He ignored the sarcasm. "--could not be happy together."

"Who said anything about your living together?"

The interruptions were most disconcerting, but he continued: "Now if

you, as her representatives, self-appointed or otherwise"--he could not

refrain from the sarcasm--"if you will name a sum--"

"_What?_"

Twenty rods away the camp now slept, steeped in the drug of labor--all

but the cook, who came running out of his tent and was thus witness of

the event. Looking up-stream, he saw them blackly silhouetted against

the moonlit sky, a shadow show, play of marionettes upon the bridge.

"Out of my way! Let go!"

Followed the swish and crack of Molyneux's whip, as he lashed Bender

over the face, then fell to flogging his horses. But stinging pain

freed in the giant those bulldog passions that had made him king of the

camps in other years. He hung on, while the plunging beasts drowned the

river's roar in thunder of iron hoofs. Unable to break his grip, they

reared--their smooth, elongated bodies conveying to the cook an odd

impression of slugs reaching upward through moonlit dew--then, stooping

quickly under the nigh beast, the mad giant took its full weight on his

shoulder and with a mighty heave sent team and rig crashing sideways off

the bridge.

A quick leap saved Molyneux--for the moment. All through the action had

moved with kinetoscopic quickness, and it accelerated so that the cook

could scarcely establish its sequence. Like an angry bull, Bender shook

the hair from his eyes; then, as he rushed, came a report; a puff of

smoke curled bluely up from Molyneux's hand; the giant thudded at length

on the bridge. Followed a yell, a piercing cry suitable to the animal

after which the Cougar was named. As Bender fell, he rushed. The pistol

spoke again. While the cook was running twenty yards, a black, furious

tangle writhed over the bridge, and as he came darting out from behind a

bunch of willow scrub he saw that it was gone. Bender lay alone under

the moonlight.

Now this was the cook of a lumber-camp, equivalent to saying that he was

a man of parts. He had cooked on B Contract, Superior Construction

Division of the Trunk Line, and so had seen a liberal sprinkling of his

grumblers go into the dump--a grisly foundation for track, surely yet

what better could the builders of the road desire than to be cradled

under the ties and sleep, sleep, sleep, to the thundering lullaby of the

fast express? Which intimacy with the pale terror is responsible for

his prompt action in these unusual premises. Molyneux's bullet had

merely grazed Bender's temple. He rose, staggering, as the cook made the

bridge, and, seeing that he was too sick and dizzy to handle the

situation, the latter took it into his own able hands.

As before mentioned, a drive camp sleeps in its boots, and the shots had

brought a score out from their sleep on a hunt for causes. "Man drove

offen the bridge!" he yelled. "An' Cougar went after him! They're both

under the drive! Scatter down-stream an' skin your eyes for bubbles!"

Thus, on the spur of the moment, the cook wrote history--as accurately,

perhaps, as the run of historians; for after the drive once closed

serried ranks over the struggling men, they were never seen again, so

none could rise with an opposing theory. When, a few days later, the

water was drawn off at the first dam, the horses floated out on the

shallows. But the men--? The river carried them to its secret places;

buried them in some scour or pothole, free at last, one of his

passions--the incubus of his generations--the other from his pain. That

night, if such things be, the Cougar was joined, after his years of

suffering, in perfect knowledge with his "little girl."

*XXI*

*PERSECUTION*

Yes, the cook made history, for though the event furnished gossip for

the ninety days which, on the lonely frontier, corresponds with the

world's nine days' wonder, his story was never questioned. The truth

lay buried between him and Bender, and if either visited her grave, it

was never in company with the other. Up to the time that delirium

tremens removed the cook from the snows of a Rocky Mountain camp to a

sphere where pots are said to boil with or without watching, Bender

never knew just how much or little he really knew.

To others the event appeared under varying complexions. Helen and Jenny

were shocked at Molyneux's death, the latter without astonishment,

though her firm belief that sin had at last received its full wage was

without trace of malignance; both were sorrier than they had any right

to be; and both mourned the Cougar. As for the settlers, they regarded

the affair rather in the light of a special dispensation of Providence.

Flocking to the auction of Molyneux's effects a month later, they

caballed against high bidding, paid for chattels they bought at

ridiculous prices in long-time notes, for that was the "Black Year," and

throughout Manitoba nothing could be sold for cash.

Poverty, sociologists tell us, is the mother of crime, and as those hard

times subsequently influenced the settlers in their attitude towards

Helen, they are surely worthy of mention. To begin, the country was

practically bankrupt. The frost of the preceding fall had left the

wheat useless, and but for the fact that the provincial government had

imported and distributed free seed, not an acre of grain would have been

sown that year. The seriousness of the crisis may be gauged by the

legislature's further action in enacting an exemption law that

practically excluded all of a farmer's goods and chattels from legal

execution. This was good, but in that it was not, nor could be made

retroactive, it benefited only the new-comers and left the pioneers, who

had spent their little all opening up the country, still liable to

foreclosure and execution.

On the northern settlers times had borne particularly hard. During boom

years all had assumed loan indebtedness, and whereas creditors had bided

patiently successive lean seasons on the chance of a branch railroad and

bumper crop, now that the country's credit, its very future was

trembling in the balance; implement-men and store-keepers raced with

twenty-per-cent. Shylocks to grab what they could from the wreck. That

spring the sheriff of Brandon was the busiest man in the country-side.

He and his deputies sowed summonses, executions, foreclosures broadcast

over the land. Wolves of the law, they harried the farmers till the

optimism of the brilliant emigration pamphlets was swamped, submerged

beneath inky pessimism. Small wonder that--coupled with idleness,

breeder of mischief, in the slack season that Glaves feared between

seeding and haying--small wonder that some of the rancor bred by hard

conditions should be vented upon Helen.

She may be said to have stood in an uncomfortable position as lightning

conductor between this cloud of spleen and the earth, upon which it

should have properly been discharged. And looking back, one may see the

storm gathering over her fair head, observing in its approach all of the

natural phenomena: first the cold wind, social disfavor, the whispers;

next, heavy drops thudding in the dust, the snubs and slights; lastly,

thunder, lightning, rain, downright persecution.

The whispers, of course, she did not hear, but she could not overlook

the difference in trail greetings, which were either far too warm or

much too cool, according to the years and disposition of the greeter.

Coldness was endurable, but the rude stares, conscious laughter of the

younger boors often caused her to fly the hot colors of angry shame.

Yet even this hurt less than the sudden, shy suspicion of her pupils.

Whereas they were wont to hang upon her skirts, they now held aloof in

play hours, and ran straight home from school.

"Mother says I'm not to walk with you any more," one tot explained her

haste. How that stung! Having only the faintest of ideas, little more

than a suspicion of the strength and nature of this uncomfortable

prejudice, she resented it as bitter injustice, and held a proud head

until a thing happened that almost broke her spirit.

Of all the settler women, Ruth Murchison was the one girl with whom

Helen had been, or could be, on anything like terms of intimacy. Quiet

and thoughtful, Ruth had gone through the English common schools, and

had taken the Junior Oxford Examination, to which passable education a

taste for good reading had formed a further bond. Wherefore Helen was

delighted when, one day, news drifted into the post-office that Ruth was

to be married to the Probationer, the young minister who preached

Merrill's funeral sermon.

Borrowing a beast from Glaves, she rode north one evening to offer

congratulations, and as the Murchisons lived several miles north of

Silver Creek Valley, night fell while she still lacked half a mile of

the homestead. From that distance the windows' yellow blaze advised of

fuss and busy preparation. Drawing nearer, voices, laughter, the whir

of an egg-beater, clatter of cooking-gear came down the trail merrily

freighting the dusk. Infected by the cheer, she gave a shrill halloa,

spurred to a gallop, and drew in at the door with a clatter of hoofs.

"Ruth! Oh, Ruth!" she called. "Ruth-y!"

Instantly the voices hushed, then, after an uncomfortable pause, she

heard Mrs. Murchison say, in thin, constrained tones, "Mrs. Carter is

out there, father."

Followed a shuffling, and the door opened revealing Murchison framed in

yellow light. Stout, robust, ruddy, with that mottled-beef English

complexion, he came of that stout yeoman stock whose twanging long-bows

sounded France's knell at Crecy and Poitiers, of that rich blood the

slow drainage of which to her colonies has left England flabby, ensemic,

flaccid. He had not wished to leave, but the motherland had become

industrial without further place for her yeoman. Over fields that were

enriched by the tilth of thirty Murchison generations, a thousand

factories were depositing soot and blighting acids. American wheat and

beeves had wiped out profits, while enormous rents ate up the farmer's

substance. So Murchison, England's best, had become partner in exile

with the remittance-men, her worst. Undoubtedly, there was no symptom of

remittance weakness in the scowl he turned on Helen.

