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The Impostor

by Harold Bindloss · English · Gutenberg #39698 · 535,196 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Impostor

Author: Harold Bindloss


        
Release date: May 14, 2012 [eBook #39698]

Language: English

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THE IMPOSTOR.


[Illustration: "In the meanwhile, Maud Barrington sat by the open window
in her room." (Chapter XVI.)]


THE IMPOSTOR

by

HAROLD BINDLOSS

Author of "Hawtrey's Deputy," "The Liberationist,"
"A Sower of Wheat," "The Pioneer," etc.







Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
London, Melbourne and Toronto




CONTENTS

      I Rancher Witham
     II Lance Courthorne
    III Trooper Shannon's Quarrel
     IV In the Bluff
      V Miss Barrington Comes Home
     VI Anticipations
    VII Witham's Decision
   VIII Witham Comes to Silverdale
     IX An Armistice
      X Maud Barrington's Promise
     XI Speed the Plough
    XII Mastery Recognized
   XIII A Fair Advocate
    XIV The Unexpected
     XV Facing the Flame
    XVI Maud Barrington is Merciless
   XVII With the Stream
  XVIII Under Test
    XIX Courthorne Blunders
     XX The Face at the Window
    XXI Colonel Barrington is Convinced
   XXII Sergeant Stimson Confirms his Suspicions
  XXIII The Revelation
   XXIV Courthorne makes Reparation
    XXV Witham Rides Away
   XXVI Reinstation




THE IMPOSTOR




CHAPTER I

RANCHER WITHAM


It was a bitter night, for although there was no snow as yet, the
frost had bound the prairie in its iron grip, when Rancher Witham
stood shivering in a little Canadian settlement in the great, lonely
land which runs north from the American frontier to Athabasca. There
was no blink of starlight in the murky sky, and a stinging wind that
came up out of the great waste of grass moaned about the frame houses
clustering beside the trail that led south over the limited levels to
the railroad and civilization. It chilled Witham through his somewhat
tattered furs, and he strode up and down, glancing expectantly into
the darkness, and then across the unpaved street, where the ruts were
ploughed a foot deep in the prairie sod, towards the warm, red glow
from the windows of the wooden hotel. He knew that the rest of the
outlying farmers and ranchers who had ridden in for their letters were
sitting snug about the stove, but it was customary for all who sought
shelter there to pay for their share of the six o'clock supper, and
the half-dollar Witham had then in his pocket was required for other
purposes.

He had also retained through all his struggles a measure of his pride,
and because of it strode up and down buffeted by the blasts until a
beat of horse-hoofs came out of the darkness and was followed by a
rattle of wheels. It grew steadily louder, a blinking ray of
brightness flickered across the frame houses, and presently dark
figures were silhouetted against the light on the hotel veranda as a
lurching wagon drew up beneath it. Two dusky objects, shapeless in
their furs, sprang down, and one stumbled into the post office close
by with a bag while the other man answered the questions hurled at him
as he fumbled with stiffened fingers at the harness.

"Late? Well, you might be thankful you've got your mail at all," he
said. "We had to go round by Willow Bluff, and didn't think we'd get
through the ford. Ice an inch thick, anyway, and Charley talked that
much he's not said anything since, even when the near horse put his
foot into a badger hole."

Rude banter followed this, but Witham took no part in it. Hastening
into the post office, he stood betraying his impatience by his very
impassiveness while a sallow-faced woman tossed the letters out upon
the counter. At last she took up two of them, and the man's fingers
trembled a little as he stretched out his hand, when she said--

"That's all there are for you."

Witham recognized the writing on the envelopes, and it was with
difficulty he held his eagerness in check, but other men were waiting
for his place, and he went out and crossed the street to the hotel
where there was light to read by. As he entered it a girl, bustling
about a long table in the big stove-warmed room, turned with a little
smile.

"It's only you!" she said. "Now I was figuring it was Lance
Courthorne."

Witham, impatient as he was, stopped and laughed, for the
hotel-keeper's daughter was tolerably well-favoured and a friend of
his.

"And you're disappointed?" he said. "I haven't Lance's good looks, or
his ready tongue."

The room was empty, for the guests were thronging about the post
office then, and the girl's eyes twinkled as she drew back a pace and
surveyed the man. There was nothing in his appearance that would have
aroused a stranger's interest, or attracted more than a passing
glance, and he stood before her in a very old fur coat, with a fur cap
that was in keeping with it in his hand. His face had been bronzed
almost to the colour of a Blackfoot Indian's by frost and wind and
sun, and it was of English type from the crisp fair hair above the
broad forehead to the somewhat solid chin. The mouth was hidden by the
bronze-tinted moustache, and the eyes alone, were noticeable. They
were grey, and there was a steadiness in them which was almost unusual
even in that country, where men look into long distances. For the
rest, he was of average stature, and stood impassively straight,
looking down upon the girl without either grace or awkwardness, while
his hard brown hands, suggested, as his attire did, strenuous labour
for a very small reward.

"Well," said the girl with Western frankness, "there's a kind of stamp
on Lance that you haven't got. I figure he brought it with him from
the old country. Still, one might take you for him if you stood with
the light behind you, and you're not quite a bad-looking man. It's a
kind of pity you're so solemn."

Witham smiled. "I don't fancy that's astonishing after losing two
harvests in succession," he said. "You see, there's nobody back there
in the old country to send remittances to me."

The girl nodded with quick sympathy. "Oh, yes. The times are bad," she
said. "Well, you read your letters; I'm not going to worry you."

Witham sat down and opened the first envelope under the big lamp. It
was from a land agent and mortgage-broker, and his face grew a trifle
grimmer as he read, "In the present condition of the money market your
request that we should carry you over is unreasonable, and we regret
that unless you can extinguish at least half the loan we will be
compelled to foreclose upon your holding."

There was a little more of it, but that was sufficient for Witham, who
knew it meant disaster, and it was with the feeling of one clinging
desperately to the last shred of hope he tore open the second
envelope. The letter it held was from a friend he had made in a
Western city, and once entertained for a month at his ranch, but the
man had evidently sufficient difficulties of his own to contend with.

"Very sorry, but it can't be done," he wrote. "I'm loaded up with
wheat nobody will buy, and couldn't raise five hundred dollars to lend
any one just now,"

Witham sighed a little, but when he rose and slowly straightened
himself nobody would have suspected he was looking ruin in the face.
He had fought a slow, losing battle for six weary years, holding on
doggedly though defeat appeared inevitable, and now when it had come
he bore it impassively, for the struggle which, though he was scarcely
twenty-six, had crushed all mirth and brightness out of his life, had
given him endurance in place of them. Just then a man came bustling
towards him, with the girl who bore a tray close behind.

"What are you doing with that coat on?" he said. "Get it off and sit
down right there. The boys are about through with the mail and
supper's ready,"

Witham glanced at the steaming dishes hungrily, for he had passed most
of the day in the bitter frost, eating very little, and there was
still a drive of twenty miles before him.

"It is time I was taking the trail," he said.

He was sensible of a pain in his left side, which, as other men have
discovered, not infrequently follows enforced abstinence from food,
but he remembered what he wanted the half-dollar in his pocket for.
The hotel-keeper had possibly some notion of the state of affairs, for
he laughed a little.

"You've got to sit down," he said. "Now, after the way you fixed me up
when I stopped at your ranch, you don't figure I'd let you go before
you had some supper with me."

Witham may have been unduly sensitive, but he shook his head. "You're
very good, but it's a long ride, and I'm going now," he said.
"Good-night, Nettie."

He turned as he spoke, with the swift decision that was habitual with
him, and when he went out the girl glanced at her father
reproachfully.

"You always get spoiling things when you put your hand in," she said.
"Now that man's hungry, and I'd have fixed it so he'd have got his
supper if you had left it to me."

The hotel-keeper laughed a little. "I'm kind of sorry for Witham
because there's grit in him, and he's never had a show," he said.
"Still, I figure he's not worth your going out gunning after, Nettie."

The girl said nothing, but there was a little flush in her face which
had not been there before, when she busied herself with the dishes.

In the meanwhile Witham was harnessing two bronco horses to a very
dilapidated wagon. They were vicious beasts, but he had bought them
cheap from a man who had some difficulty in driving them, while the
wagon had been given him, when it was apparently useless, by a
neighbour. The team had, however, already covered thirty miles that
day, and started homewards at a steady trot without the playful
kicking they usually indulged in. Here and there a man sprang clear of
the rutted road, but Witham did not notice him or return his greeting.
He was abstractedly watching the rude frame houses flit by, and
wondering, while the pain in his side grew keener, when he would get
his supper, for it happens not infrequently that the susceptibilities
are dulled by a heavy blow, and the victim finds a distraction that is
almost welcome in the endurance of a petty trouble.

Witham was very hungry, and weary alike in body and mind. The sun had
not risen when he left his homestead, and he had passed the day under
a nervous strain, hoping, although it seemed improbable, that the mail
would bring him relief from his anxieties. Now he knew the worst he
could bear it as he had borne the loss of two harvests, and the
disaster which followed in the wake of the blizzard that killed off
his stock; but it seemed unfair that he should endure cold and hunger
too, and when one wheel sank in a rut and the jolt shook him in every
stiffened limb, he broke out with a hoarse expletive. It was his first
protest against the fate that was too strong for him, and almost as he
made it he laughed.

"Pshaw! There's no use kicking against what has to be, and I've got to
keep my head just now," he said.

There was no great comfort in the reflection, but it had sustained him
before, and Witham's head was a somewhat exceptional one, though there
was as a rule nothing in any way remarkable about his conversation,
and he was apparently merely one of the many quietly-spoken,
bronze-faced men who are even by their blunders building up a great
future for the Canadian dominion. He accordingly drew his old rug
tighter round him, and instinctively pulled his fur cap lower down
when the lights of the settlement faded behind him and the creaking
wagon swung out into the blackness of the prairie. It ran back league
beyond league across three broad provinces, and the wind that came up
out of the great emptiness emphasized its solitude. A man from the
cities would have heard nothing but the creaking of the wagon and the
drumming fall of hoofs, but Witham heard the grasses patter as they
swayed beneath the bitter blasts stiff with frost, and the moan of
swinging boughs in a far-off willow bluff. It was these things that
guided him, for he had left the rutted trail, and here and there the
swishen beneath the wheels told of taller grass, while the bluff ran
black athwart the horizon when that had gone. Then twigs crackled
beneath them as the horses picked their way amidst the shadowy trees
stunted by a ceaseless struggle with the wind, and Witham shook the
creeping drowsiness from him when they came out into the open again,
for he knew it is not advisable for any man with work still to do to
fall asleep under the frost of that country.

Still, he grew a trifle dazed as the miles went by, and because of it
indulged in memories he had shaken off at other times. They were
blurred recollections of the land he had left eight years ago,
pictures of sheltered England, half-forgotten music, the voices of
friends who no longer remembered him, and the smiles in a girl's
bright eyes. Then he settled himself more firmly in the driving-seat,
and with numbed fingers sought a tighter grip of the reins as the
memory of the girl's soft answer to a question he had asked brought
his callow ambitions back.

He was to hew his way to fortune in the West, and then come back for
her, but the girl who had clung to him with wet cheeks when he left
her had apparently grown tired of waiting, and Witham sent back her
letters in return for a silver-printed card. That was six years ago,
and now none of the dollars he had brought into the country remained
to him. He realized, dispassionately and without egotism, that this
was through no fault of his, for he knew that better men had been
crushed and beaten.

It was, however, time he had done with these reflections, for while he
sat half-dazed and more than half-frozen the miles had been flitting
by, and now the team knew they were not very far from home. Little by
little their pace increased, and Witham was almost astonished to see
another bluff black against the night ahead of him. As usual in that
country, the willows and birches crawled up the sides and just showed
their heads above the sinuous crest of a river hollow. It was very
dark when the wagon lurched in among them, and it cost the man an
effort to discern the winding trail which led down into the blackness
of the hollow. In places the slope was almost precipitous, and it
behoved him to be careful of the horses, which could not be replaced.
Without them he could not plough in spring, and his life did not
appear of any especial value in comparison with theirs just then.

The team, however, were evidently bent on getting home as soon as
possible, and Witham's fingers were too stiff to effectively grasp the
reins. A swinging bough also struck one of the horses, and when it
plunged and flung up its head the man reeled a little in his seat.
Before he recovered the team were going down-hill at a gallop. Witham
flung himself bodily backwards with tense muscles, and the reins
slipping a trifle in his hands, knowing that though he bore against
them with all his strength the team were leaving the trail. Then the
wagon jolted against a tree, one horse stumbled, picked up its stride,
and went on at a headlong gallop. The man felt the wind rush past him
and saw the dim trees whirl by, but he could only hold on and wonder
what would take place when they came to the bottom. The bridge the
trail went round by was some distance to the right and because the
frost had just set in he knew the ice on the river would not bear the
load, even if the horses could keep their footing.

He had not, however, long to wonder. Once more a horse stumbled, there
was a crash, and a branch hurled Witham backwards into the wagon,
which came to a standstill suddenly. When he rose something warm was
running down his face, and there was a red smear on the hand he
lighted the lantern with. When that was done he flung himself down
from the wagon, dreading what he would find. The flickering radiance
showed him that the pole had snapped, and while one bronco still stood
trembling on its feet the other lay inert amidst a tangle of harness.
The man's face grew a trifle grimmer as he threw the light upon it,
and then, stooping, glanced at one doubled leg. It was evident that
fate, which did nothing by halves, had dealt him a crushing blow. The
last faint hope he clung to had vanished now.

He was, however, a humane man, and considerate of the beasts that
worked for him, and accordingly thrust his hand inside the old fur
coat, when he had loosed the uninjured horse, and drew out a
long-bladed knife. Then he knelt and, setting down the lantern, felt
for the place to strike. When he found it his courage almost deserted
him, and meeting the eyes that seemed to look up at him with dumb
appeal, turned his head away. Still, he was a man who would not shirk
a painful duty, and shaking off the sense of revulsion turned again
and stroked the beast's head.

"It's all I can do for you," he said.

Then his arm came down, and a tremor ran through the quivering frame,
while Witham set his lips tightly as his hand grew warm. The thing was
horrible to him, but the life he led had taught him the folly of
weakness, and he was too pitiful to let his squeamishness overcome
him.

Still, he shivered when it was done, and rubbing the knife in the
withered leaves, rose and made shift to gird a rug about the uninjured
horse. Then he cut the reins and tied them, and mounting without
stirrups rode towards the bridge. The horse went quietly enough now,
and the man allowed it to choose its way. He was going home to find
shelter from the cold, because his animal instincts prompted him, but
otherwise, almost without volition, in a state of dispassionate
indifference. Nothing more he fancied, could well befall him.




CHAPTER II

LANCE COURTHORNE


It was late when Witham reached his log-built house, but he set out
once more with his remaining horse before the lingering daylight crept
out of the east, to haul the wagon home. He also spent most of the day
in repairing it, because occupation of any kind that would keep him
from unpleasant reflections appeared advisable, and to allow anything
to fall out of use was distasteful to him, although as the wagon had
been built for two horses he had little hope of driving it again. It
was a bitter, grey day, with a low, smoky sky, and seemed very long to
Witham; but evening came at last, and he was left with nothing between
him and his thoughts.

He lay in a dilapidated chair beside the stove, and the little bare
room through which its pipe ran was permeated with the smell of fresh
shavings, hot iron, and the fumes of indifferent tobacco. A
carpenter's bench ran along one end of it, and was now occupied by a
new wagon pole the man had fashioned out of a slender birch. A Marlin
rifle, an axe, and a big saw hung beneath the head of an antelope on
the wall above the bench, and all of them showed signs of use and
glistened with oil. Opposite to them a few shelves were filled with
simple crockery and cooking utensils, and these also shone spotlessly.
There was a pair of knee boots in one corner with a patch partly sewn
on to one of them, and the harness in another showed traces of careful
repair. A bookcase hung above them, and its somewhat tattered contents
indicated that the man who had chosen and evidently handled them
frequently possessed tastes any one who did not know that country
would scarcely have expected to find in a prairie farmer. A table and
one or two rude chairs made by their owner's hands completed the
furniture; but while all hinted at poverty, it also suggested
neatness, industry, and care, for the room bore the impress of its
occupier's individuality, as rooms not infrequently do.

It was not difficult to see that he was frugal, though possibly from
necessity rather than taste, not sparing of effort, and had a keen eye
for utility, and if that suggested the question why, with such
capacities, he had not attained to greater comfort, the answer was
simple. Witham had no money, and the seasons had fought against him.
He had done his uttermost with the means at his disposal, and now he
knew he was beaten.

A doleful wind moaned about the lonely building and set the roof
shingles rattling overhead. Now and then the stove crackled, or the
lamp flickered, and any one unused to the prairie would have felt the
little loghouse very desolate and lonely. There was no other human
habitation within a league, only a great waste of whitened grass
relieved about the homestead by the raw clods of the fall ploughing;
for, while his scattered neighbours, for the most part, put their
trust in horses and cattle, Witham had been among the first to realize
the capacities of that land as a wheat-growing country.

Now, clad in well-worn jean trousers and an old deerskin jacket, he
looked down at the bundle of documents on his knee, accounts unpaid, a
banker's intimation that no more cheques would be honoured and a
mortgage deed. They were not pleasant reading, and the man's face
clouded as he pencilled notes on some of them, but there was no
weakness or futile protest in it. Defeat was plain between the lines
of all he read, but he was going on stubbornly until the struggle was
ended, as others of his kind had done, there at the western limit of
the furrows of the plough and in the great province further east which
is one of the world's granaries. They went under and were forgotten,
but they showed the way, and while their guerdon was usually six feet
of prairie soil, the wheat-fields, mills, and railroads came, for it
is written plainly on the new North-West that no man may live and
labour for himself alone, and there are many who, realizing it,
instinctively ask very little, and freely give their best for the land
that but indifferently shelters them.

Presently, however, there was a knocking at the door, and though this
was most unusual, Witham only quietly moved his head when a bitter
blast came in, and a man wrapped in furs stood in the opening.

"I'll put my horse in the stable while I've got my furs on. It's a
bitter night," he said.

Witham nodded. "You know where the lantern is," he said. "There's some
chop in the manger, and you needn't spare the oats in the bin. At
present prices it doesn't pay to haul them in."

The man closed the door silently, and it was ten minutes before he
returned, and sloughing off his furs dropped into a chair beside the
stove. "I got supper at Broughton's, and don't want anything but
shelter to-night," he said. "Shake that pipe out and try one of these
instead."

He laid a cigar case on the table, and though well worn it was of
costly make, with a good deal of silver about it, while Witham, who
lighted one, knew that the cigars were good. He had no esteem for his
visitor, but men are not censorious upon the prairie, and Western
hospitality is always free.

"Where have you come from, Courthorne?" he said quietly.

The other man laughed a little. "The long trail," he said. "The
Dakotas, Colorado, Montana. Cleaned up one thousand dollars at Regent,
and might have got more, but some folks down there seemed tired of me.
The play was quite regular, but they have apparently been getting
virtuous lately."

"And now?" said Witham, with polite indifference.

Courthorne made a little gesture of deprecation.

"I'm back again with the rustlers."

Witham's nod signified comprehension, for the struggle between the
great range-holders across the frontier and the smaller settlers who
with legal right invaded their cattle runs was just over. It had been
fought out bitterly with dynamite and rifles, and when at last, with
the aid of the United States cavalry, peace was made, sundry broken
men and mercenaries who had taken the pay of both parties, seeing
their occupation gone, had found a fresh scope for their energies in
smuggling liquor, and on opportunity transferring cattle, without
their owners' sanction, across the frontier. That was then a
prohibition country, and the profits and risks attached to supplying
it and the Blackfeet on the reserves with liquor were heavy.

"Business this way?" said Witham.

Courthorne appeared to consider a moment, and there was a curious
little glint which did not escape his companion's attention in his
eyes, but he laughed.

"Yes, we're making a big run," he said, then stopped and looked
straight at the rancher. "Did it ever strike you, Witham, that you
were not unlike me?"

Witham smiled, but made a little gesture of dissent as he returned the
other's gaze. They were about the same height and had the same English
type of face, while Witham's eyes were grey and his companion's an
indefinite blue that approached the former colour, but there the
resemblance, which was not more than discernible, ended. Witham was
quietly-spoken and somewhat grim, a plain prairie farmer in
appearance, while a vague but recognizable stamp of breeding and
distinction still clung to Courthorne. He would have appeared more in
place in the States upon the southern Atlantic seaboard, where the
characteristics the Cavalier settlers brought with them are not
extinct, than he did upon the Canadian prairie. His voice had even in
his merriment a little imperious ring, his face was refined as well as
sensual, and there was a languid gracefulness in his movements and a
hint of pride in his eyes. They, however, lacked the steadiness of
Witham's, and there were men who had seen the wild devil that was born
in Courthorne look out of them. Witham knew him as a pleasant
companion, but surmised from stories he had heard that there were men,
and more women, who bitterly rued the trust they had placed in him.

