CHAPTER XVII.
DEFEAT.
A grey dimness was creeping in upon the schooner when a little bitter breeze sprang up from westwards, and Dampier bade them get the mainsail on to her.
"I don't like the look of the weather, and I'm beginning to feel that I'd like to see that boat," he said. "Anyhow, we'll get way on her."
It was a relief to hoist the mainsail. The work put a little warmth into them, and the white men, at least, had been conscious of a growing uneasiness about their comrades in the boat. The breeze had, however, freshened before they set it, and there were white caps on the water when the Selache headed for the ice. It had somewhat changed its formation when they approached it, for big masses had become detached from it and were moving out into the open water, while the opening had become perceptibly narrower. The light was now fading rapidly, and Wyllard took the wheel when Dampier sent the man there forward.
"Get the cover off the second boat, and see everything clear for hoisting out," he said to him, and then called to Wyllard. "We're close enough. You'd better heave her round."
She came round with a thrashing of canvas, stretched out seawards, and came back again with her deck sharply slanted and little puffs of bitter spray blowing over her weather rail, for there was no doubt that the breeze was freshening fast. Then Dampier sent a man up into the foremast shrouds, and looked at Wyllard afterwards.
"I'd heave a couple of reefs down if I wasn't so anxious about that blamed boat," he said. "As it is, I want to be ready to pick her up just as soon as we see her, and it's quite likely she'd turn up when we'd got way off the schooner, and the peak eased down."
Wyllard fancied that he was right as he glanced over the rail at the dimness that was creeping in on them. It was blowing almost fresh now, and the Selache was driving very fast through the swell, which commenced to froth here and there. It is, as he knew from experience, always hard work, and often impossible, to pull a boat to windward in any weight of breeze, which rendered it advisable to keep the schooner under way. If the boat drove by them while they were reefing it might be difficult to pick her up afterwards in the dark. He was now distinctly anxious about her. At length, just as the light was dying out, the man in the shrouds sent down a cry.
"I see them, sir," he said.
Dampier turned to Wyllard with a gesture of relief. "That's a weight off my mind. I wish we had a reef in, but"—and he glanced up at the canvas—"she'll have to stand it. Anyway, I'll leave you there. We want to get that second boat lashed down again."
This, as Wyllard recognised, was necessary, though he would sooner have had somebody by him, and the rest of them ready to let the mainsheet run, for he was a little to windward of the opening, and surmised that he would have to run the schooner down upon the boat. It was a few moments later when he saw her emerge from among the ice, and the men in her appeared to be pulling strenuously. They were, perhaps, half a mile off, and the schooner was sailing very fast and heading for the ice. Then he lost sight of her again, for a thin shower of whirling snow suddenly obscured the light. Dampier called to him.
"You'll have to run her off," he said. "Boys, slack out your sheets."
There was a clatter of blocks, and when Wyllard pulled his helm up it taxed all his strength. The Selache swung round, and he gasped with the effort to control her as she drove away furiously into the thickening snow. She was carrying far too much canvas, but they could not heave her to and take it off her now. The boat must be picked up first, and the veins rose swollen to Wyllard's forehead as he struggled with the wheel. There is always a certain possibility of bringing a fore-and-aft rigged vessel's mainboom over when she is running hard, and this is rather apt to result in disaster to her spars. So fast was she travelling that the sea piled up in a big white wave beneath her quarter, and, cold as it was, the sweat of tense effort dripped from Wyllard as he forecasted what he had to do. First of all, he must hold her straight before the wind without letting her fall off to leeward, which would bring the booms crashing over; then he must run past the boat, which he could no longer see, and round the schooner up with fore-staysail aback to leeward of her, to wait until she drove down on them.
This would not have been difficult in a moderate breeze, but the wind was freshening furiously and the schooner was horribly pressed with sail. He thought of calling the others to lower the mainsail peak, but with the weight of wind there was in the canvas he was not sure that they could haul the gaff down. Besides, they were busy securing the boat, which must be made fast again before they hove the other in, and it was almost dark now. In view of what had happened in the same waters one night four years ago, the desire to pick the boat up while there was a little light left became an obsession.
In the meanwhile, the swell was rapidly whitening and getting steeper. The Selache hove herself out of it forward as she swung up with streaming bows. It almost seemed to Wyllard that he must overrun the boat before he noticed her, but at length he saw Dampier swing himself on to the rail. He stood there clutching at a shroud, and presently turned towards Wyllard, swinging up an arm.
"Right ahead!" he shouted. "Let her come up a few points before you run over them."
Wyllard put his helm down a spoke or two, which was easy, and then as the bows swung high again there was a harsh cry from the man who stood above Dampier in the shrouds.
"Ice!" he roared. "Big pack of it right under your weather bow."
Dampier shouted something, but Wyllard did not hear what he said. He was only conscious that he had to decide what he must do in the next few seconds. If he let the Selache come up to avoid the boat, there was the ice ahead, and at the speed she was travelling it would infallibly crush her bows in, while if he held her straight there was the boat close in front of her. To swing her clear of both by going to leeward he must bring the mainsail and boom-foresail over with a tremendous shock, but that seemed preferable, and with his heart in his mouth he pulled his helm up.
He fancied he cried out in warning, but was never sure of it, though three men came running to seize the mainsheet. The schooner fell off a little, swinging until the boom-foresail came over with a thunderous bang and crash. She rolled down, heaving a wide strip of wet planking out of the sea, and now for a moment or two there were great breadths of canvas swung out on either hand. Then the ponderous mainboom went up high above his head, and he saw three shadowy figures dragged aft as they tried in vain to steady it. The big mainsail was bunched up, a vast, portentous shape above him, and then he set his lips, and pulled up the helm another spoke as it swung. He never quite knew what happened after that. There was a horrible crash, and the schooner appeared to be rolling over bodily. The spokes he clung to desperately reft themselves from his grasp, the deck slanted until one could not stand upon it, and something heavy struck him on the head. He dropped, and Dampier flung himself upon the wheel above his senseless body.