Behind him Helen could see Ruth, red and embarrassed, hanging her head

over the egg-beater. A half-dozen girls and neighboring women, who had

come in to help in the baking and brewing, were exchanging meaning

glances across the table.

"Ruth? She's well," Murchison answered her question.

She knew what to expect now, but nerved herself to face the situation.

"Can't I see her?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Because she don't run with your kind."

"Oh, Mr. Murchison!"

He felt the heart sickness, yet glowered relentlessly, for it had been

the habit of his forebears to thrash their women into good behavior. He

itched to do it now for the good of her soul, but, lacking the power, he

growled:

"If you don't like it--keep better company."

If he had been alone, she would undoubtedly have challenged his reproach

and, while clearing herself in his eyes, have turned away future

trouble. But a titter from within fired her pride. "Very well, please

give her my congratulations." And turning she rode away.

Good-hearted as rough, Murchison stared after, stricken with sudden

compunction. He knew that she must have intended to stay the night, and

here she was a timorous woman riding out into the darkness. "Here!" he

shouted. "Come back!"

But she held on, eyes snapping, cheeks aflame, throat convulsed under

the strain of suppressing imminent hysteria. Beyond earshot she broke

down, venting her injured loneliness in broken speech between bursts of

sobbing. "They hate--me. Condemn me--because--my husband left me. It

wasn't my--fault--that is, altogether." She hastily corrected herself.

"Of course--I failed him. But I was--sorry--would have done better--if

he had--given me a chance. He's so stern--and stiff--" She would not

even let this undoubted truth pass unmodified. "But then--he thought I

didn't--love him. Perhaps I didn't--then. I was a little fool. But I

do! I do!" She stretched wild arms to the darkness. "I do! I do! I

do!" But the velvet night returned nothing to her embrace and she

collapsed, sobbing, upon the pony's neck. Still the cry did her good,

tided over hysteria, composed and quieted her so that she was able to

meet the trustee's glance of spectacled inquiry as she entered the

cabin.

Kindliness as well as curiosity inhered in his glance, for, besides the

cash and educational prestige which she had brought to his cabin, Jimmy

had come to like her for herself. The frost and grizzle of fifty

winters thawed under his smile as he threw a Winnipeg paper across the

table. "Catch! Just kem in. Yes, there's a story 'bout him. Now,

don't eat it."

Metaphorically, she did, indeed, devour the article, and while she read

the trustee watched with something of puzzled astonishment the lovely

tide that flowed out from the lace at her neck, and drowned her pale

creams to the roots of her hair. He had ample opportunity for study as

the article was long. Just then Carter's line, with its promise of

competition, focussed the interest of the entire province, and some

enterprising scribe had risen to the opportunity afforded by a visit

west of the general manager of the trunk line, to interview him upon the

probable action of his road in proceedings to condemn a crossing of its

right of way. Time, however, had not abated one iota of the manager's

sphinx like quality. While affable, he had declined to discuss railroad

politics, remarking that his company did not "cross bridges before they

were built." Interviewed in his turn upon the significance of the

aforesaid remark, Carter had ventured the opinion that the trunk-line

people would not oppose the crossing, and thereby had provoked a flaming

editorial upon his artlessness.

"If the people behind Mr. Carter imagine that the greediest monopoly in

history will loose its grip on this province till the law's crowbar

pries off its fingers one by one, they are mightily mistaken," the

editor hotly declared. "Forewarned is forearmed, and we hereby present

them, gratis, with this piece of information--while they are running

their grades in peaceful confidence that will be most appropriate in the

innocent age when lion and lamb lie down together, the monopoly is

gathering men and means, preparing to crush their enterprise by force

should the crooked enginery of the law fail its purpose. Why else have

five hundred extra men been distributed among the sections on either

side of the proposed crossing? Why does a gravel-train stand there

permanently across the proposed right of way? Soon Mr. Carter will

receive unmistakable answer to these questions."

"He's dead right there, that editor man," the trustee said when, all

rosy red, Helen looked up from her reading. "Old Brass-Bowels was born

with a nateral insight into the nater of a dead cinch."

"But won't the law support my"--she paused, then proudly finished--"my

husband? Can't he compel a crossing?"

"The law?" Sniffing, Jimmy indicated the legal patchwork on the wall

with a comprehensive sweep of his pipe. "The law said as I was to pay

them, but did I? Humph!"

"But they'll hardly dare to fly in the face of the province? Public

opinion is a great moral force." She quoted a sentence from the

editorial with gusto.

"Yes, but 'tain't much of a club. Did you ever see one of my hawgs

stan' aside, even when he was full, to let another have a go at the

trough? Not till I hit him on the snout. Well, they ain't agoin' to

cross the trunk line these two years, an' for my part I don't care if

they never cross."

"Why?" Her eyes dilated widely. "Wouldn't a competing line benefit

you--all of the province?"

Nodding, he regarded her from half-shut eyes. "Oh, I ain't expecting to

walk on gold this side o' the pearly gates. As for my reasons, they

ain't a mile away from here. I'm not wishing too much success for a man

that deserts his wife."

Touched and very much flushed as to the face by his genuine, if crabbed

sympathy, the Reasons yet shook her head and spoke up for the recreant

husband stoutly as she had defended him against herself. She made,

however, small headway against his obduracy.

"Well, that's the way I see it. By-the-way," he added, heading off a

disposition for further argument, "did you see the evangelist? Pitched

his tent over by Flynn's. You want to go. Beats a three-ring circus

when old man Cummings hits up to his gait."

"Jimmy! Jimmy!" His wife looked up from her ironing; then daunted,

perhaps, by his twinkle, she addressed Helen. "He hadn't orter talk

that away, my dear. If Mr. Cummings does go on the rampage a bit when

he gets het up, at least he's sincere. As for him--" She turned a

severe eye on her husband. "We'll get him yet."

"Yes, I see myself. Her idea of heaven"--he shrugged at the

ironing-board--"is an eternal class-meeting with everybody giving their

experience--love-feast she calls it. I like something solider. Give me

plenty to eat, a pipe by a warm fire, an' something to read, an' I'll

sign away my harp an' crown." Ignoring his better-half's remark that he

would not lack the fire, he finished: "She's going. Wouldn't miss a

meeting. Kedn't keep her away with a club. So if you'd alike to see

some fun--"

"If 'twas jes' out of curiosity I'd ask her to stay at home," his wife

interrupted. "But she's not that kind, an' I'll be glad to take her."

"If you will?" Helen assented, and so, returning to the analogy, placed

herself directly beneath the leaden belly of the lowering storm.

*XXII*

*DENUNCIATION*

A molten sun was smouldering in the ashes of day when, the following

evening, Helen with Mrs. Glaves, drove up to the gospel-tent. It still

lacked half an hour of meeting-time, so, while her companion joined the

early arrivals who were passing time by holding a service of song

inside, Helen remained in the buckboard and watched the sunset, observed

herself by a group of remittance-men and a scattering of settler youths

who sprawled near by on the grass.

Enthralled, she scarcely saw them; had eyes only for the ruby sun that

stained the prairies with amber incandescences, the ribbed glories of

the fiery cloud pillars that seemed to uphold the darkling vault above.

As the orb slid into his blankets of rose and gold, shy stars peeped

down at the violet shadows that crawled slowly up the slopes and knolls;

over all fell the hush of evening.

It was one of the moments when the Riddle of Infinity, Puzzles of Time,

Space, Eternity appear as concrete though unthinkable realities; weigh

down and oppress the soul with a sense of its insignificance. Against

the black-blue vault the stars loomed as worlds; she could see beyond,

around them. Through vast voids planets were rushing on their courses;

suns with attendant systems swung on measured arcs obedient to--what?

... A thin minor, querulous plaint stole out on the hush:

"Poor crawling Worm of Earth,

A Child of Sin am I--"

It was an honest attempt at the riddle, but its incongruity, futile

insufficiency caused her to shrug with sudden annoyance. She wondered

if, somewhere in planetary space, other "pinches of sentient dust" were

equally afflicted with a sense of their central importance in the scheme

of things. The apologetic whine spoiled the sunset; she impatiently

turned to watch the arrivals--the wagons, buck-boards, horsemen--that

were streaming in on every trail.

"How are you, Mrs. Carter?"

It was Danvers, Molyneux's old pupil. An honest lad and merry, she

always liked him, and now made him welcome to the seat beside her, and

laughed at his fire of chaff. Indicating Cummings, whose ovine

expression had sustained no diminution since the day he bearded the

general manager, he remarked: "He's great, Mrs. Carter; puts it all over

Henry Irving. And there's the sky pilot! What a Jovelike port!"

