” he said. “He has evidently ridden out from the settlement and fallen from his horse.”
“Why should he fall?” asked the Colonel.
Witham laughed. “There is a perfume about him that is tolerably conclusive. I was, however, on the point of going, and if you will tell your hired man to get my wagon out, I’ll take him away quietly. You can make light of the affair to the others.”
“Yes,” said Barrington. “Unless you think the man is hurt, that would be best, but we’ll keep him if you like.”
“No, sir. I couldn’t trouble you,” said Witham hastily. “Men of his kind are also very hard to kill.”
Five minutes later he and the hired man hoisted Courthorne into the wagon and packed some hay about him, while, soon after the rattle of wheels sank into the silence of the prairie, the girl Maud Barrington had spoken to rejoined her companion.
“Could Courthorne have seen you coming in?” he asked.
“Yes,” said the girl, blushing. “He did.”
“Then it can’t be helped, and, after all, Courthorne wouldn’t talk, even if he wasn’t what he is,” said the lad. “You don’t know why, and I’m not going to tell you, but it wouldn’t become him.”
“You don’t mean Maud Barrington?” asked his companion.
“No,” said the lad with a laugh. “Courthorne is not like me. He has no sense. It’s quite another kind of girl, you see.”
It was not until early morning that Courthorne awakened from the stupor he sank into, soon after Witham conveyed him into his homestead. First, however, he asked for a little food, and ate it with apparent difficulty. When Witham came in, he looked up from the bed where he lay, with the dust still white upon his clothing, and his face showed grey and haggard in the creeping light.
“I’m feeling a trifle better now,” he said; “still, I scarcely fancy I could get up just yet. I gave you a little surprise last night?”
Witham nodded. “You did. Of course, I knew how much your promise was worth, but in view of the risks you ran, I had not expected you to turn up at the Grange.”
“The risks!” said Courthorne with an unpleasant smile.
“Yes,” said Witham wearily; “I have a good deal on hand I would like to finish here, and it will not take me long, but I am quite prepared to give myself up now, if it is necessary.”
Courthorne laughed. “I don’t think you need, and it wouldn’t be wise. You see, even if you made out your innocence, which you couldn’t do, you rendered yourself an accessory by not denouncing me long ago. I fancy we can come to an understanding which would be pleasanter to both of us.”
“The difficulty,” said Witham, “is that an understanding is useless when made with a man who never keeps his word.”
“Well,” said Courthorne dryly, “we shall gain nothing by paying each other compliments, and whether you believe it or otherwise, it was not by intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn’t find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Anyway, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I saw a house.”
“That,” said Witham, “is beside the question. What do you want of me? Dollars, in all probability. Well, you will not get them.”
“I’m afraid I’m scarcely fit for a discussion now,” said Courthorne. “The fact is, it hurts me to talk, and there’s an aggressiveness about you which isn’t pleasant to a badly-shaken man. Wait until this evening, but there is no necessity for you to ride to the outpost before you have heard me.”
“I’m not sure it would be advisable to leave you here,” said Witham dryly.
Courthorne smiled ironically. “Use your eyes. Would any one expect me to get up and indulge in a fresh folly? Leave me a little brandy—I need it—and go about your work. You’ll certainly find me here when you want me.”
Witham, glancing at the man’s face, considered this very probable, and went out. He found his cook, who could be trusted, and said to him, “The man yonder is tolerably sick, and you’ll let him have a little brandy, and something to eat when he asks for it. Still, you’ll bring the decanter away with you, and lock him in whenever you go out.”
The man nodded, and making a hasty breakfast, Witham, who had business at several outlying farms, mounted and rode away. It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidlydebonairbut apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them.
“You take a look at the decanter,” said the man, who went up with Witham, carrying a lamp. “He’s been wanting brandy all the time, but it doesn’t seem to have muddled him.”
Witham dismissed the man and sat down in front of Courthorne.
“Well?” he said.
Courthorne laughed. “You ought to be a witty man, though one would scarcely charge you with that. You surmised correctly this morning. It is dollars I want.”
“You had my answer.”
“Of course. Still, I don’t want very many in the meanwhile, and you haven’t heard what led up to the demand, or why I came back to you. You are evidently not curious, but I’m going to tell you. Soon after I left you, I fell very sick, and lay in the saloon of a little desolate settlement for days. The place was suffocating, and the wind blew the alkali dust in. They had only horrible brandy, and bitter water to drink it with, and I lay there on my back, panting, with the flies crawling over me. I knew if I stayed any longer it would finish me, and when there came a merciful cool day I got myself into the saddle and started off to find you. I don’t quite know how I made the journey, and during a good deal of it I couldn’t see the prairie, but I knew you would feel there was an obligation on you to do something for me. Of course, I could put it differently.”
