AGAINST TIME
Dixon's prediction proved correct. When I was brought into court a
second time there was still no news of Wilkins, and after further
testimony of no importance the case was again adjourned. This time,
however, bail was allowed, and Boone and Rancher Gordon stood surety for
me. The latter was by no means rich, and had, like the rest of us,
suffered severe losses of late. Dixon was the first to greet me when I
went forth, somewhat moodily, a free man for the time being.
"You don't look either so cheerful or grateful as you ought to be," he
said.
"You are wrong in one respect. I am at least sincerely grateful for your
efforts."
Dixon, in defiance of traditions, smote me on the shoulder. "Then what's
the matter with the cheerfulness?"
"It is not exactly pleasant to have a charge of this description hanging
over one indefinitely, and I have already lost time that can never be
made up," I said. "Lane will no doubt produce his witness when he
considers it opportune, and there is small encouragement to work in the
prospect of spending a lengthy time in jail while one's possessions go
to ruin."
"You think Lane had a hand in his disappearance?" Dixon asked
thoughtfully; and when I nodded, commented: "I can't quite say I do. My
reasons are not conclusive, and human nature's curious, anyway; but I'm
not sure that Wilkins will, if he can help it, turn up at all. However,
in the meantime, the dinner we're both invited to will put heart into
you."
He slipped his arm through mine, and led me into the leading hotel,
where, as it was drawing near the time for the six o'clock supper,
every man turned to stare at us as we passed through the crowded bar and
vestibule. I was making for the general dining-room when Dixon said: "Go
straight ahead. It was not easy to manage, but our hosts were determined
to do the thing in style."
He flung a door open, and Boone and Gordon greeted me in turn, while I
had never seen a menu in a Western hostelry to compare with that of the
following meal. Perhaps Gordon noticed my surprise, for he said: "It was
Adams who fixed up all this, and came near having a scrimmage with the
hotelkeeper about the wine. 'This comes from California, and I prefer it
grown in France. Those labels aren't much use to any man with a sense of
taste,' says he. This brand, wherever they grew it, is quite good enough
for me, but I'm wondering where Adams learned the difference."
Boone smiled at me. "I have," he said, "a good memory, and learned a
number of useful things during a somewhat varied experience."
The meal was over and the blue cigar smoke curled about us, when I
turned to Gordon: "There are two things I should like to ask you. First,
and because I know what losses you have had to face, how you raised the
money to liberate me in the generous way you did; and, second, how many
acres are left unsown at Crane Valley?"
The gaunt rancher fidgeted before he answered: "You have said 'Thank
you' once, and I guess that's enough. You're so blame thin in the hide,
and touchy, Ormesby; and it wasn't I who did it--at least not much of
it."
Dixon appeared to be amused, and when Gordon glanced appealingly at
Boone the latter only smiled and shook his head; seeing which, I said
quietly: "In short, you sent round the hat?"
There was no doubt that the chance shot had told, for Gordon rose, very
red in face, to his feet. "That's just what I didn't. Don't you know us
yet? Send round the hat when the boys knew you were innocent and just
how I was fixed! No, sir. They came right in, each bringing his roll of
bills with him, and if I'd wanted twice as much they'd have raised it.
And now I've given them away--just what they made me promise not to."
I had anticipated the answer, but it stirred me, nevertheless, and while
Gordon stared at me half angry, half ashamed of his own vehemence, I
filled a wine-glass to the brim. "Here's to the finest men and stanchest
comrades on God's green earth," I said, looking steadily at him.
It was Dixon who brought us down to our normal level, for, setting his
glass down empty, he commented: "You're not overmodest, Ormesby,
considering that you are one of them. Still, I think you're right.
People in the East are expecting a good deal from you and the good
country that has been given you."
Gordon joined in the lawyer's laugh, but I broke in: "You have not
answered my second question."
"Well!" and the rancher smiled mischievously. "You're so mighty
particular that I don't know what to say. Still, things looked pretty
tolerable last time I was down to Crane Valley."
Dixon accompanied us to the station when it was time to catch the train,
and as he stood on the car platform said to me: "It's probably no use to
tell you not to worry, but I'd sit tight in my saddle and think as
little as possible about this trouble if I were you."
He dropped lightly from the platform, cigar in hand, as the train pulled
out, and, though most unlike the traditional lawyer in speech or
agility, left me with a reassuring confidence in his skill.
