A PRAIRIE STUDY
So Redmond came home, and we buried him the following night by
torchlight on a desolate ridge of the prairie. It was his daughter who
ordered this; and if some of those who held aloft the flaming tow
guessed his secret they kept it for the sake of the girl who stood with
a stony, tearless face beside the open grave. He had doubtless yielded
to strong compulsion when driven into a corner from which, for one of
his nature, there was no escape, and now that he was dead, I had
transferred my score against him to the debit of the usurer. As we rode
home after the funeral I said something of the kind to Steel, who agreed
with me.
"If you concluded to try it, Thorn and Jo and I, taking our affidavits
as to what we saw that night, might make out a case for you; but I don't
know that we could fix it on Lane, and it strikes me as mean to drag a
dead man into the fuss for nothing," he said. "Redmond has gone to a
place where he can't testify, but he has left his daughter, and she
already has about all she can stand."
"Strikes me that way, too; and Lane's too smart to be corraled," added
Thorn.
"We'll get even somehow without Redmond, and to that end you two will
have to run Gaspard's Trail," I said. "I'm going down to Montreal with
Carolan's cattle."
A project had for some little time been shaping itself in my mind. I had
a small reversionary interest in some English property, and though it
would be long before a penny of it could accrue to me, it seemed just
possible to raise a little money on it. Considering Western rates of
interest, nobody in Winnipeg would trouble with such an investment, but
I had a distant and prosperous kinsman in Montreal who might find some
speculator willing. Montreal was, however, at least two thousand miles
away, and traveling expensive; but the Carolan brothers had promptly
accepted my offer to take charge of their cattle destined for Europe,
which implied free passes both ways. It was not the mode of traveling
one would have expected a prosperous rancher to adopt, but I needed
every available dollar for the approaching struggle, and was well
content when, after the untamed stock had nearly wrecked the railroad
depot, we got them on board the cars.
The only time I ever saw Sergeant Mackay thoroughly disconcerted was
that morning. We came up out of the empty prairie riding on the flanks
of the herd. The beasts had suffered from the scarcity of water and were
in an uncertain temper, while, as luck would have it, just as they
surged close-packed between the bare frame houses, Mackay and a trooper
came riding down the unpaved street of the little prairie town. There
was no opening either to right or to left, and the more prudent
storekeepers put up their shutters.
"Look as if they owned the universe, them police," said the man who
cantered up beside me. "Sure, it would take the starch out of them if
anything did start the cattle."
Mackay pulled up his horse and looked dubiously at the mass of tossing
horns rolling towards him. "'Tis not in accordance with regulations to
turn a big draft loose on a peaceful town. Why did ye not split them
up?" he said. "Ye could be held responsible if there's damage done."
"I'm afraid these beasts don't understand regulations, and I had to
bring them as best I could," I answered; and my assistant shouted, "Get
out of the daylight, sergeant, dear, while your shoes are good."
Mackay seemed to resent this familiarity, and sat still, with one hand
on his hip, an incarnation of official dignity, though he kept his eyes
upon the fast advancing herd until the big freight locomotive which was
awaiting us set up a discordant shrieking, and backed a row of clanging
cars across the switches. That was sufficient for the untamed cattle.
With a thunder of pounding hoofs they poured tumultuously down the
rutted street, and I caught a brief glimpse of the sergeant hurriedly
wheeling his horse before everything was blotted out by the stirred-up
dust. The streets of a prairie town are inches deep in powdered loam all
summer and in bottomless sloughs all spring.
A wild shout of "Faugh-a-ballagh!" rang out; and I found myself riding
faster than was prudent along the crazy plank sidewalk to pass and, if
possible, swing the stampeding herd into the railroad corral. How my
horse gained the three-foot elevation and avoided falling over the
dry-goods bales and flour bags which lay littered everywhere, I do not
remember; but my chief assistant, Dennis, who, yelling his hardest,
charged recklessly down the opposite one, afterwards declared that his
beast climbed up the steps like a kitten. Then, as I drew a little
ahead, Mackay became dimly visible, riding bareheaded, as though for his
life, with the horns, that showed through the tossed-up grit, a few
yards behind him. Fortunately the stockyard gates were open wide, and
Dennis came up at a gallop in time to head the herd off from a charge
across the prairie, while a second man and I turned their opposite wing.
Mackay did his best to wheel his horse clear of the gates, but the beast
was evidently bent on getting as far as possible from the oncoming mass,
and resisted bit and spur. Then there was a great roar of laughter from
loungers and stockyard hands as the dust swept up towards heaven and the
drove thundered through the opening.
"Where's the sergeant?" I shouted; and Dennis, who chuckled so that his
speech was thick, made answer: "Sure, he's in the corral. The beasts
have run him in, but it's mighty tough beef they'd find him in the old
country."