There was, of course, little wit and less humor in his chaff, but his

intentions were honorable, so, ignoring the sour looks of the arriving

settlers, she gave him smiling attention up to the moment they entered

the tent together, and so prepared the way for what followed. For

though, going in, she left levity without, her modest and devout bearing

could not mitigate her offence in allying herself with the English

Ishmael. It was aggravated, moreover, by her remaining with him in

close proximity to the remittance crowd on the back benches. Thereafter

nothing could save her; she remained a target for sour glances

throughout the service.

This was on the usual pattern--rousing hymns, prayer, testimony, and

exhortation--then when groans and ejaculations testified to the

spiritual temperature, the evangelist, a stout man of bull-like build,

proceeded to cut off yards of the "undying worm," and to measure bushels

of the "fire that quencheth not" for the portion of such as refused to

view the problems of Infinity through aught but his own wildly gleaming

spectacles. His discourse, indeed, bristled with those cant terms which,

while entirely devoid of meaning, are still eminently conducive of

religious hysteria, and his efforts were the more successful because of

the absence of the Probationer, a thoughtful young fellow whose rare

common-sense could be depended upon to prevent religious emotion from

degenerating into epilepsy.

Lacking his wholesome presence, the evangelist paced the platform under

the yellow lantern-light, stretching long, black arms, hovering over the

people like some huge, dark bird as he pleaded, threatened, thundered,

launching his fiery periods on a groaning wave of "amens" and

"hallelujahs." As he went on, painting heaven and hell into his lurid

scheme of things, sighs and exclamations grew in volume, flooding

feeling pulsed through the audience, wild settler youths, who had come

to scoff, exchanged uneasy glances on the back benches, sure sign of a

coming stampede.

This was the psychological moment, and, skilled in his trade, the

revivalist pounced upon it. Stilling the groaning chorus with upheld

hand, he solemnly invited all who were not _against_ the Lord Jesus to

stand, an old revival trick and one which now, as always, turned. For,

as before said, the plains were not yet infected with the leprosy of

agnosticism, and, Episcopalians to a man, even the Englishmen were not

willing to pose as the open enemies of God.

Once standing and pilloried in the public eye, it was but a question of

minutes until the back benches began to yield up penitents. One by one

the settler youths were gathered into the mourning bench, until at last

Helen stood alone with the Englishmen.

"Come ye! Come ye to the Lord!" The preacher pleaded, but, haughty and

coldly constrained, the remittance-men ignored the invitation; and so,

for the space of a thunderous hymn of praise, gnostic civilization and

the fervid frontier faced each other across the middle benches. From

that dramatic setting anything might come. Moment, feeling, atmosphere,

all pointed to the event that came to pass as the hymn died.

Leaping upon a bench, and so adding its height to unusual tallness, a

woman pointed a warning hand at the unbelievers. Thin, family-worn, and

naturally cadaverously yellow, she was now flushed with the fever of

delirium. "In that day," she screeched, "the Tares shall be separated

from the Wheat and cast with the grass into the oven!" Then, while her

finger indicated man after man, she raised the grewsome hymn:

"'I heard the Sinners Wailing, Wailing, Wailing,

I heard the Sinners Wailing on that Great Day!'"

Travelling around the benches, her skinny finger finally fastened on

Helen, and, as the lugubrious refrain came to an end, she burst forth in

tremendous paraphrase: "Beware ye of the Scarlet Woman! Avoid ye, for

her portals lead down to Death; her feet take hold of Hell!"

The silence of paralysis followed. So still it was that a mosquito's

thin whine sounded through the tent, the tinkle of a cow-bell came in

from far pastures, a dog could be heard barking a long way off.

Swinging from the tent-pole, a circle of lanterns lit dark, flushed

faces, and thus, for the space of a long breath, Helen faced the virago,

the one glowering, malignant, the other pale with astonishment, mutely

indignant. She was not confused. On the contrary, thought and vision

were surprisingly clear; she noted Mrs. Glaves's shocked look, the

vindictive settler faces, the Englishmen's blank expressions.

"We had better go. May I drive home, Mrs. Carter?" Danvers, the

witless, the foolish, rose to the situation.

Low-pitched, his voice yet carried to every ear, as did her clear reply:

"After the service is over."

It was defiance as well as answer, and as she threw it in the lowering

face of the congregation, her glance fixed on the evangelist who, till

then, had stood, mouth open, hand arrested midway of a gesture, a

bearded, spectacled effigy of ridiculous surprise. Starting under her

pale scorn, he flushed, looked for a second through shining, bewildered

glasses, then strode forward and seized the virago's arm.

"Sister, sister! Judge not that ye be not judged!" Then, himself

again, he swept a pudgy hand over the benches. "Sit down, all! Brother

Cummings will lead in prayer."

It mercifully happens that sudden calamity carries its own anaesthetic

in that it blinds, confuses, destroys feeling, numbs the faculties that

ought to register its importance. Under Helen's unnatural calmness she

was dimly conscious of a sick excitement, but this was unrelated with

her thought. She saw and sensed as usual; was aware of curious backward

glances, the sympathy of the Englishmen at her side; heard every word of

Cummings's sputtering prayer, the following hymn and benediction; only

her mind refused commerce with these things. Divorced from the present,

it juggled the terms of an equation in that day's lesson up to the

moment that the remittance-men came crowding about Danvers' rig after

the meeting.

Aside from their looseness and general inefficiency, the lads were brave

enough, and though some of them had won or lost bets on her reputation,

winners were no more eager than losers to avenge the insult that had

been provoked by her association with themselves.

"Just say the word, Mrs. Carter," Danvers pleaded, "and we'll lick the

crowd."

"And put a head on the preacher," young Poole added, sinfully licking

his chops.

From the darkness that enveloped the press of rigs and wagons rose

jeering voices, sneers, laughter, the conscious cackle of scandal.

Several times she heard her own name. There was provocation and to

spare, but though a word would have started a racial riot, she desired

only solitude, to flutter home like a wounded bird to its nest.

"No, no!" she answered them. "Take me home! Only take me home!"

Arrived there, she flew to her own room leaving Danvers to enlighten the

trustee. Lying face down on her bed, she heard the rumble of their

conversation, Jimmy's violent reflections upon revivals particular and

general, his wife's whimpering protests when she returned. His growl

extended far into the night, and when it was finally extinguished by a

robust snoring, the girl was afflicted with a sense of lost

companionship; thereafter she had to suffer it out by herself.

There would be more pain than profit in describing her reflections,

agonizings. Sufficient to know that a knife in the breast hurts a woman

less than a stab at her reputation, and her thought was none the sweeter

for the knowledge that she had drawn the blow by giving way to her

pique. Her resolve as expressed next morning to Jimmy Glaves is of more

concern.

She had turned impatiently from Mrs. Glaves's tearful apologies, but

when the old trustee laid a kindly hand on her shoulder, as she passed

him in the garden on her way to school, she gave him honest eyes.

"Now, you ain't to bother. 'Twas on'y Betsy Rodd, the old harridan.

Nobody minds her."

But she shook her head in accordance with her resolution to face truth.

"She was expressing what was in everybody's minds. I know it, and

though I didn't intend it, I'm partly to blame, for their suspicion."

Her mouth drew thin and firm as she finished. "I shall live it down."

"Course you will!" he heartily agreed. "That's my brave girl!" But his

face darkened after she had passed on, and he slowly wagged a grave head

as he plied his hoe in the garden.

For he knew the difficulty, impossibility of the task she had marked out

for herself. Of Scotch descent, dogmatic, wedded to convention, intense

clannishness reinforced in the settlers bitter morality, racial hatred,

the condemnation of sin. With them the offence of the fathers was

visited upon the children to the fourth generation. It was remembered,

for instance, against Donald Ross that his great-grandfather had died a

drunkard, and the fact had limited his choice of a wife; the daughters

of Hector MacCloud took inferior husbands because their grandmother had

been born on the easy side of the knot. Handing such cold charity

around among themselves, what mercy were they likely to extend to the

suspected stranger within their gates? Jimmy was still wagging his head

when, half an hour later, the Probationer reined in at the end of the

garden.

Hearing of the scandal on the Lone Tree trail, the young man had turned

aside to express his sorrow, and now listened patiently while the

trustee drew invidious parallels between the religious movement then

proceeding and his own misfit horticulture. "You see them?" Removing

his pipe from between his teeth, he waved it at some half-dozen

straggling apple-shoots. "Hardiest variety of Siberian crabs.

Professor at the gove'nment experimental station warranted 'em to grow

at the north pole. Remind me of your revival, they do."

"Why? Don't they grow?" The Probationer smiled.

"Grow? I should swan! four feet every summer, an' freeze off to the

roots every winter--jes' like your converts. Get all het up at

meetings, blossom with grace, then comes the backsliding, the frost, an'

nips the leafage. Where's the sense of it?"

