A HARMLESS CONSPIRACY
On the evening that George left for Brandon, Edgar drove over to the
Grant homestead.
"It's Saturday night, my partner's gone, and I felt I deserved a little
relaxation," he explained.
"It's something to be able to feel that; the men who opened up this
wheat-belt never got nor wanted anything of the kind," Grant rejoined.
"But as supper's nearly ready, you have come at the right time."
Edgar turned to Flora.
"Your father always makes me feel that I belong to a decadent age. One
can put up with it from him, because he's willing to live up to his
ideas, which is not a universal rule, so far as my experience of
moralizers goes. Anyhow, I'll confess that I'm glad to arrive in time
for a meal. The cooking at our place might be improved; George, I
regret to say, never seems to notice what he eats."
"That's a pretty good sign," said Grant.
"It strikes me as a failing for which I have to bear part of the
consequences."
Flora laughed.
"If you felt that you had to make an excuse for coming, couldn't you
have made a more flattering one?"
"Ah!" said Edgar, "you have caught me out. But I could give you a
number of better reasons. It isn't my fault you resent compliments."
Flora rose and they entered the room where the hired men were gathering
for the meal. When it was over, they returned to the smaller room and
found seats near an open window, Grant smoking, Flora embroidering,
while Edgar mused as he watched her. Dressed in some simple,
light-colored material, which was nevertheless tastefully cut, she made
an attractive picture in the plainly furnished room, the walls of which
made an appropriate frame of uncovered native pine, for he always
associated her and her father with the land to which they belonged.
There was nothing voluptuous in any line of the girl's face or figure;
the effect was chastely severe, and he knew that it conveyed a reliable
hint of her character. This was not marked by coldness, but rather by
an absence of superficial warmth. The calmness of her eyes spoke of
depth and balance. She was steadfast and consistent; a daughter of the
stern, snow-scourged North.
Then he glanced at the prairie, which ran west, streaked with ochre
stubble in the foreground, then white and silvery gray, with neutral
smears of poplar bluffs, to the blaze of crimson where it cut the sky.
It was vast and lonely; at first sight a hard, forbidding land that
broke down the slack of purpose and drove out the sybarite. He had
sometimes shrunk from it, but it was slowly fastening its hold on him,
and he now understood how it molded the nature of its inhabitants. For
the most part, they were far from effusive; some of their ways were
primitive and perhaps slightly barbarous, but there was vigor and
staunchness in them. They stuck to the friends they had tried and were
admirable in action; it was when, as they said, they were up against it
that one learned most about the strong hearts of these men and women.
"Lansing will be away some days," Grant said presently. "What are you
going to do next week?"
"Put up the new fence, most likely. The land's a little soft for
plowing yet."
"That's so. As you'll have no use for the teams, it would be a good
time to haul in some of the seed wheat. I've a carload coming out."
"A carload!" exclaimed Edgar in surprise, remembering the large
carrying capacity of the Canadian freight-cars. "At the price they've
been asking, it must have cost you a pile."
"It did," said Grant. "I generally try to get down to bed-rock figure,
but I don't mind paying it. The fellow who worked up that wheat
deserves his money."
"You mean the seed's worth its price if the crop escapes the frost?"
"That wasn't quite all I meant. I'm willing to pay the man for the
work he has put into it. Try to figure the cross fertilizations he
must have made, the varieties he's tried and cut out, and remember it
takes time to get a permanent strain, and wheat makes only one crop a
year. If the stuff's as good as it seems, the fellow's done something
he'll never be paid for. Anyway, he's welcome to my share."
"There's no doubt about your admiration for hard work," declared Edgar.
"As it happens, you have found putting it into practise profitable,
which may have had some effect."
Grant's eyes twinkled.
"Now you have got hold of the wrong idea. You have raised a different
point."
"Then, for instance, would you expect a hired man who had no interest
in the crop to work as hard as you would?"
"Yes," Grant answered rather grimly; "I'd see he did. Though I don't
often pay more than I can help, I wouldn't blame him for screwing up
his wages to the last cent he could get; but if it was only half the
proper rate, he'd have to do his share. A man's responsible to the
country he's living in, not to his employer; the latter's only an
agent, and if he gets too big a commission, it doesn't affect the case."
"It affects the workman seriously."
"He and his master must settle that point between them," Grant paused
and spread out his hands forcibly. "You have heard what the country
west of old Fort Garby--it's Winnipeg now--was like thirty years ago.
Do you suppose all the men who made it what it is got paid for what
they did? Canada couldn't raise the money, and quite a few of them got
frozen to death."
