E-text prepared by Roger Frank and the Project Gutenberg Online
Distributed Proofreading Canada Team (http://www.pgdpcanada.net)
Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this
file which includes the original illustrations.
See 25922-h.htm or 25922-h.zip:
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/9/2/25922/25922-h/25922-h.htm)
or
(https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/5/9/2/25922/25922-h.zip)
MASTERS OF THE WHEAT-LANDS
by
HAROLD BINDLOSS
Author of "Thurston of Orchard Valley," "By Right of
Purchase," "Lorimer of the Northwest," etc.
With Four Illustrations by Cyrus Cuneo
[Illustration: "IT'S GOING TO HURT, GREGORY, BUT I HAVE GOT TO GET YOU
IN"--Page 17]
A. L. Burt Company
Publishers :: New York
All Rights Reserved, Including That of Translation
into Foreign Languages, Including the Scandinavian
Copyright, 1910, by Frederick A. Stokes Company
Published in England Under the Title, "Hawtrey's Deputy"
October, 1910
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Sally Creighton 1
II. Sally Takes Charge 11
III. Wyllard Assents 22
IV. A Crisis 33
V. The Old Country 44
VI. Her Picture 55
VII. Agatha Does Not Flinch 66
VIII. The Traveling Companion 78
IX. The Fog 92
X. Disillusion 104
XI. Agatha's Decision 117
XII. Wanderers 130
XIII. The Summons 143
XIV. Agatha Proves Obdurate 154
XV. The Beach 165
XVI. The First Ice 177
XVII. Defeat 187
XVIII. A Delicate Errand 199
XIX. The Prior Claim 209
XX. The First Stake 223
XXI. Gregory Makes Up His Mind 234
XXII. A Painful Revelation 244
XXIII. Through The Snow 254
XXIV. The Landing 265
XXV. News of Disaster 276
XXVI. The Rescue 287
XXVII. In the Wilderness 299
XXVIII. The Unexpected 308
XXIX. Cast Away 320
XXX. The Last Effort 331
XXXI. Wyllard Comes Home 342
MASTERS OF THE WHEAT-LANDS
CHAPTER I
SALLY CREIGHTON
The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie which rolled back from
Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath
the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn.
The barn stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the
trail that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into
two wavy ribands melting into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then
of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material,
several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants
considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada. That,
however, is the land of promise, a promise which is in due time usually
fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part, shrewdly
practical optimists. They made the most of a somewhat grim and frugal
present, and staked all they had to give--the few dollars they had
brought in with them, and their powers of enduring toil--upon the
roseate future.
Stukely had given them, and their scattered neighbors, who had driven
there across several leagues of prairie, a supper in his barn. A big
rusty stove, brought in for the occasion, stood in the center of the
barn floor. Its pipe glowed in places a dull red, and now and then
Stukely wondered uneasily whether it was charring a larger hole through
the shingles of the roof. On one side of the stove the floor had been
cleared; on the other, benches, empty barrels and tables were huddled
together, and such of the guests as were not dancing at the moment, sat
upon the various substitutes for chairs. A keg of hard Ontario cider had
been provided for the refreshment of the guests, and it was open to
anybody to ladle up what he wanted with a tin dipper. A haze of tobacco
smoke drifted in thin blue wisps beneath the big nickeled lamps, and in
addition to the reek of it, the place was filled with the smell of hot
iron which an over-driven stove gives out, and the subtle odors of old
skin coats.
The guests, however, were accustomed to an atmosphere of that kind, and
it did not trouble them. For the most part, they were lean, spare,
straight of limb and bronzed by frost and snow-blink, for though
scarcely half of them were Canadian born, the prairie, as a rule,
swiftly sets its stamp upon the newcomer. Also, there was something in
the way they held themselves and put their feet down that suggested
health and vigor, and, in the case of most of them, a certain alertness
and decision of character. Some were from English cities, a few from
those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but there was a
similarity among them for which the cut and tightness of their store
clothing did not altogether account. They lived well, though plainly,
and toiled out in the open unusually hard. Their eyes were steady, their
bronzed skin was clear, and their laughter had a wholesome ring.
