UNDER TEST
The prairie lay dim and shadowy in the creeping dusk when Winston sat
on a redwood stringer near the head of his partly-finished bridge.
There was no sound from the hollow behind him but the faint gurgle of
the creek, and the almost imperceptible vibration of countless minute
wings. The birches which climbed the slope to it wound away sinuously,
a black wall on either hand, and the prairie lying gray and still
stretched back into the silence in front of him. Here and there a
smoldering fire showed dully red on the brink of the ravine, but the
tired men who had lighted them were already wrapped in heavy slumber.
The prairie hay was gathered, harvest had not come, and for the last
few weeks Winston, with his hired men from the bush of Ontario, had
toiled at the bridge with a tireless persistency which had somewhat
astonished the gentlemen farmers of Silverdale. They, however, rode
over every now and then, and most cheerfully rendered what assistance
they could, until it was time to return for tennis or a shooting
sweepstake, and Winston thanked them gravely, even when he and his
Ontario axmen found it necessary to do the work again. He could have
told nobody why he had undertaken to build the bridge, which could be
of no use to him, but he was in a measure prompted by instincts born in
him, for he was one of the Englishmen who, with a dim recognition of
the primeval charge to subdue the earth and render it fruitful,
gravitate to the newer lands, and usually leave their mark upon them.
He had also a half-defined notion that it would be something he could
leave behind in reparation, that the men of Silverdale might remember
more leniently the stranger who had imposed on them while in the strain
of the mental struggle strenuous occupation was a necessity to him.
A bundle of papers it was now too dim to see lay beside him clammy with
the dew, and he sat bare-headed, a pipe which had gone out in his hand,
staring across the prairie with an ironical smile in his eyes. He had
planned boldly and striven tirelessly, and now the fee he could not
take would surely be tendered him. Wheat was growing dearer every day,
and such crops as he had sown had not been seen at Silverdale. Still,
the man, who had had few compunctions before he met Maud Barrington,
knew now that in a little while he must leave all he had painfully
achieved behind. What he would do then he did not know, for only one
fact seemed certain--in another four months, or less, he would have
turned his back on Silverdale.
Presently, however, the sound of horse-hoofs caught his ears, and he
stood up when a mounted figure rose out of the prairie. The moon had
just swung up, round and coppery, from behind a rise, and when horse
and rider cut black and sharp against it his pulses throbbed faster and
a little flush crept into his face, for he knew every line of the
figure in the saddle. Some minutes had passed when Maud Barrington
rode slowly to the head of the bridge, and pulled up her horse at the
sight of him.
The moon turning silver now shone behind her head, and a tress of hair
sparkled beneath her wide hat, while the man had a glimpse of the
gleaming whiteness of rounded cheek and neck. Her face he could not
see, but shapely shoulders, curve of waist, and sweeping line of the
light habit were forced up as in a daguerreotype, and as the girl sat
still looking down on him, slender, lissom, dainty, etherealized almost
by the brightening radiance, she seemed to him a visionary complement
of the harmonies of the night. It also appeared wiser to think of her
as such than a being of flesh and blood whom he had wildly ventured to
long for, and he almost regretted when her first words dispelled the
illusion.
"It is dreadfully late," she said. "Pluto went very lame soon after I
left Macdonald's, and I knew if I went back for another horse he would
have insisted on riding home with me. I had slipped away while he was
in the granary. One can cross the bridge?"
"Not mounted!" said Winston. "There are only a few planks between the
stringers here and there, but, if you don't mind waiting, I can lead
your horse across."
He smiled a little, for the words seemed trivial and out of place in
face of the effect the girl's appearance had on him, but she glanced at
him questioningly.
"No!" she said. "Now, I would have gone round by the old bridge, only
that Allardyce told me you let him ride across this afternoon."
"Still," and the man stopped a moment, "it was daylight then, you see."
Maud Barrington laughed a little, for his face was visible and she
understood the slowness of his answer. "Is that all? It is moonlight
now."
[Illustration: Maud Barrington laughed a little.]
"No," said Winston dryly, "but one is apt to make an explanation too
complete occasionally. Will you let me help you down?"