"No," he said dryly. "I scarcely think I am like you, although only
last night Nettie at the settlement took me for you. You see, the kind
of life I've led out here has set its mark on me, and my folks in the
old country were distinctly middle-class people. There is something in
heredity."

Courthorne did not parry the unexpressed question. "Oh, yes," he said,
with a little sardonic smile. "I know. The backbone of the
nation--solemn, virtuous, and slow. You're like them, but my folks
were different, as you surmise. I don't think they had many estimable
qualities from your point of view, but if they all didn't go quite
straight they never went slow, and they had a few prejudices, which is
why I found it advisable to leave the old country. Still, I've had my
fill of all that life can offer most folks out here, while you
scarcely seem to have found virtue pay you. They told me at the
settlement things were bad with you."

Witham, who was usually correct in his deductions, surmised that his
companion had an object, and expected something in return for this
confidence. There was also no need for reticence when every farmer in
the district knew all about his affairs, while something urged him to
follow Courthorne's lead.

"Yes," he said quietly. "They are. You see, when I lost my cattle in
the blizzard, I had to sell out or mortgage the place to the hilt, and
during the last two years I haven't made the interest. The loan falls
due in August, and they're going to foreclose on me."

"Then," said Courthorne, "what is keeping you here when the result of
every hour's work you put in will go straight into another's man's
pocket?"

Witham smiled a little. "In the first place, I've nowhere else to go,
and there's something in the feeling that one has held on to the end.
Besides, until a few days ago I had a vague hope that by working
double tides, I might get another crop in. Somebody might have
advanced me a little on it because the mortgage only claims the house
and land."

Courthorne looked at him curiously. "No. We are not alike," he said.
"There's a slow stubborn devil in you, Witham, and I think I'd be
afraid of you if I ever did you an injury. But go on."

"There's very little more. My team ran away down the ravine, and I had
to put one beast out of its misery. I can't do my ploughing with one
horse, and that leaves me stranded for the want of the dollars to buy
another with. It's usually a very little thing that turns the scale,
but now the end has come, I don't know that I'm sorry. I've never had
a good time, you see, and the struggle was slowly crushing the life
out of me."

Witham spoke quietly, without bitterness, but Courthorne, who had
never striven at all but stretched out his hand and taken what was
offered, the more willingly when it was banned alike by judicial and
moral law, dimly understood him. He was a fearless man, but he knew
his courage would not have been equal to the strain of that six years'
struggle against loneliness, physical fatigue, and adverse seasons,
during which disaster followed disaster. He looked at the bronzed
farmer as he said, "Still, you would do a little in return for a
hundred dollars that would help you to go on with the fight?"

A faint sparkle crept into Witham's eyes. It was not hope, but rather
the grim anticipation of the man offered a better weapon when standing
with his back to the wall.

"Yes," he said slowly. "I would do almost anything."

"Even if it was against the law?"

Witham sat silent for almost a minute, but there was no indecision in
his face, which slightly perplexed Courthorne. "Yes," he said. "Though
I kept it while I could, the law was made for the safe-guarding of
prosperous men, but with such as I am it is every man for his own hand
and the devil to care for the vanquished. Still, there is a
reservation."

Courthorne nodded. "It's unlawful, but not against the unwritten
code."

"Well," said Witham quietly, "when you tell me what you want I should
have a better opinion."

Courthorne laughed a little, though there was something unpleasant in
his eyes. "When I first came out to this country I should have
resented that," he said. "Now, it seems to me that I'm putting too
much in your hands if I make the whole thing clear before you commit
yourself in any way."

Witham nodded. "In fact, you have got to trust me. You can do so
safely."

"The assurance of the guileless is astonishing and occasionally hard
to bear," said Courthorne. "Why not reverse the position?"

Witham's gaze was steady, and free from embarrassment. "I am," he
said, "waiting for your offer."

"Then," said Courthorne dryly, "here it is. We are running a big load
through to the northern settlements and the reserves to-morrow, and
while there's a good deal of profit attached to the venture, I have a
notion that Sergeant Stimson has had word of it. Now, the Sergeant
knows just how I stand with the rustlers, though he can fasten no
charge on me, and he will have several of his troopers looking out for
me. Well, I want one of them to see and follow me south along the
Montana trail. There's no horse in the Government service can keep
pace with that black of mine, but it would not be difficult to pull
him and just keep the trooper out of carbine shot behind. When he
finds he can't overtake the black he'll go off for his comrades, and
the boys will run our goods across the river while they're picking up
the trail."

"You mentioned the horse, but not yourself," said Witham quietly.

Courthorne laughed. "Yes," he said; "I will not be there. I'm offering
you one hundred dollars to ride the black for me. You can put my furs
on, and anybody who saw you and knew the horse would certify it was
me."

"And where will you be?"

"Here," said Courthorne dryly. "The boys will have no use for me until
they want a guide, but they'll leave an unloaded packhorse handy, and,
as it wouldn't suit any of us to make my connexion with them too
plain, it will be a night or two later when I join them. In the
meanwhile your part's quite easy. No trooper could ride you down
unless you wanted him to, and you'll ride straight on to Montana--I've
a route marked out for you. You'll stop at the places I tell you, and
the testimony of anybody who saw you on the black would be quite
enough to clear me if Stimson's men are too clever for the boys."

Witham sat still a moment, and it was not avarice which prompted him
when he said, "Considering the risk, one hundred dollars is very
little."

"Of course," said Courthorne. "Still, it isn't worth any more to me,
and there will be your expenses. If it doesn't suit you, I will do the
thing myself and find the boys another guide."

He spoke indifferently, but Witham was not a fool, and knew that he
was lying.

"Turn your face to the light," he said sharply.

A little ominous glint became visible in Courthorne's eyes, and there
was just a trace of darker colour in his forehead, but Witham saw it
and was not astonished. Still Courthorne did not move.

"What made you ask me that?" he said.

Witham watched him closely, but his voice betrayed no special interest
as he said, "I fancied I saw a mark across your cheek. It seemed to me
that it had been made by a whip."

The deeper tint was more visible on Courthorne's forehead, where the
swollen veins showed a trifle, and he appeared to swallow something
before he spoke. "Aren't you asking too many questions? What has a
mark on my face to do with you?"

"Nothing," said Witham quietly. "Will you go through the conditions
again?"

Courthorne nodded. "I pay you one hundred dollars--now," he said. "You
ride south to-morrow along the Montana trail and take the risk of the
troopers overtaking you. You will remain away a fortnight at my
expense, and pass in the meanwhile for me. Then you will return at
night as rancher Witham, and keep the whole thing a secret from
everybody."

Witham sat silent and very still again for more than a minute. He
surmised that the man who made the offer had not told him all and
there was more behind, but that was, after all, of no great
importance. He was prepared to do a good deal for one hundred dollars,
and his bare life of effort and self-denial had grown almost
unendurable. He had now nothing to lose, and while some impulse urged
him to the venture, he felt that it was possible fate had in store for
him something better than he had known in the past. In the meanwhile
the cigar he held went out, and the striking of a match as Courthorne
lighted another roused him suddenly from the retrospect he was sinking
into. The bitter wind still moaned about the ranch, emphasizing its
loneliness, and the cedar shingles rattled dolefully overhead, while
it chanced that as Witham glanced towards the roof his eyes rested on
the suspended piece of rancid pork which with a little flour and a few
potatoes had during the last few months provided him with a
sustenance. It was of course a trifle, but it tipped the beam, as
trifles often do, and the man who was tired of all it symbolized
straightened himself with a little mirthless laugh.

"On your word of honour there is nothing beyond the risk of a few
days' detention which can affect me?" he said.

"No," said Courthorne solemnly, knowing that he lied. "On my honour.
The troopers could only question you. Is it a deal?"

"Yes," said Witham simply, stretching out his hand for the roll of
bills the other flung down on the table, and, while one of the
contracting parties knew that the other would regret it bitterly, the
bargain was made.

Then Courthorne laughed in his usual indolent fashion as he said,
"Well, it's all decided, and I don't even ask your word. To-morrow
will see the husk sloughed off and for a fortnight you'll be Lance
Courthorne. I hope you feel equal to playing the role with credit,
because I wouldn't entrust my good fame to everybody."

Witham smiled dryly. "I fancy I shall," he said, and long afterwards
recalled the words. "You see, I had ambitions in my callow days, and
it's not my fault that hitherto I've never had a part to play."

Rancher Witham was, however, wrong in this. He had played the part of
an honest man with a courage which had brought him to ruin, but there
was now to be a difference.




CHAPTER III

TROOPER SHANNON'S QUARREL


There was bitter frost in the darkness outside when two young men
stood talking in the stables of a little outpost lying a long ride
back from the settlement in the lonely prairie. One leaned against a
manger with a pipe in his hand, while the spotless, softly-gleaming
harness hung up behind him showed what his occupation had been. The
other stood bolt upright with lips set, and a faint greyness which
betokened strong emotion showing through his tan. The lantern above
them flickered in the icy draughts, and from out of the shadows beyond
its light came the stamping of restless horses and the smell of
prairie hay, which is pungent with the odours of wild peppermint.

The two lads, and they were very little more, were friends, in spite
of the difference in their upbringing, for there are few distinctions
between caste and caste in that country where manhood is still
esteemed the greatest thing, and the primitive virtues count for more
than wealth or intellect. Courage and endurance still command respect
in the new North-West, and that both the lads possessed them was made
evident by the fact that they were troopers of the North-West police,
a force of splendid cavalry whose duty it is to patrol the wilderness
at all seasons and in all weathers, under scorching sun and in
blinding snow.

The men who keep the peace of the prairie are taught what heat and
thirst are, when they ride in couples through a desolate waste wherein
there is only bitter water, parched by pitiless sunrays and whitened
by the intolerable dust of alkali. They also discover just how much
cold the human frame can endure, when they lie down with only the
stars above them, long leagues from the nearest outpost, in a trench,
scooped in the snow, and they know how near one may come to
suffocation and yet live through the grassfire's blinding smoke. It
happens now and then that two who have answered to the last roster in
the icy darkness do not awaken when the lingering dawn breaks across
the great white waste, and only the coyote knows their resting-place,
but the watch and ward is kept, and the lonely settler dwells as safe
in the wilderness as he would in an English town.

Trooper Shannon was an Irishman from the bush of Ontario, Trooper
Payne, English, and a scion of a somewhat distinguished family in the
old country, but while he told nobody why he left it suddenly, nobody
thought of asking him. He was known to be a bold rider and careful of
his beast, and that was sufficient for his comrades and the keen-eyed
Sergeant Stimson. He glanced at his companion thoughtfully as he said,
"She was a pretty girl. You knew her in Ontario?"

Shannon's hands trembled a little. "Sure," he said, "Larry's place was
just a mile beyont our clearing, an' there was never a bonnier thing
than Ailly Blake came out from the old country--but is it need there
is for talking when ye've seen her? There was once I watched her smile
at ye with the black eyes that would have melted the heart out of any
man. Waking and sleeping they're with me still."

Three generations of the Shannons had hewn the lonely clearing further
into the bush of Ontario and married the daughters of the soil, but
the Celtic strain, it was evident, had not run out yet. Payne,
however, came of English stock, and expressed himself differently.

"It was a--shame," he said. "Of course he flung her over. I think you
saw him, Pat?"

Shannon's face grew greyer, and he quivered visibly as his passion
shook him, while Payne felt his own blood pulse faster as he
remembered the graceful dark-eyed girl who had given him and his
comrade many a welcome meal when their duty took them near her
brother's homestead. That was, however, before one black day for Ailly
and Larry Blake when Lance Courthorne also rode that way.

"Yes," said the lad from Ontario, "I was driving in for the stores
when I met him in the willow bluff, an' Courthorne pulls his divil of
a black horse up with a little ugly smile on the lips of him when I
swung the wagon right across the trail.

"'That's not civil, trooper,' says he.

"'I'm wanting a word,' says I, with the black hate choking me at the
sight of him. 'What have ye done with Ailly?'

"'Is it anything to you?' says he.

"'It's everything,' says I. 'And if ye will not tell me I'll tear it
out of ye.'

"Courthorne laughs a little, but I saw the divil in his eyes. 'I don't
think you're quite man enough,' says he, sitting very quiet on the big
black horse. 'Anyway, I can't tell you where she is just now, because
she left the dancing saloon she was in down in Montana when I last saw
her.'

"I had the big whip that day, and I forgot everything as I heard the
hiss of it round my shoulder. It came home across the ugly face of
him, and then I flung it down and grabbed the carbine as he swung the
black round with one hand fumbling in his jacket. It came out empty,
an' we sat there a moment, the two of us, Courthorne white as death,
his eyes like burning coals, and the fingers of me trembling on the
carbine. Sorrow on the man that he hadn't a pistol, or I'd have sent
the black soul of him to the divil it came from."

The lad panted, and Payne, who had guessed at his hopeless devotion to
the girl who had listened to Courthorne, made a gesture of disapproval
that was tempered by sympathy. It was for her sake, he fancied,
Shannon had left the Ontario clearing and followed Larry Blake to the
West.

"I'm glad he hadn't, Pat," said Payne. "What was the end of it?"

"I remembered," said the other with a groan, "remembered I was Trooper
Shannon, an' dropped the carbine into the wagon. Courthorne wheels the
black horse round, an' I saw the red line across the face of him.

"'You'll be sorry for this, my lad,' says he."

"He's a dangerous man," Payne said thoughtfully. "Pat, you came near
being a----ass that day. Anyway, it's time we went in, and as Larry's
here I shouldn't wonder if we saw Courthorne again before the
morning."

The icy cold went through them to the bone as they left the stables,
and it was a relief to enter the loghouse, which was heated to
fustiness by the glowing stove. A lamp hung from a rough birch beam,
and its uncertain radiance showed motionless figures wrapped in
blankets in the bunks round the walls. Two men were, however,
dressing, and one already in uniform sat at a table talking to another
swathed in furs, who was from his appearance a prairie farmer. The man
at the table was lean and weather-bronzed, with grizzled hair and
observant eyes. They were fixed steadily upon the farmer, who knew
that very little which happened upon the prairie escaped the vigilance
of Sergeant Stimson.

"It's straight talk you're giving me, Larry? What do you figure on
making by it?" he said.

The farmer laughed mirthlessly. "Not much, anyway, beyond the chance
of getting a bullet in me back or me best steer lifted one dark night.
'Tis not forgiving the rustlers are, and Courthorne's the divil," he
said. "But listen now, Sergeant; I've told ye where he is, and if
ye're not fit to corral him I'll ride him down meself."

Sergeant Stimson wrinkled his forehead. "If anybody knows what they're
after, it should be you," he said, watching the man out of the corner
of his eyes. "Still, I'm a little worried as to why, when you'll get
nothing for it, you're anxious to serve the State."

The farmer clenched a big hand. "Sergeant, you that knows everything,
will ye drive me mad, an' to ---- with the State!" he said. "Sure,
it's gospel I'm telling ye, an' as you're knowing well, it's me could
tell where the boys who ride at midnight drop many a keg. Well, if ye
will have your reason, it was Courthorne who put the black shame on me
an' mine."

Sergeant Stimson nodded, for he had already suspected this.

"Then," he said dryly, "we'll give you a chance of helping us to put
the handcuffs on him. Now, because they wouldn't risk the bridge, and
the ice is not thick yet everywhere, there are just two ways they
could bring the stuff across, and I figure we'd be near the thing if
we fixed on Graham's Pool. Still, Courthorne's no kind of fool, and
just because that crossing seems the likeliest he might try the other
one. You're ready for duty, Trooper Payne?"

The lad stood straight. "I can turn out in ten minutes, sir," he said.

"Then," and Sergeant Stimson raised his voice a trifle, "you will ride
at once to the rise a league outside the settlement, and watch the
Montana trail. Courthorne will probably be coming over from Witham's
soon after you get there, riding the big black, and you'll keep out of
sight and follow him. If he heads for Carson's Crossing ride for
Graham's at a gallop, where you'll find me with the rest. If he makes
for the bridge, you will overtake him if you can and find out what
he's after. It's quite likely he'll tell you nothing, and you will not
arrest him, but bearing in mind that every minute he spends there will
be a loss to the rustlers you'll keep him so long as you can. Trooper
Shannon, you'll ride at once to the bluff above Graham's Pool, and
watch the trail. Stop any man who rides that way, and if it's
Courthorne keep him until the rest of the boys come up with me. You've
got your duty quite straight, both of you?"

The lads saluted, and went out, while the Sergeant smiled a little as
he glanced at the farmer, and the men who were dressing.

"It's steep chances we'll have Mr. Courthorne's company to-morrow,
boys," he said. "Fill up the kettle, Tom, and serve out a pint of
coffee. There are reasons why we shouldn't turn out too soon. We'll
saddle in an hour or so."

Two of the men went out, and the stinging blast that swept in through
the open door smote a smoky smear across the blinking lamp and roused
a sharper crackling from the stove. Then one returned with the kettle
and there was silence, when the fusty heat resumed its sway. Now and
then a tired trooper murmured in his sleep, or there was a snapping in
the stove, while the icy wind moaned about the building and the kettle
commenced a soft sibilation, but nobody moved or spoke. Three shadowy
figures in uniform sat just outside the light soaking in the grateful
warmth while they could, for they knew that they might spend the next
night unsheltered from the Arctic cold of the wilderness. The Sergeant
sat with thoughtful eyes and wrinkled forehead where the flickering
radiance forced up his lean face and silhouetted his spare outline on
the rough boarding behind him, and close by the farmer sucked silently
at his pipe, waiting, with a stony calm that sprang from fierce
impatience, the reckoning with the man who had brought back shame upon
him.

It was about this time when Witham stood shivering a little with the
bridle of a big black horse in his hand just outside the door of his
homestead. A valise and two thick blankets were strapped to the
saddle, and he had donned the fur cap and coat Courthorne usually
wore. Courthorne himself stood close by, smiling at him sardonically.

"If you keep the cap down and ride with your stirrups long, as I've
fixed them, anybody would take you for me," said he. "Go straight
through the settlement, and let any man you come across see you. His
testimony would come in useful if Stimson tries to fix a charge on me.
You know your part of the bargain. You're to be Lance Courthorne for a
fortnight from to-day."

"Yes," said Witham dryly. "I wish I was equally sure of yours."

Courthorne laughed. "I'm to be Rancher Witham until to-morrow night,
anyway. Don't worry about me. I'll borrow those books of yours and
improve my mind. Possible starvation is the only thing that threatens
me, and it's unfortunate you've left nothing fit to eat behind you."

Witham swung himself into the saddle, a trifle awkwardly, for
Courthorne rode with longer stirrup leathers than he was accustomed
to, then he raised one hand, and the other man laughed a little as he
watched him sink into the darkness of the shadowy prairie. When the
drumming of hoofs was lost in the moaning of the wind he strode
towards the stable, and taking up the lantern surveyed Witham's horse
thoughtfully.

"The thing cuts with both edges, and the farmer only sees one of
them," he said. "That beast's about as difficult to mistake as my
black is."

Then he returned to the loghouse, and presently put on Witham's old
fur coat and tattered fur cap. Had Witham seen his unpleasant smile as
he did it, he would probably have wheeled the black horse and returned
at a gallop, but the farmer was sweeping across the waste of whitened
grass at least a league away by this time. Now and then a half-moon
blinked down between wisps of smoky cloud, but for the most part grey
dimness hung over the prairie, and the drumming of hoofs rang
stridently through the silence. Witham knew a good horse, and had bred
several of them--before a blizzard which swept the prairie killed off
his finest yearlings as well as their pedigree sire--and his spirits
rose as the splendid beast swung into faster stride beneath him.

For two weeks at least he would be free from anxiety, and the monotony
of his life at the lonely homestead had grown horribly irksome. Witham
was young, and, now when for a brief space he had left his cares
behind, the old love of adventure which had driven him out from
England once more awakened and set his blood stirring. For the first
time in six years of struggle he did not know what lay before him, and
he had a curious, half-instinctive feeling that the trail he was
travelling would lead him farther than Montana. It was borne in upon
him that he had left the old hopeless life behind, and, stirred by
some impulse, he broke into a little song he had sung in England, long
and forgotten. He had a clear voice, and the words, which were filled
with the hope of youth, rang bravely through the stillness of the
frozen wilderness until the horse blundered, and Witham stopped with a
little smile.