Witham had as little liking for Courthorne as he had ever had, but he remembered the time when he had lain very sick in his lonely log hut. He also remembered that everything he now held belonged to this man.
“You made the bargain,” he said, less decisively.
Courthorne nodded. “Still, I fancy one of the conditions could be modified. Now, if I wait for another three months I may be dead before the reckoning comes, and while that probably wouldn’t grieve you, I could, when it appeared advisable, send for a magistrate and make a deposition.”
“You could,” said Witham. “I have, however, something of the same kind in contemplation.”
Courthorne smiled curiously. “I don’t know that it will be necessary. Carry me on until you have sold your crop, and then make a reasonable offer, and it’s probable you may still keep what you have at Silverdale. To be quite frank, I’ve a notion that my time in this world is tolerably limited, and I want a last taste of all it has to offer a man of my capacities before I leave it. One is a long while dead, you know.”
Witham nodded, for he understood. He had also during the grim cares of the lean years known the fierce longing for one deep draught of the wine of pleasure, whatever it afterwards cost him.
“It was that which induced you to look for a little relaxation at the settlement at my expense,” he said. “A trifle paltry, wasn’t it?”
Courthorne laughed. “It seems you don’t know me yet. That was a frolic, indulged in out of humour, for your benefit. You see, your rôle demanded a good deal more ability than you ever displayed in it, and it did not seem fitting that a very puritanical and priggish person should pose as me at Silverdale. The little affair was the one touch of verisimilitude about the thing. No doubt my worthy connexions are grieving over your lapse.”
“My sense of humour had never much chance of developing,” said Witham grimly. “What is the matter with you?”
“Pulmonary haemorrhage!” said Courthorne. “Perhaps it was born in me, but I never had much trouble until after that night in the snow at the river. Would you care to hear about it? We’re not fond of each other, but after the steer-drivers I’ve been herding with, it’s a relief to talk to a man of moderate intelligence.”
“Go on,” said Witham.
“Well,” said Courthorne, “when the trooper was close behind me, my horse went through the ice, but somehow I crawled out. We were almost across the river, and it was snowing fast, while I had a fancy that I might have saved the horse but, as the trooper would probably have seen a mounted man, I let him go. The stream sucked him under, and, though you may not believe it, I felt very mean when I saw nothing but the hole in the ice. Then, as the troopers didn’t seem inclined to cross, I went on through the snow, and, as it happened, blundered across Jardine’s old shanty. There was still a little prairie hay in the place, and I lay in it until morning, dragging fresh armfuls around me as I burnt it in the stove. Did you ever spend a night, wet through, in a place that was ten to twenty under freezing?”
“Yes,” said Witham dryly. “I have done it twice.”
“Well,” said Courthorne, “I fancy that night narrowed in my life for me, but I made out across the prairie in the morning, and as we had a good many friends up and down the country, one of them took care of me.”
Witham sat silent a while. The story had held his attention, and the frankness of the man who lay panting a little in his chair had its effect on him. There was no sound from the prairie, and the house was very still.
“Why did you kill Shannon?” he asked at length.
“Is any one quite sure of his motives?” said Courthorne. “The lad had done something which was difficult to forgive him, but I think I would have let him go if he hadn’t recognized me. The world is tolerably good to the man who has no scruples, you see, and I took all it offered me, while it did not seem fitting that a clod of a trooper without capacity for enjoyment, or much more sensibility than the beast he rode, should put an end to all my opportunities. Still, it was only when he tried to warn his comrades he threw his last chance away.”
Witham shivered a little at the dispassionate brutality of the speech, and then checked the anger that came upon him.
“Fate, or my own folly, has put it out of my power to denounce you without abandoning what I have set my heart upon, and after all it is not my business,” he said. “I will give you five hundred dollars and you can go to Chicago or Montreal, and consult a specialist. If the money is exhausted before I send for you, I will pay your hotel bills, but every dollar will be deducted when we come to the reckoning.”
Courthorne laughed a little. “You had better make it seven-fifty. Five hundred dollars will not go very far with me.”
