It was not until early morning that Courthorne awakened from the stupor he sank into soon after Winston conveyed him into his homestead. First, however, he asked for a little food, and ate it with apparent difficulty. When Winston came in he looked up from the bed where he lay, with the dust still white upon his clothing, and his face showed gray and haggard in the creeping light.
"I'm feeling a trifle better now," he said; "still, I scarcely fancy I could get up just yet. I gave you a little surprise last night?"
Winston nodded. "You did. Of course, I knew how much your promise was worth, but in view of the risks you ran, I had not expected you to turn up at the Grange."
"The risks!" said Courthorne, with an unpleasant smile.
"Yes," said Winston wearily, "I have a good deal on hand I would like to finish here and it will not take me long, but I am quite prepared to give myself up now, if it is necessary."
Courthorne laughed. "I don't think you need, and it wouldn't be wise. You see, even if you made out your innocence, which you couldn't do, you rendered yourself an accessory by not denouncing me long ago. I fancy we can come to an understanding which would be pleasanter to both of us."
"The difficulty," said Winston, "is that an understanding is useless when made with a man who never keeps his word."
"Well," said Courthorne dryly, "we shall gain nothing by paying each other compliments, and whether you believe it or otherwise, it was not by intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement, and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn't find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Any way, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I saw a house."
"That," said Winston, "is beside the question. What do you want of me? Money in all probability. Well, you will not get it."
"I'm afraid I'm scarcely fit for a discussion now," said Courthorne. "The fact is, it hurts me to talk, and there's an aggressiveness about you which isn't pleasant to a badly-shaken man. Wait until this evening, but there is no necessity for you to ride to the outpost before you have heard me."
"I'm not sure it would be advisable to leave you here," said Winston dryly.
Courthorne smiled ironically. "Use your eyes. Would any one expect me to get up and indulge in a fresh folly? Leave me a little brandy--I need it--and go about your work. You'll certainly find me here when you want me."
Winston, glancing at the man's face, considered this very probable, and went out. He found his cook, who could be trusted, and said to him, "The man yonder is tolerably sick, and you'll let him have a little brandy and something to eat when he asks for it. Still, you'll bring the decanter away with you, and lock him in whenever you go out."
The man nodded, and making a hasty breakfast, Winston, who had business at several outlying farms, mounted and rode away. It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidly debonair but apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them.
"You take a look at the decanter," said the man, who went up with Winston, carrying a lamp. "He's been wanting brandy all the time, but it doesn't seem to have muddled him."
Winston dismissed the man and sat down in front of Courthorne.
"Well?" he said.
Courthorne laughed. "You ought to be a witty man, though one would scarcely charge you with that. You surmised correctly this morning. It is money I want."
"You had my answer."
"Of course. Still, I don't want very much in the meanwhile, and you haven't heard what led up to the demand, or why I came back to you. You are evidently not curious, but I'm going to tell you. Soon after I left you, I fell very sick, and lay in the saloon of a little desolate settlement for days. The place was suffocating, and the wind blew the alkali dust in. They had only horrible brandy, and bitter water to drink it with, and I lay there on my back, panting, with the flies crawling over me. I knew if I stayed any longer it would finish me, and when there came a merciful cool day I got myself into the saddle and started off to find you. I don't quite know how I made the journey, and during a good deal of it I couldn't see the prairie, but I knew you would feel there was an obligation on you to do something for me. Of course, I could put it differently."
Winston had as little liking for Courthorne as he had ever had, but he remembered the time when he had lain very sick in his lonely log hut. He also remembered that everything he now held belonged to this man.
"You made the bargain," he said, less decisively.
Courthorne nodded. "Still, I fancy one of the conditions could be modified. Now, if I wait for another three months, I may be dead before the reckoning comes, and while that probably wouldn't grieve you, I could, when it appeared advisable, send for a magistrate and make a desposition."
"You could," said Winston. "I have, however, something of the same kind in contemplation."
Courthorne smiled curiously. "I don't know that it will be necessary. Carry me on until you have sold your crop, and then make a reasonable offer, and it's probable you may still keep what you have at Silverdale. To be quite frank, I've a notion that my time in this world is tolerably limited, and I want a last taste of all it has to offer a man of my capacities before I leave it. One is a long while dead, you know."
Winston nodded, for he understood. He had also during the grim cares of the lean years known the fierce longing for one deep draught of the wine of pleasure, whatever it afterwards cost him.
"It was that which induced you to look for a little relaxation at the settlement at my expense," he said. "A trifle paltry, wasn't it?"
Courthorne laughed. "It seems you don't know me yet. That was a frolic, indulged in out of humor, for your benefit. You see, your role demanded a good deal more ability than you ever displayed in it, and it did not seem fitting that a very puritanical and priggish person should pose as me at Silverdale. The little affair was the one touch of verisimilitude about the thing. No doubt my worthy connections are grieving over your lapse."
"My sense of humor had never much chance of developing," said Winston grimly. "What is the matter with you?"
"Pulmonary hemorrhage!" said Courthorne. "Perhaps it was born in me, but I never had much trouble until after that night in the snow at the river. Would you care to hear about it? We're not fond of each other, but after the steer-drivers I've been herding with, it's a relief to talk to a man of moderate intelligence."
"Go on," said Winston.
"Well," said Courthorne, "when the trooper was close behind me, my horse went through the ice, but somehow I crawled out. We were almost across the river, and it was snowing fast, while I had a fancy that I might have saved the horse, but, as the troopers would probably have seen a mounted man, I let him go. The stream sucked him under, and, though you may not believe it, I felt very mean when I saw nothing but the hole in the ice. Then, as the troopers didn't seem inclined to cross, I went on through the snow, and, as it happened, blundered across Jardine's old shanty. There was still a little prairie hay in the place, and I lay in it until morning, dragging fresh armfuls around me as I burnt it in the stove. Did you ever spend a night, wet through, in a place that was ten to twenty under freezing?"
