Produced by Al Haines
[Frontispiece: "In another moment Wyllard's last doubt vanished, and he
sprang forward with a gasp." (CHAPTER XXVIII.)]
HAWTREY'S DEPUTY
BY
HAROLD BINDLOSS
_Author of "The Impostor," "The Liberationist," etc._
Illustrated by
Cyrus Cuneo
WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED
LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO
1910
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I.--SALLY CREIGHTON
II.--SALLY TAKES CHARGE
III.--WYLLARD ASSENTS
IV.--A CRISIS
V.--THE OLD COUNTRY
VI.--HER PICTURE
VII.--AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH
VIII.--THE TRAVELLING COMPANION
IX.--THE FOG
X.--DISILLUSION
XI.--AGATHA'S DECISION
XII.--WANDERERS
XIII.--THE SUMMONS
XIV.--AGATHA PROVES OBDURATE
XV.--THE BEACH
XVI.--THE FIRST ICE
XVII.--DEFEAT
XVIII.--A DELICATE ERRAND
XIX.--THE PRIOR CLAIM
XX.--THE FIRST STAKE
XXI.--GREGORY MAKES UP HIS MIND
XXII.--A PAINFUL REVELATION
XXIII.--THROUGH THE SNOW
XXIV.--THE LANDING
XXV.--NEWS OF DISASTER
XXVI.--THE RESCUE
XXVII.--IN THE WILDERNESS
XXVIII.--THE UNEXPECTED
XXIX.--CAST AWAY
XXX.--THE LAST EFFORT
XXXI.--WYLLARD COMES HOME
ILLUSTRATIONS
"In another moment Wyllard's last doubt vanished, and he sprang forward
with a gasp." . . . . . . _Frontispiece_
"She could not raise him wholly, and he cried out once when his injured
leg trailed in the snow."
"Then she turned to Sproatly. 'You can wash up those dishes on the
table.'"
"At length the door opened, and Agatha Ismay, wrapped in a long cloak,
came in."
"'Now,' he said, 'I won't let you fall.'"
"'You!' was all she said."
"In another moment Hawtrey sprang up on the platform, and she felt his
arms about her."
"Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble
and plunge."
"'Do you think--that--would have mattered?'"
"'Well,' she said, 'we have driven over as we promised!'"
"Agatha held her hands up ... as the man leaned down, and the next
moment she was strongly lifted."
"'I guess I needn't tell you where that is,' he said, and pointed to
the parallel of latitude that ran across."
"It seemed that he did not immediately notice her."
"'Are these things very much too big for you, Sally?'"
"It shambled forward in a curious manner."
"'I thought you might save Gregory, if I told you.'"
"'I was waiting for you,' she said simply."
HAWTREY'S DEPUTY.
CHAPTER I.
SALLY CREIGHTON.
The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie, which rolled back from
Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath
the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn.
It stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail
that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two
wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then
of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material,
several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants
considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada.
That, however, is the land of promise, a promise that is in due time
usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part,
shrewdly practical optimists. They made the most of a somewhat grim
and frugal present, and staked all they had to give--the few dollars
they had brought in with them, and their powers of enduring toil--upon
the roseate future.
Stukely had given them, and their scattered neighbours, who had driven
there across several leagues of prairie, a supper in his barn, and a
big rusty stove, which had been brought in for the occasion, stood in
the midst of it. Its pipe glowed in places a dull red, and Stukely now
and then wondered uneasily whether it was charring a larger hole
through the shingles of the roof. On one side of the stove the floor
had been cleared; on the other benches, empty barrels, and tables were
huddled together, and such of the guests as were not at the moment
dancing sat upon them indiscriminately. A keg of hard Ontario cider
had been provided for their refreshment, and it was open to anybody to
ladle up what he wanted with a tin dipper, while a haze of tobacco
smoke drifted in thin blue wisps beneath the big nickelled lamps. In
addition to the reek of it, the place was filled with the smell of hot
iron which an over-driven stove gives out, and the subtle odours of old
skin coats.
