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BY RIGHT OF PURCHASE
[Illustration: "GET HOLD OF THE BEASTS, SOME OF YOU. IT'S MRS. LELAND.
SHE'S A DAISY!"--Page 297]
By Right of Purchase
By HAROLD BINDLOSS
AUTHOR OF "Alton of Somasco," etc.
[Illustration]
ILLUSTRATED BY ALFRED JAMES DEWEY
A. L. BURT COMPANY
Publishers New York
Copyright, 1908, by
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
All rights reserved
September, 1908
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. BARROCK-HOLME 3
II. LELAND IS ROUSED TO PITY 15
III. PRESSURE OF CIRCUMSTANCES 26
IV. LELAND MAKES THE PLUNGE 36
V. NO ESCAPE 48
VI. THE PRAIRIE 60
VII. CARRIE MAKES HER VIEWS CLEAR 73
VIII. LELAND SEEKS DISTRACTION 86
IX. FARMERS IN COUNCIL 98
X. HOMICIDE 109
XI. SEEDTIME 121
XII. LELAND'S PROTEST 134
XIII. CARRIE ABASES HERSELF 146
XIV. THE OUTLAWS STRIKE BACK 159
XV. BENEFICENT RAIN 170
XVI. URMSTON SHOWS HIS PRUDENCE 181
XVII. CARRIE MAKES A COMPARISON 191
XVIII. A MIDNIGHT VISITOR 202
XIX. PRAIRIE-HAY 215
XX. AN UNDERSTANDING 227
XXI. A WILLING SACRIFICE 237
XXII. HAIL 248
XXIII. GALLWEY'S ADVENTURE 261
XXIV. LELAND MAKES SURE 272
XXV. A PORTENTOUS LIGHT 281
XXVI. FIGHTING FIRE 292
XXVII. LELAND FEELS THE STRAIN 303
XXVIII. CARRIE'S RESPONSIBILITY 313
XXIX. LELAND STRIKES BACK 324
XXX. HARVEST 335
By Right of Purchase
CHAPTER I
BARROCK-HOLME
It was a hot September afternoon. Leland wondered vaguely how the
harvesting and threshing were progressing in his own far distant
country, as he leant on the moss-grown wall of the terrace beneath the
old house of Barrock-holme. He had been a week there now as the guest of
Lieutenant Denham, whose acquaintance he had originally made out on the
wide prairie in Western Canada, and for whom he had a certain liking
that was slightly tinged with contempt. The estate would be Jimmy
Denham's some day, provided that his father succeeded in keeping it out
of the grasp of his creditors. Those who knew the old man well fancied
that he might with difficulty accomplish it, for Branscombe Denham of
Barrock-holme was not troubled by many scruples, and had acquired
considerable proficiency in the evasion of debts.
The mansion stood on the brink of a ravine in the desolate border
marshes. Part of it had been built to stand a siege in the days of the
Scottish wars. The strong square tower was intact and habitable still;
the rest of the low building stretched round three sides of a
quadrangle, with a dry moat across the fourth, beyond which lawn and
flower-garden lay shielded from the shrewd border winds by tall,
lichened walls. Through an archway one could look down, across
silver-stemmed birches and dusky firs, upon the Barrock flashing in the
depths of the ravine.
Leland found the prospect pleasant as he lounged there, with a cigar in
his hand. He was accustomed to his own country, and there was something
congenial and, in a fashion, familiar in the sweep of lonely moorlands
and bleak Scottish hills which stretched, shining warm in the paling
sunlight, along the northern horizon. It reminded him of his own
country, which was even more wild and desolate, on the southern border
of Western Canada. He had been three months in England, and was already
longing to be home again, though he had found what he called the
hardness of the North congenial.
It was a land of legends and traditions, of which they were rather proud
at Barrock-holme. The grey tower had more than once been beset by the
border spears, on whom the dragon's mouth on the wall above had spouted
boiling oil. There was an oak on the edge of the ravine which had borne
bitter fruit in the days of foray, and--for the men of Barrock-holme
could strike back tellingly then--the quadrangle had been filled with
Scottish cattle. They were grim, hard men, and what he had heard of
their doings appealed to Leland. He himself was in some respects a hard
man, and rather primitive. The life of the wardens of Barrock-holme and
the moss-troopers was rather more comprehensible to him than the one of
which he had had brief glimpses in London.