"Yes," said Winston dryly. "I have done it twice."
"Well," said Courthorne, "I fancy that night narrowed in my life for me, but I made out across the prairie in the morning, and as we had a good many friends up and down the country, one of them took care of me."
Winston sat silent a while. The story had held his attention, and the frankness of the man who lay panting a little in his chair had its effect on him. There was no sound from the prairie, and the house was very still.
"Why did you kill Shannon?" he asked, at length.
"Is any one quite sure of his motives?" said Courthorne. "The lad had done something which was difficult to forgive him, but I think I would have let him go if he hadn't recognized me. The world is tolerably good to the man who has no scruples, you see, and I took all it offered me, while it did not seem fitting that a clod of a trooper without capacity for enjoyment, or much more sensibility than the beast he rode, should put an end to all my opportunities. Still, it was only when he tried to warn his comrades he threw his last chance away."
Winston shivered a little at the dispassionate brutality of the speech, and then checked the anger that came upon him.
"Fate, or my own folly, has put it out of my power to denounce you without abandoning what I have set my heart upon, and after all it is not my business," he said. "I will give you five hundred dollars and you can go to Chicago or Montreal, and consult a specialist. If the money is exhausted before I send for you, I will pay your hotel bills, but every dollar will be deducted when we come to the reckoning."
Courthorne laughed a little. "You had better make it seven fifty. Five hundred dollars will not go very far with me."
"Then you will have to husband them," said Winston dryly. "I am paying you at a rate agreed upon for the use of your land and small bank balance handed me, and want all of it. The rent is a fair one in face of the fact that a good deal of the farm consisted of virgin prairie, which can be had from the Government for nothing."
He said nothing further, and soon after he went out Courthorne went to sleep, but Winston sat by an open window with a burned-out cigar in his hand staring at the prairie while the night wore through, until he rose with a shiver in the chill of early morning to commence his task again.
A few days later he saw Courthorne safely into a sleeping car with a ticket for Chicago in his pocket, and felt that a load had been lifted off his shoulders when the train rolled out of the little prairie station. Another week had passed when, riding home one evening, he stopped at the Grange, and as it happened found Maud Barrington alone. She received him without any visible restraint, but he realized that all that had passed at their last meeting was to be tacitly ignored.
"Has your visitor recovered yet?" she asked.
"So far as to leave my place, and I was not anxious to keep him," said Winston, with a little laugh. "I am sorry he disturbed you."
Maud Barrington seemed thoughtful. "I scarcely think the man was to blame."
"No?" said Winston.
The girl looked at him curiously, and shook her head. "No," she said. "I heard my uncle's explanation, but it was not convincing. I saw the man's face."
It was several seconds before Winston answered, and then he took the bold course.
"Well?" he said.
Maud Barrington made a curious little gesture. "I knew I had seen it before at the bridge, but that was not all. It was vaguely familiar, and I felt I ought to know it. It reminded me of somebody."
"Of me?" and Winston laughed.
"No. There was a resemblance, but it was very superficial. That man's face had little in common with yours."
"These faint likenesses are not unusual," said Winston, and once more Maud Barrington looked at him steadily.
"No," she said, "of course not. Well, we will conclude that my fancies ran away with me, and be practical. What is wheat doing just now?"
"Rising still," said Winston, and regretted the alacrity with which he had seized the opportunity of changing the topic when he saw that it had not escaped the notice of his companion. "You and I and a few others will be rich this year."
"Yes, but I am afraid some of the rest will find it has only further anxieties for them."
"I fancy," said Winston, "you are thinking of one."
Maud Barrington nodded. "Yes. I am sorry for him."
"Then it would please you if I tried to straighten out things for him? It would be difficult, but I believe it could be accomplished."
Maud Barrington's eyes were grateful, but there was something that Winston could not fathom behind her smile.
"If you undertook it. One could almost believe you had the wonderful lamp," she said.
Winston smiled somewhat dryly. "Then all its virtues will be tested to-night, and I had better make a commencement while I have the courage. Colonel Barrington is in?"
Maud Barrington went with him to the door, and then laid her hand a moment on his arm. "Lance," she said, with a little tremor in her voice, "if there was a time when our distrust hurt you, it has recoiled upon our heads. You have returned it with a splendid generosity."
Winston could not trust himself to answer, but walked straight to Barrington's room, and finding the door open, went quietly in. The head of the Silverdale settlement was sitting at a littered table in front of a shaded lamp, and the light that fell upon it showed the care in his face. It grew a trifle grimmer when he saw the younger man.
"Will you sit down?" he said. "I have been looking for a visit from you for some little time. It would have been more fitting had you made it earlier."
Winston nodded as he took a chair. "I fancy I understand you, but I have nothing that you expect to hear to tell you, sir."
"That," said Barrington, "is unfortunate. Now, it is not my business to pose as a censor of the conduct of any man here, except when it affects the community, but their friends have sent out a good many young English lads, some of whom have not been too discreet in the old country, to me. They did not do so solely that I might teach them farming. A charge of that kind is no light responsibility, and I look for assistance from the men who have almost as large a stake as I have in the prosperity of Silverdale."
"Have you ever seen me do anything you could consider prejudicial to it?" asked Winston.
"I have not," said Colonel Barrington.
"And it was by her own wish Miss Barrington, who, I fancy, is seldom mistaken, asked me to the Grange?"