“Then you will have to husband them,” said Witham dryly. “I am paying you at a rate agreed upon for the use of your land and small bank balance handed me, and want all of it. The rent is a fair one in face of the fact that a good deal of the farm consisted of virgin prairie, which can be had from the Government for nothing.”
He said nothing further, and soon after he went out Courthorne went to sleep, but Witham sat by an open window with a burned-out cigar in his hand, staring at the prairie while the night wore through, until he rose with a shiver in the chill of early morning to commence his task again.
A few days later he saw Courthorne safely into a sleeping car with a ticket for Chicago in his pocket, and felt that a load had been lifted off his shoulders when the train rolled out of the little prairie station. Another week had passed, when, riding home one evening, he stopped at the Grange, and, as it happened, found Maud Barrington alone. She received him without any visible restraint, but he realized that all that had passed at their last meeting was to be tacitly ignored.
“Has your visitor recovered yet?” she asked.
“So far as to leave my place, and I was not anxious to keep him,” said Witham with a little laugh. “I am sorry he disturbed you.”
Maud Barrington seemed thoughtful. “I can scarcely think the man was to blame.”
“No?” said Witham.
The girl looked at him curiously, and shook her head. “No,” she said. “I heard my uncle’s explanation, but it was not convincing. I saw the man’s face.”
It was several seconds before Witham answered, and then he took the bold course.
“Well?” he said.
Maud Barrington made a curious little gesture. “I knew I had seen it before at the bridge, but that was not all. It was vaguely familiar, and I felt I ought to know it. It reminded me of somebody.”
“Of me?” and Witham laughed.
“No. There was a resemblance, but it was very superficial. That man’s face had little in common with yours.”
“These faint likenesses are not unusual,” said Witham, and once more Maud Barrington looked at him steadily.
“No,” she said. “Of course not. Well, we will conclude that my fancies ran away with me, and be practical. What is wheat doing just now?”
“Rising still,” said Witham, and regretted the alacrity with which he had seized the opportunity of changing the topic when he saw that it had not escaped the notice of his companion. “You and I and a few others will be rich this year.”
“Yes, but I am afraid some of the rest will find it has only further anxieties for them.”
“I fancy,” said Witham, “you are thinking of one.”
Maud Barrington nodded. “Yes; I am sorry for him.”
“Then it would please you if I tried to straighten out things for him? It would be difficult, but I believe it could be accomplished.”
Maud Barrington’s eyes were grateful, but there was something that Witham could not fathom behind her smile.
“If you undertook it. One could almost believe you had the wonderful lamp,” she said.
Witham smiled somewhat dryly. “Then all its virtues will be tested to-night, and I had better make a commencement while I have the courage. Colonel Barrington is in?”
Maud Barrington went with him to the door, and then laid her hand a moment on his arm. “Lance,” she said, with a little tremor in her voice, “if there was a time when our distrust hurt you, it has recoiled upon our heads. You have returned it with a splendid generosity.”
Witham did not trust himself to answer, but walked straight to Barrington’s room, and finding the door open went quietly in. The head of the Silverdale settlement was sitting at a littered table in front of a shaded lamp, and the light that fell upon it showed the care in his face. It grew a trifle grimmer when he saw the younger man.
“Will you sit down?” he said. “I have been looking for a visit from you for some little time. It would have been more fitting had you made it earlier.”
Witham nodded as he took a chair. “I fancy I understand you, but I have nothing that you expect to hear to tell you, sir.”
“That,” said Barrington, “is unfortunate. Now, it is not my business to pose as a censor on the conduct of any man here, except when it affects the community, but their friends have sent out a good many young English lads, some of whom have not been too discreet in the old country, to me. They did not do so solely that I might teach them farming. A charge of that kind is no light responsibility, and I look for assistance from the men who have almost as large a stake as I have in the prosperity of Silverdale.”
“Have you ever seen me do anything you could consider prejudicial to it?” asked Witham.
“I have not,” said Colonel Barrington.
“And it was by her own wish Miss Barrington, who, I fancy, is seldom mistaken, asked me to the Grange?”
“Is is a good plea,” said Barrington. “I cannot question anything my sister does.”
“Then we will let it pass, though I am afraid you will consider what I am going to ask a further presumption. You have forward wheat to deliver, and find it difficult to obtain it?”
Barrington’s smile was somewhat grim. “In both cases you have surmised correctly.”