Now the Probationer had his own doubts. Having turned a prentice hand

at revival work, he was painfully familiar with its characteristic

phenomena--first, hot enthusiasm, slow cooling, obstinate adherence to

the form after the spirit has fled, finally the reaction which would

leave his people less charitable, not quite so kindly, a little poorer

in the things which make for the kingdom of Christ on earth. He had

tried to be a real shepherd to his flock--to upraise by precept,

example, counsel, and admonition. Avoiding dogma, he had brought them

together irrespective of cult and creed on the broad basis of love and a

common humanity, and just when he was beginning to expect fruit from

that liberal sowing, this bitter theologian, the revivalist, had been

loosed upon him. And this was first fruit of his work!

Jimmy's illustration coincided exactly with his own experience, yet

fealty to his Church demanded some sort of defence. "Isn't an annual

growth better than none?" he asked. "The green shoots certainly improve

the appearance of your garden."

Jimmy blew a derisive cloud over the few cabbages, two sickly

cauliflowers, a bed of onions, salvage from worms and spring frost of

half an acre's planting. "But you don't get results. One sound cabbage

is worth an acre of sick saplings; a cheerful sinner discounts a hundred

puckered saints. I'm scairt as the black knot has got inter that

orchard o' yourn, sir?"

"I'm afraid so," the young fellow sadly agreed. "Well, I must try and

prune it out."

"I'd advise the axe," Jimmy grimly commented. "An' begin with Betsy

Rodd."

Sorrowing, the Probationer drove on to the school, where a very cold

young lady answered his call at the door. A slant of sunshine struck in

under the porch twining an aureole about her golden head, creating an

auriferous nimbus for her shapely figure. Standing there, so cold and

pale, she might have passed for a statue of purity, and the Probationer,

being young and still impressionable albeit engaged, wondered that any

should have dared to doubt her. Thawing when he mentioned Ruth, she

froze again as soon as he touched, apologetically, upon the event of the

night before.

"If religion strips them of common charity, they would be better without

it," she answered his apology, and turned but a cold ear to his plea for

his people.

"They were altogether subject to emotion, incapable of a reasoned rule

of life," he said. "With the fear of God removed from their hearts,

they would drop to unmentionable levels, to say nothing of the hope and

consolation religion brought to sweeten their hard lives."

But he made little headway. "I don't doubt they are not quite so bad as

they would like to be. But there, let us drop the subject. Won't you

come in and examine the children?"

From this conversation it will be seen that her resolve to "live it

down" was not exactly founded upon grounds that would appeal to a

professor of ethics; yet her attitude was very natural, and not so

deplorable as would at first appear. Was she so much to blame? Hardness

breeds hardness, opposition its like. Fire flies from the impact of

rock and iron. Always like begets like, heredity applies to mental

forces. Moreover, injured pride has stiffened more weak spines and given

better results than the command to turn the other cheek; the desire to

"show people" lies at the root of many a bravery. Lastly, once

rehabilitated socially, softness comes later to the injured member,

increasing in ratio to the respect of his or her community. And so it

would have been with Helen--with a different people.

*XXIII*

*THE CHARIVARI*

Straddling a log in his dooryard, the trustee whistled softly while he

whittled and shaped a pair of birch crooks into the ox-collars that,

with trace-chains, are preferred in the northland to the old-fashioned

bows and yoke. The revival was over. After passing from house to house

like measles, mumps, or other dark disease, infecting men on trail, by

fireside, at the plough-tail with the prejudice he styled religion, the

evangelist had reported so many head of "saved" to his superiors, and so

had swooped like a plague upon other settlements, leaving the

Probationer to repair, as best he might, his ravages in this. Now, two

weeks later, symptoms in Silver Creek indicated a quick recovery; extra

meetings had altogether ceased, bi-weekly prayer-meetings languished,

remarks at the plough-tail showed signs of former vigor; the sweat and

labor of haying would undoubtedly bring complete convalescence and, with

it, danger for Helen. For while the religious excitement had served her

by excluding all else from the settler mind, tongues would be the

sharper, prejudice the keener for the rest. It was but a lull in the

storm, the hush that follows the first flash and crash of thunder.

It was knowledge of this fact that inspired the trustee's thoughtful

whistling. Already he smelled trouble on the wind, the impression being

formed on many small significances--looks, nods, winks, and whispered

asides at "bees" and "raisings." More important: his cabin, which, as

post-office, had been a social focus, centre of news and gossip, a place

to linger and chat, had of late been almost deserted. Calling for their

mail, his neighbors departed with the shortest of salutations. So,

having had a gray eye on trouble through all, he was not surprised when

she presently appeared between Shinn and Hines in the latter's

buck-board. Indeed, his comment while they were still a hundred yards

away signified profound distrust. "Gummed if the coyotes ain't running

in packs this weather." His beetling brows, moreover, drew a grizzled

line across his hawk nose when the two reined in opposite; he glared

suspiciously while Hines glibly discoursed on crops, weather, the

ox-collars; nor hesitated to interrupt and reach for trouble's forelock.

"Crops is fair to middling, nothing wrong with the hay, the crooks is

for Flynn--now, what is it?"

Hines blinked and looked silly, but the check worked oppositely on

Shinn. Of that gaunt, raw-boned, backwoods type produced by generations

of ineffable hardship and slavish labor, he stood over six feet, and

combined great strength with mean ferocity and uncontrollable passion.

His huge mouth twitched feverishly as he answered, "Sence you're so

pressing--it's the talk through the settlement that we orter have a new

teacher."

"Umph!" Grunt could not convey greater contempt. "Hain't you got a

teacher?"

"Yes, but it's agreed that she ain't quite the sort to put over

innercent children."

This time the trustee snorted, "Might infect them brats o' yourn with

her sweet manners, eh?"

Shinn flushed dully under his yellow skin. "That or something else.

Anyway, every one's agreed that she's gotter go."

"Who's everybody?"

"Meeting, held at my place." Recovering, Hines backed up his partner.

"Yes? First I heard of it. Was Flynn there? Thought not; he ain't much

of a mixer. Didn't ask me, did you?"

Hines shuffled uneasily. "'Twas held after a prayer-meeting--you might

ha' been there."

"Prayer-meeting, eh? Real Christian, wasn't it, to try and take the

bread out of a good girl's mouth?"

"_Good?_"

At Hines's sneer the trustee rose, hand gripping hard on a heavy crook,

eyes one gray glare under ragged brows, temple veins ridged and swollen.

"I said 'good.'"

On the frontier a man must usually furnish material proof of courage,

but there are exceptions from whom imminent fearlessness distils as an

exhalation affecting all who come within its atmosphere. Carter was

such a one; Glaves another. Though neither had found it necessary to

"make good" physically during the settlement's short history, their

ability to do so was never at question. Behind the reserve of one,

crabbed sarcasm of the other, danger lay so close to the surface that it

was always felt, could never be quite forgotten. Indeed, as regards

Glaves, the feeling took form in the opinion often delivered when the

qualities of men were under discussion--"If the old man ever gets

started, some one will earn a quick funeral." Now Hines quailed, and

even the truculent Shinn observed silence.

Glaring on the shrinking Hines, the trustee went on: "Never forgot how

Carter bluffed you out on that hay business, did you? An' as you wasn't

man enough to get back at him, you 'lowed to take it out of his wife?

Well, you ain't going to. You kin go back an' tell them that sent you

that so long as Flynn an' me sit on the board she'll teach this school."

"That," Shinn retorted, "would be till nex' election, but she won't stay

that long. Sence you're so stiff about it, Glaves, let me tell you that

you kain't fly in the face of this settlement. You may be big wolf, but

there's others in the pack. If she's here at the end of the

month--there'll be something doing." Nodding evilly, he drove on,

leaving the trustee to puzzle over his meaning as he shaped and polished

the crooks.

"Bluffing, I reckon," he concluded, and that, also, was the opinion of

Flynn, to whom he carried his doubts that evening.

"There'll be no way for thim spalpeens to fire us av the boord?" Flynn

queried. "No? Phwat about an opposhition school?"

"Agin the law to build one in this township."

"Thin 'tis all out av the big mouth av Shinn. Thalk, an' nothing more."

Both were confirmed in their opinion when the month drew to a peaceful,

if hot, end. Tricked out in various green, woods and prairies slumbered

or sighed restlessly under torrid heat that extracted their essential

essences, weighting the heavy air with intense odors of curing grasses.

There was nothing to indicate that the virulent tide of spleen was ready

to burst its banks. Knowing that another week would bring on haying,

with its attendant wars to provide an outlet for feeling, neither

trustee anticipated the event which occurred at the full of the moon.

