CONSTABLE FLETT'S SUSPICIONS
It was nearly six o'clock in the evening when George and his
companions, who had spent part of the day looking for the straying
stock, rode up to the Grant homestead through a vast stretch of grain.
This grew on the rich black soil they call "gumbo" in the West; but
here and there a belt of dark-colored summer fallow checkered the
strong green of the wheat and oats. Though he clung to the one-crop
system, Alan Grant was careful of his land. The fine brick house and
range of smart wooden buildings, the costly implements, which included
a gasoline tractor-plow, all indicated prosperity, and George
recognized that the rugged-faced man beside him had made a marked
success of his farming.
When the cattle had been secured, Flora Grant welcomed the new arrivals
graciously, and after a while they sat down to supper with the hired
men in a big room. It was plainly furnished, but there was everything
that comfort demanded, for the happy mean between bareness and
superfluity had been cleverly hit, and George thought Miss Grant was
responsible for this. He sat beside her at the foot of the long table
and noticed the hired hands' attitude toward her. It was respectful,
but not diffident. The girl had no need to assert herself; she was on
excellent terms with the sturdy toilers, who nevertheless cheerfully
submitted to her rule.
When the meal was over, Grant led his guests into a smaller room, and
produced a bag of domestic tobacco.
"The stock have gone far enough," he said. "You'll stay here to-night."
Flett looked doubtful, though it was obvious that he wished to remain.
He was a young, brown-faced man, and his smart khaki uniform proclaimed
him a trooper of the Northwest Mounted Police.
"The trouble is that I'm a bit late on my round already," he protested.
"That's soon fixed," said Grant.
He opened a roll-top desk, and wrote a note which he read out:
"'Constable Flett has been detained in the neighborhood of this
homestead through having rendered, at my request, valuable assistance
in rounding up a bunch of cattle, scattered in crossing the flooded
river.'"
"Thanks," said Flett. "That kind of thing counts when they're choosing
a corporal."
Grant turned to George with a smile.
"Keep in with the police, Lansing--I've known a good supper now and
then go a long way. They may worry you about fireguards and fencing,
but they'll stand by you when you're in trouble, if you treat them
right. If it's a matter of straying stock, a sick horse, or you don't
know how to roof a new barn, you have only to send for the nearest
trooper."
"Aren't these things a little outside their duties?" Edgar asked.
The constable grinned.
"Most anything that wants doing badly is right in our line."
"Sure," said Grant. "It's not long since Flett went two hundred miles
over the snow with a dog-team to settle a little difference between an
Indian and his wife. Then he once brought a hurt trapper a fortnight's
journey on his sledge, sleeping in the snow, in the bitterest weather.
They were quite alone, and the hurt man was crazy most of the time."
"Then you're supposed to look after the settlers, as well as to keep
order?" suggested Edgar, looking admiringly at the sturdy young
constable.
"That's so," replied Flett. "They certainly need it. Last winter we
struck one crowd in a lonely shack up north--man, woman, and several
children huddled on the floor, with nothing to eat, and the stove
out--at forty degrees below. There was a bluff a few miles off, but
they hadn't a tool of any kind to cut cordwood with. Took us quite a
while to haul them up some stores, though we made twelve-hour marches
between our camps in the snow. We had to hustle that trip."
He paused and resumed:
"Better keep an eye on that bunch of young horses, Mr. Grant; bring
them up nearer the house when the nights get darker. Those Clydesdales
are mighty fine beasts and prices are high."
Grant looked astonished.
"I've been here a good many years, and I've never lost a horse," he
declared.
"It doesn't follow you'll always be as lucky," the trooper said
pointedly.
"I was told that property is as safe in the West as it is in England,"
Edgar broke in.
"Just so," remarked the trooper. "They say that kind of thing. I
never was in the old country, but young mavericks aren't the only stock
to go missing in Alberta, which isn't a long way off. The boys there
have their hands full now and then, and we have three or four of the
worst toughs I've struck right in Sage Butte."
