"It's got to be settled to-night, Nance, This game is up here, up forever.
The redcoat police from Ottawa are coming, and they'll soon be roostin' in
this post, the Injuns are goin', the buffaloes are most gone, and the fur
trade's dead in these parts. D'ye see?"
The woman did not answer the big, broad-shouldered man bending over her,
but remained looking into the fire with wide, abstracted eyes, and a face
somewhat set.
"You and your brother Bantry's got to go. This store ain't worth a cent
now. The Hudson's Bay Company'll come along with the redcoats, and they'll
set up a nice little Sunday-school business here for what they call
'agricultural settlers.' There'll be a railway, and the Yankees'll send up
their marshals to work with the redcoats on the border, and--"
"And the days of smuggling will be over," put in the girl, in a low voice.
"No more bull-whackers and mule-skinners 'whooping-it up'; no more
Blackfeet and Piegans drinking alcohol and water, and cutting one
anothers' throats. A nice, quiet time coming on the border Abe, eh?"
The man looked at her queerly. She was not prone to sarcasm, she had not
been given to sentimentalism in the past; she had taken the border-life as
it was, had looked it straight between the eyes. She had lived up to it,
or down to it, without any fuss, as good as any man in any phase of the
life, and the only white woman in this whole West country. It was not in
the words, but in the tone, that Abe Hawley found something unusual and
defamatory.
"Why, gol darn it, Nance, what's got into you? You bin a man out West, as
good a pioneer as ever was on the border. But now you don't sound friendly
to what's been the game out here, and to all of us that've been risking
our lives to get a livin'."
"What did I say?" asked the girl, unmoved.
"It ain't what you said, it's the sound o' your voice."
"You don't know my voice, Abe. It ain't always the same. You ain't always
about; you don't always hear it."
He caught her arm suddenly. "No, but I want to hear it always. I want to
be always where you are, Nance. That's what's got to be settled
to-day--to-night."
"Oh, it's got to be settled to-night!" said the girl, meditatively,
kicking nervously at a log on the fire. "It takes two to settle a thing
like that, and there's only one says it's got to be settled. Maybe it
takes more than two--or three--to settle a thing like that." Now she
laughed mirthlessly.
The man started, and his face flushed with anger; then he put a hand on
himself, drew a step back, and watched her.
"_One_ can settle a thing, if there's a dozen in it. You see, Nance, you
and Bantry've got to close out. He's fixing it up to-night over at
Dingan's Drive, and you can't go it alone when you quit this place. Now,
it's this way: you can go West with Bantry, or you can go North with me.
Away North there's buffalo and deer, and game a-plenty, up along the
Saskatchewan, and farther up on the Peace River. It's going to be all
right up there for half a lifetime, and we can have it in our own way yet.
There'll be no smuggling, but there'll be trading, and land to get; and,
mebbe, there'd be no need of smuggling, for we can make it, I know
how--good white whiskey--and we'll still have this free life for our own.
I can't make up my mind to settle down to a clean collar and going to
church on Sundays, and all that. And the West's in your bones, too. You
look like the West--"
The girl's face brightened with pleasure, and she gazed at him steadily.
"You got its beauty and its freshness, and you got its heat and cold--"
She saw the tobacco-juice stain at the corners of his mouth, she became
conscious of the slight odor of spirits in the air, and the light in her
face lowered in intensity.
"You got the ways of the deer in your walk, the song o' the birds in your
voice; and you're going North with me, Nance, for I bin talkin' to you
stiddy four years. It's a long time to wait on the chance, for there's
always _women_ to be got, same as others have done--men like Dingan with
Injun girls, and men like Tobey with half-breeds. But I ain't bin lookin'
that way. I bin lookin' only toward you." He laughed eagerly, and lifted a
tin cup of whiskey standing on a table near. "I'm lookin' toward you now,
Nance. Your health and mine together. It's got to be settled now. You got
to go to the 'Cific Coast with Bantry, or North with me."
The girl jerked a shoulder and frowned a little. He seemed so sure of
himself.
"Or South with Nick Pringle, or East with someone else," she said,
quizzically. "There's always four quarters to the compass, even when Abe
Hawley thinks he owns the world and has a mortgage on eternity. I'm not
going West with Bantry, but there's three other points that's open."