"It's four long years since I felt as I do to-night," he said.

Then he drew bridle and checked the horse as the lights of the
settlement commenced to blink ahead, for the trail was rutted deep and
frozen into the likeness of adamant, but when the first frame houses
flung tracks of yellow radiance across the whitened grass he dropped
his left arm a trifle and rode in at a canter as he had seen
Courthorne do. Witham did not like Courthorne, but he meant to keep
his bargain.

As he passed the hotel more slowly a man who came out called to him.
"Hello, Lance! Taking the trail?" he said. "Well, it kind of strikes
me it's time you did. One of Stimson's boys was down here, and he
seemed quite anxious about you."

Witham knew the man, and was about to urge the horse forward, but in
place of it drew bridle, and laughed with a feeling that was wholly
new to him as he remembered that his neighbours now and then bantered
him about his English and that Courthorne only used the Western
colloquialism when it suited him.

"Sergeant Stimson is an enterprising officer, but there are as keen
men as he is," he said. "You will, in case he questions you, remember
when you met me."

"Oh, yes," said the other. "Still, I wouldn't fool too much with
him--and where did you get those mittens from? That's the kind of
outfit that would suit Witham."

Witham nodded, for though he had turned his face from the light the
hand he held the bridle with was visible, and his big fur gloves were
very old.

"They are his. The fact is, I've just come from his place," he said.
"Well, you can tell Stimson you saw me starting out on the Montana
trail."

He shook the bridle, laughed softly as the frame houses flitted by,
and then grew intent when the darkness of the prairie once more closed
down. It was, he knew probable that some of Stimson's, men would be
looking out for him, and he had not sufficient faith in Courthorne's
assurances to court an encounter with them.

The lights had faded, and the harsh grass was, crackling under the
drumming hoofs when the blurred outline of a mounted man showed up on
the crest of a rise, and a shout came down.

"Hallo! Pull up there a moment, stranger."

There was nothing alarming in the greeting, but Witham recognized the
ring of command, as well as the faint jingle of steel which had
preceded it, and pressed his heels home. The black swung forward
faster, and Witham glancing over his shoulder, saw, the dusky shape
was now moving down the incline, Then the voice rose again more
commandingly.

"Pull up; I want a talk with you."

Witham turned his head a moment, and remembering Courthorne's English,
flung back the answer, "Sorry, I haven't time."

The faint musical jingle grew plainer, there was a thud of hoofs
behind, and the curious, exhilaration returned to Witham as the big
black horse stretched out at a gallop. The soil was hard as granite,
but the matted grasses formed a covering that rendered fast riding
possible to a man who took the risks and Witham knew there were few
horses in the Government service to match the one he rode. Still, it
was evident that the trooper meant to overtake him, and recollecting
his compact he tightened his grip on the bridle. It was a long way to
the ranch where he was to spend the night, and he knew that the
further he drew the trooper on the better it would suit Courthorne.

So they swept on through the darkness over the empty waste, the
trooper who was riding hard slowly creeping up behind. Still, Witham
held the horse in until a glance over his shoulder showed him that
there was less than a hundred yards between them, and he fancied he
heard a portentous rattle as well as the thud of hoofs. It was not
unlike that made by a carbine flung across the saddle. This suggested
unpleasant possibilities, and he slackened his grip on the bridle.
Then a breathless shout rang out, "Pull up or I'll fire."

Witham wondered if the threat was genuine or what is termed "bluff" in
that country, but as he had decided objections to being shot in the
back to please Courthorne, sent his heels home. The horse shot forward
beneath him, and though no carbine flashed, the next backward glance
showed him that the distance between him and the pursuer was drawing
out, while when he stared ahead again the dark shape of willows or
birches cut the skyline. As they came back to him the drumming of
hoofs swelled into a staccato roar, while presently the trail grew
steep, and dark boughs swayed above him. In another few minutes
something smooth and level flung back a blink of light, and the
timbers of a wooden bridge rattled under his passage. Then he was
racing upwards through the gloom of wind-dwarfed birches on the
opposite side, listening for the rattle behind him on the bridge, and
after a struggle with the horse pulled him up smoking when he did not
hear it.

There was a beat of hoofs across the river, but it was slower than
when he had last heard it and grew momentarily less audible, and
Witham laughed as he watched the steam of the horse and his own breath
rise in a thin white cloud.

"The trooper has given it up, and now for Montana," he said.




CHAPTER IV

IN THE BLUFF


It was very dark amidst the birches where Trooper Shannon sat
motionless in his saddle, gazing down into the denser blackness of the
river hollow. The stream ran deep below the level of the prairie, as
the rivers of that country usually do, and the trees, which there
alone found shelter from the winds, straggled, gnarled and stunted, up
either side of the steep declivity. Close behind the trooper a sinuous
trail seamed by ruts and the print of hoofs stretched away across the
empty prairie. It forked on the outskirts of the bluff, and one arm
dipped steeply to the river where, because the stream ran slow just
there and the bottom was firm, a horseman might cross when the water
was low, and heavy sledges make the passage on the ice in winter time.
The other arm twisted in and out among the birches towards the bridge,
but that detour increased the distance to any one travelling north or
south by two leagues or so.

The ice, however was not very thick as yet, and Shannon, who had heard
it ring hollowly under him, surmised that while it might be possible
to lead a laden horse across, there would be some risk attached to the
operation. For that very reason, and although his opinion had not been
asked, he agreed with Sergeant Stimson that the whisky-runners would
attempt the passage. They were men who took the risks as they came,
and that route would considerably shorten the journey it was
especially desirable for them to make at night, while it would,
Shannon fancied, appear probable to them that if the police had word
of their intentions they would watch the bridge. Between it and the
frozen ford the stream ran faster, and the trooper decided that no
mounted man could cross the thinner ice.

It was very cold as well as dark, for although the snow, which usually
precedes the frost in that country, had not come as yet, it was
evidently not far away, and the trooper shivered in the blasts from
the pole which cut through fur and leather with the keenness of steel.
The temperature had fallen steadily since morning, and now there was a
presage of a blizzard in the moaning wind and murky sky. If it broke
and scattered its blinking whiteness upon the roaring blast there
would be but little hope for any man or beast caught shelterless in
the empty wilderness, for it is beyond the power of anything made of
flesh and blood to withstand that cold.

Already a fine haze of snow swirled between the birch twigs every now
and then, and stung the few patches of the trooper's unprotected skin
as though they had been pricked with red-hot needles. It, however,
seldom lasted more than a minute, and when it whirled away, a
half-moon shone down for a moment between smoky clouds. The uncertain
radiance showed the thrashing birches rising from the hollow, row on
row, struck a faint sparkle from the ice beneath them, and then went
out, leaving the gloom intensified. It was evident to Shannon that his
eyes would not be much use to him that night, for which reason he kept
his ears uncovered at the risk of losing them, but though he had been
born in the bush and all the sounds of the wilderness had for him a
meaning, hearing did not promise to be of much assistance. The dim
trees roared about him with a great thrashing of twigs, and when the
wilder gusts had passed there was an eery moaning, through which came
the murmur of leagues of tormented grasses. The wind was rising
rapidly, and it would, he fancied, drown the beat of approaching hoofs
as well as any cry from his comrades.

Four of them were hidden amidst the birches where the trail wound
steeply upwards through the bluff across the river, two on the nearer
side not far below, and Trooper Shannon's watch would serve two
purposes. He was to let the rustlers pass him it they rode for the
ford, and then help to cut off the retreat of any who escaped the
sergeant, while if they found the ice too thin for loaded beasts or
rode towards the bridge, a flash from his carbine would bring his
comrades across in time to join the others who were watching that
trail. It had, as usual with Stimson's schemes, all been carefully
thought out and the plan was eminently workable, but unfortunately for
the grizzled sergeant a better brain than his had foreseen the
combination.

In the meanwhile the lad felt his limbs grow stiff and almost useless,
and a lethargic numbness blunt the keenness of his faculties as the
heat went out of him. He had more than usual endurance, and utter
cold, thirst, and the hunger that most ably helps the frost, are not
infrequently the portion of the wardens of the prairie; but there is a
limit to what man can bear, and the troopers who watched by the frozen
river that night had almost reached it. Shannon could not feel the
stirrups with his feet. One of his ears was tingling horribly as the
blood that had almost left it resumed its efforts to penetrate the
congealing flesh, while the mittened hands he beat upon his breast
fell solidly on his wrappings without separate motion of the fingers.
Once or twice the horse stamped fretfully, but a touch of hand and
heel quieted him, for though the frozen flesh may shrink, unwavering
obedience is demanded equally from man and beast enrolled in the
service of the North-West police.

"Stiddy now," said the lad, partly to discover if he still retained
the power of speech. "Sure ye know the order that was given me, and if
it's a funeral that comes of it the Government will bury ye."

He sighed as he beat his hands upon his breast again, and when a
flicker of moonlight smote a passing track of brightness athwart the
tossing birches his young face was very grim. Like many another
trooper of the North-West police, Shannon had his story, and he
remembered the one trace of romance that had brightened his hard, bare
life that night as he waited for the man who had dissipated it.

When Larry Blake moved West from Ontario, Shannon, drawn by his
sister's dark eyes, followed him, and took up a Government grant of
prairie sod. His dollars were few, but he had a stout heart and two
working oxen, and nothing seemed impossible while Ailly Blake smiled
on him, and she smiled tolerably frequently, for Shannon was a
well-favoured lad. He had worked harder than most grown men could do,
won one good harvest, and had a few dollars in the bank when
Courthorne rode up to Blake's homestead on his big black horse. After
that, all Shannon's hopes and ambitions came down with a crash; and
the day he found Blake grey in face with shame and rage he offered
Sergeant Stimson his services. Now he was filled with an unholy
content that he had done so, for he came of a race that does not
forget an injury, and had sufficient cause for a jealous pride in the
virtue of its women. He and Larry might have forgiven a pistol shot,
but they could not forget the shame.

Suddenly he stiffened to attention, for though a man of the cities
would probably have heard nothing but the wailing of the wind, he
caught a faint rhythmic drumming which might have been made by a
galloping horse. It ceased, and he surmised, probably correctly, that
it was Trooper Payne returning. It was, however, his business to watch
the forking of the trail, and when he could only hear the thrashing of
the birches, he moved his mittened hand from the bridle, and patted
the restive horse. Just then the bluff was filled with sound as a
blast that drove a haze of snow before it roared down. It was followed
by a sudden stillness that was almost bewildering, and when a blink of
moonlight came streaming down, Trooper Shannon grabbed at his carbine,
for a man stood close beside him in the trail. The lad, who had
neither seen nor heard him come, looked down on the glinting barrel of
a Marlin rifle and saw a set white face behind it.

"Hands up!" said a hoarse voice. "Throw that thing down,"

Trooper Shannon recognized it, and all the fierce hate he was capable
of flamed up. It shook him with a gust of passion, and it was not fear
that caused his stiffened fingers to slip upon the carbine. It fell
with a rattle, and while he sat still, almost breathless and livid in
face, the man laughed a little.

"That's better; get down," he said.

Trooper Shannon swung himself from the saddle, and alighted heavily as
a flung-off sack would have done, for his limbs refused to bend. Still
it was not from lack of courage that he obeyed, and during one moment
he had clutched the bridle with the purpose of riding over his enemy.
He had, however, been taught to think for himself swiftly and shrewdly
from his boyhood up, and realized instinctively that if he escaped
scathless the ringing of the rifle would warn the rustlers who, he
surmised, were close behind. He was also a police trooper broken to
the iron bond of discipline, and if a bullet from the Marlin was to
end his career, he determined it should, if possible, also terminate
his enemy's liberty. The gust of rage had gone, and left him with the
cold vindictive cunning the Celt who has a grievous injury to remember
is also capable of, and there was contempt in his voice as he turned
to Courthorne quietly.

"Sure it's your turn now," he said. "The last time I put my mark on
the divil's face of ye."

Courthorne laughed wickedly. "It was a bad day's work for you; I
haven't forgotten yet," he said. "I'm only sorry you're not a trifle
older, but it will teach Sergeant Stimson the folly of sending a lad
to deal with me. Well, walk straight into the bush, and remember that
the muzzle of the rifle is scarcely three feet behind you!"

Trooper Shannon did so with black rage in his heart, and his empty
hands at his sides. He was a police trooper and a bushman born, and
knew that the rustlers' laden horses would find some difficulty in
remounting the steep trail and could not escape to left or right once
they were entangled amidst the trees. Then it would be time to give
the alarm, and go down with a bullet in his body, or by some
contrivance evade the deadly rifle and come to grips with his enemy.
He also knew Lance Courthorne, and, remembering how the lash had
seamed his face, expected no pity. One of them it was tolerably
certain would have set out on the long trail before the morning, but
they breed grim men in the bush of Ontario, and no other kind ride
very long with the wardens of the prairie.

"Stop where you are," said Courthorne presently. "Now then, turn
round. Move a finger or open your lips, and I'll have great pleasure
in shooting you. In the meanwhile you can endeavour to make favour
with whatever saint is honoured by the charge of you."

Shannon smiled in a fashion that resembled a snarl as once more a
blink of moonlight shone down upon them, and in place of showing
apprehension, his young white face, from which the bronze had faded,
was venomous.

"And my folks were Orange, but what does that matter now?" said he.
"There'll be one of us in----to-morrow, but for the shame ye put on
Larry ye'll carry my mark there with ye."

Courthorne looked at him with a little glow in his eyes. "You haven't
felt mine yet," he said. "You will probably talk differently when you
do."

It may have been youthful bravado, but Trooper Shannon laughed. "In
the meanwhile," he said, "I'm wondering why you're wearing an honest
man's coat and cap. Faith, if he saw them on ye, Witham would burn
them."

Courthorne returned no answer and the moonlight went out, but they
stood scarcely three feet apart, and one of them knew that any move he
made would be followed by the pressure of the other's finger on the
trigger. He, however, did not move at all, and while the birches
roared about them they stood silently face to face, the man of birth
and pedigree with a past behind him and blood already upon his head,
and the raw lad from the bush, his equal before the tribunal that
would presently judge their quarrel.

In the meanwhile Trooper Shannon heard a drumming of hoofs that grew
steadily louder before Courthorne apparently noticed the sound, and
his trained ears told him that the rustlers' horses were coming down
the trail. Now they had passed the forking, and when the branches
ceased roaring again he knew they had floundered down the first of the
declivity, and it would be well to wait a little until they had
straggled out where the trail was narrow and deeply rutted. No one
could turn them hastily there, and the men who drove them could
scarcely escape the troopers who waited them, if they blundered on
through the darkness of the bush. So five breathless minutes passed,
Trooper Shannon standing tense and straight with every nerve tingling
as he braced himself for an effort, Courthorne stooping a little with
forefinger on the trigger, and the Marlin rifle at his hip. Then
through a lull there rose a clearer thud of hoofs. It was lost in the
thrashing of the twigs as a gust roared down again, and Trooper
Shannon launched himself like a panther upon his enemy.

He might have succeeded, and the effort was gallantly made, but
Courthorne had never moved his eyes from the shadowy object before
him, and even as it sprang, his finger contracted further on the
trigger. There was a red flash and because he fired from the hip the
trigger guard gashed his mitten. He sprang sideways, scarcely feeling
the bite of the steel, for the lad's hand brushed his shoulder. Then
there was a crash as something went down heavily amidst the crackling
twigs. Courthorne stooped a little, panting in the smoke that blew
into his eyes, jerked the Marlin lever, and, as the moon came through
again, had a blurred vision of a white, drawn face that stared up at
him still with defiance in its eyes. He looked down into it as he drew
the trigger once more.

Shannon quivered a moment, and then lay very still, and it was high
time for Courthorne to look to himself, for there was a shouting in
the bluff, and something came crashing through the undergrowth. Even
then his cunning did not desert him, and flinging the Marlin down
beside the trooper, he slipped almost silently in and out among the
birches and swung himself into the saddle of a tethered horse.
Unlooping the bridle from a branch, he pressed his heels home,
realizing as he did it that there was no time to lose, for it was
evident that one of the troopers was somewhat close behind him, and
others were coming across the river. He knew the bluff well, and
having no desire to be entangled in it was heading for the prairie,
when a blink of moonlight showed him a lad in uniform riding at a
gallop between him and the crest of the slope. It was Trooper Payne,
and Courthorne knew him for a very bold horseman.

Now, it is possible that had one of the rustlers, who were simple men
with primitive virtues as well as primitive passions, been similarly
placed, he would have joined his comrades and taken his chance with
them, but Courthorne kept faith with nobody unless it suited him, and
was equally dangerous to his friends and enemies. Trooper Shannon had
also been silenced for ever, and if he could cross the frontier
unrecognized, nobody would believe the story of the man he would leave
to bear the brunt in place of him. Accordingly he headed at a gallop
down the winding trail, while sharp orders and a drumming of hoofs
grew louder behind him, and hoarse cries rose in front. Trooper Payne
was, it seemed, at least keeping pace with him, and he glanced over
his shoulder as he saw something dark and shadowy across the trail. It
was apparently a horse from which two men were struggling to loose its
burden.

Courthorne guessed that the trail was blocked in front of it by other
loaded beasts, and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen
trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him
and the edge of the bluff cutting off his road to the prairie. It was
evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs,
and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride
back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them.
There alone remained the river. It ran fast below him, and the ice was
thin, and for just a moment he tightened his grip on the bridle.

"We've got you!" a hoarse voice reached him. "You're taking steep
chances if you go on."

Courthorne swung off from the trail. There was a flash above him,
something whirred through the twigs above his head, and the horse
plunged as he drove his heels in.

"One of them gone for the river," another shout rang out, and
Courthorne was crashing through the undergrowth straight down the
declivity, while thin snow whirled about him, and now and then he
caught the faint glimmer flung back by the ice beneath.

Swaying boughs lashed him, his fur cap was whipped away, and he felt
that his face was bleeding, but there was another crackle close behind
him, for Trooper Payne was riding as daringly, and he carried a
carbine. Had he desired it Courthorne could not turn. The bronco he
bestrode was madly excited and less than half broken, and it is
probable no man could have pulled him up just then. It may also have
been borne in upon Courthorne, that he owed a little to those he had
left behind him in the old country, and he had not lost his pride.
There was, it seemed, no escape, but he had at least a choice of
endings, and with a little breathless laugh he rode straight for the
river.

It was with difficulty Trooper Payne pulled his horse up on the steep
bank a minute later. A white haze was now sliding down the hollow
between the two dark walls of trees, and something seemed to move in
the midst of it while the ice rang about it. Then, as the trooper
pitched up his carbine, there was a crash that was followed by a
horrible floundering and silence again. Payne sat still, shivering a
little in his saddle until the snow that whirled about him blotted out
all the birches, and a roaring blast came down.

He knew there was now nothing that he could do. The current had
evidently sucked the fugitive under, and, dismounting, he groped his
way up the slope, leading the horse by the bridle, and only swung
himself into the saddle when he found the trail again. A carbine
flashed in front of him, two dim figures went by at a gallop, and a
third one flung an order over his shoulder as he passed.

"Go back. The Sergeant's hurt and Shannon has got a bullet in him."

Trooper Payne had surmised as much already, and went back as fast as
he could ride, while the beat of hoofs grew fainter down the trail.
Ten minutes later he drew bridle close by a man who held a lantern,
and saw Sergeant Stimson sitting very grim in face on the ground. It
transpired later that his horse had fallen and thrown him, and it was
several weeks before he rode again.

"You lost your man?" he said. "Get down."

Payne dismounted. "Yes, sir, I fancy he is dead," he said. "He tried
the river, and the ice wouldn't carry him. I saw him ride away from
here just after the first shot, and fancied he fired at Shannon. Have
you seen him, sir?"

The other trooper moved his lantern, and Payne gasped as he saw a
third man stooping, with the white face of his comrade close by his
feet. Shannon appeared to recognize him, for his eyes moved a little
and the grey lips fell apart. Then Payne turned his head aside while
the other trooper nodded compassionately in answer to his questioning
glance.

"I've sent one of the boys to Graham's for a wagon," said the
Sergeant. "You saw the man who fired at him?"

"Yes, sir," said Trooper Payne.

"You knew him?" and there was a ring in the Sergeant's voice.