Grant leaned forward on the table, looking steadily at him.
"Hadn't you better tell me what you have in your mind?"
"I can't give you much information, but we got a hint from Regina to
keep our eyes open, and from things I've heard it's my idea that now
that the boys have nearly stopped the running of Alberta cattle across
the frontier, some of the toughs they couldn't track mean to start the
same game farther east. Some of you ranchers run stock outside the
fences, and I guess one could still find a lonely trail to the American
border."
"Well," said Grant, "I'm glad you told me." He turned to George. "Be
careful, Lansing; you would be an easier mark."
They strolled outside; and after a while George joined Flora, and
sauntered away across the grass with her. It was a clear, still
evening, and the air was wonderfully fresh.
"Though he wouldn't let me thank him, I feel I'm seriously indebted to
your father, Miss Grant," he said. "Our horses were worn out, and the
stock had all scattered when he turned up with the trooper."
"I believe he enjoyed the ride, and the night in the rain," replied
Flora. "You see, he had once to work very hard here, and now that
things have changed, he finds it rather tame. He likes to feel he's
still capable of a little exertion."
"I shouldn't consider him an idle man."
Flora laughed.
"That would be very wrong; but the need for continual effort and the
strain of making ends meet, with the chance of being ruined by a frozen
crop, have passed. I believe he misses the excitement of it."
"Then I gather that he built up this great farm?"
"Yes; from a free quarter-section. He and my mother started in a
two-roomed shack. They were both from Ontario, but she died several
years ago." The girl paused. "Sometimes I think she must have had
remarkable courage, I can remember her as always ready in an emergency,
always tranquil."
George glanced at her as she stood, finely posed, looking out across
the waste of grass with gravely steady eyes, and it occurred to him
that she resembled her mother in the respects she had mentioned.
Nevertheless, he felt inclined to wonder how she had got her grace and
refinement. Alan Grant was forceful and rather primitive.
"Have you spent much of your time here?" he asked.
"No," she answered. "My mother was once a school-teacher, and she must
have had ambitious views for me. When the farm began to prosper, I was
sent to Toronto. After that I went to Montreal, and finally to
England."
"You must be fond of traveling."
"Oh," she said, with some reserve, "I had thought of taking up a
profession."
"And you have abandoned the idea?"
She looked at him quietly, wondering whether she should answer.
"I had no alternative," she said. "I began to realize it after my
mother's death. Then my father was badly hurt in an accident with a
team, and I came back. He has nobody else to look after him, and he is
getting on in life."
Her words conveyed no hint of the stern struggle between duty and
inclination, but George guessed it. This girl, he thought, was one not
to give up lightly the career she had chosen.
Then she changed the subject with a smile.
"I suspect that my father approves of you, perhaps because of what you
are doing with the land. I think I may say that if you have any little
difficulty, or are short of any implements that would be useful, you
need only come across to us."
"Thank you," George responded quietly.
"Mr. West mentioned that you were on a farm in this country once
before. Why did you give it up?"
"Somebody left me a little money."
"Then what brought you back?"
She was rather direct, but that is not unusual in the West, and George
was mildly flattered by the interest she displayed.
"It's a little difficult to answer. For one thing, I was beginning to
feel that I was taking life too easily in England, It's a habit that
grows on one."
He had no desire to conceal the fact that he had come out on Sylvia's
behalf--it never occurred to him to mention it. He was trying to
analyze the feelings which had rendered the sacrifice he made in
leaving home a little easier.
"I don't think the dread of acquiring that habit is common among your
people," Flora said mischievously. "It doesn't sound like a very
convincing reason."
"No," replied George, with a smile. "Still, it had some weight. You
see, it isn't difficult to get lazy and slack, and I'd done nothing
except a little fishing and shooting for several years. I didn't want
to sink into a mere lounger about country houses and clubs. It's
pleasant, but too much of it is apt to unfit one for anything else."