"It is a good plea," said Barrington. "I cannot question anything my sister does."
"Then we will let it pass, though I am afraid you will consider what I am going to ask a further presumption. You have forward wheat to deliver, and find it difficult to obtain it?"
Barrington's smile was somewhat grim. "In both cases you have surmised correctly."
Winston nodded. "Still, it is not mere inquisitiveness, sir. I fancy I am the only man at Silverdale who can understand your difficulties, and, what is more to the point, suggest a means of obviating them. You still expect to buy at lower prices before the time to make delivery comes?"
Again the care crept into Barrington's face, and he sat silent for almost a minute. Then he said, very slowly, "I feel that I should resent the question, but I will answer. It is what I hope to do."
"Well," said Winston, "I am afraid you will find prices higher still. There is very little wheat in Minnesota this year, and what there was in Dakota was cut down by hail. Millers in St. Paul and Minneapolis are anxious already, and there is talk of a big corner in Chicago. Nobody is offering grain, while you know what land lies fallow in Manitoba, and the activity of their brokers shows the fears of Winnipeg millers with contracts on hand. This is not my opinion alone. I can convince you from the papers and market reports I see before you."
Barrington could not controvert the unpleasant truth he was still endeavoring to shut his eyes to. "The demand from the East may slacken," he said.
Winston shook his head. "Russia can give them nothing. There was a failure in the Indian monsoon, and South American crops were small. Now, I am going to take a further liberty. How much are you short?"
Barrington was never sure why he told him, but he was hard pressed then, and there was a quiet forcefulness about the younger man that had its effect on him.
"That," he said, holding out a document, "is the one contract I have not covered."
Winston glanced at it. "The quantity is small. Still, money is very scarce and bank interest almost extortionate just now."
Barrington flushed a trifle, and there was anger in his face. He knew the fact that his loss on this sale should cause him anxiety was significant, and that Winston had surmised the condition of his finances tolerably correctly.
"Have you not gone quite far enough?" he said.
Winston nodded. "I fancy I need ask no more, sir. You can scarcely buy the wheat, and the banks will advance nothing further on what you have to offer at Silverdale. It would be perilous to put yourself in the hands of a mortgage broker."
Barrington stood up very grim and straight, and there were not many men at Silverdale who would have met his gaze.
"Your content is a little too apparent, but I can still resent an impertinence," he said. "Are my affairs your business?"
"Sit down, sir," said Winston. "I fancy they are, and had it not been necessary, I would not have ventured so far. You have done much for Silverdale, and it has cost you a good deal, while it seems to me that every man here has a duty to the head of the settlement. I am, however, not going to urge that point, but have, as you know, a propensity for taking risks. I can't help it. It was probably born in me. Now, I will take that contract up for you."
Barrington gazed at him in bewildered astonishment.
But you would lose on it heavily. How could you overcome a difficulty that is too great for me?"
"Well," said Winston, with a little smile, "it seems I have some ability in dealing with these affairs."
Barrington did not answer for a while, and when he spoke it was slowly. "You have a wonderful capacity for making any one believe in you."
"That is not the point," said Winston. "If you will let me have the contract, or, and it comes to the same thing, buy the wheat it calls for, and if advisable sell as much again, exactly as I tell you, at my risk and expense, I shall get what I want out of it. My affairs are a trifle complicated and it would take some little time to make you understand how this would suit me. In the meanwhile you can give me a mere I O U for the difference between what you sold at, and the price today, to be paid without interest and whenever it suits you. It isn't very formal, but you will have to trust me."
Barrington moved twice up and down the room before he turned to the younger man. "Lance," he said, "when you first came here, any deal of this kind between us would have been out of the question. Now, it is only your due to tell you that I have been wrong from the beginning, and you have a good deal to forgive."
"I think we need not go into that," said Winston, with a little smile. "This is a business deal, and if it hadn't suited me I would not have made it."
He went out in another few minutes with a little strip of paper, and just before he left the Grange placed it in Maud Barrington's hands.
"You will not ask any questions, but if ever Colonel Barrington is not kind to you, you can show him that," he said.
He had gone in another moment, but the girl, comprehending dimly what he had done, stood still, staring at the paper with a warmth in her cheeks and a mistiness in her eyes.
It was late in the afternoon when Colonel Barrington drove up to Winston's homestead. He had his niece and sister with him, and when he pulled up his team, all three were glad of the little breeze that came down from the blueness of the north and rippled the whitened grass. It had blown over leagues of sun-bleached prairie, and the great desolation beyond the pines of the Saskatchewan, but had not wholly lost the faint, wholesome chill it brought from the Pole.
There was no cloud in the vault of ether, and slanting sun-rays beat fiercely down upon the prairie, until the fibrous dust grew fiery and the eyes ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery gray. The latter was, however, relieved by stronger color in front of the party, for blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree. Oats had moved up in value in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest might have been his.
"We will get down and walk towards the wheat," he said. "It is a good crop and Lance is to be envied."
"Still," said Miss Barrington, "he deserved it, and those sheaves stand for more than the toil that brought them there."
"Of course!" said the Colonel, with a curious little smile. "For rashness, I fancied, when they showed the first blade above the clod, but I am less sure of it now. Well, the wheat is even finer."
A man who came up took charge of the horses, and the party walked in silence towards the wheat. It stretched before them in a vast parallelogram, and while the oats were the pale gold of the austral, there was the tint of the ruddier metal of their own Northwest in this. It stood tall and stately, murmuring as the sea does, until it rolled before a stronger puff of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic patter swelled into deeper-toned harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of color which appealed to the sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil, and white-robed priests blessed it, when the world was young.
