CARRIE'S RESPONSIBILITY
Carrie Leland spent two very anxious days before a doctor, from one of
the larger settlements down the line, arrived in company with Gallwey,
who drove him in from the station. The latter had, during the journey,
favoured Gallwey with his professional opinions as to the cause of
Leland's illness. As soon as he reached the homestead he was shown into
the sick-room. Leland, who had recovered consciousness after the first
few hours, submitted to a lengthy examination with a patience which
somewhat astonished his comrade, after which the doctor, who asked him a
few questions, nodded as though satisfied.
"I have no great fault to find with anything the man did who attended to
you in the first place." he said. "In fact, I have seen considerably
worse dressings. A bushman, I presume?"
Leland looked at him languidly out of half-closed eyes. "He's not going
to be sorry. It would be more to the purpose if you told me what was the
matter with me."
"An abrasion on your forehead, and a bruise on the back of your head
which should apparently have been sufficient to produce concussion of
the brain," the doctor said. "Then your arm is cut half across, and, if
the knife hadn't brought up on a bone, you would probably not have
survived the wound on your breast. I almost think that is quite enough."
"Anyway, it's not quite what I mean. The cuts will heal. What made me
turn dizzy and fall off the binder? I've never had anything of that kind
happen to me before."
The doctor smiled drily. "Well," he said, "in similar circumstances you
will in all probability have it happen again. It rests with yourself to
decide whether you like it. Speaking generally, it's the result of worry
and trying to work a good deal harder than it's fit for you to work. To
be a little more definite, you have had what one might call incipient
sunstroke on the top of it, and, though I don't know how you fell on the
binder, the thump you got had its effect upon your brain. That's almost
as near as one can get to it in every-day language."
Leland laughed. "The question is, when can I get up?"
"It depends upon yourself. If you lie quite still and don't worry about
anything, I will consider the matter, when I come back again."
Leland could extract nothing more definite from him, and, when he went
out, Carrie took him into her sitting-room.
"There is nothing to be anxious about," he said. "The surgical aspect of
the case is in no way serious, and I'll leave you an antiseptic dressing
and mail you some medicine. I don't know when I can get back, but it
will be a week, anyway; so, if there is any change that seems to make it
advisable, you will wire me from the depot. What your husband needs is
absolute quiet. He is on no account to be worried about any business."
"I think I can promise that," said Carrie. "Still there are his letters.
If I don't give him any, it will certainly make him restless, and, as
most of them are about the price of wheat and accounts, I'm afraid they
would scarcely be likely to soothe him."
The doctor appeared a trifle uncertain, and flashed a swift glance at
Eveline Annersly, who sat not far away. Like most of his profession, he
was acquainted with the little shortcomings of human nature, and was
quite aware that there are men whose wives would probably be none the
happier if supplied with an insight into all their husband's affairs. He
was too young to conceal very successfully what he was thinking, and,
though he was, perhaps, not altogether conscious of it, he looked to
Eveline Annersly for guidance. She said nothing, but there was, he
fancied, comprehension and an answer in her little smile.
"Well," he said, "I might suggest that you open them and keep back
anything that seems likely to disturb him."
In a few more minutes, Mrs. Nesbit came in to announce that a meal was
awaiting him. When he went out, Eveline Annersly smiled again as she
glanced at her companion.
"That man is painfully young," she said. "I suppose you are not afraid
of opening Charley's letters?"
"No," said Carrie with a little flash in her eyes. "Why should I be?"
"Well," said Eveline Annersly, reflectively, "one would almost fancy
that when Jimmy marries, he would sooner his wife did not see everything
that came for him. It was a letter that first made the trouble between
Captain and Ada Heaton. In such cases, it not infrequently is."
Carrie turned upon her with a red spot in her cheek. "You will succeed
in making me angry presently. You know there is nothing Charley would
keep from me."
"That, I think, is saying a good deal; but, while you are no doubt
right, my dear, any one who had only seen you in England would be
inclined to wonder what had happened to you lately. If I had suggested
anything of the kind once upon a time, you would only have looked at me
with chilling disdain, but now a word against Charley Leland brings a
flash into your eyes. That, however, is by the way. I wonder if you have
heard that Heaton has at last taken proceedings?"
"I haven't. I never hear from home."
"I have had a letter and a paper. The decision was in his favour. There
was practically no defence. There couldn't very well have been in face
of the disclosures, and, while I had a certain sympathy with Ada at
first, I have none now."
Carrie sat silent a minute, a faint flush in her face. Then she suddenly
raised her head.