Though the storm broke around Glaves's cabin, Flynn received immediate

notice. In pleasant weather he and his wife would sit on their doorstep

after the children were in bed, to enjoy the quiet hour while the peace

and cool charmed away the cares of the day; and this night was

particularly beautiful. Over dewlit plains the moon emptied a flood of

silver and polished the slough beyond the dooryard till it shone like

burnished steel. Rolling off and away under that tender light, the huge

earth waves seemed to heave, swell, sigh as a lover's bosom under the

sweet eyes of his mistress, while from the corrals near by issued the

heavy breathing of contented kine. Always music in the ears of a

farmer, it stimulated Flynn, set him planning for the future; but he had

hardly touched on next year's increase before Mrs. Flynn seized his arm.

"Phwat's that?"

At first Flynn thought that Glaves was "dogging" stray cattle away from

his grain-fields, but when the iron note of beaten pans, gunshots,

metallic thundering were added to the first clash of cow-bells, he

sprang up. "A charivari! At Glaves's! A spite charivari!"

"Oh, my God, Flynn!" his wife exclaimed. "That poor girl!" She knew

what that orgy of sound portended. A jest at weddings, the charivari was

sometimes used as a sinister weapon to express communal dislike or

punish suspicion of sin. The most terrible memory of her girlhood was

associated with a party of fiercely moral backwoodsmen that flogged a

man at her father's wagon-tail and dragged a woman, who had offended

public morals, naked and screaming through a field of thistles. In

Silver Creek were men who had participated in that cruelty, forced to

emigrate to escape the law. Small wonder that she agonized under the

thought. "Flynn! Flynn, man! Hurry, get your horse!"

Holding the light for him to saddle, she called after as he rode away:

"Go round be Misther Danvers'! 'Tis on'y a mile out av your way! Going

by here at noon, himself told me that he was to have a sthag-party the

night! They'll jump at the chance, an' fight none the worse for a

smhell av the whiskey!"

A cold, with complications in the shape of rheumatic pains, sent the

trustee early to bed that evening, and Helen was sewing by the fire with

Mrs. Glaves when the charivari turned loose outside. As, jumping up,

they stood staring at one another, he shouted for them to bolt the door;

and as, after complying, Helen returned to the fire he came limping out,

bent, warped, and twisted by sciatica, half dressed, but grimly

resolute.

"Danger?" he rasped, swinging round on his wife as the house trembled

under sudden thunder of scurrying hoofs outside. "Listen!" And when

pained bellows followed dropping shots, he added: "Peppering the cattle.

Scairt? Then go an' stick your fool head under a pillow. How is it with

you?"

As a matter of fact, Helen's face was as white as the fluffy shawl from

which her golden head rose like a yellow crocus above soft spring snows;

but, noting the thin, scarlet line of her mouth, the trustee nodded his

satisfaction. "You'll do. Swing round that lounge--here, where I can

train a gun on the door. Good!" He eased his length along it with a

groan of relief. "Now hand me the gun--no, the other." Rehanging his

own long duck-gun upon its wooden pegs, she brought him the famous

double-barrelled Greener which, having disarranged the lock action in

trying to clean it, Danvers had left with the trustee for repairs.

"There, put out the light an' take a look out at the window."

Pulling the curtain aside, she got full benefit of the brazen clamor

while learning something of its genesis, for, while easily recognizable,

the din of beaten pans, cow-bells, gunshots, and yells formed only a

minor accompaniment to a barbarous metallic roll, louder than a corps of

beaten drums, and a discordant screech that discounted the torment of a

thousand tortured fiddles. Now she saw two men rapidly vibrating long

cross-cut saws back and forth against the house, while others drew a

rosined plank to and fro across a log, concentrating the discords of the

world into a single excruciating note. Closing her ears, she took

further note of the score of dark figures that came and went in the

moonlight, leaping, shouting, gesticulating strangely, as though crazed

by the frenzy of noise. Weird, sinister shapes, they moved, massed, and

melted to units again as in some mad carnival or distorted madman's

dream.

The trustee pulled her skirt. "Come away! They might shoot at the

window."

Obeying, she knelt beside him--fortunately with her back to the pane

that, a few minutes later, shivered and flew in fine rain. "Drunk!"

Glaves commented; and as a piercing cry, clever imitation of a cougar,

rang high over a slight lull, he said, "That's sure Bill MacCloud." He

grimly added--for, besides being dissolute, the man was a scoffer and

leader against religion: "Gosh! but the saints are keeping queer

company. Bill ain't more'n a mile 'way from his bottle."

After that one lull the tumult increased in loudness and volume, and for

a long half-hour Helen listened as some soft maid of Rome may have

hearkened to the din of Goth or ravaging Hun in the sacred streets of

the imperial city. To her, brought up under the shadow of law, with its

material manifestation--a policeman--always within call, the brutal

elemental passion behind that huge, amorphous voice was very terrible.

Almost equally fearful was the sudden cessation that set the silence

singing in her ears, the voiceless darkness, thick night of that black

room.

Touching the trustee, more for the comfort of his presence than to draw

his attention, she whispered, "What now?"

Just then the door rattled under a heavy kick; a strident voice answered

her question: "Open, Glaves, an' send out that ---- baggage" (it was a

viler word) "or we'll burn the house over your ears!"

"You will--" the trustee began, but was interrupted by a wail from his

wife in the bedroom.

"Jimmy! Oh, Jimmy, don't let 'em have her. They'll duck her in the

slough--mebbe drown her like they did Jenny Ross back in Huron."

"Will you shet up!" he roared, but the man outside had heard.

"You bet we will. She needs a little cooling."

"That's surely Mr. Shinn that's talking so fierce!" the trustee taunted.

"Man, but you're gaining a heap wolfish, though it did take you some

time to work up to the p'int of speech. Why didn't you take the

shortcut through Bill's bottle?" His tone suddenly altered from banter

to such stern command that they distinctly heard Shinn shuffle back a

step from the door. "Burn this house? Get, or I'll blow the black

heart out of you!"

A derisive yell rose outside, then silence fell again, a hush so

complete that Helen distinctly heard the tick of the clock, her own

breathing, the chirrup of a hearth cricket. Pulling the trustee's

sleeve, she whispered, "I've brought _such_ trouble upon you!"

"Rubbish!" he snapped. "Say that ag'in an' I'll spank you!" But he

gently patted her hand.

A minute slid by without further speech; a second, third, fourth, then

she whispered, "Surely they must have gone."

Before he could reply came a rapid beat of running feet, a splintering

crash, an oblong of moonlight flashed out of the darkness at the end of

the room, and quiet reigned again. Only the battering ram, a long log,

poked its blunt nose over the doorsill.

"Stand clear there!" the trustee sharply warned. Then, as a dim,

crouched figure appeared between the jambs, he shouted, "Fair warning!"

and fired; but as the figure fell back and out, a chuckling laugh

drifted through the smoke, Shinn's coarse voice yelled: "His gun's

single barrel! In, afore he kin reload!" and a black, surging mass

trampled over the dummy and filled the doorway. As aforeseen, the

conclusion was justified--the trustee's long gun was familiar as his

face in the settlement--and the click of Danvers' left trigger was

drowned by a second harsh command--"Fair warning!"

The report, thunderous, ear-splitting in the confined space, certified

to Shinn's mistake. His writhing mouth, Hines's wintry visage, the

press of men in the door showed redly under the flash, then sulphurous

darkness wiped out all. To Helen, its smothering pall seemed to pulse

with thick life, to extend clutching fingers, horrors that were

intensified by Mrs. Glaves's sudden burst of hysterical screaming.

Crouched behind Glaves, she listened in agony to the swearing, sharp

oaths, as men tripped and stumbled over the furniture and one another.

There was no escape. They were feeling for her all over the room, and

through a sick horror she heard Shinn's triumphant yell--

"I've got her!"

A choked gurgle, snarl of rage, as Glaves fastened onto his throat,

explained his mistake. "Hell! has no one a match?" His strangled voice

issued from a dark whorl, crash of splintering furniture, as they swung

and staggered in that pit of gloom. The struggle could have but one

ending. Healthy, Glaves would have been no match for Shinn, and, as a

match scratched, came the soft thud of his body as he was thrown with

brutal force against the wall.

Flaring up, the flame revealed Helen, white, trembling, sick with that

paralysis of fear that a mouse must feel in the claws of a cat. From

the bedroom came the hysterical whooping, terrible in its sameness.

Wide-eyed, she stared, fascinated, at Shinn, but he also was staring at

a body spread-eagled before the door, its face turned down in a black,

viscid, spreading pool. The match went out.

"My God!" a man cried. "It's Hines!"

But Helen did not hear that or a cry from outside warning of approaching

hoofs. Throughout the frenzy of noise, horror of darkness, suspense,

the attack, she had carried herself bravely; but this swift death,

following on all, broke her shaken nerves, deprived her of

consciousness.

