THE VIGIL-KEEPER
It was a clear starlit night when I rode across a tract of the
Assiniboian prairie, some two hundred miles east of Crane Valley. A
half-moon hung in the cloudless ether, and the endless levels, lying
very silent under its pale radiance, seemed to roll away into infinity.
They had no boundary, for the blueness above them melted imperceptibly
through neutral gradations into the earth below, which, gathering
strength of tone, stretched back again to the center of the lower circle
a vast sweep of silvery gray.
There was absolute stillness, not even a grass blade moved; but the air
was filled with the presage of summer, and the softness of the carpet,
which returned no sound beneath the horse's feet, had its significance.
That sod had been bleached by wind-packed snow and bound into iron
hardness by months of arctic frost. Bird and beast had left it, and the
waste had lain empty under the coldness of death; but life had once more
conquered, and the earth was green again. Even among the almost
unlettered born upon it there are few men impervious to the influence of
the prairie on such a night; and in days not long gone by the half-breed
_voyageurs_ told strange stories of visions seen on it during the lonely
journeys they made for the great fur-trading company. Its vastness and
its emptiness impresses the human atom who becomes conscious of an
indefinite awe or is uplifted by an exaltation which vanishes with the
dawn, for there are times when, through the silence of measureless
spaces, man's spirit rises into partial touch with the greater things
unseen.
My errand was prosaic enough--merely to buy cattle for Haldane and
others on a sliding-scale arrangement. I could see a possibility of
some small financial benefit, and that being so had reluctantly left
Crane Valley, where I was badly needed, because the need of money was
even greater. Also, as time was precious, I had decided to travel all
night instead of spending it as a guest of the last farmer with whom I
bargained. I was at that time neither very imaginative nor
oversentimental; but the spell of the prairie was stronger than my will,
and, yielding to it, I rode dreamily, so it seemed, beyond the reach of
petty troubles and the clamor of our sordid strife into a shadowy land
of peace which, defying the centuries, had retained unchanged its solemn
stillness. The stars alone sufficed to call up the fancy, for there
being neither visible heavens nor palpable atmosphere, only a blue
transparency, the eye could follow the twinkling points of flame far
backwards from one to another through the unknown spaces beyond our
little globe. Nothing seemed impossible on such a night, and only the
touch of the bridle and the faint jingle of metal material.
It was in this mood that I became conscious of a shadow object near the
foot of a rise. It did not seem a natural portion of the prairie, and
when I had covered some distance it resolved itself into a horse and a
dismounted man. His broad hat hung low in his hand, his head was bent,
and he stood so intent that I had almost ridden up to him before he
turned and noticed me. Then, as I checked my horse, I saw that it was
Boone.
"What has brought you here?" I asked.
"That I cannot exactly tell you when we know so little of the influences
about us on such a night as this. It is at least one stage of a
pilgrimage I must make," he said.
Had this answer been given me in the sunlight I should have doubted the
speaker's mental balance, but one sets up a new standard of sanity on
the starlit prairie on a night of spring, and I saw only that the spell
was also upon him. He held a great bunch of lilies (which do not grow on
the bare Western levels) in one hand, and his face was changed. Even in
Boone's reckless humor there had been a sardonic vein which sometimes
added a sting to the jest, and I knew what the shadow was that accounted
for his fits of silent grimness. Now he seemed strangely calm, but
rather reverent than sad.
"I cannot understand you," I said.
"No?" he answered quietly. "How soon you have forgotten; but you helped
me once. Come, and I will show you."
He tethered his horse to an iron peg, beckoned me to do the same, and
then, moving forward until we stood on the highest of the rise, pointed
to something that rose darkly from the grass. Then I remembered, and
swung my hat to my knee, as my eyes rested on a little wooden cross.
Following the hand he stretched out, I could read the rude letters cut
on it--"Helen Boone."
He stooped, and, I fancied with some surprise, lifted a glass vessel
from beneath a handful of withered stalks. He shook them out gently,
laid the fresh blossoms in their place, and a faint fragrance rose like
incense through the coolness of the dew. Then he turned, and I followed
him to where we had left the horses. "There are still kind souls on this
earth, and one of them placed that vessel under the last flowers I left.
You have a partial answer to your question now."
