SERGEANT STIMSON CONFIRMS HIS SUSPICIONS
It was late in the afternoon when Colonel Barrington drove up to
Winston's homestead. He had his niece and sister with him, and when he
pulled up his team, all three were glad of the little breeze that came
down from the blueness of the north and rippled the whitened grass. It
had blown over leagues of sun-bleached prairie, and the great
desolation beyond the pines of the Saskatchewan, but had not wholly
lost the faint, wholesome chill it brought from the Pole.
There was no cloud in the vault of ether, and slanting sun-rays beat
fiercely down upon the prairie, until the fibrous dust grew fiery and
the eyes ached from the glare of the vast stretch of silvery gray. The
latter was, however, relieved by stronger color in front of the party,
for blazing gold on the dazzling stubble, the oat sheaves rolled away
in long rows that diminished and melted into each other, until they cut
the blue of the sky in a delicate filigree. Oats had moved up in value
in sympathy with wheat, and the good soil had most abundantly redeemed
its promise that year. Colonel Barrington, however, sighed a little as
he looked at them, and remembered that such a harvest might have been
his.
"We will get down and walk towards the wheat," he said. "It is a good
crop and Lance is to be envied."
"Still," said Miss Barrington, "he deserved it, and those sheaves stand
for more than the toil that brought them there."
"Of course!" said the Colonel, with a curious little smile. "For
rashness, I fancied, when they showed the first blade above the clod,
but I am less sure of it now. Well, the wheat is even finer."
A man who came up took charge of the horses, and the party walked in
silence towards the wheat. It stretched before them in a vast
parallelogram, and while the oats were the pale gold of the austral,
there was the tint of the ruddier metal of their own Northwest in this.
It stood tall and stately, murmuring as the sea does, until it rolled
before a stronger puff of breeze in waves of ochre, through which the
warm bronze gleamed when its rhythmic patter swelled into deeper-toned
harmonies. There was that in the elfin music and blaze of color which
appealed to the sensual ear and eye, and something which struck deeper
still, as it did in the days men poured libations on the fruitful soil,
and white-robed priests blessed it, when the world was young.
Maud Barrington felt it vaguely, but she recognized more clearly, as
her aunt had done, the faith and daring of the sower. The earth was
very bountiful, but that wheat had not come there of itself; and she
knew the man who had called it up and had done more than bear his share
of the primeval curse which, however, was apparently more or less
evaded at Silverdale. Even when the issue appeared hopeless, the
courage that held him resolute in the face of others' fears, and the
greatness of his projects, had appealed to her, and it almost counted
for less that he had achieved success. Then glancing further across
the billowing grain she saw him--still, as it seemed it had always been
with him, amid the stress and dust of strenuous endeavor.
Once more, as she had seen them when the furrows were bare at seed
time, and there was apparently only ruin in store for those who raised
the Eastern people's bread, lines of dusty teams came plodding down the
rise. They advanced in echelon, keeping their time and distance with a
military precision, but in place of the harrows, the tossing arms of
the binders flashed and swung. The wheat went down before them, their
wake was strewn with gleaming sheaves, and one man came foremost
swaying in the driving-seat of a rattling machine. His face was the
color of a Blackfeet's, and she could see the darkness of his neck
above the loose-fronted shirt, and a bare blackened arm that was raised
to hold the tired beasts to their task. Their trampling, and the crash
and rattle that swelled in slow crescendo, drowned the murmur of the
wheat, until one of the machines stood still, and the leader, turning a
moment in his saddle, held up a hand. Then those that came behind
swung into changed formation, passed, and fell into indented line
again, while Colonel Barrington nodded with grim approval.
"It is very well done," he said. "The best of harvesters! No
newcomers yonder. They're capable Manitoba men. I don't know where he
got them, and, in any other year, one would have wondered where he
would find the means of paying them. We have never seen farming of
this kind at Silverdale."
He seemed to sigh a little while his hand closed on the bridle, and
Maud Barrington fancied she understood his thoughts just then.
"Nobody can be always right, and the good years do not come alone," she
said. "You will plow every acre next one."
Barrington smiled dryly. "I'm afraid that will be a little late, my
dear. Any one can follow, but since, when everybody's crop is good,
the price comes down, the man who gets the prize is the one who shows
the way."
"He was content to face the risk," said Miss Barrington.
"Of course," said the Colonel quietly. "I should be the last to make
light of his foresight and courage. Indeed, I am glad I can
acknowledge it, in more ways than one, for I have felt lately that I am
getting an old man. Still, there is one with greater capacities ready
to step into my shoes, and though it was long before I could overcome
my prejudice against him, I think I should now be content to let him
have them. Whatever Lance may have been, he was born a gentleman, and
blood is bound to tell."
Maud Barrington, who was of patrician parentage, and would not at one
time have questioned this assertion, wondered why she felt less sure of
it just then.
"But if he had not been, would not what he has done be sufficient to
vouch for him?" she said.