"You believe it's safer, for example, to haul stovewood home through
the Canadian frost or drive a plow under the scorching sun?"
"Yes; I think I feel something of the kind."
Flora somewhat astonished him by her scornful laugh.
"You're wise," she said. "We have had sportsmen here from your
country, and I've a vivid memory of one or two. One could see by their
coarse faces that they ate and drank too much; and they seemed
determined to avoid discomfort at any cost. I suppose they could
shoot, but they could neither strip a gun nor carry it on a long day's
march. The last party thought it needful to take a teamload of
supplies when they went north after moose. It would have been a
catastrophe if they had missed their dinner."
"Going without one's dinner has its inconveniences," said George.
"And thinking too much about it has its perils," she retorted.
George nodded. He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with
it. He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by
degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to
which they had confined their efforts. Some had become mere club
loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence. This
had had its effect on him: he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful,
and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities
until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.
"Well," he said, "nobody could call this a good country for the
pampered loafer."
Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie. In the foreground it
was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs
stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond
them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline. It was almost
beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a
sense of vastness and solitude. The effect was somehow daunting. One
thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.
"I've heard it called hard," she said. "It undoubtedly needs hard men;
there is nothing here that can be easily won. That's a fact that the
people you're sending over ought to recognize."
"They soon discover it when they get out. When they've had a crop
hailed or frozen, the thing becomes obvious."
"Did you lose one?"
"I did," George rejoined rather gloomily. "I've a suspicion that if we
get much dry weather and the usual strong winds, I may lose another.
The wheat's getting badly cut by driving sand; that's a trouble we
don't have to put up with in the old country."
"I'm sorry," said Flora; and he knew she meant it. "But you won't be
beaten by one bad season?"
"No," George answered with quiet determination. "I must make a success
of this venture, whatever it costs."
She was a little puzzled by his manner, for she did not think he was
addicted to being needlessly emphatic; but she asked no questions, and
soon afterward the others joined them and they went back to the house.
Early on the following morning, George started homeward with his
cattle, and as they rode slowly through the barley-grass that fringed
the trail, Edgar looked at him with a smile.
"You spent some time in Miss Grant's company," he remarked. "How did
she strike you?"
"I like her. She's interesting--I think that's the right word for it.
Seems to understand things; talks to you like a man."
"Just so," Edgar rejoined, with a laugh. "She's a lady I've a high
opinion of; in fact, I'm a little afraid of her. Though I'm nearly as
old as she is, she makes me feel callow. It's a sensation that's new
to me."
"And you're a man of experience, aren't you?"
"I suppose I was rather a favorite at home," Edgar owned with humorous
modesty. "For all that, I don't feel myself quite up to Miss Grant's
standard."
"I didn't notice any assumption of superiority on her part."
"Oh, no," said Edgar. "She doesn't require to assume it; the
superiority's obvious; that's the trouble. One hesitates about
offering her the small change of compliments that generally went well
at home. If you try to say something smart, she looks at you as if she
were amused, not at what you said, but at you. There's an embarrassing
difference between the things."
"The remedy's simple. Don't try to be smart."
"You would find that easy," Edgar retorted. "Now, in my opinion, Miss
Grant is intellectual, which is more than anybody ever accused you of
being, but I suspect you would make more progress with her than I could
do. Extremes have a way of meeting, and perhaps it isn't really
curious that your direct and simple views should now and then recommend
you to a more complex person."
"I notice a couple of beasts straying yonder," George said dryly.
Edgar rode off to drive the animals up to the herd. George, he
thought, was painfully practical; only such a man could break off the
discussion of a girl like Miss Grant to interest himself in the
movements of a wandering steer. For all that, the beasts must be
turned, and they gave Edgar a hard gallop through willow scrub and tall
grass before he could head them off and afterward overtake the drove.