Then there was mad confusion, and a frantic banging of canvas as the schooner came up beam to the wind, with her rent mainsail flogging itself to tatters. Its ponderous boom was broken, and the mainmast-head had gone, but it was not the first time the sealermen had grappled with somewhat similar difficulties, and Dampier kept his head. He had the boat to think of, and she was somewhere to windward, hidden in the sudden darkness and the turmoil of the quickly rising sea, but in the meanwhile the schooner counted most of all. His crew could scarcely hear him through the uproar the thundering canvas made, and the screaming of the wind, but the orders were given, and from habit and the custom of their calling they knew what they must be.
They hauled a jib down, backed the fore-staysail, and got the boom-foresail sheeted in, but they let the rent mainsail bang, for it could do no more damage than it had already done. Then a man sprang up on the rail with a blue light in his hand, and as the weird radiance flared in a long streak to leeward a cry rose from the water. In another few moments a blurred object, half hidden in flying spray, drove down upon the schooner furiously on the top of a sea, and then there was sudden darkness as the man flung down the flare.
Another harsh and half-heard cry rose out of the obscurity. An indistinguishable object plunged past the schooner's stern, there was a crash to leeward as she rolled, and a man standing up in the boat clutched her rail. He was swung out of it as she rolled back again, but he crawled on to the rail with a rope in one hand, and after jamming it fast round something sprang down with the hooks of the lifting tackles which one of the rest had given him. Then, while two more men scrambled up, there was a clatter of blocks, but a shattered sea struck the boat as they hove her dear, and when she swung in the brine poured out through the rents in her. Dampier waved an arm as they dropped her on the deck, and they heard him faintly.
"Boys," he said, "you have got to cut that mainsail down."
They did it somehow, hanging on to the mast-hoops, buffeted and now and then enveloped by the madly flogging canvas, floundering below amidst a raffle of fallen gear, while the bitter spray lashed them, and the broken boom held up by the clew ring banged savagely to and fro. After that they trimmed her fore-staysail over, and there was by contrast a curious quietness as Dampier jammed his helm up, and the schooner swung off before the sea. Then somebody lighted a lantern, and Charly stooped over Wyllard, who lay limp and still beside the wheel. His face showed grey in the feeble light, save where a broad red stain had spread across it. Dampier cast a glance at him.
"Get him below, and into his bunk, two of you," he said.
They did it with difficulty, for the Selache lurched viciously each time a white-topped sea came up upon her quarter, and as soon as it seemed advisable to leave the deck Dampier went down. Wyllard lay in his bunk, with his eyes half-open, but there was no expression in them, and his face was almost colourless except for the broad smear of blood. It was oozing fast from a laceration in his scalp, but Dampier, who noticed his chilliness, did not in the meanwhile trouble about that. He stripped off the senseless man's long boots, and unshipping a hot fender iron from the stove laid it against his feet. Afterwards he contrived to get some whisky down his throat, and then set to work to wash the scalp wound, dropping into the water a little of the permanganate of potash, which is freely used at sea. When that was done he applied a rag dipped in the same fluid, and seeing no result of his efforts went back on deck. He was anxious about his patient, but not unduly so, for he had discovered long ago that men of his description are apt to recover from more serious injuries. By and bye, he said, Wyllard's brain, which had evidently been rudely jarred by the shock, would resume its functions.
It was blowing very hard when he stood near the wheel. A steep sea was already tumbling after the schooner, but she was, at least, heading out from where they supposed the ice to be, and he let her go, keeping her away before it, and heading a little south of east. When morning came the sea was very high, and the faint light further dimmed by snow, but it seemed to him just safe, and no more, to run, and they held on while the big combers came up astern and forged by, ridged with foam, high above her rail.
She was travelling very fast, to the eastwards, under boom-foresail and one little jib, with her mainmast broken short off where the bolts of the halliard blocks had traversed it, and Dampier realised that because of that every knot she made then could not by any means be recovered that season. He wondered, with a little uneasiness, what Wyllard would say when he came to himself again. In the meanwhile he said nothing, but lay like a log in his bunk, only that there was now a little warmth in him.
Next day the breeze moderated somewhat, and they let her come up a little, heading further south; while on the morning after that Wyllard showed signs of returning consciousness. Dampier, however, kept away from him, partly to allow his senses to readjust themselves, and partly because he rather shrank from the coming interview. At length, when dusk was falling, Charly came up to say that Wyllard, who seemed quite sensible, insisted on seeing him, and Dampier went down with some misgivings into the little cabin. The lamp was lighted, and when he sat down Wyllard, who raised himself feebly on his pillow, turned a pallid face to him.
"Charly tells me you picked the boat up," he said.
"We did," said Dampier. "She had three or four planks on one side ripped out of her."
Wyllard's faint grimace implied that this did not matter, and Dampier braced himself for the question he dreaded. He had to face it in another moment.
"How's she heading?"
"A little south of east."
Wyllard's face hardened. It was still blowing moderately fresh, and by the heave of the vessel and the wash of water outside he could guess how fast she was travelling. Except for the latter sound, however, there was for a moment or two an almost oppressive silence in the little cabin. Then Wyllard spoke again.
"You have been running to the eastwards since I was struck down?" he said.
Dampier nodded. "Three days," he said. "Just now the breeze is on her quarter."
He winced under Wyllard's gaze, and spread his hands out deprecatingly.
"Now," he added, "what else was there I could do? She wrung her masthead off when you jibed her and there's not stick enough left to set any canvas that would shove her to windward, I might have hove her to, but the first time the breeze hauled easterly she'd have gone up on the beach or among the ice with us. I had to run!"
Wyllard closed a feeble hand. "Dunton was crippled, too. It's almost incredible."
"In one way, it looks like that, but, after all, a jibe's quite a common thing with a fore-and-after. If you run her off to lee when she's going before it her mainboom's bound to come over. Of course, nobody would run her off in a wicked breeze unless he had to, but you'd no choice with the ice in front of you."
