CHAPTER XXIVAt Haying Time
JANE and Blue Pete were doing their best. Their massive bodies were a sumptuous feeding-ground for the swarming mosquitoes, which transformed their cheerful roan coats into something drab and dismal. The air was hot and heavy in the depths of the slough, but the grass was luxuriant, and the hay cut was heavy.
Perched on the iron saddle of the mower, Lightning had no complaint to make against the conditions of his work, or the result of his labours. The heat, and the flies, and the mosquitoes, left the man unheeding. The toughened pores of his skin refused to exude a perspiration that could cause him discomfort. As for the flies, they made no more impression on him than if he had been a brass image. Even the blood-lust of the mosquitoes was little enough likely to obtain satisfaction from his hardening veins. But his temper was more than usually uncertain, and it found expression in a wealth of invective which he hurled at the heads of his devoted team. He sat there like some ragged, bewhiskered vulture, lean, aggressive, alternately cursing and coaxing. Lightning was worried. He was irritated. He was desperately unhappy.
Lightning’s ill mood had been steadily growing for three weeks, ever since the night of Molly’s party. It seemed like an eternity to the old man since that night which was only three weeks ago. He seemed to have lived through an age of disquiet and anxiety. And the depression of it had long since passed the stage when explosive blasphemy could afford him any relief.
With Molly’s unremitting assistance he had been cutting, and hauling, and stacking hay for days. But he had found in the work none of his customary satisfaction. In happier times each accomplished item in the round of his seasonal labours signified something achieved in the interests of the girl. Every detail of improvement in the progress of the Marton homestead had been a source of complete satisfaction to him. But that was when he knew it was all for Molly. That was before the thought of Andy McFardell had become the disturbing element of his intolerant mind.
But now that disturbing element had given place to something a hundredfold worse. It was Molly who had become his gravest anxiety. Again he knew that it was the man who was the source of the trouble. But it was in a different fashion. Hitherto Lightning had deplored and hated the man’s presence anywhere near the farm. Now he was desperately concerned at his absence from it. Andy McFardell had not been near the farm since the night of the party.
The change in the girl immediately following the dance had been bad enough. Whatever his regard for Andy, Lightning had felt that the girl’s distress, her obvious unhappiness, was altogether wrong and unaccountable. She was going to be married. It was her own choice. She was crazy about the wretched man. Well?
The first day had passed without relief. But with the second day it seemed that the work of time and youth would surely tell. Molly’s silence was less unbroken; her work was carried on less feverishly; even a shadow of her smile returned. Then came the moment when he discovered her returning from the trail by the creek, and he knew she had been there watching for the coming of her lover. His relief developed into something like joy, and he was amazed to find the contemplated coming of Andy McFardell could so affect him.
But the man did not come. Neither the next day, nor the next, nor the next. And now three weeks had passed without his having put in an appearance. Each day the old man had seen the girl move out down the trail looking for his coming. And each day the time she remained seemed to lengthen.
The change in Molly had become almost calamitous. She rarely left the house except at Lightning’s express call for her assistance. She laboured silently in the hay corral when the old man brought in a load of newly-cut hay. But she always returned to the house the moment the work was finished. Her eyes had the look of sleepless nights. Her cheeks had lost their happy roundness, and a pathetic down-drooping of the corners of her mouth told the troubled old man their own tale of dreary unhappiness.
Then came that memorable night when Lightning had recklessly ventured. Molly had eaten little at midday. She was eating less at the supper she was sharing with him. He had been observing her closely while he noisily consumed his hash with an appetite wholly unimpaired. Molly was gazing out of the window, her food scarcely touched, watching the play of the evening sunlight upon the foliage of a distant bluff. It was realisation of unshed tears in the girl’s eyes that robbed the old man of his caution, and flung him headlong.
“Ain’t you eatin’ your hash, Molly, gal?” he asked kindly, although at the moment his own mouth was filled to overflowing. “It’s real good,” he went on, with a smack of his lips as he swallowed. “You surely hev got the onions good in it. You didn’t eat at midday. An’ you ain’t eatin’ now. There’s a heap o’ work around this layout needs swell muscle, even in a gal like you. Best eat.”
Molly shook her head without withdrawing her gaze. And Lightning could restrain his impulse no longer.
“He ain’t been round, Molly, gal,” he said. “Ain’t you lookin’ fer him to come along?”
Molly sighed pathetically. Her gaze was studiously held to the window. Lightning realised the struggle she was making. Then, when she spoke, her voice was low and unsteady.
“I guess he isn’t through,” she said. “He’ll be haying, too. He’ll surely be haying. You see, he’s such a boy for getting back of his work.”
Lightning could have shouted blasphemy when Molly spoke of her lover’s devotion to work. But, instead, his voice came very gently.
“Sure, he’ll be haying. That’s so. That’s why he ain’t been around. You couldn’t want him to get around when the grass is ripe, and the season’s good. Say”—he passed his plate for another portion of the hash he approved—“why not get your pinto out an’ get a breath of good air, gal? You sure need it. I guess it won’t worry me stackin’ the grass I haul. Beat it over to that boy’s place an’ see the way he’s makin’ out.”
Lightning needed no better reward than the look that responded to his grin. He watched Molly pass to the stove to replenish his plate. And as she passed it back to him, he listened to the reacting hope which sounded in her voice.
“I surely could do that,” she said eagerly. “Maybe it would help him, too. You see, he’s alone. It isn’t the same with him as it is with us. You don’t need to haul to-morrow, anyway. Just cut. That way I could ride out and——”
Lightning felt he had really done a wonderful thing.