The trustee, however, heard and saw the house vomit its black life, the

dark figures streaming under the moonlight out to the bluff where the

horses were tied, panic-stricken by sudden death and uneasy memories of

outraged law. Leaning in his doorway, bent and bruised, he saw also

Flynn and Danvers thunder by with a score of remittance-men, a wild

cavalcade hard on their heels. In the Irishman's hand a neck-yoke swung

with ominous rattle of iron rings; Danvers carried a cavalry sabre he

had snatched from his wall; the others brandished clubs. Looming an

instant in the steam of their sweating beasts, they shot on with a glad

hurrah.

"Yoicks! Tally-ho!" young Poole shrilled as he passed. "Sic 'em,

Flynn!"

"A Flynn! A Flynn!" Danvers squeaked as Shinn crumpled under the

neck-yoke.

Wild lads, under wilder leadership, they fought--as Mrs. Flynn had

predicted--none the worse for a smell at the whiskey. Those of the

enemy who made a slow mounting were ridden down, fell under the clubs,

or achieved uncomfortable leaps into briers and scrub, to be afterwards

caught and drubbed, while such as escaped were run down and brought to

bay by twos and threes. In a running fight over miles of moonlit

prairie the grudges of years were settled; jeers, gibes, many a cheating

received payment in full, with arrears of interest. Thus Cummings

received from Danvers the "boot" due on the mare that Carter once

described as being "blind, spavined, sweenied, an' old enough to

homestead," payment being slapped down upon the spot where most pain may

be inflicted with least structural damage. In like manner Poole settled

with Peter Rodd for a cannibalistic sow; Perceval with MacCloud, arrears

_not_ due on a quarter-section of scrub; Gray with Seebach for forty

bushels of heated seed wheat. Leaving them to their rough auditing, the

story returns with Flynn to the cabin after the dropping of Shinn.

After relighting the lamp, Glaves had carried his sore bones back to the

lounge, and when Flynn entered he found the terrible old fellow

glowering upon the dead. His wife's hysteria had slackened to a strained

sobbing, and, answering Flynn's question, he tartly replied: "No,

'tain't Mrs. Carter. Had her fainting-spell an' kem to without any

fuss, like a sensible girl. She's in there tending to that old fool."

Then, beetling again on the dead, he forecast the verdict of the

sheriff's jury. "Ye'll bear witness, Flynn, that this man kem to his

death through running into a charge of buckshot after my winder 'd been

shot in an' door battered down."

*XXIV*

*WITHOUT THE PALE*

"I really believe that I _ought_ to resign!"

When, one morning a week later, Helen delivered herself of certain

secret misgivings at breakfast, the trustee looked up, startled, from

his eggs and mush, then proceeded to fish for motives.

"Scairt? You needn't to be. We've got this settlement by the short

hairs at last."

His rude metaphor roughly set forth the truth. Without ties, the

bachelors of the charivari party had scattered west through the

territories, while Shinn, MacCloud, and other married men had gone into

such close hiding that the sheriff had been unable to subpoena one for

the inquest. But though she neither feared nor anticipated further

violence, Helen now knew that she never would be able to live down the

settlers' prejudice; and without the children's love, parents'

confidence, her day of usefulness was past.

Glaves snorted at this altruistic reason. "Love? Confidence? What's

their market value? You kedn't hope to compete with a dollar note for

the first; as for the second-- Danvers hit it off exactly when he stuck

that sign on his stable door--'No more trading here!' Now, from my

p'int of view, it isn't a question of love or confidence, but one of

faith."

"Faith?" she echoed.

Nodding, he went on. "Me and Flynn backed you up--stood by you through

all, didn't we?"

"Indeed you did!" She grew rosily red under warmth of feeling. "I

shall never--"

"An' now you allow to throw us down? For Shinn and MacCloud will

shorely tell how that they scared you an' beat us out."

It was bad argument, poor ethics--a bald statement of his grim intention

of bending the stubborn settlers to his inflexible purpose. She felt,

however, that it would be still poorer ethics for her to desert and

disappoint these, her champions, defenders. It was one of these

peculiar situations where any course seems wrong, and if she chose that

which seemed most human, she did it with a mental reservation. She

would resign just as soon as she could persuade him to look at things

her way.

"Of course I'll stay--to please you. But--"

"No 'buts,'" he interrupted. "Haying begins Monday, an' by fall it'll

all be ol' hist'ry."

But Monday brought justification of her doubt, proving that, if cowed,

the settlers were by no means conquered. Only the young Flynns attended

school, and the array of empty benches loomed in her troubled vision

like a huge face, vacant, mulishly obstinate as a blank wall, vividly

eloquent of the invincible determination that would have none of her.

Her heart sank, and when the week passed without further attendance she

gave up, handed her resignation to Flynn and Glaves in council at the

latter's cabin.

Both, as might be expected, registered strenuous objections. "'Tain't

your fault if they cut off their nose to spite their face," Glaves

argued. And when she replied that the children would suffer, he rasped:

"What of it? 'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the children

to the fourth generation.' Ye have Scripter for that."

"But not the sin of the stranger," she gently objected. "I have myself

to blame for the prejudice."

Now, though neither trustee would admit her confession, both were

afflicted with a sneaking consciousness of its truth. For not only had

she offended by consorting with that public enemy, the remittance-man,

but the cause of Carter's desertion had escaped from Elinor Leslie's

indiscreet tongue. Every man, woman, and child in the country-side was

informed as to the events which led up to and followed the Ravells'

visit. Their denials, therefore, were negated by that profuseness of

expression which accentuates the truth it seeks to conceal.

"You know it," she answered them, and opposed further argument with that

soft feminine obstinacy which wears out masculine strength.

"But what else kin you do?" Glaves cried at last, in despair.

"Go to Winnipeg and take a place in an office or store."

Though she affected brightness, she could not altogether hide the

dejection, homesickness that inhered in the thought. Now that she was

to leave it, that rude cabin, with its log walls, legal patchwork,

home-made furniture, glowed with the glamours of home. Even Mrs.

Glaves's gaunt ugliness became suddenly dear in the light of an

indefinite future among strangers.

Detecting her underlying sadness, Flynn exclaimed: "Phwat? Wurrk in a

sthore? Sell pins, naydles, an' such truck while I've a roof over me

head? Ye'd die in thim lonesome hotels. Ye 'll just come right home

wid me."

"Likely, ain't it?" Glaves broke in, jealous for his prerogative. "In

the first place, if she goes, she ain't agoing to stop at no hotel, but

with my own sister that keeps a boarding-house on Main Street. An' if

she stays, it'll be right here, with me--eh, old woman?"

His wife's warm assent brought Helen to tears without, however,

affecting her resolution. For the settlement would be by the ears, she

said, just as long as she stayed in it.

"Humph!" Glaves growled. "It'll have itself be the throat afore long.

Yesterday Poole an' Danvers ran their mowers into Shinn's five-acre

swamp, an' if that don't bring that big Injin a-kiting from the tall

timber, I'm Dutch."

She was not, however, to be moved, and after an embarrassed pause Flynn

said, hesitatingly: "Thim cities, now, is mighty ixpinsive. A lone girl

without money--ye'll let me--"

Digging a shabby bill-book from the bottom depths of his overalls, he

precipitated a second kindly quarrel. Glaring at it, Glaves snorted,

"When she knows she kin draw on me for the vally of my last head of

stock down to the dog!"

Having means for some months, this storm was more easily laid than that

which burst when Flynn offered to drive her in to Lone Tree.

"An' her living with me?" Glaves stormed.

"'Tis meself that knowed her longest," Flynn argued.

"Humph!" Glaves sneered--"three days. Thursday she stopped at your

house coming out from Lone Tree. Sunday I saw her at meeting--went

a-purpose an' never tended sence. No, she goes with me."

"Anyway, I knowed her longest," Flynn persisted. "But 'tis herself shall

say. Which shall it be, ma'am?"

"Both," she laughed; and so, with a grizzled champion on either hand,

she rattled southward the following day.

By one of those strange coincidences of ironical fate, this, the day of

her departure, occurred on the third anniversary of her first drive out

with Carter, and all things, season, sight, sound, conspired to vividly

recall that memorable occasion. Rank growths in uncut sloughs bowed

under warm winds that freighted a distant metallic rattle of many

mowers; beyond the settlements the Park Lands stretched to the

Assiniboin with only the chimneys of the burned Cree village to break

their spangled undulations. As before, they came suddenly upon the

valley, rugged, riven, with its bald, buttressing headlands, timbered

ravines; the river, writhing in giant convolutions along the level

bottoms. As before, they dropped with jolts, jerks, skidding of wheels

to the ford that now tuned its hoarse voice to a melancholy dirge in

harmony with her mood; and from the door of the log mission Father

Francis bowed his silver head in courtly farewell.