Barrington smiled a little, and the girl felt that her question was
useless as she glanced at him. He sat very straight in his saddle,
immaculate in dress, with a gloved hand on his hip, and a stamp which
he had inherited, with the thinly-covered pride that usually
accompanies it from generations of a similar type, on his clean-cut
face. It was evidently needless to look for any sympathy with that
view from him.
"My dear," he said, "there are things at which the others can beat us;
but, after all, I do not think they are worth the most, and while Lance
has occasionally exhibited a few undesirable characteristics, no doubt
acquired in this country, and has not been always blameless, the fact
that he is a Courthorne at once covers and accounts for a good deal."
Then Winston recognized them, and made a sign to one of the men behind
him as he hauled his binder clear of the wheat. He had dismounted in
another minute, and came towards them, with the jacket he had not
wholly succeeded in struggling into, loose about his shoulders.
"It is almost time I gave my team a rest," he said, "Will you come with
me to the house?"
"No," said Colonel Barrington. "We only stopped in passing. The crop
will harvest well."
"Yes," said Winston, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington.
"Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will
remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably
come!"
"Then," said the white-haired lady, "next year I will do as much again,
though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes
all the time. Still, you are too prosaic to fancy they can have
anything to do with--this."
She pointed to the wheat, but, though Winston smiled again, there was a
curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.
"I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than
you realize to me," he said.
Miss Barrington looked at him steadily. "Lance," she said, "there is
something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me.
Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I
fancied you meant it."
"I did," said Winston, with a trace of grimness in his smile. "Still,
isn't it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?"
"Well," said Miss Barrington, "you are going to be franker with me by
and by. Now, my brother has been endeavoring to convince us that you
owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes."
Winston did not answer for a moment, and then he laughed. "I fancy
Colonel Barrington is wrong," he said. "Don't you think there are
latent capabilities in every man, though only one here and there gets
an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn't it be pleasanter
for any one to feel that his virtues were his own and not those of his
family?"
Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled, but she shook her head. "That," she
said, "would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were
getting on."
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as
they drove slowly past the wheat, his niece had another view of the
toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in
front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash
of the binders' wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those
sounds often before, and attached no significance to them, but now she
knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them, she could
hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.
Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise, and had passed from view
behind it, when a mounted man rode up to Winston with an envelope in
his hand.
"Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement and the telegraph clerk gave it
him," he said. "He told me to come along with it."
Winston opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, "Send me
five hundred dollars. Urgent."
Then he thrust it into his pocket, and went on with his harvesting when
he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up
across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the
affair, and then the note he wrote was laconic.
"Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be
ill. In case of necessity you can forward your doctor's or hotel
bills," it ran.
It was with a wry smile he watched a man ride off towards the
settlement with it. "I shall not be sorry when the climax comes," he
said. "The strain is telling."
In the meanwhile Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his
acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered
across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found
him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or
two he unbent so far as, in the face of the regulations, to refresh
himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian
revenue. Now the lonely ranchers have as a rule few opportunities of
friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant's
geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which
confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished
him. In consequence of this he rode out one night with two or three
troopers of a Western squadron.
His apparent business was somewhat prosaic. Musquash, the Blackfeet,
in place of remaining quietly on his reserve, had in a state of
inebriation reverted to the primitive customs of his race, and taking
the trail, not only annexed some of his white neighbors' ponies and
badly frightened their wives, but drove off a steer with which he
feasted his people. The owner following came upon the hide, and
Musquash, seeing it was too late to remove the brand from it, expressed
his contrition, and pleaded in extenuation that he was rather worthy of
sympathy than blame, because he would never have laid hands on what was
not his had not a white man sold him deleterious liquor. As no white
man is allowed to supply an Indian with alcohol in any form, the
wardens of the prairie took a somewhat similar view of the case, and
Stimson was, from motives which he did not mention, especially anxious
to get his grip upon the other offender.
The night when they rode out was very dark, and they spent half of it
beneath a birch bluff, seeing nothing whatever, and only hearing a
coyote howl. It almost appeared there was something wrong with the
information supplied them respecting the probable running of another
load of prohibited whisky, and towards morning Stimson rode up to the
young commissioned officer.
"The man who brought us word has either played their usual trick and
sent us here while his friends take the other trail, or somebody saw us
ride out and went south to tell the boys," he said. "Now, you might
consider it advisable that I and one of the troopers should head for
the ford at Willow Hollow, sir."
"Yes," said the young officer, who was quite aware that there were as
yet many things connected with his duties he did not know. "Now I come
to think of it, Sergeant, I do. We'll give you two hours, and then, if
you don't turn up, ride over after you; it's condemnably shivery
waiting for nothing here."
