LELAND'S PROTEST
There were two breakfasts served in the Occidental Hotel, which,
dilapidated and weather-scarred, stands at the foot of the unpaved
street of a desolate little town beside the railroad track. Most men
commence their work early in the prairie country, so the first meal was
laid at six; but there was another from eight to nine when a train came
in. This was a somewhat unusual concession to the needs of the few
passengers who alighted there, because throughout most of the Northwest
no self-respecting hotel cook would prepare a meal out of the fixed
hours, not even for a cabinet minister or a railroad director. Nor would
the proprietor vary a dish, for in his estimation what suffices the
plainsman is quite good enough for anybody else.
The table had just been cleared when a small and select company of men
who had nothing in particular to do pulled their chairs up to the stove,
on which as many of them as could find room put their feet. It had not
been lighted that morning, or black-leaded for many days, but habit was
strong in them. There are, even in countries where most men are hard
workers, a few who spend their lives lounging on hotel verandahs and
sitting round the stove. Nobody unused to it would, in all probability,
have cared to linger there, for there are few places of entertainment so
wholly desolate and uninviting as the general room of the average
prairie hotel.
Its walls were obviously made of dressed boards, and had even borne a
coat of paint at one time; but they were bare and dirty now. Two lonely
German oleographs of more than usually barbaric type hung on rusty
nails. Cigar-ends and burnt matches littered the uncarpeted floor.
Benches without backs to them ran along either side of the uncovered
table. The rest of the furniture consisted of the rusty stove and a few
chairs, which the loungers monopolised. Two of the group wore
store-clothing, with trousers so tight that one wondered how they ever
got them on, and two wore blue jean in sad need of patching. They had
rough, dark faces, relieved by no sign of amiability or unusual
intelligence; but they could talk. Loafers and tramps usually can.
Outside the open window, bright sunshine flooded the verandah, and fell
upon the bare frame-houses across the way. A couple of light waggons,
with the mire of the spring thawing not yet washed off them, passed
clattering and jolting among the ruts. The streets of a prairie town
usually resemble a morass when the frost breaks up. When they had gone,
a police trooper swung by on a spume-flecked horse, with the dust of
several leagues' journey thick on his trim uniform. Then there was
silence again until one of the loungers looked up from the greasy paper
he was reading.
"Wheat still going down," he said. "There's no bottom to the market, or,
if it had one, it's dropped out. Our boss farmers are going to feel it
if things go on like this; but nobody's going to be sorry for them. They
figure they own the country already."
"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going
up," said another man.
The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which
was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt.
"Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for
him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That,
and nothing else."
"Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remaining comrade, and the
others grinned.
A vindictive gleam crept into the man's eyes. "Well," he said, "I've no
use for being bossed by that kind of man, and one day I up and told him
what I thought of him. There was considerable trouble before I walked
out. Anyway, between the market and the English girl he's married, he's
fixed just now."
"She's flinging his money away?" asked somebody.
"With both hands, and too stuck on herself to be civil to him. They're
made like that in the Old Country. Leland's no more to her than the
hired man, one of the boys told me."
"Well, why'd she marry him?"
"For his money. That's a good enough reason, and it's quite likely there
was another one. Girls like her have got to marry somebody over there,
and the men with money are kind of particular. I guess it's not
astonishing. If you got hold of an English paper, it's full of their
goings-on."
"That's all right," said one of the others in tight store-clothes.
"Still, until they're married, they've got to be careful. Afterwards, it
don't so much matter. Unless all's quite straight, buyers hold off, and
the figure comes down."
"It's quite easy guessing that's what was wrong with Mrs. Leland. What
else would a girl with her looks make sure of him for? Charley Leland
comes along with his money, and they plant her right on to him. It's
even betting she goes off with another man if the market breaks him."
He stopped abruptly as his neighbour drove an elbow into his ribs, and
his mouth gaped open as he dropped his feet from the stove. Then the
others moved uneasily in their chairs, for a man stood in the doorway
regarding them with a singularly unpleasant smile.
"Stand right up, Jasper, you--hog!" he said.
Jasper sat still, glancing at the others, as though he felt that, while
none of them appeared in any haste to do so, it was their duty to
support him, until one evidently remembered that there were, after all,
four of them.
"He's sitting where he is, Charley Leland," he said. "Nobody asked you
to hang round listening, and if you don't like our talk you can go
outside again."
Leland showed no sign of having heard him. "Get up," he said, "and tell
them you're a liar."
Jasper sat still. He was tolerably active and muscular, or he would
never have worked at Prospect. But there was a dangerous look in
Leland's eyes. His quiet incisiveness was portentous. Realising that
his comrades expected something of him, Jasper managed to retort.
"Oh, go home!" he said. "I guess you've plenty of trouble there without
making any here."
In another moment Leland had crossed the room and swung him to his feet.
Nobody was very clear about what happened during the next few seconds.