The guests, however, were accustomed to an atmosphere of that kind, and
it did not trouble them. For the most part, they were lean and spare,
bronzed by frost and snow-blink, and straight of limb, for, though
scarcely half of them were Canadian born, the prairie, as a rule,
swiftly sets its stamp upon the newcomer. There was also something in
the way they held themselves and put their feet down that suggested
health and vigour, and, in the case of most of them, a certain
alertness and decision of character. Some hailed from English cities,
a few from those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but
there was a similarity between them which the cut and tightness of
their store clothing did not altogether account for. They lived well
if plainly, and toiled out in the open unusually hard. Their eyes were
steady, their bronzed skin was clear, and their laughter had a
wholesome ring.
A fiery-haired Scot, a Highlander of the Isles, sat upon a barrel-head
sawing at a fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone
he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing,
and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that
sets the blood tingling and the feet to move in rhythm, though the
exhilarating effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the
little French Canadian who had another fiddle and threw in clanging
chords upon the lower strings.
They were dancing in the cleared space what was presumably a quadrille,
though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country
dance, or indeed to one of the measures of Bretonne France, which was,
however, characteristic of the country. The Englishman has set no
distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It has absorbed him with his
reserve and sturdy industry, and the Canadian from the cities is
apparently lost in it, too, for theirs is the leaven that works through
the mass slowly and unobtrusively, and it is the Scot and the habitant
of French extraction who have given the life of it colour and
individuality. Extremes meet and fuse on the wide white levels of the
West.
It was, however, an Englishman who was the life of that dance, and he
was physically a bigger man than most of the rest, for as a rule, at
least, the Colonial born run to wiry hardness rather than solidity of
frame. Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest
of him was in fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English
blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish
merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient
characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though
his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his
manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one
likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten
neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of
drought and frost in adverse seasons.
As it happened, the grim, hard-faced Sager, who had come there from
Michigan, was just then talking to Stukely about him.
"Kind of tone about that man--guess he once had the gold-leaf on him
quite thick, and it hasn't all worn off yet," he said. "Seen more
Englishmen like him, and some folks from Noo York, too, when I took
parties bass fishing way back yonder."
He waved his hand vaguely, as though to indicate the American Republic,
and Stukely agreed with him. They were also right as far as they went,
for Hawtrey undoubtedly possessed a grace of manner which, however,
somehow failed to reach distinction. It was, perhaps, just a little
too apparent, and lacked the strengthening feature of restraint.
"I wonder," said Stukely reflectively, "what those kind of fellows done
before they came out here."
He had expressed a curiosity which is now and then to be met with on
the prairie, but Sager, the charitable, grinned.
"Oh," he said, "I guess quite a few done no more than make their folks
on the other side tired of them, and that's why they sent them out to
you. Some of them get paid so much on condition that they don't come
back again. Say"--and he glanced towards the dancers--"Dick
Creighton's Sally seems quite stuck on Hawtrey by the way she's looking
at him."
Stukely assented. He was a somewhat primitive person, as was Sally
Creighton, for that matter, and he did not suppose she would have been
greatly offended had she overheard his observations.
"Well," he said, "I've thought that, too. If she wants him she'll get
him. She's a smart girl--Sally."
There were not many women present--perhaps one to every two of the men,
which was, however, rather a large proportion in that country, and none
of their garments were particularly elegant. The fabric was, for the
most part, the cheapest obtainable, and they had fashioned it with
their own fingers in the scanty interludes between washing, and baking,
and mending their husbands' or fathers' clothes. Their faces were a
trifle sallow and had lost their freshness in the dry heat of the
stove. Their hands were hard and reddened, and in figure most of them
were thin and spare. One could have fancied that in a land where
everybody toiled strenuously their burden was the heavier. One or two
of them had clearly been accustomed to a smoother life, but there was
nothing to suggest that they looked back to it with regret. As a
matter of fact, they looked forward, working for the future, and there
was patient courage in their smiling eyes.
Creighton's Sally, who was then tripping through the measure on
Hawtrey's arm, was native born. She was young and straight--straighter
in outline than the women of the cities--with a suppleness which was
less suggestive of the willow than a rather highly-tempered spring.