Stimson saluted and shook his bridle, and rather less than an hour
later faintly discerned a rattle of wheels that rose from a long way
off across the prairie. Then he used the spur, and by and by it became
evident that the drumming of their horses' feet had carried far, for,
though the rattle grew a little louder, there was no doubt that whoever
drove the wagon had no desire to be overtaken. Still, two horses
cannot haul a vehicle over a rutted trail as fast as one can carry a
man, and when the wardens of the prairie raced towards the black wall
of birches that rose higher in front of them, the sound of wheels
seemed very near. It, however, ceased suddenly, and was followed by a
drumming that could only have been made by a galloping horse.
"One beast!" said the Sergeant. "Well, they'd have two men, any way,
in that wagon. Get down and picket. We'll find the other fellow
somewhere in the bluff."
They came upon him within five minutes endeavoring to cut loose the
remaining horse from the entangled harness in such desperate haste that
he did not hear them until Stimson grasped his shoulder.
"Hold out your hands," he said. "You have your carbine ready, trooper?"
The man made no resistance, and Stimson laughed when the handcuffs were
on.
"Now," he said, "where's your partner?"
"I don't know that I mind telling you," said the prisoner. "It was a
low down trick he played on me. We got down to take out the horses
when we saw we couldn't get away from you, and I'd a blanket girthed
round the best of them, when he said he'd hold him while I tried what I
could do with the other. Well, I let him, and the first thing I knew
he was off at a gallop, leaving me with the other kicking devil two men
couldn't handle. You'll find him rustling south over the Montana
trail."
"Mount and ride!" said Stimson, and when his companion galloped off,
turned once more to his prisoner.
"You'll have a lantern somewhere, and I'd like a look at you," he said.
"If you're the man I expect, I'm glad I found you."
"It's in the wagon," said the other dejectedly.
Stimson got a light, and when he had released and picketed the plunging
horse, held it so that he could see his prisoner. Then he nodded with
evident contentment.
"You may as well sit down. We've got to have a talk," he said.
"Well," said the other, "I'd help you to catch Harmon if I could, but I
can prove he hired me to drive him over to Kemp's in the wagon, and
you'd find it difficult to show I knew what there was in the packages
he took along."
Stimson smiled dryly. "Still," he said, "I think it could be done, and
I've another count against you. You had one or two deals with the boys
some little while ago."
"I'm not afraid of your fixing up against me anything I did then," said
the other man.
"No?" said Stimson. "Now, I guess you're wrong, and it might be a good
deal more serious than whisky-running. One night a man crawled up to
your homestead through the snow, and you took him in."
He saw the sudden fear in his companion's face before he turned it from
the lantern.
"It has happened quite a few times," said the latter. "We don't turn
any stranger out in this country."
"Of course!" said the Sergeant gravely, though he felt a little thrill
of content as he saw the shot, he had been by no means sure of, had
told. "That man, however, had lost his horse in the river, and it was
the one he got from you that took him out of the country. Now, if we
could show you knew what he had done, it might go as far as hanging
somebody."
The man was evidently not a confirmed law breaker, but merely one of
the small farmers who were willing to pick up a few dollars by
assisting the whisky-runners now and then, and he abandoned all
resistance.
"Sergeant," he said, "it was 'most a week before I knew, and if anybody
had told me at the time, I'd have turned him out to freeze before I'd
have let him have a horse of mine."
"That wouldn't go very far if we brought the charge against you," said
Stimson grimly. "If you'd sent us word when you did know, we'd have
had him."
"Well," said the man, "he was across the frontier by that time, and I
don't know that most folks would have done it, if they'd had the
warning the boys sent me."
Stimson appeared to consider for almost a minute, and then gravely
rapped his companion's arm.
"It seems to me that the sooner you and I have an understanding, the
better it will be for you," he said.
They were some time arriving at it, and the Sergeant's superiors might
not have been pleased with all he promised during the discussion.
Still, he was flying at higher game, and had to sacrifice a little,
while he knew his man.
"We'll fix it up without you, as far as we can, but if we want you to
give evidence that the man who lost his horse in the river was not
farmer Winston, we'll know where to find you," he said. "You'll have
to take your chance of being tried with him if we find you're trying to
get out of the country."
It was half an hour later when the rest of the troopers arrived and
Stimson had some talk with their officer aside.
"A little out of the usual course, isn't it?" said the latter. "I
don't know that I'd have countenanced it, so to speak, off my own bat
at all, but I had a tolerably plain hint that you were to use your
discretion over this affair. After all, one has to stretch a point or
two occasionally."
"Yes, sir," said Stimson. "A good many now and then."
The officer smiled a little and went back to the rest. "Two of you
will ride after the other rascal," he said. "Now, look here, my man,
the first time my troopers, who'll call round quite frequently, don't
find you about your homestead, you'll land yourself in a tolerably
serious difficulty. In the meanwhile, I'm sorry we can't bring a
charge of whisky-running against you, but another time be careful who
you hire your wagon to."
Then there was a rapid drumming of hoofs as two troopers went off at a
gallop, while when the rest turned back towards the outpost. Stimson
rode with them quietly content.