A fiery-haired Scot, a Highlander, sat upon a barrel-head sawing at a
fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. To tone he did not
aspire, but he played with Caledonian nerve and swing, and kept the
snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that sets the blood
tingling, causes the feet to move in rhythm, though the exhilarating
effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the little French
Canadian who had another fiddle and struck clanging chords from the
lower strings.
In the cleared space they were dancing what was presumably a quadrille,
though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country
dance, or indeed to one of the measures of rural France, which was,
however, characteristic of the present country.
The Englishman has set no distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It
has absorbed him with his reserve and sturdy industry, and apparently
the Canadian from the cities is also lost in it, too, for his is the
leaven that works through the mass slowly and unobtrusively, while the
Scot and the habitant of French extraction have given the life of it
color and individuality. Extremes meet and fuse on the wide white levels
of the West.
An Englishman, however, was the life of that dance, and he was
physically a larger man than most of the rest, for, as a rule, the
Colonial born run to wiry hardness rather than to solidity of frame.
Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest of him
was in fine modeling, and he had a pleasant face of the English
blue-eyed type. Just then it was shining with boyish merriment, and
indeed an irresponsible gayety was a salient characteristic of the man.
One would have called him handsome, though his mouth was a trifle slack,
and though a certain assurance in his manner just fell short of swagger.
He was the kind of man one likes at first sight, but for all that not
the kind his hard-bitten neighbors would have chosen to stand by them
through the strain of drought and frost in adverse seasons.
As it happened, the grim, hard-faced Sager, who had come there from
Michigan, was just then talking about him to Stukely.
"Kind of tone about that man--guess he once had the gold-leaf on him
quite thick, and it hasn't all worn off yet," said Sager. "Seen more
Englishmen like him, and some folks from Noo York, too, when I took
parties bass fishing way back yonder."
He waved his hand vaguely, as though to indicate the American Republic,
and Stukely agreed with him. They were right as far as they went, for
Hawtrey undoubtedly possessed a grace of manner which, however, somehow
failed to reach distinction. It was, perhaps, just a little too
apparent, and lacked the strengthening feature of restraint.
"I wonder," remarked Stukely reflectively, "what those kind of fellows
done before they came out here."
He had expressed a curiosity which is now and then to be met with on the
prairie, but Sager, the charitable, grinned.
"Oh," he responded, "I guess quite a few done no more than make their
folks on the other side tired of them, and that's why they sent them out
to you. Some of them get paid so much on condition that they don't come
back again. Say"--and he glanced toward the dancers--"Dick Creighton's
Sally seems quite stuck on Hawtrey by the way she's looking at him."
Stukely assented. He was a somewhat primitive person, as was Sally
Creighton, for that matter, and he did not suppose that she would have
been greatly offended had she overheard his observations.
"Well," he said, "I've thought that, too. If she wants him she'll get
him. She's a smart girl--Sally."
There were not many women present--perhaps one to every two of the men,
which was rather a large proportion in that country, and their garments
were not at all costly or beautiful. The fabrics were, for the most
part, the cheapest obtainable, and the wearers had fashioned their gowns
with their own fingers, in the scanty interludes between washing, and
baking, and mending their husbands' or fathers' clothes. The faces of
the women were a trifle sallow and had lost their freshness in the dry
heat of the stove. Their hands were hard and reddened, and in figure
most of them were thin and spare. One could have fancied that in a land
where everybody toiled strenuously their burden was heavier than the
men's. One or two of the women clearly had been accustomed to a smoother
life, but there was nothing to suggest that they looked back to it with
regret. As a matter of fact, they looked forward, working for the
future, and there was patient courage in their smiling eyes.