It struck Edgar as a rather stern doctrine, but he admitted the truth
of it; what was more, he felt that George and this farmer had many
views in common. Grant, however, changed the subject.
"You had better take your two heavy teams in to the Butte on Monday;
I've ordered my freight there until the sandy trails get loose again.
Bring a couple of spare horses along. We'll load you up and you can
come in again."
"Two Clover-leaf wagons will haul a large lot of seed in a double
journey."
"It's quite likely you'll have to make a third. Don't you think you
ought to get this hauling done before Lansing comes home?"
A light broke in on Edgar. Grant was, with some reason, occasionally
called hard; but he was always just, and it was evident that he could
be generous. He meant to make his gift complete before George could
protest.
"Yes," acquiesced Edgar; "it would be better, because George might want
the teams, and for other reasons."
The farmer nodded.
"That's fixed. The agent has instructions to deliver."
Edgar left the homestead an hour later and spent the Sunday resting,
because he knew that he would need all of his energy during the next
few days. At dawn on the following morning he and Grierson started for
Sage Butte, and on their arrival loaded the wagons and put up their
horses for the night. They set out again before sunrise and were glad
of the spare team when they came to places where all the horses could
scarcely haul one wagon through the soft black soil. There were other
spots where the graded road sloped steeply to the hollow out of which
it had been dug, and with the lower wheels sinking they had to hold up
the side of the vehicle. Great clods clung to the wheels; the men,
plodding at the horses' heads, could scarcely pull their feet out of
the mire, and they were thankful when they left the fences behind and
could seek a slightly sounder surface on the grass.
Even here, progress was difficult. The stalks were tough and tangled
and mixed with stiff, dwarf scrub, which grew in some spots almost to
one's waist. There were little rises, and hollows into which the
wagons jolted violently, and here and there they must skirt a bluff or
strike back into the cut-up trail which traversed it. Toward noon they
reached a larger wood, where the trees crowded thick upon the track.
When Edgar floundered into it, there appeared to be no bottom. Getting
back to the grass, he surveyed the scene with strong disgust; he had
not quite got over his English fastidiousness.
Leafless branches met above the trail, and little bays strewn with
trampled brush which showed where somebody had tried to force a drier
route, indented the ranks of slender trunks. Except for these, the
strip of sloppy black gumbo led straight through the wood, interspersed
with gleaming pools. Having seen enough, Edgar beckoned Grierson and
climbed a low hillock. The bluff was narrow where the road pierced it,
but it was long and the ground was rough and covered with a smaller
growth for some distance on its flanks.
"There's no way of getting round," he said. "I suppose six horses
ought to haul one wagon through that sloo."
"It looks a bit doubtful," Grierson objected. "We mightn't be able to
pull her out if she got in very deep. We could dump half the load and
come back for it."
"And make four journeys? It's not to be thought of; two's a good deal
too many."
They yoked the three teams to the first wagon, which promptly sank a
long way up its high wheels, and while the men waded nearly knee-deep
at their heads, the straining horses made thirty or forty yards. Then
Edgar sank over the top of his long boots and the hub of one wheel got
ominously low.
"They've done more than one could have expected; I hate to use the
whip, but we must get out of this before she goes in altogether," he
said.
Grierson nodded. He was fond of his horses, which were obviously
distressed, and flecked with spume and lather where the traces chafed
their wet flanks; but to be merciful would only increase their task.
The whip-cracks rang out like pistol-shots; and, splashing, snorting,
struggling, amid showers of mire, they drew the wagon out of its sticky
bed. They made another dozen yards; and then Grierson turned the
horses into one of the embayments where there was brush that would
support the wheels. Edgar sat down, breathless, upon a fallen trunk.
"People at home have two quite unfounded ideas about this country," he
said disgustedly. "The first is that money is easily picked up
here--which doesn't seem to need any remark; the second is that they
have only to send over the slackers and slouchers to reform them. In
my opinion, a few doses of this kind of thing would be enough to fill
them with a horror of work." He replaced the pipe he had taken out.
"It's a pity, Grierson, but we can't sit here and smoke."
They went on and nearly capsized the wagon in a pool, the bottom of
which was too soft to give them foothold while they held up the
vehicle, but they got through it and one or two others, and presently
came out, dripping from the waist down, on to the drier prairie. Then
Edgar turned and viewed their track.
"It won't bear much looking at; we had better unyoke," he said. "If
anybody had told me in England that I'd ever flounder through a place
like that, I'd--"
He paused, seeking for words to express himself fittingly.
"You'd have called him a liar," Grierson suggested.
"That hardly strikes me as strong enough," Edgar laughed.