Maud Barrington felt it vaguely, but she recognized more clearly, as her aunt had done, the faith and daring of the sower. The earth was very bountiful, but that wheat had not come there of itself; and she knew the man who had called it up and had done more than bear his share of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently more or less evaded at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the courage that held him resolute in the face of others' fears, and the greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted for less that he had achieved success. Then glancing further across the billowing grain she saw him--still, as it seemed it had always been with him, amid the stress and dust of strenuous endeavor.
Once more, as she had seen them when the furrows were bare at seed time, and there was apparently only ruin in store for those who raised the Eastern people's bread, lines of dusty teams came plodding down the rise. They advanced in echelon, keeping their time and distance with a military precision, but in place of the harrows, the tossing arms of the binders flashed and swung. The wheat went down before them, their wake was strewn with gleaming sheaves, and one man came foremost swaying in the driving-seat of a rattling machine. His face was the color of a Blackfeet's, and she could see the darkness of his neck above the loose-fronted shirt, and a bare blackened arm that was raised to hold the tired beasts to their task. Their trampling, and the crash and rattle that swelled in slow crescendo, drowned the murmur of the wheat, until one of the machines stood still, and the leader, turning a moment in his saddle, held up a hand. Then those that came behind swung into changed formation, passed, and fell into indented line again, while Colonel Barrington nodded with grim approval.
"It is very well done," he said. "The best of harvesters! No newcomers yonder. They're capable Manitoba men. I don't know where he got them, and, in any other year, one would have wondered where he would find the means of paying them. We have never seen farming of this kind at Silverdale."
He seemed to sigh a little while his hand closed on the bridle, and Maud Barrington fancied she understood his thoughts just then.
"Nobody can be always right, and the good years do not come alone," she said. "You will plow every acre next one."
Barrington smiled dryly. "I'm afraid that will be a little late, my dear. Any one can follow, but since, when everybody's crop is good, the price comes down, the man who gets the prize is the one who shows the way."
"He was content to face the risk," said Miss Barrington.
"Of course," said the Colonel quietly. "I should be the last to make light of his foresight and courage. Indeed, I am glad I can acknowledge it, in more ways than one, for I have felt lately that I am getting an old man. Still, there is one with greater capacities ready to step into my shoes, and though it was long before I could overcome my prejudice against him, I think I should now be content to let him have them. Whatever Lance may have been, he was born a gentleman, and blood is bound to tell."
Maud Barrington, who was of patrician parentage, and would not at one time have questioned this assertion, wondered why she felt less sure of it just then.
"But if he had not been, would not what he has done be sufficient to vouch for him?" she said.
Barrington smiled a little, and the girl felt that her question was useless as she glanced at him. He sat very straight in his saddle, immaculate in dress, with a gloved hand on his hip, and a stamp which he had inherited, with the thinly-covered pride that usually accompanies it from generations of a similar type, on his clean-cut face. It was evidently needless to look for any sympathy with that view from him.
"My dear," he said, "there are things at which the others can beat us; but, after all, I do not think they are worth the most, and while Lance has occasionally exhibited a few undesirable characteristics, no doubt acquired in this country, and has not been always blameless, the fact that he is a Courthorne at once covers and accounts for a good deal."
Then Winston recognized them, and made a sign to one of the men behind him as he hauled his binder clear of the wheat. He had dismounted in another minute, and came towards them, with the jacket he had not wholly succeeded in struggling into, loose about his shoulders.
"It is almost time I gave my team a rest," he said, "Will you come with me to the house?"
"No," said Colonel Barrington. "We only stopped in passing. The crop will harvest well."
"Yes," said Winston, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington. "Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably come!"
"Then," said the white-haired lady, "next year I will do as much again, though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes all the time. Still, you are too prosaic to fancy they can have anything to do with--this."
She pointed to the wheat, but, though Winston smiled again, there was a curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.
"I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than you realize to me," he said.
Miss Barrington looked at him steadily. "Lance," she said, "there is something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me. Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I fancied you meant it." "I did," said Winston, with a trace of grimness in his smile. "Still, isn't it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?"
"Well," said Miss Barrington, "you are going to be franker with me by and by. Now, my brother has been endeavoring to convince us that you owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes."
Winston did not answer for a moment, and then he laughed. "I fancy Colonel Barrington is wrong," he said. "Don't you think there are latent capabilities in every man, though only one here and there gets an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn't it be pleasanter for any one to feel that his virtues were his own and not those of his family?"
Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled, but she shook her head. "That," she said, "would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on."
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as they drove slowly past the wheat, his niece had another view of the toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash of the binders' wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those sounds often before, and attached no significance to them, but now she knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them, she could hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.
Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise, and had passed from view behind it, when a mounted man rode up to Winston with an envelope in his hand.
"Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement and the telegraph clerk gave it him," he said. "He told me to come along with it."
Winston opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, "Send me five hundred dollars. Urgent."
Then he thrust it into his pocket, and went on with his harvesting when he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the affair, and then the note he wrote was laconic.
"Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be ill. In case of necessity you can forward your doctor's or hotel bills," it ran.
It was with a wry smile he watched a man ride off towards the settlement with it. "I shall not be sorry when the climax comes," he said. "The strain is telling."
In the meanwhile Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or two he unbent so far as, in the face of the regulations, to refresh himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian revenue. Now the lonely ranchers have as a rule few opportunities of friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant's geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished him. In consequence of this he rode out one night with two or three troopers of a Western squadron.