Creighton's Sally, who was then tripping through the measure on
Hawtrey's arm, was native born. She was young and straight--straighter
in outline than the women of the cities--with a suppleness which was
less suggestive of the willow than a rather highly-tempered spring. She
moved with a large vigor which barely fell short of grace, her eyes
snapped when she smiled at Hawtrey, and her hair, which was of a ruddy
brown, had fiery gleams in it. Anyone would have called her comely, and
there were, indeed, no women in Stukely's barn to compare with her in
that respect, a fact that she recognized.
"Oh, yes," said Sager reflectively; "she'll get him sure if she sets her
mind on it, and there's no denying that they make a handsome pair. I've
nothing against Hawtrey either: a straight man, a hustler, and smart at
handling a team. Still, it's kind of curious that while the man's never
been stuck for the stamps like the rest of us, he's made nothing very
much of his homestead yet. Now there's Bob, and Jake, and Jasper came in
after he did with half the money, and they thrash out four bushels of
hard wheat for Hawtrey's three."
Stukely made a little gesture of concurrence, for he dimly realized the
significance of his companion's speech. It is results which count in
that country, where the one thing demanded is practical efficiency, and
the man of simple, steadfast purpose usually goes the farthest. Hawtrey
had graces which won him friends, boldness of conception, and the power
of application; but he had somehow failed to accomplish as much as his
neighbors did. After all, there must be a good deal to be said for the
man who raises four bushels of good wheat where his comrade with equal
facilities raises three.
In the meanwhile Hawtrey was talking to Sally, and it was not
astonishing that they talked of farming, which is the standard topic on
that strip of prairie.
"So you're not going to break that new piece this spring?" she asked.
"No," answered Hawtrey; "I'd want another team, anyway, and I can't
raise the money; it's hard to get out here."
"Plenty under the sod," declared Sally, who was essentially practical.
"That's where we get ours, but you have to put the breaker in and turn
it over. You"--and she flashed a quick glance at him--"got most of yours
from England. Won't they send you any more?"
Hawtrey's eyes twinkled as he shook his head. "I'm afraid they won't,"
he replied. "You see, I've put the screw on them rather hard the last
few years."
"How did you do that?" Sally inquired. "Told them you were thinking of
coming home again?"
There was a certain wryness in the young man's smile, for though Hawtrey
had cast no particular slur upon the family's credit he had signally
failed to enhance it, and he was quite aware that his English relatives
did not greatly desire his presence in the Old Country.
"My dear," he said, "you really shouldn't hit a fellow in the eye that
way."
As it happened, he did not see the girl's face just then, or he might
have noticed a momentary change in its expression. Gregory Hawtrey was a
little casual in speech, but, so far, most of the young women upon whom
he bestowed an epithet indicative of affection had attached no
significance to it. They had wisely decided that he did not mean
anything.
The Scottish fiddler's voice broke in.
"Can ye no' watch the music? Noo it's paddy-bash!" he cried.
His French Canadian comrade waved his fiddle-bow protestingly.
"Paddybashy! _V'la la belle chose!_" he exclaimed with ineffable
contempt, and broke in upon the ranting melody with a succession of
harsh, crashing chords.
Then began a contest as to which could drown the other's instrument, and
the snapping time grew faster, until the dancers gasped, and men who
wore long boots encouraged them with cries and stamped a staccato
accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was savage, rasping
music, but one player infused into it the ebullient nerve of France, and
the other was from the misty land where the fiddler learns the witchery
of the clanging reel and the swing of the Strathspey. It is doubtless
not high art, but there is probably no music in the world that fires the
blood like this and turns the sober dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps,
too, amid the prairie snow, it gains something that gives it a closer
compelling grip.
Hawtrey was breathless when it ceased, and Sally's eyes flashed with the
effulgence of the Northern night when her partner found her a
resting-place upon an upturned barrel.
"No," she declared, "I won't have any cider." She turned and glanced at
him imperiously. "You're not going for any more either."
It was, no doubt, not the speech a well-trained English maiden would
have made, but, though Hawtrey smiled rather curiously, it fell
inoffensively from Sally's lips. Though it is not always set down to
their credit, the brown-faced, hard-handed men as a rule live very
abstemiously in that country, and, as it happened, Hawtrey, who
certainly showed no sign of it, had already consumed rather more cider
than anybody else. He made a little bow of submission, and Sally resumed
their conversation where it had broken off.