Witham nodded. “Still, it is not mere inquisitiveness, sir. I fancy I am the only man at Silverdale who can understand your difficulties, and, what is more to the point, suggest a means of obviating them. You still expect to buy at lower prices before the time to make delivery comes?”
Again the care crept into Barrington’s face, and he sat silent for almost a minute. Then he said, very slowly, “I feel that I should resent the question, but I will answer. It is what I hope to do.”
“Well,” said Witham, “I am afraid you will find prices higher still. There is very little wheat in Minnesota this year, and what there was in Dakota was cut down by hail. Millers in St. Paul and Minneapolis are anxious already, and there is talk of a big corner in Chicago. Nobody is offering again, while you know what land lies fallow in Manitoba, and the activity of their brokers shows the fears of Winnipeg millers with contracts on hand. This is not my opinion alone. I can convince you from the papers and market reports I see before you.”
Barrington could not controvert the unpleasant truth he was still endeavouring to shut his eyes to. “The demand from the East may slacken,” he said.
Witham shook his head. “Russia can give them nothing. There was a failure in the Indian monsoon, and South American crops were small. Now, I am going to take a further liberty. How much are you short?”
Barrington was never sure why he told him, but he was hard pressed then, and there was a quiet forcefulness about the younger man that had its effect on him. “That,” he said, holding out a document, “is the one contract I have not covered.”
Witham glanced at it. “The quantity is small. Still, money is very scarce, and bank interest almost extortionate just now.”
Barrington flushed a trifle, and there was anger in his face. He knew the fact that his loss on this sale should cause him anxiety was significant, and that Witham had surmised the condition of his finances tolerably correctly.
“Have you not gone quite far enough?” he said.
Witham nodded. “I fancy I need ask no more, sir. You can scarcely buy the wheat, and the banks will advance nothing further on what you have to offer at Silverdale. It would be perilous to put yourself in the hands of a mortgage-broker.”
Barrington stood up very grim and straight, and there were not many men at Silverdale who would have met his gaze.
“Your content is a little too apparent, but I can still resent an impertinence,” he said. “Are my affairs your business?”
“Sit down, sir,” said Witham. “I fancy they are, and had it not been necessary, I would not have ventured so far. You have done much for Silverdale, and it had cost you a good deal, while it seems to me that every man here has a duty to the head of the settlement. I am, however, not going to urge that point, but have, as you know, a propensity for taking risks. I can’t help it. It was probably born in me. Now, I will take that contract up for you.”
Barrington gazed at him in bewildered astonishment. “But you would lose on it heavily. How could you overcome a difficulty that is too great for me?”
“Well,” said Witham with a little smile, “it seems I have some ability in dealing with these affairs.”
Barrington did not answer for a while, and when he spoke it was slowly. “You have a wonderful capacity for making any one believe in you.”
“That is not the point,” said Witham. “If you will let me have the contract, or, and it comes to the same thing, buy the wheat it calls for, and if advisable sell as much again, exactly as I tell you, at my risk and expense, I shall get what I want out of it. My affairs are a trifle complicated, and it would take some little time to make you understand how this would suit me. In the meanwhile you can give me a mere I O U for the difference between what you sold at, and the price to-day, to be paid without interest and whenever it suits you. It isn’t very formal, but you will have to trust me.”
Barrington moved twice up and down the room before he turned to the younger man. “Lance,” he said, “when you first came here, any deal of this kind between us would have been out of the question. Now, it is only your due to tell you that I have been wrong from the beginning, and you have a good deal to forgive.”
“I think we need not go into that,” said Witham, with a little smile. “This is a business deal, and if it hadn’t suited me I would not have made it.”
He went out in another few minutes with a little strip of paper, and just before he left the Grange placed it in Maud Barrington’s hand.
“You will not ask any questions, but if ever Colonel Barrington is not kind to you, you can show him that,” he said.
He had gone in another moment, but the girl, comprehending dimly what he had done, stood still, staring at the paper with a warmth in her cheeks and a mistiness in her eyes.
It was late in the afternoon when Colonel Barrington drove up to Witham’s homestead. He had his niece and sister with him, and when he pulled up his team, all three were glad of the little breeze that came down from the blueness of the north and rippled the whitened grass. It had blown over leagues of sun-bleached prairie, and the great desolation beyond the pines of the Saskatchewan, but had not wholly lost the faint wholesome chill it brought from the Pole.