Maud Barrington held out her hands, and when he swung her down watched
him tramp away with the horse, with a curious smile. A light
compliment seldom afforded her much pleasure, but the man's grim
reserve had now and then piqued more than her curiosity, though she was
sensible that the efforts she occasionally made to uncover what lay
behind it were not without their risk. Then he came back, and turned
to her very gravely.
"Let me have your hand," he said.
Maud Barrington gave it to him, and hoped the curious little thrill
that ran through her when his hard fingers closed upon her palm did not
communicate itself to him. She also noticed that he moved his head
sharply a moment, and then looked straight in front again. Then the
birches seemed to fall away beneath them, and they moved out across the
dim gully with the loosely-laid planking rattling under their feet,
until they came to a strip scarcely three feet wide which spanned a
gulf of blackness in the shadow of the trees.
"Hold fast!" said Winston, with a trace of hoarseness. "You are sure
you feel quite steady?"
"Of course!" said the girl, with a little laugh, though she recognized
the anxiety in his voice, and felt his hand close almost cruelly on her
own. She was by no means timorous, and still less fanciful, but when
they moved out into the blackness that closed about them above and
beneath along the slender strip of swaying timber she was glad of the
masterful grip. It seemed in some strange fashion portentous, for she
felt that she would once more be willing to brave unseen perils, secure
only in his guidance. What he felt she did not know, and was sensible
of an almost overwhelming curiosity, until when at last well-stiffened
timber lay beneath them, she contrived to drop a glove just where the
moonlight smote the bridge. Winston stooped, and his face was clear in
the silvery light when he rose again. Maud Barrington saw the relief
in it, and compelled by some influence stood still looking at him with
a little glow behind the smile in her eyes. A good deal was revealed
to both of them in that instant, but the man dare not admit it, and was
master of himself.
"Yes," he said, very simply, "I am glad you are across."
Maud Barrington laughed. "I scarcely fancy the risk was very great,
but tell me about the bridge," she said. "You are living beside it?"
"Yes," said Winston. "In a tent. I must have it finished before
harvest, you see!"
The girl understood why this was necessary, but deciding that she had
on other occasions ventured sufficiently far with that topic, moved on
across the bridge.
"A tent," she said, "cannot be a very comfortable place to live in, and
who cooks for you?"
Winston smiled dryly. "I am used to it, and can do all the cooking
that is necessary," he said. "It is the usual home for the beginner,
and I lived six months in one--on grindstone bread, the tinctured
glucose you are probably not acquainted with as 'drips,' and rancid
pork--when I first came out to this country and hired myself, for ten
dollars monthly, to another man. It is a diet one gets a little tired
of occasionally, but after breaking prairie twelve hours every day one
can eat almost anything, and when I afterwards turned farmer my credit
was rarely good enough to provide the pork."
The girl looked at him curiously, for she knew how some of the smaller
settlers lived, and once more felt divided between wonder and sympathy.
She could picture the grim self-denial, for she had seen the stubborn
patience in this man's face, as well as a stamp that was not born by
any other man at Silverdale. Some of the crofter settlers, who
periodically came near starvation in their sod hovels, and the men from
Ontario who staked their little handful of dollars on the first wheat
crop to be wrested from the prairie, bore it, however. From what Miss
Barrington had told her, it was clear that Courthorne's first year in
Canada could not have been spent in this fashion, but there was no
doubt in the girl's mind as she listened. Her faith was equal to a
more strenuous test.
"There is a difference in the present, but who taught you
bridge-building? It takes years to learn the use of the ax," she said.
Winston laughed. "I think it took me four, but the man who has not a
dollar to spare usually finds out how to do a good many things for
himself, and I had working drawings of the bridge made in Winnipeg.
Besides, your friends have helped me with their hands as well as their
good-will. Except at the beginning, they have all been kind to me, and
one could not well have expected very much from them then."
Maud Barrington colored a trifle as she remembered her own attitude
towards him. "Cannot you forget it?" she said, with a curious little
ring in her voice. "They would do anything you asked them now."