"We could let you have our ox-team to do that breaking with," she
volunteered. "You've had Sproatly living with you all winter. Why don't
you make him stay and work out his keep?"
Hawtrey laughed. "Sally," he said, "do you think anybody could make
Sproatly work?"
"It would be hard," the girl admitted, and then looked up at him with a
little glint in her eyes. "Still, I'd put a move on him if you sent him
along to me."
She was a capable young woman, but Hawtrey was dubious concerning her
ability to accomplish such a task. Sproatly was an Englishman of good
education, though his appearance seldom suggested it. Most of the summer
he drove about the prairie in a wagon, vending cheap oleographs and
patent medicines, and during the winter contrived to obtain free
quarters from his bachelor acquaintances. It is a hospitable country,
but there were men round Lander's who, when they went away to work in
far-off lumber camps, as they sometimes did, nailed up their doors and
windows to prevent Sproatly from getting in.
"Does he never do anything?" Sally added.
"No," Hawtrey assured her, "at least, never when he can help it. He had,
however, started something shortly before I left him. You see, the house
has needed cleaning, the last month or two, and we tossed up for who
should do it. It fell to Sproatly, who didn't seem quite pleased, but he
got as far as firing the chairs and tables out into the snow. Then he
sat down for a smoke, and he was looking at them through the window when
I drove away."
"Ah," commented Sally, "you want somebody to keep the house straight and
look after you. Didn't you know any nice girls back there in the Old
Country?"
She spoke naturally, and there was nothing to show that the girl's heart
beat a little more rapidly than usual as she watched Hawtrey. His face,
however, grew a trifle graver, for she had touched upon a momentous
question to such men as he. Living in Spartan simplicity upon the
prairie, there are a good many of them, well-trained, well-connected
young Englishmen, and others like them from Canadian cities. They
naturally look for some grace of culture or refinement in the woman they
would marry, and there are few women of the station to which they once
belonged who could face the loneliness and unassisted drudgery that must
be borne by the small wheat-grower's wife. There were also reasons why
this question had been troubling Hawtrey in particular of late.
"Oh, yes, of course, I knew nice girls in England, one or two," he
answered. "I'm not quite sure, however, that girls of that kind would
find things even moderately comfortable here."
A certain reflectiveness in his tone, which seemed to indicate that he
had already given the matter some consideration, jarred upon Sally.
Moreover, she had an ample share of the Western farmer's pride, which
firmly declines to believe that there is any land to compare with the
one the plow is slowly wresting from the wide white levels of the
prairie.
"We make out well enough," she asserted with a snap in her eyes.
Hawtrey made an expressive gesture. "Oh, yes," he admitted, "it's in
you. All you want in order to beat the wilderness and turn it into a
garden is an ax, a span of oxen, and a breaker plow. You ought to be
proud of your energy. Still, you see, our folks back yonder aren't quite
the same as you."
Sally partly understood him. "Ah," she replied, "they want more, and,
perhaps, they're used to having more than we have; but isn't that in one
way their misfortune? Is it what folks want, or what they can do, that
makes them of use to anybody else?"
There was a hard truth in her suggestion, but Hawtrey, who seldom
occupied himself with matters of that kind, smiled.
"Oh," he said, "I don't know; but, after all, it wouldn't be worth while
for us to raise wheat here unless there were folks back East to eat it,
and, if some of them only eat in the shape of dainty cakes, that doesn't
affect the question. Anyway, there will be but another dance or two, and
I was wondering whether I could drive you home; I've got Wyllard's
Ontario sleigh."
Sally glanced at him rather sharply. She had half-expected this offer,
and it is possible would have judiciously led him up to it if he had not
made it. Now, as she saw that he really wished to drive her home, she
was glad that she had not deliberately encouraged the invitation.
"Yes," she answered softly, "I think you could."
"Then," said Hawtrey, "if you'll wait ten minutes I'll be back with the
team."