His apparent business was somewhat prosaic. Musquash, the Blackfeet, in place of remaining quietly on his reserve, had in a state of inebriation reverted to the primitive customs of his race, and taking the trail, not only annexed some of his white neighbors' ponies and badly frightened their wives, but drove off a steer with which he feasted his people. The owner following came upon the hide, and Musquash, seeing it was too late to remove the brand from it, expressed his contrition, and pleaded in extenuation that he was rather worthy of sympathy than blame, because he would never have laid hands on what was not his had not a white man sold him deleterious liquor. As no white man is allowed to supply an Indian with alcohol in any form, the wardens of the prairie took a somewhat similar view of the case, and Stimson was, from motives which he did not mention, especially anxious to get his grip upon the other offender.
The night when they rode out was very dark, and they spent half of it beneath a birch bluff, seeing nothing whatever, and only hearing a coyote howl. It almost appeared there was something wrong with the information supplied them respecting the probable running of another load of prohibited whisky, and towards morning Stimson rode up to the young commissioned officer.
"The man who brought us word has either played their usual trick and sent us here while his friends take the other trail, or somebody saw us ride out and went south to tell the boys," he said. "Now, you might consider it advisable that I and one of the troopers should head for the ford at Willow Hollow, sir."
"Yes," said the young officer, who was quite aware that there were as yet many things connected with his duties he did not know. "Now I come to think of it, Sergeant, I do. We'll give you two hours, and then, if you don't turn up, ride over after you; it's condemnably shivery waiting for nothing here."
Stimson saluted and shook his bridle, and rather less than an hour later faintly discerned a rattle of wheels that rose from a long way off across the prairie. Then he used the spur, and by and by it became evident that the drumming of their horses' feet had carried far, for, though the rattle grew a little louder, there was no doubt that whoever drove the wagon had no desire to be overtaken. Still, two horses cannot haul a vehicle over a rutted trail as fast as one can carry a man, and when the wardens of the prairie raced towards the black wall of birches that rose higher in front of them, the sound of wheels seemed very near. It, however, ceased suddenly, and was followed by a drumming that could only have been made by a galloping horse.
"One beast!" said the Sergeant. "Well, they'd have two men, any way, in that wagon. Get down and picket. We'll find the other fellow somewhere in the bluff."
They came upon him within five minutes endeavoring to cut loose the remaining horse from the entangled harness in such desperate haste that he did not hear them until Stimson grasped his shoulder.
"Hold out your hands," he said. "You have your carbine ready, trooper?"
The man made no resistance, and Stimson laughed when the handcuffs were on.
"Now," he said, "where's your partner?"
"I don't know that I mind telling you," said the prisoner. "It was a low down trick he played on me. We got down to take out the horses when we saw we couldn't get away from you, and I'd a blanket girthed round the best of them, when he said he'd hold him while I tried what I could do with the other. Well, I let him, and the first thing I knew he was off at a gallop, leaving me with the other kicking devil two men couldn't handle. You'll find him rustling south over the Montana trail."
"Mount and ride!" said Stimson, and when his companion galloped off, turned once more to his prisoner.
"You'll have a lantern somewhere, and I'd like a look at you," he said. "If you're the man I expect, I'm glad I found you."
"It's in the wagon," said the other dejectedly.
Stimson got a light, and when he had released and picketed the plunging horse, held it so that he could see his prisoner. Then he nodded with evident contentment.
"You may as well sit down. We've got to have a talk," he said.
"Well," said the other, "I'd help you to catch Harmon if I could, but I can prove he hired me to drive him over to Kemp's in the wagon, and you'd find it difficult to show I knew what there was in the packages he took along."
Stimson smiled dryly. "Still," he said, "I think it could be done, and I've another count against you. You had one or two deals with the boys some little while ago."
"I'm not afraid of your fixing up against me anything I did then," said the other man.
"No?" said Stimson. "Now, I guess you're wrong, and it might be a good deal more serious than whisky-running. One night a man crawled up to your homestead through the snow, and you took him in."
He saw the sudden fear in his companion's face before he turned it from the lantern.
"It has happened quite a few times," said the latter. "We don't turn any stranger out in this country."
"Of course!" said the Sergeant gravely, though he felt a little thrill of content as he saw the shot, he had been by no means sure of, had told. "That man, however, had lost his horse in the river, and it was the one he got from you that took him out of the country. Now, if we could show you knew what he had done, it might go as far as hanging somebody."
The man was evidently not a confirmed law breaker, but merely one of the small farmers who were willing to pick up a few dollars by assisting the whisky-runners now and then, and he abandoned all resistance.
"Sergeant," he said, "it was 'most a week before I knew, and if anybody had told me at the time, I'd have turned him out to freeze before I'd have let him have a horse of mine."
"That wouldn't go very far if we brought the charge against you," said Stimson grimly. "If you'd sent us word when you did know, we'd have had him."
"Well," said the man, "he was across the frontier by that time, and I don't know that most folks would have done it, if they'd had the warning the boys sent me."
Stimson appeared to consider for almost a minute, and then gravely rapped his companion's arm.
"It seems to me that the sooner you and I have an understanding, the better it will be for you," he said.
They were some time arriving at it, and the Sergeant's superiors might not have been pleased with all he promised during the discussion. Still, he was flying at higher game, and had to sacrifice a little, while he knew his man.
"We'll fix it up without you, as far as we can, but if we want you to give evidence that the man who lost his horse in the river was not farmer Winston, we'll know where to find you," he said. "You'll have to take your chance of being tried with him if we find you're trying to get out of the country."
It was half an hour later when the rest of the troopers arrived and Stimson had some talk with their officer aside.
"A little out of the usual course, isn't it?" said the latter. "I don't know that I'd have countenanced it, so to speak, off my own bat at all, but I had a tolerably plain hint that you were to use your discretion over this affair. After all, one has to stretch a point or two occasionally."