While he stood there, Jimmy Denham came along the terrace, and stopped
beside him.
"You're not going down to join them?" he said, indicating with a little
wave of a particularly well-shaped hand the white-clad figures that
flitted to and fro across a sunken square of turf beyond the lawn.
"No," said Leland. "I don't play tennis well. In fact, I don't play any
of your games. I never had time to learn them."
Denham sat down upon the wall and looked at him languidly. He was a
well-favoured young man, tall and fair, with pale blue eyes, and
distinguished by a finicking, almost feminine daintiness in dress and
person, though he was proficient in most manly sports and a soldier. His
friends, however, were aware that his fastidiousness was much less
noticeable in his character.
"One can't do everything," he said lazily. "I don't know that I've seen
another beginner show quite as good form at billiards as you do. I'll
play you fifty with the same allowance as last time. It will be some
time yet before dinner."
"Not just now. It seems to me I've had about enough of billiards for one
week. To be quite straight, one finds learning your amusements a trifle
expensive, and I'm not sure they're worth it. You see, I'm not going to
stay here forever, and once I go back, it will probably be a very long
while before I take part in any of them again."
Denham laughed with undiminished good-humour. "Well," he said, "though I
have taken a little out of you, the acquisition of knowledge is usually
more or less costly. There's a couple of hours to put in, anyway. What
would you like to do?"
"I don't mind poker, if you'll make it high enough."
Denham saw the little twinkle in his eyes, and languidly shook his head.
"No," he said; "I rather fancy you would have me there. The suggestion's
a bit significant, and I have a notion your nerve's too good. Of course,
it isn't very sporting to say no, but I really can't afford to face a
risk just now."
"Which was probably why you wanted to play billiards with me?"
Denham regarded him reproachfully for a moment or two, and then made a
little gesture. "That coming from some people might be considered
offensive, but nobody seems to mind how you express yourself, although
your observations aren't always particularly delicate. Still, I'm
willing to admit that I want fifty pounds rather worse than I generally
do."
"I wonder," said Leland, with a trace of dryness, "if you would take it
amiss if I offered to lend it to you?"
Jimmy Denham smiled delicately where another man would have grinned.
"Not in the least! In fact, I should consider myself distinctly obliged
to you."
"Then you shall have a cheque after dinner."
Denham thanked him without effusion. One could almost have fancied that
it was he who was conferring the favour. As Leland listened, a little
sardonic smile crept into his eyes. He was known in his own country as a
shrewd man, and was quite aware that he ran some risk in lending his
comrade fifty pounds. But Jimmy had done him one or two kindnesses, and
that counted for much with Leland.
"Who is the very pretty girl who has just come into the tennis ground?"
he asked.
"My sister," said Denham. "I had almost forgotten you had not met
Carrie. She is rather pretty, though. While the governor and I are
Denhams, she takes after the other side of the family in more ways than
one. She has only just come from Town, you know."
Leland did not know. He had merely heard that there was a Carrie Denham;
but as he looked down across the moat he was conscious of a sudden
interest in the girl. She stood with one hand on the back of a
basket-chair, her long white dress flowing in easy lines about her tall
and shapely figure. So far as he could see it, her face beneath the big
white hat was attractive, too; but it was her pose that vaguely
impressed him. There was a suggestion of strength and pride in it that
was by no means noticeable in the case of either her father or Jimmy
Denham. The appearance of the man with whom she talked was, however,
much less pleasing. He was inclined to be portly, his face was coarsely
fleshy, with the distinctive stamp of the city on him. He looked out of
place in that quaint old pleasance on the desolate border side. He
reminded Leland forcibly of the caricatures he had seen of Hebrew
usurers.
"And the gentleman?" he asked.
Denham laughed. "You would expect his name to be Moses, or Levy, but, as
a matter of fact, it isn't. Anyway, he calls himself Aylmer. A friend of
the governor's, and the usual something in the city. Comes down for a
week or two at the partridges, ostensibly, at least, though it's quite
possible there will be a dog or two, and, perhaps, a keeper, disabled
before he goes away. If you care to come down, I'll present you to
Carrie. She knows you are here, and is no doubt a trifle curious about
you."