Wyllard lay very still for almost a minute. It was clear to him that his project must be abandoned for that season, which meant that at least six months must elapse before he could even approach the Kamtchatkan coast again.
"Well," he said at length, "what do you mean to do?"
"If the breeze holds we could pick up one of the Aleutians in a few days, but I'm keeping south of them. There'll probably be ugly ice along the beaches, and I've no fancy for being cast ashore by a strong tide when the fog lies on the land. With westerly winds I'd sooner hold on for Alaska. We could lie snug in an inlet there, and, it's quite likely, get a cedar that would make a spar. I can't head right away for Vancouver with no mainsail."
This was clear to Wyllard, who made a feeble gesture. "If the wind comes easterly?"
Dampier pursed his face up. "Then unless I could fetch one of the Kuriles we'd sure be jammed. She won't beat to windward, and there'd be all Kamtchatka to lee of us. The ice is packing up along the north of it now, and the Russians have two or three settlements to the south. We don't want to run in and tell them what we're after."
A faint smile crept into Wyllard's eyes. "No," he said, "not after that little affair on the beach. Since it's very probable that the vessel they send up to the seal islands would deliver stores along the coast, the folks in authority would have a record of it. They'd call the thing piracy—and, in a sense, they'd be justified."
He said nothing more for a little, and then looked up again wearily.
"I wonder," he said, "how that boat's crew ever got across to Kamtchatka. It was north of the islands where the man brought Dunton the message."
Dampier understood that he desired to change the subject, for this was a question they had often discussed already.
"Well," he said, "I still hold by my first notion. They were blown ashore on the beach we'd just left, and made prisoners. Then a supply schooner or perhaps a steamer came along, and they sent them off in her to be handed over to the authorities. The vessel put in somewhere. We'll say she was lying in an inlet with a boat astern, and somehow they cut that boat loose in the dark, and got away in her."
He broke off for a moment, and then looked at his companion significantly.
"You can find quite a few points where that idea seems to fail," he added. "They were in Kamtchatka, but I'm beginning to feel that we shall never know any more than that."
Wyllard made a little weary gesture of concurrence, but before he closed them Dampier saw no sign that he meant to abandon his project in his eyes. In another few minutes he seemed to sink into sleep, and Dampier, who went up on deck, paced to and fro awhile before he stopped by the wheel and turned to the helmsman.
"You can let her come up a couple of points. We may as well make a little southing while we can," he said.
Charly, who was steering, looked up with suggestive eagerness. "Then he's not going for the Aleutians?"
"No," said Dampier drily. "I was kind of afraid of that, but I choked him off. Anyway, this year won't see us back in Vancouver." He paused, with a little jarring laugh. "We're going to stay up here until we find out where those men left their bones. The man who has this thing in hand isn't the kind that lets up."
Charly made no answer, but his face hardened as he put his helm down a spoke or two.
Next day the wind fell lighter, but for a week it still held westerly, and after that it blew moderately fresh from the south. Crippled as she was, the Selache would lie a point or two south of east when they had set an old cut down fore-staysail on what was left of her mainmast, and the hearts of her crew grew a little lighter as she crawled on across the Pacific. They had no wish to be blown back to the frozen North. The days were, however, growing shorter rapidly, and the sun hung low in the southern sky when at length she crept into one of the many inlets that indent the coast of Southern Alaska. There was just wind enough to carry her in round a long, foam-lapped point, and soon afterwards they let the anchor go in four fathoms in a sheltered arm, with a river mouth not far away. There was no sign of life anywhere about it, and the ragged cedars that crept close down to the beach stood out in sombre spires against the gleaming snow.
The cold was not particularly severe when she crept in, but when Dampier went ashore next morning to pick a log that they could hew a mast out of the temperature suddenly fell, and that night the drift ice from the river mouth closed in on them. When the late daylight broke she was frozen fast, and they knew it would be several months before she moved again. It was then before the gold rush, and in winter Alaska was practically cut off from all communication with the south. No man would have attempted to traverse the tremendous snow-wrapped desolation of almost impassable hills and trackless forests that lay between them and the nearest of the commercial factories on the north, or the canneries on the other hand. Besides, the canneries were shut up in winter time. They were prisoners, and could only wait with what patience they could muster until the thaw set them free again.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A DELICATE ERRAND.
There was sharp frost outside, and the prairie was white with a thin sprinkle of snow, when a little party sat down to supper in the Hastings homestead one Saturday evening. Hastings sat at the head of the table, his wife at the foot with her little daughters, Agatha, Sproatly, and Winifred between them. The latter two had just driven over from the railroad settlement, as they did now and then, which explained why the meal, which is usually served early in the evening, had been delayed an hour or so. The two hired men, whom Mrs. Hastings had not kept waiting, had gone out to some task in the barn or stables.
By and bye Sproatly took a bundle of papers out of his pocket and laid them on the table. There had been a remarkable change in his appearance of late, for he now wore store clothes, and the skin coat he had taken off when he came in was, as his hostess had noticed, a new one. It occurred to her that there was a certain significance in this, though Sproatly had changed his occupation some little time ago, and now drove about the prairie on behalf of certain makers of agricultural implements.
"I called for your mail and Gregory's before we left," he said. "I had to go round to see him, which is partly what made us so late, though Winifred couldn't get away as soon as she expected. They've floods of wheat coming in to the elevators, and I understand that the milling people can't take another bushel in."
Mrs. Hastings glanced at Agatha, who understood what she meant, for Sproatly had hitherto spoken of Winifred circumspectly as Miss Rawlinson. Hastings, however, took the papers which Agatha handed him, and laid them aside.
"We'll let them wait until supper's over. I don't expect any news that's particularly good," he said. "The bottom's apparently dropping out of the wheat market."
"Hamilton can't get cars enough, and we'll have to shut down in another day or two unless they turn up," said Winifred. "It's much the same all along the line. The Winnipeg traffic people wired us they haven't an empty car in the yards. Why do you rush the grain in that way? It's bound to break the market."