There was no cloud in the vault of ether, and slanting sunrays beat fiercely down upon the prairie, until the fibrous dust grew fiery, and the eyes ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery grey. The latter was, however, relieved by stronger colour in front of the party, for, blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree. Oats had moved up in value in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest might have been his.
“We will get down and walk towards the wheat,” he said. “It is a good crop, and Lance is to be envied.”
“Still,” said Miss Barrington, “he deserved it, and those sheaves stand for more than the toil that brought them there.”
“Of course!” said the Colonel with a curious little smile. “For rashness, I fancied, when they showed the first blade above the clod, but I am less sure of it now. Well, the wheat is even finer.”
A man who came up took charge of the horses, and the party walked in silence towards the wheat. It stretched before them in a vast parallelogram, and while the oats were the pale gold of the austral, there was the tint of the ruddier metal of their own North-West in this. It stood tall and stately, murmuring as the sea does, until it rolled before a stronger puff of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic patter swelled into deeper-toned harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of colour which appealed to sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil, and white-robed priest blessed it, when the world was young.
Maud Barrington felt it vaguely, but she recognized more clearly, as her aunt had done, the faith and daring of the sower. The earth was very bountiful, but that wheat had not come there of itself; and she knew the man who had called it up had done more than bear his share of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently more or less evaded at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the courage that held him resolute in face of other’s fears, and the greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted for less that he had achieved success. Then, glancing further across the billowing grain she saw him—still, as it seemed it had always been with him, amidst the stress and dust of strenuous endeavour.
Once more, as she had seen them when the furrows were bare at seed time, and there was apparently only ruin in store for those who raised the Eastern people’s bread, lines of dusty teams came plodding down the rise. They advanced in echelon, keeping their time and distance with a military precision; but in place of the harrows the tossing arms of the binders flashed and swung. The wheat went down before them, their wake was strewn with gleaming sheaves, and one man came foremost, swaying in the driving-seat of a rattling machine. His face was the colour of a Blackfoot’s, and she could see the darkness of his neck above the loose-fronted shirt and a bare blackened arm that was raised to hold the tired beasts to their task. Their trampling and the crash and rattle that swelled in slow crescendo drowned the murmur of the wheat, until one of the machines stood still, and the leader, turning a moment in his saddle, held up a hand. Then those that came behind swung into changed formation, passed, and fell into indented line again, while Colonel Barrington nodded with grim approval.
“It is very well done,” he said. “The best of harvesters! No newcomers yonder. They’re capable Manitoba men. I don’t know where he got them, and, in any other year, one would have wondered where he would find the means of paying them. We have never seen farming of this kind at Silverdale.”
He seemed to sigh a little, while his hand closed on the bridle; and Maud Barrington fancied she understood his thoughts just then.
“Nobody can be always right, and the good years do not come alone,” she said. “You will plough every acre next one.”
Barrington smiled dryly. “I’m afraid that will be a little late, my dear. Any one can follow, but since, when everybody’s crop is good, the price comes down, the man who gets the prize is the one who shows the way.”
“He was content to face the risk,” said Miss Barrington.
“Of course,” said the Colonel quietly. “I should be the last to make light of his foresight and courage. Indeed, I am glad I can acknowledge it, in more ways than one, for I have felt lately that I am getting an old man. Still, there is one with greater capacities ready to step into my shoes; and though it was long before I could overcome my prejudice against him, I think I should now be content to let him have them. Whatever Lance may have been, he was born a gentleman, and blood is bound to tell.”
Maud Barrington, who was of a patrician parentage, and would not at one time have questioned this assertion, wondered why she felt less sure of it just then.
“But if he had not been, would not what he has done be sufficient to vouch for him?” she said.
Barrington smiled a little, and the girl felt that her question was useless as she glanced at him. He sat very straight in his saddle, immaculate in dress, with a gloved hand on his hip and a stamp which he had inherited, with the thinly-covered pride that usually accompanies it, from generations of a similar type, on his clean-cut face. It was evidently needless to look for any sympathy with that view from him.
“My dear,” he said, “there are things at which the others can beat us; but, after all, I do not think they are worth the most; and while Lance has occasionally exhibited a few undesirable characteristics, no doubt acquired in this country, and has not been always blameless, the fact that he is a Courthorne at once covers and accounts for a good deal.”
Then Witham recognized them, and made a sign to one of the men behind him as he hauled his binder clear of the wheat. He had dismounted in another minute and came towards them, with the jacket he had not wholly succeeded in struggling into loose about his shoulders.