I bent my head, and seeing that he was not averse to speech, said
quietly: "You come here sometimes? It is a long journey."
"Yes," was the answer; and Boone's voice vibrated. "She who sleeps there
gave up a life of luxury for me; and is a three-hundred-mile journey too
much to make, or a summer night too long to watch beside her? I am drawn
here, and there are times when one wonders if it is possible for us to
rise into partial communion with those who have passed into the darkness
before us."
"It is all," I answered gravely, "a mystery to me. Can you conceive such
a possibility?"
"Not in any tangible shape to such as I, but this at least I know. In
spite of the destruction of the mortal clay, when I can see my way no
further, and lose courage in my task, fresh strength comes to me after
a night spent here."
"Your task?" I said. "I guessed that there was a motive behind your
wanderings."
"There is one," and Boone's voice rose to its natural level. "The wagon
journeys suit it well. Had Lane ruined me alone I should have tried to
pay my forfeit for inexperience and the risk I took gracefully; but when
I saw the woman, who had lain down so much for me, fading day by day
that he might add to his power of oppressing others the money which
would have saved her life, the case was different. The last part he
played in the pitiful drama was that of murderer, and the loss he
inflicted on me one that could never be forgiven."
"And you are waiting revenge?" I asked.
"No." Boone looked back towards the crest of the rise. "At first I did
so, but it is justice that prompts me now. I have a full share of human
passions, and once I lay in wait for him with a rifle--my throat parched
and a fire of torment in my heart; but when he passed at midnight within
ten paces I held my hand and let him go. Perhaps it was because I could
not take the life of even that venomous creature in cold blood, and
feared he would not face me. Perhaps another will was stronger than my
own, for, with every purpose strained against what seemed weakness, it
was borne in on me that I could not force him to stand with a weapon,
and that I dare not kill him groveling. Then the power went out of me,
and I let him go. Yet I have twice lain long hours in hot sand under a
deadly rifle fire, Ormesby. There are many mysteries, and as yet it is
very little that we know."
"But you are following him still, are you not?" I asked. And Boone
continued: "As I said, it is for justice, and it was here I learned the
difference. I would not take the reptile's life unless he met me armed
in the daylight, which he would never do; but for the sake of
others--you and the rest, whose toil and blood he fattens on--I am
waiting and working for the time when, without a crime, it may be
possible to end his career of evil."
We were both silent for a few minutes, and I felt that Boone's task,
self-imposed or otherwise, was a worthy one. Lane was a man without
either anger or compassion--an incarnation of cunning and avarice more
terrible to human welfare than any legendary monster of the olden time.
It was no figure of speech to declare that he fattened on poor men's
blood and agony, and his overthrow could not be anything but a blessing.
Still, it was in prosaic speech that, considering the practical aspect
of the question, I said: "I wish you luck, but you will need a long
patience, besides time and money."
"I have them," was the answer. "The first was the hardest to acquire.
Time--I could wait ages if I knew the end was certain; and, as to money,
when it came too late to save her, someone died in the old country, and
part of the property fell to me. Well, you can guess my purpose--using
all means short of bloodshed and perjury to take him in his own net. She
who sleeps there was pitiful and gentle, but she hated oppression and
cruelty, and I feel that if she knows--and I think it is so--she would
smile on me."
Boone's face was plain before me under the moon. It was quietly
confident, calm, and yet stamped with a solemn purpose. He had, it
seemed, mastered his passions, and would perhaps be the more dangerous
because he followed tirelessly, with brain unclouded by hatred or
impatience. I felt that there was much I should say in the shape of
encouragement and sympathy, but the only words that rose to my lips
were: "He has fiendish cunning."
"And I was once a careless fool!" said Boone. "Still, the most cunning
forget, and blunder at times. I, however, can never forget, and when he
does, it will be ill for Lane. I have--I don't know why--spoken to you,
Ormesby, as I have spoken to no man in the Dominion before, and I feel I
need ask no promise of you. I am going east with the sunrise, but I must
be alone now."