Dennis was right, for when the haze thinned the sergeant appeared, as
white as a miller, flattened up against the rails, while a playful steer
curveted in the vicinity, as though considering where to charge him. He
was extricated by pulling down the rails, and accepted my apologies
stiffly.
"This," he said, disregarding the offer of a lounger to wash him under
the locomotive tank, "is not just what I would have expected of ye,
Rancher Ormesby."
While the stock were being transferred to the cars amid an almost
indescribable tumult, I met Miss Redmond on the little sod platform.
"I am glad I have met you, because I am going to Winnipeg, and may never
see you again," she said. "There is much I do not understand, but I feel
you have been wronged, and want to thank you for your consideration."
Redmond's daughter had received some training in an Eastern convent, it
was said, and I found it hard to believe that the very pale,
quietly-spoken girl was the one who had called down the curses upon
Foster Lane. Still, I knew there was a strain of something akin to
insanity in that family, and that, in addition, she was of the changeful
nature which accompanies pure Celtic blood.
"You should not indulge in morbid fancies, and you have very little
cause for gratitude. We were sincerely sorry for you, and tried to do
what we could," I said.
Ailin Redmond fixed her black eyes intently upon me, and I grew uneasy,
seeing what suggested a smoldering fire in them. "You are not clever
enough to deceive a woman," she said, with a disconcerting composure. "I
do not know all, but perhaps I shall some day, and then, whatever it
costs me, you and another person shall see justice done. It may not be
for a long time, but I can wait; and I am going away from the prairie.
Still, I should like to ask you one question--how did your cattle get
inside the fence?"
"The fire drove them; but instead of fretting over such things, you must
try to forget the last two months as soon as possible," I answered as
stoutly as I could, seeking meanwhile an excuse for flight, which was
not lacking. "Those beasts will kill somebody if I neglect them any
longer."
Ailin Redmond held out her hand to me, saying very quietly: "I shall
never forget, and--it is no use protesting--a time will come when I
shall understand it all clearly. Until then may the good saints protect
you from all further evil, Rancher Ormesby."
As I hurried away a tented wagon lurched into the station, and when I
last saw Redmond's daughter she stood near the lonely end of the
platform talking earnestly with the traveling photographer.
Dennis had not recovered from his merriment when, much to the
satisfaction of those we left behind, the long cars rolled out of the
station, while many agents remembered our visit to the stations which
succeeded. Blinding dust and fragments of ballast whirled about the cars
as the huge locomotive hauled them rocking over the limitless levels.
From sunrise to sunset the gaunt telegraph poles reeled up from the
receding horizon, growing from the size of matches to towering spars as
they came, and then slowly diminishing far down the straight-ruled line
again. For hours we lay on side-tracks waiting until one of the great
inter-ocean expresses, running their portion of the race round half the
globe, thundered past, white with the dust of a fifteen-hundred-mile
journey, and then, with cars and cattle complaining, we lurched on our
way again.
At times we led the beasts out in detachments to water at wayside
stations, and there was usually much profanity and destruction of
property before we got them back again, and left the agent to assess the
damage to his feelings, besides splintered gangways and broken rails. It
was at Portage or Brandon, I think, that one showed me a warning
received by wire. "Through freight full of wild beasts coming along.
There'll be nothing left of your station if you let the lunatics in
charge of them turn their menagerie out."
The beasts had, however, grown more subdued before the cars rolled
slowly into Winnipeg, and gave us little trouble when, leaving the
prairie behind, we sped, eastwards ever, past broad lake and foaming
river, into the muskegs of Ontario; so that I had time for reflection
when the great locomotive, panting on the grades, hauled us, poised
giddily between crag face and deep blue water, along the Superior shore.
The Haldanes were in Montreal, and I wondered, in case chance threw me
in their way, how they would greet me, and what I should say. I was
apparently a prosperous rancher when they last spoke with me, and a
tender of other men's cattle now, while it might well happen that in
their eyes a further cloud rested upon me.
The long and weary journey came to an end at last, and when the big
engines ceased their panting beside the broad St. Lawrence I left Dennis
and his companions to divert themselves in Montreal after the fashion of
their kind, and, arraying myself in civilized fashion, proceeded to my
relative's offices.
A clerk said that Mr. Leyland, who was absent, desired me to follow him
to his autumn retreat, but I first set about the business which had
brought me, unassisted. Nobody, however, would entertain the species of
investment I had to propose, and it was with a heavy heart I boarded the
cars again some days later.
Leyland and his wife appeared unaffectedly glad to see me at their
pretty summer-house, which stood above the smooth white shingle fringing
a wide lake, and at sunset that evening I lay smoking among the boulders
of a point, while his son and heir sat close by interrogating me. Part
of the lake still reflected the afterglow, and after the monotonous
levels of the prairie it rested my eyes to see the climbing pines tower
above it in shadowy majesty. Their drowsy scent was soothing, and
through the dusk that crept towards me from their feet, blinking lights
cast trembling reflections across the glassy water. Several prosperous
citizens retired at times to spend their leisure in what they termed
camping on the islets of that lake.
