By Right of Purchase
by Harold Bindloss · English · Gutenberg #36705 · 531,594 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: By Right of Purchase
Author: Harold Bindloss
Illustrator: Alfred James Dewey
Release date: July 12, 2011 [eBook #36705]
Most recently updated: August 29, 2015
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BY RIGHT OF PURCHASE ***
Produced by Steven desJardins and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project.)
BY RIGHT OF PURCHASE
[Illustration: "GET HOLD OF THE BEASTS, SOME OF YOU. IT'S MRS. LELAND.
SHE'S A DAISY!"--Page 297]
By Right of Purchase
By HAROLD BINDLOSS
AUTHOR OF "Alton of Somasco," etc.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY ALFRED JAMES DEWEY
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1908, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
All rights reserved
September, 1908
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BARROCK-HOLME 3
II. LELAND IS ROUSED TO PITY 15
III. PRESSURE OF CIRCUMSTANCES 26
IV. LELAND MAKES THE PLUNGE 36
V. NO ESCAPE 48
VI. THE PRAIRIE 60
VII. CARRIE MAKES HER VIEWS CLEAR 73
VIII. LELAND SEEKS DISTRACTION 86
IX. FARMERS IN COUNCIL 98
X. HOMICIDE 109
XI. SEEDTIME 121
XII. LELAND'S PROTEST 134
XIII. CARRIE ABASES HERSELF 146
XIV. THE OUTLAWS STRIKE BACK 159
XV. BENEFICENT RAIN 170
XVI. URMSTON SHOWS HIS PRUDENCE 181
XVII. CARRIE MAKES A COMPARISON 191
XVIII. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 202
XIX. PRAIRIE-HAY 215
XX. AN UNDERSTANDING 227
XXI. A WILLING SACRIFICE 237
XXII. HAIL 248
XXIII. GALLWEY'S ADVENTURE 261
XXIV. LELAND MAKES SURE 272
XXV. A PORTENTOUS LIGHT 281
XXVI. FIGHTING FIRE 292
XXVII. LELAND FEELS THE STRAIN 303
XXVIII. CARRIE'S RESPONSIBILITY 313
XXIX. LELAND STRIKES BACK 324
XXX. HARVEST 335
By Right of Purchase
CHAPTER I
BARROCK-HOLME
It was a hot September afternoon. Leland wondered vaguely how the
harvesting and threshing were progressing in his own far distant
country, as he leant on the moss-grown wall of the terrace beneath the
old house of Barrock-holme. He had been a week there now as the guest of
Lieutenant Denham, whose acquaintance he had originally made out on the
wide prairie in Western Canada, and for whom he had a certain liking
that was slightly tinged with contempt. The estate would be Jimmy
Denham's some day, provided that his father succeeded in keeping it out
of the grasp of his creditors. Those who knew the old man well fancied
that he might with difficulty accomplish it, for Branscombe Denham of
Barrock-holme was not troubled by many scruples, and had acquired
considerable proficiency in the evasion of debts.
The mansion stood on the brink of a ravine in the desolate border
marshes. Part of it had been built to stand a siege in the days of the
Scottish wars. The strong square tower was intact and habitable still;
the rest of the low building stretched round three sides of a
quadrangle, with a dry moat across the fourth, beyond which lawn and
flower-garden lay shielded from the shrewd border winds by tall,
lichened walls. Through an archway one could look down, across
silver-stemmed birches and dusky firs, upon the Barrock flashing in the
depths of the ravine.
Leland found the prospect pleasant as he lounged there, with a cigar in
his hand. He was accustomed to his own country, and there was something
congenial and, in a fashion, familiar in the sweep of lonely moorlands
and bleak Scottish hills which stretched, shining warm in the paling
sunlight, along the northern horizon. It reminded him of his own
country, which was even more wild and desolate, on the southern border
of Western Canada. He had been three months in England, and was already
longing to be home again, though he had found what he called the
hardness of the North congenial.
It was a land of legends and traditions, of which they were rather proud
at Barrock-holme. The grey tower had more than once been beset by the
border spears, on whom the dragon's mouth on the wall above had spouted
boiling oil. There was an oak on the edge of the ravine which had borne
bitter fruit in the days of foray, and--for the men of Barrock-holme
could strike back tellingly then--the quadrangle had been filled with
Scottish cattle. They were grim, hard men, and what he had heard of
their doings appealed to Leland. He himself was in some respects a hard
man, and rather primitive. The life of the wardens of Barrock-holme and
the moss-troopers was rather more comprehensible to him than the one of
which he had had brief glimpses in London.
While he stood there, Jimmy Denham came along the terrace, and stopped
beside him.
"You're not going down to join them?" he said, indicating with a little
wave of a particularly well-shaped hand the white-clad figures that
flitted to and fro across a sunken square of turf beyond the lawn.
"No," said Leland. "I don't play tennis well. In fact, I don't play any
of your games. I never had time to learn them."
Denham sat down upon the wall and looked at him languidly. He was a
well-favoured young man, tall and fair, with pale blue eyes, and
distinguished by a finicking, almost feminine daintiness in dress and
person, though he was proficient in most manly sports and a soldier. His
friends, however, were aware that his fastidiousness was much less
noticeable in his character.
"One can't do everything," he said lazily. "I don't know that I've seen
another beginner show quite as good form at billiards as you do. I'll
play you fifty with the same allowance as last time. It will be some
time yet before dinner."
"Not just now. It seems to me I've had about enough of billiards for one
week. To be quite straight, one finds learning your amusements a trifle
expensive, and I'm not sure they're worth it. You see, I'm not going to
stay here forever, and once I go back, it will probably be a very long
while before I take part in any of them again."
Denham laughed with undiminished good-humour. "Well," he said, "though I
have taken a little out of you, the acquisition of knowledge is usually
more or less costly. There's a couple of hours to put in, anyway. What
would you like to do?"
"I don't mind poker, if you'll make it high enough."
Denham saw the little twinkle in his eyes, and languidly shook his head.
"No," he said; "I rather fancy you would have me there. The suggestion's
a bit significant, and I have a notion your nerve's too good. Of course,
it isn't very sporting to say no, but I really can't afford to face a
risk just now."
"Which was probably why you wanted to play billiards with me?"
Denham regarded him reproachfully for a moment or two, and then made a
little gesture. "That coming from some people might be considered
offensive, but nobody seems to mind how you express yourself, although
your observations aren't always particularly delicate. Still, I'm
willing to admit that I want fifty pounds rather worse than I generally
do."
"I wonder," said Leland, with a trace of dryness, "if you would take it
amiss if I offered to lend it to you?"
Jimmy Denham smiled delicately where another man would have grinned.
"Not in the least! In fact, I should consider myself distinctly obliged
to you."
"Then you shall have a cheque after dinner."
Denham thanked him without effusion. One could almost have fancied that
it was he who was conferring the favour. As Leland listened, a little
sardonic smile crept into his eyes. He was known in his own country as a
shrewd man, and was quite aware that he ran some risk in lending his
comrade fifty pounds. But Jimmy had done him one or two kindnesses, and
that counted for much with Leland.
"Who is the very pretty girl who has just come into the tennis ground?"
he asked.
"My sister," said Denham. "I had almost forgotten you had not met
Carrie. She is rather pretty, though. While the governor and I are
Denhams, she takes after the other side of the family in more ways than
one. She has only just come from Town, you know."
Leland did not know. He had merely heard that there was a Carrie Denham;
but as he looked down across the moat he was conscious of a sudden
interest in the girl. She stood with one hand on the back of a
basket-chair, her long white dress flowing in easy lines about her tall
and shapely figure. So far as he could see it, her face beneath the big
white hat was attractive, too; but it was her pose that vaguely
impressed him. There was a suggestion of strength and pride in it that
was by no means noticeable in the case of either her father or Jimmy
Denham. The appearance of the man with whom she talked was, however,
much less pleasing. He was inclined to be portly, his face was coarsely
fleshy, with the distinctive stamp of the city on him. He looked out of
place in that quaint old pleasance on the desolate border side. He
reminded Leland forcibly of the caricatures he had seen of Hebrew
usurers.
"And the gentleman?" he asked.
Denham laughed. "You would expect his name to be Moses, or Levy, but, as
a matter of fact, it isn't. Anyway, he calls himself Aylmer. A friend of
the governor's, and the usual something in the city. Comes down for a
week or two at the partridges, ostensibly, at least, though it's quite
possible there will be a dog or two, and, perhaps, a keeper, disabled
before he goes away. If you care to come down, I'll present you to
Carrie. She knows you are here, and is no doubt a trifle curious about
you."
If she was, Miss Denham concealed the fact very well, and Leland, who
was not readily embarrassed, felt a quite unusual diffidence as she held
out a little white hand. He noticed, however, that she looked at him
frankly, and that she had a beautiful hand, like the rest of the
Denhams. Her face was cold and somewhat colourless, with dusky hair low
on the broad forehead, unusually straight brows, and dark eyes; a
beautiful face it seemed to him, but one that had a vague suggestion of
weariness in it just then. Carrie Denham, he thought, in no way
resembled her easy-going brother Jimmy. There was, as he expressed it to
himself, more grit in her; and yet he was, without exactly knowing why,
rather sorry for her. She was evidently not more than three or
four-and-twenty, and he felt there must be a reason for her quietness
and reserve, which appeared a trifle unnatural.
She, on her part, saw a tall and wiry rather than stalwart man, some
four or five years older than herself, especially straight of limb,
holding himself well, whilst his bronzed face, which was otherwise of
brown-eyed, English type, showed undoubted force. He was, she fancied, a
man accustomed to exert authority, but not exactly what in the most
restricted English sense of the word would be called a gentleman. At
least, he was evidently one who earned his living, and his hands were
curiously brown and hard, while the manner in which he wore his
shooting clothes suggested that he seldom wasted much time over his
toilet.
"I hope you will find your stay at Barrock-holme pleasant," she said.
"In weather like this the birds should lie well. You have not been here
long?"
"A week," said Leland.
Jimmy Denham had in the meanwhile passed on. His sister glanced at the
fleshy Aylmer, who was about to move the chair for her.
"No," she said in a coldly even voice, "you need not trouble. I am not
going to stay here. Have they shown you our dripping-well yet, Mr.
Leland?"
Leland, who said he had not seen it, surmised that Miss Denham desired
to be rid of her other cavalier; but Aylmer, who protested that he had
an absorbing interest in dripping-wells, was not to be shaken off, so
they crossed the lawn and went out through the archway together. Then
Leland stopped a moment and flashed a questioning glance at Carrie
Denham, for the strip of pathway outside the wall was, perhaps, two feet
wide, and he could look almost straight down through the tops of the
birch trees upon the Barrock flashing in the hollow a hundred and fifty
feet below. He was thinking that it would probably go hard with anybody
who stumbled there. A railed walk led in the opposite direction.
Carrie Denham, however, met his gaze with a faint, understanding smile,
and he followed her in single file until the path grew broader beyond a
bend of the wall. Then looking round he saw, as he half-expected, that
the passage had apparently been too much for the third of the party. In
another moment he met the girl's glance again.
"I hope you were not afraid?" she said.
Leland's eyes twinkled, but he made no disclaimer, which, for no
apparent reason, seemed to please her.
"There is, of course, another path," she said.
"So I should surmise!" said Leland. "Do you really wish to show me the
well?"
The girl laughed for the first time, and the swift change in her face
almost startled the man. The coldness and reserve had gone, and for a
moment she was, it seemed to him, subtly alluring.
"Well," she said, "I have to justify myself, and somebody may ask you
what you think of it. Under the circumstances, it might be better to go
on, although the way is often a little muddy when one gets among the
trees."
Leland was fancying that it must have been muddier than usual, or she
would not have ventured there, when they reached a spot where a tiny
stream came trickling out of a hollow shrouded with sombre firs. A few
stones had evidently once been laid in the moss and mire; but some of
them had sunk, and the gaps were wide between. Carrie Denham stopped and
surveyed them dubiously.
"I haven't been here for a long while, but I don't like to turn back,"
she said.
"Or the men who do?"
She flashed a little, swift glance at him, but his face was
expressionless. "That goes without saying."
Leland glanced down at her little bronze shoes. "Of course, there is
usually a way; but the trouble is that I am a stranger. If I were in my
own country, I should suggest a very simple means of getting you over."
The girl looked at him with something in her eyes that suggested
ironical appreciation of his boldness, but her only action was to shake
her head.
"It is just as well you are not," she said. "We are a little less
primitive here."
"Then," said Leland, "I guess we must try the other way."
He plunged boldly into the mossy quagmire, into which he sank well above
his ankles, and held out his hand to her. She noticed as she sprang from
stone to stone how hard it was and how firm his grasp. It seemed to her
that what this man took hold of he would not easily let go, an
impression she remembered afterwards.
She crossed dry-shod, and Leland did not seem in the least concerned at
the water squishing in his shoes. There was then a scramble up the
hillside under the shadowy firs until they reached the well, which
Leland promptly decided was not very much to look at. It lay at the head
of a little green hollow, a wall of fissured limestones sprinkled with
mosses and tufted with hartstongue fern from the midst of which the
water splashed drip by drip into a shallow basin. Carrie Denham turned
and glanced at him with a trace of somewhat chilly amusement in her
face.
"You are no doubt wondering if I haven't wasted your time," she said.
"Still, now you are here, you may as well notice that the water has
rather curious properties. If you will pull out one of these sticks, for
instance, you will see what is happening to them."
Leland stooped and drew out a slender birch branch, whose feathery twigs
were changing into what looked very like silver lace. The stem was also
crusted with a white deposit, and it cost him a little effort to snap
it across. Then he looked up at his companion with a smile as he saw
that the interior was still soft.
"Do you know that you strike me as being very like this twig?" he said,
and she noticed for the first time his Western accent and modulation.
"The hardness is all outside."
"Whatever made you say that?"
Leland met her half-indignant gaze gravely. "Well," he said with a
little deprecatory gesture, "I have seen you laugh."
"Ah," said Carrie, "there was a time when I laughed rather more
frequently than I do now. I should, however, like to point out that the
stick had not been in quite long enough."
Leland still looked at her with a quizzical expression. "I think I know
what you mean," he said. "Still, I should scarcely have fancied you
would have felt it yet. Anyway, that's not the question; and, perhaps,
it wouldn't do for me to make you stop here. There will be other people
wanting to talk to you."
They turned back together, this time taking the easier way. As they
passed along a tall hedge, Leland heard a rustling on its other side and
darted impulsively through, leaving his astonished companion without a
word. Following through a gap, she came upon him as he picked up a
rabbit from the grass. The little creature's eyes were protuding in an
agony of strangulation, and a thin brass wire hung from its red-smeared
fur. Then Leland either saw or heard her, for he turned his back to the
hedge, and flung over his shoulder what seemed to her rather too like a
command.
"Go back!" he said. "This is not a thing for you to see."
Carrie Denham went back, though she was more accustomed to do what
pleased her, and make others do it, than to do what she was told. It was
a minute or two before Leland joined her, grim in face, an ominous
sparkle in his eyes.
"It was only half-choked, so I put it back in a burrow," he said. "It
would have pleased me to hang the brute who set that wire."
Carrie Denham watched him with interest. "I believe it is the usual way
of catching them."
"Then," said Leland grimly, "there must be something very wrong with the
folks who allow that abominable cruelty to go on. The little beast might
have struggled there for hours in horrible pain before it choked itself
in its agony."
The girl fancied that abominable was not the adjective he had wanted to
employ, but she said nothing further on the subject, though there
remained with her the picture of him holding the little furry creature
with womanly gentleness while he slackened the torturing wire. It was
made even more impressive when, on suggesting hanging for the man who
had laid the snare, something in his face and voice left her with the
conviction that he would on due occasion be capable of carrying out his
suggestion. He was, she decided, altogether different from the men she
usually saw. When he left her in the quadrangle, she contrived to fall
in with her brother.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"Charley Leland," said Jimmy with his nearest approach to a grin.
"I know that already."
"I can't tell you very much more, and no doubt you'll find out what you
want to know for yourself. I spent a month shooting round his place in
Western Canada, and made him promise if ever he came over he'd look in
upon me here. Then I met him in London a few weeks ago."
"What does he do out there?"
"Farm, on a lordly scale. I forget how many thousand acres he has under
wheat, and how many steers he owns; but he's rather a famous man in
Assiniboia. His father was, I believe, an Englishman, but he died when
Leland was young, and the farm and the stock-run have doubled in the
hands of the son. That's about all, except that I rather like the man.
He has his strong points, but needs handling. I fancy any one who roused
him would see the devil."
Carrie Denham asked no more questions, but went somewhat thoughtfully to
her room. On the whole she felt a mild interest in Charley Leland.
CHAPTER II
LELAND IS ROUSED TO PITY
The evening was unusually soft and clear, and a warm, gentle breeze kept
the dew from settling. Leland strolled out on the terrace above the moat
at Barrock-holme. He had spent a fortnight there now, and was beginning
to find the easy-going life of its inmates somewhat pleasant, though at
first it had caused him contemptuous astonishment. Nobody appeared to
have any duties; or, if they had, he surmised that they were seldom
attended to. People got up at all hours, and some of them seldom retired
before the morning. Whenever he walked over the estate with Jimmy
Denham, he noticed many things that pained his eyes. There was land that
lay rushy and sour for the need of draining, the roads in the Barrock
hollow were so ill-kept and rutted that he wondered how any one could
haul a full load along them, and rotting gates and tottering dry-stone
walls dotted the entire acreage. At Barrock-holme, waste and
short-sighted parsimony that defeated its own object apparently went
hand-in-hand. Once he ventured to point out to Jimmy what was in his
mind.
"If you put four or five thousand pounds into the land, you would be
astonished at what it would give you back," he said.
Jimmy Denham laughed. "The question is, where we would get the four
thousand pounds. We are, as you have no doubt noticed, confoundedly
hard-up, and a tenant with capital enough to stand a decent rent would
think twice before he took a farm from us."
"I guess I wouldn't blame him," said Leland drily. "But what you folks
spend personally in a couple of years would set the place on its feet."
"It is very probable," and Jimmy laughed again. "Still, you see, you
can't always live as you should in this country. Of course, I could cut
the service, and we might let the house to a shooting tenant; that is,
the thing is physically practicable. The trouble is that it wouldn't
suit me, and the governor would veto it right off if it did. To be
candid, there is no particular capacity for hard work and self-denial in
any of the family."
Leland made no further suggestions. On the last point, he quite
concurred with Jimmy; but his own life hitherto had been one of
strenuous endeavour and Spartan simplicity, and it was pleasant to feel
the strain relaxed for a month or two.
On the night in question he was quite content with circumstances and his
surroundings, as he strolled out on the terrace an hour after dinner
with his cigar. There was a clear moon above him, and in the air a
faint, astringent smell of falling leaves. The splashing of the Barrock
came up musically athwart the birches in the hollow.
As he was strolling up and down the terrace in the evening dress no
longer strange to him, he saw Carrie Denham come out from one of the
long windows that opened into the old stone gallery. A glance about him
showed Aylmer, to whom he felt an intuitive aversion, hovering big and
fat in the vicinity. He fancied that the girl saw Aylmer, too, for she
came down the staircase at the end of the gallery farthest from him and
moved in Leland's direction. She wore a light evening gown, a fleecy
white wrap concealing her shoulders and part of her dark hair. Flowing
straight to the delicate incurving of waist, it emphasised by suggestion
the outline of her shapely figure. Leland felt a little thrill as she
came towards him. He surmised that she merely desired to make use of him
for the purpose of ridding herself of Aylmer's company, or, perhaps, as
an incentive to the latter; but that did not matter. Leland was shrewd
enough to be aware of his own disabilities; and, no matter what her
motive, she looked ethereally beautiful with the soft moonlight upon
her.
"You need not throw the cigar away," she said, when she stopped and
seated herself on an old stone bench close to where he stood. "In fact,
I should be rather sorry if you did."
"Thank you," said Leland, with a little smile. "It would be a pity.
Jimmy gave me two or three of them, and they're unusually good."
"One would fancy that you were not in the habit of throwing anything
away?" she half asked, half said.
Again the twinkle flashed in Leland's eyes. "Until I came to England I
don't think I ever wasted anything, effort or material, in my life. That
is, when I knew what I was doing, at least."
"Ah," said Carrie, "you would soon get into the way of doing it at
Barrock-holme. Still, why aren't you playing bridge or billiards? Was
the long day on the moors too much for you? I believe you walked home."