I left him to keep his vigil with his dead, and camped in a hollow some
distance away. That is to say, I tethered the horse, rolled a thick
brown blanket round me, and used the saddle for a pillow. There was no
hardship in this. The grasses, if a trifle damp, were soft and springy,
the night still and warm; and many a better man has slept on a worse bed
in the Western Dominion. Slumber did not, however, come at first, and I
lay watching the stars, neither asleep nor wholly awake, until they grew
indistinct, and a woman's figure, impalpable as the moonlight, gathered
shape upon a rise of the prairie.
It was borne in on me that this was Helen Boone risen from her sleep;
for she was ethereal, and her face with its passionless calmness not
that of a mortal, while no shadow touched the grasses when she passed,
and, fading, gave place or changed into one I knew. Haldane's elder
daughter looked down at me from the rise, but she, too, seemed of
another world, wearing a cold serenity and a beauty that was not of this
earth. She also changed with a marvelous swiftness before my bewildered
vision, and it was now Lucille Haldane who moved across the prairie with
soft words of pity on her lips and yet anger in her eyes. She, at least,
appeared not transcendental, but a living, breathing creature of flesh
and blood subject to human weaknesses, and I raised myself on one elbow
to speak to her.
The prairie was empty. Nothing moved on it; even the horse stood still,
while, when I sank back again, moonlight and starlight went out
together; and perhaps it was as well, for, sleeping or waking, a plain
stock-raiser has no business with such fancies, and next morning I
convinced myself that I had dreamed it all. I had doubtless done so, and
the explanation was simple. The influence of the night, or the words of
Boone, had galvanized into abnormal activity some tiny convolution of
the brain; but, even that once granted, it formed the beginning, not the
end, of the question, and Boone had, it seemed, supplied the best
solution when he said we know so little as yet.
The sun was lifting above the prairie when I set out in search of Boone
with my horse's bridle over my arm. I met him swinging across the
springy sod in long elastic strides, but there was nothing about him
which suggested one preyed upon by morbid fancies or the visionary. His
eyes were a little heavy, but that was all, for with both of us the
dreams of the night had melted before the rising sun. The air had been
freshened by the dew, and the breeze, which dried the grasses, roused
one to a sense of human necessities and the knowledge that there was a
day's work to be done. I was also conscious of an unfanciful and very
prosaic emptiness.
"I wonder where we could get anything to eat. I have a long ride before
me," said Boone, when he greeted me.
"It can hardly be safe for you to be seen anywhere in this
neighborhood," I said; and Boone smiled.
"I walked openly into the railroad depot and asked for a package
yesterday. You forget that I partly changed my appearance, while, so far
as memory serves, only two police troopers occasionally saw me. The
others?--you should know your own kind better, Ormesby. Do you think any
settler in this region would take money--and Lane offered a round
sum--for betraying me?"
"No," I answered with a certain pride; "that is to say, not unless he
were a nominee of the man you name."
No proof of this was needed, but one was supplied us. A man who
presently strode out of a hollow stopped and stared at Boone. He was, to
judge from his appearance, one of the stolid bushmen who come out West
from the forests of Northern Ontario--tireless men with ax and plow, but
with little knowledge of anything else.
"I'm kind of good at remembering faces, and I've seen you before," he
said. "You are the man who used to own my place."
"How often have you seen me?" asked Boone.
"Once in clear daylight, twice back there at night," answered the
stranger.
"Did you know that you could have earned a good many dollars by telling
the police as much?" asked Boone; and the other regarded him with a
frown.
"I'm a peaceable man when people will let me be; but I don't take that
kind of talk from anybody."
"I was sure, or I shouldn't have asked you," said Boone. "They don't
raise mean Canadians yonder in the country you came from among the rocks
and trees. You're not overrich, either, are you? to judge from my own
experience, for I put more money into the land than I ever took out of
it. However, that doesn't concern the main thing. Just now I'm a hungry
man."
The big axman's face relaxed, and he laughed the deep, almost silent,
laugh which those like him learn in the shadow of the northern pines.
There is as little mirth in it as there is in most of their hard lives,
but one can generally trust them with soul and body.
"Breakfast will be ready soon's I get home. You just come along," he
said.
We followed him to the log-house which had risen beside Boone's
dilapidated dwelling. A neatly-dressed, dark-haired woman was busy about
the stove, and our host presented us very simply. "Here's the man who
shot the money-lender, and a partner, Lou."