"Yes, sir," said the trooper. "At least he was riding Witham's horse,
and had on the old, long coat of his."

Sergeant Stimson nodded, and pointed to the weapon lying with
blackened muzzle at his feet. "And I think you could recognize that
rifle? There's F. Witham cut on the stock of it."

Payne said nothing, for the trooper signed to him.

"I fancy Shannon wants to talk to you," he said.

The lad knelt down, slipped one arm about his comrade's neck, and took
the mittened hand in his own. Shannon smiled up at him feebly.

"Witham's horse and his cap," he said, and then stopped, gasping
horribly.

"You will remember that, boys," said the Sergeant.

Payne could say nothing. Trooper Shannon and he had ridden through icy
blizzard and scorching heat together, and he felt his manhood melting
as he looked down into his dimming eyes. There was a curious look in
them which suggested a strenuous endeavour and an appeal, and the lips
moved again.

"It was," said Shannon, and moved his head a little on Payne's arm,
apparently in an agony of effort.

Then the birches roared about them, and drowned the feeble utterance,
while, when the gust passed, all three, who had not heard what
preceded it, caught only one word--"Witham."

Trooper Shannon's eyes closed, and his head fell back, while the snow
beat softly in to his upturned face, and there was a very impressive
silence, intensified by the moaning of the wind, until the rattle of
wheels came faintly down the trail.




CHAPTER V

MISS BARRINGTON COMES HOME


The long train was slackening speed and two whistles rang shrilly
through the roar of wheels when Miss Barrington laid down the book
with which she had beguiled her journey of fifteen hundred miles, and
rose from her seat in a corner of the big first-class car. The car was
sumptuously upholstered, and its decorations tasteful as well as
lavish, but just then it held no other passenger, and Miss Barrington
smiled curiously as she stood, swaying a little, in front of the
mirror at one end of it, wrapping her furs about her. There was,
however, a faint suggestion of regret in the smile, and the girl's
eyes grew grave again, for the soft cushions, dainty curtains,
gleaming gold and nickel, and equable temperature formed a part of the
sheltered life she was about to leave behind her, and there would, she
knew, be a difference in the future. Still, she laughed again as,
drawing a little fur cap well down upon her broad, white forehead, she
nodded at her own reflection.

"One cannot have everything, and you might have stayed there and
revelled in civilization if you had liked," she said.

Crossing to the door of the portico she stood a moment with fingers on
its handle, and once more looked about her. The car was very cosy, and
Maud Barrington had all the average young woman's appreciation of the
smoother side of life, although she had also the capacity, which is by
no means so common, for extracting the most it had to give from the
opposite one. Still, it was with a faint regret she prepared to
complete what had been a deed of renunciation. Montreal, with its
gaieties and luxuries, had not seemed so very far away while she was
carried West amid all the comforts artizans who were also artists
could provide for the traveller, but once that door closed behind her
she would be cut adrift from it all, and left face to face with the
simple, strenuous life of the prairie.

Maud Barrington had, however, made her mind up some weeks ago; and
when the lock closed with a little clack that seemed to emphasize the
fact that the door was shut, she had shaken the memories from her, and
was quietly prepared to look forward instead of back. It also needed
some little courage, for, as she stood with the furs fluttering about
her on the lurching platform, the cold went through her like a knife,
and the roofs of the little prairie town rose up above the willows the
train was now crawling through. The odours that greeted her nostrils
were the reverse of pleasant, and glancing down with the faintest
shiver of disgust, her eyes rested on the litter of empty cans,
discarded garments, and other even more unsightly things which are
usually dumped in the handiest bluff by the citizens of a springing
Western town. They have, for the most part, but little appreciation of
the picturesque, and it would take a good deal to affect their health.

Then the dwarfed trees opened out, and flanked by two huge wheat
elevators and a great water tank, the prairie city stood revealed. It
was crude and repellent, devoid of anything that could please the most
lenient eye, for the bare frame houses rose with their rough boarding
weathered and cracked by frost and sun, hideous almost in their
simplicity, from the white prairie. Paint was apparently an unknown
luxury, and pavement there was none, though a rude plank platform
straggled some distance above the ground down either side of the
street, so that the citizens might not sink knee-deep in the mire of
the spring thawing. Here and there a dilapidated wagon was drawn up in
front of a store, but with a clanging of the big bell the locomotive
rolled into the little station, and Maud Barrington looked down upon a
group of silent men who had sauntered there to enjoy the one
relaxation the desolate place afforded them.

There was very little in their appearance to attract the attention of
a young woman of Miss Barrington's upbringing. They had grave, bronzed
faces, and wore, for the most part, old fur coats stained here and
there with soil. Nor were their mittens and moccasins in good repair,
but there was a curious steadiness in their gaze which vaguely
suggested the slow, stubborn courage that upheld them through the
strenuous effort and grim self-denial of their toilsome lives. They
were small wheat-growers who had driven in to purchase provisions or
inquire the price of grain, and here and there a mittened hand was
raised to a well-worn cap, for most of them recognized Miss Barrington
of Silverdale Grange. She returned their greetings graciously, and
then swung herself from the platform, with a smile in her eyes as a
man came hastily and yet, as it were, with a certain deliberation in
her direction.

He was elderly, but held himself erect, while his furs, which were
good, fitted him in a fashion which suggested a uniform. He also wore
boots which reached half-way to the knee, and were presumably lined to
resist the prairie cold, which few men at that season would do, and
scarcely a speck of dust marred their lustrous exterior, while as much
of his face as was visible beneath the great fur cap was lean and
commanding. Its salient features were the keen and somewhat imperious
grey eyes and long, straight nose, while something in the squareness
of the man's shoulders and his pose set him apart from the prairie
farmers and suggested the cavalry officer. He was, in fact, Colonel
Barrington, founder and autocratic ruler of the English community of
Silverdale, and had been awaiting his niece somewhat impatiently.
Colonel Barrington was invariably punctual, and resented the fact that
the train had come in an hour later than it should have done.

"So you have come back to us. We have been longing for you, my dear,"
he said. "I don't know what we should have done had they kept you in
Montreal altogether."

Maud Barrington smiled, though there was a brightness in her eyes and
a faint warmth in her cheek, for the sincerity of her uncle's welcome
was evident.

"Yes," she said, "I have come back. It was very pleasant in the city,
and they were all kind to me; but I think, henceforward, I would
sooner stay with you on the prairie."

Colonel Barrington patted the hand he drew through his arm, and there
was a very kindly smile in his eyes as they left the station and
crossed the tract towards a little, and by no means very comfortable,
wooden hotel. He stopped outside it.

"I want to see the horses put in and get our mail," he said. "Mrs.
Jasper expects you, and will have tea ready."

He disappeared behind the wooden building, and his niece standing a
moment on the veranda watched the long train roll away down the faint
blur of track that ran west to the farthest verge of the great white
wilderness. Then with a little impatient gesture she went into the
hotel.

"That is another leaf turned down, and there is no use in looking
back; but I wonder what is written on the rest," she said.

Twenty minutes later she watched Colonel Barrington cross the street
with a bundle of letters in his hand. She fancied that his step was
slower than it had been, and that he seemed a trifle preoccupied and
embarrassed; but he spoke with quiet kindliness when he handed her
into the waiting sleigh, and the girl's spirits rose as they swung
smoothly northwards behind two fast horses across the prairie. It
stretched away before her, ridged here and there with a dusky birch
bluff or willow grove under a vault of crystalline blue. The sun that
had no heat in it struck a silvery glitter from the snow, and the
trail swept back to the horizon a sinuous blue-grey smear, while the
keen, dry cold and sense of swift motion set the girl's blood
stirring. After all, it seemed to her, there were worse lives than
those the Western farmers led on the great levels under the frost and
sun.

Colonel Barrington watched her with a little gleam of approval in his
eyes. "You are not sorry to come back to this and Silverdale?" he
said, sweeping his mittened hand vaguely round the horizon.

"No," said the girl, with a little laugh. "At least, I shall not be
sorry to return to Silverdale. It has a charm of its own, for while
one is occasionally glad to get away from it, one is even more pleased
to come home again. It is a somewhat purposeless life our friends are
leading yonder in the cities. I, of course, mean the women."

Barrington nodded. "And some of the men! Well, we have room here for
the many who are going to the devil in the old country for the lack of
something worth while to do; though I am afraid there is considerably
less prospect than I once fancied there would be of their making
money."

His niece noticed the gravity in his face, and sat thoughtfully silent
for several minutes, while, with the snow hissing beneath it, the
sleigh nipped into and swung out of a hollow.

Colonel Barrington had founded the Silverdale settlement ten years
earlier, and gathered about him other men with a grievance who had
once served their nation, and the younger sons of English gentlemen
who had no inclination for commerce, and found that lack of brains and
capital debarred them from either a political or military career. He
had settled them on the land, and taught them to farm, while, for the
community had prospered at first when Western wheat was dear, it had
taken ten years to bring home to him the fact that men who dined
ceremoniously each evening and spent at least a third of their time in
games and sport, could not well compete with the grim bushmen from
Ontario, or the lean Dakota ploughmen, who ate their meals in ten
minutes and toiled at least twelve hours every day.

Colonel Barrington was slow to believe that the race he sprang from
could be equalled and much less beaten at anything, while his respect
for and scrupulous observance of insular traditions had cost him a
good deal, and left him a poorer man than he had been when he founded
Silverdale. Maud Barrington had been his ward, and he still directed
the farming of a good many acres of wheat land which she now held in
her own right. The soil was excellent, and would in all probability
have provided one of the Ontario men with a very desirable revenue,
but Colonel Barrington had no taste for small economies.

"I want to hear all the news," said the girl. "You can begin at the
beginning--the price of wheat. I fancied, when I saw you, it had been
declining."

Barrington sighed a little. "Hard wheat is five cents down, and I am
sorry I persuaded you to hold your crop. I am very much afraid we
shall see the balance the wrong side again next half-year."

Maud Barrington smiled curiously. There was no great cause for
merriment in the information given her, but it emphasized the contrast
between the present and the careless life she had lately led when her
one thought had been how to extract the greatest pleasure from the
day. One had frequently to grapple with the problems arising from
scanty finances at Silverdale.

"It will go up again," she said. "Is there anything else?"

Barrington's face grew a trifle grim as he nodded. "There is; and
while I have not much expectation of an advance in prices, I have been
worrying over another affair lately."

His niece regarded him steadily. "You mean, Lance Courthorne?"

"Yes," said Barrington, who flicked the near horse somewhat viciously
with the whip. "He is also sufficient to cause any man with my
responsibilities anxiety."

Maud Barrington looked thoughtful. "You fancy he will come to
Silverdale?"

Barrington appeared to be repressing an inclination towards vigorous
speech with some difficulty, and a little glint crept into his eyes.
"If I could by any means prevent it, the answer would be, No. As it
is, you know that, while I founded it, Silverdale was one of Geoffrey
Courthorne's imperialistic schemes, and a good deal of the land was
recorded in his name. That being so, he had every right to leave the
best farm on it to the man he had disinherited, especially as Lance
will not get a penny of the English property. Still, I do not know why
he did so, because he never spoke of him without bitterness."

"Yes," said the girl, while a little flush crept into her face. "I was
sorry for the old man. It was a painful story."

Colonel Barrington nodded. "It is one that is best forgotten--and you
do not know it all. Still, the fact that the man may settle among us
is not the worst. As you know, there was every reason to believe that
Geoffrey intended all his property at Silverdale for you."

"I have much less right to it than his own son, and the colonial cure
is not infrequently efficacious," said Miss Barrington. "Lance may,
after all, quieten down, and he must have some good qualities."

The Colonel's smile was very grim. "It is fifteen years since I saw
him at Westham, and they were not much in evidence then. I can
remember two little episodes, in which he figured, with painful
distinctness, and one was the hanging of a terrier which had in some
way displeased him. The beast was past assistance when I arrived on
the scene, but the devilish pleasure in the lad's face sent a chill
through me. In the other, the gardener's lad flung a stone at a
blackbird on the wall above the vinery, and Master Lance, who, I
fancy, did not like the gardener's lad, flung one through the glass.
Geoffrey, who was angry, but had not seen what I did, haled the boy
before him, and Lance looked him in the face and lied with the
assurance of an ambassador. The end was that the gardener, who was
admonished, cuffed the innocent lad. These, my dear, are somewhat
instructive memories."

"I wonder," said Maud Barrington, glancing out across the prairie
which was growing dusky now, "why you took the trouble to call them up
for me?"

The Colonel smiled dryly. "I never saw a Courthorne who could not
catch a woman's eye, or had any undue diffidence about making the most
of the fact; and that is partly why they have brought so much trouble
on everybody connected with them. Further, it is unfortunate that
women are not infrequently more inclined to be gracious to the sinner
who repents, when it is worth his while, than they are to the honest
man who has done no wrong. Nor do I know that it is only pity which
influences them. Some of you take an exasperating delight in
picturesque rascality."

Miss Barrington laughed, and fearlessly met her uncle's glance. "Then
you don't believe in penitence?"

"Well," said the Colonel dryly, "I am, I hope, a Christian man, but it
would be difficult to convince me that the gambler, cattle-thief, and
whisky-runner who ruined every man and woman who trusted him will be
admitted to the same place as clean-lived English gentlemen. There
are, my dear, plenty of them still."

Barrington spoke almost fiercely, and then flushed through his tan,
when the girl, looking into his eyes, smiled a little. "Yes," she
said, "I can believe it, because I owe a good deal to one of them."

The ring in the girl's voice belied the smile, and the speech was
warranted; for, dogmatic, domineering, and vindictive as he was apt to
be occasionally, the words he had used applied most fitly to Colonel
Barrington. His word at least had never been broken, and had he not
adhered steadfastly to his own rigid code, he would have been a good
deal richer man than he was then. Nor did his little shortcomings,
which were burlesqued virtues, and ludicrous now and then, greatly
detract from the stamp of dignity which, for speech was his worst
point, sat well upon him. He was innately conservative to the
backbone, though since an ungrateful Government had slighted him, he
had become an ardent Canadian, and in all political questions
aggressively democratic.

"My dear, I sometimes fancy I am a hypercritical old fogey!" he said,
and sighed a little, while once more the anxious look crept into his
face. "Just now I wish devoutly I was a better business man."

Nothing more was said for a little, and Miss Barrington watched the
crimson sunset burn out low down on the prairie's western rim. Then
the pale stars blinked out through the creeping dusk, and a great
silence and an utter cold settled down upon the waste. The muffled
thud of hoofs, and the crunching beneath the sliding steel, seemed to
intensify it, and there was a suggestion of frozen brilliancy in the
sparkle flung back by the snow. Then a coyote howled dolefully in a
distant bluff, and the girl shivered as she shrank down further amidst
the furs.

"Forty degrees of frost," said the Colonel. "Perhaps more. This is
very different from the cold of Montreal. Still, you'll see the lights
of Silverdale from the crest of the next rise."

It was, however, an hour before they reached them, and Miss Barrington
was almost frozen when the first square loghouse rose out of the
prairie. It and others that followed it flitted by, and then, flanked
by a great birch bluff, with outlying barns, granaries and stables,
looming black about it against a crystalline sky, Silverdale Grange
grew into shape across their way. Its rows of ruddy windows cast
streaks of flickering orange down the trail, the baying of dogs
changed into a joyous clamour when the Colonel reined in his team,
half-seen men in furs waved a greeting, and one who risked frost-bite,
with his cap at his knee, handed Miss Barrington from the sleigh and
up the veranda stairway.

She had need of the assistance, for her limbs were stiff and almost
powerless, and she gasped a little when she passed into the drowsy
warmth and brightness of the great log-walled hall. The chilled blood
surged back tingling to her skin, and swaying with a creeping
faintness she found refuge in the arms of a grey-haired lady who
stooped and kissed her gently. Then the door swung to, and she was
home again in the wooden grange of Silverdale, which stood far remote
from any civilization but its own on the frozen levels of the great
white plain.




CHAPTER VI

ANTICIPATIONS


It was late at night, and outside the prairie lay white and utterly
silent under the Arctic cold, when Maud Barrington, who glanced at it
through the double windows, flung back the curtains with a little
shiver, and turning towards the fire, sat down on a little velvet
footstool beside her aunt's knee. She had shaken out the coils of
lustrous brown hair which flowed about her shoulders glinting in the
light of the shaded lamp, and it was with a little gesture of physical
content she stretched her hands towards the hearth. A crumbling birch
log still gleamed redly amidst the feathery ashes, but its effect was
chiefly artistic, for no open fire could have dissipated the cold of
the prairie, and a big tiled stove brought from Teutonic Minnesota
furnished the needful warmth.

The girl's face was partly in shadow, and her figure foreshortened by
her pose, which accentuated its rounded outline and concealed its
willowy slenderness; but the broad white forehead and straight nose
became visible when she moved her head a trifle, and a faintly
humorous sparkle crept into the clear brown eyes. Possibly Maud
Barrington looked her best just then, for the lower part of the
pale-tinted face was a trifle too firm in its modelling.

"No, I am not tired, aunt, and I could not sleep just now," she said.
"You see, after leaving all that behind one, one feels, as it were,
adrift, and it is necessary to realize one's self again."

The little silver-haired lady who sat in the big basket chair smiled
down upon her and laid a thin white hand that was still beautiful upon
the gleaming hair.

"I can understand, my dear, and am glad you enjoyed your stay in the
city, because sometimes when I count your birthdays, I can't help a
fancy that you are not young enough," she said. "You have lived out
here with two old people who belong to the past too much."

The girl moved a little, and swept her glance slowly round the room.
It was small and scantily furnished, though great curtains shrouded
door and window, and here and there a picture relieved the bareness of
the walls, which were panelled with roughly-dressed British-Columbian
cedar. The floor was of redwood, diligently polished and adorned, not
covered, by one or two skins brought by some of Colonel Barrington's
younger neighbours from the Rockies. There were two basket-chairs and
a plain, redwood table; but in contrast to them a cabinet of old
French workmanship stood in one corner bearing books in dainty
bindings, and two great silver candlesticks. The shaded lamp was also
of the same metal, and the whole room with its faint resinous smell
conveyed, in a fashion not uncommon on the prairie, a suggestion of
taste and refinement held in check by the least comparative poverty.
Colonel Barrington was a widower who had been esteemed a man of
wealth, but the founding of Silverdale had made a serious inroad on
his finances. Even yet, though he occasionally practised it, he did
not take kindly to economy.

"Yes," said the girl, "I enjoyed it all--and it was so different from
the prairie."

There was comprehension, and a trace of sympathy, in Miss Barrington's
nod. "Tell me a little, my dear," she said. "There was not a great
deal in your letters."

Her niece glanced dreamily into the sinking fire as though she would
call up the pictures there. "But you know it all--the life I have only
had glimpses of. Well, for the first few months I almost lost my head,
and was swung right off my feet by the whirl of it. It was then I was,
perhaps, just a trifle thoughtless."

The while-haired lady laughed softly. "It is difficult to believe it,
Maud."

The girl shook her head reproachfully. "I know what you mean, and
perhaps you are right, for that was what Twoinette insinuated," she
said. "She actually told me that I should be thankful I had a brain
since I had no heart. Still, at first I let myself go, and it was
delightful--the opera, the dances, and the covered skating rink with
the music and the black ice flashing beneath the lights. The whirr of
the toboggans down the great slide was finer still, and the torchlight
meets of the snowshoe clubs on the mountain. Yes, I think I was really
young while it lasted."

"For a month," said the elder. "And after?"

"Then," said the girl slowly, "it all seemed to grow a trifle
purposeless, and there was something that spoiled it. Twoinette was
quite angry, and I know her mother wrote you--but it was not my fault,
aunt. How was I, a guileless girl from the prairie, to guess that such
a man would fling the handkerchief to me?"

The evenness of tone and entire absence of embarrassment was
significant. It also pointed to the fact that there was a closer
confidence between Maud Barrington and her aunt than often exists
between mother and daughter, and the elder lady stroked the lustrous
head that rested against her knee with a little affectionate pride.

"My dear, you know you are beautiful, and you have the cachet that all
the Courthornes wear. Still, you could not like him. Tell me about
him."

Maud Barrington curled herself up further. "I think I could have liked
him, but that was all," she said. "He was nice to look at and did all
the little things gracefully; but he had never done anything else,
never would, and, I fancy, had never wanted to. Now, a man of that
kind would very soon pall on me, and I should have lost my temper
trying to waken him to his responsibilities."

"And what kind of man would please you?"