"So did Jimmy. It was only four miles. I have quite often ridden sixty
in my own country, and, when it's light, I usually begin to work there
at four in the morning."
"You are a farmer?"
"Yes, as it's understood out there. Our wheat furrows at Prospect would
run straight across four of the biggest holdings on this property, and
I've over a thousand cattle on the new range among the willow bluffs. A
farm of that kind requires looking after, with wheat at present
figures."
"You give all your time to it?"
"Every minute until the snow comes, and we usually begin hauling grain
in to the railroad on the bob-sledges then. In summer it's work from
sun-up until it's dark, and you go to sleep in ten minutes after you
come in."
Carrie Denham's little shudder might have expressed either horror or
sympathy.
"Isn't that, in one way, a waste of life? You have no amusement at all?"
she asked.
"An hour or two after the antelope, or the brent geese in the sloos in
fall and spring, when the salt pork runs out. As to the other question,
there are people who want the wheat we raise. Some of them want it badly
in your own English towns. A man's life was given him to use at what
suits him best. It's taking quite a responsibility to fritter it away."
Carrie Denham had naturally heard this sentiment expressed before,
though she had never seen it taken seriously among her own friends and
family. She glanced at her companion curiously, rather resenting his
flinging maxims of that kind at her. It rankled more when she realised
that there was nothing about the speaker to suggest the trifler or the
prig. As a new sensation, he was undoubtedly interesting.
"And you never take a holiday?" she asked.
"This is the first one, and I mightn't have taken it if several
four-bushel bags of wheat hadn't fallen on me in the granary. The doctor
we brought out two hundred miles to see me wouldn't let me do anything
active when I commenced to crawl round again."
"I think Jimmy said you were quite young when you were left alone."
"I had been three months at McGill--which is to us much the same thing
as your Oxford is to you--when the news of my father's death came, and I
went back and fought my trustees over what was to be done with the farm.
They were two of the cleverest grain and cattle men in Winnipeg, and I
was a raw lad, but I beat them. I was to stay at McGill and be educated
while they let or sold the place, they said; but I had my way of it and,
instead, went back to the prairie where I belonged. Prospect has doubled
the acreage it had then."
Carrie Denham listened with slightly languid interest. The narrative had
been a bit egotistical, but she could imagine the struggle the lonely
lad had waged with the wilderness. She understood already that it was an
especially desolate wilderness in which the Prospect farm stood, and
Jimmy had told her that Leland had neither brother nor sister. He had
made his own way, and had, no doubt, from his point of view, done a good
deal with his life; but his outlook was, it seemed to her, necessarily
restricted. One should not, however, expect too much from a man born in
the wilderness who had had only three months of what could be considered
education. She also wondered why he had told her so much, since most of
the young men she came across took some trouble to keep their best side
uppermost, until it occurred to her that he probably considered the
doubling of the acreage of the Prospect farm a very notable achievement.
It scarcely seemed to her to warrant the effort. She loved pleasure.
Though she was by no means without a sense of duty, the little graces
and amenities of life counted for much with her.
Aylmer and two of the other guests came along the terrace, and Leland
looked at her with a little inquiring smile.
"Shall I go on talking? I can keep it up if you wish," he said.
"No," said the girl. "You have really done enough in the meanwhile."
She rose and joined the others, and Leland was left wondering exactly
what she meant, though it was borne in upon him that she did not object
to Aylmer so much when he had a companion. Then he also rose, and
strolled along to where a little faded lady of uncertain age, who had
shown him some trifling kindness, was sitting alone. She swept her dress
aside to let him pass, looking at him with a smile, but he seated
himself on the broad-topped wall in front of her.
"Why are you not playing cards, or making love to somebody? Don't you
know what you are here for?" she said.
Leland laughed. "I'm afraid I'm not good at either, Mrs. Annersly. You
see, I'm from the wilderness."
"Well," said the lady, "there are, I fancy, one or two young women who
would be willing to teach you the rules of one game."
"Are you sure they would think it worth while to waste powder and shot
on a prairie farmer?"
"They might, if it was understood that he was willing to sell his broad
acres and settle down to the simple pleasures of an English country
life."
"No, by the Lord!" said Leland. "You will excuse me, madam, but I really
meant it."
Mrs. Annersly laughed. "I believe you did. Still, you must remember that
there are not many English estates managed like Barrock-holme. In fact,
one may observe traces of, at least, a moderate prosperity in parts of
this country; but we needn't talk of that. You will notice that a few of
the others besides ourselves have sense enough to prefer being outside
on such a pleasant night."
Leland looked down across the lawn, conscious that she was watching him
meanwhile, and saw Carrie Denham and Aylmer cross it together. The
moonlight was upon them, and the silvery radiance that made the girl's
beauty more apparent seemed to emphasise the grossness of her companion.
In that space of grass and flowers, moated and hemmed in by mouldering
walls that had flung back the keen winds of the border for five hundred
years, Aylmer looked more out of place than he had done by daylight.
Leland, who had read no little English history, could almost have
fancied it was filled with memories of the old knightly days when the
spears of Ettrick and Liddesdale came pricking across the brown moors
and mosses on many such a night; while Aylmer was from the cities,
heavy-fleshed, soft of muscle, and sensual, of a wholly modern type.
"Yes," he said drily; "I see two of them."
Mrs. Annersly laughed again. "So does Branscombe Denham, I surmise, but
that in all probability does not concern you or me." She stopped, and
flashed a swift glance at her companion. Seeing that he made no denial,
she changed the subject. "You have been taking billiard lessons from
Jimmy Denham. Don't you find it expensive?"
"Madam," said Leland, "Jimmy Denham is rather a friend of mine."
"Of course. He is also my relative--which is, however, no great
advantage to him. Besides, I am a privileged person, an encumbrance the
Denhams are scarcely likely to get rid of in the present state of their
affairs, which is, perhaps, a little unfortunate for everybody. My
tongue is supposed to be dipped in wormwood, nobody expects anything
pleasant from me, and the weak points in the Denhams constitute my
special hobby. As you have probably noticed, they have a good many."
Leland looked at her gravely. "You couldn't expect me to admit it, and,
if I did, you wouldn't be pleased with me. In different ways they have
all of them been kind to me."
"Have you asked yourself why?"
"I certainly haven't," said Leland, a trifle sharply.
"Well," said the lady, with an air of reflection, "there is usually a
reason for most things, though it is, perhaps, a little clearer in
Aylmer's case. They have been somewhat attentive to him, too. Branscombe
Denham is one of the most improvident of men, and in that respect Jimmy
is very like him; but, while the strength of the whole family is in the
girls, there is one thing to their credit: they all stand by one another
through thick and thin. I fancy there is very little Carrie would stop
at if it was necessary to save the old man, or, perhaps, Jimmy, from
disaster."
She turned her head a bit. As it happened, Carrie Denham and Aylmer
crossed the lawn again just then, and Leland, following the direction of
Mrs. Annersly's glance, felt that she wished to call his attention to
them.
"Yes," she said, "unless something unexpected turns up, I should not be
astonished if they married her to that man."
Leland looked at her, a slight flush in his grim face. "It would be
almost indecent for several reasons, to say nothing of his age; but Miss
Denham has surely a will of her own."
Though he seldom manifested the tenderness and pity in his nature until
an opportunity for helpful action came his way, his face grew softer as
he watched the pair. His life had of necessity been hard and lonely.
Perhaps, in some degree at least, from ignorance of them, he had grown
up with an impersonal, chivalrous respect for all women. Love as between
man and woman was a thing still remote from him. On the desolate
prairie, a woman was scarcely ever even seen. It was a man's country.
As his eyes followed the strolling couple, he was conscious of a
longing to offer the girl the protection of his strength against Aylmer.
Then the lady, who had been watching him closely, spoke again. "She
decidedly has a will, and, what is more, a tolerably large share of the
family pride," she said. "Still, she will probably marry her companion.
Branscombe Denham is usually at his wits' end for money, and Jimmy, I am
very much afraid, has been getting into difficulties again. Carrie is in
one sense an excellent daughter. She knows her duty, and is scarcely
likely to flinch from doing it."
"But is there nobody else, no young man of good character and family,
available?"
"What do you know against the character of the man yonder?"
"Nothing," said Leland tersely. "Nothing at all, except that he carries
it about with him. You can see it in his face. If I had a sister, I
should feel tempted to kick a man of that kind for looking at her."
Mrs. Annersly smiled as she answered his previous question. "Young men
of the kind you mention, with any means, are not to be met with every
day. What's more, they also naturally prefer a girl with money, and, at
least, there would in their case be a tying up of property in the
settlements. The happy man does not, as a rule, consider it necessary to
contribute anything to the bride's family."
Leland turned sharply, and looked at her with a portentous sparkle in
his eyes. "Isn't it a horribly unpleasant thing you are suggesting?"
"That is, after all, largely a matter of opinion."
Leland sat still a moment watching the two figures on the lawn with a
curious blending of compassion and disgust. Then he rose and looked down
on his companion.
"Madam," he said, "I wonder if I might ask you why you thought fit to
tell me this?"
"One should never ask for a woman's reasons, and I think I have informed
you already that my tongue is dipped in wormwood."
Leland made a little impatient gesture. "Is it Aylmer's money alone that
counts with them, or his station, if he has any?"
"One would certainly imagine that it was his means."
Leland left her presently. As she watched him stride along the terrace,
her shrewd, faded face grew gentle.
"If I have read that man aright, there may be results," she said. "In
that case, I almost fancy Carrie will have much to thank me for."
Then she rose and, crossing the quadrangle, sought the card-room. It was
an hour later when she came upon Carrie Denham sitting alone.
"I have been talking to Mr. Leland, and am rather pleased with him," she
said to the girl. "He is a curious compound of simplicity and
forcefulness. They must live like anchorites out there."
Carrie Denham laughed. "I thought that type was distinctly out of date
now. It probably has its disadvantages."
"Still," said Mrs. Annersly with an air of reflection, "he would
scarcely jar as much on one's self-respect as the people one would meet
as the wife of the other sort of man."
CHAPTER III
PRESSURE OF CIRCUMSTANCES
The early breakfast over, Leland was walking up and down beneath the red
beeches that grew close up to the old arched gateway of Barrock-holme,
one of his fellow guests beside him, and a gun under his arm. Looking in
through the quadrangle, they saw a young groom holding with some
difficulty a restive, champing horse that pawed the gravel and shook his
head impatiently.
"He doesn't like waiting either," said Leland's companion to the groom.
"How long have you been holding him here?"
"About half an hour, Mr. Terry," said the groom.
Terry glanced at Leland with a little uplifting of his brows, and again
addressed the groom.
"You can't pack all of us into that dog-cart, and it's four miles,
anyway, to the edge of Garberry moor," he said. "Do you know how we are
expected to get there?"
"Mr. Parsons of the Dell farm keeps a smart cart, and he promised to
lend it Mr. James when he heard we had the tire loose on our other one.
It should have been here."
"Then why isn't it?"
Leland fancied that a suspicion of a smile flickered in the man's eyes.
"I don't know, sir, unless Mr. James forgot to let him know when we
wanted it."
"I should consider it very probable," said Terry drily. "Have you any
objections to walking on as far as the Dell, Leland? It wouldn't
astonish me greatly if Jimmy kept us waiting an hour yet."
Leland having no objections, they strode away together. Beech-mast
crackled underfoot between the colonnades of lichened trunks, whose
great branches stayed the high, vaulted roof of gold and crimson leaves.
Looking out through the openings between, one could see the sweep of
rolling champaign stretch away into the horizon through gradations of
blueness, and the rigid line of the fells smeared with warm brown
patches of withered bracken.
"It's rather a shame that Jimmy and his father should have a place of
this kind in their hands at all," said Terry. "Still, for the credit of
the country, I should like to explain that there are not very many
English properties run on the same lines. In fact, the Denhams are an
exception to everything, but I really think Jimmy might have got up in
time for once in a way."
Leland laughed. "The loss of an hour's shooting seems to count with
you."
"It does. You see, like a good many other people, I have to work rather
hard for my living, and time is of a little more value to me than it
apparently is to Jimmy Denham. Besides, my stay here has cost me a good
deal more than I expected, and, being engaged in commerce, I can't help
feeling that I ought to get something in return for my money."
"I don't quite understand that last remark."
"No?" said Terry. "Well, perhaps you don't. In fact, I have had a fancy
that you were a bona-fide guest. You see, two or three of us aren't."
"Will you make that a little clearer?" And Leland looked astonished,
though he remembered now several little incidents that had struck him as
strange.
"With pleasure. Indeed, I feel I owe it to Jimmy for his losing us an
hour or two every day. Our amusement costs two or three of us a good
deal directly, as well as the other way. Branscombe Denham, naturally,
doesn't advertise Barrock-holme as a shooting hotel, but, though affairs
are arranged more tastefully, it amounts to much the same thing. You
share expenses of watching and turning down hand-reared birds, and you
get so many days' shooting with entertainment thrown in. The latter,
however, is usually costly. One way or the other, Jimmy has taken one
hundred pounds out of me."
"Ah," said Leland. "Is that sort of thing common in this country? I had
a notion that you were rather proud of yourselves. It wouldn't strike us
as quite nice in Western Canada."
"No," said the other man. "Still, it's done occasionally, and, as to
family pride, you are not likely to come across anybody who has more of
it than the Denhams. How they reconcile it with some of the things they
do is a different matter; but you can take it as a rule that the less
people have to congratulate themselves upon, the prouder they are. In
fact, Jimmy Denham, who, though one can't help liking him, is a
downright bad egg, was at first a little shy of me. I am a partner in a
concern making a certain advertised specialty, you see."
"I wonder," said Leland reflectively, "if the girls quite understand the
position."
"I don't think they do. Anyway, not exactly. Indeed, it's a little
difficult to believe they're daughters of Branscombe Denham, or sisters
of Jimmy. They show some trace of sense and temper, whilst you can't
ruffle Jimmy. Still, I fancy, if it were necessary, they would stand by
their delightful relatives through thick and thin."
Leland lapsed into thoughtful silence. He fancied that his companion was
right, for he had seen a good deal of Carrie Denham during the month he
had now spent at Barrock-holme. She had been, in her own reserved
fashion, gracious to him, and Leland did not in the least resent the
fact that there was in all she said a suggestion of condescension that
he surmised was unconscious. Indeed, this struck him as being what it
should be. Though quite aware of his own value where men were concerned,
he had seen very few women, and regarded them in general with a vague,
uncomprehending respect. Furthermore, the girl's physical beauty, her
pride and almost stately coldness, made a strong appeal to him. She was,
he was quite willing to admit, a being of a very different order from a
plain Western farmer. Besides that, she was the one person who had quite
come up to his expectations, for his visit to the old country had in
most respects brought him disillusionment.
His father had often spoken of it with all the exile's appreciation of
the home he had left, and he could remember his mother's daintiness and
refinement; it was, perhaps, not astonishing that he had learned to
idealise the old land and those who lived in it. It was also unfortunate
that, whilst it might have happened differently, the few English men and
women he had met on any terms of intimacy during his stay in London had
resembled the Denhams more or less, and it had hurt him to discover what
he considered was the reality. For Jimmy and his father he had a
tolerant contempt, and it was, in fact, only the presence of Carrie
Denham that had kept him at Barrock-holme so long. He was sorry for her,
and had a vague fancy that she might need a friend. There was a vein of
chivalry in him, and he was also a just man. His sense of justice led
him to play billiards periodically for somewhat heavy stakes with Jimmy.
It was one way of getting even, as he expressed it, for he did not care
to be indebted to a man he looked down upon. Jimmy, who was skilful and
almost suspiciously fortunate at both billiards and cards, had also no
objections to emptying the pockets of his guests, though, as Leland was
aware, the chance stranger very seldom leaves a ranch of Western Canada
any poorer than when he came there.
In the meanwhile it happened that Branscombe Denham sat talking to his
son in what he called his library. The few books in it for the most part
related to the estate, for Denham had reasons for not trusting his
affairs altogether to a steward or country lawyer. He was, in some
respects, a handsome man, though his eyes were of too pale a blue, and
his thin face, in spite of its unmistakable stamp of refinement, lacked
character. The room was in the old tower, ceiled with dark wood and
sombrely panelled, with one long, narrow leaded-glass window. The tall,
sparely-framed man with his white hands and immaculate dress seemed out
of place there. He was essentially modern, the room belonged to the more
virile past. There was a pile of letters before him, and he took one up
delicately.
"If I could have foreseen that it would lead to this kind of thing, I
should never have consented to your grandfather's breaking the entail,"
he said, with a little whimsical smile. "Lancely has written me in his
usual stand-and-deliver style again:--'I am now directed to inform you
that, unless the last instalment with arrears of interest is remitted me
by next quarter-day, my clients will regretfully feel themselves
compelled to foreclose.'"
He laid down the letter with a little lifting of his brows. "I really
think they mean it at last, and their mortgage covers most of the Dell,
and the leys on Stapleton's holding. I suppose it is no use asking if
you could dispense with your next allowance."
Jimmy Denham laughed, though he was quite aware that the occasion was
serious enough. "I'm afraid not, sir. In fact, as I had regretfully to
admit, unless I can raise two hundred pounds in addition to it before my
leave runs out, I shall probably have to send in my papers. Fortunately,
I think I can manage it."
He spoke quite frankly, and there was nothing in the attitude of either
to suggest that one was a father embarrassed by financial difficulties
and the other a spendthrift son. Indeed, they faced each other as
comrades, one could almost have said confederates, for in spite of their
shortcomings, which were somewhat plentiful, the Denhams at least
recognised the family bond, standing by one another in everything.
"In that case," said Branscombe Denham, "the allowance must stand,
though I don't know at present where it is to come from. The other
affair is more difficult. In fact, unless we face it resolutely it might
become serious."
"So one would imagine," said Jimmy, reflectively. "The Dell is the best
farm we have, and to let those fellows have it would make things a
little too plain to everybody. Besides, it's splitting up the property.
To a certain extent, of course, we are living upon our credit."
Branscombe Denham nodded, though there was a curious look in his pale
blue eyes as he fixed them on his son.
"I'm rather afraid you don't quite grasp the point," he said. "You see,
Lancely's man holds a mortgage on most of the Dell; but, as you,
perhaps, remember, Lennox lent me a couple of thousand, with the
plough-land in the bottom as security. He did it as a friend, and didn't
worry much about his papers, while I'm not sure I remembered to mention
Lancely's bond to him, so there is what one might call a certain
overlapping of the mortgages. Then I found it necessary to realise a
little on the oaks and beeches at Arkil bank."
Jimmy's face grew grave. "I rather fancy they brought you in a good
deal. They were unusually good trees. You sold the timber after you
raised the money on the mortgages?"
"I did. That is just the point of it. I needn't say that I had then a
scheme of retrenchment in my mind which would provide a kind of sinking
fund to meet the interest, and in due time extinguish the loan, in
which case the question of the timber would, naturally, never have been
raised. Unfortunately, the fall in rents and one or two other
matters--rendered it unworkable."
Jimmy made a gesture of comprehending sympathy. "I'm afraid it would
look rather bad, sir, if it came out. Lancely's man might make a good
deal of trouble if he wants his timber and finds it isn't there, to say
nothing of what Lennox, who, it seems, has a claim on it as well, might
do. Still, no doubt, you did what you could, sir, and I'm rather afraid
it was one or two of my little extravagances that put some of the
pressure on you. I needn't say that if there is anything I can do, down
to cutting the service--or bearing part of the responsibility----"
"Thanks," said Denham, as if he meant it. "You were not very
extravagant, Jimmy, as young men go, and we have hitherto, at least,
always stood by each other. Still, I'm not sure that it's my son I can
count on now."
"Ah," and Jimmy's voice was a trifle sharper. "I'm afraid I never liked
that notion, sir. I think I've mentioned it. There's a good deal of the
beast in Aylmer. Has he said anything?"
A curious look crept into Denham's face, and it suggested repugnance as
well as anxiety. "He came to me yesterday, and his ideas of a settlement
were liberal. I pointed out a few of my difficulties to him, and he
mentioned rather tastefully that he fancied they could be got over if he
had my good will in the other matter. In fact, he left me with the
impression that the mortgage bonds would be handed Carrie after the
wedding."
Jimmy Denham's face appeared a trifle flushed, though he was considered
a rather hard case by a certain officers' mess.
"I don't like it, sir," he said again. "I can't claim to be very
particular, but that man is rather too much for me."
"Then have you any proposition to make?"
Jimmy sat still for at least a minute, apparently lost in thought, which
was in his case a very unusual thing.