The woman, who laid down the pan she held, cast a quick glance of
interest at my companion. "We have seen you, and wondered why you never
looked in," she said.
"Did you twice do a great kindness for me?" asked Boone.
The woman's black eyes softened. "Sure, that was a little thing, and
don't count for much. The posies were so pretty, and I figured they'd
keep fresh a little longer," she said.
"It was one of the little things which count the most," said Boone.
Thereupon the woman's olive-tinted face flushed into warmer color, while
her long-limbed spouse observed: "She's of the French habitant stock,
and their ways of showing they haven't forgotten aren't the same as
ours."
Breakfast was set before us, and I think Boone had made firm friends of
our hosts before we finished the meal. He had abilities in this
direction. They, on their part, were very simple people, the man silent
for the most part, rugged in face, and abrupt when he spoke, but shrewd
in his own way it seemed withal, and probably as generous as he was hard
at a bargain. His wife was of the more emotional Latin stock, quick in
her movements, and one might surmise equally quick in sympathy.
"You are not the man who bought the place at the sale," said Boone, at
length. "I can remember him tolerably well, and, if I couldn't, one
would hardly figure you were likely to work under Lane."
"No!" and the farmer laughed his curious laugh again. "No. I shouldn't
say. We never worked for any master since my grandfather got fired for
wanting his own way by the Hudson's Bay, and I guess neither Lane nor
the devil could handle the rest of us. He once came round to try."
"How?" I asked, and the gaunt farmer sighed a little as he filled his
pipe. "This way. He was open to finance me to buy up a poor devil's
place, and if I'd had a little less temper and a little more sense I
might have obliged him, and landed a good pile of money, too."
"He's just talking. Don't you believe him," broke in the woman, with an
indignant glance at her spouse.
I fancied Boone saw the drift of this, which was more than I did, and
the farmer nodded oracularly in his direction when I asked: "What did
you do instead?"
"Just reached for a big ox-goad, and walked up to him like a blame
millionaire or a hot-headed fool. Them negotiations broke right off, and
he lit out across the prairie talking 'bout assaults and violences at
twenty mile an hour. Some other man will know better, and that's just
how Lane will get badly left some day."
The woman laughed immoderately. "It was way better'n a circus," she
said. "He didn't tell you he rammed the ox-goad into the skittish horse,
and Lane he just hugged the beast."
The picture of the full-fledged Lane, who made a very poor figure in the
saddle at any time, careering panic stricken across the prairie with his
arms about the neck of a bolting horse appealed to me; but as to the
possibility of the usurer's future discomfiture I was still in the dark,
and asked for enlightenment.
"It's easy," said the farmer. "Lane he squeezes somebody until he can't
hold on to his property, then he puts up the money and another man buys
the place dirt-cheap for him, in his own name. Suppose that man goes
back on Lane? 'This place is my own,' says he. Well, he's recorded
owner, isn't he? and I figure Lane wouldn't be mighty keen on dragging
that kind of case into the courts."
"But he wouldn't put any man in unless he had him by the throat," said
I; and the farmer grinned.
"Juss so! He'll choke some fellow with grit in him a bit too much some
day, and when the wrong breed of scoundrel is jammed right up between
the devil and the sea, it's quite likely he'll go for the devil before
he starts swimming."
"I"--and Boone regarded the farmer fixedly--"quite agree with you. Do
you mind telling me what you gave for this place?"
Our host named the sum without hesitation, adding that he would be glad
to show us over it; and Boone's face grew somber as he said: "It is more
than twice what it was sold for when it was stolen from me."
We walked around the plowed land, inspected the stock, stables, and
barns, and when, after a cordial parting with our hosts, we rode away,
Boone turned to me: "It was an ordeal, and harrowing to see what might
have been but for an insatiable man's cunning and my poverty. Another
half-hour of the memories would have been too much for me. Well, we can
let that pass. They were kind souls, and this last lesson may have been
necessary. Strange, isn't it, that the simple are sometimes shrewder
than the wise?"
"For instance?" I said; and Boone smiled significantly.
"Yonder very plain farmer has hit upon a weak spot in Lane's armor which
the keenest brain on this prairie--I don't mean my own, of course--has
hitherto failed to see."
Soon afterwards we separated, each going his different way.