"Yes, sir," said Stimson. "A good many now and then."
The officer smiled a little and went back to the rest. "Two of you will ride after the other rascal," he said. "Now, look here, my man, the first time my troopers, who'll call round quite frequently, don't find you about your homestead, you'll land yourself in a tolerably serious difficulty. In the meanwhile, I'm sorry we can't bring a charge of whisky-running against you, but another time be careful who you hire your wagon to."
Then there was a rapid drumming of hoofs as two troopers went off at a gallop, while when the rest turned back towards the outpost. Stimson rode with them quietly content.
Winston's harvesting prospered as his sowing had done, for by day the bright sunshine shone down on standing wheat and lengthening rows of sheaves. It was in the bracing cold of sunrise the work began, and the first pale stars were out before the tired men and jaded horses dragged themselves home again. Not infrequently it happened that the men wore out the teams and machines, but there was no stoppage then, for fresh horses were led out from the corral or a new binder was ready. Every minute was worth a dollar, and Winston, who had apparently foreseen and provided for everything, wasted none.
Then, for wheat is seldom stacked in that country, as the days grew shorter and the evenings cool, the smoke of the big thrasher streaked the harvest field, and the wagons went jolting between humming separator and granary, until the later was gorged to repletion and the wheat was stored within a willow framing beneath the chaff and straw that streamed from the chute of the great machine. Winston had around him the best men that dollars could hire, and toiled tirelessly with the grimy host in the whirling dust of the thrasher and amid the sheaves, wherever another pair of hands, or the quick decision that would save an hour's delay, was needed most.
As compared with the practice of insular Britain, there were not half enough of them, but wages are high in that country, and the crew of the thrasher paid by the bushel, while the rest had long worked for their own hand on the levels of Manitoba and in the bush of Ontario, and knew that the sooner their toil was over the sooner they would go home again with well-lined pockets. So, generously fed, splendid human muscle kept pace with clinking steel under a stress that is seldom borne outside the sun-bleached prairie at harvest time, and Winston forgot everything save the constant need for the utmost effort of body and brain. It was even of little import to him that prices moved steadily upward as he toiled.
At last it was finished, and only knee-high stubble covered his land and that of Maud Barrington, while, for he was one who could venture fearlessly and still know when he had risked enough, soon after it was thrashed out the wheat was sold. The harvesters went home with enough to maintain them through the winter, and Winston, who spent two days counting his gain, wrote asking Graham to send him an accountant from Winnipeg. With him he spent a couple more days, and then, with an effort he was never to forget, prepared himself for the reckoning. It was time to fling off the mask before the eyes of all who had trusted him.
He had thought it over carefully, and his first decision had been to make the revelation to Colonel Barrington alone. That, however, would, he felt, be too simple, and his pride rebelled against anything that would stamp him as one who dare not face the men he had deceived. One by one they had tacitly offered him their friendship and then their esteem, until he knew that he was virtually leader at Silverdale, and it seemed fitting that he should admit the wrong he had done them, and bear the obloquy, before them all. For a while the thought of Maud Barrington restrained him, and then he brushed that aside. He had fancied with masculine blindness that what he felt for her had been well concealed, and that her attitude to him could be no more than kindly sympathy with one who was endeavoring to atone for a discreditable past. Her anger and astonishment would be hard to bear, but once more his pride prompted him, and he decided that she should at least see he had the courage to face the results of his wrong-doing. As it happened, he was given an opportunity, when he was invited to the harvest celebration that was held each year at Silverdale.
It was a still, cool evening when every man of the community, and most of the women, gathered in the big dining-room of the Grange. The windows were shut now, for the chill of the early frost was on the prairie, and the great lamps burned steadily above the long tables. Cut glass, dainty china and silver gleamed beneath them amidst the ears of wheat that stood in clusters for sole and appropriate ornamentation. They merited the place of honor, for wheat had brought prosperity to every man at Silverdale who had had the faith to sow that year.
On either hand were rows of smiling faces, the men's burned and bronzed, the women's kissed into faintly warmer color by the sun, and white shoulders shone amidst the somberly covered ones, while here and there a diamond gleamed on a snowy neck. Barrington sat at the head of the longest table, with his niece and sister, Dane and his oldest followers about him, and Winston at its foot, dressed very simply after the usual fashion of the prairie farmers. There were few in the company who had not noticed this, though they did not as yet understand its purport.
Nothing happened during dinner, but Maud Barrington noticed that, although some of his younger neighbors rallied him, Winston was grimly quiet. When it was over, Barrington rose, and the men who knew the care he had borne that year never paid him more willing homage than they did when he stood smiling down on them. As usual he was immaculate in dress, erect, and quietly commanding, but in spite of its smile his face seemed worn, and there were thickening wrinkles, which told of anxiety, about his eyes.
"Another year has gone, and we have met again to celebrate with gratefulness the fulfillment of the promise made when the world was young," he said. "We do well to be thankful, but I think humility becomes us too. While we doubted the sun and the rain have been with us for a sign that, though men grow faint-hearted and spare their toil, seed-time and harvest shall not fail."
It was the first time Colonel Barrington had spoken in quite that strain, and when he paused a moment there was a curious stillness, for those who heard him noticed an unusual tremor in his voice. There was also a gravity that was not far removed from sadness in his face when he went on again, but the intentness of his retainers would have been greater had they known that two separate detachments of police troopers were then riding toward Silverdale.