It was early morning when I rode alone towards Crane Valley, feeling, in
spite of Dixon's good advice, distinctly anxious. It is true that Thorn
and Steel were both energetic, but no man can drive two teams at once,
and it was my impression that, having more at stake, I could do
considerably more in person than either of them. I had small comfort in
the reflection that, after all, the question how much had been
accomplished was immaterial, because there was little use in sowing
where, while I lay in jail, an enemy might reap, and I urged my horse
when I drew near the hollow in which the homestead lay, and then pulled
him up with a jerk. Gordon had said things had been going tolerably
well, but this proved a very inadequate description. The plowed land had
all been harrowed and sown, and beyond it lay the shattered clods of
fresh breaking, where I guessed oats had been sown under the sod newly
torn from the virgin prairie. Ten men of greater endurance could not
have accomplished so much, and I sat still, humbled and very grateful,
with eyes that grew momentarily dim, fixed on the wide stretch of black
soil steaming under the morning sun. It seemed as though a beneficent
genie had been working for my deliverance while I lay, almost
despairing, in the grip of the law.
Then Steel, springing out from the door of the sod-house, came up at a
run, with Thorn behind him. It was strangely pleasant to see the elation
in their honest faces, and Steel's shout of delight sent a thrill
through me.
"This is the best sight I've seen since you left us," he panted,
wringing my hand. "Thorn's that full up with satisfaction he can't even
run. We knew Dixon and Adams would see you through between them."
"Has Dixon been down here?" I asked, for the lawyer had not told me so;
and Thorn, who came up, gasped: "Oh, yes; and a Winnipeg man he sent
down went round with Adams 'most everywhere. Say, did you strike Niven
for compensation?"
"No," I answered, a trifle ruefully. "I am only free on bail, and not
acquitted yet."
Steel's jaw dropped, and his dismay would have been ludicrous had it not
betrayed his whole-hearted friendship, while Thorn's burst of sulphurous
language was an even more convincing testimony. Again I felt a curious
humility, and something enlarged in my throat as I looked down at them.
"If I can't stand Lane off with you two and the rest behind me I shall
deserve all I get, and we must hope for the best," I said. "But if you
could handle three teams each you could not have done all this."
Thorn, who was not usually vociferous in expressing his sentiments,
appeared glad of this diversion, and, after a glance at the plowed land,
strove to smile humorously. "Think you could have done it any better
yourself?"
"It's a fair hit," I answered. "You know exactly how much I can do. Let
me down easily. How did you manage it?"
"We didn't manage anything," said Thorn. "No, sir. The boys, they did it
all. Everybody came or sent a hired man, and blame quaint plowing some
of them cow-chasers done. Put up a dollar sweepstake and ran races with
the harrows, they did, and Steel talked himself purple before he stopped
them. They've busted the gang-plow, and one said he ought to have been a
dentist by the way he pulled out the cultivator teeth."
"And where did you come in?" I asked, and duly noted the effort it cost
Steel to follow his comrade's lead.
"We just lay back and turned the good advice on," he said. "Tom, he led
the prayer meeting when, after supper, they turned loose on Lane. Oh,
yes, we rode in and out for provisions. Sally, she would have the best
in the settlement, and sat up all night cooking. Don't know how you'll
feel when you see the grocery bill."
"I can tell you now," I said. "I feel that there's nothing in the whole
Dominion too good for them--or you--and I'd be glad, if necessary, to
sell my shirt to pay the bill."
We went on to the house together, and Sally, hiding her disappointment,
plunged with very kindly intentions into a spirited description of her
visitors' feats. "That's a testimonial," she said, pointing through the
window to an appalling pile of empty tins. "I just had to get them when
some of the boys brought their own provisions in. I set one of them
peeling potatoes all night to convince him."
"Peeling potatoes?" I interpolated; and Steel, smiling wickedly,
furnished the explanation.
"Sally was busy in the shed when he came along, and wanted to help her
considerable. 'Feel like peeling half a sackful?' says Sally; and when
the fool stockman allowed he'd like it better than anything, says she,
'Then, as I'm tired, you can.' She just left him with it, while she
talked to the other man; but there was grit in him, and he peeled away
until morning. Wanted to marry her, too, he did."
Sally's glance foreboded future tribulation for the speaker, and Thorn
frowned; but Steel, disregarding it, concluded gravely: "Dessay he might
have done it, but he heard Sally turn loose on me one day, and took
warning."
In spite of the shadow hanging over me, it was good to be at home, and
perhaps the very uncertainty as to its duration made the somewhat sordid
struggle of our life at Crane Valley almost attractive. Lane, it seemed
only too probable, would crush us in the end, but there was satisfaction
in the thought that every hour's work well done would help us to prolong
our resistance. So the days of effort slipped by until I received a
notice to present myself at court on a specified date, and, there being
much to do, I delayed my departure until the last day. Steel insisted on
accompanying me to the railroad, but protested against the time of
starting. "One might fancy you were fond of jail by the hurry you're in
to get back to it," he said. "We could catch the cars if we left hours
later."
"It's as well to be on the right side," I said; for I had been in a
state of nervous impatience all day. Wilkins had been found, and now
that a decision appeared certain, I grew feverishly anxious to learn the
best--or the worst.