They had spent two hours in the bluff when they brought the last load
through, and sitting down in a patch of scrub they took out their
lunch. After a while Edgar flung off his badly splashed hat and jacket
and lay down in the sunshine.
"The thing's done; the pity is it must be done again to-morrow," he
remarked, "In the meanwhile, we'll forget it; I'll draw a veil over my
feelings."
They had finished lunch and lighted their pipes when a buggy appeared
from behind a projecting dump of trees and soon afterward Flora Grant
pulled up her horse near by. Edgar rose and stood beside the vehicle
bareheaded, looking slender and handsome in his loose yellow shirt,
duck overalls, and long boots, though the marks of the journey were
freely scattered about him. Flora glanced at the jaded teams and the
miry wagons and smiled at the lad. She had a good idea of the
difficulties he had overcome.
"The trail must have been pretty bad," she said. "I struck off to the
east by the creek, but I don't think you could get through with a load."
"It was quite bad enough," Edgar assured her. Flora looked thoughtful.
"You have only two wagons; we must try to send you another, though our
teams are busy. Didn't you say Mr. Lansing would be back in a day or
two?"
"I did, but I got a note this morning saying he thought he had better
go on to Winnipeg, if I could get along all right. I told him to go
and stop as long as he likes. Considering the state of the trails, I
thought that was wise."
Flora smiled. She knew what he meant, since they had agreed that all
the seed must be hauled in before his comrade's return.
"I'm not going to thank you; it would be difficult, and George can ride
over and do so when he comes home," Edgar resumed. "I know he'll be
astonished when he sees the granary."
"If he comes only to express his gratitude, I'm inclined to believe my
father would rather he stayed at home."
"I can believe it; but I've an idea that Mr. Grant is not the only
person to whom thanks are due."
Flora looked at him sharply, but she made no direct answer.
"Your partner," she said, "compels one's sympathy."
"And one's liking. I don't know how he does so, and it isn't from any
conscious desire. I suppose it's a gift of his."
Seeing she was interested, he went on with a thoughtful air:
"You see, George isn't witty, and you wouldn't consider him handsome.
In fact, sometimes he's inclined to be dull, but you feel that he's the
kind of man you can rely on. There's not a trace of meanness in him,
and he never breaks his word. In my opinion, he has a number of the
useful English virtues."
"What are they, and are they peculiarly English?"
"I'll call them Teutonic; I believe that's their origin. You people
and your neighbors across the frontier have your share of them."
"Thanks," smiled Flora. "But you haven't begun the catalogue."
"Things are often easier to recognize than to describe. At the top of
the list, and really comprising the rest of it, I'd place, in the
language of the country, the practical ability to 'get there.' We're
not in the highest degree intellectual; we're not as a rule worshipers
of beauty--that's made obvious by the prairie towns--and to be thought
poetical makes us shy. In fact, our artistic taste is strongly
defective."
"If these are virtues, they're strictly negative ones," Flora pointed
out.
"I'm clearing the ground," said Edgar. "Where we shine is in making
the most of material things, turning, for example, these wilds into
wheatfields, holding on through your Arctic cold and blazing summer
heat. We begin with a tent and an ox-team, and end, in spite of
countless obstacles, with a big brick homestead and a railroad or an
automobile. Men of the Lansing type follow the same course
consistently, even when their interests are not concerned. Once get an
idea into their minds, convince them that it's right, and they'll
transform it into determined action. If they haven't tools, they'll
make them or find something that will serve; effort counts for nothing;
the purpose will be carried out."
Flora noticed the enthusiastic appreciation of his comrade which his
somewhat humorous speech revealed, and she thought it justified.
"One would imagine Mr. Lansing to be resolute," she said. "I dare say
it's fortunate; he had a heavy loss to face last year."
"Yes," returned Edgar. "As you see, he's going on; though he never
expected anything for himself."
"He never expected anything?" Flora repeated incredulously. "What are
you saying?"
Edgar realized that he had been injudicious. Flora did not know that
Sylvia Marston was still the owner of the farm and he hesitated to
enlighten her.
"Well," he said, "George isn't greedy; it isn't in his nature."
"Do you mean that he's a rich man and is merely farming for amusement?"
"Oh, no," said Edgar; "far from it!" He indicated the miry wagons and
the torn-up trails. "You wouldn't expect a man to do this kind of
thing, if it wasn't needful. The fact is, I don't always express
myself very happily; and George has told me that I talk too much."
Flora smiled and drove away shortly afterward, considering what he had
said. She had noticed a trace of confusion in his manner and it struck
her as significant.
When the buggy had grown small in the distance, Edgar called to
Grierson and they went on again.