Hastings smiled rather drily. "Well," he said, "a good many of us have bills to meet. For another thing, they've had a heavy crop in Manitoba, Dakota, and Minnesota, and I suppose some folks have an idea they'll get in first before the other people swamp the Eastern markets. I think they're foolish. It's a temporary scare. Prices will stiffen by and bye."
"That's what Hamilton says, but I suppose the thing is natural. Men are very like sheep, aren't they?"
Hastings laughed. "Well," he admitted, "we are, in some respects. When prices break a little we generally rush to sell. One or two of my neighbours are, however, holding on, and it's hardly likely that very much of my wheat will be flung on to a falling market."
"We have been getting a good deal from the Range."
There was displeasure in Hastings's face. "Gregory's selling largely on Harry's account?"
"They've been hauling wheat in to us for the last few weeks," said Winifred.
Hastings, as Agatha noticed, glanced at his wife significantly, but she interposed and forbade any further conversation of the kind until supper was over, while when the table had been cleared Hastings opened his papers. The rest sat expectantly silent, while he turned them over one after another.
"No," he said, "there's no news of Harry, and I'm afraid it's scarcely possible that we'll hear anything of him this winter."
Agatha was conscious that Mrs. Hastings's eyes were upon her, and she sat very still, though her heart was beating a little faster than usual. Hastings, however, went on again.
"The Colonist has a line or two about a barque from Alaska, which put into Victoria short of stores," he said. "She was sent up to an A.C.C. factory, and had to clear out before she was ready. The ice, it seems, was closing in unusually early. A steam whaler at Portland reports the same thing, and from the news brought by a steamer from Japan all communication with North-Eastern Asia is already cut off."
None of the others said anything for a moment or two, and Agatha, leaning back in her chair, glanced round the room. There was not much furniture in it, but, though this was unusual on the prairie, door and double casements were guarded by heavy hangings. The big brass lamp overhead shed down a cheerful light, the birch billets in the stove snapped and crackled noisily, and its pipe, which was far too hot to touch, diffused a drowsy heat. One could lounge beside it contentedly, knowing that the stinging frost was drying the snow to dusty powder outside. That heightened the contrast, for Agatha pictured the little schooner bound fast in the Northern ice, and then two or three travel-worn men crouching in a tiny tent buffeted by an Arctic gale. She could see the poles bend, and the tricings strain.
After that, with a sudden transition, her thoughts went back to the early morning when Wyllard had driven away, and every detail of the scene rose up clearly in her mind. She saw him and the stolid Dampier sitting in the waggon, with nothing in their manner to suggest that they were setting out upon a very perilous venture, and she felt his hand close tight upon her fingers, as it had done just before the waggon jolted away from the homestead. She could once more see it growing smaller and smaller on the white prairie, until it dipped behind the crest of a low rise, and the sinking beat of hoofs died away. Then, at least, she had realised that he had started on the first stage of a journey which might lead him through the ice-bound gates of the North to the rest that awaits the souls of the sailormen. She could not, however, imagine him shrinking. Gripping helm, or hauling in the sled traces, he would gaze with quiet eyes steadfastly ahead, even if they saw only the passage from this world to the next. Once more, as it had done that morning, a curious thrill ran through her, and there was pride as well as regret in it. Then she became conscious that Hastings was speaking.
"What took you round by the Range, Jim?" he asked.
"Collecting," said Sproatly. "I sold Gregory a couple of binders earlier in the season, but, as it happened, I couldn't get a dollar out of him." He laughed. "Of course, if it had been anybody else I'd have stayed until he handed over, but I couldn't press Gregory too hard after quartering myself upon him as I did last winter, though I'm rather afraid my employers wouldn't appreciate that kind of delicacy."
Mrs. Hastings looked thoughtful. "Gregory should have been able to pay. He thrashed out a moderately good crop."
"About two-thirds of what it should have been, and I've reason for believing that he has been putting up a mortgage. Interest's heavy. There's another matter. I wonder if you've heard that he's getting rid of two of Harry's hands? I mean Pat and Tom Moran."
"You're sure of that?" Hastings asked somewhat sharply.
"Tom told me."
Mrs. Hastings leaned forward suddenly in her chair. "Then," she said, "I'm going to drive across on Monday, and have a few words with Gregory. Did Moran tell you that Harry had decided to keep the two of them on throughout the year?"
"He wasn't very explicit, but he seemed to feel he had a grievance against Gregory. Of course, in a way, you can't blame Gregory. He's in charge, and it isn't in him to carry out Harry's policy. This fall in wheat is getting on his nerves, and in any case he'd probably have held his hand and cut down the crop next year."
"I do blame him," and Mrs. Hastings turned to Agatha. "You will understand that in a general way there's not much that can be done when the snow's upon the ground, and as one result of it the hired man prefers to engage himself for the year. To secure himself from being turned adrift when harvest's over he will frequently make a concession in wages. Now I know Harry intended to keep those two men on, and Tom Moran, who has a little half-cleared ranch back somewhere in the bush of Ontario, came out here tempted by higher wages. I understand he had to raise a few dollars or give the place up, and he left his wife behind. A good many of the little men can't live upon their holdings all the while. Well, I'm going over on Monday to tell Gregory he has got to keep them, and you're coming with me."
Agatha said nothing. In the first place, she knew that if Mrs. Hastings had made her mind up she would gain nothing by objecting, and in addition to this she was conscious of a certain desire to go. It appeared in some respects an unreasonable wish, but she felt deep down in her that if Wyllard had let the men understand that he would not dismiss them the promise, implied or explicit, must be redeemed. He would not have attempted to release himself from it—she was sure of that—and it appeared intolerable to her that another should be permitted to do anything that would unfavourably reflect on him. Then, somewhat to her relief, Hastings started another topic.
"You have sold quite a few binders and harrows one way or another, haven't you, Jim?" he said.