There is, however, a certain animal courage in every man who has lived
by bodily toil, and Jasper, who had also a vindictive temper, did all he
could. When he had once felt Leland's hand, he clinched with him, and,
reeling locked together, they fell with a crash against the table and
overturned one of the benches. Then, gasping, panting, floundering, and
striking when they could, they went swaying towards the door, while
Jasper's friends howled encouragingly, and men, attracted by the uproar,
ran out of the opposite store. Foot by foot they neared the verandah,
and when Leland, gasping with passion, made a supreme effort, they
staggered out into it.
There was a crowd below it now, and they set up a shout as Leland's
grasp sank lower down the other man's hollowing back. Jasper, it seemed,
was not altogether a favourite of theirs. After that there was silence
for another moment or two, while the two men swayed and strained with
scuffling feet, until one of them suddenly relaxed his hold, and,
reeling backwards, plunged down the verandah stairway. He struck a rail
as he did it, and, overturning, came down headlong in the unpaved
street. Somebody dragged him to his feet, and he stood still a moment,
hatless, with the dust upon his flushed face, and his jacket rent,
gasping with futile rage. Then he slunk away through the gap that was
opened up for him.
Leland leant somewhat heavily on the rails above. The veins were swollen
on his forehead, blood trickled down his chin from one of his bleeding
lips, and his face was dark with rage. Altogether, he was not exactly an
attractive spectacle. Raising himself stiffly, he disappeared into the
hotel, from which three other men made their way with as much haste as
was compatible with any show of dignity. A light waggon had stopped
unnoticed just outside the crowd.
A few minutes earlier Carrie Leland and Mrs. Annersly had driven across
the railroad track on their way to the dry-goods store, and, as the
waggon jolted in the ruts, the girl pointed to the town with a little
gesture of repugnance.
"Could one well imagine anything less attractive than this?" she said.
"Still, I believe the desolate place is looked upon as a rising city,
and they are actually proud of it."
Eveline Annersly glanced up the single street with a twinkle in her
eyes. It somewhat resembled a ploughed field, though the ruts and ridges
the wheels had made were crumbling into dust. Above it ran a rickety
sidewalk of planks, by means of which foot passengers could escape the
mire in spring; and crude frame-houses, destitute of paint or any
attempt at adornment, rose from that in turn. The fronts of most of them
were carried sufficiently high to hide the pitch of sloped roof, so that
they resembled squares of timber pierced by little windows. Above the
topmost of the latter there usually ran a blatant but half-obliterated
commendation of the wares sold within, for in the rising prairie town
every house is, as a rule, either a store or a hotel.
"Well," she said, "one could scarcely call it picturesque, but we have
colliery and other industrial villages at home that are not very far
behind it."
Carrie laughed. "Still, we have the grace to attempt to justify them on
the score of necessity, while they hold this place up as a model and a
sign of progress. It is a barbarous country."
"Including Prospect, too?"
"Of course! Still, Prospect makes no pretence of civilisation. It is
part of the prairie, and nobody could expect much from it."
"Or of those who dwell in it?"
A little tinge of colour showed in the girl's cheek. "Well," she said
with faint scorn, "I don't mind admitting that, too. They are a
distinctly primitive people."
Mrs. Annersly said nothing further. She had her fancies respecting the
reason for the girl's bitterness, and did not think that her marriage
accounted for all of it. This was, in a way, as she would have it. She
sat silent until Carrie pulled the team up close to the dry-goods store.
A crowd was collecting in front of it, and they could get no further.
While they sat there, a clamour broke out, and amidst a sound of
scuffling, two men reeled across the verandah of the hotel opposite
them. Their faces were not at first visible, and Carrie smiled
contemptuously when the crowd encouraged them as they grappled with each
other.
"That," she said, "is evidently considered the correct thing when
Western gentlemen have a difference of opinion. You will notice that
nobody makes any attempt to put an end to it. After all, since they
cannot keep their brutality under restraint, there is something to be
said for the use of pistols."
In another moment one of the men brought his fist down with a dull thud
upon the other's half-concealed face, and a little spark of scornful
anger crept into the girl's eyes.
"It is a little disgusting, but we cannot get on without driving over
somebody, and it would be a trifle absurd to have to go away again," she
said. "What brutes men of their kind are!"
"Still, there is something to admire in their brutality," said her
companion. "That man has both lips cut open. One would have fancied the
blow would have stunned him, but he seems to be disregarding it, and is
holding on."
She stopped a moment, with a little catching of her breath. "Ah," she
said, "there will be no more of it."
One of the men loosed his hold and reeled down the stairway. Then for
the first time they saw the face of the other clearly as he leant upon
the rails. It was not wholly pleasant to look at, for there was passion
in it, and blood trickled from the swollen lips. Carrie's hands
tightened convulsively on the reins as she urged the team forward. Her
cheeks were almost colourless, but she met Eveline Annersly's eyes
steadily, and her voice had a bitter ring in it.
"Yes," she said, "it is my husband. No doubt his comrades would expect
me to be pleased with him."