"Air you poor and wicked?" asked the urchin, inspecting me critically.
"Very poor, and about up to the average for iniquity," I said; and the
diminutive questioner rubbed his curly locks as though puzzled.
"Well, you don't quite look neither," he commented. "Poor men don't wear
new store clothes. The last one I saw had big holes in his pants, and
hadn't eaten nothing for three weeks, he said. Pop, he spanked me good
'cos I gave him four dollars off'n the bureau to buy some dinner with.
Say, how long was it since you had a square meal, anyway? You did mighty
well at supper. I was watching you."
"It is about two months since I had a meal like that and then it was
because a friend of mine gave it to me," I answered truthfully; and
Leyland junior rubbed his head again.
"No--you don't look very low down, but you must be," he repeated. "Pop
was talking 'bout you, and he said: 'You'll do your best to see the poor
devil has a good time, 'Twoinette. From what I gather he needs it pretty
bad.'"
I laughed, perhaps somewhat hollowly, for the child commented: "Won't
you do that again? It's just like a loon. There's one lives over yonder,
and he might answer. Ma, she says people should never make a noise when
they laugh; but when I sent Ted on the roof to get my ball, and he fell
into the rain-butt, she just laughed worse than you, and her teeth came
out."
"Your mother would probably spank you for telling that to strangers. But
who is Ted?" I said, remembering that a loon is a water-bird that sets
up an unearthly shrieking in the stillness of the night; and the urchin
rebuked me with the cheerful disrespect for his seniors which
characterizes the Colonial born.
"Say, was you forgotten when brains were given out? He's just Ted Caryl,
and I think he's bad. Pop says his firm's meaner than road agents. He
comes round evenings and swops business lies with Pop, 'specially when
Bee is here, but he can't be clever. Ma says he don't even know enough
to be sure which girl he wants. They is two of them, and I like Lou
best."
"Why?" I asked, because the urchin seemed to expect some comment; and
he proceeded to convince me. "They is both pretty, but Lou is nicest. I
found it out one day I'd been eating corduroy candy, and Bee she just
dropped me when I got up on her knee. She didn't say anything, but she
looked considerable. Then I went to Lou, and she picked me up and gave
me nicer candies out of a gilt-edge box. Ma says she must have been an
angel, because her dress was all sticky, and I think she is. There was
one just like her with silver wings in the church at Sault Chaudiere.
One night Ma and them was talking 'bout you, and Bee sits quite still as
if she didn't care, but she was listening. Lou, she says: 'Poor----' I
don't think it was poor devil."
"Do you know where little boys who tell all they hear go to?" I asked;
and Leyland junior pointed to a dusky sail that showed up behind the
island before he answered wearily: "You make me tired. I've been asked
that one before. Here's Ted and the others coming. I'm off to see what
they have brought for me."
He vanished among the boulders, and, filling my pipe again, I kept
still, feeling no great inclination to take part in the casual chatter
of people with whose customs I had almost lost touch. I was struck by
the resemblance of the names the child mentioned to those of Haldane's
daughters, but both were tolerably common, and it did not please me that
Mrs. Leyland should make a story of my struggles for the amusement of
strangers. So some time had passed before I entered the veranda of the
little wooden house, and, as it was only partially lighted by a shaded
lamp, managed to find a place almost unobserved in a corner. Thus I had
time to recover from my surprise at the sight of Beatrice and Lucille
Haldane seated at a little table beneath the lamp. Two men I did not
know leaned against the balustrade close at hand, and several more were
partly distinguishable in the shadows. From where I sat some of the
figures were projected blackly against a field of azure and silver, for
the moon now hung above the lake. Beatrice Haldane was examining what
appeared to be a bound collection of photographic reproductions.
"Yes. As Mrs. Leyland mentions, I have met the original of this picture,
and it is a good one, though it owes something to the retoucher," she
said; and I saw my hostess smile wickedly at her husband when somebody
said: "Tell us about him. How interesting!"
Beatrice Haldane answered lightly: "There is not much to tell. The
allegorical title explains itself, if it refers to the edict that it is
by the sweat of his brow man shall earn his bread, which most of our
acquaintances seem to have evaded. The West is a hard, bare country, and
its inhabitants, though not wholly uncivilized, hard men. I should like
to send some of our amateur athletes to march or work with them. This
one is merely a characteristic specimen."
I wondered what the subject of the picture was, but waited an
opportunity to approach the speaker, while, as I did so, a young man
said: "I should rather like to take up your sister's challenge. Pulling
the big catboat across here inside an hour without an air of wind was
not exactly play; but can you tell us anything more about these tireless
Westerners, Miss Lucille?"