If she was, Miss Denham concealed the fact very well, and Leland, who
was not readily embarrassed, felt a quite unusual diffidence as she held
out a little white hand. He noticed, however, that she looked at him
frankly, and that she had a beautiful hand, like the rest of the
Denhams. Her face was cold and somewhat colourless, with dusky hair low
on the broad forehead, unusually straight brows, and dark eyes; a
beautiful face it seemed to him, but one that had a vague suggestion of
weariness in it just then. Carrie Denham, he thought, in no way
resembled her easy-going brother Jimmy. There was, as he expressed it to
himself, more grit in her; and yet he was, without exactly knowing why,
rather sorry for her. She was evidently not more than three or
four-and-twenty, and he felt there must be a reason for her quietness
and reserve, which appeared a trifle unnatural.
She, on her part, saw a tall and wiry rather than stalwart man, some
four or five years older than herself, especially straight of limb,
holding himself well, whilst his bronzed face, which was otherwise of
brown-eyed, English type, showed undoubted force. He was, she fancied, a
man accustomed to exert authority, but not exactly what in the most
restricted English sense of the word would be called a gentleman. At
least, he was evidently one who earned his living, and his hands were
curiously brown and hard, while the manner in which he wore his
shooting clothes suggested that he seldom wasted much time over his
toilet.
"I hope you will find your stay at Barrock-holme pleasant," she said.
"In weather like this the birds should lie well. You have not been here
long?"
"A week," said Leland.
Jimmy Denham had in the meanwhile passed on. His sister glanced at the
fleshy Aylmer, who was about to move the chair for her.
"No," she said in a coldly even voice, "you need not trouble. I am not
going to stay here. Have they shown you our dripping-well yet, Mr.
Leland?"
Leland, who said he had not seen it, surmised that Miss Denham desired
to be rid of her other cavalier; but Aylmer, who protested that he had
an absorbing interest in dripping-wells, was not to be shaken off, so
they crossed the lawn and went out through the archway together. Then
Leland stopped a moment and flashed a questioning glance at Carrie
Denham, for the strip of pathway outside the wall was, perhaps, two feet
wide, and he could look almost straight down through the tops of the
birch trees upon the Barrock flashing in the hollow a hundred and fifty
feet below. He was thinking that it would probably go hard with anybody
who stumbled there. A railed walk led in the opposite direction.
Carrie Denham, however, met his gaze with a faint, understanding smile,
and he followed her in single file until the path grew broader beyond a
bend of the wall. Then looking round he saw, as he half-expected, that
the passage had apparently been too much for the third of the party. In
another moment he met the girl's glance again.
"I hope you were not afraid?" she said.
Leland's eyes twinkled, but he made no disclaimer, which, for no
apparent reason, seemed to please her.
"There is, of course, another path," she said.
"So I should surmise!" said Leland. "Do you really wish to show me the
well?"
The girl laughed for the first time, and the swift change in her face
almost startled the man. The coldness and reserve had gone, and for a
moment she was, it seemed to him, subtly alluring.
"Well," she said, "I have to justify myself, and somebody may ask you
what you think of it. Under the circumstances, it might be better to go
on, although the way is often a little muddy when one gets among the
trees."
Leland was fancying that it must have been muddier than usual, or she
would not have ventured there, when they reached a spot where a tiny
stream came trickling out of a hollow shrouded with sombre firs. A few
stones had evidently once been laid in the moss and mire; but some of
them had sunk, and the gaps were wide between. Carrie Denham stopped and
surveyed them dubiously.
"I haven't been here for a long while, but I don't like to turn back,"
she said.
"Or the men who do?"
She flashed a little, swift glance at him, but his face was
expressionless. "That goes without saying."
Leland glanced down at her little bronze shoes. "Of course, there is
usually a way; but the trouble is that I am a stranger. If I were in my
own country, I should suggest a very simple means of getting you over."
The girl looked at him with something in her eyes that suggested
ironical appreciation of his boldness, but her only action was to shake
her head.
"It is just as well you are not," she said. "We are a little less
primitive here."
"Then," said Leland, "I guess we must try the other way."