"The whole affair is a little unpleasant, and I think you won't mind my
saying that much. Still, it's evident that we have to face the
circumstances, and I scarcely think Carrie will flinch when she
understands the necessity. There might, however, be a more suitable man
than Aylmer. In fact, I almost think I know of one."
"The Canadian?"
"Exactly. Anyway, the man is wholesome, which is more than anybody could
say of Aylmer, and I rather fancy he will be a person of considerable
importance by-and-bye, in his own country. If, as I suppose, you haven't
given Aylmer a definite answer yet, I might suggest that you tell him he
must make his own running, and leave the rest to me. Though she's not
fond of any of us but Carrie, I've no doubt that Eveline Annersly would
stand by me."
There was silence again for almost a minute, and then Denham sighed.
"Well," he said, with a little gesture, "you will remember that there is
not very much time left. In the meanwhile aren't you keeping the rest
of them waiting?"
Jimmy went out, and none of the three men he drove to the Garberry moor
could have suspected that he had a single care. They would certainly not
have believed, had he told them, that he was, for once, sincerely
disgusted with himself as well as his father, and troubled with a very
unusual sense of shame. There was courage of a kind in the Denhams, and
they could, at least, hide their feelings very well. He inspired the
rest with good-humour and shot rather better than he generally did, but
he had grown grave again when he had an interview with Mrs. Annersly
shortly before dinner that evening. She listened to him with a little
frown.
"Jimmy," she said, "you are almost as deficient in estimable qualities
as your father is."
"Well," said Jimmy humbly, "I know I am, but you might leave the
governor out. I think he is a little older than you are--and he is my
father. Anyway, though you mightn't believe it, I feel a trifle sick
when I think of Aylmer."
"What do you expect from me?"
Jimmy smiled. "Not a great deal. Only a persistence in your original
policy. I have rather a fancy that you and I have had the same thing in
our minds."
Mrs. Annersly looked thoughtful. "If it must be one or the other, I'll
do what I can. In fact, I don't mind admitting that, seeing what it
would probably come to, I have, as you surmise, had the affair in hand
already. Still, it was not to make things easier for either you or your
father."
CHAPTER IV
LELAND MAKES THE PLUNGE
There was for the first time a chill of frost in the air, so none of the
guests at Barrock-holme thought of lounging on the terrace after dinner.
Some were in Denham's gun-room, some were playing cards, and only a few
were left in the big drawing-room where Carrie sat at the piano. Leland
stood beside her to turn the music over, a duty which was new to him and
indifferently fulfilled. He had no very clear notion then or afterwards
what she was singing. Still, her voice, which was indubitably good,
awakened a little thrill in him. Her proximity had also an exhilarating
effect, and he was lost in a whir of sensations he could not analyse as
he looked down on the cold face with its crown of dusky hair and saw the
gleam of ivory shoulders. This was a man who had usually so much to do
that it left him little time to dissect and classify his emotions.
He did not think he was in love with Carrie Denham, so far as his ideas
on that subject went; but, until he had come to England, the society of
a woman of her description was an unknown thing to him. Her physical
beauty appealed to him, her cold, reposeful sincerity and pride of
station had made an even stronger impression, and now he was sensible of
a vague admiration and compassion for her. He felt, too, a feeling of
awkwardness in her presence, realising at the same time that there was
nothing to warrant it.
He did not look awkward in the least. His bronze face was quiet, his
grave, brown eyes were steady, and, though he was quite unconscious of
it, the pose he had fallen into effectively displayed the spare symmetry
of his muscular figure. There was also upon him the stamp of the silent
strength and vigour that comes of a clean life spent in wide spaces out
in the wind and sun. He did not know that several pairs of eyes were
watching him with approval, and that the owner of one of them smiled in
a fashion which suggested satisfaction as she glanced towards Aylmer.
The fleshy gentleman sat not very far away, and Leland fancied that his
own presence at the piano was justified when he looked in that
direction. There was that in his nature which prompted him to offer
protection to any one who needed it, and he felt it was not fitting that
such a man as Aylmer should stand at Carrie Denham's side. He had been
sensible of this before, but the feeling was unusually strong that
night. At last the music stopped, and she looked up at him with her
curious little smile.
"Thank you," she said; and the man felt his blood stir, for he fancied
she understood what had brought him there. Still, shrewd in his own way
as he was, he was strangely deceived in supposing that nobody except the
girl and himself had grasped his purpose, or that he would have been
able to carry it out at all without the concurrence of one, at least,
of those who watched him. Leland had grappled with adverse seasons, and
held his own against hard and clever men, but he had not as yet had
cultured Englishwomen for his enemies or partisans.
He turned away when Carrie Denham rose, and, moving about the room,
found himself presently near Mrs. Annersly, who was sitting alone just
then on a divan with a big, partly-folded screen on one hand of her. It
cut that nook off from the observation of most of the rest, as she was
probably aware when she settled herself there; but, when she indicated
the vacant place at her side, it never occurred to Leland that she had
been lying in wait for him.
"You did that very cleverly. I mean when you opened the piano first,"
she said. "I never suspected you of being a diplomatist. One could
almost fancy that Carrie was grateful, too."
Leland was in no way flattered, since all he had done was to reach the
piano in advance of Aylmer, who was a trifle heavy on his feet. In fact,
he was slightly disconcerted, though he did not show it.
"Well," he said frankly, "it was either Aylmer or I."
His companion looked at him in a rather strange fashion. "Exactly!" she
said. "It was either you or Aylmer, and, perhaps, it was natural that
Carrie should prefer you."
Leland glanced across the big room, towards where Aylmer was sitting,
and was once more sensible of dislike and repulsion. The man did not
look well in evening dress. It made his flabby heaviness of flesh too
apparent, and the sharply contrasted black and white emphasised the
florid colouring of his broad, sensual face. He was just then regarding
Carrie Denham out of narrow slits of eyes, priggish eyes, Leland called
them to himself, and there was the easily recognisable stamp of
grossness and indulgence upon him. The Westerner himself was hard and
somewhat spare, a man whose body had been toughened by strenuous labour
and held in due subjection by an unbending will. Mrs. Annersly noticed
the clearness of his steady eyes and the clean transparency of his
bronzed skin. As a man, he was, she decided, certainly to be preferred
to Aylmer, and perhaps the more so because there was a side of his
nature which as yet, it was evident, had scarcely been awakened. She was
glad that the drawing-room was large and the place where they sat
secluded, because there was a notion with which she desired to inspire
him. She had already gone a certain distance in that direction, and now
it was time to go a little further. She could see that her last speech
had had some effect.
"Madam," he said, with his usual directness, "I wonder what you mean by
that."
"It ought to be evident," said the lady, with a little smile. "If
everybody's suppositions are correct, I really think Carrie will have
enough of Aylmer by-and-bye. There is no reason why she should commence
the surfeit now."
"Then if she feels as you suggest she does, why in the name of wonder
should she marry him?"
"There are family reasons. Jimmy and his family are, I fear, in
difficulties again, and it will be the privilege of Carrie's husband to
extricate them. I believe I told you as much before, though you do not
seem to have remembered it."
A slightly darker tinge of colour crept into Leland's cheek. "As a
matter of fact, madam, the thing has been worrying me ever since you
did. A marriage of that kind is rather more than any one with a sense of
the fitness of things could quietly contemplate."
"Still"--and Mrs. Annersly looked at him steadily--"the difficulty is
that I am afraid there is nothing you or I could do to prevent it."
Leland was a trifle startled. He could almost fancy that she expected a
disclaimer from him, and meant to suggest that, if he wished it, he
might find a way where she had failed. He did not know how she had
conveyed this impression, and, as he could not be sure that she had
desired to do so, he sat in silence until she abruptly changed the
subject. With a man of this description there was no necessity for being
unduly artistic; the one thing was to get the notion into his mind.
"When are you going back?" she said.
"I don't quite know. In a month or so. Of course, I ought to be there
now; but it is the first time I have been away since I came home from
Montreal, and it will probably be a long while before I take a rest
again. As it is, my being away this harvest will probably cost me a good
deal."
"It must be lonely on the prairie, especially in the winter."
Leland smiled. "It is. Once we haul the grain in, there is very little
one can do, with a foot of snow upon the ground and the thermometer at
forty below. There's just Prospect and its birch bluff in the midst of
the big white circle with the sledge-trails running out from it
straight to the horizon. Not a house, not a beast, or any sign of life
about."
He stopped, and made a little gesture. "Of course, there are big hotels
where one could meet pleasant people, as well as operas and theatres, at
Winnipeg, and one could get there in two days on the cars. I dare say I
could manage a trip to Montreal or New York occasionally too, and we
have a few well-educated people from the East on the prairie not more
than twenty miles away; but, since I have nobody to go with, going away
from home doesn't appeal to me, so I spend the long night sitting beside
the stove with the cedar shingles crackling over me in the cold. Now and
then I read, and when I don't there is plenty to think about in planning
out the next year's campaign."
"Has it never occurred to you that it would be a good deal more pleasant
if you were married?"
"As a matter of fact it has, but I put the notion away from me. For one
thing, I remember my mother, and, if ever I married, it would have to be
somebody grave and sweet and dainty like her. She was a well brought-up
Englishwoman, and, perhaps, she lived long enough to spoil me. She
showed me what a wife could be, and it's scarcely likely there are many
women of her kind who would ever care for a prairie farmer who knows
very little about anything but wheat and cattle."
"You seem almost unreasonably sure of that," said Mrs. Annersly.
Leland laughed. "Madam," he said, "would you go out there to the prairie
and trust yourself alone to such a man as I am?"
The little faded lady's eyes twinkled, and in the tones of her reply
there was something which suggested confidence in her companion.
"I scarcely suppose you mean me to consider that seriously?" she said.
"Still, if I were twenty years younger I almost think I would, and, what
is more, I scarcely fancy I should be sorry. That is, at least, if you
were willing to take me to Winnipeg or Montreal now and then, and bring
out any friends I might make there to stay with me. We, however, needn't
concern ourselves with that question, since you certainly don't want me.
The point is that one could fancy there are English girls of the kind
you mention who would be willing to venture as far as I would. Still,
you would have to bestir yourself, and make it evident that you wanted
one in particular to go out with you. You could hardly expect anybody to
suggest it to you."
Leland was thoughtful, for Eveline Annersly had done her work
successfully. She had first inspired him with a strong man's pity for
Carrie Denham, and awakened in him an undefined, chivalrous desire to
protect her, whilst now she had gone a little further, and suggested
that there was, perhaps, a way in which he could do so. He sat quite
still for a moment or two. The great bare room at Prospect, with its
uncovered walls and floor, and the big stove in the midst of it, rose up
before his fancy. Then he saw it changed and cosy, filled to suit a
woman's artistic taste with the things he cared little for, but which
his wealth could buy for the gracious presence sitting there beside him.
Then there would be something to look forward to as he floundered home
from the railroad down the beaten sledge-trail beside his jaded team, or
swept up in his sleigh out of the white waste, stiff with frost. It was
an alluring picture in its way, but, after all, material comforts had
not appealed to him greatly, and while he sat silent by Eveline
Annersly's side the visions carried him further.
There were, he knew, doors that would be opened to him willingly in
Winnipeg. He could conceive himself becoming a man of mark in the
prairie city, and lonely Prospect filled in the shooting season with
guests whose names were famous in the West. Hitherto he had been a mere
grower of wheat, but he had a quiet faith in his capabilities, and
fancied there was no reason why, with a clever wife to help him, he
should not become famous too, an influence in the new land whose future
he and others were laboriously building up. So far, it was only his
reason the fancies appealed to, but, as he glanced across the room
towards where Carrie Denham sat, he was conscious of a stirring of his
blood. She was very alluring, with her reposeful stateliness, dark eyes
that shone with light when she smiled, and dark hair that emphasised the
clear ivory tinting of the patrician face beneath it. The pity he felt
for her was becoming lost in a quickening admiration.
"Still," he said, "what you suggest is a trifle difficult to believe. If
wheat keeps its value, my life, which is now in some ways a hard and
lonely one, might be changed--it is my personality that presents the
difficulty. There is so much you set value on that I know nothing about,
and one could scarcely expect an English girl with any refinement to be
attracted by a plain Western farmer."
Mrs. Annersly smiled at him. "Well," she said, "I believe I told you I
had no great fault to find with you, and I don't believe the rising
generation is more fastidious than my own. In fact, it wouldn't be
difficult to persuade oneself of the contrary. To be frank, I really
don't think you need be lonely any longer, unless, of course, you prefer
it."
Again Leland did not answer her. He sat looking straight in front of him
with a faint glow in his eyes and his lips firmly set, while an
unreasoning impulse seized him, and swept him away as he saw Aylmer
approach Carrie Denham's chair. Perhaps Eveline Annersly guessed part,
at least, of what was in his mind, for she raised her eyes a moment and
glanced at Jimmy Denham, who was talking to a young girl some distance
away. Jimmy was a young man of considerable intelligence, and though he
made no sign, he knew that he was wanted. A minute or two later he made
his way indirectly and leisurely across the room, and drawing out a
chair sat down near Leland.
"You two look as if you had been discussing something important," he
said. "Has he been persuading you to go out and preside over Prospect,
Aunt Eveline?"
Mrs. Annersly smiled. "No," she said; "he naturally wants a younger and
more attractive person, but I understand is rather afraid that nobody of
the kind would look at him. I have been trying to show him that he is
mistaken."
"Of course!" said Jimmy. "He doesn't quite grasp things yet. There are
few sensible girls who would say no to a man with his income. In fact,
I'd feel reasonably sure of getting an heiress if I had a third of it."
He stopped with a short laugh, looking straight at Leland with something
that suggested a definite meaning in his pale blue eyes. "Anyway,
there's no reason why you shouldn't get any one you have seen at
Barrock-holme, provided, of course, that the lady in question is in
other respects pleased with you."
Leland closed his lips a little tighter, for it was borne in upon him
that Jimmy Denham had not spoken without a purpose, and he realised that
he might be listened to if he craved permission to offer himself as a
suitor for his sister's hand. Jimmy, however, was too adroit to dwell
upon the subject, and, changing it abruptly, led Leland into a
discussion of hammerless guns. Still, both he and Eveline Annersly
realised that he had said enough, which in most cases is a good deal
better than too much. As a matter of fact, his words had stirred Leland
to the rashest plunge he had ever made in his life, though during most
of it he had usually taken the boldest course, holding his wheat on a
falling market and sowing in times of black depression when the prudent
held their hand.
On the next morning he had an interview with Branscombe Denham in the
library, which left him with a very unpleasant impression. In fact, the
silence he forced himself to maintain hurt him, and he felt it would
have been a vast relief to tell the fastidious, immaculately dressed
gentleman precisely what he thought of him. Having on certain delicately
implied conditions secured his goodwill, Leland set about the
prosecution of his suit with a directness and singleness of purpose that
was a matter of delight to those who watched his proceedings. He,
however, was quite oblivious of their amusement. He knew what he
wanted, and it did not matter in the least that others should guess it,
too, but, apart from his obvious directness, he played the suitor with a
grave, old-fashioned gallantry and deference that became him. In fact,
since it was by no means what they expected from him, they wondered how
he came to have it. Though Leland himself could not have told them its
source, it had been his practice in the long nights, when Prospect lay
silent under the Arctic frost, to read and ponder over the best of the
early Victorian novelists. His mother had been a woman of taste, and he
had, perhaps, unconsciously acquired from the books she had left him
some of the mannerisms of a more punctilious time.
It was, in any case, promptly evident to everybody that Aylmer was
outclassed. Leland's wooing was, no doubt, a trifle ceremonious, but
Aylmer's savoured too much of the freedom of the barroom and
music-halls. There was more than one maiden at Barrock-holme who felt
that it was a pity she had not accorded a little judicious encouragement
to the quiet, bronze-faced Canadian, who it now transpired had large
possessions. After all, his stilted courtesy was attractive in its way
and had in it the interest of an entirely new sensation.
Nobody, however, knew exactly what Carrie Denham thought of it, although
it was evident that she preferred him to Aylmer. When at last he spoke
his mind to her, she listened gravely with a slightly flushed face and a
thoughtful look in her eyes.
"If you are wise," she said quietly, "you will not press me for an
answer now. You can wait, at least, until this time to-morrow. Then I
shall be outside on the steps of the terrace."
It was not very encouraging, but Leland made her a little inclination.
"If that is your wish, I must try to be patient," he said.
CHAPTER V
NO ESCAPE
It was towards the middle of the next afternoon when Carrie Denham
leaned upon the rails of the little path outside the grey walls of the
garden at Barrock-holme. From where she stood she could see the narrower
and unprotected way along which she had ventured with Leland a few weeks
earlier, and she could not help remembering his quiet glance of
interrogation when he had come upon it suddenly. She and Jimmy had often
crossed that somewhat perilous ledge in their younger days, the more
often, in fact, because it had been forbidden to them. Though it was, of
course, new to Leland, he had displayed no hesitation when once she had
made her wishes plain. This had pleased her at the time, since it
suggested that he understood her resolution was equal to his own; but
now she brushed the recollection aside, for just then she felt she
almost hated him.
Close by, a narrow flight of steps hewn out of the dripping rock led
down into the ravine, and she watched with a curious sense of strained
expectancy the path which wound among the silvery birches from the foot
of them to the mossy stepping-stones round which the Barrock flashed.
She knew this was unwise, and that she could not escape from what lay
before her, but hope dies hard when one is young, and there was still
lurking at the back of her mind a faint belief that after all something
might happen to stave off the impending disaster. If so, it would be
only fitting that it should result from the efforts of the man in whom
she had once had faith and confidence, though neither now was so strong
as it had been.
A drowsy quietness brooded over Barrock-holme. The men were away
shooting, and the women had driven to inspect some relics of the Roman
occupation among the fells. She herself had made excuses for remaining
behind.
There was not a movement among the birch leaves still hanging here and
there, flecks of pale gold among the lace-like twigs beneath her, and
the murmur of the gently swirling water emphasised the silence of the
hollow. She could hear a squirrel shaking the beech-mast down, and the
patter of the falling nuts rose sharply distinct from the thin carpet of
yellow leaves. Then she felt her heart beat as the sound of footsteps
reached her ears. The man she had once believed in was coming, and, if
there was any way out of the difficulties that threatened her, it was
his part to find it.
He came up the rude steps hastily, a well-favoured young man of her own
world, and almost her own age, which she felt was in some ways
unfortunate then. As he seized both her hands, with a little resolute
movement she drew them away from him.
"No," she said a trifle sharply. "As I told you last time, that is all
done with now. It was a little weak of me to see you, and you must not
come here again."
The colour faded in the young man's face, and he clenched his hands
spasmodically.
"Oh!" he said, with a catch in his breath, "you can't mean it, Carrie.
In spite of what you told me, I had been trying to believe the thing was
out of the question."
There was pain in Carrie Denham's face, and a little bitter smile
flickered into her eyes.
"The thing one shrinks from most is generally the one that
happens--unless one does something to make it impossible," she said.
The man reddened, for, though he was pleasant to look at, a stalwart,
open-faced Englishman, he was very young, and it was, perhaps, not his
fault that there was a lack of stiffness in his composition. He was not
one to grapple resolutely with an emergency, and Carrie Denham, who had
once looked up to him, realised it then.
"What could I do--what could anybody in my place do?" he said, with a
little gesture that suggested desperation. "Stanley Crossthwaite is only
sixty, and may live another twenty years. While he does, I'm something
between his head keeper and a pensioner."
"Isn't it a pity you didn't think of that earlier?"
The man made as though he would have seized her hands again, but she
drew back from him with a slight shiver of hopelessness running through
her.
"You can't blame me," he said. "Who could help falling in love with you?
There was a time when I think you loved me, too."
Carrie watched him with a quietness at which she herself marvelled. She
had, at least, fancied she felt for him what he had protested he felt
for her, but now there was a stirring of contempt in her. Her reason
recognised that he was right, and there was nothing he could do; but,
for all that, he had been her last faint hope, and he had failed her.
"There is nothing to be gained by talking of that now," she said
quietly.
The man, who did not answer her, leaned upon the rails, gazing down into
the ravine with his face awry, until at last he looked up again.
"It's not that awful brute Aylmer?" he said hoarsely.
"No. I could not have brought myself to that."
"The farmer fellow? It's horrible, anyway, but I suppose one couldn't
blame you--they, your father and Jimmy, made you."
He straightened himself suddenly and moved along the path a pace or two.
"It's an abominable thing that you should be driven to such a sacrifice,
but you shall not make it. Can't you understand? It's out of the
question. You can't make it. Is there nothing you can do?"