The younger girl, who sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, looked up.
"It is the fashion never to grow enthusiastic; but I am going to tell
you, Ted. Those men were always in real earnest, and that is why they
interested me; but I shouldn't take up the challenge if I were you. We
call this camping. They lie down to sleep on many a journey in a snow
trench under the arctic frost, ride as carelessly through blinding
blizzard as summer heat, and, I concluded, generally work all day and
half the night. They are not hard in any other sense, but very generous,
though they sometimes speak, as they live, very plainly."
Some of the listeners appeared amused, others half-inclined to applaud
the girl, and there was a little laughter when Miss Haldane interposed:
"This is my sister's hobby. Some of them, you may remember, seem to live
upon gophers, Lucille."
Lucille Haldane did not appear pleased at this interruption; but the
flush of animation and luster in her eyes wonderfully became her. "I do
not know that even gophers would be worse than the canned goose livers
and other disgusting things we import for their weight in silver," she
said. "All I saw in the West pleased me, and, because I am a Canadian
first and last, I don't mind being smiled at for admitting that I am
very glad I have seen the men who live there at their work. They are
doing a great deal for our country."
"They could not have a stancher or prettier champion, my dear," said a
gray-haired man who sat near me. "It would be hard to grow equally
enthusiastic about your profession, Ted."
"It is Miss Haldane's genius which makes the most of everybody's good
points," answered a young man with a frank face and stalwart appearance,
turning towards me. "I am afraid the rest of us would see only a tired
and dusty farmer who looked as though twelve hours' sleep would be good
for him. What's your idea of the West? If I remember Mrs. Leyland
correctly, you come from the land of promise, don't you?"
"We certainly work tolerably hard out there, but it is no great credit
to us when we have to choose between that and starvation; and the West
is the land of disappointment as well as promise," I answered dryly.
The rest glanced around in our direction, and Mrs. Leyland laughed
mischievously. "If any of you are really interested, my friend here, who
came in so quietly, would, I dare say, answer your questions. Let me
present you, Rancher Ormesby."
I bowed as, endeavoring to remember the names that followed, I moved
towards the chair beside her when she beckoned. It lay full in the
light, and I noticed blank surprise in the faces turned towards me.
Beatrice Haldane dropped the album, and for some reason the clear rose
color surged upwards from her sister's neck. I stooped to recover the
book, which lay open, and then stared at it with astonishment and
indignation, for the face of the man standing beside a weary team,
waist-deep in the tall grass of a slough, was unmistakably my own. I
had forgotten the click of the camera shutter that hot morning.
"It was hardly fair of my hostess not to warn me, and this print was
published without my knowledge or consent," I said. "Still, it shows how
we earn a living in my country, and I can really tell you little more.
We resemble most other people in that we chiefly exert ourselves under
pressure of necessity--and one would prefer to forget that fact during a
brief holiday."
The listeners either smiled or nodded good-humoredly and it was Lucille
Haldane who held out her hand to me, while her elder sister returned my
salutation with a civility which was distinct from cordiality. How Mrs.
Leyland changed the situation I do not remember, nor how, when some of
the party were inspecting fire-flies in the grasses by the lake, I found
myself beside Beatrice Haldane at the end of the veranda. I had schooled
myself in preparation for a possible meeting, but she looked so
beautiful with the moonlight on her that I spoke rashly.
"We parted good friends--but no one could have hoped you felt the
slightest pleasure at the present meeting."
"Frankness is sometimes irksome to both speaker and listener," said the
girl, turning her dark eyes upon me steadily. "Can you not be satisfied
with the possibility of your being mistaken?"
"No," I answered doggedly, and she smiled. "Then suppose one admitted
you had surmised correctly?"
"I should ask the cause," and Beatrice Haldane, saying nothing, looked a
warning, which, being filled with an insane bitterness, I would not
take. "It would hurt me to conclude that those you honored with your
friendship on the prairie would be less welcome here."
She raised her head a little with the Haldane's pride, which, though
never paraded, was unmistakable. "You should have learned to know us
better. Neither your prosperity nor the reverse would have made any
difference."
"Then is there no explanation?" I asked, forgetting everything under the
strain of the moment; and it was evident that Beatrice Haldane shared
her sister's courage, for, though there was a darker spot in the center
of her cheek she answered steadily: "There is. We are disappointed in
you, Rancher Ormesby."
Then, without another word, she turned away, and presently the rattle of
oars and a gleam of moonlit canvas told that the catboat was returning
across the lake.
"I hope you have enjoyed the meeting with your friends," said Mrs.
Leyland, presently. "Very much, I assure you," I answered, with an
effort which I hope will be forgiven me.