Maud Barrington's eyes twinkled, but the fact that she answered at all
was a proof of the sympathy between herself and the questioner. "I do
not know that I am anxious any of them should," she said. "But, since
you ask, he would have to be a man first: a toiling, striving animal,
who could hold his own amidst his fellows wherever he was placed.
Secondly, one would naturally prefer a gentleman, though I do not like
the word, and one would fancy the combination a trifle rare, because
brains and birth do not necessarily tally, and the man educated by the
struggle for existence is apt to be taught more than he ever would be
at Oxford or in the army. Still, men of that stamp forget a good deal,
and learn so much that is undesirable, you see. In fact, I only know
one man who would have suited me, and he is debarred by age and
affinity--but, because we are so much alike, I can't help fancying
that you once knew another."

The smile in Miss Barrington's face, which was still almost beautiful
as well as patient, became a trifle wistful.

"There are few better men than my brother, though he is not clever,"
she said and dropped her voice a little. "As to the other, he died in
India--beside his mountain gun--long ago."

"And you have never forgotten? He must have been worth it--I wonder if
loyalty and chivalric faith belong only to the past," said the girl,
reaching up a rounded arm and patting her aunt's thin hand. "And now
we will be practical. I fancied the head of the settlement looked
worried when he met me, and he is not very proficient at hiding his
feelings."

Miss Barrington sighed. "I am afraid that is nothing very new, and
with wheat steadily falling and our granaries full, he has cause for
anxiety. Then the fact that Lance Courthorne has divided your
inheritance and is going to settle here has been troubling him."

"The first is the lesser evil," said the girl, with a little laugh. "I
wore very short frocks when I last saw Lance in England, and so far as
I can remember he had the face of an angel and the temper of a devil.
But did not my uncle endeavour to buy him off, and--for I know you
have been finding out things--I want you to tell me all about him."

"He would not take the money," said Miss Barrington, and sat in
thoughtful silence a space. Then, and perhaps she had a reason, she
quietly recounted Courthorne's Canadian history so far as her
brother's agents had been able to trace it, not omitting, dainty in
thought and speech as she was, one or two incidents which a mother
might have kept back from her daughter's ears. Still, it was very
seldom that Miss Barrington made a blunder. There was a faint pinkness
in her face when she concluded, but she was not surprised when, with a
slow, sinuous movement, the girl rose to her feet. Her cheeks were
very slightly flushed, but there was a significant sparkle in her
eyes.

"Oh," she said, with utter contempt. "How sickening! Are there men
like that?"

There was a little silence, emphasized by the snapping in the stove,
and if Miss Barrington had spoken with an object she should have been
contented. The girl was imperious in her anger, which was caused by
something deeper than startled prudery.

"It is," said the little white-haired lady, "all quite true. Still, I
must confess that my brother and myself were a trifle astonished at
the report of the lawyer he sent to confer with Lance in Montana, One
would almost have imagined that he had of late been trying to make
amends."

The girl's face was very scornful. "Could a man with a past like that
ever live it down."

"We have a warrant for believing it," said Miss Barrington quietly, as
she laid her hand on her companion's arm. "My dear, I have told you
what Lance was, because I felt it was right that you should know; but
none of us can tell what he may be, and if the man is honestly trying
to lead a different life, all I ask is that you should not wound him
by any manifest suspicion. Those who have never been tempted can
afford to be merciful."

Maud Barrington laughed somewhat curiously. "You are a very wise
woman, aunt, but you are a little transparent now and then," she said.
"At least, he shall have a fair trial without prejudice or favour--and
if he fails, as fail he will, we shall find the means of punishing
him."

"We?" said the elder lady a trifle maliciously.

The girl nodded as she moved towards the doorway, and then turned a
moment with the folds of the big red curtain flung behind her. It
forced up the sweeping lines of a figure so delicately moulded that
its slenderness was scarcely apparent, for Maud Barrington still wore
a long, sombre dress that had assisted in her triumphs in the city. It
emphasized the clear pallor of her skin and the brightness of her
eyes, as she held herself very erect in a pose which, while assumed in
mockery, had yet in it something that was almost imperial.

"Yes," she said. "We. You know who is the power behind the throne at
Silverdale, and what the boys call me. And now, good night. Sleep
well, dear."

She went out, and Miss Barrington sat very still gazing, with eyes
that were curiously thoughtful, into the fire. "Princess of the
Prairie--and it fits her well," she said, and then sighed a little.
"And if there is a trace of hardness in the girl it may be fortunate.
We all have our troubles--and wheat is going down."

In the meanwhile, late as it was, Colonel Barrington and his chief
lieutenant, Gordon Dane, sat in his log-walled smoking-room talking
with a man he sold his wheat through in Winnipeg. The room was big and
bare. There were a few fine heads of antelope upon the walls, and
beneath them an armoury of English-made shot guns and rifles, while a
row of riding crops, silver-mounted, and some handled with ivory,
stood in a corner. All these represented amusement, while two or three
treatises on veterinary surgery and agriculture lying amidst English
stud-books and racing records, presumably stood for industry. The
comparison was significant, and Graham, the Winnipeg wheat-broker,
noticed it as he listened patiently to the views of Colonel
Barrington, who nevertheless worked hard enough in his own fashion.
Unfortunately, it was rather the fashion of the English gentleman than
that common on the prairie.

"And now," he said, with a trace of the anxiety he had concealed in
his eyes, "I am open to hear what you can do for me."

Graham smiled a little. "It isn't very much, Colonel. I'll take all
your wheat off you at three cents down."

Now Barrington did not like the broker's smile. It savoured too much
of equality; and, though he had already unbent as far as he was
capable of doing, he had no great esteem for men of business. Nor did
it please him to be addressed as "Colonel."

"That," he said coldly, "is out of the question, I would not sell at
the last market price. Besides, you have hitherto acted as my broker."

Graham nodded. "The market price will be less than what I offered you
in a week, and I could scarcely sell your wheat at it to-day. I was
going to hold it myself, because I can occasionally get a little more
from one or two millers who like that special grade. Usual sorts I'm
selling for a fall. Quite sure the deal wouldn't suit you?"

Barrington lighted a fresh cigar, though Graham, noticed that he had
smoked very little of the one he flung away. This was, of course, a
trifle, but it is the trifles that count in the aggregate upon the
prairie, as they not infrequently do elsewhere.

"I fancy I told you so," he said.

The broker glanced at Dane, who was a big, bronzed man, and, since
Barrington could not see him, shook his head deprecatingly.

"You can consider that decided, Graham," he said. "Still, can you as a
friendly deed give us any notion of what to do? As you know, farming,
especially at Silverdale, costs money, and the banks are demanding an
iniquitous interest just now, while we are carrying over a good deal
of wheat."

Graham nodded. He understood why farming was unusually expensive at
Silverdale, and was, in recollection of past favours, inclined to be
disinterestedly friendly.

"If I were you I would sell right along for forward delivery at a few
cents under the market."

"It is a trifle difficult to see how that would help us," said
Barrington, with a little gesture of irritation, for it almost seemed
that the broker was deriding him.

"No!" said the man from Winnipeg, "on the contrary, it's quite easy.
Now I can predict that wheat will touch lower prices still before you
have to make delivery, and it isn't very difficult to figure out the
profit on selling a thing for a dollar and then buying it, when you
have to produce it at ninety cents. Of course, there is a risk of the
market going against you, but you could buy at the first rise, and
you've your stock to dole out in case anybody cornered you."

"That," said Dane thoughtfully, "appears quite sensible. Of course,
it's a speculation, but presumably we couldn't be much worse off than
we are. Have you any objections to the scheme, sir."

Barrington laid down his cigar, and glanced with astonished severity
at the speaker. "Unfortunately, I have. We are wheat growers, and not
wheat stock jugglers. Our purpose is to farm, and not swindle and lie
in the wheat pits for decimal differences. I have a distinct antipathy
to anything of the kind."

"But, sir," said Dane, and Barrington stopped with a gesture.

"I would," he said, "as soon turn gambler. Still, while it has always
been a tradition at Silverdale that the head of the settlement's lead
is to be followed, that need not prevent you putting on the gloves
with the wheat-ring blacklegs in Winnipeg."

Dane blushed a little under his tan, and then smiled as he remembered
the one speculative venture his leader had indulged in, for Colonel
Barrington was a somewhat hot-tempered and vindictive man. He made a
little gesture of deprecation as he glanced at Graham, who
straightened himself suddenly in his chair.

"I should not think of doing so in face of your opinion, sir," he
said. "There is an end to the thing, Graham!"

The broker's face was a trifle grim. "I gave you good advice out of
friendship, Colonel, and there are men with dollars to spare who would
value a hint from me," he said. "Still, as it doesn't seem to strike
you the right way, I've no use for arguing. Keep your wheat--and pay
bank interest if you want any help to carry over."

"Thanks," said Dane quietly. "They charge tolerably high, but I've
seen what happens to the man who meddles with the mortgage-broker."

Graham nodded. "Well, as I'm starting out at six o'clock, it's time I
was asleep," he said. "Good-night to you, Colonel."

Barrington shook hands with Graham, and then sighed a little when he
went out. "I believe the man is honest, and he is a guest of mine, or
I should have dressed him down," he said. "I don't like the way things
are going, Dane; and the fact is we must find accommodation somewhere,
because now I have to pay out so much on my ward's account to that
confounded Courthorne, it is necessary to raise more dollars than the
banks will give me. Now, there was a broker fellow wrote me a very
civil letter."

Dane, who was a thoughtful man, ventured to lay his hand upon his
leader's arm. "Keep yourself and Miss Barrington out of those fellows'
clutches, at any cost," he said.

Barrington shook off his hand and looked at him sternly. "Are you not
a trifle young to adopt that tone?" he asked.

Dane nodded. "No doubt I am, but I've seen a little of mortgage
jobbing. You must try to overlook it. I did not mean to offend."

He went out, and, while Colonel Barrington sat down before a sheaf of
accounts, sprang into a waiting sleigh. "It's no use; we've got to go
through," he said to the lad who shook the reins, "Graham made a very
sensible suggestion, but our respected leader came down on him, as he
did on me. You see, one simply can't talk to the Colonel; and it's
unfortunate Miss Barrington didn't marry that man in Montreal."

"I don't know," said the lad. "Of course, there are not many girls
like Maud Barrington, but is it necessary she should go outside
Silverdale?"

Dane laughed. "None of us would be old enough for Miss Barrington when
we were fifty. The trouble is, that we spend half our time in play,
and I've a notion it's a man, and not a gentleman dilettante, she's
looking for."

"Isn't that a curious way of putting it?" asked his companion.

Dane nodded. "It may be the right one. Woman is as she was made, and
I've had more than a suspicion lately that a little less refinement
would not come amiss at Silverdale. Anyway, I hope she'll find him,
for it's a man with grit and energy, who could put a little desirable
pressure on the Colonel occasionally, we're all wanting. Of course,
I'm backing my leader, though it's going to cost me a good deal, but
it's time he had somebody to help him."

"He would never accept assistance," said the lad thoughtfully. "That
is, unless the man who offered it was, or became by marriage, one of
the dynasty."

"Of course," said Dane. "That's why I'm inclined to take a fatherly
interest in Miss Barrington's affairs. It's a misfortune we've heard
nothing very reassuring about Courthorne."




CHAPTER VII

WITHAM'S DECISION


Farmer Witham crossed the frontier without molestation and spent one
night in a little wooden town, where several people he did not speak
to apparently recognized him. Then he pushed on southwards, and passed
a week in the especially desolate settlement he had been directed to.
A few dilapidated frame houses rose out of the white wilderness beside
the broad, beaten trail, and, for here the prairie rolled south in
long rises like the wakes of a frozen sea, a low wooden building on
the crest of one cut the skyline a league away. It served as outpost
for a squadron of United States cavalry, and the troopers daily
maligned the Government which had sent them into that desolation on
police duty.

There was nothing else visible but a few dusky groves of willows and
dazzling snow. The ramshackle wooden hotel was rather more than
usually badly kept and comfortless, and Witham, who had managed to
conciliate his host, felt relieved one afternoon when the latter flung
down the cards disgustedly.

"I guess I've had enough," he said. "Playing for stakes of this kind
isn't good enough for you!"

Witham laughed a little to hide his resentment, as he said, "I don't
quite understand."

"Pshaw!" said the American with a contemptuous gesture. "Three times
out of four I've spoiled your hand, and if I didn't know that black
horse I'd take you for some blamed Canadian rancher. You didn't handle
the pictures that way when you stripped the boys to the hide at
Regent, Mr. Courthorne?"

"Regent?" said Witham.

The hotel-keeper laughed. "Oh yes," he said. "I wouldn't go back there
too soon, anyway. The boys seem quite contented, and I don't figure
they would be very nice to you. Well, now, I've no use for fooling
with a man who's too proud to take my dollars, and I've a pair of
horses just stuffed with wickedness in the stable. There's not much
you don't know about a beast, anyway, and you can take them out a
league or two if you feel like it."

Witham, who had grown very tired of his host, was glad of any
distraction, especially as he surmised that while the man had never
seen Courthorne, he knew rather more than he did himself about his
doings. Accordingly, he got into the sleigh that was brought out by
and by, and enjoyed the struggle with the half-tamed team which stood
with ears laid back, prepared for conflict. Oats had been very
plentiful, and prices low that season. Witham, who knew at least as
much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will
and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch
bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down
the trail behind him. It led straight beneath the leafless branches,
and was beaten smooth and firm; while Witham, who had noticed already
that whenever he strayed any distance from the hotel there was a
mounted cavalryman somewhere, in the vicinity, shook the reins.

The team swung into faster stride, the cold wind whistled past him,
and the snow whirled up from beneath the runners; but while he
listened the rhythmic drumming behind him also quickened a little.
Then a faintly musical jingle of steel accompanied the beat of hoofs,
and Witham glanced about him with a little laugh of annoyance. The
dusk was creeping across the prairie, and a pale star or two growing
into brilliancy in the cloudless sweep of indigo.

"It's getting a trifle tiresome. I'll find out what the fellow wants,"
he said.

Wheeling the team, he drove back the way he came, and, when a dusky
object materialized out of the shadows beneath the birches, swung the
horses right across the trail. The snow lay deep on either side of it
just there, with a sharp crust upon its surface, which rendered it
inadvisable to take a horse round the sleigh. The mounted man
accordingly drew bridle, and the jingle and rattle betokened his
profession, though it was already too dark to see him clearly.

"Hallo!" he said. "Been buying this trail up, stranger?"

"No," said Witham quietly, though he still held his team across the
way. "Still, I've got the same right as any other citizen to walk or
drive along it without anybody prowling after me, and just now I want
to know if there is a reason I should be favoured with your company."

The trooper laughed a little. "I guess there is. It's down in the
orders that whoever's on patrol near the settlement should keep his
eye on you. You see, if you lit out of here we would want to know just
where you were going to."

"I am," said Witham, "a Canadian citizen, and I came out here for
quietness."

"Well," said the other, "you're an American too. Anyway, when you were
in a tight place down in Regent there, you told the boys so. Now, no
sensible man would boast of being a Britisher unless it was helping
him to play out his hand."

Witham kept his temper. "I want a straight answer. Can you tell me
what you and the boys are trailing me for?"

"No," said the trooper. "Still, I guess our commander could. If you
don't know of any reason, you might ask him."

Witham tightened his grip on the reins. "I'll ride back with you to
the outpost now."

The trooper shook his bridle, and trotted behind the sleigh, while, as
it swung up and down over the billowy rises of the prairie, Witham
became sensible of a curious expectancy. The bare, hopeless life he
had led seemed to have slipped behind him, and though he suspected
that there was no great difference between his escort and a prisoner's
guard, the old love of excitement he once fancied he had outgrown for
ever awoke again within him. Anything that was different from the past
would be a relief, and the man who had for eight long years of
strenuous toil practised the grimmest self-denial wondered with a
quickening of all his faculties what the future, that could not be
more colourless, might have in store for him.

It was dark, and very cold, when they reached the wooden building, but
Witham's step was lighter, and his spirits more buoyant than they had
been for some months when, handing the sleigh over to an orderly, he
walked into the guard-room, where bronzed men in uniform glanced at
him curiously. Then he was shown into a bare, log-walled hall, where a
young man in blue uniform with a weather-darkened face was writing at
a table.

"I've been partly expecting a visit," he said. "I'm glad to see you,
Mr. Courthorne."

Witham laughed with a very good imitation of the outlaw's
recklessness, and wondered the while because it cost him no effort. He
who had, throughout the last two adverse seasons, seldom smiled at
all, and then but grimly, experienced the same delight in an adventure
that he had done when he came out to Canada.

"I don't know that I can return the compliment just yet," he said. "I
have one or two things to ask you."

The young soldier smiled good-humouredly, as he flung a cigar case on
the table. "Oh, sit down and shake those furs off," he said. "I'm not
a worrying policeman, and we're white men, anyway. If you'd been
twelve months in this forsaken place you'd know what I'm feeling. Take
a smoke, and start in with your questions when you feel like it."

Witham lighted a cigar, flung himself down in a hide chair, and
stretched out his feet towards the stove. "In the first place, I want
to know why your boys are shadowing me. You see, you couldn't arrest
me unless our folks in the Dominion had got their papers through."

The officer nodded. "No. We couldn't lay hands on you, and we only had
orders to see where you went to when you left this place, so the folks
there could corral you if they got the papers. That's about the size
of it at present, but, as I've sent a trooper over to Regent, I'll
know more to-morrow."

Witham laughed. "It may appear a little astonishing, but I haven't the
faintest notion why the police in Canada should worry about me. Is
there any reason you shouldn't tell me?"

The officer looked at him thoughtfully. "Bluff? I'm quite smart at it
myself," he said.

"No," and Witham shook his head. "It's a straight question. I want to
know."

"Well," said the other, "it couldn't do much harm if I told you. You
were running whisky a little while ago, and, though the folks didn't
seem to suspect it, you had a farmer or a rancher for a partner--it
appears he has mixed up things for you."

"Witham?" and the farmer turned to roll the cigar which did not need
it between his fingers.

"That's the man," said his companion. "Well, though I guess it's
no news to you, the police came down upon your friends at a
river-crossing, and farmer Witham put a bullet into a young trooper,
Shannon, I fancy."

Witham sat upright, and the blood that surged to his forehead sank
from it suddenly, and left his face grey with anger.

"Good Lord!" he said hoarsely. "He killed him?"

"Yes, sir," said the officer, "Killing's not quite the word, because
one shot would have been enough to free him of the lad, and the
rancher fired twice into him. They figured, from the way the trooper
was lying and the footprints, that he meant to finish him."

The farmer's face was very grim as he said, "They were sure it was
Witham?"

"Yes," and the soldier watched him curiously. "Anyway, they were sure
of his horse, and it was Witham's rifle. Another trooper nearly got
him, and he left it behind him. It wasn't killing, for the trooper
don't seem to have had a show at all, and I'm glad to see it makes you
kind of sick. Only that one of the troopers allows he was trailing you
at a time which shows you had no hand in the thing, you wouldn't be
sitting there smoking that cigar."

It was almost a minute before Witham could trust his voice. Then he
said slowly, "And what do they want me for?"

"I guess they don't quite know whether they do or not," said the
officer. "They crawl slow in Canada. In the meanwhile they wanted to
know where you were, so they could take out papers if anything turned
up against you."

"And Witham?" said the farmer.

"Got away with a trooper close behind him. The rest of them had headed
him off from the prairie, and he took to the river. Went through the
ice and drowned himself, though as there was a blizzard nobody quite
saw the end of him, and in case there was any doubt they've got a
warrant out. Farmer Witham's dead, and if he isn't he soon will be,
for the troopers have got their net right across the prairie, and the
Canadians don't fool time away as we do when it comes to hanging
anybody. The tale seems to have worried you."

Witham sat rigidly still and silent for almost a minute. Then he rose
up with a curious little shake of his shoulders.

"And farmer Witham's dead. Well he had a hard life. I knew him rather
well," he said. "Thank you for the story. On my word this is the first
time I've heard it, and now it's time I was going."

The officer laughed a little. "Sit right down again. Now, there's
something about you that makes me like you, and as I can't talk to the
boys, I'll give you the best supper we can raise in the whole forsaken
country, and you can camp here until to-morrow. It's an arrangement
that will meet the views of everybody, because I'll know whether the
Canadians want you or not in the morning."