"One generally finds it useful to have a good memory, and I remember
most clearly that, although they had very little reason for it, most of
them afterwards trusted me. That made, and still makes, a great
difference to me."
The girl appeared thoughtful. "Does it?" she said. "Still, do you
know, I fancy that if they had tried to drive you out, you would have
stayed in spite of them?"
"Yes," said Winston dryly. "I believe I would, but the fact that in a
very little while they held out a friendly hand to a stranger steeped
in suspicion, and gave him the chance to prove himself their equal,
carries a big responsibility. That, and your aunt's goodness, puts so
many things one might have done out of the question."
The obvious inference was that the prodigal had been reclaimed by the
simple means of putting him on his honor, but that did not for a moment
suggest itself to the girl. She had often regretted her own disbelief
and once more felt the need for reparation.
"Lance," she said, very quietly, "my aunt was wiser than I was, but she
was mistaken. What she gave you out of her wide charity was already
yours by right."
That was complete and final, for Maud Barrington did nothing by half,
and Winston recognized that she held him blameless in the past, which
she could not know, as well as in the present, which was visible to
her. Her confidence stung him as a whip, and when in place of
answering he looked away, the girl fancied that a smothered groan
escaped him. She waited, curiously expectant, but he did not speak,
and just then the fall of hoofs rose from behind the birches in the
bluff. Then a man's voice came through it singing a little French
song, and Maud Barrington glanced at her companion.
"Lance," she said, "how long is it since you sang that song?"
"Well," said Winston, doggedly conscious of what he was doing, "I do
not know a word of it, and never heard it in my life."
Maud Barrington stared at him. "Think," she said. "It seems ever so
long ago, but you cannot have forgotten. Surely you remember Madame
Aubert, who taught me to prattle in French, and the day you slipped
into the music-room and picked up the song, while she tried in vain to
teach it me. Can't you recollect how I cried, when you sang it in the
billiard-room, and Uncle Geoffrey gave you the half-sovereign which had
been promised to me?"
"No," said Winston, a trifle hoarsely, and with his head turned from
her watched the trail.
A man in embroidered deerskin jacket was riding into the moonlight, and
though the little song had ceased, and the wide hat hid his face, there
was an almost insolent gracefulness in his carriage that seemed
familiar to Winston. It was not the _abandon_ of the swashbuckler
stock-rider from across the frontier, but something more finished and
distinguished that suggested the bygone cavalier. Maud Barrington, it
was evident, also noticed it.
"Geoffrey Courthorne rode as that man does," she said. "I remember
hearing my mother once tell him that he had been born too late, because
his attributes and tastes would have fitted him to follow Prince
Rupert."
Winston made no answer, and the man rode on until he drew bridle in
front of them. Then he swung his hat off, and while the moonlight
shone into his face looked down with a little ironical smile at the man
and woman standing beside the horse. Winston closed one hand a trifle,
and slowly straightened himself, feeling that there was need of all his
self-control, for he saw his companion glance at him, and then almost
too steadily at Lance Courthorne.
The latter said nothing for a space of seconds, for which Winston hated
him, and yet in the tension of the suspense he noticed that the signs
of indulgence he had seen on the last occasion were plainer in
Courthorne's face. The little bitter smile upon his lips was also not
quite in keeping with the restlessness of his fingers upon the bridle.
"Is that bridge fit for crossing, farmer?" he asked.
"Yes," said Winston quietly. "You must lead your horse."
Maud Barrington had in the meanwhile stood very still, and now moved as
by an effort. "It is time I rode on, and you can show the stranger
across," she said. "I have kept you at least five minutes longer than
was necessary."
Courthorne, Winston fancied, shifted one foot from the stirrup, but
then sat still as the farmer held his hand for the girl to mount by,
while when she rode away he looked at his companion with a trace of
anger as well as irony in his eyes.
"Yes," said Winston. "What you heard was correct. Miss Barrington's
horse fell lame coming from one of the farms, which accounts for her
passing here so late. I had just led the beast across the incompleted
bridge. Still, it is not on my account I tell you this. Where have
you been and why have you broken one of my conditions?"