After the valley came the "Dry Lands," the tawny plains, barren of

trees, cabin, or farmstead; finally Lone Tree impinged in that huge

monochrome, its grain-sheds reminding her, as before, of red Noah's arks

on a yellow carpet. To her the hour of departure restored the fresh,

clear vision of the stranger. The town appeared as on that first

occasion--its one scanty street of clapboard hotels and stores with

false fronts fencing the railway tracks that came spinning out of the

western horizon to flash on over the east; the wise ox-teams rolling

along the street; the squaws with ragged ponies hitched in big-wheeled

Red River carts; the cows pasturing amid tomato-cans that strewed vacant

lots; the loafers, omni-present riffraff of the small frontier, holding

down nail-kegs and cracker-boxes under store verandas.

It was a trying drive. Every turn of the trail brought its

reminiscences; mud chimneys, the Indian graveyard, a lone coyote,

recalled the beginnings of her love, and now that she was leaving she

vividly realized how she had grown to this land of white silences, grave

winds, vast, sunwashed spaces. But if she had need of the heavy veil

that she pinned on that morning, that marvellous feminine restraint

enabled her to turn a composed face to the doctor and Jenny, who came to

the station to see her off.

As she passed up street, the riffraff exchanged nods and winks, but Lone

Tree furnished still other champions. The store-keeper, he who had

loaded Carter's buck-board with jams and jellies, came hurrying across

the tracks with good wishes and protestations.

"Shinn, MacCloud, Cummings--the hull gang--go off my books," he swore to

Glaves. "Not another cent's credit to keep 'em from starving."

"They can rot in their beds for me," the doctor added. "I strike Silver

Creek from my practice." And though the train was even then whistling

for the station, Hooper, the agent, stole time for friendly greetings.

If roughly expressed, their sympathy was at least genuine; it eased the

parting so that she was able to lean out and give them a last smile as

the train rolled by the water-tank with long, easy clickings, carrying

her away beyond their tough pale. Good enough as a farewell, it was

not, however, a success as a smile, and the woe behind its wanness

formed the subject of an indignant caucus that convened as soon as Jenny

left the platform.

"I can't figure out jes' what Carter means," the storekeeper fretfully

exclaimed. "Granted that she throwed him that onct--the

charivari?--that business at the revival? If it had been my wife, I'd

been smelling round for--"

"Blood!" the agent interjected; and though he had intended "trouble,"

the store-keeper accepted the amendment.

"What's the man looking for?" the doctor roared. "She has beauty,

amiability, intelligence, almost every quality that a man can desire in

a wife, yet he goes off in a pout because she falls short of the angels.

He's a damned fool. He ought to be--"

"Aisy, aisy wid ye." Flynn stemmed the tide of wrath. "'Tis no

throuble at all to condimn whin a purty girl's at t'other ind of the

argymint. She's sweet, an' I'll break the face av the man as says she

isn't good. But--give the man toime. Let be till we know that he's

heard av the rhuctions. Thin, if he does nothing--"

"Well," the doctor interrupted, "he'll hear, all right--from me, this

very night."

"Me, too," the store-keeper added.

"An' don't forget to give him partickler h--l!" the agent called after

as they strolled away.

Nor did they. Dipping his pen in scorn, the doctor opened his epistle

with a timely question as to the exact number and kinds of fool that

Carter considered himself, and finished with a spirit that transcended

even Glaves's difficult requirements. Equally thorough in his

beginnings, a rush of business prevented the store-keeper from making an

end that evening; but his default had its advantages in that he was thus

enabled to deliver the remainder, _viva voce_, to Carter himself, when

he stepped off the train next morning. Served hot, with good frontier

adjectives sizzling among the nouns and articles, his opinion gained the

admiring attention of Hooper, the agent, who stood ready to offer advice

and assistance.

For his part, Carter listened quietly until the storekeeper paused for

breath. Then he turned to the agent. "If you'd like five minutes with

my character and attainments, don't be bashful! I've got it coming.

After that please oblige with a little information on this charivari? I

only heard yesterday morning of that revival through Bender's coming

into camp."

As he listened, his natural sternness deepened to dark austerity, then

fluxed in sad pity as the store-keeper told of Helen's departure.

Murmuring "Poor thing!--poor little thing!" he asked for her address.

His face fell when the store-keeper answered: "You'll have to go to

Glaves for that. The doc' might have it, but him an' Miss Jenny went

north this morning to settle up her father's affairs." Noting Carter's

disappointment, he kindly added: "You kin drive my sorrels. They're a

third faster than the livery teams. On'y, remember they're fresh off

the grass."

"I'll _try_ not to misuse them," Carter answered, brightening, a remark

that plentifully illustrates his impatient feeling.

Agent and store-keeper helped him hitch; and as he headed the sorrels

out on the Silver Creek trail--the trail that for him, as for Helen, was

one long heartache--the agent drew a deduction from his sombre

sternness.

"I heard that MacCloud an' Cummings were back. Je-hosh-a-phat! There'll

be something doing if they cross his track."

Stepping out of his stable, after feeding the noon oats next day, Glaves

"lifted up his eyes," in biblical phrase, and saw Carter "a long way

off." A hot morning at the hay, and the loss of two sections of his

mower-sickle by impact with a willow snag, did not tend to alleviate his

natural crustiness. As he recognized the tall figure behind the

sorrels, the hoar of his fifty winters seemed to settle in the lines of

his weathered visage; his eye took the steely sparkle of river ice; his

nod, when Carter reined in opposite, was curt as his answer.

"Your wife's address? Yes, I know it."

Forewarned by the store-keeper of the old man's bitterness, Carter was

not surprised. "Meaning that you won't give it to me?"

"Not till I know as she wants you to have it."

Tone and manner were superlatively irritating, but the man had taken

blood on his soul in Helen's defence, and Carter spoke quietly. "Don't

you allow that she's a right to decide for herself?"

"Now, ain't that exac'ly what I said?"

It was not, but contradiction would merely inflame his obstinacy. At a

loss how to proceed, Carter switched the heads, one by one, from a patch

of tall brown pig-weeds, using his left hand, for the right was roughly

tied up in his handkerchief. On his part Glaves looked steadily past

him.

It was a beautiful day--sensuous, soft, one of the golden days when warm

winds flirt among rustling grasses breathing the incense of smiling

flowers. Heat hung in quivering waves along the horizon like an

emanation from the hot, prolific earth over whose bosom birds,

bumblebees, the little beasts of the prairies, came and went on errands

of love and business with songs and twitterings. And there, in the

midst of this joy of life, the grim old man bent frowning brows on

Carter, who was lost in bitter meditation.

He was laboring under an unhappy sense of error, for his contumacy,

determined absence, was not altogether a product of hurt pride. As he

himself had dissolved their relations, it was Helen's privilege to renew

them, and he had waited, yearning for her word. But now that he was

dragged under the harrows of remorse, in an agony of pity for her, he

stood before Glaves as in the presence of Nemesis, convicted of a huge

mistake.

The initiative, after all, had lain with him. If he had owned to his

fault, had apologized for his summary desertion, she could have been

trusted to do the rest. Now he doubted that he was too late, for it was

but reasonable to suppose that the trustee's determined opposition had

origin with her. He squared his big shoulders to this burden of his own

packing.

"Will you forward a letter?"

Frowning, Glaves answered without looking at him, "You kin leave your

address."'

"But you will forward it?"

"If she wants it."

Carter flushed, but checked a sharp answer. "You ain't extending too

much grace to a sinner."

"Any less than you extended her? What d' you expect of me that saw her

name dragged in the mud, herself insulted--that took a life to save her

body from violence? G--d d-- you!" His pent-up feelings exploded, and

for three minutes thereafter hot speech bubbled like vitriol through his

clinched teeth in scathing denunciation of Carter's remissness.

"Part of what you say being true, we'll pass the rest," the latter said,

when the trustee had drained his phials of wrath. "Now--without

conceding your right to withhold her address--will you forward some

money?"

Glaves stared. He had expected a blow, a violent quarrel, at least;

nay, had lusted for it. But he was too much of a man himself to mistake

a just imperturbability for fear, while the mention of money checked his

anger by switching his ideas. Jealous for her honor, he looked his

suspicion. "Whose money?" But if accent and tone declared against the

acceptance of favors, he took the proffered greenbacks after Carter

explained that they covered her share of the cattle he and Morrill had

owned in common--took them, that is, with a proviso.

"Let me see," he mused, counting five of ten bills of one-hundred-dollar

denomination. "You'd forty head of stock when Morrill died. Five

hundred covers her share. Take these back." And to further argument he

sternly answered, "I don't allow that she's looking for any presents

from you."

"No, I don't allow that she is."