Sproatly laughed. "I have," he said. "As I told the Company's Western representative some time ago, a man who could sell patent medicine to the folks round here could do a good trade in anything. He admitted that my contention sounded reasonable, but I didn't wear store clothes then, and he seemed very far from sure of me. Anyway, he gave me a show, and now I've got two or three quite complimentary letters from the Company. They've added a few dollars to my salary, and hint that it's possible they may put me in charge of an implement store."
"And you're satisfied?"
"Well," said Sproatly, with an air of reflection, "in some respects, I suppose I am. In others, the thing's galling. You have to report who you've called upon, and, if you couldn't do business, why they bought somebody else's machines. If you can't get a farmer to take you in you have to put up at a hotel. There's no more camping in a birch bluff under your waggon. Besides, you have to wear store clothes."
Hastings glanced at Winifred, and Agatha fancied she understood what was in his mind.
"Some folks would sooner sleep in a hotel," he said, with a twinkle in his eyes.
"Then," said Sproatly, decisively, "they don't know very much. They're the kind of men who'd spend an hour every morning putting their clothes on, and they haven't found out that there's no comfort in any garment until you've had to sew two or three flour bag patches on to it. Then think of the splendid freeness of the other thing. You make your supper when you want, and just how you like it, when you put up in a bluff, and no tea tastes as good as the kind you drink with the wood smoke in it out of a blackened can. You can hear the little birch leaves and the grasses whispering about you when you lie down at night, and you drive on in the glorious freshness—just when it pleases you—when morning comes. Now the Company have the whole route and programme plotted out for me. They write me letters demanding most indelicately why I haven't done this and that."
Winifred looked at him sharply. "Civilisation," she said, "implies responsibility. You can't live just how you like without it being detrimental to the community."
"Oh yes," said Sproatly with a rueful gesture, "it implies no end of giving up. You have to fall into line, and that's why I kept outside it just as long as I could. I don't like standing in a rank, and," he glanced down at his clothing, "I've an inborn objection to wearing uniform."
Agatha laughed as she caught Hastings's eye. She fancied that Sproatly would be sorry for his candour afterwards, but she understood what he was feeling to some extent. It was a revolt against cramping customs and conventionalities, and she partly sympathised with it, though she knew that such revolts are dangerous. Even in the West, those who cannot lead must march in column with the rank and file or bear the consequences of their futile mutiny. It is a hard truth that no man can live as he pleases.
"Restraint," said Winifred, "is a wholesome thing, but it's one most of the men I have met are singularly deficient in. That's why they can't be left alone but must be driven, as they are, in companies. It's their own fault if they now and then find it a little humiliating."
There was a faint gleam in her eyes at which Sproatly apparently took warning, for he said no more upon that subject, and they talked about other matters until he took his departure an hour or two later. It was next afternoon when he appeared again, and Mrs. Hastings smiled at Agatha as he and Winifred drove away together.
"Thirty miles is a long way to drive in the frost. I suppose you have noticed that she calls him Jim?" she said. "Anyway, there's a good deal of very genuine ability in that young man. He isn't altogether wild."
"His appearance rather suggested it when I first met him," said Agatha with a laugh. "Was it a pose?"
"No," said her companion reflectively. "I think one could call it a reaction, and it's probable that some very worthy people in the Old Country are to blame for it. Sproatly is not the only young man who has suffered from having too many rules and conventions crammed down his throat. In fact, they're rather plentiful."
Agatha said nothing further, for the little girls appeared just then, and it was not until the next afternoon that she and Mrs. Hastings were alone together again. Then as they drove across the prairie wrapped in the heavy waggon robes her companion spoke of the business they had in hand.
"Gregory must keep those men," she said. "There's no doubt that Harry meant to do it, and it would be horribly unfair to turn them loose now when there's absolutely nothing going on. Besides, Tom Moran is a man I'm specially sorry for. As I told you, he left a young wife and a very little child behind him when he came out here."
"One would wonder why he did it," said Agatha. "He had to. There seems to be a notion in the Old Country that we earn our dollars easily, but it's very wrong. We'll take that man's case as an example. He has a little, desolate holding up in the bush of Ontario, a hole chopped out of the forest studded all over with sawn-off fir-stumps, with a little, two-roomed log shack on it. In all probability there isn't a settlement within two or three leagues of the spot. Now, as a rule, a place of that kind won't produce enough to keep a man for several years after he has partially cleared it, and unless he can earn something in the meanwhile he must give it up. Moran, it seems, got heavily into debt with the nearest storekeeper, and had to choose between selling the place up or coming out here where wages are higher. Well, you can probably imagine what it must be to the woman who stayed behind in the desolate bush, seeing nobody for weeks together, though I've no doubt that she'd bear it uncomplainingly believing that her husband would come back with enough to clear the debt."
Agatha could imagine it, and a certain indignation against Gregory crept into her heart. She had once liked to think of him as pitiful and chivalrous, and now, it seemed, he was quite willing that this woman should make her sacrifice in vain.
"But why have you taken the trouble to impress this on—me?" she asked.
Her companion smiled. "I want you to plead that woman's cause. Gregory may do what you ask him gracefully. That would be much the nicest way out of it."
"The nicest way?"
"Yes," said Mrs. Hastings, with a trace of dryness, "there is another one. Gregory is going to keep Tom Moran, anyway. Harry has one or two friends in this neighbourhood who feel it more or less of an obligation on them to maintain his credit."
Agatha felt the blood rise to her face, but it was not her companion she was angry with. It was an unpleasant thing to admit, but she fancied that Gregory might yield to judicious pressure when he would not be influenced by either compassion or a sense of equity. It also flashed upon her that had Mrs. Hastings believed that she still retained any tenderness for the man she would not have spoken as she had done. The whole situation was horribly embarrassing, but there was courage in her.
"Well," she said simply, "I will speak to him."
They said nothing more until they approached the Range, and as they drove by the outbuildings Agatha glanced about her curiously. It occurred to her that the homestead did not look quite the same as it had done when Wyllard had been there. A waggon stood near the strawpile without one wheel. A door of the barn hung awkwardly open in a manner which suggested that it needed mending, and the snow had blown inside the building. There was a gap in the side of one sod and pole structure which should evidently have been repaired, and all this and several other things she noticed jarred upon her. They suggested slackness and indifference. Then she saw Mrs. Hastings purse her lips up.