"The year has brought its changes, and set its mark deeply on some of us," he said. "We cannot recall it, or retrieve our blunders, but we can hope they will be forgiven us and endeavor to avoid them again. This is not the fashion in which I had meant to speak to you tonight, but after the bounty showered upon us I feel my responsibility. The law is unchangeable. The man who would have bread to eat or sell must toil for it, and I, in disregard of it, bade you hold your hand. Well, we have had our lesson, and we will be wiser another time, but I have felt that my usefulness as your leader is slipping away from me. This year has shown me that I am getting an old man."
Dane kicked the foot of a lad beside him, and glanced at the piano as he stood up.
"Sir," he said simply, "although we have differed about trifles and may do so again, we don't want a better one--and if we did we couldn't find him."
A chord from the piano rang through the approving murmurs, and the company rose to their feet before the lad had beaten out the first bar of the jingling rhythm. Then the voices took it up, and the great hall shook to the rafters with the last "Nobody can deny."
Trite as it was, Barrington saw the darker flush in the bronzed faces, and there was a shade of warmer color in his own as he went on again.
"The things one feels the most are those one can least express, and I will not try to tell you how I value your confidence," he said. "Still, the fact remains that sooner or later I must let the reins fall into younger hands, and there is a man here who will, I fancy, lead you farther than you would ever go with me. Times change, and he can teach you how those who would do the most for the Dominion need live to-day. He is also, and I am glad of it, one of us, for traditions do not wholly lose their force and we know that blood will tell. That this year has not ended in disaster irretrievable is due to our latest comrade, Lance Courthorne."
This time there were no musical honors or need of them, for a shout went up that called forth an answering rattle from the cedar paneling. It was flung back from table to table up and down the great room, and when the men sat down, flushed and breathless, their eyes still shining, the one they admitted had saved Silverdale rose up quietly at the foot of the table. The hand he laid on the snowy cloth shook a little, and the bronze that generally suffused it was less noticeable in his face. All who saw it felt that something unusual was coming, and Maud Barrington leaned forward a trifle, with a curious throbbing of her heart.
"Comrades! It is, I think, the last time you will hear the term from me," he said. "I am glad that we have made and won a good fight at Silverdale, because it may soften your most warranted resentment when you think of me."
Every eye was turned upon him, and an expression of bewilderment crept into the faces, while a lad who sat next to him touched his arm reassuringly.
"You'll feel your feet in a moment, but that's a curious fashion of putting it," he said.
Winston turned to Barrington, and stood silent a moment. He saw Maud Barrington's face showing strained and intent, but less bewildered than the others, and that of her aunt, which seemed curiously impassive, and a little thrill ran through him. It passed, and once more he only saw the leader of Silverdale.
"Sir," he said, "I did you a wrong when I came here, and with your convictions you would never tolerate me as your successor."
There was a rustle of fabric as some of the women moved, and a murmur of uncontrollable astonishment, while those who noticed it, remembered Barrington's gasp. It expressed absolute bewilderment, but in another moment he smiled.
"Sit down, Lance," he said. "You need make no speeches. We expect better things from you."
Winston stood very still. "It was the simple truth I told you, sir," he said. "Don't make it too hard for me."
Just then there was a disturbance at the rear of the room, and a man, who shook off the grasp of one that followed him, came in. He moved forward with uneven steps, and then, resting his hand on a chair back, faced about and looked at Winston. The dust was thick upon his clothes, but it was his face that seized and held attention. It was horribly pallid, save for the flush that showed in either cheek, and his half-closed eyes were dazed.
"I heard them cheering," he said. "Couldn't find you at your homestead. You should have sent the five hundred dollars. They would have saved you this."
The defective utterance would alone have attracted attention, and, with the man's attitude, was very significant, but it was equally evident to most of those who watched him that he was also struggling with some infirmity. Western hospitality has, however, no limit, and one of the younger men drew out a chair.
"Hadn't you better sit down, and if you want anything to eat we'll get it you," he said. "Then you can tell us what your errand is."
The man made a gesture of negation, and pointed to Winston.
"I came to find a friend of mine. They told me at his homestead that he was here," he said.
There was an impressive silence, until Colonel Barrington glanced at Winston, who still stood quietly impassive at the foot of the table.
"You know our visitor?" he said. "The Grange is large enough to give a stranger shelter."
The man laughed. "Of course he does; it's my place he's living in."
Barrington turned again to Winston, and his face seemed to have grown a trifle stern.
"Who is this man?" he said.
Winston looked steadily in front of him, vacantly noticing the rows of faces turned towards him under the big lamps. "If he had waited a few minutes longer, you would have known," he said. "He is Lance Courthorne."
This time the murmurs implied incredulity, but the man who stood swaying a little with his hand on the chair, and a smile in his half-closed eyes, made an ironical inclination.
"It's evident you don't believe it or wish to. Still, it's true," he said.
One of the men nearest him rose and quietly thrust him into the chair.
"Sit down in the meanwhile," he said dryly. "By and by, Colonel Barrington will talk to you."
Barrington thanked him with a gesture, and glanced at the rest. "One would have preferred to carry out this inquiry more privately," he said, very slowly, but with hoarse distinctness. "Still, you have already heard so much."
Dane nodded. "I fancy you are right, sir. Because we have known and respected the man who has, at least, done a good deal for us, it would be better that we should hear the rest."
Barrington made a little gesture of agreement, and once more fixed his eyes on Winston. "Then will you tell us who you are?"
"A struggling prairie farmer," said Winston quietly. "The son of an English country doctor who died in penury, and one who from your point of view could never have been entitled to more than courteous toleration from any of you."
He stopped, but, for the astonishment was passing, there was negation in the murmurs which followed, while somebody said, "Go on!"
Dane stood up. "I fancy our comrade is mistaken," he said. "Whatever he may have been, we recognize our debt to him. Still, I think he owes us a more complete explanation."