She moved with a large vigour which only just fell short of grace, her
eyes snapped when she smiled at Hawtrey, and her hair, which was of a
ruddy brown, had fiery gleams in it. Anyone would have called her
comely, and there was, indeed, no women in Stukely's barn to compare
with her in that respect, which was a fact she recognised, while every
line and pose of her figure seemed expressive of an effervescent
vitality.
"Oh yes," said Sager reflectively; "she'll get him sure if she sets her
mind on it, and there's no denying that they make a handsome pair.
I've nothing against Hawtrey either: a straight man, a hustler, and
smart at handling a team. Still, it's kind of curious that while the
man's never been stuck for the stamps like the rest of us, he's made
nothing very much of his homestead yet. Now there's Bob, and Jake, and
Jasper came in after he did with half the dollars, and they thrash out
four bushels of hard wheat for Hawtrey's three."
Stukely made a little gesture of concurrence, for he dimly realised the
significance of his companion's speech. It is results which count in
that country, where the one thing demanded is practical efficiency, and
the man of simple, steadfast purpose usually goes the farthest.
Hawtrey had graces which won him friends, boldness of conception, and
the power of application; but he had somehow failed to accomplish as
much as his neighbours did. After all, there must be a good deal to be
said for the man who raises four bushels of good wheat where his
comrade with equal facilities raises three.
In the meanwhile Hawtrey was talking to Sally, and it was not
astonishing that they talked of farming, which is the standard topic on
that strip of prairie.
"So you're not going to break that new piece this spring?" she said.
"No," said Hawtrey; "I'd want another team, anyway, and I can't raise
the dollars; they're hard to get out here."
"Plenty under the sod," said Sally, who was essentially practical.
"That's where we get ours, but you have to put the breaker in and turn
it over. You"--and she flashed a swift glance at him--"got most of
yours from England. Won't they send you any more?"
Hawtrey's eyes twinkled as he shook his head. "I'm afraid they won't,"
he said. "You see, I've put the screw on them rather hard the last few
years."
"How did you do that?" said Sally. "Told them you were thinking of
coming home again?"
There was a certain wryness in her companion's smile, for though
Hawtrey had cast no particular slur upon the family's credit he had
signally failed to enhance it, and he was quite aware that his English
relatives did not greatly desire his presence in the Old Country.
"My dear," he said, "you really shouldn't hit a fellow in the eye that
way."
As it happened, he did not see the girl's face just then, or he might
have noticed a momentary change in its expression. Gregory Hawtrey was
a little casual in speech, but so far most of the young women he
bestowed an epithet of that kind upon had attached no significance to
it. They had wisely decided that he did not mean anything. In another
moment or two the Scottish fiddler's voice broke in.
"Can ye no' watch the music? Noo it's paddybash!" he cried.
His French Canadian comrade waved his fiddle-bow protestingly.
"Paddybashy! _V'la la belle chose!_" he said with ineffable contempt,
and broke in upon the ranting melody with a succession of harsh,
crashing chords.
Then it apparently became a contest as to which could drown the other's
instrument, and the snapping time grew faster, until the dancers
gasped, and men with long boots encouraged them with cries and stamped
a staccato accompaniment upon the benches or on the floor. It was
savage, rasping music, but one player infused into it the ebullient
verve of France, and the other was from the misty land where the
fiddler learns the witchery of the clanging reel and the swing of the
Strathspey. It is doubtless not high art, but there is probably no
music in the world that fires the blood like this and turns the sober
dance to rhythmic riot. Perhaps, too, it gains something that gives it
a closer compelling grip amidst the prairie snow.
Hawtrey, at least, was breathless when it ceased, and Sally's eyes
flashed with the effulgence of the Northern night when her partner
found her a resting-place upon an upturned barrel.
"No," she said, "I won't have any cider." She turned and glanced at
him imperiously. "You're not going for any more either."