He plunged boldly into the mossy quagmire, into which he sank well above
his ankles, and held out his hand to her. She noticed as she sprang from
stone to stone how hard it was and how firm his grasp. It seemed to her
that what this man took hold of he would not easily let go, an
impression she remembered afterwards.
She crossed dry-shod, and Leland did not seem in the least concerned at
the water squishing in his shoes. There was then a scramble up the
hillside under the shadowy firs until they reached the well, which
Leland promptly decided was not very much to look at. It lay at the head
of a little green hollow, a wall of fissured limestones sprinkled with
mosses and tufted with hartstongue fern from the midst of which the
water splashed drip by drip into a shallow basin. Carrie Denham turned
and glanced at him with a trace of somewhat chilly amusement in her
face.
"You are no doubt wondering if I haven't wasted your time," she said.
"Still, now you are here, you may as well notice that the water has
rather curious properties. If you will pull out one of these sticks, for
instance, you will see what is happening to them."
Leland stooped and drew out a slender birch branch, whose feathery twigs
were changing into what looked very like silver lace. The stem was also
crusted with a white deposit, and it cost him a little effort to snap
it across. Then he looked up at his companion with a smile as he saw
that the interior was still soft.
"Do you know that you strike me as being very like this twig?" he said,
and she noticed for the first time his Western accent and modulation.
"The hardness is all outside."
"Whatever made you say that?"
Leland met her half-indignant gaze gravely. "Well," he said with a
little deprecatory gesture, "I have seen you laugh."
"Ah," said Carrie, "there was a time when I laughed rather more
frequently than I do now. I should, however, like to point out that the
stick had not been in quite long enough."
Leland still looked at her with a quizzical expression. "I think I know
what you mean," he said. "Still, I should scarcely have fancied you
would have felt it yet. Anyway, that's not the question; and, perhaps,
it wouldn't do for me to make you stop here. There will be other people
wanting to talk to you."
They turned back together, this time taking the easier way. As they
passed along a tall hedge, Leland heard a rustling on its other side and
darted impulsively through, leaving his astonished companion without a
word. Following through a gap, she came upon him as he picked up a
rabbit from the grass. The little creature's eyes were protuding in an
agony of strangulation, and a thin brass wire hung from its red-smeared
fur. Then Leland either saw or heard her, for he turned his back to the
hedge, and flung over his shoulder what seemed to her rather too like a
command.
"Go back!" he said. "This is not a thing for you to see."
Carrie Denham went back, though she was more accustomed to do what
pleased her, and make others do it, than to do what she was told. It was
a minute or two before Leland joined her, grim in face, an ominous
sparkle in his eyes.
"It was only half-choked, so I put it back in a burrow," he said. "It
would have pleased me to hang the brute who set that wire."
Carrie Denham watched him with interest. "I believe it is the usual way
of catching them."
"Then," said Leland grimly, "there must be something very wrong with the
folks who allow that abominable cruelty to go on. The little beast might
have struggled there for hours in horrible pain before it choked itself
in its agony."
The girl fancied that abominable was not the adjective he had wanted to
employ, but she said nothing further on the subject, though there
remained with her the picture of him holding the little furry creature
with womanly gentleness while he slackened the torturing wire. It was
made even more impressive when, on suggesting hanging for the man who
had laid the snare, something in his face and voice left her with the
conviction that he would on due occasion be capable of carrying out his
suggestion. He was, she decided, altogether different from the men she
usually saw. When he left her in the quadrangle, she contrived to fall
in with her brother.
"Who is he?" she asked.
"Charley Leland," said Jimmy with his nearest approach to a grin.
"I know that already."
"I can't tell you very much more, and no doubt you'll find out what you
want to know for yourself. I spent a month shooting round his place in
Western Canada, and made him promise if ever he came over he'd look in
upon me here. Then I met him in London a few weeks ago."
"What does he do out there?"
"Farm, on a lordly scale. I forget how many thousand acres he has under
wheat, and how many steers he owns; but he's rather a famous man in
Assiniboia. His father was, I believe, an Englishman, but he died when
Leland was young, and the farm and the stock-run have doubled in the
hands of the son. That's about all, except that I rather like the man.
He has his strong points, but needs handling. I fancy any one who roused
him would see the devil."
Carrie Denham asked no more questions, but went somewhat thoughtfully to
her room. On the whole she felt a mild interest in Charley Leland.