The girl's face was colourless, and her lips were trembling, but her
eyes were hard, for her contempt was growing stronger now. The man had
asked her the question to which it seemed fitting that he alone should
find an answer. She did not know what she had expected from him, and,
since she had decided that the sacrifice must be made, she recognised
that there was, in fact, nothing she could expect; but her strength had
almost failed her. Had he suggested a desperate remedy, and insisted on
it masterfully, she might have fled with him. Only it would have been
necessary for him to compel her with an overwhelming forcefulness that
was stronger than her will, and that was apparently too much to ask of
him.
"No," she said, with a quietness that was born of despair, "there is
nothing. Fate is too strong for us, Reggie, and you must go back now. It
would have been better had I never promised that I would see you. I
should not have done it, but I wanted you to understand that I couldn't
help myself."
She held out a hand to him, and the man flushed as he seized it. Then he
drew her towards him, but the girl shook him off with a strength that
seemed equal to his own, and, though he scarcely saw her move, in
another moment she stood a yard or two away from him. There was a spot
of crimson in her cheek, and she was gasping a little.
"Go now!" she said, and her voice had a faintly grating ring. "Since you
cannot help me, you shall, at least, not make it harder than I can
bear."
He stood looking at her, slightly bewildered, irresolute, and
half-ashamed, though he did not quite realise for the moment why he
should feel so. Then, with a despairing gesture, he went down the steps
without a word. Whilst Carrie Denham still leaned dejectedly on the
terrace railing, Eveline Annersly, coming through the archway, caught a
glimpse of a shadowy figure moving off through the trees.
"Were you wise?" she asked the girl. "One has to be circumspect, you
know."
Carrie laughed bitterly.
"I do not think there was any great risk. It is a very long while since
young Lochinvar swam the Esk at Netherby. In fact, unless men have
changed with the times, it is difficult to believe that he ever did."
Mrs. Annersly glanced at her shrewdly, for she fancied she understood.
"I'm not sure they have," she said. "There was a gentleman in the ballad
who said nothing at all, and presumably did nothing, too; but I don't
know that I'm so very sorry for you. Reggie Urmston is a nice boy, but I
imagine that is about all that could be said of him."
She stopped a moment, and looked at the girl with a little twinkle in
her eyes. "I almost think, my dear, that if you had shown the Canadian
half the favour you have wasted on Reggie, he would, even in these
degenerate days, have carried you off, in spite of all the Denhams could
do to prevent him."
Then for the first time Carrie Denham flushed crimson as she heard the
thought she had not permitted herself to put into words. The impression
sank in, and she afterwards recalled it. She, however, said nothing in
comment, and the two went back silently through the archway to the lawn.
The rest of the afternoon seemed very long to Carrie; but it dragged
itself away, and at last she slipped out of the house as the still night
was closing down. A full moon had just lifted itself above the ridge of
moor. As she flitted along the terrace, the pale, silvery light was
creeping across the old grey house. It rose above her, a pile of rudely
hewn and weathered stone, not beautiful, for time itself could not make
it that with its creeping mosses, houseleek, and lichens, but stamped
with a certain rugged stateliness, and the girl, who had much else to
think of, felt its influence.
The pride of family was strong in her, and she remembered what kind of
men those were who had built themselves that home in the days of feud
and foray. They, at least, had not shrunk from the harder things of
life, and she, who sprang from them, could emulate their courage. It
seemed that Barrock-holme demanded a sacrifice, and she must make it.
Then a little flush crept to her face as she remembered the part her
father and Jimmy played. It was a degenerate and paltry one, to which
she felt the very stranger to whom they were willing to sell her would
never have stooped. He was not of her world, a man, so far as she knew,
of low degree, one who had held the plough; but there were, at least,
signs of strength and pride in him.
She stopped for just a moment with a little catching of her breath as
she saw him, a dim figure in the shadow of the firs beyond the wall that
lay in sharp, black outline upon the dewy lawn. Then she went on again,
nerving herself for what must be borne. When he had reached the foot of
the terrace steps, he stood waiting her there with his hat in his hand.
It was not exactly what Jimmy Denham or even Reggie Urmston would have
done in a similar case, but this quaint Westerner had seen fit to make
use of the formal courtesy of sixty years ago, and, what was most
curious, farmer as he was, it did not appear ridiculous in him.
"It was," he said, "very good of you to come, though I was 'most afraid
to hope that you would keep your promise."
"Wouldn't such a thing imply an obligation?'
"Yes"--and Leland made a little gesture--"I think it would with you.
Still, you see, the fact that you made that promise was in one way an
astonishing thing to me."
He stopped, and stood for a moment or two regarding her gravely, and the
girl noticed that he was one who could be silent without awkwardness. It
also seemed to her that he had made the opening moves rather gracefully.
"Well," he said at length, "I had the honour of making you an offer last
night."
The girl found something reassuring in his lack of embarrassment and his
dispassionate tone. She felt that the man was not in love with her, and
that promised to make things a good deal easier. She was also relieved
to find that she was mistress of herself.
"It was, perhaps, rather an unusual thing for me to ask you to meet me
here, but I fancied we should be quite alone," she said. "There is
something to be said."
"Yes," said Leland gravely. "That is quite natural. I am all attention."
"Then will you tell me candidly why you wish to marry me."
The moonlight showed the faint twinkle in Leland's eyes, as he made her
one of his queer little bows.
"I wonder," he said, "do you ever look into your mirror?"
"Pshaw!" said the girl. "That is, after all, a very indifferent reason.
I want the real one."
Leland stood very straight now, looking at her steadily, but it was
evident that he was somewhat perplexed. Accustomed as he was to being
frank with himself, he did not quite know why he wanted to marry her
then. A few weeks earlier he had been swayed by no more than an
unreasoning desire to save her from Aylmer, but he was by no means sure
that was all now. She stood full in the moonlight with the fleecy wrap
about her shoulders, intensifying the duskiness of her eyes and hair,
and the long light dress suggesting the sweeping lines of a
beautifully-moulded figure, and her freshness and beauty stirred his
depths. The faint trace of imperiousness in her pose, and the
unfaltering gaze of her dark eyes, which were as steady as his own, had
an effect that was stronger still, for her courage and composure
appealed most to him. In the meanwhile she was, however, apparently
awaiting an answer, and, though he was usually candid, nothing would
have induced him to mention his original reason.
"Well," he said, "I think I have told you that you are the most
beautiful woman I have ever, at least, spoken to, but that, though it
goes some distance, isn't quite everything. You've got grit and fibre
that are worth more than looks. I am a lonely man with big fancies of my
own, and, with you beside me to teach me what I do not know, I think I
could make my mark in my own country."
"You have nothing more to urge?"
Leland made a little gesture.
"My dear, I think you would find me kind to you."
If the issue had been less serious, Carrie Denham could have laughed.
His frankness and the absence of any sign of ardour or impassioned
protest were, she fancied, under the circumstances, somewhat unusual,
but that was, after all, a matter of relief to her. She was willing to
marry him, but she meant to teach him to keep his distance afterwards,
which would naturally be more difficult to do in the case of a man in
love with her. Then he fixed his gaze on her again.
"I almost fancy it's my turn now," he said. "I want the answer to a
question I asked you last night. Will you come back to Prospect with me,
as my wife?"
Carrie Denham felt her cheeks burn, for she had to make him understand,
and it was harder than she had imagined.
"Yes," she said simply; "on conditions. One must be honest, and I could
not make a bargain with you--afterwards--you can draw back now. I think
you know that I do not love you--and I have nothing to give you except
my fellowship. Still, as you do not love me, you will, perhaps, be
content with that."
The moonlight showed that Leland started slightly, and the darker colour
in his bronzed face, but he made her a little deferential gesture. Then
he looked up again, straightening himself, with the glint in his eyes
she had now and then seen there before.
"My dear," he said, "you shall do 'most everything you like; but, when
you say that I do not love you, I am not sure that you are right."
"Still," said the girl sharply, "I, at least, know what I feel myself,
and I have tried to tell you that you must not expect too much from me."
Leland, stooping, caught her hand and held it fast.
"It's a bargain," he said. "You shall be your own mistress in every way,
and your wishes will be quite enough for me; but I almost think that you
will love me, too, some day. I shall try to find how to make you, and I
have never been quite beaten yet in anything I undertook."
He saw the look of shrinking in her face, and, though he had not
expected it, a little thrill of pain ran through him. Then he raised the
hand he held, and, stooping, touched it with his lips before he laid it
on his arm. As they went up the steps together, he looked down on her
again.
"In the meanwhile, I will try to do nothing that could make you sorry
you married me; and you have only to tell me when anything does not
please you."
He left her at the entrance to the hall, while he went in search of
Branscombe Denham, and, as it happened, saw very little of her during
the rest of the evening. It was late that night when the girl related to
Eveline Annersly a part of what had passed. The faded, merry little
woman, her aunt and only confidante, smiled as she listened.
"You probably know your own affairs best, but I can't help wondering if
you were wise in giving that man to understand that you didn't care in
the least for him," she said.
"Why?" said Carrie.
"Because it is just possible that you may be sorry for it by-and-bye. As
it is, I don't think there is any great necessity for pitying you. If it
had been Aylmer, it would have been a different matter."
The girl looked at her with lifted brows.
"Do you suppose I should ever care for a man like that one?"
"Well," said her companion reflectively, "he seems to me a much superior
man to Reggie. Quite apart from that, I never could discover any
particular reason for the belief the Denhams seem to have that they are
set apart from the rest of humanity. If there were any, I should know
it, since I'm one of them myself, you see. Henry Annersly, with all his
shortcomings--and he naturally had them--was a much better man than
Jimmy will ever be. In any case, you would have had to marry somebody;
and, if I had been your mother, I would have shaken you for trying to
fancy yourself in love with Reggie."
Carrie Denham flushed crimson, and her brows straightened ominously, but
she restrained herself, and laughed, a little bitter laugh.
"Well," she said, "I suppose I did, and I had my chances in two Town
seasons. Perhaps I was unreasonably fastidious, but I was--if it wasn't
more than that--fond of Reggie, and, at least, I am willing to bear the
cost of my foolishness now."
Mrs. Annersly rose, and, after looking down on her a moment, stooped and
kissed her.
"Still," she said, "it wouldn't be quite honest to expect your husband
to bear it too. Good-night, and try to think well of him. I almost fancy
he deserves it."
She went out smiling, but, when the door had closed, her face grew grave
again.
"I wonder if that man will have reason to hate me for what I have done,"
she said.
CHAPTER VI
THE PRAIRIE
Two long whistles came ringing up the track.
Carrie Leland rose unsteadily in the big overheated car and struggled
into the furs which had been one of her husband's gifts to her. She had
never worn furs of that kind before, and, indeed, had never seen
anything quite like them in her friends' possession; but, while that had
naturally been a cause of satisfaction, it was, nevertheless, with a
vague repugnance she put them on. They were one of the visible tokens
that in the most sordid sense of the word she belonged to him. The man
had not won her favour. In fact, he had made no great pretence of
seeking it, for which, so far as that went, she was grateful; but he had
evidently carried out his part of the bargain, and now she was part of
his property, acquired by purchase. The recognition of it carried with
it an almost intolerable sting, though hitherto--and it was just a
fortnight since her wedding--she had not felt it quite so keenly. He had
not been exacting, and it had been comparatively easy to keep him at due
distance on board the big mail-boat and in the crowded train, but she
realised it would be different, now they were almost home.
In the meanwhile the great train was slowing down, and, when the
clanging of the locomotive bell came back to her, she went out through
the vestibule and leant on the platform-rails. Two huge wooden
buildings, grain elevators, she supposed, with lines of sledges beneath
them, flitted by. It was with a shiver she glanced at the little wooden
town. It rose abruptly from the prairie, without sign of tree or garden
to relieve its ugliness, an unsightly jumble of wooden houses in the
midst of a vast white plain, which stretched gleaming to the far
horizon, with not even a willow bluff to relieve its desolation. She set
her lips tight as the cars ran slowly into the station. It consisted
apparently of a stock-yard, a towering water-tank, and a weatherbeaten
shed half-buried in snow, and was, as usual when the trains came in,
crowded with men, who looked uncouth and shapeless in dilapidated
skin-coats, and had hard faces, almost blackened by exposure to the
frost. It was all strange and unfamiliar. She had not a friend in that
grim, desolate land, and she felt the physical discomfort almost a
relief by way of distraction from her overpowering sense of loneliness
when the bitter cold struck through her with the keenness of steel.
Then the cars stopped, and her husband, who swung her down into the
dusty snow beside the track, was forthwith surrounded by the crowd. Men
with the snow-dust sprinkled like flour upon their shaggy furs clustered
about him, and their harsh, drawling voices grated on her ears. They
made it evident that he was one of them, for they greeted him with rude
friendliness as "Charley". That was another shock to her prejudices.
Leland, however, waved them aside, and they fell back a pace or two,
gazing at her with unemotional inquiry in their eyes, until he laid his
hand upon her arm.
"I guess you're going to be astonished," he said. "My wife, boys!"
Then the big fur caps came off, while the men with the hard brown faces
clustered thicker about the pair, and awkwardly held out mittened hands.
They were most of them speaking, and, though it was difficult to catch
all they said, she heard from those at the back odd snatches which did
not please her.
"Why didn't you let us know, and we'd have turned out the band? . . .
It's a great country you have come to, ma'am. . . . She's a daisy. . . .
Where'd he get her from? . . . You've married the whitest man on the
prairie, Mrs. Leland. . . . Some tone about that one."
A little red spot burned in Carrie Leland's cheeks. She hovered between
anger and humiliation. Social distinctions counted for much in the land
of her birth, and it seemed to her that the man she had married might
have spared her this vulgarity. It might have been different had she
loved him, for she would then, perhaps, have found pleasure in his
evident popularity; but, as it was, she felt merely the indignity of
being exposed to the gaze and comments of these ox-drivers or ploughmen,
as she took them to be. That she was apparently expected to shake hands
with them struck her as ridiculous. The ovation, however, died away, and
there was for a moment an uncomfortable silence, during which the crowd
gazed at the cold, beautiful woman who regarded them with unsympathetic
eyes, until her husband touched her arm again.
"Won't you say just a word to them? They mean to be kind," he said.
Carrie made no response. She felt she could not have done so had she
wished, and Leland turned to the men again. "Mrs. Leland doesn't feel
quite equal to thanking you, boys," he said. "She has just come off a
long journey and is feeling a little strange."
The men murmured good-humouredly. One of them pushed his way through the
crowd and shook hands with Leland.
"We sent your wheat on to Winnipeg, as you cabled, and your people have
brought us another forty sledge-loads in," he said. "We're rather
tightly fixed for room, and want to know if you're going to send much
more along. No doubt you know wheat is two cents down."
"I do," said Leland drily. "Still, in the meanwhile I have got to sell."
The man appeared a little astonished, but he made a sign of
comprehension. "Well," he said, "if you could have held back a month or
two, it might have been better. They've been rushing a good deal on to
the markets lately, but I guess you'll want to straighten up after your
trip to the old country. Your sleigh's ready, as you wired."
Leland, who, as she noticed, seemed desirous of changing the subject,
turned to his wife.
"Would you like some tea, or anything of that kind?" he said. "If not,
we had better start at once. It's forty miles to Prospect, and there's
not much of the afternoon left. Still, of course, if you prefer it, they
might fix you up a fairly decent room at the hotel to-night."
Carrie glanced at the little desolate town. It appeared uninviting
enough, but when she spoke the words seemed to stick in her throat.
"No," she said; "I would sooner go--home."
Leland said something to the man beside him, and then led Carrie into a
very dirty wooden room with a big stove in the midst of it, after which
he left her to watch, with a sinking heart, the departing train clatter
out into the darkness.
He came back transformed--with a battered fur cap hiding most of his
face, in a very big and somewhat tattered fur coat. With a fresh shock
of dismay, she noticed that he now looked very much as the others did.
In another minute he had lifted her into the sleigh and wrapped the big
robes about her. Then he shook the reins and they were whirled away down
the long smear of trail that led straight off to the horizon.
It was beaten hard, the team were fresh and fast, and for a while the
girl felt the exhilaration of the swift rush through nipping air. The
desolate town faded behind her; a grey blur that lifted itself out of
the horizon, and was a big birch bluff, came flitting back to her; there
was deep stillness, only intensified by the screech of runners and the
soft drumming of hoofs. A vast sweep of fleckless azure overhung the
glistening plain below. It was not all white, however, for there were
shades of grey and dusky purple in the hollows, and the trail was a wavy
riband that rose and fell in varying blue. It was beautiful in its own
way, and the stinging air stirred her blood like wine. That was for an
hour or so; but when the sun dipped, a red, copper ball, amidst a frosty
haze, and the blues and greys crept wide across the whiteness of the
plain, the cold laid hold of her. Leland, who had scarcely spoken,
looked down.
"Are you warm?" he said.
The girl was scarcely willing to admit that she was not; but the frost
of the Northwest strikes keen and deep, and, after all, it was his
business to attend to her physical comfort.
"No," she said; "I am very cold."
Leland nodded, though there was light enough to show the curious look in
his eyes. "Well," he said, "that ought to be excuse enough for me, and
it's going to be a good deal colder presently."
He slipped his free arm round her, and drew her to him masterfully. Then
he shook the furs higher about her neck with the hand that held the
reins, and Carrie, who felt that protest would be useless and
undignified, said nothing when she found her shoulder drawn against his
breast, though the old fur coat had a faint but unmistakable odour of
tobacco and the stable about it.
Leland looked down on her with a little laugh. "After all, that is where
you ought to be," he said. "Perhaps, if I am very good to you, you will
come there of your own will, by-and-bye."
Carrie said nothing, and, though she felt her cheeks burn, it was not
altogether with anger against him. The man had been tactfully
considerate, and had deferred to her as she felt that Aylmer would not
have done. Indeed, she realised that she owed him a good deal, if only
because of the delicacy he had displayed, and which she had scarcely
expected from one so much beneath her in station. It was not even so
repugnant as she had fancied to lie there warmed by the heat of his
body, with his arm about her, and she felt, at least, a comforting
confidence in his ability to shelter and protect her. What Leland felt
he did not tell her until some time afterwards. He was accustomed to
restraint, and, too, the driving occupied most of his attention, for
darkness was creeping across the waste, and the snow was deep outside
the beaten trail.
Then the cold increased until it grew numbing, and when the pain ceased,
all feeling died out of the girl's hands and feet. She gradually grew
drowsy, and, looking up now and then with heavy eyes, saw only the dim
shapes of the horses projected against the bitter blueness of the night.
Still, at times, they plunged into belts of shadow, where there was a
crackling under the runners and a flitting by of ghostly trees that
vanished when they once more swept out into the awful cold of the open.
Now and then Leland called to the horses, but his voice was lost again
next moment in the silence it had scarcely broken. A curious sense of
the unreality of it all came upon the girl. She almost felt that, if she
could cry out, he and the team would vanish, and all would be with her
as it had been in England before she met him. Then the drumming of hoofs
grew very faint, and with a half-conscious desire for warmth she crept
still closer to the silent man, who looked down on her very
compassionately, and then, setting his lips, gave his attention again to
the team. She remembered nothing further until she roused herself at a
pressure on her arm.
"Prospect is close in front of us," said her companion.
She raised herself a trifle, and, looking round with a shiver, saw a
half-moon sailing low above a dusky mass of trees. What seemed to be a
wooden house stood in the midst of them, and its windows flung out
streaks of ruddy light upon the snow. Behind it, she could dimly see a
range of strange, shapeless buildings. They did not in the least look
like English stables, barns, or granaries. Then there was a sound of
voices, and a door swung open, letting out a broader track of
brightness, in the midst of which the sleigh pulled up. Shadowy figures
appeared here and there, and Leland, who unstrapped the robes, rolled
them about her. Then, before she quite realised his purpose, he had
lifted her and them together, and was walking stiffly towards the house.
In another minute or two he set her down in a little log-walled room
which had a tiled stove in the middle of it, and a hard-featured elderly
woman came towards her with a kindly smile in her eyes.
"Mrs. Nesbit, Carrie," said the man. "She has been looking after the
house for me lately. My wife's 'most frozen, and you'll do what you can
to make her comfortable. . . . I suppose those are the fixings from
Montreal?"
Mrs. Nesbit said they were, but that they had arrived with one of the
sledges too late to be opened that day. Leland pointed to several
canvas-covered rolls and bulky cases as he turned to the girl.