It was, no doubt, not the speech a well-trained English maiden would
have made, but, though Hawtrey smiled rather curiously, it fell
inoffensively from Sally's lips. Though it is not always set down to
their credit, the brown-faced, hard-handed men as a rule live very
abstemiously in that country, and, as it happened, Hawtrey, who,
however, certainly showed no sign of it, had already consumed rather
more cider than anybody else. He made a little sign of submission, and
Sally resumed their conversation where it had broken off.
"We could let you have our ox-team to do that breaking with," she said.
"You've had Sproatly living with you all winter. Why don't you make
him stay and work out his keep?"
Hawtrey laughed. "Sally," he said, "do you think anybody could make
Sproatly work?"
"It would be hard," the girl admitted, and then looked up at him with a
little glint in her eyes. "Still, I'd put a move on him if you sent
him along to me."
She was a rather capable young woman, but Hawtrey was very dubious of
her ability to accomplish as much as this. Sproatly was an Englishman
of good education, though his appearance seldom suggested it, who drove
about the prairie in a waggon vending cheap oleographs and patent
medicines most of the summer, and contrived to obtain free quarters
from his bachelor acquaintances during the winter. It is a hospitable
country, but there were men round Lander's who when they went away to
work in far-off lumber camps, as they sometimes did, nailed up their
doors and windows to prevent Sproatly getting in.
"Does he never do anything?" Sally added.
"No," said Hawtrey; "at least, never when he can help it. He had,
however, started something shortly before I left him. You see, the
house has wanted cleaning the last month or two, and we tossed up for
who should do it. It fell to Sproatly, who didn't seem quite pleased,
but he got as far as firing the chairs and tables out into the snow.
Then he sat down for a smoke, and he was looking at them through the
window when I drove away."
"Ah," said his companion, "you want somebody to keep the house straight
and look after you. Didn't you know any nice girls back there in the
Old Country?"
It was spoken naturally, and there was nothing to show that the girl's
heart beat a little more rapidly than usual as she watched her
companion. His face, however, grew a trifle graver, for she had
touched upon a rather momentous question to such men as him. There are
a good many of them living in Spartan simplicity upon the prairie,
well-trained, well-connected young Englishmen, and others like them
from Canadian cities. They naturally look for some grace of culture or
refinement in the woman they would marry, and there are few women of
the station they once belonged to who could face the loneliness and
unassisted drudgery that must be borne by the small wheat-grower's
wife. There were also reasons why this question had been troubling
Hawtrey in particular of late.
"Oh, yes, one or two," he said. "I'm not quite sure, however, that
girls of that kind would find things even moderately comfortable here."
There was a certain reflectiveness in his tone, which, since it seemed
to indicate that he had already given the point some consideration,
jarred upon his companion. She had also an ample share of the Western
farmer's pride, which firmly declines to believe that there is any land
to compare with the one the plough is slowly wresting from the wide
white levels of the prairie.
"We make out well enough," she said with a snap in her eyes.
Hawtrey made a little whimsical gesture. "Oh, yes," he admitted; "it's
in you. All you want to beat the wilderness and turn it into a garden
is an axe, a span of oxen, and a breaker plough. You ought to be proud
of it. Still, you see, our folks back yonder aren't quite the same as
you."
Sally partly understood him. "Ah," she said, "they want more, and,
perhaps, they're used to having more than we have; but isn't that in
one way their misfortune? Is it what folks want, or what they can do,
that makes them of use to anybody else?"
There was a hard truth in her suggestion, but Hawtrey, who seldom
occupied himself with matters of that kind, smiled.
"Oh," he said, "I don't know; but, after all, it wouldn't be worth
while our raising wheat here unless there were folks back East to eat
it, and if some of them only eat it in the shape of dainty cakes that
doesn't affect the question. Anyway, there's only another dance or
two, and I was wondering whether I could drive you home; I've got
Wyllard's Ontario sleigh."
Sally glanced at him rather sharply. She had half-expected this offer,
and it is possible would have judiciously led him up to it if he had
not made it. Now, as she saw that he really wished to drive her home,
she was glad that she had not done so.
"Yes," she said softly, "I think you could."
"Then," said Hawtrey, "if you'll wait ten minutes I'll be back with the
team."