It was a day in early summer when we set out and pushed on at a good
pace, though already the sun shone hot. Steel, indeed, suggested there
was no need for haste, but after checking my beast a little, I shot
ahead again. "It might be your wedding you were going to!" he said.
We had covered part of the distance left to traverse on the second day
when a freighter's lumbering ox-team crawled out of a ravine, and Steel
pulled up beside him. "I don't know if you're mailing anything East, but
you're late if you are," said the teamster.
"Then there's something wrong with the sun," said Steel. "If he's
keeping his time bill we're most two hours too soon."
"You would have been last week," answered the other; while a sudden
chill struck through me as I remembered the promised acceleration of the
transcontinental express. "They've improved the track in the Selkirks
sooner than they expected, and they're rushing the Atlantic hummer
through on the new schedule this month instead of next."
Before he concluded I had snatched out my watch and simultaneously
touched the beast with the spurs. The next moment the timepiece was
swinging against my belt, and, with eyes fixed on the willows before me,
I was plunging at a reckless gallop down the side of the ravine. The
horse was young and resented the punishment, but I had no desire to hold
him, and the further he felt inclined to bolt the better it would please
me. So we smashed through the thinner willows, and somehow reeled down
an almost precipitous slope, reckless of the fact that there was a creek
at the bottom, while the trail wound round towards a bridge, until the
hoofs sank into the soft ground, and we came floundering towards the
tall growth by the water's edge. There the spurs went in again, and the
beast, which knew nothing of jumping, rather rushed than launched itself
at the creek. There was a splash and a flounder, a fountain of mire and
water shot up, and green withes parted before me as we charged through
the willows on the farther bank. The slope was soft and steep beneath
the climbing birches, and by the time we were half way up the beast had
relinquished all desire to bolt; but my watch showed me that go he must,
and it was without pity I drove him at the declivity. Meantime, a thud
of hoofs followed us, and when, racing south across the levels, we had
left the ravine two miles behind, Steel came up breathless.
"Can you do it, Harry?" he panted.
"I'm afraid not," I shouted. "Still, if I kill the horse under me, I'm
going to try. He's carrying a good many poor men's money."
A hurried calculation had proved conclusively that if the train were
punctual I should miss it by more than an hour, and there was, of
course, not another until the following day. Still, it was a long climb
from Vancouver City up through the mountains of British Columbia to the
Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies, and there then remained a wide
breadth of prairie for the mammoth locomotives to traverse. Sometimes,
when the load was heavy, they lost an hour or two on the wild up-grade
through the canyons. I was ignorant of legal procedure, but greatly
feared that my non-appearance in the court would entail the forfeiture
of the sureties, and, as the session was near an end, postpone the trial
indefinitely. Therefore the train must be caught if it were in the power
of horseflesh to accomplish it, and I settled myself to ride as for my
life.
"Wouldn't the Port Arthur freight do?" shouted Steel.
"No," I answered. "It's the Atlantic Express or nothing! You can pick
those things up on your homeward journey."
Without checking the beast I managed to loosen the valise strapped
before me, and hurled it down upon the prairie. It contained all I
possessed in the shape of civilized apparel except what I rode in, and
that was mired all over from the flounder through the creek; but the
horse already carried weight enough. It was now blazing noon, and in the
prairie summer the sun is fiercely hot. Here and there the bitter dust
of alkali rolled across the waste, crusting our dripping faces and the
coats of the lathered beasts. My eyelashes grew foul and heavy, blurring
my vision, so that it was but dimly I saw the endless levels crawl up
from the far horizon. A speck far down in the distance grew into the
altitude of a garden plant, and, knowing what it must be, I pressed my
heels home fiercely, waiting for what seemed hours until it should
increase into a wind-dwarfed tree.
It passed. There was nothing but the dancing heat to break the great
monotony of grass, while the gray streak where it cut the sky-line
rolled steadily back in mockery of our efforts to reach it. Yet I was
soaked in perspiration, and Steel was alkali white. There was a steady
trickle into my eyes, and the taste of salt in my mouth, while the
drumming of hoofs rose with a staccato thud-thud, like distant rifle
fire, and the springy rush of the beasts beneath us showed how fast we
were traveling. Steel shook his head as we raced up a rise which had
tantalized me long, stirrup to stirrup and neck to neck, while the clots
from the dripping bits drove past like flakes of wind-whirled snow.
"If you want to get there, Ormesby, this won't do," he said. "You'd
break the heart of the toughest beast inside another hour."
"The need would justify a worse loss," I panted, snatching out my watch.
"We have pulled up thirty minutes, but are horribly behind still. Men
who can't afford to lose it have put up the stakes I am riding for."