“Don’t say a thing, Molly, gal,” he cried. “I’ll fix all that. You get your pinto an’ ride over to-morrow mornin’. Guess you’ll tickle that boy to death comin’ along. An’, say, quit this foolishness with your food, gal. You got me so worried I don’t feel I could swallera mouthful right. An’ ther’s Jane an’ Pete worried about it, too,” he grinned. “That’s it,” he cried, as Molly made a serious attempt to obey him. “You don’t know the thing you’re missin’ in this darn hash.”
That night had been the one bright spot in the whole of the three weeks. But it was only the forerunner of darker days. Molly went off the next morning. She went off in spirits she had not displayed for a week. She returned in less than three hours. It was her return that brought Lightning’s structure of hope crashing about his unfortunate ears.
He encountered her at the barn as she rode up. Her pinto was blowing, as though the tireless creature had been flogged every mile of the journey home. But all hope had fled at sight of the distracted girl, and his heart sank to zero.
“Wal?”
Lightning’s voice had never rasped so harshly.
But there was no reply. It is doubtful even if Molly heard. Her mare propped to a standstill and she leapt from the saddle. The next moment she was gone. She had fled to the house, leaving the pinto to its own devices.
Since that time another two weeks had passed—two weeks of worry which the old man had hardly known how to endure.
After Molly’s return he had contemplated having the whole thing out with her at the first opportunity. But the girl settled the matter herself that very night. She met him in the doorway as he went up to the house for his supper.
He was astonished and further alarmed at the sight of her waiting for him. Her eyes contained not a sign of that which had filled them on her return at midday. They were calm—quite calm—like the eyes of the dead father he so well remembered. But they had a coldness in them that utterly forbade the intrusion he had contemplated.
As he came to the door the girl spoke.
“You fixed my mare?” she said sharply. “That’s all right,” she went on, as the old man reassured her. “We’ll get right on with the haying. The seasons don’t wait around for any foolishness. Do you get me? There’s going to be no more foolishness. Not a thing more, and not a word about it.”
So the evening had been passed without any explanation. He was never likely to forget that evening. Molly seemed suddenly to have grown years older. She ate her food and went about her work silently, deliberately. When he spoke to her, she replied sufficiently, in unemotional fashion. She never once smiled. It seemed as if all her youth had gone from her, as though an icy coldness had frozen up the last drop of the warm springs of her young heart.
Now Lightning was engaged upon the last of the haying. He was also engaged upon something else. At long last he had determined to discover the thing that had happened between the lovers from the other end of the affair—that end where no delicacy or scruple need be displayed.
He was perfecting his plans. He had thought them out in detail, and the result, in his view, was all he desired. This was the last cut of hay. To-morrow he would announce to Molly that the team must be re-shod. He would take them into Hartspool, and, on his way, he would call in at Andy McFardell’s homestead, and be prepared to deal with the man as he saw fit. He would certainly discover the thing that had happened.
It was nearly noon the next day when Lightning drove his team into the clearing of Andy McFardell’s homestead. He had had no difficulty in putting his plans into operation. Molly had agreed, after inspection of thelengthened hoofs of the team. So the old man had driven off, with his treasured guns carefully concealed in the wagon-box. Once beyond all chance of Molly’s observation, the weapons were taken from their place of concealment and adjusted about his lean body.
He gazed eagerly about him as he dodged the tree-stumps at the entrance to the clearing. The thing he expected to find had never been clear to him. But that which he did find was certainly the last thing he expected. Andy McFardell’s homestead was derelict. It was abandoned.
He drove his team right up to the miserable barn and got out of the wagon. The door of the building was nailed up. He stood for a moment considering it. Then he raised one heavily-booted foot, and launched it, sole first, against the crazy boarding. It gave on the instant, splintering and cracking. A second effort flung it open by the simple process of tearing it from its rusted hinges. He passed within.
A few moments later he returned into the full sunlight. Just for one moment he glanced at his drowsy team. Then he glanced round at the other buildings, all of which had been lightly boarded up. Finally he sought the hay corral. There was a small scattering of loose hay littering it, otherwise the place was empty.
He collected an armful of the hay. It was the best offering he could make to his team. He had tried the barn for feed, but had drawn a blank. So he came back to his horses, removed their bits, and, leaving them busily devouring the hay, passed on to complete his investigations.
He spent a full hour at his task, and when he returned to his wagon to water his horses, and feed them from the reserve of oats he carried with him, it was in the full knowledge that Andy’s farm was abandoned for good.
There was not a living thing to be discovered anywhere.The man’s horses were gone. His two cows. His spring wagon, harness, and even the wealth of implements he had acquired from the machine agent. There was not a spade, or fork, or axe, or saw, about the place. The house, too, was similarly bare. Such items of furnishing as the place had possessed had vanished. Blankets, pots, and crocks—all had been swept away. And the answer to it came to him without even an effort. The man had given up, and either sold up, or been sold up—the man who had promised to marry Molly before the summer was out.
He had fixed his team and seated himself in the shade of his wagon, prepared to eat such food as he had brought with him.
The full significance of the thing he had discovered slowly took possession of him. And he found in it the looked-for answer to the latest change in Molly. Oh, yes, it was clear enough to him now. The whole thing must have been in contemplation, even exactly planned, at the time when—yes, that was it. Molly had found the same as he had found. What did it signify? Was it that the man reckoned he would no longer need the place with Molly as his wife? It looked that way. Then why had he not shown up in three weeks?
The old man sat there eating, and labouring heavily with thought. He saw the whole thing in its own light. He contemplated it from the viewpoint of his own experiences of men. Deliberately, definitely, his mind fixed itself on the night of the dance, and his whole focus became preoccupied with the girl’s breakdown after McFardell’s departure on that night.
Why? Why? Why that flood of tears? All the rest receded into the background. That one detail stood out above all others. And as he considered it, as he translated it in the only fashion possible to him, a sickening horror took possession of him.