Witham did not know what prompted him to agree, but it all seemed part
of a purpose that impelled him against his reasoning will, and he sat
still beside the stove while his host went out to give orders
respecting supper and the return of the sleigh. He was also glad to be
alone for a while, for now and then a fit of anger shook him as he saw
how he had been duped by Courthorne. He had heard Shannon's story,
and, remembering it, could fancy that Courthorne had planned the
trooper's destruction with a devilish cunning that recognized by what
means the blame could be laid upon a guiltless man. Witham's face
became mottled with grey again as he realized that if he revealed his
identity he had nothing but his word to offer in proof of his
innocence.

Still, it was anger and not fear that stirred him, for nobody could
arrest a man who was dead, and there was no reason that would render
it undesirable for him to remain so. His farm would, when sold,
realize the money borrowed upon it, and the holder of the mortgage had
received a profitable interest already. Had the unforeseen not
happened, Witham would have held out to the end of the struggle, but
now he had no regret that this was out of the question. Fate had been
too strong for him as farmer Witham, but it might deal more kindly
with him as the outlaw Courthorne. He could also make a quick
decision, and when the officer returned to say that supper was ready,
he rose with a smile.

They sat down to a meal that was barbaric in its simplicity and
abundance, for men live and eat in Homeric fashion in the North-West,
while when the green tea was finished and the officer pushed the
whisky across, his guest laughed as he filled his glass.

"Here's better fortune to farmer Witham!" he said.

The officer stared at him. "No, sir," he said "If the old folks taught
me aright, Witham's in----"

A curious smile flickered in the farmer's eyes. "No," he said slowly.
"He was tolerably near it once or twice when he was alive, and,
because of what he went through then, there may be something better in
store for him."

His companion appeared astonished, but said nothing further until he
brought out the cards. They played for an hour beside the snapping
stove, and then, when Witham flung a trump away, the officer groaned.

"I guess," he said disgustedly, "you're not well to-night, or
something is worrying you."

Witham looked up with a little twinkle in his eyes. "I don't know that
there's very much wrong with me."

"Then," said the officer decisively, "if the boys down at Regent know
enough to remember what trumps are, you're not Lance Courthorne. Now
after what I'd heard of you, I'd have put up fifty dollars for the
pleasure of watching your game--and it's not worth ten cents when I've
seen it."

Witham laughed. "Sit down and talk," he said. "One isn't always in his
usual form, and there are folks who get famous too easily."

They talked until nearly midnight, sitting close to the stove, while a
doleful wind that moaned without drove the dust of snow pattering
against the windows, and the shadows grew darker in the corners of the
great log-walled room each time the icy draughts set the lamp
flickering. Then the officer, rising, expressed the feelings of his
guest as he said, "It's a forsaken country, and I'm thankful one can
sleep and forget it."

He had, however, an honourable calling, and a welcome from friend and
kinsman awaiting him when he went East again, to revel in the life of
the cities, but the man who followed him silently to the sleeping-room
had nothing but a half-instinctive assurance that the future could not
well be harder or more lonely than the past had been. Still, farmer
Witham was a man of courage with a quiet belief in himself, and in ten
minutes he was fast asleep.

When he came down to breakfast his host was already seated with a
bundle of letters before him, and one addressed to Courthorne lay
unopened by Witham's plate. The officer nodded when he saw him.

"The trooper has come in with the mail, and your friends in Canada are
not going to worry you," he said. "Now, if you feel like staying here
a few days, it would be a favour to me."

Witham had in the meanwhile opened the envelope. He knew that when
once the decision was made there could only be peril in half-measures,
and his eyes grew thoughtful as he read. The letter had been written
by a Winnipeg lawyer from a little town not very far away, and
requested Courthorne to meet and confer with him respecting certain
suggestions made by a Colonel Barrington. Witham decided to take the
risk.

"I'm sorry, but I have got to go into Annerly at once," he said.

"Then," said the officer, "I'll drive you. I've some stores to get
down there."

They started after breakfast, but it was dusk next day when they
reached the little town, and Witham walked quietly into a private room
of the wooden hotel, where a middle-aged man with a shrewd face sat
waiting him. The big nickelled lamp flickered in the draughts that
found their way in, and Witham was glad of it, though he was outwardly
very collected. The stubborn patience and self-control with which he
had faced the loss of his wheat crops and frozen stock stood him in
good stead now. He fancied the lawyer seemed a trifle astonished at
his appearance, and sat down wondering whether he had previously
spoken to Courthorne, until the question was answered for him.

"Although I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before, I have
acted as Colonel Barrington's legal adviser ever since he settled at
Silverdale, and am, therefore, well posted as to his affairs, which
are, of course, connected with those of your own family," said the
lawyer. "We can accordingly talk with greater freedom, and I hope
without the acerbity which in your recent communications somewhat
annoyed the Colonel!"

"Well," said Courthorne, who had never heard of Colonel Barrington, "I
am ready to listen."

The lawyer drummed on the table. "It might be best to come to the
point at once," he said. "Colonel Barrington does not deem it
convenient that you should settle at Silverdale, and would be prepared
to offer you a reasonable sum to relinquish your claim."

"My claim?" said Witham, who remembered having heard of the Silverdale
Colony, which lay several hundred miles away.

"Of course," said the lawyer. "The legacy lately left you by Roger
Courthorne. I have brought you a schedule of the wheat in store, and
amounts due to you on various sales made. You will also find the
acreage, stock, and implements detailed at a well-known appraiser's
valuation, which you could, of course, confirm, and Colonel Barrington
would hand you a cheque for half the total now. He however, asks four
years to pay the balance, which would carry bank interest in the
meanwhile, in."

Witham, who was glad of the excuse, spent at least ten minutes
studying the paper, and realized that it referred to a large and
well-appointed farm, though it occurred to him that the crop was a
good deal smaller than it should have been. He noticed this, as it
were, instinctively, for his brain was otherwise very busy.

"Colonel Barrington seems somewhat anxious to get rid of me," he said.
"You see, this land is mine by right."

"Yes," said the lawyer. "Colonel Barrington does not dispute it,
though I am of opinion that he might have done so under one clause of
the will. I do not think we need discuss his motives."

Witham moistened his lips with his tongue, and his lips quivered a
little. He had hitherto been an honest man, and now it was impossible
for him to take the money. It, however, appeared equally impossible to
reveal his identity and escape the halter, and he felt that the dead
man had wronged him horribly. He was entitled at least to safety by
way of compensation, for by passing as Courthorne he would avoid
recognition as Witham.

"Still, I do not know how I have offended Colonel Barrington," he
said.

"I would sooner," said the lawyer, "not go into that. It is, I fancy,
fifteen years since Colonel Barrington saw you, but he desired me to
find means of tracing your Canadian record, and did not seem pleased
with it. Nor, at the risk of offending you, could I deem him unduly
prejudiced."

"In fact," said Witham dryly, "this man who has not seen me for
fifteen years is desirous of withholding what is mine from me at
almost any cost."

The lawyer nodded. "There is nothing to be gained by endeavouring to
controvert it. Colonel Barrington is also, as you know, a somewhat
determined gentleman."

Witham laughed, for he was essentially a stubborn man, and felt little
kindliness towards any one connected with Courthorne, as the Colonel
evidently was.

"I fancy I am not entirely unlike him in that respect," he said. "What
you have told me makes me the more determined to follow my own
inclinations. Is there any one else at Silverdale prejudiced against
me?"

The lawyer fell into the trap. "Miss Barrington, of course, takes her
brother's view, and her niece would scarcely go counter to them. She
must have been a very young girl when she last saw you, but from what
I know of her character I should expect her to support the Colonel."

"Well," said Witham. "I want to think over the thing. We will talk
again to-morrow. You would require me to establish my identity,
anyway?"

"The fact that a famous inquiry agent has traced your movements down
to a week or two ago, and told me where to find you, will render that
simple," said the lawyer dryly.

Witham sat up late that night turning over the papers the lawyer left
him, and thinking hard. It was evident that in the meanwhile he must
pass as Courthorne, but as the thought of taking the money revolted
him, the next step led to the occupation of the dead man's property.
The assumption of it would apparently do nobody a wrong, while he felt
that Courthorne had taken so much from him that the farm at Silverdale
would be a very small reparation. It was not, he saw, a great
inheritance, but one that in the right hands could be made profitable,
and Witham, who had fought a plucky fight with obsolete and worthless
implements and indifferent teams, felt that he could do a great deal
with what was, as it were, thrust upon him at Silverdale. It was not
avarice that tempted him, though he knew he was tempted now, but a
longing to find a fair outlet for his energies, and show what, once
given the chance that most men had, he could do. He had stinted
himself and toiled almost as a beast of burden, but now he could use
his brains in place of wringing the last effort out of overtaxed
muscle. He had also during the long struggle lost, to some extent, his
clearness of vision, and only saw himself as a lonely man fighting for
his own hand with fate against him. Now, when prosperity was offered
him, it seemed but folly to stand aside when he could stretch out a
strong hand and take it.

During the last hour he sat almost motionless, the issue hung in the
balance, and he laid himself down still undecided. Still, he had lived
long in primitive fashion in close touch with the soil, and sank, as
most men would have done, into restful sleep. The sun hung red above
the rim of the prairie when he awakened, and going down to breakfast
found the lawyer waiting for him.

"You can tell Colonel Barrington I'm coming to Silverdale," he said.

The lawyer looked at him curiously. "Would there be any use in asking
you to consider?"

Witham laughed. "No," he said. "Now, I rather like the way you talked
to me, and if it wouldn't be disloyalty to the Colonel, I should be
pleased if you would undertake to put me in due possession of my
property."

He said nothing further, and the lawyer sat down to write Colonel
Barrington.

"Mr. Courthorne proves obdurate," he said. "He is, however, by no
means the type of man I expected to find, and I venture to surmise
that you will eventually discover him to be a less undesirable
addition to Silverdale than you are at present inclined to fancy."




CHAPTER VIII

WITHAM COMES TO SILVERDALE


There were warmth and brightness in the cedar-boarded general room of
Silverdale Grange, and most of the company gathered there basked in it
contentedly after their drive through the bitter night. Those who came
from the homesteads lying farthest out had risked frost-nipped hands
and feet, for when Colonel Barrington held a levee at the Grange
nobody felt equal to refusing his invitation. Neither scorching heat
nor utter cold might excuse compliance with the wishes of the founder
of Silverdale, and it was not until Dane, the big middle-aged
bachelor, had spoken very plainly, that he consented to receive his
guests in time of biting frost dressed otherwise than as they would
have appeared in England.

Dane was the one man in the settlement who dare remonstrate with its
ruler, but it was a painful astonishment to the latter when he said,
in answer to one invitation, "I have never been frost-bitten, sir, and
I stand the cold well, but one or two of the lads are weak in the
chest, and this climate was never intended for bare-shouldered women.
Hence, if I come, I shall dress myself to suit it."

Colonel Barrington stared at him for almost a minute, and then shook
his head. "Have it your own way," he said, "Understand that in itself
I care very little for dress, but it is only by holding fast to every
traditional nicety we can prevent ourselves sinking into Western
barbarism, and I am horribly afraid of the thin end of the wedge."

Dane having gained his point, said nothing further, for he was one of
the wise and silent men who know when to stop, and that evening he sat
in a corner watching his leader thoughtfully, for there was anxiety in
the Colonel's face. Barrington sat silent near the ample hearth whose
heat would scarcely have kept water from freezing but for the big
stove, and disdaining the dispensation made his guests, he was clad
conventionally, though the smooth black fabric clung about him more
tightly than it had once been intended to do. His sister stood, with
the stamp of a not wholly vanished beauty still clinging to her gentle
face, talking to one or two matrons from outlying farms, and his niece
by a little table turning over Eastern photographs with a few young
girls. She, too, wore black in deference to the Colonel's taste, which
was sombre, and the garment she had laughed at as a compromise, left
uncovered a narrow strip of ivory shoulder and enhanced the polished
whiteness of her neck. A slender string of pearls gleamed softly on
the satiny skin, but Maud Barrington wore no other adornment and did
not need it. She had inherited the Courthorne comeliness, and the
Barringtons she sprang from on her father's side had always borne the
stamp of distinction.

A young girl sat at the piano singing in a thin, reedy voice, while an
English lad waited with ill-concealed jealousy of a too officious
companion to turn over the music by her side. Other men, mostly young,
with weather-bronzed faces, picturesque in embroidered deerskin or
velvet lounge jackets, were scattered about the room, and all were
waiting for the eight-o'clock dinner, which replaced the usual prairie
supper at Silverdale. They were growers of wheat who combined a good
deal of amusement with a little not very profitable farming, and most
of them possessed a large share of insular English pride and a
somewhat depleted exchequer.

Presently Dane crossed over, and sat down by Colonel Barrington. "You
are silent, sir, and not looking very well to-night," he said.

Barrington nodded gravely, for he had a respect for the one man who
occasionally spoke plain truth to him. "The fact is, I am growing
old," he said, and then added, with what was only an apparent lack of
connexion, "Wheat is down three cents, and money tighter than ever."

Dane looked thoughtful, and noticed the older man's glance in his
niece's direction, as he said, "I am afraid there are difficult times
before us."

"I have no doubt we shall weather them as we have done before," said
the Colonel. "Still, I can't help admitting that just now I feel--a
little tired--and am commencing to think we should have been better
prepared for the struggle had we worked a trifle harder during the
recent era of prosperity. I could wish there were older heads on the
shoulders of those who will come after me."

Just then Maud Barrington glanced at them, and Dane, who could not
remember having heard his leader talk in that fashion before, and
could guess his anxieties, was a little touched as he noticed his
attempt at sprightliness. As it happened, one of the lads at the piano
commenced a song of dogs and horses that had little to recommend it
but the brave young voice.

"They have the right spirit, sir," he said.

"Of course!" said Barrington. "They are English lads, but I think a
little more is required. Thank God we have not rated the dollar too
high, but it is possible we have undervalued its utility, and I fear I
have only taught them to be gentlemen."

"That is a good deal, sir," Dane said quietly.

"It is. Still, a gentleman, in the restricted sense, is somewhat of an
anachronism on the prairie, and it is too late to begin again. In the
usual course of nature I must lay down my charge presently, and that
is why I feel the want of a more capable successor, whom they would
follow because of his connexion with mine and me."

Dane looked thoughtful. "If I am not taking a liberty--you still
consider the one apparently born to fill the place quite unsuitable?"

"Yes," said Barrington quietly. "I fear there is not a redeeming
feature in Courthorne's character."

Neither said anything further, until there was a tapping at the door,
and, though this was a most unusual spectacle on the prairie, a trim
English maid in white-banded dress stood in the opening.

"Mr. Courthorne, Miss Barrington," she said.

Now Silverdale had adopted one Western custom in that no chance guest
was ever kept waiting, and the music ceased suddenly, while the
stillness was very suggestive, when a man appeared in the doorway. He
wore one of the Scandinavian leather jackets which are not uncommon in
that country, and when his eyes had become accustomed to the light,
moved forward with a quiet deliberation that was characterized neither
by graceful ease nor the restraint of embarrassment. His face was
almost the colour of a Blackfoot's, his eyes steady and grey, but
those of the men who watched him were next moment turned upon the
Colonel's sister, who rose to receive him, slight, silver-haired, and
faded, but still stamped with a simple dignity that her ancient silks
and lace curiously enhanced. Then there was a silence that could be
felt, for all realized that a good deal depended on the stranger's
first words and the fashion of his reception.

Witham, as it happened, felt this too, and something more. It was
eight years since he had stood before an English lady, and he surmised
that there could not be many to compare with this one, while after his
grim, lonely life an intangible something that seemed to emanate from
her gracious serenity compelled his homage. Then as she smiled at him
and held out her hand, he was for a moment sensible of an almost
overwhelming confusion. It passed as suddenly, for this was a man of
quick perceptions, and remembering that Courthorne had now and then
displayed some of the grace of bygone days he yielded to a curious
impulse, and, stooping, kissed the little withered fingers.

"I have," he said, "to thank you for a welcome that does not match my
poor deserts, madam."

Then Dane, standing beside his leader, saw the grimness grow a trifle
less marked in his eyes. "It is in the blood," he said half aloud, but
Dane heard him and afterwards remembered it.

In the meanwhile Miss Barrington had turned from the stranger to her
niece. "It is a very long time since you have seen Lance, Maud, and,
though I knew his mother well, I am less fortunate, because this is
our first meeting," she said. "I wonder if you still remember my
niece."

Now, Witham had been gratified by his first success, and was about to
venture on the answer that it was impossible to forget; but when he
turned towards the very stately young woman in the long black dress,
whose eyes had a sardonic gleam, and wondered whether he had ever seen
anybody so comely or less inclined to be companionable, it was borne
in upon him that any speech of the kind would be distinctly out of
place. Accordingly, and because there was no hand held out in this
case, he contented himself with a little bend of his head. Then he was
presented to the Colonel, who was distantly cordial, and Witham was
thankful when the maid appeared in the doorway again, to announce that
dinner was ready. Miss Barrington laid her hand upon his arm.

"You will put up with an old woman's company to-night?" she said.

Witham glanced down deprecatingly at his attire. "I must explain that
I had no intention of trespassing on your hospitality," he said. "I
purposed going on to my own homestead, and only called to acquaint
Colonel Barrington with my arrival."

Miss Barrington laughed pleasantly. "That," she said, "was neither
dutiful nor friendly. I should have fancied you would also have
desired to pay your respects to my niece and me."

Witham was not quite sure what he answered, but he drew in a deep
breath, for he had made the plunge and felt that the worst was over.
His companion, evidently noticed the gasp of relief.

"It was somewhat of an ordeal?" she said.

Witham looked down upon her gravely, and Miss Barrington noticed a
steadiness in his eyes she had not expected to see. "It was, and I
feel guilty because I was horribly afraid," he said. "Now I only
wonder if you will always be equally kind to me."

Miss Barrington smiled a little, but the man fancied there was just a
perceptible tightening of the hand upon his arm. "I would like to be,
for your mother's sake," she said.

Witham understood that while Courthorne's iniquities were not to be
brought up against him, the little gentle-voiced lady had but taken
him on trial; but, perhaps because it was so long since any woman had
spoken kindly words to him, his heart went out towards her, and he
felt a curious desire to compel her good opinion. Then he found
himself seated near the head of the long table, with Maud Barrington
on his other hand, and had an uncomfortable feeling that most of the
faces were turned somewhat frequently in his direction. It is also
possible that he would have betrayed himself, had he been burdened
with self-consciousness, but the long, bitter struggle he had fought
alone had purged him of petty weaknesses and left him the closer grasp
of essential things, with the strength of character which is one and
the same in all men who possess it, whatever may be their upbringing.

During a lull in the voices, Maud Barrington, who may have felt it
incumbent on her to show him some scant civility, turned towards him
as she said, "I am afraid our conversation will not appeal to you.
Partly because there is so little else to interest us, we talk wheat
throughout the year at Silverdale."

"Well," said Witham with a curious little smile, "wheat as a topic is
not quite new to me. In fact, I know almost more about cereals than
some folks would care to do."

"In the shape of elevator warrants or Winnipeg market margins,
presumably?"

Witham's eyes twinkled, though he understood the implication. "No," he
said. "The wheat I handled was in 250-pound bags, and I occasionally
grew somewhat tired of pitching them into a wagon, while my
speculations usually consisted in committing it to the prairie soil,
in the hope of reaping forty bushels to the acre, and then
endeavouring to be content with ten. It is conceivable that operations
on the Winnipeg market are less laborious as well as more profitable,
but I have no opportunity of trying them."

Miss Barrington looked at him steadily, and Witham felt the blood
surge to his forehead as he remembered having heard of a certain
venture made by Courthorne, which brought discredit on one or two men,
connected with the affairs of a grain elevator. It was evident that
Miss Barrington had also heard of it, and no man cares to stand
convicted of falsification in the eyes of a very pretty girl. Still,
he roused himself with an effort.

"It is neither wise nor charitable to believe all one hears," he said.

The girl smiled a little, but the man still winced inwardly under her
clear brown eyes that would, he fancied, have been very scornful had
they been less indifferent.

"I do not remember mentioning having heard anything," she said. "Were
you not a trifle premature in face of the proverb?"

Witham's face was a trifle grim, though he laughed. "I'm afraid I was;
but I am warned," he said. "Excuses are, after all, not worth much,
and when I make my defence it will be before a more merciful judge."

Maud Barrington's curiosity was piqued. Lance Courthorne, outcast and
gambler, was at least a different stamp of man from the type she had
been used to, and, being a woman, the romance that was interwoven with
his somewhat iniquitous career was not without its attractions for
her.

"I did not know that you included farming among your talents, and
should have fancied you would have found it--monotonous," she said.

"I did," and the provoking smile still flickered in Witham's eyes.
"Are not all strictly virtuous occupations usually so?"