"There is a change in the place already," she said.
They got down in another minute or two, and when they entered the house the grey-haired Swedish woman greeted them moodily. She seemed to notice the glance Mrs. Hastings cast around her, and her manner became deprecatory.
"I can't keep things straight now. It is not the same," she said.
Mrs. Hastings asked if Hawtrey was in, and hearing that he was turned to Agatha. "Go along and talk to him. I've something to say to Mrs. Nansen," she said.
CHAPTER XIX.
THE PRIOR CLAIM.
It was with confused feelings among which a sense of repugnance predominated that Agatha walked towards Hawtrey's room. She was not one of the women who take pleasure in pointing out another person's duty, for while she had discovered that this task is apparently an easy one to some people she was quite aware that a duty usually looks much more burdensome when it is laid upon one's self. Indeed, she was conscious just then that one might be shortly thrust upon her which she would find it very hard to bear, and she became troubled with a certain compunction as she remembered how she had of late persistently driven all thought of it out of her mind.
There was no doubt that she was still pledged to Gregory, and that she had loved him once. Both facts must be admitted, and it seemed to her that if he insisted she must marry him. Deep down in her there was an innate sense of right and honesty, and she realised that the fact that he was not the man she had once imagined him to be did not release her. In the meanwhile, it was clear that if he was about to commit a cruel and unjustifiable action she was the one person of all others whose part it was to restrain him.
The colour was a little plainer in her face than usual when she quietly entered the room where he lay, pipe in hand, in a lounge chair, and, for it seemed that he did not immediately notice her, his attitude of languid ease irritated her. There were, as she had seen, several things which should evidently have had some claim on his attention outside. A litter of letters and papers lay upon a little table at his side, but the fact that he could not reach them as he lay was suggestive. Then he rose, and came forward with outstretched hand.
"It seemed that he did not immediately notice her."
"I didn't hear you," he said. "This is a pleasure I scarcely anticipated."
Agatha sat down in the chair he drew out for her near the stove, and he seemed to notice that she glanced at the papers on the table, for he laughed.
"Bills, and things of that kind. They've been worrying me for a week or two," he said. Then he seized the litter, and bundling it together flung it into an open drawer, which he shut with a snap. "Anyway, that's the last of them for to-day. I'm awfully glad you drove over."
Agatha smiled. The action was so characteristic of the man. She had once found no fault with Gregory's careless habits, and his way of thrusting a difficulty into the background and making light of it had appealed to her. It had suggested his ability to straighten out the trouble when it appeared advisable. Now, she said, she would not be absurdly hypercritical, and he had, as it happened, given her the lead that she desired.
"I should have fancied that you would have had to give them more attention as wheat is going down," she said.
Hawtrey looked at her with an air of reproach. "It must be nearly three weeks since I have seen you, and now you expect me to talk of farming." He made a whimsically rueful gesture. "If you quite realised the situation it would be about the last thing you would ask me to do."
Agatha was a little astonished to remember that three weeks had actually elapsed since she had last met him, and they had only exchanged a word or two then. He had certainly not obtruded himself upon her, for which she was grateful.
"Nobody is talking about anything except the fall in prices just now," she persisted. "I suppose it affects you, too?"
The man, who seemed to accept this as a rebuff, looked at her rather curiously, and then laughed.
"It must be admitted that it does. In fact, I've been acquiring parsimonious habits and worrying myself about expenses lately. They have to be kept down somehow, and that's a kind of thing I never took kindly to."
"You feel it a greater responsibility when you're managing somebody else's affairs?" suggested Agatha, who was still waiting her opportunity.
"Well," said Hawtrey, in whom there was, after all, a certain honesty, "that's not quite the only thing that has some weight with me. You see, I'm not altogether disinterested. I get a certain percentage—on the margin—after everything is paid, and I want it to be a big one. Things are rather tight just now, and the wretched mortgage on my place is crippling me."
It had slipped out before he quite realised what he was saying, and he saw the girl's look of astonishment and concern. She now realised what Sproatly had meant.
"You are in debt, Gregory? I thought you had, at least, kept clear of that," she said.
"So I did—for a while. In any case, if Wyllard stays away, and I can run this place on the right lines, I shall, no doubt, get out of it again."
She was vexed that he had said this, for it was clear to her that if Wyllard did not return until another crop was gathered in it would be because he was held fast among the Northern ice in peril of his life. Then another thought struck her. She had never quite understood why Gregory had been willing to undertake the management of the Range, in view of the probability of Wyllard having plainly told him what he had said to her, but he had made that point clear by admitting that he had been burdened with a load of debt, which suggested the question why he had incurred the latter. The answer appeared in another moment or two, as she remembered having heard Mrs. Hastings or somebody else say that he had spent a good many dollars upon his house and furnishings for it. It brought her a sudden sense of confusion, for as one result of that expenditure he had been forced into doing what she fancied must have been a very repugnant thing, and she had never even crossed his threshold.
"When did you borrow that money?" she asked sharply.
There was no doubt that the man was embarrassed, and her heart softened towards him for his hesitation. It was to further her comfort he had laid that load upon himself, and he was clearly unwilling that she should recognise it. That counted for a good deal in his favour.
"Was it just before I came out?" she asked again.
Hawtrey made a little sign of expostulation. "You really mustn't worry me about these matters, Aggy. A good many of us are in the storekeepers' or mortgage-jobbers' hands, and there's no doubt that if I have another good year at the Range I shall clear off the debt."
Agatha turned her face away from him for a moment or two. The thing the man had done laid a heavy obligation on her, and she remembered that she had only found fault with him. Even then, however, stirred as she was, she was conscious that all the tenderness she had once felt for him had gone. The duty, however, remained, and with a little effort she turned to him again.
"Oh!" she said, "I'm so sorry."