"They're curtains and rugs and carpets, and things of that kind," he
said. "We don't worry much about them on the prairie, but this room and
the next one are your own, unless there are any you like better. We'll
get the cases opened to-morrow."
He went out, and it was some little time later when Carrie found him
awaiting her in a great bare room. There were antelope heads, guns,
axes, rifles, and here and there a splendid cluster of wheat ears, upon
the walls, but there was nothing on the floor, and the furniture
appeared to consist of a table, a carpenter's bench, a set of
bookshelves, and a few lounge chairs. Still, it was well warmed by the
big crackling stove, and she sank with a little sigh of physical content
into one of the chairs he drew out. Leland, who now wore a jacket of
soft white deer-skin, stooped beside her and took one of her still
chilly hands in his. It was also the one on a finger of which there
gleamed the ring, and he glanced at it with a queer, half-wistful little
smile.
"I hope you will be happy here. What I can do to make it home to you
will be done," he said.
He stopped a moment, and, seeing she made no response, went on:
"All the way out I have thought of you sitting here. Since my mother, no
woman but Mrs. Nesbit has crossed my threshold. It has been all work and
loneliness with me. Won't you try to make it different now?"
He laid his other hand gently on her shoulder, and the girl who bore his
name felt her cheeks burn as she turned her eyes away. A caress would
have been in one sense a very little thing, but she could not bring
herself to invite it then, and she was further warned by what she saw in
her companion's eyes.
Leland for a moment closed one of his hard hands. Presently he smiled
again and, drawing another of the chairs up, sat down beside her.
"Well," he said, "you will get used to me by-and-bye, and I only want to
please you in the meanwhile. And now about Mrs. Nesbit. We'll send her
away if it would suit you, and you can get somebody from Winnipeg,
though I don't know that it wouldn't be better to let Jake do the
cooking and cleaning as before. It's quite difficult to get maids in
this country, and, when you've had them 'bout a week, they marry
somebody. Anyway, that's your business. The one thing to be done is what
you like, but if you could see your way to keep Mrs. Nesbit, it would
please me."
It was almost the only thing he had asked of her, and she was willing to
humour him in this. "Of course," she said. "In fact, I rather like her.
Who is she?"
"A widow, the mother of one of the boys who drives a team for me. Wages
come down when there's little doing with the snow upon the ground, and
he's away railroading. I told him I'd see the old lady was looked after
until he came back again."
"But how could you have done that, if I had sent her away?"
"I'd have boarded her out with Custer at The Range, whose wife wants
help and can't hire it. Mrs. Nesbit would never have known where the
money came from."
Carrie Leland smiled. It was only a few months since she had first set
eyes upon the man, but she felt that, if she had been his housekeeper, a
device of that kind would not have availed with her. There was no doubt
that he had his strong points.
Then another young man came in, and was presented to her as Tom Gallwey.
He called her husband "Charley", and spoke with a clean English
intonation.
"I'm going round to give the boys their instructions," he said. "We have
cleaned out the sod granaries as you cabled. Are we to break into the
straw-pile to-morrow?"
"Yes," said Leland. "You'll go on hauling wheat in with every team."
"I suppose you know what has happened to the market? One would fancy it
wasn't a good time to sell."
"Still, you'll haul that wheat in. We'll go into the rest to-morrow.
Will you come back to supper?"
The young man glanced at Carrie. "If Mrs. Leland will excuse me, I think
not," he said, and departed, as he evidently considered, tactfully.
"An Englishman?" said the girl, with a trace of colour in her face.
"I've never asked him, but he talks like one. I struck him shovelling on
a railroad, and looking very sick, two or three years ago. Now he gets
decent pay for looking after things for me."
Just then another man in weirdly patched blue-jean, who limped in his
walk and carried the tray with his left hand, brought in supper. He
gazed at Carrie so hard that he spilled some of the contents of the
dishes, and, when he went out, she glanced at her husband with a smile.
"I suppose that is another pensioner?" she said.
"No," said Leland. "He earns his pay, and all I did was to make it a
little easier for him. He got himself mixed up with a threshing mill at
another place a while ago."
"And he naturally came to you?"
Leland's eyes sparkled shrewdly. "Well," he said, "I guess I get my full
value out of him. Won't you come to supper?"
Carrie took her place at the head of the table, and found the pork,
fried potatoes, apples, flapjacks, and hot corn-cakes much more
palatable than she had expected. She also looked very dainty sitting
there in the great bare room, and was not displeased when Leland told
her so. In fact, the more she saw of him, the more favourably he
impressed her, and, though she remembered always that she was a Denham
of Barrock-holme, and he a Western farmer of low degree, she did what
she could to be gracious to him. It was not until the meal was over that
a trace of the bitterness she had felt towards him came back to her.
"I suppose you posted the letter I gave you at Winnipeg?" she said.
Leland showed some little embarrassment. "I did. I was going to talk to
you about it in a day or two, because it wouldn't be quite convenient to
have Mrs. Heaton out from Chicago just now."
Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You told me I could fill the house with
my friends, if I wished."
"I believe I did," said Leland. "Anyway, I meant it. Still, we're not
going to worry about that to-night."
Carrie saw that he was resolute, and discreetly changed the subject. She
had not yet quite shaken off the effects of the cold, and in another
hour rose drowsily from beside the stove.
Leland opened the door, and stood with his hand on it. "Mrs. Nesbit will
see you have everything you want," he said. "Don't come down too
early--and good-night."
He took the hand she held out, and did not let it go at once. The girl
felt her heart beat a wee bit faster than usual, as it had done once or
twice before that day. Again she felt that it was only fitting she
should offer her cheek to him, but it was more than she could do.
Then he dropped her hand, and made her a little inclination as he once
more said, "Good-night."
CHAPTER VII
CARRIE MAKES HER VIEWS CLEAR
It was ten o'clock next morning when Carrie, coming down to breakfast,
found that her husband had gone out two or three hours earlier. Gallwey
also came in, soon after she had finished the meal, to say that Leland
might not be back until the evening, and, when he offered to take her
round the homestead, she decided to go with him. Mrs. Nesbit, who
equipped her with a pair of lined gum-boots, helped her on with her
furs, gazing at them admiringly.
"There's not another set like them on the prairie, and I expect there
are very few folks in Montreal have anything quite as smart," she said.
"They must have cost a pile of money."
A little flush crept into Carrie's face, but she answered languidly.
"I suppose they did," she said. "Mr. Leland had them made for me."
"Well," said the woman, who gazed at her with an air of deprecation,
"you have got a good man, my dear. There's not a straighter or a
better-hearted one between Winnipeg and the Rockies--but it would be
worth while to humour him a little. He has just a hard spot or two in
him, and he generally gets his way."
Carrie smiled, a trifle coldly. "And so do I."
She went out with Gallwey, but the hard-handed woman stood still a
moment with a shadow of anxiety in her eyes, and then sighed a little as
she went on with her work again. She would have done a good deal to save
Charley Leland trouble, and she foresaw difficulties.
In the meanwhile, the girl found the cold unlike anything she had felt
in England, but, after the first few minutes, more endurable than she
had expected. There was no trace of moisture in that crystalline
atmosphere, the sun that had no heat in it shone dazzlingly, and the
snow that flung the sun's rays back fell from her feet dusty and dry as
flour. No cloud flecked the clear blueness overhead, and fainter washes
of the same cold colour marked the beaten trails and prints of
horse-hoofs that alone broke the gleaming surface of the white expanse
below. On the far horizon she could see grey blurs, which were
presumably trees.
Gallwey, who was wrapped in an old fur coat from cheeks to ankles,
proved an agreeable companion. He led her first a little way back among
the slender birches, where she could see the house. It was, she decided,
by no means picturesque, a rambling, frame structure roofed with cedar
shingles, built round what was evidently the original hut of small birch
logs; but it had a little verandah with rude pillars and trellis work on
one side of it, and Gallwey assured her there were not many houses in
that country to equal it. Then he showed her the barns and stables,
built in part of birch logs and for the rest of sods, stretching back
into the shelter of the bluff. They were primitive and almost shapeless
structures, with roofs that apparently consisted of straw and soil and
snow, but she fancied their thickness would keep out even the frost of
the Northwest. There were, however, only a horse or two and a few brawny
oxen standing in them. Last of all, he led her into one of the most
curious edifices she had ever seen. Sitting down on one of the wheat
bags inside it, she looked about her.
It had no definite outline, and, from the outside, it had looked like a
great mound of snow, but she now saw that it had a skeleton wall of
birch branches. Round this had been piled an immensity of very short
straw, and the roof, which had partly fallen in as the bags beneath it
had been cut out, consisted of the same material. It was filled with
bags of wheat that here and there trickled red-gold grain, and she
turned to Gallwey with a question.
"Is this the usual granary?" she said.
Gallwey laughed. "There are quite a few of them in this country. You
see, we don't stack the grain here, but leave most of the straw
standing, and thresh in the field, whilst most of the smaller men rush
their grain in to the railroad elevators as soon as that is done. As a
rule, they want their money, but Charley had meant to hold wheat this
year."
Carrie felt a little thoughtful, for it was evident that her husband's
change of purpose had attracted attention, and she fancied she knew the
reason for it.
"The stables are a little primitive, too," she said.
"They are no doubt very different from what you have been accustomed to
in England, but they serve their purpose, and in a way they're
characteristic of your husband. While there are men who would spend
part of their profits making things comfortable, every dollar Charley
Leland takes out of the land goes back into it again, and with the
increase he breaks so many more acres each year. It's a tolerably bold
policy, but that is what suits him, and it has succeeded well so far.
For one thing, he wants very little for personal expenses. To all
intents and purposes he hasn't any."
He stopped a moment, and then went on deprecatingly: "I wonder if I may
say that I am glad he has married. After all, it is scarcely fit for a
man to live as he has done, stripping himself of everything. It has been
all effort and self-denial, and you can do so much to make things
pleasant for him."
Carrie was touched, though she would not show it. The man, who
apparently had no time for pleasure and no thought of comfort, had been
very generous to her. It was also evident that there was much a woman
could do to brighten the life he led, if it was only to teach him that
it had more to offer him than the material results of ceaseless labour.
Still, that had not been her purpose in marrying him, and she felt an
uncomfortable sense of confusion as she decided that it would have been
very much better if he had chosen a woman who loved him. As things were,
he must give everything, and there was so little that she could offer.
"Where are all the horses and the men gone?" she asked.
"To the railroad. They started before the sun was up, but Charley has
driven twenty miles to meet one of the Winnipeg cattle-brokers. It's
wheat or beef only with most men in this country, but we raise the two,
and Charley is thinking of cutting out some stock for the market, though
it's very seldom done at this season. We only keep store beasts through
the winter, and, as they take their chances in the open, when the snow
comes they get poor and thin."
Gallwey excused himself in another minute or two, and Carrie, who went
back to the house, spent the afternoon lying in a big chair by the stove
with a book, of which she read but little. From what she had heard, it
was evident that Leland was selling his wheat and cattle at a sacrifice,
which, she could understand, he would naturally not have done, could he
have helped it. The reflection was not exactly a pleasant one, for
though Branscombe Denham had carefully refrained from mentioning to what
agreement he and Leland had come, she was, of course, aware that her
marriage had relieved him from some, at least, of his financial
difficulties. After all, though she had sacrificed herself for him, she
could not think highly of her father, and the fact that her husband had
been thus compelled to strip himself was painful to contemplate. It
placed her under a heavy obligation to Leland, and there was so little
she could do, or, at least, was willing to do, that would free her of
it.
It was dark when he came in, walking stiffly, with his fur coat hard
with frost, and her heart smote her again as she saw how his weary face
brightened at the sight of her. It cost her an effort to submit to the
touch of his lips, but she made it, though she felt her cheeks grow hot,
and was sorry she had done so when she saw the glint in his eyes and
felt the constraint of his arm. Drawing herself away from him, she
slipped back a pace or two. Leland stood looking at her wistfully.
"I didn't wish to startle you," he said. "Still, it has been a little
hard and lonely here, and I fancied it was going to be different now. I
was looking forward to a kind word from you all the twenty miles home."
An unusual colour crept into his wife's face. Both of them were glad
that Jake limped in just then with the evening meal, which in that
country differs in no way from breakfast or the midday dinner. Salt
pork, potatoes, apples, flapjacks or hot cakes with molasses, and strong
green tea, it is usually very much the same from Winnipeg to Calgary.
Few men have more, or desire it, on the prairie, and fewer still have
less. At the end of the meal, when Jake had cleared away, Carrie Leland
looked up questioningly at her husband, who sat opposite her beside the
crackling stove. There was nobody else in the big, bare room.
"You haven't told me why it is not convenient for me to have Ada Heaton
here just now," she said.
"You want her very much?" and again the man glanced at her wistfully.
"Yes," said Carrie, "of course I do. I must have somebody to talk to."
Leland made a gesture of vague appeal. "I suppose it's only natural,
though I had 'most dared to hope you might be content for a little with
my company. Anyway, we won't let that count. Couldn't you bring Mrs.
Annersly out? I like her, and she told me that if I asked her she would
come and stay a year. Then there's your younger sister."
"You don't suppose that Lily would come to live here?" and there was
something in her smile that jarred upon the man.
"Well," he said, "I'm sorry. She was rather nice to me. Is there nobody
else you could think of?"
"One would almost fancy that you were trying to get away from the
question. It is why you don't want me to bring Ada Heaton here."
Leland leaned forward a little, and laid his hand upon her arm. "Won't
you let it rest to please me? I haven't asked you very much."
The girl was almost tempted to do so, but, unfortunately, she had some
notion of what was influencing him, and resented it.
"No," she said coldly. "I really think I ought to know."
"Then I'm sorry, but it wouldn't suit me to have Mrs. Heaton here at
all."
"Why?" and an ominous red spot appeared in the girl's cheek as she shook
off his arm.
Leland stood up, and, leaning upon the chair-back, looked down at her.
Perhaps he felt it gave him an advantage, and he would need it in the
struggle which was evidently impending. He had never faced an angry
woman before, and he shrank from it now, but not sufficiently to desist
from what he felt he had to do.
"I wonder if you have ever asked yourself why Mrs. Heaton is in Chicago
when her home is in London," he said. "I can't believe that she told
you."
"Ah,"--and Carrie moved her head so that he could see the sparkle in her
eyes--"you have heard those tales, and believed them--about a relative
of mine. Presumably, you have heard nothing about Captain Heaton?"
"It was one of your people who told me. They said the man was short of
temper. So are a good many of us; and, it seems, he had some reason.
Still, there's rather more against Mrs. Heaton than that she's not
living with her own husband. Knowing you meant to ask her here, I made
inquiries."
The girl turned towards him with anger and contempt in her face, which
was almost colourless now, although she fancied that he knew rather more
than she did about the recent doings of the lady in question. The pride
of family was especially strong in her, as it occasionally is in cases
where there is very little to warrant it.
"Your time was well employed," she said. "You who live here with your
horses and cattle presume to decide how people of our station should
spend their lives."
"There is one thing, at least, expected of a woman who is married; it's
the necessary foundation of civilised society. And the woman you want to
bring here has openly disregarded it. You must have heard something of
the trouble between her and her husband in London, but I can't quite
think you know how she came to be in Chicago."
As a matter of fact, Carrie Leland did not know. Still, she would not
ask the man, who had apparently laid firm hands upon his temper, and was
looking at her appealingly. It was unfortunate that she only remembered
he had presumed to cast a slur upon one of her relations, and was, in
her opinion, very far beneath her. She refused to answer, and Leland's
face grew grim.
"Well," he said, "you are in almost every way your own mistress, but
there are points on which what I say stands. This house was built for my
mother. I have brought my wife home to it now, and Mrs. Heaton does not
enter its door."
Carrie rose and faced him, imperious, but at last dangerously cold in
her anger.
"Your wife!" she said. "Could you have expected that I should ever be
more than that in name to you?"
The veins showed swollen on the man's forehead as he looked at her, and
a dark flush crept into his bronzed cheek.
"Madam," he said, "now you have gone that far, you have got to tell me
exactly what you mean."
"It should be quite plain. You could buy me. It sounds absurd, of
course, and a trifle theatrical, but it is just what took place, and
there are no doubt many of us for sale. Isn't that alone sufficient to
make me hate you? Can't you realise the sickening humiliation of it, and
did you suppose you could buy my love as well?"
Leland made her a little inclination which, though it was the last thing
she had expected just then, undoubtedly became him. "I had 'most
ventured to hope that you might give it me by-and-bye," he said.
His restraint did not serve him. The girl realised that she was in the
wrong, but she had failed in her desire to look down on him. This she
naturally felt was another grievance against him. She had the old
disdain of those who own the land for those who till it, and, although
in this man's case, the contempt she strove to feel seemed out of
place, it was horribly humiliating to recognise that she was wholly in
his hands.
"To you?" she said, with a bitter laugh that brought the dark flush to
his face again.
Leland laid his hand on her shoulder and gripped it hard.
"I have, perhaps, no great reason for setting too high a value on
myself," he said. "What I am you know, but, if you must have plain talk,
there were two men made the bargain that disposed of you. It cost me a
big share of my possessions to satisfy your father, but he showed no
unwillingness to take my cheque, and he would have taken Aylmer's could
he have raised him high enough. Who was the lowest down, the Western
farmer, who, at least, meant to be kind to you, or Branscombe Denham,
who was willing to sell his daughter to the highest bidder? Still, you
were right. It was, in one way, about the meanest thing I ever did. The
blood was in my face when I made my offer--and your father smiled. By
the Lord, if I'd made that proposition to any hard-up wheat-grower
between here and Calgary, he'd have whipped me from his door."
The girl had plenty of courage, but she was almost afraid of him now,
for there was a strength and grimness in his bronzed face which she had
never seen in that of any Denham, and the tightening grip of his
ploughman's fingers bruised her shoulder cruelly. Perhaps unconsciously,
he shook her a little in a gust of passion, and she set her lips hard to
check the cry she would not have uttered had he beaten her.
"Now," he said, "in any case, you belong to me. That has to be
remembered always. How are we to go on? What is it to be?"
Carrie contrived to smile sardonically. "Oh," she said, "sit down, and
try to be rational. All this is a trifle ridiculous."
Leland dropped his hand, and, when she sat down, leaned upon the back of
the other chair facing her.
"Well?" he said.
"It seems to me that we must quietly try to come to an understanding
once for all to-night. In the first place, why did you wish to marry
me?"
Leland set his lips for a moment. It would have been a relief just then
to tell her that it was to save her from Aylmer, but this appeared a
brutality to which he could not force himself, for, in spite of what she
had told him, he could not be sure that it had been his only reason. Her
shrinking from him, painful to him as it was, nevertheless had its
attraction.
"I believe I said that you were the most beautiful woman I had, at
least, ever spoken to," he said. "I was a lonely man, and it seemed to
me I might, perhaps, do big things some day, with a woman of your kind
to teach me what I did not know. That was part of it, but I think there
was more. It was a hard life and a bare one here, and I had a fancy that
you could show me how much I might have that I was missing. A smile
would have helped me through my difficulties; a word or two when one had
to choose between the mean and right, and the knowledge that there was
some one who believed in me, would have made another and gentler man of
me. Well, it seems that you have none of them to give me."
He made an emphatic gesture. "Still, we have to face the position as it
is, and my part's plain. Everything you have been used to you shall
have, so far as I can get it for you. You can have any of your friends
here who will make the journey and be civil to your farmer-husband, and
you can go to them when it pleases you. To save you ever asking me for
money, I will open you an account in a Winnipeg bank, and you need never
see me unless you wish to."
"Ah," said Carrie, "you are, at least, generous. To make the
understanding complete, what do you expect from me?"
Leland moved and laid his hand upon her shoulder again.
"Only to remember that, however little you think of your husband, you
are my wife, after all."
The girl's cheeks burned, but she looked up at him with a little hard
laugh. "I think I could have struck you for that, but it must go with
the rest. Still, even if I were all that your imagination could picture
me, and went as far as Mrs. Heaton did, why should it trouble you?"
Leland stooped lower over her with the veins swollen on his forehead and
a glint in his eyes.
"You and your father tricked me--taking all I had to offer for nothing,"
he said. "I suppose I ought to hate you, too--and still I can't."
Once more he gripped her cruelly. "By the Lord, dolt that I am, I think
I almost love you for the grit that made you show your scorn. Still,
that doesn't count. It is for me to go it alone."
He let his grasp relax and left her suddenly, turning at the door.
"You will want a companion. Will you write for Mrs. Annersly to-morrow?"