"It is probably a question of temperament. I have, of course, heard
sardonic speeches of the kind before, and felt inclined to wonder
whether those who made them were qualified to form an opinion."

Witham nodded, but there was a little ring in his voice. "Perhaps I
laid myself open to the thrust; but have you any right to assume I
have never followed a commendable profession?"

No answer was immediately forthcoming, but Witham did wisely when, in
place of waiting, he turned to Miss Barrington. He had left her niece
irritated, but the trace of anger she felt was likely to enhance her
interest. The meal, however, was a trial to him, for he had during
eight long years lived for the most part apart from all his kind, a
lonely toiler, and now was constrained to personate a man known to be
almost dangerously skilful with his tongue. At first sight the task
appeared almost insuperably difficult, but Witham was a clever man,
and felt all the thrill of one playing a risky game just then. Perhaps
it was due to excitement that a readiness he had never fancied himself
capable of came to him in his need, and, when at last the ladies rose,
he felt that he had not slipped perilously. Still, he found how dry
his lips had grown when somebody poured him a glass of wine. Then he
became sensible that Colonel Barrington, who had apparently been
delivering a lengthy monologue, was addressing him.

"The outlook is sufficient to cause us some anxiety," he said. "We are
holding large stocks, and I can see no prospect of anything but a
steady fall in wheat. It is, however, presumably a little too soon to
ask your opinion."

"Well," said Witham, "while I am prepared to act upon it, I would
recommend it to others with some diffidence. No money can be made at
present by farming, but I see no reason why we should not endeavour to
cut our losses by selling forward down. If caught by a sudden rally,
we could fall back on the grain we hold."

There was a sudden silence, until Dane said softly, "That is exactly
what one of the cleverest brokers in Winnipeg recommended."

"I think," said Colonel Barrington, "you heard my answer. I am
inclined to fancy that such a measure would not be advisable or
fitting, Mr. Courthorne. You, however, presumably know very little
about the practical aspect of the wheat question?"

Witham smiled. "On the contrary, I know a great deal."

"You do?" said Barrington sharply, and while a blunderer would have
endeavoured to qualify his statement, Witham stood by it.

"You are evidently not aware, sir, that I have tried my hand at
farming, though not very successfully."

"That, at least," said Barrington dryly, as he rose, "is quite
credible."

When they went into the smaller room, Witham crossed over to where
Maud Barrington sat alone, and looked down upon her gravely. "One
discovers that frankness is usually best," he said. "Now, I would not
like to feel that you had determined to be unfriendly with me."

Maud Barrington fixed a pair of clear brown eyes upon his face, and
the faintest trace of astonishment crept into them. She was a woman
with high principles, but neither a fool nor a prude, and she saw no
sign of dissolute living there. The man's gaze was curiously steady,
his skin clear and brown, and his sinewy form suggested a capacity
for, and she almost fancied an acquaintance with, physical toil. Yet
he had already denied the truth to her. Witham, on his part, saw a
very fair face with wholesome pride in it, and felt that the eyes
which were coldly contemptuous now could, if there was a warrant for
it, grow very gentle.

"Would it be of any moment if I were?" she said.

"Yes," said Witham quietly. "There are two people here it is desirable
for me to stand well with, and the first of them, your aunt, has, I
fancy, already decided to give me a fair trial. She told me it was for
my mother's sake. Now, I can deal with your uncle."

The girl smiled a little. "Are you quite sure? Everybody does not find
it easy to get on with Colonel Barrington. His code is somewhat
draconic."

Witham nodded. "He is a man, and I hope to convince him I have at
least a right to toleration. That leaves only you. The rest don't
count. They will come round by and by, you see."

The little forceful gesture with which he concluded pleased Maud
Barrington. It was free from vanity, but conveyed an assurance that he
knew his own value.

"No friendship that is lightly given is worth very much," she said. "I
could decide better in another six months. Now it is perhaps fortunate
that Colonel Barrington is waiting for us to make up his four at
whist."

Witham allowed a faint gesture of dismay to escape him. "Must I play?"

"Yes," said the girl, smiling. "Whist is my uncle's hobby, and he is
enthusiastic over a clever game."

Witham groaned inwardly. "And I am a fool at whist."

"Then it was poker you played?" and again a faint trace of anger crept
into the girl's eyes.

Witham shook his head. "No," he said. "I had few opportunities of
indulging in expensive luxuries."

"I think we had better take our places," said Maud Barrington, with
unveiled contempt.

Witham's forehead grew a trifle hot, and when he sat down Barrington
glanced at him. "I should explain that we never allow stakes of any
kind at Silverdale," he said. "Some of the lads sent out to me have
been a trifle extravagant in the old country."

He dealt out the cards, but a trace of bewildered irritation crept
into his eyes as the game proceeded, and once or twice he appeared to
check an exclamation of astonishment, while at last he glanced
reproachfully at Witham.

"My dear sir! Still, you have ridden a long way," he said, laying his
finger on a king.

Witham laughed to hide his dismay. "I am sorry, sir. It was scarcely
fair to my partner. You would, however, have beaten us, anyway."

Barrington gravely gathered up the cards. "We will," he said, "have
some music. I do not play poker."

Then, for the first time, Witham lost his head in his anger. "Nor do
I, sir."

Barrington only looked at him, but the farmer felt as though somebody
had struck him in the face, and as soon as he conveniently could, bade
Miss Barrington good night.

"But we expected you would stay here a day or two. Your place is not
ready," she said.

Witham smiled at her. "I think I am wise. I must feel my way."

Miss Barrington was won, and, making no further protest, signed to
Dane. "You will take Mr. Courthorne home with you," she said. "I would
have kept him here, but he is evidently anxious to talk over affairs
with some one more of his age than my brother is."

Dane appeared quite willing, and an hour later, Witham sat, cigar in
hand, in a room of his outlying farm. It was furnished simply, but
there were signs of taste, and the farmer who occupied it had already
formed a good opinion of the man whose knowledge of his own profession
astonished him.

"So you are actually going to sell wheat in face of the Colonel's
views?" he said.

"Of course," said Witham simply. "I don't like unpleasantness, but I
can allow no man to dictate my affairs to me."

Dane grinned. "Well," he said, "the Colonel can be nasty, and he has
no great reason for being fond of you already."

"No?" said Witham. "Now, of course, my accession will make a
difference at Silverdale, but I would consider it a friendly act if
you will let me know the views of the colony."

Dane looked thoughtful. "The trouble is that your taking up the land
leaves less for Maud Barrington than there would have been.
Barrington, who is fond of the girl, was trustee for the property, and
after your--estrangement--from your father everybody expected she
would get it all."

"So I have deprived Miss Barrington of part of her income?"

"Of course," said Dane. "Didn't you know?"

Witham found it difficult to answer. "I never quite realized it
before. Are there more accounts against me?"

"That," said Dane slowly, "is rather a facer. We are all more or less
friends of the dominant family, you see."

Witham laid down his cigar and stood up, "Now," he said, "I generally
talk straight, and you have held out a hand to me. Can you believe in
the apparent improbability of such a man as I am in the opinion of the
folks at Silverdale getting tired of a wasted life and trying to walk
straight again? I want your answer, yes or no, before I head across
the prairie for my own place."

"Sit down," said Dane with a little smile. "Do you think I would have
brought you here if I hadn't believed it? And, if I have my way, the
first man who flings a stone will be sorry for it. Still, I don't
think any of them will--or could afford it. If we had all been saints,
some of us would never have come out from the old country."

He stopped and poured out two glasses of wine. "It's a long while
since I've talked so much," he said. "Here's to our better
acquaintance, Courthorne."

After that they talked wheat-growing and horses, and when his guest
retired Dane still sat smoking thoughtfully beside the stove. "We want
a man with nerve and brains," he said. "I fancy the one who has been
sent us will make a difference at Silverdale."

It was about the same time when Colonel Barrington stood talking with
his niece and sister in Silverdale Grange. "And the man threw that
trick away when it was absolutely clear who had the ace--and wished me
to believe that he forgot!" he said.

His face was flushed with indignation, but Miss Barrington smiled at
her niece. "What is your opinion, Maud?"

The girl moved one white shoulder with a gesture of disdain. "Can you
ask--after that! Besides, he twice wilfully perverted facts while he
talked to me, though it was not in the least necessary."

Miss Barrington looked thoughtful. "And yet, because I was watching
him, I do not think he plays cards well."

"But he was a professional gambler," said the girl.

The elder lady shook her head. "So we--heard," she said. "My dear,
give him a little time. I have seen many men and women--and can't help
a fancy that there is good in him."

"Can the leopard change his spots?" asked Colonel Barrington, with a
grim smile.

The little white-haired lady glanced at him as she said quietly, "When
the wicked man----"




CHAPTER IX

AN ARMISTICE


The dismal afternoon was drawing in when Witham, driving home from the
railroad, came into sight of a lonely farm. It lifted itself out of
the prairie, a blur of huddled buildings on the crest of a long rise,
but at first sight Witham scarcely noticed it. He was gazing
abstractedly down the sinuous smear of trail which unrolled itself
like an endless riband across the great white desolation, and his
brain was busy. Four months had passed since he came to Silverdale,
and they had left their mark on him.

At first there had been the constant fear of detection, and when that
had lessened and he was accepted as Lance Courthorne, the latter's
unfortunate record had met him at every turn. It accounted for the
suspicions of Colonel Barrington, the reserve of his niece, and the
aloofness of some of his neighbours, while there had been times when
Witham found Silverdale almost unendurable. He was, however, an
obstinate man, and there was on the opposite side the gracious
kindliness of the little grey-haired lady, who had from the beginning
been his champion, and the friendship of Dane and one or two of the
older men. Witham had also proved his right to be listened to, and
treated, outwardly at least, with due civility, while something in his
resolute quietness rendered an impertinence impossible. He knew by
this time that he could hold his own at Silverdale, and based his
conduct on the fact, but that was only one aspect of the question, and
he speculated as to the consummation.

It was, however, evident that in the meanwhile he must continue to
pose as Courthorne, and he felt, rightly or wrongly, that the
possession of his estate, was, after all, a small reparation for the
injury the outlaw had done him, but the affair was complicated by the
fact that, in taking Courthorne's inheritance, he had deprived Maud
Barrington of part of hers. The girl's coldness stung him, but her
unquestionable beauty and strength of character had not been without
their effect, and the man winced as he remembered that she had no pity
for anything false or mean. He had decided only upon two things, first
that he would vindicate himself in her eyes, and, since nobody else
could apparently do it, pull the property that should have been hers
out of the ruin it had been drifting into under her uncle's
guardianship. When this had been done, and the killing of Trooper
Shannon forgotten, it would be time for him to slip back into the
obscurity he came from.

Then the fact that the homestead was growing nearer forced itself upon
his perceptions, and he glanced doubtfully across the prairie as he
approached the forking of the trail. A grey dimness was creeping
across the wilderness and the smoky sky seemed to hang lower above the
dully gleaming snow, while the moaning wind flung little clouds of icy
dust about him. It was evident that the snow was not far away, and it
was still two leagues to Silverdale, but Witham, who had been to
Winnipeg, had business with the farmer, and had faced a prairie storm
before. Accordingly he swung the team into the forking trail and shook
the reins. There was, he knew, little time to lose, and in another
five minutes he stood, still wearing his white-sprinkled furs, in a
room of the birch-log building.

"Here are your accounts, Macdonald, and while we've pulled up our
losses, I can't help thinking we have just got out in time," he said.
"The market is but little stiffer yet, but there is less selling, and
before a few months are over we're going to see a sharp recovery."

The farmer glanced at the documents, and smiled with contentment as he
took the cheque. "I'm glad I listened to you," he said. "It's
unfortunate for him and his niece that Barrington wouldn't--at least,
not until he had lost the opportunity."

"I don't understand," said Witham.

"No," said the farmer, "you've been away. Well, you know it takes a
long while to get an idea into the Colonel's head, but once it's in
it's even harder to get it out again. Now Barrington looked down on
wheat jobbing, but money's tight at Silverdale, and when he saw what
you were making, he commenced to think. Accordingly he's going to
sell, and, as he seems convinced that wheat will not go up again, let
half the acreage lie fallow this season. The worst of it is, the
others will follow him up, and he controls Maud Barrington's property
as well as his own."

Witham's face was grave. "I heard in Winnipeg that most of the smaller
men who had lost courage were doing the same thing. That means a very
small crop of western hard, and millers paying our own prices.
Somebody must stop the Colonel."

"Well," said Macdonald dryly, "I wouldn't like to be the man, and,
after all, it's only your opinion. As you have seen, the small men
here and in Minnesota are afraid to plough."

Witham laughed softly. "The man who makes the dollars is the one who
sees farther than the crowd. Anyway, I found the views of one or two
men who make big deals were much the same as mine, and I'll speak to
Miss Barrington."

"Then if you will wait a little, you will have an opportunity. She is
here, you see."

Witham looked disconcerted. "She should not have been. Why didn't you
send her home? There'll be snow before she reaches Silverdale."

Macdonald laughed. "I hadn't noticed the weather, and, though my wife
wished her to stay, there is no use in attempting to persuade Miss
Barrington to do anything when she does not want to. In some respects
she is very like the Colonel."

The farmer led the way into another room, and Witham flushed a little
when the girl returned his greeting in a fashion which he fancied the
presence of Mrs. Macdonald alone rendered distantly cordial. Still, a
glance through the windows showed him that delay was inadvisable.

"I think you had better stay here all night, Miss Barrington," he
said. "There is snow coming."

"I am sorry our views do not coincide," said the girl. "I have several
things to attend to at the Grange."

"Then Macdonald will keep your team, and I will drive you home," said
Witham. "Mine are the best horses at Silverdale, and I fancy we will
need all their strength."

Miss Barrington looked up sharply. There had been a little ring in
Witham's voice, but there was also a solicitude in his face which
almost astonished her, and when Macdonald urged her to comply she rose
leisurely.

"I will be ready in ten minutes," she said.

Witham waited at least twenty, very impatiently, but when at last the
girl appeared, handed her with quiet deference into the sleigh, and
then took his place, as far as the dimensions of the vehicle
permitted, apart from her. Once he fancied she noticed it with faint
amusement, but the horses knew what was coming, and it was only when
he pulled them up to a trot again on the slope of a rise that he found
speech convenient.

"I am glad we are alone, though I feel a little diffidence in asking a
favour of you, because unfortunately when I venture to recommend
anything you usually set yourself against it," he said. "This is, in
the language of this country, tolerably straight."

Maud Barrington laughed. "I could find no fault with it on the score
of ambiguity."

"Well," said Witham, "I believe your uncle is going to sell wheat for
you, and let a good deal of your land go out of cultivation. Now, as
you perhaps do not know, the laws which govern the markets are very
simple and almost immutable, but the trouble is that a good many
people do not understand their application."

"You apparently consider yourself an exception," said the girl.

Witham nodded. "I do just now. Still, I do not wish to talk about
myself. You see, the people back there in Europe must be fed, and the
latest news from wheat-growing countries does not promise more than an
average crop, while half the faint-hearted farmers here are not going
to sow much this year. Therefore when the demand comes for Western
wheat there will be little to sell."

"But how is it that you alone see this? Isn't it a trifle
egotistical?"

Witham laughed. "Can't we leave my virtues, or the reverse, out of the
question? I feel that I am right, and want you to dissuade your uncle.
It would be even better if, when I return to Winnipeg, you would
empower me to buy wheat for you."

Maud Barrington looked at him curiously. "I am a little perplexed as
to why you should wish me to."

"No doubt," said Witham. "Still, is there any reason why I should be
debarred the usual privilege of taking an interest in my neighbour's
affairs?"

"No," said the girl slowly. "But can you not see that it is out of the
question that I should entrust you with this commission?"

Witham's hands closed on the reins, and his face grew a trifle grim as
he said, "From the point of view you evidently take, I presume it is."

A flush of crimson suffused the girl's cheeks. "I never meant that,
and I can scarcely forgive you for fancying I did. Of course I could
trust you with--you have made me use the word--the dollars, but you
must realize that I could not do anything in public opposition to my
uncle's opinion."

Witham was sensible of a great relief, but it did not appear advisable
to show it. "There are so many things you apparently find it difficult
to forgive me--and we will let this one pass," he said. "Still, I
cannot help thinking that Colonel Barrington will have a good deal to
answer for."

Maud Barrington made no answer, but she was sensible of a respect
which appeared quite unwarranted for the dryly-spoken man who, though
she guessed her words stung him now and then, bore them without
wincing. While she sat silent, shivering under her furs, darkness
crept down. The smoky cloud dropped lower, the horizon closed in as
the grey obscurity rolled up to meet them across a rapidly-narrowing
strip of snow. Then she could scarcely see the horses, and the muffled
drumming of their hoofs was lost in a doleful wail of wind. It also
seemed to her that the cold, which was already almost insupportable,
suddenly increased, as it not infrequently does in that country before
the snow. Then a white powder was whirled into her face, filling her
eyes and searing the skin, while, when she could see anything again,
the horses were plunging at a gallop through a filmy haze, and Witham,
whitened all over, leaned forward with lowered head hurling hoarse
encouragement at them. His voice reached her fitfully through the roar
of wind, until sight and hearing were lost alike as the white haze
closed about them, and it was not until the wild gust had passed she
heard him again.

He was apparently shouting, "Come nearer."

Maud Barrington was not sure whether she obeyed him or he seized and
drew her towards him. She, however, felt the furs piled high about her
neck and that there was an arm round her shoulder, and for a moment
was sensible of an almost overwhelming revulsion from the contact. She
was proud and very dainty, and fancied she knew what this man had
been, while now she was drawn in to his side, and felt her chilled
blood respond to the warmth of his body. Indeed, she grew suddenly hot
to the neck, and felt that henceforward she could never forgive him or
herself, but the mood passed almost as swiftly, for again the awful
blast shrieked about them and she only remembered her companion's
humanity as the differences of sex and character vanished under that
destroying cold. They were no longer man and woman, but only beings of
flesh and blood, clinging desperately to the life that was in them,
for the first rush of the Western snowstorm has more than a physical
effect, and man exposed to its fury loses all but his animal instincts
in the primitive struggle with the elements.

Then, while the snow folded them closely in its white embrace during a
lull, the girl recovered herself, and her strained voice was faintly
audible.

"This is my fault; why don't you tell me so?" she said.

A hoarse laugh seemed to issue from the whitened object beside her,
and she was drawn closer to it again. "We needn't go into that just
now. You have one thing to do, and that is to keep warm."

One of the horses stumbled, the grasp that was around her became
relaxed and she heard the swish of the whip followed by hoarse
expletives, and did not resent it. The man, it seemed, was fighting
for her life as well as his own, and even brutal virility was
necessary. After that there was a space of oblivion, while the storm
raged about them, until, when the wind fell a trifle, it became
evident that the horses had left the trail.

"You are off the track, and will never make the Grange unless you find
it!" she said.

Witham seemed to nod. "We are not going there," he said, and if he
added anything, it was lost in the scream of a returning gust.

Again Maud Barrington's reason reasserted itself, and remembering the
man's history she became sensible of a curious dismay, but it also
passed, and left her with the vague realization that he and she were
actuated alike only by the desire to escape extinction. Presently she
became sensible that the sleigh had stopped beside a formless mound of
white and the man was shaking her.

"Hold those furs about you while I lift you down," he said.

She did his bidding, and did not shrink when she felt his arms about
her, while next moment she was standing knee-deep in the snow and the
man shouting something she did not catch. Team and sleigh seemed to
vanish, and she saw her companion dimly for a moment before he was
lost in the sliding whiteness too. Then a horrible fear came upon her.

It seemed a very long while before he reappeared, and thrust her in
through what seemed to be a door. Then there was another waiting
before the light of a lamp blinked out, and she saw that she was
standing in a little log-walled room with bare floor and a few trusses
of straw in a corner. There was also a rusty stove, and a very small
pile of billets beside it. Witham, who had closed the door, stood
looking at them with a curious expression.

"Where is the team?" she gasped.

"Heading for a birch bluff or Silverdale, though I scarcely think they
will get there," said the man. "I have never stopped here, and it
wasn't astonishing they fancied the place a pile of snow. While I was
getting the furs out they slipped away from me."

Miss Barrington now knew where they were. The shanty was used by the
remoter settlers as a half-way house where they slept occasionally on
their long journey to the railroad, and as there was a birch bluff not
far away, it was the rule that whoever occupied it should replace the
fuel he had consumed. The last man had, however, not been liberal.