Hawtrey smiled. "I really don't think I deserve a very great deal of pity. As I have said, I'll probably come out all right next year if I can only keep expenses down."
Then Agatha remembered the task she had in hand. It was a very inauspicious moment to set about it, but that could not be helped, and even for the man's own sake she felt that she must win him over.
"There is one way, Gregory, in which I don't think it ought to be done," she said. "You took over Wyllard's obligations when you took the farm, and I think you should keep the two Morans on."
Hawtrey started. "Ah!" he said, "Mrs. Hastings has been setting you on; I partly expected it."
"She told me," Agatha admitted. "Unless you will look at the thing as I do, I could almost wish she hadn't. The thought of that woman shut up in the woods all winter only to find that what she must have to bear has all been thrown away troubles me. Wyllard promised to keep those men on, didn't he?"
"There was no regular engagement so far as I can make out."
"Still, Moran seems to have understood that he was to be kept on."
"Yes," admitted Hawtrey, "he evidently does. If the market had gone with us I'd have fallen in with his views. As it hasn't, every man's wages count."
Agatha was conscious of a little thrill of repugnance. Of late Gregory's ideas had rather frequently jarred on hers.
"Does that release you?"
Hawtrey did not answer this.
"I'll keep those men on if you want me to," he said.
Agatha winced at this. She had discovered that she must not look for too much from Gregory, but to realise that he had practically no sense of moral obligation, and could only be influenced to do justice by the expectation of obtaining her favour positively hurt her.
"I want them kept on, but I don't want you to do it for that reason," she said. "Can't you grasp the distinction, Gregory?"
A trace of darker colour crept into Hawtrey's face, but while she was a little astonished at this he looked at her steadily. He had not thought much about her during the last month, but now the faint scorn in her voice had stirred him.
"Now," he said, "there are just three reasons, Aggy, why you should have troubled yourself about this thing. You are, perhaps, a little sorry for Moran's wife, but as you haven't even seen her that can hardly count for much. The next is, that you don't care to see me doing what you regard as a shabby thing; perhaps it is a shabby thing in some respects, but I feel it's justifiable. Of course, if that's your reason there's a sense in which, while not exactly complimentary—it's consoling."
He broke off, and looked at her with a question in his eyes, and it cost Agatha an effort to meet them. She was not prudish or over conscious of her own righteousness, but once or twice after the shock of her disillusionment in regard to him had lessened she had dreamed of the possibility of enduing him little by little with some of the qualities she had once fancied he possessed, and, as she vaguely thought of it, rehabilitating him. Now, however, the thing seemed impossible, and, what was more, the desire to bring it about had gone. Hateful as the situation was becoming, she was honest, and she could not let him credit her with a motive that had not influenced her.
In the meanwhile, her very coldness and aloofness stirred desire in the man, and she shrank as she saw a spark of passion kindling in his eyes. It was merely passion, she felt, for she recognised that there was a strain of grossness in him.
"No," she said, "that reason was not one which had any weight with me."
Hawtrey's face hardened. "Then," he said grimly, "we'll get on to the third. Wyllard's credit is a precious thing to you; sooner than anything should cast a stain on it you would beg a favour from—me. You have set him up on a pedestal, and it would hurt you if he came down. Considering everything, it's a remarkably curious situation."
Agatha grew a trifle pale. Gregory was horribly right, for she had no doubt now that he had merely thrust upon her a somewhat distressing truth. It was to save Wyllard's credit, and for that alone she had undertaken this most unpalatable task. She did not answer, and Hawtrey stood up.
"Wyllard has his faults, but there's this in his favour—he keeps a promise," he said. "One has a certain respect for a person who never goes back upon his word. Well, because I really think he would like it, I'll keep those men."
He paused for a moment, as if to let her grasp the drift of this, and then turned to her with something that startled her in his voice and manner. "The question is—are you willing to emulate his example?"
Agatha shrank from the glow in his eyes. "Oh!" she broke out, "you cannot urge me now—after what you said."
Hawtrey laughed harshly. "Well," he said, "I'll come for my answer very shortly. It seems that you and Wyllard attach a good deal of importance to a moral obligation—and I must remind you that the time agreed upon is almost up."
Agatha sat very still for perhaps half a minute, while a sense of dismay crept over her. There was no doubt that Gregory's retort was fully warranted. She had, as she admitted, insisted upon him carrying out an obligation which would cost him something, not because she took pleasure in seeing him do what was honourable, but to preserve the credit of another man, and now it was with intense repugnance she recognised that there was apparently no escaping from the one she had incurred. The man's attitude was perfectly natural and logical. She had promised to marry him, and he had saddled himself with a load of debt on her account, but the slight pity and tenderness she had felt for him a few minutes earlier had utterly gone. Indeed, she felt she almost hated him. His face had grown hard and almost brutal, and there was a look she shrank from in his eyes.
Then she rose.
"Do you wish to speak to Mrs. Hastings?" she asked.
Hawtrey smiled rather grimly. "No," he said, "if she'll excuse me, I don't think I do. If you tell her you have been successful, she'll probably be quite content."
Agatha went out without another word, and Hawtrey lighted his pipe and stretched himself out in his chair, when he heard the waggon drive away a few minutes later. He did not like Mrs. Hastings, and had a suspicion that she had no great regard for him, but he was conscious of a somewhat grim satisfaction. There was, though it seldom came to the surface, a taint of crude brutality in his nature, and it was active now. When Agatha had first come out the change in her had been a shock to him, and it would not have cost him very much to let her go. Since then, however, her coldness and half-perceived disdain had angered him, and the interview which was just over had left him in an unpleasant mood. Though this was, perhaps, the last thing he would have expected, it had stirred him to desire. It was consoling to feel that he could exact the fulfilment of her promise from the girl. His face grew coarser as he assured himself of it, but he had, as it happened, never realised the shiftiness and instability of his own character. It was his misfortune that the impulses which swayed him one day had generally changed the next.
This became apparent when, having occasion to drive in to the elevators on the railroad a week later, he called at a store to make one or two purchases. The man who kept it laid a package on the counter.