"I will," said Carrie coldly. "Under the circumstances it is advisable.
She will be a protection."
He went out and she saw no more of him for a day or two, but that night
she found a blue mark upon the whiteness of her shoulder.
CHAPTER VIII
LELAND SEEKS DISTRACTION
Dusk was creeping up from the eastwards across the great snow-sheeted
plain when Leland pulled his horses up where a little by-track branched
off from the beaten trail. Behind him the wilderness, losing its
gleaming whiteness and fading into shades of soft blue-grey, ran level
to the hard blueness on the northern horizon. In front of him there were
rolling rises ridged with sinuous bands of birches, black in broken
masses against the lingering light in the south and west. There was room
for wheat enough to glut markets of the world on the leagues of rich
black loam that undulated to the frozen waters of Lake Winnipeg. Already
miles of it were banded together by belts of two-foot stubble; but as
yet the plough had not invaded the land of bluff and ravine, creek and
coulee, where the shaggy broncho and the wild steer ran.
Leland was wrapped to the eyes in an old fur coat, and his breath rose
like steam into the dead still air. A cloud of thin vapour floated above
the horses. It was exceptionally cold, and Gallwey, who sat half-frozen
beneath the piled-up robes, wondered why his companion had pulled the
team up there when they were within some twenty minutes' ride from
shelter. Still he did not consider it advisable to inquire, for certain
colts of a blooded sire had been missing, and Leland, who had shown
signs of temper during the day, looked unusually grim. Flinging the
reins to Gallwey, he stepped down stiffly from the sleigh.
"Drive on slowly, Tom. You don't want to keep a warm team standing in
this frost," he said.
Gallwey contrived to clutch the reins, though his hands were numbed
through the big mittens.
"What are you going to do?" he asked.
"Look at these tracks," said Leland drily. "They kind of interest me."
Gallwey spoke to the team, and the sleigh, which consisted of a light
waggon-box mounted on a runner frame, slid on. Sleighs such as are used
about the Eastern cities are not common in the Northwest, where, indeed,
the snow seldom lies so deep or long; and the prairie farmer either
makes shift with his waggon or contents himself with the humble
bob-sled. He now noticed what he had been too cold to notice before,
that there was something peculiar about the print of hoofs breaking out
here and there, a blur of scattered blue smudges in the trail he
followed. Some seemed deeper than others, and there were long spaces
where they disappeared altogether. This did not seriously concern him,
so he drove on until he reached the first grove of stunted birches which
clung beneath the shelter of a winding rise. Here he waited until Leland
rejoined him. It was quite dark now, and he could not see his comrade's
face at all, but, as he flung himself into the sleigh, he laughed in a
fashion of his that Gallwey knew usually portended trouble.
"Go on," Leland said. "I want my supper, and a little talk with Jeff
Kimball, too. One would have figured that man had a little more sense in
him. It's 'most two weeks, I think, since you had any snow?"
"A week last Monday. Just enough to dust the trail. Is there anything
particular to be deduced from that?"
"Only that we had the rustlers round next day, and I've a kind of notion
my colts went then."
Gallwey sat silent while the sleigh glided on. He did not know, of
course, that Leland had quarrelled with his wife, but he had noticed the
man's grimness during the day, and now he was struck with the ring of
his voice as he spoke of the rustlers.
The cattle war in Montana across the neighbouring border, in which the
great ranchers and small homesteaders contended for the land, was over;
and, when the United States cavalry restored order, little bands of
broken men, ruined in the struggle, and cattle-riders who found their
occupation gone, had undertaken a smuggling business along the frontier.
The Prohibition Act was enforced in neighbouring parts of Canada, and
there was accordingly an excellent profit to be made on any whisky they
could run. There was, too, among the Chinamen in the United States a
good demand for opium, which it was supposed came in via Vancouver. For
the most part, the smugglers were tolerated, perhaps from the same
motives that prompt otherwise honest people to pardon outlaws who rob
the rich and the government. At any rate, a farmer seldom grumbled when
a horse was requisitioned, though he knew that the animal might not be
returned. As a reward for his silence, he was likely to find mysterious
cases of whisky near his trail. His opposite conduct could carry with it
many results. For instance, grass-fires, so dangerous to homesteads and
ripening crops, had a suspicious way of starting in the harvest season.
The small farmer, accordingly, was loth to trouble the mounted police
about anything he might have heard or seen, and the rustlers as a rule
knew when to stop, and only seized a horse or killed a steer for meat
when they urgently needed it.
"Do you think it's worth while making trouble?" said Gallwey,
suggestively.
"I want my colts back," said Leland. "I guess I'm going to get them.
Shake that team up. It's getting cold."
Gallwey, who was half frozen already, called to the horses, and in
another ten minutes they came into sight of a blaze of cheerful radiance
in the gloom of a big bluff. Leland held the big cattle run in the
vicinity, though it lay a long ride from his homestead.
Gradually a little log house grew into shape, and Leland, who drove the
sleigh round to the back of it before he got out, turned to the man who
had slouched from the doorway.
"I guess we'll leave the sleigh here," he said. "We have come for the
night, and we'll put the team in while you get supper."
Though he could not see the man's face for the dark, Gallwey fancied he
was a little disconcerted at this announcement. In another half-hour,
however, they were sitting down to a meal. Leland said very little until
it was over, when, taking his pipe out, he pulled a hide chair up to
the stove and looked at the man. "Whom have you had round the place the
last week or so, Jeff?" he said.
"Thompson," said the other. "He brought four or five horses along."
"He did. I saw his tracks where he headed off the trail for the back
range. Quite sure he hadn't any more? That reminds me; I'll want to see
him in a day or two about those steers."
Gallwey fancied this last was meant as an intimation that accuracy was
advisable, and he watched the big, loose-limbed man who was filling his
pipe just then. He appeared uneasy under all this scrutiny, for Leland
was also quietly regarding him.
"Now I come to recollect, it was four."
"Anybody else?" said Leland.
"Custer; he came along with a bob-sled yesterday."
"You can't think of any more?"
"No," said the other man, who flashed a suspicious glance at him. "I
can't quite figure how I could when they weren't there."
Leland smoked on tranquilly, apparently considering for a moment or two,
and then, straightening himself a little, looked hard at the man.
"Jeff," he said quietly, "it's a kind of pity you don't know enough to
make a decent liar."
The man started, but seemed to recover himself again, and it was with
quickening interest Gallwey watched the pair. A smoky kerosene lamp gave
out an indifferent light, and a red glare beat out from the open door of
the stove, streaming uncertainly upon the faces of the men.
It showed Leland sitting motionless, a hard glint in his eyes, and the
other man making little uneasy movements as he shrank from the steady
gaze. As Leland spoke again, the man winced.
"If any man had said as much to me, one of us would have been out in the
snow by now," he said. "Have you no grit in you? Then why in the name of
thunder did you take hold of a contract that was 'way too big for you?
Did you think I could be bluffed by a thing like you?"
"I can't quite figure what you mean," said the other man sullenly.
"Then I'll have some pleasure in telling you. Soon after the last snow
fell, two rustlers came up this trail--there were more of them, but they
stayed down by the big one. When they went away, three of my horses went
with them. Now, who caught those horses and had them ready? It's kind of
curious, too, that they were the pick of the bunch, with good blood in
them. The only man round here who could tell them which were worth the
lifting is you. Jeff, you don't know enough to run a peanut stand, and
yet you figured you were fit to kick against the man who hired you."
Jeff appeared to rouse himself for an effort. "You're guessing a good
deal of it."
"Guessing, when I've lived on this prairie all my life, and the whole
thing is written there in the snow. Can't I tell the difference between
the tracks of a steady ridden horse and a young one that's not used to
the halter? However, I'm open to listen now."
"I've just this to say. It won't hurt you to lose a horse or two, and
that's about all anybody has ever taken out of you, while it's quite
likely you'll be worse off if you make trouble about it. In fact,
taking it all around, you can't afford to get rid of me."
"Anyway, that is what I mean to do. I have no use for a man who sells my
property to his friends. You'll get out of this place to-morrow."
"I guess I'll go right now. Thompson will take me in."
"No," said Leland sharply; "you'll stay just where you are until the
morning, though you can take your blankets into the other room as soon
as you like. It's quite hard to keep my hands off you, and if you come
out before I call you to make breakfast, I'm not going to try."
Jeff said nothing further, but, taking two dirty blankets out of a
hay-filled bunk, shuffled away into a second room behind a log
partition. Leland went after him, and, laying his hands on the little
window, shook it violently.
"If you try to get out that way, we're going to hear you, and then
you'll be sorry for yourself," he said.
He came back and, flinging himself into the chair beside the stove,
filled his pipe.
"I don't quite know how you worried the thing out, and perhaps it
doesn't greatly matter, but I rather think it was good advice he gave
you," said Gallwey reflectively. "You certainly can afford to lose a
horse or two, and the rustlers are the kind of people it is just as well
to keep on good terms with. Sergeant Grier has only three or four
troopers, and the outpost is quite a long way off."
Leland smiled. "Well," he said, "horse-stealing is getting to be a good
deal more profitable business than liquor-running. They get horses for
nothing, and they have to buy the whisky. They haven't gone very far
into it yet, but it's a sure thing that they will if they find out that
none of us seem to mind it. Somebody has to make a protest, and it may
as well be me."
"So far as my observation goes, most men would rather let their
neighbour make it first," said Gallwey drily. "You, however, seem to be
an exception."
Leland's face hardened. "The fact is, I feel like taking it out of
somebody soon. I have had a good deal to worry me."
"One would not have expected you to feel like that just now."
"I guess we'll change the subject," said Leland grimly. "You are
wondering what I sent Jeff in there for? Well, I didn't want him loose
on the prairie. It seems to me he's expecting a visit from his friends,
and I'd just as soon they came and let me have a word with them. You get
into the bunk there, and go to sleep until I want you."
Wrapping one of the sleigh robes about him, Gallwey lay down for the
night. He saw Leland put the light out and sit down again by the
snapping, crackling stove. Through its open door a flickering radiance
now and again touched his earnest face. Though they had been out since
dawn in the stinging frost, he sat firmly erect, gripping his unlighted
pipe and gazing straight in front of him with hard, unwavering eyes.
Behind him the shadows played upon the walls of the gloomy shanty, quiet
save for the moan of the bitter wind. Gallwey, who did not think it was
the rustlers, wondered what was worrying his comrade, until his eyes
grew heavy, and, though he had not intended it, he fell asleep wearily.
Leland, however, sat still while the crackle of the stove died away, and
the stinging cold crept in. He had much to think of, and could see no
way out of the difficulties that beset him and his wife. He had known
that she had no love for him, but, since the night she had met him on
the terrace steps at Barrock-holme, his admiration for her had grown
steadily stronger, and he had been conscious of a curious tenderness
whenever he thought of her. Her smile was worth the winning by any
effort he could make, and the odd kind word she occasionally flung him
would set his heart thumping.
Then the revelation had come, and left him dismayed. He had never
counted on her hating him, as it now seemed she must do, or regarding
him as one so far beneath her that the most she could feel for him was
an impersonal toleration. He was a proud man, and her words had stung
him deeply. It was galling to realise that he was bound to a woman who
shrank from him and despised him, and that the bonds were unbreakable,
no matter how irksome they might become to both his wife and himself.
Then that mood passed, for there was a silent, deep-seated optimism in
him that had carried him through frozen harvests and adverse seasons,
and he began to appreciate her point of view, and that it might not be
an unalterable one. He did not blame her for her courage, or even for
her scorn, though it had hurt him horribly. It was for him to prove it
unwarranted, or with patience to live it down, but he did not know how
either could be done, and now and then a little fit of anger set his
blood tingling as he sat in the growing shadows beside the emptying
stove. His resentment was not so much against the woman as the man who
had, knowing what she must feel, forced her into marrying him; but they
were in England, and he felt illogically that he must strike at some one
nearer, which was why he waited for the rustlers. He had no pistol. It
is not often that the plainsman carries arms in Western Canada, but
there was a big axe at Jeff's wood-pile, which would, he fancied, serve
in case of necessity. At last, when the stove had almost gone out, he
roused himself to attention with a little start in the bitter cold and,
rising, touched Gallwey.
"Get up!" he said. "Slip in behind the door, and shut it when I tell
you. There are horses on the trail."
Gallwey did as he was bidden, half asleep, though he heard a beat of
hoofs that grew louder. Then there was a stamping of feet outside, and
Leland flung a few split billets through the open top of the stove. A
sharp crackling followed, and a blaze sprang up, but the light only
flickered here and there, leaving the room almost dark.
"Let them in!" he said.
The door swung open. Two shadowy figures, shapeless in fur coats and
caps, appeared in the opening, and one of them turned sharply when
Gallwey slammed the door behind him.
"Now," he said, "what is that for? I don't seem to recognise you,
anyway."
Leland laughed. "Come right in, gentlemen. I've been waiting to see you,
and there's no mistake. Jeff's in the second room yonder, and if he
ventures to come out with any notion of making trouble he'll run a
considerable risk of getting himself hurt."
He had raised his voice a trifle, and the rustle that had commenced died
away in token that Jeff had heard. In the meanwhile one of the rustlers
had slipped his hand inside his furs; but Leland, who noticed it, made a
little gesture.
"I guess it's not worth while," he said. "If you'll sit down a minute, I
have a word or two to say to you."
One of the men did so, but the other stood near the door watching
Gallwey, who was, on the whole, thankful that he had taken down Jeff's
rifle.
"Well?" said the first outlaw. "It was Jeff who gave us away?"
"Not exactly. At least, he didn't mean to. You should have got a smarter
man before you ventured to put up a bluff on me. Still, that's not the
question. When are you going to bring my horses back?"
"I'm afraid I can't quite promise," said the other with a chuckle. "With
us, finding is sometimes keeping."
"You have two weeks. If they're not back in that time, you're going to
be sorry."
The outlaw laughed openly. "Come down and look at it reasonably. We have
got to live, and we have, after all, stuck you for very little. With
four police troopers to watch this part of the country, there's nothing
you can do. I guess we've got our grip on it just now."
"You have two weeks to bring back my horses in."
"Then you mean to insist on it?" said the other man.
"I do. Don't you get to thinking the honest men in this country are a
bit afraid of you. They're only lazy. We have nothing to do with the
whisky, but this horse-lifting has got to be stopped. Get out, and
remember it, before I use my feet on you."
The outlaw was a big man. As he slipped his hand beneath his furs,
Leland quietly reached for the axe.
"I could shear your arm off before you got it out," he said. "Will you
lay it down, and see if you can stop in this shanty when I tell you to
get out."
The rustler looked at him for a moment, and, though there was very
little light, was apparently satisfied.
"No," he said. "I guess that's not business, anyway. You won't get your
horses, but I'll give you good advice. Sit tight, and mind your farming,
and it's quite likely you won't lose any more. We're not nice folks when
we're roused, but we're not looking for trouble."
"You'll get it," said Leland drily, "unless my horses are back two weeks
to-night. Open the door, Tom, and let the gentlemen out."
Nothing more was said by either, and in another minute or two there was
a thud of hoofs as the outlaws rode away.
CHAPTER IX
FARMERS IN COUNCIL
Nearly three weeks had slipped by since Leland met the outlaws, and his
horses were missing still, when he sat in council at Prospect with a few
of his scattered neighbours one bitter night. The big room was as bare
and comfortless as it had been in his bachelor days, though there were
cases at the railroad station whose contents would have transformed it,
had he troubled to haul them in. Leland was somewhat grim of face, for
the past few weeks had not been pleasant ones to him.
The breach between him and his wife was still as wide as ever, and he
felt it the more keenly because, since the night of their frankness, she
had shown no sign of anger. Instead, she had treated him with a civility
that was hard to bear, and had professed herself content with all the
arrangements at Prospect as they were. Leland was too proud a man to
make advances which he felt would be repelled, and decided bitterly
that, since nothing he could do would please her, the comforts she did
not seem to care about might stay where they were until they rotted. Her
own rooms, at least, were furnished and fitted luxuriously, in so far
as he had been able to contrive it, and, since she spent most of her
time in them, the one in which his mother had lived was good enough for
him. Still, all this reacted upon his temper, and, on the night when he
had his neighbours there, he was feeling the strain.
There were four of them, men who toiled early and late, and had a stake
in the country, and they were all aware that others would probably be
influenced by what they did. They listened to him gravely, sitting about
the crackling stove with a box of cigars on the little table in front of
them. There was nothing to drink, however, since, for several reasons,
including the enactments of the legislature, strong green tea is the
beverage most usually to be met with on the prairies, and of that they
had just had their fill at supper. There was silence until one of them
turned to the rest with a twinkle in his eyes.
"I'm with Charley Leland in most of what he says," he said. "The law's
necessary, as you find out when you have lived, as I have, in a country
where there isn't any. Still, after all, the enforcing of it is the
business of the legislature, and the most they do for us is to worry us
for statistics and fine us for not ploughing unnecessary fire-guards.
Then there are two or three of us on this prairie who aren't fond of
tea, and, as things are, we generally know where to get a little
Monongahela or Bourbon when we want it. I guess it would give a kind of
tone to this _soiree_ if we had some of it now."
There was approving laughter until another man spoke.
"That's quite right, just as far as it goes," he said. "Give me a
chance of a square kick at the Scott Act, and I'll kick--like a mule. In
the meanwhile, there it is, and you have to figure if breaking it is
worth while. When you begin making exceptions, it's quite hard to stop.
Now, I don't want to go round with a pistol strapped on to me, and,
while we stand by the law, it isn't necessary. So long as I know that
the crops I raise are mine and nobody can take them from me, I can do
without my whisky. That's why I'm with Charley Leland in this thing, and
you have to remember it's quite a big one."
"It is," said a third speaker. "Here we are, a few scattered farmers
with stables and granaries that will burn, and horses that can be run
across the frontier. Behind us stand Sergeant Grier and his four
troopers, while, if we back up Leland, we have a tolerably extensive
organisation against us, and the men who belong to it aren't going to
stick at anything. If we are willing to live and let live, what do we
stand to lose? A horse borrowed now and then, an odd steer killed,
perhaps, an unbranded beast or two missing. Well, I guess it might work
out cheaper than the other thing."
There was silence for a moment or two, and then a young man looked up
languidly. He had come out four or five years before from Montreal.
"There is hard sense in all we have heard, but I think Leland's point of
view is nearest the Academic one," he said. "Every honest man has a duty
to the State, and it is certainly going to cost him more than he gains
if he won't discharge it. There are probably more honest men than rogues
everywhere, and yet one usually sees the rogues uppermost, for this
reason: the honest man won't worry so long as they don't rob him, and
his neighbour can't make a fight alone. Nobody is anxious to face the
first blow for the benefit of the rest, and so the rogue gets bolder,
until he becomes intolerable. Then the honest man stirs himself, and the
rogues go down, though it causes ever so much more trouble than it would
have done if the thing had been undertaken earlier. I'll give you an
example. Begbie hung a man in British Columbia, the first one who wanted
it, and there was order at once. Coleman and his vigilantes, who were
scarcely quick enough, had to hang them by the dozen in California. Now
we come to the question: How bad have things got to be before you think
it worth while to do anything?"
It was evident that he had made an impression. He had shown them the
dangers of toleration; and they were men who, while they did little
rashly, believed in the greatness of their country. They looked at
Leland, who turned to them with a little grim smile.
"They have gone quite far enough for me," he said. "I'm going to move
now. The one thing I want to ask is, who is going to stand in with me?"
The man who had last spoken glanced at the rest. "I think you can count
upon the four of us."
There was a murmur of concurrence, and Leland smiled. "As a matter of
fact, I did so already, and asked Sergeant Grier to ride across and meet
you to-night. He should be here any minute now. In the meanwhile I want
to say that I've been riding up and down the country lately, and have
reasons for supposing there's a big load of whisky to be run during the
next few days."
As they talked over this news, there was a knocking at the outer door,
and a grizzled man who wore what had once been a very smart cavalry
uniform was shown into the room. He sat down and listened with grave
attention to what Leland had to say. Then he looked up quietly.
"I have to thank you, gentlemen, and I'll swear you in," he said. "From
what I can figure, it must be Ned Johnston's gang, and they're about the
hardest of the crowd. I haven't much fault to find with Mr. Leland's
programme except on a point or two."
They discussed it for an hour, and, when all was arranged, one of them
laughed as he laid his hand on Leland's shoulder. "I guess you're doing
the right thing," he said. "Still, in one way, it's a little curious
that it's you."
"Why?"