"Aunt," she said, "I suppose you don't know it was about Ada that
Charley and I quarrelled? In fact, it was on her account I nearly drove
him away from me altogether. In that, too, it seems that I was wrong. I
wonder sometimes how he ever forgave me, or why I have so much I never
deserved to have at all."
She said nothing further, and went out presently. That afternoon and
for several subsequent days, she opened Leland's letters, finding
nothing that must be kept back from him. But one evening, however, she
sent for Gallwey when he came in from harvesting, and, signing him to
sit down, handed him a letter from the Winnipeg broker.
"Will you tell me what you think I ought to do?" she said. "You will see
that the man must have an answer."
Gallwey studied the letter carefully for several minutes. When he laid
it down, he felt a certain sympathy with Mrs. Leland, though he fancied
she would show herself equal to the occasion.
"It's rather unfortunate it should have come just now," she said.
"Still, it is here, and I want your views."
Gallwey looked thoughtful. "The thing is rather a big one. As I daresay
you know, there are different kinds of wheat, but our hard red is rather
a favourite with millers. There is, it seems, a man who, subject to one
or two conditions about samples being up to usual grade, is willing to
buy about half the crop from Charley at a cent the bushel more than he
previously offered. I wonder if you quite grasp the significance of
that."
"Prices are rising?"
"Not necessarily, though they are certainly steadier. This man may have
orders for some special flour for which our grade of red is preferable,
though he could, of course, get other wheat which would, no doubt, do
almost as well. Still, prices have, at least, stiffened. It is what is
called a rally, and it may last a week or so, though it is somewhat
strange it should happen now, when everybody has wheat to sell."
He stopped a moment. "If you sell this wheat, and prices fall, you will
have made an excellent bargain, though the figure doesn't cover
expenses. On the contrary, if prices go up, you will have thrown a good
deal of money away. You have to bear in mind that it represents about
half the crop, which makes it evident that a good deal depends upon a
right decision."
"Have you any idea what prices will do?"
Gallwey made a little gesture. "To be frank, I haven't, and I should
shrink from mentioning it if I had. There are thousands of people up and
down this country trying in vain to reason it out, and I have no doubt
that some of the keenest men in the business find the same difficulty. I
daren't advise you."
Carrie sat silent for at least a minute, and then looked at him gravely.
"If I sell, we shall not cover expenses; if I hold, we may be ruined
altogether or it might pour hundreds of dollars into Charley's bank?"
"Yes," said Gallwey. "That is it exactly."
Again there was silence, and then Carrie looked up with a little sparkle
in her eyes. "Charley's not so well to-day, and this would certainly
make him ill again. It seems I must not shrink from the responsibility.
When he does not know exactly what to do, it is the boldest course that
appeals to him. Write the man in Winnipeg that I will not sell a
bushel."
Gallwey rose and made her a little inclination. "It shall be done," he
said. "I wonder if one might venture to compliment you on your
courage?"
Now the thing was decided, Carrie Leland sat still, somewhat limp, and
pale in face again.
After that, some ten days passed uneventfully until the doctor came
back. He did not appear particularly pleased with Leland's condition,
and repeated his instructions about keeping him quiet and undisturbed.
He left Carrie anxious, for she could not persuade herself that her
husband was looking any better. He was, however, rapidly becoming short
in temper, and, soon after the doctor had gone, she had another struggle
with him. Entering the room quietly, she found he had raised himself on
the pillows and was looking about him.
"If you would tell me where my clothes are, I'd be much obliged," he
said. "That man's no good at his business. I'm going to get up."
He made an effort to rise then and there. With some difficulty, Carrie
induced him to lie down again. He listened to what she had to say with
evident impatience, and then shook his head.
"I'm to keep quiet, and not worry. There's no sense in the thing," he
said. "How can I help chafing and fuming when I have to lie here, while
everything goes wrong, and nobody will tell me what is being done? I
felt a little dizzy just now, or you wouldn't have got me back again,
but I'm going to make another attempt to-morrow. You have to remember
that when I get up I get better. I've never been tied up like this
before, and the only thing that's wrong with me is that I've had a
doctor."
Carrie contrived to quiet him, though she did not find it easy. When at
last he had gone to sleep she went out, meeting Gallwey in the hall. He
glanced at her with a little sympathetic smile.
"I came upon the doctor riding away," he said. "It appears that Charley
has been telling him frankly what he thought of him. I suppose he has
been trying to get up again?"
Carrie said he had, and Gallwey appeared to consider.
"Well," he said, "it might, perhaps, help to keep him quiet if you let
him know that the appeal to the police authorities has been considered
favourably. I met Sergeant Grier, and he told me that they have sent him
half a dozen more troopers. He seems tolerably confident that he can lay
hands on the rustlers' leaders, though he was in too much haste to tell
me how it was to be done. By the way, I'm afraid you will have to get
Charley to write a cheque in a day or two. We'll have to pay the Ontario
harvesters shortly."
