"I won't need it," Carter answered, and so took up the case.
Humorously allowing that Cummings had stepped off with the wrong foot,
that he and his fellows had no case in law, Carter went on, in short,
crisp sentences, to give the number of settlers on the old survey, the
acreage under cultivation and of newly broken ground, the lumbering
outlook in the spruce forests north of the Park Lands, the number of
tye-camps already there established, finishing with a brief description
of the rich cattle country the proposed line would tap.
Ten minutes had added themselves to the first while he was talking, but
the manager's gray glance had evinced no impatience. "Now," he
commented, "we have something to go on. The settlements alone would not
justify us in building, but with the lumber--and colonization
prospects--" He mused a while, then, after expressing regrets for the
haste that called him away, he said, "But if you will put all this and
other information into writing, Mr. Carter, I'll see what we can do."
"He's big, the old man." Nodding at the black trail of smoke, the agent
thus commented on his superior five minutes later. Then, indicating the
deputation which was making its jubilant way back to the clapboard
hotel, he said, "They ain't giving you all the credit, are they?"
Shrugging at the last remark, Carter answered the first. "He's a big
man, shorely. But, bless you"--he flipped a thumb at the
delegation--"they don't see it. Any of 'em is willing to allow that the
manager has had chances that didn't fly by his particular roost--just as
though the same opportunity hadn't been tweaking him by the nose this
last twenty years. There it lay, loose, loose enough for people to
break their shins on, till this particular man picked it up. He's big.
Puts me in mind of them robber barons you read of in history. Big,
powerful chaps, who trod down everything that came in their own way
while dealing out a rough sort of justice. There's a crowd"--he looked
at the agent interrogatively--"that haven't had what's coming to them.
In their times moral suasion, as the parsons call it, hadn't been
invented and folks were a heap blooded. A little bleeding once in a
while kept down the temperature, and I've always allowed that the barons
prevented a sight more murder than they did." Then, nailing his point,
he finished: "The historians fixed a cold deck for them like the one
they'll deal this general manager. But you can't stop the world. She
waggles in spite of them, and it's the big men that make her go. But
there! I must eat. What does your ticker say of the express?"
"Half an hour late. You'll just have nice time." And as he watched the
tall figure swinging across the tracks, the agent gave words to a
thought that was even then in the general manager's mind--"There's a
division superintendent going to seed on a farm."
Having made up ten minutes, however, the train rolled in while Carter
was still at dinner, and as--for some motive too subtle for even his own
definition--he had not mentioned her coming, Miss Helen Morrill had
become a subject of bashful curiosity to assembled Lone Tree before he
came dashing across the tracks. Apart from his size, sunburn, and
certain intelligence of expression, there was really nothing to
distinguish this particular young man from the people who, at home, were
not on her visiting-list, and if polite the girl turned rather a cold
ear to a magnificently evolved and smoothly told set of lies as he
escorted her over to the hotel. Morrill was busy with the hay, and as
he, Carter, had to come to town for a mower casting he had agreed to
bring her out. Her brother was well! A bit delicate! He dare not
raise her hopes too high. Oh, he'd pull through! This clear northern
air--and so forth.
That clear northern air! Glowing with color, infinite, flat, the
prairies basked under the afternoon sun. From the car windows the girl
had seen them unfolding: the great screeds of God on which he had
written his wonders. Now nothing interposed between her and their vast
expanse. Swimming in lambent light they reached out through the
quivering distance till merged with the turquoise sky. After she had
dined, Carter showed her, from the hotel veranda, the train from which
she had dismounted, no larger than a toy, puffing defiance at a receding
horizon. Other things he told her--curious facts, strange happenings
drawled forth easily with touches of humor that kept her interested and
laughing. Not until the moon's magic translated the prairie's golden
sheen to ashes, and she unconsciously offered her hand as she rose to
retire, did she realize how completely she had cancelled her first
impression.
It was then that Lone Tree closed in on Carter with invitations to drink
and requests for verification of a theory that the northern settlement
was spreading itself on educational lines. "She's a right smart-looking
girl," said the store-keeper, its principal exponent, "and Silver Creek
is surely going to turn out some scholars."
But he clucked his sympathy when he heard the truth. "An' you say he's
having hemerrages? Shore, shore! Here, come over to the store. That
girl don't look like she'd been raised on sow-belly, an' sick folks is
mighty picky in their eating."
So, by moonlight, the buck-board was loaded up with jams, jellies,
fruits, and meats, the best in stock and of fabulous value at frontier
prices. While the evil deed was being perpetrated neither man looked at
the other. The store-keeper cloaked his villany by learned discourse of
freight rates, while Carter spoke indifferently of crops. Only the
parting hand-shake revealed each conspirator to the other.
*III*
*THE TRAIL*
"To make Flynn's for noon," Carter had said the preceding evening, "we
shall have to be early on the trail." And there was approbation in his
glance when he found Helen Morrill waiting upon the veranda.
"What pretty ponies!" she exclaimed, quickly adding, "Are they--tame?"
"Regular sheep," he reassured her.
However, she still dubiously eyed the "sheep," which were pawing the
high heavens in beliance of their pacific character, until, catching the
humorous twinkle in Carter's eye, she saw that he was gauging her
courage. Then she stepped in. As they felt her weight the ponies
plunged out and raced off down the trail; but Carter's arm eased her
back to her seat, and when, flushed and just a little trembling, she was
able to look back Lone Tree lay far behind, its grain-sheds looking for
all the world like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet. Over them, but
beyond the horizon, hung a black smudge, mark of a distant
freight-train. Wondering if one ever lost sight of things in this
country of distances, she turned back to the ponies, which had now found
a legitimate outlet for their energies, and were knocking off the miles
at ten to the hour.
Carter drew a loose rein, but she noticed that even when talking he kept
the team in the tail of his eye.
"Yes," he answered her question, "that Devil horse will bear watching,
and Death, the mare, is just about as sudden. Why did I name her that?"
He twinkled down upon her. "You mightn't feel complimented if I told."
"Well--if I must," he drawled when she pressed the question. "You see
there's two things that can get away with a right smart man--death and
woman. So, being a female--there! I told you that you wouldn't be
complimented."
"Oh, I don't mind," she laughed. "Like curses, slights on my sex come
home to roost, Mr. Carter. You are not dead yet."
"Nor married," he retorted.
This morning they had taken up their acquaintanceship where it was laid
down the night before, but now something in his manner--it was not
freedom; assurance would better describe it--caused a reversion to her
first coldness.
"Doubtless," she said, with condescension, "some good girl will take
pity on you."
He looked squarely in her eyes. "Mebbe--though the country isn't
overstocked. Still, they've been coming in some of late."
The suddenness of it made her gasp. How dare he? Even if he had been a
man of her own station! Turning, she looked off and away, giving him a
cold, if pretty, shoulder, till instinct told her that he was making
good use of his opportunities. But when she turned back he was
discreetly eying the ponies, apparently lost in thought.
His preoccupation permitted minute study, and in five minutes she had
memorized his every feature, from the clean profile to the strong chin
and humorous mouth. A clean, wholesome face she thought it. She failed,
however, to classify him for, despite his homely speech, he simply would
not fit in with the butchers, bakers, and candle-stick makers of her
limited experience. One thing she felt, and that very vividly: he was
not to be snubbed or slighted. So--
"Do we follow the railroad much farther?" she asked.
"A smart mile," he answered. Then, with a sidelong glance at the space
between them, he added, "I wouldn't sit on the rail."
"Thank you," she said, coldly. "I'm quite comfortable."
"Tastes differ," he genially commented. Then, stretching his whip, he
added, "See that wolf!"