Then Maud Barrington, sitting where all could see her, signed imperiously to Alfreton, who was on his feet next moment, with Macdonald and more of the men following him.
"I," he said, with a little ring in his voice and a flush in his young face, "owe him everything, and I'm not the only one. This, it seems to me, is the time to acknowledge it."
Barrington checked him with a gesture. "Sit down, all of you. Painful and embarrassing as it is, now we have gone so far, this affair must be elucidated. It would be better if you told us more."
Winston drew back a chair, and when Courthorne moved, the man who sat next to him laid a grasp on his arm. "You will oblige me by not making any remarks just now," he said dryly. "When Colonel Barrington wants to hear anything from you he'll ask you."
"There is little more," said Winston. "I could see no hope in the old country, and came out to this one with one hundred pounds a distant connection lent me. That sum will not go very far anywhere, as I found when, after working for other men, I bought stock and took up Government land. To hear how I tried to do three men's work for six weary years, and at times went for months together half-fed, might not interest you, though it has its bearing on what came after. The seasons were against me, and I had not the dollars to tide me over the time of drought and blizzard until a good one came. Still, though my stock died, and I could scarcely haul in the little wheat the frost and hail left me, with my worn-out team, I held on, feeling that I could achieve prosperity if I once had the chances of other men."
He stopped a moment, and Macdonald poured out a glass of wine and passed it across to him in a fashion that made the significance of what he did evident.
"We know what kind of a struggle you made by what we have seen at Silverdale," he said.
Winston put the glass aside, and turned once more to Colonel Barrington.
"Still," he said, "until Courthorne crossed my path, I had done no wrong, and I was in dire need of the money that tempted me to take his offer. He made a bargain with me that I should ride his horse and personate him, that the police troopers might leave him unsuspected to lead his comrades running whisky, while they followed me. I kept my part of the bargain, and it cost me what I fancy I can never recover, unless the trial I shall shortly face will take the stain from me. While I passed for him your lawyer found me, and I had no choice between being condemned as a criminal for what Courthorne had in the meanwhile done, or continuing the deception. He had, as soon as I had left him, taken my horse and garments, so that if seen by the police they would charge me. I could not take your money, but, though Courthorne was apparently drowned, I did wrong when I came to Silverdale. For a time the opportunities dazzled me; ambition drew me on, and I knew what I could do."
He stopped again, and once more there was a soft rustle of dresses, and a murmur, as those who listened gave inarticulate expression to their feelings. Moving a little, he looked steadily at Maud Barrington and her aunt, who sat close together.
"Then," he said, very slowly, "it was borne in upon me that I could not persist in deceiving you. Courthorne, I fancied, could not return to trouble me, but the confidence that little by little you placed in me rendered it out of the question. Still, I saw that I could save some at least at Silverdale from drifting to disaster, and there was work for me here which would go a little way in reparation, and now that it is done I was about to bid you good-by, and ask you not to think too hardly of me."
There was a moment's intense silence until once more Dane rose up, and pointed to Courthorne sitting with half-closed eyes, dusty, partly dazed by indulgence, and with the stamp of dissolute living on him, in his chair. Then he glanced at Winston's bronzed face, which showed quietly resolute at the bottom of the table.
"Whatever we would spare you and ourselves, sir, we must face the truth," he said. "Which of these men was needed at Silverdale?"
Again the murmurs rose up, but Winston sat silent, his pulses throbbing with a curious exultation. He had seen the color creep into Maud Barrington's face, and her aunt's eyes, when he told her what had prompted him to leave Silverdale, and knew they understood him. Then, in the stillness that followed, the drumming of hoofs rose from the prairie. It grew louder, and when another sound became audible too, more than one of those who listened recognized the jingle of accoutrements. Courthorne rose unsteadily, and made for the door.
"I think," he said, with a curious laugh, "I must be going. I don't know whether the troopers want me or your comrade."
A lad sprang to his feet, and as he ran to the door called "Stop him!"
In another moment Dane had caught his arm, and his voice rang through the confusion as everybody turned or rose.
"Keep back all of you," he said. "Let him go!"
Courthorne was outside by this time, and only those who reached the door before Dane closed it heard a faint beat of hoofs as somebody rode quietly away beneath the bluff, while as the rest clustered together, wondering, a minute or two later, Corporal Payne, flecked with spume and covered with dust, came in. He raised his hand in salutation to Colonel Barrington, who sat very grim in face in his chair at the head of the table.
"I'm sorry, sir, but it's my duty to apprehend Lance Courthorne," he said.
"You have a warrant?" asked Barrington.
"Yes, sir," said the corporal.
There was intense silence for a moment. Then the Colonel's voice broke through it very quietly.
"He is not here," he said.
Payne made a little deprecatory gesture. "We know he came here. It is my duty to warn you that proceedings will be taken against any one concealing or harboring him."
Barrington rose up very stiffly, with a little gray tinge in his face, but words seemed to fail him, and Dane laid his hand on the corporal's shoulder.
"Then," he said grimly, "don't exceed it. If you believe he's here, we will give you every opportunity of finding him."
Payne called to a comrade outside, who was, as it happened, new to the force, and they spent at least ten minutes questioning the servants and going up and down the house. Then as they glanced into the general room again, the trooper looked deprecatingly at his officer.
"I fancied I heard somebody riding by the bluff just before we reached the house," he said.
Payne wheeled round with a flash in his eyes. "Then you have lost us our man. Out with you, and tell Jackson to try the bluff for a trail."
They had gone in another moment, and Winston still sat at the foot of the table and Barrington at the head, while the rest of the company were scattered, some wonderingly silent, though others talked in whispers, about the room. As yet they felt only consternation and astonishment.