"N-o! Morrill's?"
"Oh, let me see. One--two--three--take the third fork to the left and
second to the right; that ought to bring you--to your own door," he
finished, as he listened to the departing hoof-beats. "That is, if you
follow directions, which ain't likely. Anyway," he philosophically
concluded, "you ain't agoing to bother that girl much to-night."
Spurring Shyster, he galloped on, and in ten minutes caught Murchison,
an Englishman of the yeoman class, out at his stables. Receiving a
hearty affirmative, rounded out with full-mouthed English "damns," in
answer to his question, he declined Murchison's invitation to "put in,"
and rode on--rode from homestead to homestead, asking always the same
question, receiving always the same answer. Remittance-men, Scotch
Canadians, Seebach, the solitary German settler, alike listened,
laughed, and fell in with the plan as Flynn had done. He covered many
miles and the moon caught him on trail before he permitted the last man
to carry his cold legs back to bed. It was long past midnight when he
unsaddled at Morrill's stable.
Softly closing the door on his tired beast, he stood gazing at the
house. Far-off in the woods a night-owl hooted, a bittern boomed on the
lake shore, the still air pulsed to the howl of a timber-wolf. Though
born of the plains, its moods had never palled upon him. Usually he had
been stirred. But now he had no ears for the night nor eyes for the
lake chased in rippled silver. He listened, listened, as though his
strained hearing would drag the girl's soft sleep breathing from the
house's jealous embrace. Soon he leaned back against the door musing;
and when, having inspected the cabin from one side, the moon sailed over
and looked down on the other, he was still there.
As the first quivering flushes shot through the grays of dawn Bender
came out of his cabin. He intended to be at work on Merrill's big
slough at sunrise. But as he rammed home the sickle into its place in
the mower-bar a projecting rivet caused it to buckle and break. That
spelled another journey to the blacksmith's, and the sun stood at noon
before the sickle was in place. Falling to oiling with savage
earnestness, that an ancient Briton might have exhibited in greasing his
scythe-armed war-chariot, Bender then stuffed bread and meat into his
jumper, hitched, and drove off north, looking for all the world like a
grisly pirate afloat on a yellow sea.
Half an hour's easy jogging would carry him to Merrill's big slough, but
on the way he had to pass two smaller ones. The first, which had a
hundred-yard belt of six-foot hay ringing its sedgy centre, tempted him
sorely, yet he refrained, having in mind a bigger prey. At the next he
reined in, and stared at a dozen cut swaths and a mower with feeding
horses tied to its wheels.
It was Molyneux's mower, and to Bender its presence could only mean that
the settlement was rushing the sick man's sloughs. "Invasion of the
British!" he yelled. "What 'll Carter say to this? Remember Yorktown!"
He was still laughing when a buck-board came rattling up the trail
behind him. It was Hines.
"Cut that slough yet?" he asked.
"Just going there," Bender answered; then gave the reason of his delay,
garnished with furious anathema on the maker of sickles. "But ain't
that a joke?" he said, indicating Molyneux's mower.
Hines whinnied his satisfaction. "Didn't think it was in the Britisher.
But my! won't that gall the long-geared son of a gun of a Yank? Drive
on an' I'll follow up an' see you started--mebbe see some of the fun,"
he added to himself, "if Carter's there."
Quarter of an hour brought them to the big slough, which, on this side,
was ringed so thickly with willow-scrub that neither could see it till
they reined on its edge. Both stared blankly. When Hines went by that
morning a mile of solid hay had bowed in sunlit waves before the breeze.
Save a strip some twenty yards wide down the centre, it now lay in flat
green swaths, while along the strip a dozen feeding teams were tied to
as many mowers.
"A bee, by G--!" Bender swore.
"Hell!" Hines snarled even in his swearing. "Bilked, by the Almighty!"
For a moment they stood, staring from the slough to each other, the
lumberman red, angry, foolish, Hines the personification of venomous
chagrin. Presently his rage urged him to a great foolishness.
"You an' your casting!" he sneered. "Scairt, you was--plumb scairt!"
Astonishment, the astonishment with which a bull might regard the attack
of an impertinent fly, obliterated for one moment all other expression
from Bender's face. Then, roaring his furious anger, he sprang from his
mower.
Realizing his mistake, Hines had already lashed his ponies, but even
then they barely jerked the buck-board tail from under the huge,
clutching fingers. Foaming with passion, Bender gave chase for a score
of yards, then stopped and shook his great fist, pouring out invective.
"To-morrow," he roared, "I'll come over and cut on you."
"What's the matter? You seem all het up?" Carter's quiet voice gave
Bender first notice of the buckboard that had come quietly upon him from
the grassy prairie. With Carter were Flynn, Seebach, and two others.
Not very far away a wagon was bringing others back from dinner.
"We're all giving Morrill a day's cutting," Carter went on, with a quiet
twinkle. "I called at your place this morning with a bid, but you was
away. We're right glad to see you. Who told you?"
Gradually a grin wiped out Bender's choler. "You're damn smart," he
rumbled. "Well--where shall I begin?"
*V*
*JENNY*
Thus did the bolt which Hines forged for Carter prove a boomerang and
recoil upon himself. For next morning Bender started his mower on a
particularly fine slough which Hines had left to the last because of its
wetness. Moreover, Hines had ten tons of cut hay bleaching near by in
the sun and dare not try to rake it.
It was oppressively hot the morning that Bender hitched to rake the
stolen slough; fleecy thunder-heads were slowly heaving up from behind
the swart spruce forest.
"'Twon't be worth cow-feed if it ain't raked to-day," the giant
remarked, as he overlooked his enemy's hay. Then his satisfaction gave
place to sudden anger--a rake was at work on Hines's hay less than a
quarter-mile away.
"Hain't seen me, I reckon," Bender growled. Leaving his own rake, he
crouched in a gully, skulked along the low land, gained a willow
thicket, and sprang out just as the rake came clicking by.
"Now I've got you!" he roared. Then his hands dropped. He stood
staring at a thin slip of a girl, who returned his gaze with dull, tired
eyes. It was Jenny Hines, Jed's only child.
"Well," Bender growled, "what d' you reckon you're doing?"
"Raking." Her voice was listless as her look. Just eleven when her
mother died, her small shoulders had borne the weight of Jed's
housekeeping. Heavy choring had robbed her youth, and left her, at
eighteen, nothing but a faded shadow of a possible prettiness.