She stopped a moment and pulled the team up again. "I wonder if you can
guess what it will cost me to go into that store, but I am going. After
all, it would be a little absurd for Charley Leland's wife to be
particular."
Mrs. Annersly's face was compassionate. "My dear," she said, "he had
probably a reason for it."
"Of course!" said Carrie, languidly. "No doubt they differed over the
points of a steer, or one of them was too attentive to the waiting-maid.
I believe they have two at the Occidental."
She swung herself down, ignoring the hand of a man who had seized the
reins, and, when Mrs. Annersly had descended, went into the big store.
She was perfectly conscious that everybody was watching her, but she
made her purchases with a cold serenity, and then drove away. She did
not inquire for Leland, and was unaware that the object on the verge of
the prairie was his waggon. Had she known it, she would have held her
team in a little, for she had not the least desire to overtake him.
This, however, was scarcely likely, for it was a long way to Prospect,
and she intended to break the journey for an hour or so at an outlying
farm to which the trail turned off in a league or two.
In the meanwhile, Leland drove on as fast as his weary team could go,
until he reached the crossing of the ravine where Sergeant Grier had
waylaid the outlaws. The trail dipped in sharp twists between the
birches into the hollow, and he had raised himself a trifle on the
driving-seat to swing the team round a bend when one side of the waggon
dropped suddenly beneath him. In another moment he went out headlong,
and, coming down heavily on his shoulder, lay as he fell, half dazed for
a time. When he pulled his scattered senses together, he saw that the
team had stopped and that one of the waggon wheels lay not far away from
him. He rose with difficulty, feeling very sore and very dizzy, but,
finding that he could walk, picked the wheel up. The brass cap of the
hub had gone, and so had the nut which locked the bush on the axle. He
had put a new one on not long before, and felt sure it had not come off
of itself, as he remembered how tightly it had fitted. Still, it was
evident that, if anybody had loosened it, the sudden strain upon the
wheels as the waggon swung round the bend might have jarred it off, even
after it had held that far.
That question could wait. Rolling the wheel downhill, he attempted to
put it on the hub. An unloaded prairie waggon is usually so light that a
strong man can lift one side of it, but Leland was badly shaken by his
fall. Indeed, he sat down more than once, gasping and dripping with
perspiration, before he accomplished it. It was a mighty task for any
man to attempt after a long day's ploughing, a night spent upon the
trail, and a sixty-mile drive.
Although he was bothered with a distressing headache, and found that a
branch had scored his cheek, nevertheless, when he had fitted on another
nut from the tool-box in the waggon, he drove ahead, reaching Prospect
almost as worn out as the team. Still, after a bite of food, he climbed
up into the driving-seat of the big gang-plough. Summer is short in the
Northwest, and the wheat that goes in late runs a risk of freezing, so
he needed in his struggle the efforts of every man he could get. He
drove the threefold furrow through the ripping sod until at last the
copper sun dipped below the prairie's verge. Then, leaving his team to
the men, he went back to the house, too weary to carry himself erect.
The birches swayed in a cold green transparency, the crisp air had vim
in it, but the weary man noticed nothing as he plodded, heavy-eyed,
through the crackling stubble.
He had just finished his lonely supper, and was sitting, dressed as when
he came in, with the dust of the journey on him, and smears of the soil
upon his heavy boots and leggings, when his wife, who apparently did not
know he was there, entered the room. She started a little as she saw
him, and Leland drowsily raised his hand to the raw red scar on his
face. He had not remembered that his lips were twice their natural size
and very unpleasant to look at, though they pained him.
"It doesn't amount to much," he said deprecatingly. "I've been too busy
to fix it. I got thrown out of my waggon."
Carrie became rigidly erect, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes.
"That is really a little unnecessary," she said coldly. "I didn't
presume to trouble you with any inquiries."
Leland looked at her, as though puzzled, with half-closed eyes. "They
wouldn't have been unnatural in the case of a man who was flung headlong
out of his waggon."
"One excuse will no doubt serve as well as another. The difficulty is
that I happen to have some idea as to how you got your injuries."
The man rose wearily. "I have the pleasure of telling you that I was
thrown out coming down the ravine."
"And I," said Carrie coldly, "was at the settlement at the time you
furnished everybody with that interesting spectacle on the hotel
verandah. I don't wish to be unduly fastidious, but hitherto, so far as
I know, at least you have not taken the trouble to deceive me wilfully."
Leland turned towards her with his cut lips pressed together, and his
scarred face grim and hard, making a little gesture of weariness.
"Well," he said, "I guess it doesn't matter. I don't suppose I could
make you think anything but hard of me."
He stopped a minute, and then laughed. "I have faced the world alone so
far, and held my own with it. I suppose there is no reason why I
shouldn't go on doing it."
"I believe that is, after all, what most men have to do," said Carrie.
"I shall endeavour to be as small a burden on you as I can manage."
Then she turned and left him; but, as had happened on other occasions,
her heart smote her in spite of her anger, for he looked shaken and very
weary and lonely in the big, desolate room.