He left her relieved, at least, to hear that Grier saw some prospect of
putting the outlaws down, but another couple of weeks had passed before
she heard anything more of him or them. In the meanwhile, the Sergeant,
as he had indeed expected, met with a good many difficulties. He was
supplied with plentiful information concerning the outlaws, but the
trouble was that he could not always decide how much of it was meant to
be misleading until he had acted upon it. After a week's hard riding,
during which his men had very little sleep, he found himself one night
with six of them rather more than sixty miles west of Prospect. He had
that day surrounded what he had been told was one of the whisky boys'
coverts in a big bluff, and "drawn a blank," a thing that had happened
once or twice already. The horses were dead weary, the men worn-out, so
he decided to camp where he was in a thick growth of willows. A cooking
fire was lighted, and when the men had eaten, all but two, who were left
to watch the horses, lay down, rolled in their blankets.
It was about an hour before the dawn when Trooper Standish paced up and
down on the outskirts of the bluff. He had been in the saddle under a
hot sun most of twelve hours the previous day, and now felt more than a
little shivery as well as weary. A little breeze came sighing out of the
great waste of plain, and the chill of it struck through his thin, damp
clothing, in which he had ridden and slept. Trooper Standish was also
more than a little drowsy, though he would not have admitted it. In
fact, few men are capable of very much, either in the shape of effort or
watchfulness, at three o'clock in the morning.
A hundred yards or so behind him, a comrade was standing near the
tethered horses, though he might have been very much further away for
all Standish could see of him. A thin fringe of willows lay between
Standish and the prairie. When he turned a little, he could see the
faint glow of the fire, which had not quite gone out, where the bushes
were thicker. Though there was a breeze, it had no great strength, and
the willows rustled beneath it fitfully with a faint and eery sighing.
As it happened, this was a little louder than usual, when Trooper
Standish stopped to listen and consider. His duty in such cases was, of
course, quite clear, but now that the willows had stopped rustling,
there was no sound, and he was aware that the young trooper who rouses
his worn-out comrades without due cause, after a hard day's ride, has
usually reason to regret it. Besides this, he remembered that he had not
played a very brilliant part in another affair, and he still tingled
under the recollection of the others' jibes. Accordingly, he prowled
cautiously through the bluff, and then sauntered back towards his
comrade.
"I guess you have heard nothing suspicious?" he said.
"No," said the man. "I didn't expect to, anyway."
"You didn't hear me call out, either?"
"I didn't. If you'd made any noise, I would have heard you. Have any of
the whisky boys been crawling in on you?"
Trooper Standish gazed hard at the man, who had evidently asked the
question ironically. He certainly seemed wide awake, and it occurred to
Standish that he might have been half asleep himself, and had only
fancied that he called out. He accordingly decided that it might be just
as well if he said nothing further about the matter, and he strode away
on his round again.
The sun was creeping up above the prairie when one of his comrades,
rising to waken the Sergeant, saw a strip of folded paper, of the kind
used by the storekeepers for packing, fixed between the branches of a
willow close by. Grier took it down, and his face grew intent when he
saw that there was a message scribbled across one part of it.
"If you want to do Leland a good turn, get up and ride," it said. "The
boys are holding Prospect up to-night."
Then Grier turned to the astonished troopers. "It may be a bluff to put
us off the trail," he said. "Leland keeps good watch at Prospect, and
has it full of harvesters."
"Well," said one of the others, "I don't quite know. Last time I met one
of his teamsters he told me they'd have no use for most of the
harvesters in a day or two. He said something, too, about the boys going
out to the railroad to haul the new thresher in. I guess that would keep
them away three or four days altogether."
Grier looked thoughtful. "Oh, yes," he said. "I've heard that mill's an
extra big one, and they were most of a day getting the old one across
the ravine. It's quite certain, too, that Leland has a good many friends
up and down the country who now and then break prairie or cut hay for
him, and, as some of them stand in with the rustlers, too, it's easy to
figure why the man who sent us this warning didn't want to show himself.
Well, I guess we'll take our chances of being wanted, though the horses
are dead played out, and I don't know where to get another within thirty
miles. Nobody who can help it is going to let us have a horse at harvest
time."
Then he turned sharply. "Who was on horse-guard with Ainger?"
"Standish," said one of the men.
Grier smiled unpleasantly. "Send him along. Then get your fire lighted
and look after your horses. We'll start for Prospect when you've had
breakfast, but I guess some of you are going to walk a few leagues
to-day."