“It is almost time I gave my team a rest,” he said. “Will you come with me to the house?”
“No,” said Colonel Barrington. “We only stopped in passing. The crop will harvest well.”
“Yes,” said Witham, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington. “Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably come!”
“Then,” said the white-haired lady, “next year I will do as much again, though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes all the time. Still, you are too prosaic to fancy they can have anything to do with—this.”
She pointed to the wheat, but though Witham smiled again, there was a curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.
“I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than you realize to me,” he said.
Miss Barrington looked at him steadily. “Lance,” she said, “there is something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me. Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I fancied you meant it.”
“I did,” said Witham, with a trace of grimness in his smile. “Still, isn’t it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?”
“Well,” said Miss Barrington, “you are going to be franker with me by and by. Now, my brother has been endeavouring to convince us that you owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes.”
Witham did not answer for a moment and then he laughed. “I fancy Colonel Barrington is wrong,” he said. “Don’t you think there are latent capabilities in every man, though only one here and there gets an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn’t it be pleasanter for any one to feel that his virtues were his own and not those of his family?”
Miss Barrington’s eyes twinkled but she shook her head. “That,” she said, “would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on.”
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as they drove slowly past the wheat his niece had another view of the toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash of the binders’ wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those sounds often before, and attached no significance to them; but now she knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them; she could hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.
Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise and had passed from view behind it when a mounted man rode up to Witham with an envelope in his hand.
“Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement, and the telegraph clerk gave it him,” he said. “He told me to come along with it.”
Witham opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, “Send me five hundred dollars. Urgent.”
Then he thrust it into his pocket and went on with his harvesting, when he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the affair; and then the note he wrote was laconic.
“Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be ill. In case of necessity, you can forward your doctor’s or hotel bills,” it ran.
It was with a wry smile he watched the man ride off towards the settlement with it. “I shall not be sorry when the climax comes,” he said. “The strain is telling.”
In the meanwhile, Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or two he unbent so far as, in the face of regulations, to refresh himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian revenue. Now, the lonely ranchers have, as a rule, few opportunities of friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant’s geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished him. In consequence of this, he rode out one night with two or three troopers of a Western squadron.
His apparent business was somewhat prosaic. Musquash, the Blackfoot, in place of remaining quietly on his reserve, had in a state of inebriation reverted to the primitive customs of his race, and taking the trail not only annexed some of his white neighbours’ ponies and badly frightened their wives, but drove off a steer with which he feasted his people. The owner, following, came upon the hide, and Musquash, seeing it was too late to remove the brand from it, expressed his contrition, and pleaded in extenuation that he was rather worthy of sympathy than blame, because he would never have laid hands on what was not his had not a white man sold him deleterious liquor. As no white man is allowed to supply an Indian with alcohol in any form, the wardens of the prairie took a somewhat similar view of the case; and Stimson was, from motives which he did not mention, especially anxious to get his grip upon the other offender.
The night when they rode out was very dark, and they spent half of it beneath a birch bluff, seeing nothing whatever, and only hearing a coyote howl. It almost appeared that there was something wrong with the information supplied them respecting the probable running of another load of prohibited whisky, and towards morning Stimson rode up to the young commissioned officer.
“The man who brought us word has either played their usual trick and sent us here while his friends take the other trail, or somebody saw us ride out and went south to tell the boys,” he said. “Now, you might consider it advisable that I and one of the troopers should head for the ford at Willow Hollow, sir.”
“Yes,” said the young officer, who was quite aware that there was as yet many things connected with his duties he did not know. “Now I come to think of it, Sergeant, I do. We’ll give you two hours, and then, if you don’t turn up, ride over after you; it’s condemnably shivery waiting for nothing here.”
Stimson saluted and shook his bridle, and rather less than an hour later faintly discerned a rattle of wheels that rose from a long way off across the prairie. Then he used the spur, and by and by it became evident that the drumming of their horses’ feet had carried far, for though the rattle grew a little louder there was no doubt that whoever drove the wagon had no desire to be overtaken. Still, two horses cannot haul a vehicle over a rutted trail as fast as one can carry a man, and when the wardens of the prairie raced towards the black wall of birches that rose higher in front of them, the sound of wheels seemed very near. It, however, ceased suddenly, and was followed by a drumming that could only have been made by a galloping horse.
“One beast!” said the Sergeant. “Well, they’d have two men, anyway, in that wagon. Get down and picket. We’ll find the other fellow somewhere in the bluff.”