Sadness of look and tone caused Glaves to glance up quickly, but he did

not relax in his grimness up to the moment that, having left his

address, Carter drove away. Then a shade of doubt crept into his steel

eyes. "If it had been myself--" he muttered; then as Helen's parting

smile recurred in memory, he added: "No, damn him! Let him suffer!" But

this was not the end. Pausing in his doorway as he went in to dinner,

he saw the buckboard, small as a fly, crawl over a distant knoll, and by

some association of ideas remembered Carter's hand and wondered why it

was bandaged. And when he learned from Poole and Danvers, who called

round for their mail that evening, his first small doubt was raised

almost to the dimension of regret.

Since the charivari, Glaves's opinion of the remittance-man--as a

fighting animal, at least--had risen above zero, and he lent first an

indulgent, then a rapt ear to the boys' story. As he himself had

prophesied, the piracy of the five-acre swamp brought Shinn out from his

hiding, but the latter's evil fate arranged matters so that as he

descended upon the remittance buccaneers from one end of the swamp,

Carter appeared on the Lone Tree trail which cat-a-cornered the other.

The result bubbled forth from the mouth of first one boy, then the

other, in eager interruptions.

"Shade of my granny!" Danvers swore. "You never saw such a fight!"

"No preliminaries," Poole declared. "Carter just leaped from his buggy

and went for him like a cat after a mouse."

"And little good it did him. He might have been a gopher in the paws of

a grizzly."

"Lay like a dead man for a long half-hour--"

"And looked like a snake that had mixed with a streak of lightning."

"Blind, battered, bruised, we carried him home on his shield--that is,

on our hay-rake--"

"And that poor squalid wife of his looked rather disgusted when she

found that he wasn't dead."

While they thus poured the tale of Shinn's discomfiture into Glaves's

thirsty ears, Carter rattled steadily on towards Lone Tree. Passing

Flynn's, he had been tempted to put in, but remembered that the Irishman

would be out at the hay, and so ran on and by the one person who could

have furnished an approximation of Helen's address. For she had merely

promised to write Jenny as soon as she was settled, as he had learned

when he met the doctor, back-trailing alone, early that morning.

"But you'll surely find her at one of the hotels!" the agent called to

him, on the platform of the freight-train that carried him away at

midnight.

But Helen had gone straight to the trustee's sister. And having wasted

two days scanning hotel registers, wandering the streets, he concluded

that perhaps she had changed her mind and gone straight through to her

friends back East. Charging his friends and financial backers to keep

on with the search, however, he returned to his labors in that

unenviable condition of mind which romanticist writers describe as

"broken-hearted."

In a city of twenty thousand it ought not to be so very difficult to

locate a young lady whose style and beauty drew the eyes of the street.

But if the search failed, the cause inhered in other reasons than lack

of diligence--in a reason that largely accounted for Glaves's reluctance

to give her address. Sick at heart, hopeless for the future, she had

sunk her surname with the bitter past; resumed her maiden name while

keeping the married title. Even with Glaves's sister, a big,

good-natured woman, she passed as a widow.

*XXV*

*THE SUNKEN GRADE*

The "Ragged Lands!" Seamed, rugged, broken, gloomy with dark spruce,

sterile as a barren woman, they cumber the earth from Lake Nipissing a

thousand miles westward to the edge of the prairies, and in all their

weary length no stretch of meadow-land occurs. Pock-marked with sloughs,

muskegs, black morasses, peppered with sand-hills that rise suddenly

like eruptive boils in the sparse beard of its dwarf-growths, it is a

wicked country, and was held accursed by trappers and Jesuit fathers

who, of old, _portaged_ or paddled upon its borders. Yet in

construction days men poured into its dark environs; one may still see

Carter's camps, moss-grown, roofless, rotting by the right of way, for

his line split a fifty-mile breadth from the western verge of that

mighty forest.

On the day after Carter's return from Winnipeg the westering sun gilded

a long scar, brown with the sere of felled trees, that shore thirty

miles of forest. Ten more miles and this, his right of way, would

debouch on the Park Lands, a day's drive southward from Silver Creek; at

its other end fifty miles of prairie grading would carry it down to the

American border. Northerly, the cut was masked in rolling smoke of

burning brush; but where, farther south, the spruce mantle had been torn

from the bosom of mother earth, it gaped yellow as a gangrened wound.

Over this earth-sore men and teams swarmed with the buzz and movement of

flies, coming and going about a steam-digger that bit hungry mouthfuls

from the bowels of a sand-hill and spat them, with hoarse coughing, upon

a train of flat-cars. Beyond them a pile-driver sputtered nervously

upon a lean trestle; and still farther south a track gang laid and

spiked rails with furious energy, adding their quota of noise to the

roar that combined with heat and dust to produce a miniature inferno.

Dipping still lower, the sun poked a golden finger down a thin

survey-line that slit the forest at the head of the right of way, and

touched into flame the yellow head of a young man who sat on a log near

Carter. There slim poplar-brake enclosed a mossy dell, into which the

frenzy of work and noise came faintly as the hum of a passing bee. It

was, indeed, so cool and pleasant that the surveyor shrugged unwillingly

when the advancing shadows emphasized Carter's remark that it was "time

to be moving."

"What a demon of unrest!" he laughed. "Can't keep still for five

minutes."

His mock disgust drew Carter's smile. "That's all very well--for you.

When your transit is cased, you're done. I have a few hundred men to

look after."

"Oh, confound them!" the other said. "I'll never make a philosopher of

you." And as, shouldering his transit, he followed, he commented

humorously on Carter's tiresome energy, affirming that he was reminded

of a steam-engine that had slipped its governors. "Couldn't be more

grovellingly industrious if you were qualifying for a headline on a

child's copy-book. Early to bed, early to rise, makes your boss

healthy, wealthy, and wise," he misquoted. And as, a few minutes later,

they came out upon wood-choppers who were driving the right of way into

the forest, he grimaced, "More misguided zeal."

For all his sarcasm, his eyes betrayed his appreciation, and as,

pausing, they looked on, his face lit up with professional pride.

Following the choppers, sawyers were cutting sizable timber into logs,

piling small trees with the brush; behind them a stumping outfit

practised rough dentistry upon the road-bed. All were putting in the

last "licks" of a good day's work; the air whistled of falling trees,

hummed to the ringing saws; the woods echoed laughter, shouts, cheery

curses.

"Good boys," Carter murmured. "Regular whales. Jest eat it up, don't

they?"

"Peculiar idiosyncrasy." The surveyor resumed his chaffing. "They

ought to have eased up while you were away. Can't account for it,

unless--yes, it's beans! Beans, sir! You feed them beans and they work

or--die. Query: What effect would a bean diet have on a philosopher?

Ugh! I must avoid them."

"No"--Carter indicated a figure, gigantic in the loom of the smoke,

"it's not beans; it's Bender. Without him we'd have plenty converts to

your theory."

"And now tired nature pities them."

In their coincidence, the last red ray might have signalled Bender's

shrill whistle, or _vice versa_. Anyway, sudden silence fell like a

mantle over the clearing. While choppers and sawyers cached tools under

brush away from rusting dews, teamsters dropped bows and yokes, and all

followed the patient ox-teams down the right of way.

"Joking aside," the surveyor said, as they fell in behind, "what has

life for these fellows? Ill-fed, worse clothed, only an occasional

spree breaks the monotony of grinding toil."

Carter's nod was non-committal. "They work hard--yes, but then work is

only terrible to the young and shiftless; your grown man loves it."

"If congenial."

"Generally is. You see, there's always something that a fellow thinks

he can do a bit better than any one else--Bill, there, planes his

stumps; Ole, that big Swede, is chain lightning on a cant-hook; Michigan

Red rides a log down a rapid like a ballet-dancer, and has Jehu beat out

on the reins; Big Hans lifts more'n any other man in camp. Summing it,

from whip-cracking to stable-cleaning every job has its professor, who

gets a heap of fun out of proving his title. Looking a bit closer,

these chaps get more sunshine, fresh air, and sleep than your city

workers, and if the grub is rough they ain't bothered none with

indigestion. Hans finds a flavor in his beans that your big financial

gun doesn't get out of his canvas-back. As for amusement, the regular

lumber-jack does blow a year's salary on a week's bust, as you say; but

most of these are farmers, some of 'em neighbors of mine. If they're

rushed in summer they have time to burn in winter, and what of socials,

dances, picnics, they strike a fair balance with pleasure."

"But what is ahead of them?"

Carter shrugged. "Death, of course; in the mean time, hard work, harder

living, a family, and a mortgage to keep 'em from oversleep. But

they'll breathe clean and live clean, work in the sun and outlive two

generations of city people. Barring accidents, they'll average

fourscore years, and so, when the last word is said, I don't know but

that happiness lies down instead of up the ladder."