"Well," said the other man drily, "if I had just been married to a woman
like Mrs. Leland, I figure I mightn't have been so willing to put myself
in the way of a bullet. I'd have let somebody else make the first move
and stayed at home with her."
Leland's face grew a trifle hard, as he forced a laugh. "I scarcely
think marriage has made any great change in me, or that it's likely to
do so."
Then his guests drove away, but the man to whom he had spoken remembered
the look in Leland's face.
"Now I wonder what Charley meant by that," he said, getting into his
sleigh.
Leland in the meanwhile had flung himself down into a chair beside the
stove, and was lying there moodily with an unlighted pipe in his hand,
when his wife came in. It was evident that he did not notice her, and
she had misgivings as she noticed the weariness in his attitude. After
all, he was her husband, and he looked very lonely in the big bare room.
She sat down beside him and touched his arm. "Your friends have gone?"
she said.
The man looked up sharply, and she saw the little glow in his eyes,
which, however, faded out of them again.
"Yes," he said. "I hope we did not disturb you."
"You were suspiciously quiet. What were you plotting together?"
"Nothing," said Leland. "That is, nothing you would probably care to
hear about."
Carrie felt repulsed, though she would not show it. She had meant to be
amiable, and she was a somewhat determined young woman, so she tried
again.
"Isn't it a little lonely here?" she said. "Why did you not come up to
me? I have scarcely seen you the last few days."
Leland's smile was not exactly reassuring. "I don't want to trouble you
too often. Besides, I have been out in the frost since early morning,
and feel a little tired and drowsy. One naturally doesn't care to appear
to any more disadvantage than is necessary."
Carrie's lips and brows straightened portentously. "Were you afraid I
might point it out to you, or do you wish to make it evident to
everybody that you are purposely keeping out of my way?"
"I suppose I should have thought of that, but it's a thing that never
occurred to me. Still, you asked me another question, and, though
perhaps it's weak of me, I can't help giving you an answer."
He stopped a moment and pointed round the desolate room, while the girl
realised its dreariness as she saw the dry white ears on the walls
quiver in the icy draughts and heard the wailing of a bitter wind
outside the birch-log walls.
"Do you suppose--this--is what I bargained for when I asked you to marry
me? You took the trouble not long ago to point out very plainly what you
thought of me, and I think you meant every word of it. It was rather a
bitter draught, but perhaps your point of view was a natural one. I am
not the kind of man you have been accustomed to. In fact, there are very
few points on which I resemble your father or Jimmy."
"Ah," said Carrie, "that was not meant to be conciliatory. It rather
emphasises the distinction you mention. Still, I think you had not
finished."
"Not quite. When you are willing to take me as I am, without prejudice,
and give me a chance of winning your liking, you will not find me
backward. Until then, I have a little too much self-respect to support
you in pretending to be the dutiful wife because you think it becoming.
Your contempt was honest, anyway."
Carrie rose with a little languid gesture. "I wonder how long this
exceptionally pleasant state of affairs could be expected to continue?"
"Until you change your mind, or one of us is dead. If you get tired of
it in the meanwhile, you can always go back to the Old Country for a few
months or so."
"It is really a little difficult to understand what could have induced
you to marry me."
Leland looked at her with a little grim smile. "I believe I gave you my
reasons on another occasion. It would be rather more to the purpose to
ask why you were content with them?"
The girl's cheeks burned, but she turned from him languidly. "You almost
tempt me to tell you," she said. "Still, perhaps I have already let my
candour carry me too far."
She went out of the big room quietly and naturally, but, when she
reached her own apartment, she clenched her hands passionately. Though
she was very angry, she had to realise that the man's attitude under the
circumstances was by no means astonishing. She had also exactly what she
had wished for, since it was clear that he would make no embarrassing
advances now; and yet her courage almost failed her as she looked
forward to an indefinite continuance of their present relations. He had
said that, unless she made it, there could be no change until one of
them was dead.
It was the next day, and she had seen nothing of Leland, when she met
Gallwey, with whom she had become friendly.
The young man, she saw, was quite willing to constitute himself her
devoted servant. At the same time, she felt the sincerity of his
attachment for her husband, and drew from it a comfortable sense of
security.
"Of course, you have heard the news?" he said. "I don't know if I'm
presuming, or if it's kind to admit anything that might distress you,
but it would be a relief to me if you could persuade Charley to be
careful. I'm not quite sure he realises what he has undertaken."
Carrie had, of course, heard nothing, though she naturally refused to
admit it. She also realised the irony of the fact that everybody except
herself seemed attached to her husband. They were then standing in the
big general room; but, after she had sat down and smilingly pointed the
young man to a place near her, ten minutes of judiciously directed
conversation left her with a tolerably clear notion of the state of
affairs. She was also sensible of an illogical feeling of dismay and
apprehension.
"But why does he do it?" she asked.
Gallwey looked thoughtful. "Well," he said, "somebody will have to take
the thing up eventually, and, when there is anything unpleasant but
necessary, Charley is usually there to do it. I almost fancy he can't
help it. As they say in this country, that is the kind of man he is.
Still, under the circumstances, I really think he ought to let the
others take an equal risk, and it might be advisable for you to impress
it upon him."
"You believe that what I said would have any influence?" asked Carrie,
with a curious little smile.
"Of course!" and Gallwey gazed at her reproachfully. "Surely that ought
to be evident."
"Well," said the girl, with a trace of languidness, "I have to thank you
for warning me, and I will do what I can, though I am not very certain
it will have any great effect on him."
Gallwey left her a few minutes later. Carrie, who was now very
thoughtful, saw nothing of her husband that night or during most of the
next day. He came in and asked for supper a little before dusk, and,
when he had eaten it, carefully went over the lock and magazine action
of a forty-four Marlin rifle. Then he put on his furs and girt himself
with a bandolier. On reaching the outer door, he heard a swift patter of
footsteps on the neighbouring stairs. As Carrie came up to him he stood
still, with the blue rifle-barrel gleaming over his shoulder, looking
like a giant in his shaggy coat. She was dressed, as he noticed,
unusually prettily, and, although he set his lips, the little sparkle
crept into his eyes. As it faded, the bronzed face, barely visible
beneath the fur cap, became once more impassive.
The girl walked steadily up to him, and laid a hand upon his arm.
"You have given me a good deal, but I scarcely think I have asked you
for anything yet. I want you to run no risk that isn't necessary
to-night," she said.
Leland started, but again he put a constraint upon himself.
"So you know?" he said.
"Of course! Did you think, when everybody else knew, you could keep it
from me? Still, that isn't what I asked you. I want you to be careful."
Leland looked at her, and though she saw the blood creep slowly into his
face, his restraint was also evident.
"Did you say that because you believed it was the correct thing, madam?"
he asked.
Carrie flushed, but the man, shaking her hand off his arm, laid his big
mittened one upon her shoulder, and, holding her away from him, looked
down on her gravely.
"You will try to forgive me that. It was a trifle brutal," he said, and
his voice sank. "Still, to be quite honest, I could scarcely think that
any risk I ran could cause you very much anxiety."
Carrie said nothing, for, with that steady gaze upon her, she could not
pretend, even if her pride would have permitted her; and Leland smiled a
trifle wistfully. His face was almost gentle now.
"Well," he said, "you needn't force yourself to say it would, if it
hurts you, and I daresay it was kindness that prompted you to try.
Still, you see, I should want a good deal, and anything you didn't mean
wouldn't satisfy me. After all, it would make things easier for you if I
didn't come back again."
The girl shivered. "You surely can't believe I would think of that?"
"No," and Leland made a little gesture, which was expressive of
weariness; "it was your sense of fitness that turned you against me."
He let his hand fall from her shoulder. "After all, my dear, I am sorry
for you."
"And yourself?"
"It is a little rough on me, but that can't be helped. Somehow or other
I guess I can bear it."
Then he stooped, and, taking one of her hands, held it between both of
his before he turned and flung open the door.
Carrie saw him for a moment, a tall, black figure silhouetted against
the cold blue, and then he had vanished into the night.
CHAPTER X
HOMICIDE
An almost intolerable cold had descended upon the prairie when Leland
reached the coulee where Sergeant Grier was mustering his forces late at
night. They were not a very strong body, three troopers of the Northwest
Police, all of them rather young, two prairie farmers, Leland, Gallwey,
and the Sergeant, but the latter had decided that they would be enough,
for the purpose. He was aware that, in an affair of this kind, a few men
who understand exactly what they have to do, and can be relied on to set
about it quietly and collectedly, are apt to prove more efficient than a
larger body. The unnecessary man, he knew, is usually busy getting in
his comrade's way. There was also another reason which Leland had
pointed out. Since his acquaintances had undertaken the business, it was
advisable that they should carry it out without exposing themselves
unnecessarily to the outlaws' vengeance. There were several bands of the
latter acting more or less in concert, and it would lessen the risks if
there were only three or four men liable to them in place of several
times as many.
The Sergeant quite concurred in this, and, when Leland rode up stiff
with frost, quietly sent the men out to their stations. Just there, the
beaten trail that led south to the frontier dipped into one of the
winding ravines, traversing the country with many a loop and bend. A
sluggish creek flowed through its bottom beneath the ice, and a growth
of willows and birches that there found shelter from the winds straggled
up its sides. Trees fringed the crest of the dip, too, and in places
overflowed into the prairie in scattered spurs. The trail ran through
their midst, and there was no doubt that, if the outlaws came at all,
which was not certain, they would come that way, since there are
disadvantages attached to leading loaded horses through a thick
birch-bluff in the darkness.
A farmer and one of the troopers were sent back to where the trees ran
farther out into the prairie, and they were to lie hidden there and cut
off the retreat in case the rustlers endeavoured to head back the way
they had come. The main body lined the trail in the thickest of the
bluff, just below the crest of the ravine, and Leland and one young
trooper proceeded to the foot of the declivity. It would be their
business to stop anybody who might succeed in breaking through the rest
of the ambuscade. Each of them knew precisely what was expected of him,
and the only uncertainty was whether the rustlers were coming, and if
so, how many there would be of them.
It was a suitable night for their purpose, neither too dark nor too
light. The heavens were barred with drifting wreaths of cloud, between
which every now and then a half-moon and an occasional star shone down.
The birches wailed as they shook their frail twigs beneath a bitter
wind. Leland was sensible of a distressing tingling in his numbed feet
and hands. The young trooper beside him limped and stumbled, a shadowy,
indistinct figure in his furs, stiff with cold. Their softly moccasined
feet made no sound. Both of them wondered whether they could use their
slung rifles, if the necessity arose.
It is possible, without feeling desperately cold, to face the frost of
the Northwest in a prairie waggon when one is packed about with hay and
wrapped in big fur robes, but there are times when the man who travels
on horseback runs the risk of freezing, and, because horses might be
wanted, farmers and police troopers had ridden instead of driving.
Leland was capable of moving, but the young trooper was in a far worse
state, and sighed with relief when at last they stopped beside the
creek, where a dense growth of willows kept off the stinging wind.
"I'm that cold I 'most can't hump myself," he said. "Seems to me I
haven't got any feet on. I guess they're froze. Still, it's not quite so
cruel as the night the corporal got one of his nipped. We were sleeping
way back up Long Traverse trail in a pit in the snow, and were too
played-out to waken when the fire got low. The frost had the corporal by
the morning, but we'd most of twenty leagues to make, with two or three
mighty cold camps on the way, and his moccasins opened up a wound. You
couldn't have told he had a foot when I last saw him."
Leland said nothing. He was not inclined for conversation, and knew that
instances of the kind were not uncommon. The wardens of the prairie
probably know more about cold than anybody, except Arctic explorers,
and they are expected to face it shelterless in the open for days
together when occasion arises. They cannot always find a birch-bluff to
camp in, and the snow is frequently too thin to throw up a bank between
them and the wind. Only hard men continue in that service, and perhaps
the prairie wolf alone knows what becomes of some of the unfit who try
it.
The lad, however, seemed impelled to talk, and stamped up and down
beating his mittened hands, with the swivel of his slung carbine
jangling as he moved.
"One would 'most wonder why you folks took a hand in," he said. "I guess
if I'd been a farmer, it's more than I'd have done myself. There seem to
be a blame lot of the rustlers, and, so far as we can figure, they stand
in together. The three or four of us can't be everywhere at once, and
they might take a notion of getting even by playing the fire-bug when
the grass is dry in harvest season. I'd plough my fire-guards twice as
wide. It would be quite easy to burn up a ripening crop."
Leland was aware that there would, unfortunately, be no difficulty in
doing this, but he was willing to take his chances, and did not answer
the lad. Indeed, the probable loss of a crop appeared a comparatively
small matter to him just then. He was sore and bitter, and a feud with
the outlaws would have been almost a relief. He felt that Branscombe
Denham had tricked him, but sincerely desired to stand well with his
wife, in spite of her scornful attitude towards him. He did not blame
her for that altogether, though her words still rankled, but he would
not expose himself to her disdain again, and had decided that if things
were to be different, the first advances must be made by her. In the
meanwhile, it was singularly unpleasant to both of them, and that night
he was in a very sensitive and somewhat dangerous mood as he stood
shivering among the willows.
"I guess they should be here by now, if the fellow who told us was
playing a straight game," said the lad. "The trouble is, they've a good
many friends, and nobody can tell exactly who's standing in with them.
It's kind of easier to pick up an odd case of whisky and say nothing
than to give us the office and have a fire-stick shoved into your
granary. I'm not counting too much on the Ontario man."
In the meanwhile, the others fretted at the cold, and wondered how long
the outlaws meant to keep them waiting. Two of them, upon whom all the
rest depended for the warning, were just then crouching, almost frozen,
where the thinnest of the birches broke off abruptly, watching a group
of vague, shadowy shapes moving in their direction across the white
wilderness. Gallwey stood behind them. A bank of sombre cloud sailed
across the moon, and left the watchers in almost utter darkness.
"I can make out four, and there are more behind," said the trooper.
"It's a sure thing. Snow's deep, and, as we figured, they'll stick to
the trail. Guess you'd better get back and tell the Sergeant."
Gallwey slipped away, and there was silence for several minutes while
farmer and policeman crept a little further back amidst the trees. Then
a soft patter of hoofs and an occasional rattle came up the bitter wind
as a line of men and horses grew into shape. They came on boldly, the
men growling to one another and at the beasts. With no outriders
forward, they plunged into the shadow of the birches. There the sounds
grew louder, and the thud of hoofs, hoarse voices, crackle of trodden
twigs, and creaking and jolting of burdens on pack-saddles, rang
startlingly distinct through the crisp air. The trooper counted at least
a dozen horses, but he could not quite make out how many men, for they
walked among the loaded beasts, and the trail was very dark.
They went on by, half-seen, dim shadows that jostled one another among
the trees; and, when the voices and the trampling grew less distinct,
the trooper moved out into the trail, with his carbine in his mittened
hands. The trap was sprung, for, if one or two of the outlaws succeeded
in breaking through, it was evident that they must, at least, leave
their beasts behind. With the farmer close behind him he moved
cautiously a little nearer his comrades and then stood still again.
It was, perhaps, five minutes later when Leland, who was pacing to and
fro, stopped abruptly, and held up his hand as the young trooper
materialised out of the gloom in front of him.
"Can't you hear something?" he said.
The trooper thought he could, but his ears were almost covered by the
big fur cap, and whilst they stood listening the birches swayed and
wailed before a bitter gust. It seemed to search them to the marrow, for
the cold was keen as a knife. Then through the night there came a dull,
thudding sound down from the ridge above, and the trooper flung his
carbine forward.
"They're here, sure," he said. "It's even chances we don't get a whack
at one of them."
They stood listening for a minute or two, intent and high-strung, and
heard only the wailing of the wind, for the birches once more swayed
about them. It was almost dark, for the moon was still behind a cloud.
As he moved his mittened hands on the Marlin rifle, Leland forgot that
he was stiff in every limb. Then a voice rang, harsh and commanding, out
of the shadows above them.
"Stop right there," it said. "We have got you covered."
It was followed by the whip-like crack of a pistol-shot, there was the
louder jarring ring of a carbine or a farmer's rifle, and a confused din
broke out. Men shouted and scuffled in the gloom, loaded beasts
blundered among the trees and the undergrowth, while through it all
there rose the detached beat of hoofs.
"One or two of them lit out, anyway," said the trooper. "Guess they'd
slash the pack lariat, and get into the saddle when they'd let the
whisky go. That sounds like one of the boys after them. Chancing a
gallop, too. They'll break their necks certain, if they ride that way
through the bluff."
He stopped a minute, and just then a faint silvery radiance swept
athwart the birches as the moon shone down. It sparkled on the dropping
smear of snow-sheeted trail, and the lad ran forward a pace or two
fumbling with his carbine.
"Look out, Mr. Leland!" he shouted. "There are two of them riding slap
down on us."
Two indistinct objects swept out of the shadows, and a moment later
resolved themselves into men and galloping horses. They were thundering
headlong down the sharply falling trail, and Leland felt his nerves
tingle as he watched them. He was in a particularly unpleasant temper
that night, and the prospect of an encounter stirred the half-frozen
blood in him. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw the trooper standing
a few paces away from him, and then fixed his gaze up the trail ahead.
The horsemen were coming on at a mad gallop, taking their chances of a
stumble, and he could see the powdery snow whirl about them like dust.
Then they saw him standing grimly still in the middle of the trail, for
one shouted a warning to the other, and the trooper cried aloud:
"Hold on! Pull up before we plug you," he said.
There was no answer. The riders were hard and fearless men, probably
wanted by Montana sheriffs for things they had done during the cattle
war, and they showed no sign of drawing bridle. One of them howled
shrilly as he whirled a whip about his shoulders, and for a moment
Leland saw him sway in the saddle with the beast stretched out beneath
him.
Then there was a flash, and a detonation he scarcely heard, a cloud of
smoke that floated up the trail, and man and horse came thundering down
on him. He felt the jar of the Marlin rifle on his shoulder as he aimed
at the flying form of a horse. In another moment the outlaw was almost
upon him. Then in savage recklessness he leapt forward instead of back,
with a hand that sought the bridle and an arm the rider's leg. His
fingers closed on something--bridle, or saddle, or stirrup--and he clung
with a stiffened grasp, while his feet were torn from under him and a
rifle flashed.
Exactly what happened after that he did not know, but he was hurled
forward, still clutching at something, with feet that scraped the snowy
ice of the creek; and then there was a heavy crash, and what he held was
torn away from him. He felt himself driven into a bank of snow, and lay
there for perhaps a minute wondering vaguely if the life had all been
smashed out of him, and listening to a sound of scuffling and
floundering close by. Next he essayed to draw one of his feet up, and,
to his astonishment, found that he had no great difficulty in
accomplishing it. That done, he raised himself shakily, and, scrambling
to one of the birches, leaned against it, gasping a little. A few
seconds earlier he had been almost certain that he would never stand up
again.
In the meanwhile the moonlight had grown a trifle brighter, for he could
see a horse that lay near the middle of the creek still moving
convulsively. Nearby, wrapped in an old fur coat, was an object that did
not move at all. The trooper, who now had no carbine, stood stooping a
little as he looked down on it, and there was a curious significant
stillness in his attitude, whilst as much as could be seen of his young
face appeared a trifle colourless. It was a moment or two before he
became aware that Leland was on his feet again.
"He's dead, sure. It's the first man I ever plugged," he said, and his
voice rang strained and harsh in the frosty air. "He just pitched off
and never moved. Guess it couldn't have hurt him."
One could have fancied he was anxious about the point, but in another
moment he turned away with a little deprecatory gesture, and commenced
to grope about for his carbine.
"Anyway, I couldn't help it, and it was that quick--he never wriggled
any--he couldn't have felt it."
The thing had its effect on Leland, though he had seen something very
like it happen before, and he laid his hand reassuringly on the lad's
shoulder.
"I don't think you need worry," he said. "He took his chances when he
wouldn't stop, and it's not your responsibility. Anyway, we may as well
make quite sure that he is dead."
There was no doubt on that point when he dropped on one knee beside the
man, and he nodded as he glanced at the trooper.
"A sure thing. I'd like some kind of notion of what happened," he said.
"You jumped at him yonder, but I didn't quite see what you got hold of.
Anyway, you went along with the horse--and him--until I pulled off, and
you all came down together. You went down on the ice with a bang 'most
fit to break it, and then into the snow-bank yonder. Guess you plugged
the horse in a soft place when you fired. In the meanwhile the other man
went by--whooping--like a whirlwind."
That was about all the explanation Leland ever got, but in another
moment or two the trooper, who seemed to be looking at him curiously,
spoke again.