They came upon him within five minutes endeavouring to cut loose the remaining horse from the entangled harness in such desperate haste that he did not hear them until Stimson grasped his shoulder.
“Hold out your hands,” he said. “You have your carbine ready, trooper?”
The man made no resistance, and Stimson laughed when the handcuffs were on.
“Now,” he said, “where’s your partner?”
“I don’t know that I mind telling you,” said the prisoner. “It was a low down trick he played on me. We got down to take out the horses, when we saw we couldn’t get away from you, and I’d a blanket girthed round the best of them, when he said he’d hold him while I tried what I could do with the other. Well, I let him, and the first thing I knew he was off at a gallop, leaving me with the other kicking devil two men couldn’t handle. You’ll find him rustling south over the Montana trail.”
“Mount and ride!” said Stimson, and when his companion galloped off turned once more to his prisoner.
“You’ll have a lantern somewhere, and I’d like a look at you,” he said. “If you’re the man I expect, I’m glad I found you.”
“It’s in the wagon,” said the other dejectedly.
Stimson got a light, and when he had released and picketed the plunging horse, held it so that he could see his prisoner. Then he nodded with evident contentment.
“You may as well sit down. We’ve got to have a talk,” he said.
“Well,” said the other, “I’d help you to catch Harmon if I could, but I can prove he hired me to drive him over to Kemp’s in the wagon, and you’d find it difficult to show I knew what there was in the packages he took along.”
Stimson smiled dryly. “Still,” he said, “I think it could be done, and I’ve another count against you. You had one or two deals with the boys some little while ago.”
“I’m not afraid of your fixing up against me anything I did then,” said the other man.
“No?” said Stimson. “Now, I guess you’re wrong, and it might be a good deal more serious than whisky-running. One night a man crawled up to your homestead through the snow, and you took him in.”
He saw the sudden fear in his companion’s face before he turned it from the lantern.
“It has happened quite a few times,” said the latter. “We don’t turn any stranger out in this country.”
“Of course!” said the Sergeant gravely, though he felt a little thrill of content as he saw the shot, he had been by no means sure of, had told. “That man, however, had lost his horse in the river, and it was the one he got from you that took him out of the country. Now, if we could show you knew what he had done, it might go as far as hanging somebody.”
The man was evidently not a confirmed law-breaker, but merely one of the small farmers who were willing to pick up a few dollars by assisting the whisky-runners now and then, and he abandoned all resistance.
“Sergeant,” he said, “it was most a week before I knew, and if anybody had told me at the time I’d have turned him out to freeze before I’d have let him have a horse of mine.”
“That wouldn’t go very far if we brought the charge against you,” said Stimson grimly. “If you’d sent us word when you did know, we’d have had him.”
“Well,” said the man, “he was across the frontier by that time, and I don’t know that most folks would have done it, if they’d had the warning the boys sent me.”
Stimson appeared to consider for almost a minute, and then gravely rapped his companion’s arm.
“It seems to me that the sooner you and I have an understanding, the better it will be for you,” he said.
They were some time arriving at it, and the Sergeant’s superiors might not have been pleased with all he promised during the discussion. Still, he was flying at higher game and had to sacrifice a little, while he knew his man.
“We’ll fix it up without you, as far as we can; but if we want you to give evidence that the man who lost his horse in the river was not Farmer Witham, we’ll know where to find you,” he said. “You’ll have to take your chance of being tried with him, if we find you trying to get out of the country.”
It was half an hour later when the rest of the troopers arrived, and Stimson had some talk with their officer aside.
“A little out of the usual course, isn’t it?” said the latter. “I don’t know that I’d have countenanced it, so to speak, off my own bat at all, but I had a tolerably plain hint that you were to use your discretion over this affair. After all, one has to stretch a point or two occasionally.”
“Yes, sir,” said Stimson; “a good many now and then.”
The officer smiled a little and went back to the rest. “Two of you will ride after the other rascal,” he said. “Now look here, my man; the first time my troopers, who’ll call round quite frequently, don’t find you about your homestead, you’ll land yourself in a tolerably serious difficulty. In the meanwhile, I’m sorry we can’t bring a charge of whisky-running against you, but another time be careful who you hire your wagon to.”
Then there was a rapid drumming of hoofs as two troopers went off at a gallop, while when the rest turned back towards the outpost, Stimson rode with them, quietly content.