"But what are we to do?" she asked, with a little gasp of dismay.

"Stay here until the morning," said Witham quietly. "Unfortunately I
can't even spare you my company. The stable has fallen in, and it
would be death to stand outside, you see. In the meanwhile, pull out
some of the straw and put it in the stove."

"Can you not do that?" asked Miss Barrington, feeling that she must
commence at once, if she was to keep this man at a befitting distance.

Witham laughed. "Oh, yes, but you will freeze if you stand still, and
these billets require splitting. Still, if you have special objections
to doing what I ask you, you can walk up and down rapidly."

The girl glanced at him a moment, and then lowered her eyes. "Of
course I was wrong! Do you wish to hear that I am sorry?"

Witham, answering nothing, swung an axe round his head, and the girl,
kneeling beside the stove, noticed the sinewy suppleness of his frame
and the precision with which the heavy blade cleft the billets. The
axe, she knew, is by no means an easy tool to handle. At last the red
flame crackled, and though she had not intended the question to be
malicious, there was a faint trace of irony in her voice as she asked,
"Is there any other thing you wish me to do?"

Witham flung two bundles of straw down beside the stove, and stood
looking at her gravely. "Yes," he said. "I want you to sit down and
let me wrap this sleigh robe about you."

The girl submitted, and did not shrink from his touch visibly when he
drew the fur robe about her shoulders and packed the end of it round
her feet. Still, there was a faint warmth in her face, and she was
grateful for his unconcernedness.

"Fate or fortune has placed me in charge of you until to-morrow, and
if the position is distasteful to you it is not my fault," he said.
"Still, I feel the responsibility, and it would be a little less
difficult if you could accept the fact tacitly."

Maud Barrington would not have shivered if she could have avoided it,
but the cold was too great for her, and she did not know whether she
was vexed or pleased at the gleam of compassion in the man's grey
eyes. It was more eloquent than anything of the kind she had ever
seen, but it had gone and he was only quietly deferent when she
glanced at him again.

"I will endeavour to be good," she said, and then flushed with
annoyance at the adjective. Half-dazed by the cold as she was, she
could not think of a more suitable one. Witham, however, retained his
gravity.

"Now, Macdonald gave you no supper, and he has dinner at noon," he
said. "I brought some eatables along, and you must make the best meal
you can."

He opened a packet, and laid it, with a little silver flask, upon her
knee.

"I cannot eat all this--and it is raw spirit," said Maud Barrington.

Witham laughed. "Are you not forgetting your promise? Still, we will
melt a little snow into the cup."

An icy gust swept in when he opened the door, and it was only by a
strenuous effort he closed it again, while, when he came back panting
with the top of the flask a little colour crept into Maud Barrington's
face. "I am sorry," she said. "That at least is your due."

"I really don't want my due," said Witham with a deprecatory gesture
as he laid the silver cup upon the stove. "Can't we forget we are not
exactly friends, just for to-night? If so, you will drink this and
commence at once on the provisions--to please me!"

Maud Barrington was glad of the reviving draught, for she was very
cold, but presently she held out the packet.

"One really cannot eat many crackers at once; will you help me?"

Witham laughed as he took one of the biscuits. "If I had expected any
one would share my meal, I would have provided a better one. Still, I
have been glad to feast upon more unappetizing things occasionally!"

"When were you unfortunate?" said the girl.

Witham smiled somewhat dryly. "I was unfortunate for six years on
end."

He was aware of the blunder when he had spoken, but Maud Barrington
appeared to be looking at the flask thoughtfully.

"The design is very pretty," she said. "You got it in England?"

The man knew that it was the name F. Witham his companion's eyes
rested on, but his face was expressionless. "Yes," he said. "It is one
of the things they make for presentation in the old country."

Maud Barrington noticed the absence of any attempt at explanation, and
having considerable pride of her own, was sensible of a faint
approval. "You are making slow progress," she said, with a slight but
perceptible difference in her tone. "Now, you can have eaten nothing
since breakfast."

Witham said nothing, but by and by poured a little of the spirit into
a rusty can, and the girl, who understood why he did so, felt that it
covered several of his offences. "Now," she said graciously, "you may
smoke if you wish to."

Witham pointed to the few billets left and shook his head. "I'm afraid
I must get more wood."

The roar of the wind almost drowned his voice, and the birch logs
seemed to tremble under the impact of the blast, while Maud Barrington
shivered as she asked, "Is it safe?"

"It is necessary," said Witham, with the little laugh she had already
found reassuring.

He had gone out in another minute, and the girl felt curiously lonely
as she remembered stories of men who had left their homesteads during
a blizzard to see to the safety of the horses in a neighbouring
stable, and were found afterwards as still as the snow that covered
them. Maud Barrington was not unduly timorous, but the roar of that
awful icy gale would have stricken dismay into the hearts of most men,
and she found herself glancing with feverish impatience at a
diminutive gold watch and wondering whether the cold had retarded its
progress. Ten minutes passed very slowly, lengthened to twenty more
slowly still, and then it flashed upon her that there was at least
something she could do; and, scraping up a little of the snow that
sifted in, she melted it in the can. Then she set the flask-top upon
the stove, and once more listened for the man's footsteps very
eagerly.

She did not hear them, but at last the door swung open, and carrying a
load of birch branches Witham staggered in. He dropped them, strove to
close the door, and failed, then leaned against it, gasping, with a
livid face, for there are few men who can withstand the cold of a
snow-laden gale at forty degrees below.

How Maud Barrington closed the door she did not know; but it was with
a little imperious gesture she turned to the man.

"Shake those furs at once," she said; and drawing him towards the
stove held up the steaming cup. "Now sit there and drink it."

Witham stooped and reached out for the can, but the girl swept it off
the stove. "Oh, I know the silver was for me," she said. "Still, is
this a time for trifles such as that?"

Worn out by a very grim struggle, Witham did as he was bidden, and
looked up with a twinkle in his eyes, when with the faintest trace of
colour in her cheeks the girl sat down close to him and drew part of
the fur robe about him.

"I really believe you were a little pleased to see me come back just
now," he said.

"Was that quite necessary?" asked Maud Barrington. "Still, I was."

Witham made a little deprecatory gesture. "Of course," he said. "Now
we can resume our former footing to-morrow, but in the meanwhile I
would like to know why you are so hard upon me, Miss Barrington,
because I really have not done much harm to any one at Silverdale.
Your aunt"--and he made a little respectful inclination of his head
which pleased the girl--"is at least giving me a fair trial."

"It is difficult to tell you--but it was your own doing," said Maud
Barrington. "At the beginning you prejudiced us when you told us you
could only play cards indifferently. It was so unnecessary, and we
knew a good deal about you!"

"Well," said Witham quietly, "I have only my word to offer, and I
wonder if you will believe me now, but I don't think I ever won five
dollars at cards in my life."

Maud Barrington watched him closely, but his tone carried conviction,
and again she was glad that he attempted no explanation. "I am quite
willing to take it," she said. "Still, you can understand----"

"Yes," said Witham. "It puts a strain upon your faith, but some day I
may be able to make a good deal that puzzles you quite clear."

Maud Barrington glanced at the flask. "I wonder if that is connected
with the explanation, but I will wait. Now, you have not lighted your
cigar."

Witham understood that the topic was dismissed, and sat thoughtfully
still while the girl nestled against the birch logs close beside him
under the same furs; for the wind went through the building and the
cold was unbearable a few feet from the stove. The birch rafters shook
above their heads, and every now and then it seemed that a roaring
gust would lift the roof from them. Still the stove glowed and
snapped, and close in about it there was a drowsy heat, while
presently the girl's eyes grew heavy. Finally--for there are few who
can resist the desire for sleep in the cold of the North-West--her
head sank back, and Witham, rising very slowly, held his breath as he
piled the furs about her. That done, he stooped and looked down upon
her while the blood crept to his face. Maud Barrington lay very still,
the long, dark lashes resting on her cold-tinted cheeks, and the
patrician serenity of her face was even more marked in her sleep. Then
he turned away, feeling like one who had committed a desecration,
knowing that he had looked too long already upon the sleeping girl who
believed he had been an outcast and yet had taken his word; for it was
borne in upon him that a time would come when he would try her faith
even more severely. Moving softly, he paced up and down the room.

Witham afterwards wondered how many miles he walked that night, for
though the loghouse was not longer than thirty feet, the cold bit
deep; but at last he heard a sigh as he glanced towards the stove, and
immediately swung round again. When he next turned, Miss Barrington
stood upright, a little flushed in face, but otherwise very calm; and
the man stood still, shivering in spite of his efforts, and blue with
cold. The wind had fallen, but the sting of the frost that followed it
made itself felt beside the stove.

"You had only your deerskin jacket--and you let me sleep under all the
furs," she said.

Witham shook his head, and hoped he did not look as guilty as he felt,
when he remembered that it must have been evident to his companion
that the furs did not get into the position they had occupied
themselves.

"I only fancied you were a trifle drowsy and not inclined to talk," he
said, with an absence of concern, for which Miss Barrington, who did
not believe him, felt grateful. "You see"--and the inspiration was a
trifle too evident--"I was too sleepy to notice anything myself.
Still, I am glad you are awake now, because I must make my way to the
Grange."

"But the snow will be ever so deep, and I could not come," said Maud
Barrington.

Witham shook his head. "I'm afraid you must stay here; but I will be
back with Colonel Barrington in a few hours at latest."

The girl deemed it advisable to hide her consternation. "But you might
not find the trail," she said. "The ravine would lead you to Graham's
homestead."

"Still," said Witham slowly, "I am going to the Grange."

Then Maud Barrington remembered, and glanced aside from him. It was
evident this man thought of everything; and she made no answer when
Witham, who thrust more billets into the stove, turned to her with a
little smile.

"I think we need remember nothing when we meet again, beyond the fact
that you will give me a chance of showing that the Lance Courthorne,
whose fame you know, has ceased to exist."

Then he went out, and the girl stood with flushed cheeks looking down
at the furs he had left behind him.




CHAPTER X

MAUD HARRINGTON'S PROMISE


Daylight had not broken across the prairie, when, floundering through
a foot of dusty snow, Witham reached the Grange. He was aching from
fatigue and cold, and the deerskin jacket stood out from his numbed
body, stiff with frost, when, leaning heavily on a table, he awaited
Colonel Barrington. The latter, on entering, stared at him and then
flung open a cupboard and poured out a glass of wine.

"Drink that before you talk. You look half dead," he said.

Witham shook his head. "Perhaps you had better hear me first."

Barrington thrust the glass upon him. "I could make nothing of what
you told me while you speak like that. Drink it, and then sit until
you get used to the different temperature."

Witham drained the glass and sank limply into a chair. As yet his face
was colourless, though his chilled flesh tingled horribly as the blood
once more crept into the surface tissues. Then he fixed his eyes upon
his host as he told his story. Barrington stood very straight watching
his visitor, but his face was drawn, for the resolution which
supported him through the day was less noticeable in the early
morning, and it was evident now at least that he was an old man
carrying a heavy load of anxiety. Still, as the story proceeded, a
little blood crept into his cheeks, while Witham guessed that he found
it difficult to retain his grim immobility.

"I am to understand that an attempt to reach the Grange through the
snow would have been perilous?" he said.

"Yes," said Witham quietly.

The older man stood very still regarding him intently, until he said,
"I don't mind admitting that it was distinctly regrettable!"

Witham stopped him with a gesture. "It was at least unavoidable, sir.
The team would not face the snow, and no one could have reached the
Grange alive."

"No doubt you did your best--and, as a connexion of the family, I am
glad it was you. Still--and there are cases in which it is desirable
to speak plainly--the affair, which you will, of course, dismiss from
your recollection, is to be considered as closed now."

Witham smiled, and a trace of irony he could not quite repress was
just discernible in his voice. "I scarcely think that was necessary,
sir. It is, of course, sufficient for me to have rendered a small
service to the distinguished family which has given me an opportunity
of proving my right to recognition, and neither you, nor Miss
Barrington, need have any apprehension that I will presume upon it!"

Barrington wheeled round. "You have the Courthorne temper, at least,
and perhaps I deserved this display of it. You acted with commendable
discretion in coming straight to me--and the astonishment I got drove
the other aspect of the question out of my head. If it hadn't been for
you, my niece would have frozen."

"I'm afraid I spoke unguardedly, sir; but I am very tired. Still, if
you will wait a few minutes, I will get the horses out without
troubling the hired man."

Barrington made a little gesture of comprehension, and then shook his
head. "You are fit for nothing further, and need rest and sleep."

"You will want somebody, sir," said Witham. "The snow is very loose
and deep."

He went out, and Barrington, who looked after him with a curious
expression in his face, nodded twice as if in approval. Twenty minutes
later he took his place in the sleigh that slid away from the Grange,
which lay a league behind it when the sunrise flamed across the
prairie. The wind had gone, and there was only a pitiless brightness
and a devastating cold, while the snow lay blown in wisps, dried dusty
and fine as flour by the frost. It had no cohesion, the runners sank
in it, and Witham was almost waist deep when he dragged the
floundering team through the drifts. A day had passed since he had
eaten anything worth mention, but he held on with an endurance which
his companion, who was incapable of rendering him assistance, wondered
at. There were belts of deep snow the almost buried sleigh must be
dragged through, and tracts from which the wind had swept the dusty
covering, leaving bare the grasses the runners would not slide over,
where the team came to a standstill, and could scarcely be urged to
continue the struggle.

At last, however, the loghouse rose, a lonely mound of whiteness, out
of the prairie, and Witham drew in a deep breath of contentment when a
dusky figure appeared for a moment in the doorway. His weariness
seemed to fall from him, and once more his companion wondered at the
tirelessness of the man, as, floundering on foot beside them, he urged
the team through the powdery drifts beneath the big birch bluff.
Witham did not go in, however, when they reached the house; and when,
five minutes later, Maud Barrington came out, she saw him leaning with
a drawn face against the sleigh. He straightened himself suddenly at
the sight of her, but she had seen sufficient, and her heart softened
towards him. Whatever the man's history had been he had borne a good
deal for her.

The return journey was even more arduous, and now and then Maud
Barrington felt a curious throb of pity for the worn-out man, who
during most of it walked beside the team; but it was accomplished at
last, and she contrived to find means of thanking him alone when they
reached the Grange.

Witham shook his head, and then smiled a little. "It isn't nice to
make a bargain," he said. "Still, it is less pleasant now and then to
feel under an obligation, though there is no reason why you should."

Maud Barrington was not altogether pleased, but she could not blind
herself to facts, and it was plain that there was an obligation. "I am
afraid I cannot quite believe that, but I do not see what you are
leading to."

Witham's eyes twinkled. "Well," he said reflectively, "I don't want
you to fancy that last night commits you to any line of conduct in
regard to me. I only asked for a truce, you see."

Maud Barrington was a trifle nettled. "Yes?" she said.

"Then, I want to show you how you can discharge any trifling
obligation you may fancy you may owe me, which of course would be more
pleasant to you. Do not allow your uncle to sell any wheat forward for
you, and persuade him to sow every acre that belongs to you this
spring."

"But however would this benefit you," asked the girl.

Witham laughed. "I have a fancy that I can straighten up things at
Silverdale, if I can get my way. It would please me, and I believe
they want it. Of course, a desire to improve anything appears curious
in me!"

Maud Barrington was relieved of the necessity of answering, for the
Colonel came up just then; but, moved by some sudden impulse, she
nodded as if in agreement.

It was afternoon when she awakened from a refreshing sleep, and
descending to the room set apart for herself and her aunt, sat
thoughtfully still awhile in a chair beside the stove. Then,
stretching out her hand, she took up a little case of photographs and
slipped out one of them. It was a portrait of a boy and pony, but
there was a significance in the fact that she knew just where to find
it. The picture was a good one, and once more Maud Barrington noticed
the arrogance, which did not, however, seem out of place there, in the
lad's face. It was also a comely face, but there was a hint of
sensuality in it that marred its beauty. Then with a growing
perplexity she compared it with that of the weary man who had plodded
beside the team. Witham was not arrogant but resolute, and there was
no stamp of indulgence in his face. Indeed, the girl had from the
beginning recognized the virility in it that was tinged with
asceticism and sprang from a simple, strenuous life of toil in the
wind and sun.

Just then there was a rustle of fabric, and she laid down the
photograph a moment too late, as her aunt came in. As it happened, the
elder lady's eyes rested on the picture, and a faint flush of
annoyance crept into the face of the girl. It was scarcely
perceptible, but Miss Barrington saw it, and though she felt tempted,
did not smile.

"I did not know you were down," she said. "Lance is still asleep. He
seemed very tired."

"Yes," said the girl. "That is very probable. He left the railroad
before daylight, and had driven round to several farms before he came
to Macdonald's, and he was very considerate. He had made me take all
the furs, and, I fancy, walked up and down with nothing but his indoor
clothing on all night long, though the wind went through the building,
and one could scarcely keep alive a few feet from the stove."

Again the flicker of colour crept into the girl's cheeks, and the eyes
that were keen, as well as gentle, noticed it.

"I think you owe him a good deal," said Miss Barrington.

"Yes," said her niece, with a little laugh which appeared to imply a
trace of resentment. "I believe I do, but he seemed unusually anxious
to relieve me of that impression. He was also good enough to hint that
nothing he might have done need prevent me being--the right word is a
trifle difficult to find--but I fancy he meant unpleasant to him if I
wished it."

There was a little twinkle in Miss Barrington's eyes. "Are you not a
trifle hard to please, my dear? Now, if he had attempted to insist on
a claim to your gratitude, you would have resented it."

"Of course," said the girl reflectively. "Still, it is annoying to be
debarred from offering it. There are times, aunt, when I can't help
wishing that Lance Courthorne had never come to Silverdale. There are
men who leave nothing just as they found it, and whom one can't
ignore."

Miss Barrington shook her head. "I fancy you are wrong. He has
offended after all?"

She was pleased to see her niece's face relax into a smile that
expressed unconcern. "We are all exacting now and then," said the
girl. "Still, he made me promise to give him a fair trial, which was
not flattering, because it suggested that I had been unnecessarily
harsh, and then hinted this morning that he had no intention of
holding me to it. It really was not gratifying to find he held the
concession he asked for of so small account. You are, however, as
easily swayed by trifles as I am, because Lance can do no wrong since
he kissed your hand."

"I really think I liked him the better for it," said the little
silver-haired lady. "The respect was not assumed, but wholly genuine,
you see; and whether I was entitled to it or not, it was a good deal
in Lance's favour that he should offer it to me. There must be some
good in the man who can be moved to reverence anything, even if he is
mistaken."

"No man with any sense could help adoring you," said Maud Barrington.
"Still, I wonder why you believe I was wrong in wishing he had not
come to Silverdale."

Miss Barrington looked thoughtful. "I will tell you, my dear. There
are few better men than my brother; but his thoughts, and the
traditions he is bound by, are those of fifty years ago, while the
restless life of the prairie is a thing of to-day. We have fallen too
far behind it at Silverdale, and a crisis is coming that none of us
are prepared for. Even Dane is scarcely fitted to help my brother to
face it, and the rest are either over-fond of their pleasure or
untrained boys. Brave lads they are, but none of them have been taught
that it is only by mental strain, or the ceaseless toil of his body,
the man without an inheritance can win himself a competence now. This
is why they want a leader who has known hardship and hunger, instead
of ease, and won what he holds with his own hand in place of having it
given him."

"You fancy we could find one in such a man as Lance has been?"

Miss Barrington looked grave. "I believe the prodigal was afterwards a
better, as well as a wiser, man than the one who stayed at home, and I
am not quite sure that Lance's history is so nearly like that of the
son in the parable as we have believed it to be. A residence in the
sty is apt to leave a stain, which I have not, though I have looked
for it, found on him."

The eyes of the two women met, and, though nothing more was said, each
realized that the other was perplexed by the same question, while the
girl was astonished to find her vague suspicions shared. While they
sat silent, Colonel Barrington came in.

"I am glad to see you looking so much better, Maud," he said, with a
trace of embarrassment. "Courthorne is resting still. Now, I can't
help feeling that we have been a trifle more distant than was needful
with him. The man has really behaved very discreetly. I mean in
everything."

This was a great admission, and Miss Barrington smiled. "Did it hurt
you very much to tell us that?" she asked.

The Colonel laughed. "I know what you mean, and if you put me on my
mettle I'll retract. After all, it was no great credit to him, because
blood will tell, and he is, of course, a Courthorne."

Almost without her intention, Maud Barrington's eyes wandered towards
the photograph, and then looking up she met those of her aunt, and
once

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