"I'm kind of dazed," he said. "There's quite a lot of blood running down
your forehead. I've been watching, and it never struck me you'd better
know. I'll go up now and tell the Sergeant 'bout the other fellow who
lit out."
Leland, who thrust back his fur cap and felt the gash on his forehead,
decided that he was a little confused too, or he would have noticed that
there was a warm trickle running down the outside of his nose. His
mittens showed red smears in the moonlight when he tried to brush it
away. When he next looked round, the trooper had disappeared; and,
moving rather shakily, for his fall had not been without its effect, he
too plodded up the climbing trail.
When he reached the level, he found several dejected men with manacled
hands, and a line of loaded horses with two of the troopers watching
them. The Sergeant, who appeared to be giving instructions to one of the
troopers, turned to him.
"We have got four of them and most of the horses, but, so far as I can
figure, two or three must have got away," he said. "The boys will try to
pick their tracks up, and I'll ask you to give us a hand with the
pack-horses as far as the forking of the trail."
Leland contrived to drive two of the loaded train, though his head was
aching and he felt very dizzy. When at last he was about to turn off
into a second sledge-track, the Sergeant pulled up his horse beside him.
"We are much obliged, Mr. Leland, and you'll hear all that's done," he
said. "Still, it's a kind of pity one of the two you fell in with got
away."
"I don't suppose you are particularly pleased any of them broke through,
for that matter," said Leland.
The Sergeant made a little impressive gesture. "The point is that they'd
both have got off, if it hadn't been for you, and that fellow's partner
isn't going to blame--the trooper. That's all in the business. Well, if
I were you, I'd keep clear of the bluffs and ravines if you have to go
out when it's dark."
He shook his bridle and rode on, whilst Leland stood a minute or two
watching the others straggle out along the trail. Last of all a trooper
led a horse which carried an amorphous burden wrapped in a fur coat, and
lashed on with a pack-lariat. Something that looked like a moccasined
foot trailed down on one side in the snow, and, judging from the trouble
the beast gave its driver, it did not like what it carried.
"It's quite likely that fellow's partner will try to get even," he
said.
CHAPTER XI
SEEDTIME
The snow had gone, and the frost-bleached prairie lay steaming under the
warm April sun, when Carrie Leland pulled her team up on the crest of a
low rise. The waggon she drove, a light vehicle of four high wheels with
a shallow, box-like body, had been made especially for her. It was hung
on comfortable springs, and the harness and horses matched it. There
were few broncho teams on the prairie to compare with hers. They were
young, but Carrie liked a mettlesome beast, and Leland had carefully
chosen and broken them.
It was the same with everything he had given her. Only the best that
could be had seemed good enough for her, and at times she almost
resented his generosity. Save when he lost his temper, which happened
not infrequently, she could not put him in the wrong, and she often felt
that it would be easier for her if she could charge him with neglect, or
had something to forgive him. He was gravely considerate for her
comfort, but it was very seldom that he went any further. While this
should have pleased her, she was not quite sure that it did.
On the morning in question, Eveline Annersly, who had been at Prospect
a month now, sat beside her rejoicing in the sunshine and rush of warm
wind. She had reached the age when one looks for little and makes the
most of what comes, and the warmth and freshness of the morning
delighted her. The prospect would also in all probability have had its
attractions for any one with eyes to see and a nature that could respond
to the reawakening pulse of life in the land.
Round three-fourths of the horizon the bleached prairie, tinged now with
sunny ochre, melted into the sweep of lustrous blue, but in the
foreground the sod was gemmed with little crocus-like flowers and
already flecked here and there with creeping green. All this was waste
and virgin, but on the fourth side tall bands of golden stubble, and
belts of ashes where golden stubble had once been, were narrowed down by
the steaming chocolate-tinted clods of the plough's upturning. Grain ran
up in long rippled ridges from Prospect, where the birches gleamed
silver, across the wide dip of basin and over its fringing rise, into
the luminous blueness of the sky. That was man's work, and man at
Prospect worked unusually hard, for it was not his part there to plough
where others had also sown, but to grapple with the wilderness, and
subdue it, in fulfilment of the charge given him when the waters dried.
The wilderness was there, leagues of it, but it required a stout heart
and a steadfast toil to break it and cover it with red-gold wheat when
wheat was a drug upon a falling market.
Eveline Annersly, faded and frail, was dainty still. As she sat smiling
in the waggon, with the sunlight lying warm on her beautiful hands, she
was a part of the colour scheme in her soft, grey-tinted draperies.
Some women of the cities would have been a blotch on it. She was the
figure of tranquil autumn when the wealth of fruits had gone, but her
companion with the crimson lips and dusky eyes was spring, when as yet
Nature is only stirring and has not awakened to riotous life at the
burning kiss of the sun. Eveline Annersly realised this vaguely, and at
times felt a thrill of concern, for she knew there was fire beneath that
cold exterior. When the awakening should come, much would depend upon
whether the sudden untrammelled growth of the girl's nature would cling
for warmth and shelter to the man who was her husband.
In the meanwhile, she watched the toiling teams coming on across grey
grass and golden stubble in echelon. Men sat above the horses' heads on
the driving-seats of the big gang-ploughs, and from amidst the curling
brown clods came the twinkling flash of steel. The men had brown faces,
and some of them bare, brown arms. Sun and wind had burned and beaten
them and their garments to the colour of the soil they sprang from. They
seemed almost a part of it, as they and the patient beasts did their
share in the great, harmonious scheme which in return for the sweat of
effort gives man bread to eat. This was not English farming, mixed and
variable, but an unlocking of Nature's long-stored wealth in mile-long
furrows that should fling the golden wheat by trainload and shipload on
the markets of the world. Even Eveline Annersly, who was not greatly
interested in agriculture, could realise that.
"It is a tremendous farm," she said. "We have nothing like it in
England. The length of those furrows appeals to one's imagination. How
big is it, Carrie?"
The girl smiled a trifle languidly. "I really don't know," she said.
"Charley has told me, but I never could remember things like that. He
seems rather proud of having broken--I believe that is the right
word--most of it out of the prairie. In fact, he is easily content. To
break so many acres every year seems his one object in life. I don't
think it's anybody's. Presumably, it's a question of temperament. My
husband appears to like his occupation, and absorbs himself in it."
"Which, of course, is just as you would have it?"
The girl made a little half-petulant gesture. "Oh," she said, "I suppose
so. I naturally did not expect Charley Leland and I would have many
mutual interests when I married him. It would have been in several
respects a trifle ridiculous. Still, he is, in his own way, very good to
me."
"So I should have fancied"; and Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "Did
it ever occur to you that he might have expected a good deal from you?"
A flicker of colour showed in Carrie's cheek. "In that case, he, at
least, shows no sign that he misses anything. As you know, we scarcely
see him for two or three days together every now and then. I believe
these teams are in the field by six in the morning, and it usually is
dark when he comes in again."
"I wonder if you quite realise the restraint and self-denial implied by
a life of that kind? After all, your husband is probably no fonder of
wearing himself out than most other men. Presumably he has a purpose, or
finds it necessary."
She stopped a moment, and smiled in a curious fashion as she glanced at
her companion. "I suppose you have heard that they are building a new
peach-house and vinery at Barrock-holme?"
A bright crimson spot burned for a moment in Carrie's cheek. "I hadn't,"
she said, with a trace of bitterness. "Jimmy, of course, never writes,
and even Alice seems to have forgotten me. In fact, I don't suppose
there is one of them who ever gives me a thought now. Aunt Eveline, you
are to stay here for ever so long."
Mrs. Annersly nodded reassuringly. "Of course, my dear," she said. "As
you perhaps know, it is a good deal your father's fault that I am
reduced to living on my friends, and I really think some of the money he
is spending on the peach-houses should have come to me. I have been
inclined to wonder where he got it."
Carrie Denham was usually reposeful, but a trace of the confusion she
felt showed itself in her face. Eveline Annersly understood her as well
as she understood herself, and, being aware of this, she stood less upon
her guard.
"Oh," she said, "I think you know. It is a little hard to bear, isn't
it? Have they always been the same?"
"One would almost fancy so. Henry Annersly was well off when he married
me, and everybody knows I have scarcely a penny. Where the rest has gone
only Branscombe Denham knows, though I'm not even sure that he does. No
doubt he didn't intend to lose it, but money won't stay with him. And he
never even writes to you?"
Carrie laid a hand upon her arm. "Aunt," she said, "stay with us
altogether. Charley likes you--and I can't let you go."
The little lady's eyes grew gentle, but there was a faint smile in them.
"My dear, I think I know what you are feeling, but, after all, you
deserve it, and I'm not so very sorry for you. I'm going to make your
husband stop and speak to me."
Their team stood stamping impatiently on the virgin sod, as Leland came
up foremost of the long line of men and beasts. He was sitting upright
on the driving-seat of a great machine, dressed in an old blue-jean
shirt that was open at his sunburnt throat, with a wide grey hat on his
head. His arms were bare to the elbow, corded, hard, and brown, and his
face was the deep colour of the clods that rolled away in long waves
beneath the three-fold shares. Four splendid horses plodded in front of
him, and the stain of the soil and the same stamp of enduring strength
was on him and them. He pulled the team up, and, springing down, came
towards the waggon with his hat in his hand.
"You are going to the railroad?" he said.
"Yes," said Mrs. Annersly. "Carrie wants some things, but I understand
we are to stay the night at Mrs. Custer's on the way."
"Well," said Leland, "I may see you there. There are some new harrows
and seeders I have to wire about, but I don't expect to get in until
daylight to-morrow."
"You are going to drive all night?"
"I may get an hour's sleep before I go. You see, I have to be back by
noon to-morrow. Our summer is short, and there is a good deal to do.
The grain that goes in late is quite often frozen."
He pointed as if in explanation to the great sweep of furrows that ran
back narrowing all the way to where Prospect nestled like a doll's house
beneath its bluff. With a great trampling, two other teams came up just
then. They went by amidst a ripping and crackling of fibres as the
prairie opened up beneath the gleaming shares, and Leland nodded with a
little quiet smile.
"Oh, yes," he said; "little time to do it in, and a good deal to do.
Some of us were born to feel that way."
"Not all," said Eveline Annersly. "There are, as you know, men who waste
their substance to while the day away. You are not that sort. Perhaps
it's fortunate for you."
Leland smiled again. "I don't quite know. There's a great order and
system that runs things, though I can't quite get the hang of it--I
haven't time. Every man works in this country, as all Nature does. Those
little grasses have been ten thousand years building up the black loam
I'm making wheat of. The mallard, the brent goose, and the sandhill
crane--you can see them coming up from the south in their skeins and
wedges all day long--have to hunt their food from the shores of the
Caribbean to the Pole. Well, one feels there must be a balance struck
some day, and the men who don't do anything are having the soft things
now."
He laughed good-humouredly, and stroked one of the horses that turned
its head to nibble affectionately at his shoulder. "I'll be sorry for
this by and by, but you have a habit of making me give myself away."
"Then we will be practical. Are you going to sow all that ploughing?"
"I am. I expect to break two hundred acres more. There are folks who
want the wheat, and we'll feed the world some day."
"But wheat is going down."
"It is," and Leland's face grew a trifle hard. "No bottom to the market,
apparently. That's why I'm buying new machines and cutting things down
and down. We must have everything that can save or earn a dollar at
Prospect now."
Carrie Leland was struck by something in her husband's face. It was a
comely face, as well as forceful, clean-skinned in spite of its deepness
of tint, and there was a clearness in the steady eyes that is only seen
in those of such men as he. There was also in his features a suggestion
of endurance and optimism that, in fact, was strongest in the time of
stress and struggle. Sun and wind, fruitful soil and barren, nipping
frosts, drought and devastating hail, all these were things to be
grappled with or profited by with equal willingness. He and his kind in
new countries give without stint all they have been given, from the
sweat of tense effort each and every day to the smiling courage that
cuts down hours of rest and goes on sowing when seasons are adverse and
markets fall away; and there is, in turn, usually set upon them plainly
the symbol of man's dominion over the material world. The patient beasts
that toiled with him recognised it, and again one of them muzzled his
shoulder and caught at his arm.
"And," said Mrs. Annersly, "if the market still goes down?"
Leland laughed an optimist's soft laugh. "Then we will go under, I and
the rest. That is, for a time. Nothing can stop us long, and we will
start again. Carrie, I am thankful, is provided for."
He struck the horse with the palm of his hand. "I have been keeping you,
and there is a good deal to do."
The big team stamped and strained; he swung himself into the
driving-seat, and, with a crackling of fibres, the great plough rolled
away. Mrs. Annersly smiled as Carrie shook the reins.
"If I were twenty years younger, I almost think I should fall in love
with your husband," she said. "There is a breadth of view and
forcefulness Reggie Urmston could never attain even in his simplicity,
and his egotism becomes him. It's the quiet assurance of a man who knows
what he can do, and rather thinks that he is doing a good bit. He takes
all the risk, and you are provided for. Carrie, do you know what that
man gave, or lent--it's much the same thing--to your father?"
"No," said Carrie, with the spot of colour once more in her cheek. "He
would never tell me, and how could I ask him? It is a hateful
subject--why should you mention it?"
Mrs. Annersly looked out over the prairie, a curious smile in her eyes.
"Your husband is cutting down even his hours of sleep," she said. "He is
driving in forty miles to the railroad when his work is done to-night,
while Branscombe Denham is building peach-houses at Barrock-holme."
Carrie flushed crimson, and flicked the team with the whip. "You," she
said, "are the only friend I have, and yet you sometimes take a curious
pleasure in tormenting me. Do you expect me to turn against my own flesh
and blood?"
"We have it on good authority that the wife should cleave to her
husband, and they are one. There are, of course, people nowadays, and
probably always have been, who think they know better."
The girl caught her breath. "Ah," she said, "you don't quite understand.
If he were in difficulties I would face them with him cheerfully, but he
would never let me. It was not said in bitterness, but when he told you
I was provided for, it hurt me. Why should I be safe, who helped to ruin
him?"
Eveline Annersly glanced at her with gravely questioning eyes. "My dear,
I rather fancy you have almost thrown a great treasure away."
"Whether the thing was of great value I do not know, and it is scarcely
likely I shall ever know. I certainly threw it just as far as I was able
to, and, though I do not know whether I was wise or not, it is done, and
there is no use in being sorry."
Then she swung the whip again, and sent the light waggon flying headlong
down a long grassy slope. Mrs. Annersly found it advisable to hold on,
and in any case she had said her say. Her words must lie with the rest
she had dropped, until in due time they should bear their fruit. Eveline
Annersly was old enough to be somewhat of an optimist too.
In the meanwhile, Leland went on with his ploughing, and, save for an
hour's halt at noon to rest the teams, and for the six o'clock supper,
toiled until a wondrous green transparency, through which the pale stars
peeped, hung over the prairie. Then, when the cold clear air was
invigorating as wine, he led the weary beasts to the stables, and, after
walking stiffly to the homestead, flung himself into a chair, aching and
drowsy.
"Jake," he said to the man who was busy in the room, "I'll want some
coffee in an hour or so. Make it black and strong."
Then Gallwey came in, and they sat for an hour going over a file of
accounts from which Leland made extracts on a sheet. He laid it down at
last, and pointed to a bundle of papers on a dusty shelf.
"I was worrying over them before I slept last night, and I'm no wiser
now," he said. "The one thing certain is that wheat is going down, and
what it will touch next harvest is rather more than any man can tell.
One has too many climates from California to New Zealand to reckon with.
If we stop right now and sow, we'd come out just clear as the market
stands. I had expected to have quite a pile in hand, but with the drop
in values the bank balance against me needed considerable meeting."
"It certainly did. I was a trifle astonished when you cabled me to
arrange for the credit at Winnipeg. You were, in view of your usual
habits, singularly extravagant for once."
"I was," and Leland laughed somewhat harshly. "Still, under the
circumstances, it wasn't quite unnatural. Anyway, we have wiped it out,
and it has crippled me for the next campaign."
Gallwey asked no injudicious questions, but he wondered how his comrade,
who had distinctly inexpensive tastes, had got rid of all the money he
had apparently spent in England. Mrs. Leland was not an extravagant
woman, so far as he was aware.
"The question is, how we should meet a further drop," he said.
"That's not very difficult, unless the drop is too big. We have for
fixed charges the upkeep of this homestead, besides wages, and the
feeding of the boys we can't do without, and the working horses. That's
not going to alter more than a little, anyway. Well, we have the seed,
and there are broken horses on the run, so it's going to cost us just a
few teamsters' wages, and the threshing to put oats in on as many extra
acres as we can break. You see, we get a bigger crop on much the same
cost."
"And the fall breaking?"
"Wheat," said Leland. "Every acre."
Gallwey drew in his breath. He knew his comrade's boldness, but this was
almost incredible. Cautious men were already holding their hand, but
Leland purposed to sow more freely than ever.
"It will be a huge crop," he said. "About the biggest that was ever
raised in this country. Now, of course, within a margin, there's a good
deal in your notion in increasing the ratio of production to dead
charges, but, after all, you can't sow a third as much again without its
costing you something. Well, if the price drops far enough to make that
a loss?"
Leland laughed again. "Then," he said, "it will be one of the biggest
smashes ever known in this country; but nobody's going to lose very much
when they've taken the land and stock from me. It's tolerably steep
chances, but they're all on me."
Gallwey's uneasiness showed itself in his face. The magnitude of the
risk almost dismayed him, but while he sat silent Leland made a little
gesture.
"Tell Jake to bring that coffee in, and see the waggon's ready," he
said. "I'll be off, and let the team go easy. They'll put me on to the
wire at the depot at five o'clock when the stopping freight comes
through. I should be back by noon. You'll start every man as usual."
He drank the bitter coffee to keep himself awake, and climbed into his
waggon, while Gallwey shook his head as he watched him jolt away into
the shadowy prairie.
"It's a big thing, almost too big for any other man," he said. "It was
the confounded bank balance against him that drove him into it. I wonder
how he spent all that money, or if Mrs. Leland knows."
CHAPTER XII
LELAND'S PROTEST
There were two breakfasts served in the Occidental Hotel, which,
dilapidated and weather-scarred, stands at the foot of the unpaved
street of a desolate little town beside the railroad track. Most men
commence their work early in the prairie country, so the first meal was
laid at six; but there was another from eight to nine when a train came
in. This was a somewhat unusual concession to the needs of the few
passengers who alighted there, because throughout most of the Northwest
no self-respecting hotel cook would prepare a meal out of the fixed
hours, not even for a cabinet minister or a railroad director. Nor would
the proprietor vary a dish, for in his estimation what suffices the
plainsman is quite good enough for anybody else.
The table had just been cleared when a small and select company of men
who had nothing in particular to do pulled their chairs up to the stove,
on which as many of them as could find room put their feet. It had not
been lighted that morning, or black-leaded for many days, but habit was
strong in them. There are, even in countries where most men are hard
workers, a few who spend their lives lounging on hotel verandahs and
sitting round the stove. Nobody unused to it would, in all probability,
have cared to linger there, for there are few places of entertainment so
wholly desolate and uninviting as the general room of the average
prairie hotel.
Its walls were obviously made of dressed boards, and had even borne a
coat of paint at one time; but they were bare and dirty now. Two lonely
German oleographs of more than usually barbaric type hung on rusty
nails. Cigar-ends and burnt matches littered the uncarpeted floor.
Benches without backs to them ran along either side of the uncovered
table. The rest of the furniture consisted of the rusty stove and a few
chairs, which the loungers monopolised. Two of the group wore
store-clothing, with trousers so tight that one wondered how they ever
got them on, and two wore blue jean in sad need of patching. They had
rough, dark faces, relieved by no sign of amiability or unusual
intelligence; but they could talk. Loafers and tramps usually can.
Outside the open window, bright sunshine flooded the verandah, and fell
upon the bare frame-houses across the way. A couple of light waggons,
with the mire of the spring thawing not yet washed off them, passed
clattering and jolting among the ruts. The streets of a prairie town
usually resemble a morass when the frost breaks up. When they had gone,
a police trooper swung by on a spume-flecked horse, with the dust of
several leagues' journey thick on his trim uniform. Then there was
silence again until one of the loungers looked up from the greasy paper
he was reading.
"Wheat still going down," he said. "There's no bottom to the market, or,
if it had one, it's dropped out. Our boss farmers are going to feel it
if things go on like this; but nobody's going to be sorry for them. They
figure they own the country already."
"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going
up," said another man.
The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which
was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt.
"Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for
him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That,
and nothing else."
"Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remainin
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