Courthorne laughed. "It seems to me you are adopting a somewhat
curious tone. I went to my homestead to look for you."
"You have not answered my other question, and in the meanwhile I am
your tenant, and the place is mine."
"We really needn't quibble," said Courthorne. "I came for the very
simple reason that I wanted money."
"You had one thousand dollars," said Winston dryly.
Courthorne made a little gesture of resignation. "It is, however,
certain that I haven't got them now. They went as dollars usually do.
The fact is, I have met one or two men recently who apparently know
rather more games of chance than I do, and I passed on the fame, which
was my most valuable asset, to you."
"You passed me on the brand of a crime I never committed," said Winston
grimly. "That, however, is not the question now. Not one dollar,
except at the time agreed upon, will you get from me. Why did you come
here dressed as we usually are on the prairie?"
Courthorne glanced down at the deerskin jacket and smiled as he
straightened himself into a caricature of Winston's mounted attitude.
It was done cleverly.
"When I ride in this fashion we are really not very unlike, you see,
and I let one or two men I met get a good look at me," he said. "I
meant it as a hint that it would be wise of you to come to terms with
me."
"I have done so already. You made the bargain."
"Well," said Courthorne, smiling, "a contract may be modified at any
time when both parties are willing."
"One is not," said Winston dryly. "You heard my terms, and nothing
that you can urge will move me a hairsbreadth from them."
Courthorne looked at him steadily, and some men would have found his
glance disconcerting, for now and then all the wickedness that was in
him showed in his half-closed eyes. Still, he saw that the farmer was
unyielding.
"Then we will let it go; in the meanwhile," he said, "take me across
the bridge."
They were half-way along it when he pulled the horse up, and once more
looked down on Winston.
"Your hand is a tolerably good one so long as you are willing to
sacrifice yourself, but it has its weak points, and there is one thing
I could not tolerate," he said.
"What is that?"
Courthorne laughed wickedly. "You wish me to be explicit? Maud
Barrington is devilishly pretty, but it is quite out of the question
that you should ever marry her."
Winston turned towards him with the veins on his forehead swollen.
"Granting that it is so, what is that to you?"
Courthorne nodded as if in comprehension. "Well, I'm probably not
consistent, but one rarely quite loses touch with everything, and if I
believed that my kinswoman was growing fond of a beggarly prairie
farmer, I'd venture to put a sudden stop to your love-making. This, at
least, is perfectly bona fide, Winston."
Winston had borne a good deal of late, and his hatred of the man flared
up. He had no definite intention, but he moved a pace forward, and
Courthorne touched the horse with his heel. It backed, and then,
growing afraid of the blackness about it, plunged, while Winston for
the first time saw that there was a gap in the loosely-laid planking
close behind it. Another plunge or flounder, and horse and rider would
go down together.
For a moment he held his breath and watched. Then, as the beast
resisting its rider's efforts backed again, he sprang forward and
seized the bridle.
"Get your spurs in! Shove him forward for your life," he said.
There was a momentary struggle on the slippery planking, and, almost as
its hind hoofs overhung the edge, Winston dragged the horse away.
Courthorne swung himself out of the saddle, left the farmer the bridle,
and glanced behind him at the gap. Then he turned, and the two men
looked at each other steadily. Their faces were a trifle paler than
usual.
"You saw it?" asked Courthorne.
"Yes, but not until you backed the beast and he commenced plunging."
"He plunged once or twice before you caught the bridle."
"Yes," said Winston quietly.
Courthorne laughed. "You are a curious man. It would have cleared the
ground for you."
"No," said Winston dryly. "I don't know that you will understand me,
but I scarcely think it would. It may have been a mistake of mine to
do what I did, but I have a good deal on my shoulders already."
Courthorne made no answer as he led his horse across, the bridge. Then
he mounted, and looked down on the farmer who stood beside him.
"I remember some things, though I don't always let them influence me to
my detriment," he said. "I'm going back to the railroad, and then
West, and don't quite know when you will have the pleasure of seeing me
again."
Winston watched him quietly. "It would be wiser if you did not come
back until I send for you."