"I wonder if you'd take this along to Miss Creighton as a favour," he said. "She wrote for the things, and Elliot was to take them out, but I guess he forgot; anyway, he didn't call."
Hawtrey told the clerk to put the package in his waggon. He had scarcely seen Sally since his recovery, and he suddenly remembered that, after all, he owed her a good deal, and that she was very pretty. Besides, one could talk to Sally without feeling the restraint that Agatha's manner usually laid on him. Then the storekeeper laid an open box upon the counter.
"I guess you're going to be married by and bye," he said.
Hawtrey was thinking of Sally then, and the question irritated him.
"I don't know that it concerns you, but in a general way it's probable," he said.
"Well," said the storekeeper good-humouredly, "a pair of these mittens would make quite a nice present for a lady. Smartest thing of the kind I've ever seen here; choicest Alaska fur."
Hawtrey bought a pair, and the storekeeper took a fur cap out of another box.
"Now," he said, "this is just the thing she'd like to go with the mittens. There's style about that cap; feel the gloss of it."
Hawtrey bought the cap, and smiled as he swung himself up into his waggon. Gloves are not much use in the prairie frost, and mittens, which are not divided into finger-stalls, will within limits fit almost anybody. This, he felt, was fortunate, for he was not quite sure that he meant to give them to Agatha.
It was bitterly cold, and the pace the team made was slow, for the snow was loose and too thin for a sled of any kind, which, after all, is not very generally used upon the prairie. As the result of this, night had closed down and Hawtrey was frozen almost stiff when at last a birch bluff rose out of the waste in front of him. It cut black against the cold blueness of the sky and the spectral gleam of snow, but when he had driven a little further a stream of ruddy orange light appeared in the midst of it. A few minutes later he pulled his team up in front of a little log-built house, and getting down with difficulty saw the door open as he approached it. Sally stood in the entrance silhouetted against a blaze of cheerful light.
"Oh!" she said. "Gregory!"
Hawtrey recognised the thrill in her voice, and took both her hands, as he had once been in the habit of doing.
"Will you let me in?" he asked.
The girl laughed in a rather strained fashion. She had been a little startled, and was not quite sure yet as to how she should receive him; but in the meanwhile Hawtrey drew her in.
"The old folks are out," she said. "They've gone over to Elliot's for supper. He's bringing us a package."
Hawtrey, who explained that he had got it, let her hands go, and sat down somewhat limply. He had come suddenly out of the bitter frost into the little, brightly-lighted, stove-warmed room. In another few moments, however, the comfort and cheeriness of it appealed to him.
"This looks very cosy after my desolate room at the Range," he said.
"Then if you'll stay I'll make you supper. I suppose there's nothing to take you home?"
"No," said Hawtrey, with a significant glance at her, "there certainly isn't, Sally. As a matter of fact, I often wish there was."
He saw her sudden uncertainty, which was, however, not tinged with embarrassment, and feeling that he had gone far enough in the meanwhile he went out to put up his team. When he came back there was a cloth on the table, and Sally was busy about the stove. He sat down and watched her attentively. In some respects, he thought, she compared favourably with Agatha. She had a nicely moulded figure, and a curious lithe gracefulness of carriage which was suggestive of a strong vitality, while Agatha's bearing was usually characterised by a certain rather frigid repose. This and the latter's general manner had a somewhat inciting effect on him when he was in her presence, but he now and then remembered it afterwards with resentment. Then Sally's face was at least as comely in a different way, and there was no reserve in it. She was what he thought of as human, frankly flesh and blood. Her quick smile was, as a rule, provocative, and never chilled one as Agatha's quiet glances sometimes did.
"Sally," he said, "you've grown prettier than ever."
The girl turned partly round towards him with a slow, sinuous movement that he found seductively graceful.
"Now," she said, "you oughtn't to say those things to me."
Hawtrey laughed; he was usually sure of his ground with Sally.
"Why shouldn't I, when it's just what you are?"
"For one thing, Miss Ismay wouldn't like it."
The man's face hardened. "I'm not sure she'd mind. Anyway, Miss Ismay doesn't like a good many things I'm in the habit of doing."
Sally, who had watched him closely, turned away again, but a little thrill of exultation ran through her. It had been with dismay she had first heard him speak of his marriage, which was, perhaps, not altogether astonishing, and she had fled home in an agony of anger and humiliation. That state of mind had, however, not lasted long, and when it became evident that the wedding was, at least, postponed indefinitely, she commenced to wonder whether it was quite impossible that Hawtrey should come back to her. She felt that he belonged to her although he had never given her any very definite claim in him. She was a trifle primitive and passionate, but she was determined, and now he had done what she had almost expected him to do, she meant to keep him.
"You have fallen out?" she said, and contrived to keep the anxiety she was conscious of out of her voice.
The question, and more particularly the form of it, rather jarred upon Hawtrey, but he answered it.
"Oh no," he said. "As a matter of fact, Sally, you can't fall out nicely with everybody. Now when we fell out you got delightfully angry—I don't know if you were more delightful then or when you graciously agreed to make it up again." He laughed. "I almost wish I could make you a little angry now."
Sally had moved a little nearer to take a kettle off the stove, and she looked down on him with her eyes shining in the lamplight. She realised that she would have to fight Miss Ismay for this man; but there was this in her favour, that she appealed directly to one side of his nature, as Agatha, even if she had loved him, would not have done.
"Would you?" she said. "Dare you try?"
"I might if I was tempted sufficiently."
She leaned upon the table still looking at him mockingly, and she was probably aware that her pose and expression were wholly provocative. Indeed, she could not have failed to recognise the meaning of the sudden tightening of his lips, though she did not in the least shrink from it. She had not the faintest doubt of her ability to keep him at a due distance if it appeared necessary.
"Oh," she said, "you only say things."
Hawtrey laughed, and stooping down picked up a package he had brought from the store.
"Well," he said, "after all, I think I'd rather try if I can please you." He opened the package. "Are these things very much too big for you, Sally?"