Steel made a gesture of comprehension, but once more shook his head. "My
beast's the better, and he's carrying a lighter weight, but he'll never
last at the pace we're making. Save your own a little, and when he's
dead beat I'll let up and change with you. I'll hang on in the meantime
in case one of them comes to grief over a badger-hole. It's your one
chance if you're bent on getting through."
I would at that moment have gladly sold the rest of my life for the
certainty of catching the train. To give my enemy no advantage was a
great thing, and I felt that absence when my name was called would
prejudice the most confiding against me. But that was, after all, a
trifle compared with what I owed the men who had probably stripped
themselves of necessities to help me, and I felt that if I failed them a
shame which could never be dissipated would follow me. Nevertheless,
Steel's advice was sound, and I tightened my grip on the bridle with a
smothered imprecation. Then my heart grew heavier, for the horse needed
no pulling, and responded with an ominous alacrity.
We were still leagues from the railroad, and the miles of grasses
flitted towards us ever more slowly. The last clump of birches took half
an hour to raise, and the willows which fled behind us had been five
long minutes taking the shape of trees. My watch was clenched in one
hand, and, while bluff and ravine crawled, its fingers raced around the
dial with an agonizing rapidity in testimony of the feebleness of flesh
and blood when pitted against steel and steam. The clanging cars had
swept clear of the foothills long ago, and the track ran straight and
level across the prairie, a smooth empty road for the Accelerated to
save time on in its race between the Pacific and the Laurentian
waterway. When the prairie grew blurred before us, as it sometimes did,
I could see instead the two huge locomotives veiled in dust and smoke
thundering with a pitiless swiftness down the long converging rails,
while the drumming of hoofs changed into the roar of wheels whose speed
would brand me with dishonor. Yet we were doing all that man or beast
could do, and at last a faint ray of hope and a new dismay came upon me.
The difference in time had further lessened, but my horse was failing.
"Go on as you're going," shouted Steel, edging his whitened beast
nearer. "I'm riding a stone lighter, and this beast has another hour's
work left in him."
I went on, the horse growing more and more feeble and blundering in his
stride, until at last, when it was a case of dismount or do murder, I
dropped stiffly from the saddle. Steel was down in a second, and in
another my jacket and vest were off, and I laid my foot to the stirrup
in white shirt and trousers, with a handkerchief knotted around my
waist.
"You'll startle the folks in Empress, and you can't strip off much
more," said Steel.
"I'd ride into the depot naked sooner than rob the boys," I said; and
was mounted before my comrade could reopen his mouth. When he did so his
"Good luck!" sounded already faint and far away.
Steel's horse had more life left in him--one could feel it in his
stride; but now that there was some hope of success I rode with more
caution, sparing him up the low rises, and trying, so far as one might
guess it, to keep within a very small margin of his utmost strength. So
we pressed on until all the prairie grew dim to me, and my only distinct
sensation was the rush of the cool wind. Then a flitting birch bluff
roused me once more to watch, and minute by minute I strained my eyes
for the first glimpse of the tall poles heralding the railroad track. At
last a row of what looked like matches streaked the horizon, and grew in
size until something that rose and fell with the heave of the prairie
sea became visible beneath. Then, as we topped one of its grassy waves,
a cluster of distant cubes loomed up, and a glance at the watch's racing
fingers warned me that I was already behind the time that the train was
due to reach the settlement. It might have passed; and a new torture was
added until, when in an agony of suspense, I strained my eyes towards
the west, a streak of whiteness crept out of the horizon.
The run of the Accelerated was at that time regarded as a national
exploit, forming, as it did, part of a new link binding Japan and
London--the East and the West; and I knew the conductor would hardly
have waited for one of his own directors. The white streak rapidly grew
larger; something sparkled beneath it, and there was flash of twinkling
glass through the dust and steam. I fixed my eyes on the station, and
taxed every aching sinew in hand and heel, for the weakening beast must
bring me there in time or die. A smoke cloud, with bright patches
beneath it, rolled up to the station when I was nearly half a mile away.
The horse was reeling under me, the power had gone out of the leaden
hands on switch and bridle, and--for the tension had produced a
vertigo--my sight was almost gone.
Hearing, however, still remained, and shouts of encouragement reached
me, while I could dimly see the station close ahead, and shapeless
figures apparently waving hats and arms. The clang of a big bell rang in
my ears, the twin locomotives snorted, and I fell from the saddle,
sprang towards the track, and clutched at the sliding rails of a car
platform. I missed them; the car, swaying giddily, so it seemed, rolled
past, and I hurled myself bodily at the next platform. Somebody clutched
my shoulder and dragged me up, and I fell with a heavy crash against the
door of a vestibule.
"Just in time," said a man in uniform. "Say, are you doing this for a
wager, or are some mad cow-chasers after you?"