With an oath the man caught her by the shoulders, and swung her round to
face him. He was swelling with anger. "You--Nick Pringle, that trading
cheat, that gambler! After four years, I--"
"Let go my shoulders," she said, quietly. "I'm not your property. Go and
get some Piegan girl to bully. Keep your hands off. I'm not a bronco for
you to bit and bridle. You've got no rights. You--" Suddenly she relented,
seeing the look in his face, and realizing that, after all, it was a
tribute to herself that she could keep him for four years and rouse him to
such fury. "But yes, Abe," she added, "you have some rights. We've been
good friends all these years, and you've been all right out here. You said
some nice things about me just now, and I liked it, even if it was as if
you'd learned it out of a book. I've got no po'try in me; I'm plain
homespun. I'm a sapling, I'm not any prairie-flower, but I like when I
like, and I like a lot when I like. I'm a bit of hickory, I'm not a
prairie-flower--"
"Who said you was a prairie-flower? Did I? Who's talking about
prairie-flowers--"
He stopped suddenly, turned round at the sound of a footstep behind him,
and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was
digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a
refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but
well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden by
his rough clothes.
"Je-rick-ety! How long have I slept?" he said, blinking at the two beside
the fire. "How long?" he added, with a flutter of anxiety in his tone.
"I said I'd wake you," said the girl, coming forward. "You needn't have
worried."
"I don't worry," answered the young man. "I dreamed myself awake, I
suppose. I got dreaming of redcoats and U. S. marshals, and an ambush in
the Barfleur Coulee, and--" He saw a secret, warning gesture from the
girl, and laughed, then turned to Abe and looked him in the face. "Oh, I
know him! Abe Hawley's all O.K.--I've seen him over at Dingan's Drive.
Honor among rogues. We're all in it. How goes it--all right?" he added,
carelessly, to Hawley, and took a step forward, as though to shake hands.
Seeing the forbidding look by which he was met, however, he turned to the
girl again, as Hawley muttered something they could not hear.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"It's nine o'clock," answered the girl, her eyes watching his every
movement, her face alive.
"Then the moon's up almost?"
"It'll be up in an hour."
"Jerickety! Then I've got to get ready." He turned to the other room again
and entered.
"College pup!" said Hawley, under his breath, savagely. "Why didn't you
tell me he was here?"
"Was it any of your business, Abe?" she rejoined, quietly.
"Hiding him away here--"
"Hiding? Who's been hiding him? He's doing what you've done. He's
smuggling--the last lot for the traders over by Dingan's Drive. He'll get
it there by morning. He has as much right here as you. What's got into
you, Abe?"
"What does he know about the business? Why, he's a college man from the
East. I've heard o' him. Ain't got no more sense for this life than a
dicky-bird. White-faced college pup! What's he doing out here? If you're a
friend o' his, you'd better look after him. He's green."
"He's going East again," she said, "and if I don't go West with Bantry, or
South over to Montana with Nick Pringle, _or North_--"
"Nance!" His eyes burned, his lips quivered.
She looked at him and wondered at the power she had over this bully of the
border, who had his own way with most people, and was one of the most
daring fighters, hunters, and smugglers in the country. He was cool, hard,
and well in hand in his daily life, and yet, where she was concerned,
"went all to pieces," as some one else had said about himself to her.
She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come
back, Abe," she said, in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back
then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."
He was all right again. "It's with you, Nance," he said, eagerly. "I bin
waiting four years."
As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room again.
"Oh, Abe's gone!" he said, excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of the old
rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't really need
to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight." Then, with
quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower--the flower of all the
prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes.
She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness,
joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her
greatly from the first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was
going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had
talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going
on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had,
somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had
talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said
what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His
quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and
alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank
compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons
of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by
whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions
of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been
stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said
that she was beautiful--she knew she was not--but that she was wonderful
and fascinating, and with "something about her" he had never seen in all
his life: like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His
first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and
thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here
among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the
first look at her had made him feel things, feel life and women different
from ever before; and he had never seen any one like her, nor a face with
so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done.
"You make me want to live," he had said, and she, with no knowledge of the
nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if it had
been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken interpretation
of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had not wanted to
live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep,
inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had never had so far
for any man--that he ought to have some one to look after him. This was
the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her
toward men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding animals and
birds. He had said he had not wanted to live, and yet he had come out West
in order to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his
lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough, out-door life
would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college
walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He
had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble;
but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which
had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had
been in his life, by whomever committed.
Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of
what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the
slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever
since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so
brightly in her, reached out toward this man living on so narrow a margin
of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each
day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team
of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his
last stage. She was at the door, and saw him coming while he was yet a
long distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for
she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The
Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them,
her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a
few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a
deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms
(for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the
persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.
Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled
load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then
floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college
pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a
woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move
in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border
now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the
pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and
word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a
few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile at any moment. The
trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulee, athwart a
great, open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then, suddenly,
over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be reached.
The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing
some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been goaded
by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for their
money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the red
run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.
He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and
called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months
before. On his arrival, but now he had said little, for he saw that she
was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of
ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous part
of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his blood
was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something in her
abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man
like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little time
ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him a
hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused vigor
of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed him. In
the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and form, he
forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and his
face became eager.
"Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he
said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs
faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's
worth living--I want to do things."
She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of
herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except,
perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--
But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You
must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats
catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll
stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon.
Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they
have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell."
"You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But
Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you
with me."
She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with
you--me--where?"
"East--away down East."
Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to
say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do
you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this."
"To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered.
"I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again
in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred
dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this
last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My health's
better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now and again,
and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly caught her in his
arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!"
Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full of
pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly
the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by his wooing.
She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.
She was about to answer when there came a sharp knock at the door leading
from the back yard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The soldier--he
come--many. I go over the ridge, I see. They come quick here," he said.
Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his
pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs, the
door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.
"You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said, brusquely. "Don't stir!"
In his hand was a revolver.
"Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool
in speech and action.
"We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts."
The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he
did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.
"Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit is
well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They'll
follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck and get
through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive."
Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in
Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then
she was gone.
The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realized that,
whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an
unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it
proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the
smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be
lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What had she said to the
prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied
coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she guessed it would have
to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a
principal private?"
"I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit
is. March!"
The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye.
Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face
before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide
"Examples"; but he took his chances.
"I'll march all right," he answered; "but I'll march to where you tell me.
You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found me, and
you can take my outfit, too, when you've found it; but I'm not doing your
work, not if I know it."
There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for
an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going
to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought
himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he
must heed:
"Put on your things--quick."
When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's pistols,
he said again, "March, Lambton!"
Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward the troop of men who had
come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went
his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward the Barfleur
Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower,
was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for
him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were
waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the
redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the
West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He
listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the
distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the
pursuit would be desperate.
A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head and a dozen troopers
pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for
their hardships and discouragement.
They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on
them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley
who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and
harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds, and, with
the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up
against them all: against the Law represented by the troopers camped at
Fort Stay-Awhile, against the troopers and their captain speeding after
Nancy Machell--his Nance, who was risking her life and freedom for the
hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was
up against Nance herself.
Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to
find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had
thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was
in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil thing
to some one.
The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears
strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching
forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions.
Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road,
and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in
their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again,
with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she
could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one had
ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were finished,
finished forever, and she was going--she was going East; not West with
Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley--ah, Abe
Hawley! He had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was the best
man of all the Western men she had known; but another man had come from
the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt before, a man
who had said she was wonderful; and he needed some one to take good care
of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been all right if
Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it
was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come
back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found
her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He
would hurt someone. He would follow, too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she
reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had
set out to do; and because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go
free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would
be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and, when the time came
she would face it and put things right somehow.
The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn
came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge
above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of
her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to
the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear
beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.
Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried,
fainting, into Dingan's Lodge.
A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly
searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he
had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free.
"You've fooled us," he said to Nance, sourly, yet with a kind of
admiration, too. "Through you, they got away with it. But I wouldn't try
it again, if I were you."
"Once is enough," answered the girl, laconically, as Lambton, set free,
caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.
MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he
said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.
"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we
want out here."
A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the
group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.
He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and
Lambton. "I'm last in," he said, in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its
leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand toward Nance.
"It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were
full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for
goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes
people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and
his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his
bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me,
Nance?" He took off his cap to her.
He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he
limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee
watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble.
"You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I
would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it.
I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go
with me. Are you comin'?"
His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck
strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.
"Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?"
She reached a hand toward Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak.
Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen
before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead.
"She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."
MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said, peremptorily.
"Wait one minute."
There was something in his voice which held Abe back for the instant.
[Illustration: THE START ON THE NORTH TRAIL]
"You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton.
"What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have
you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history, Lambton.
Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you were at
college--and as good a girl as ever lived?"
It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too dazed
to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger, Nancy started back.
Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but the
master of the troopers stepped between.
No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for
the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous;
but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands
and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the
master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle,
while he was pelted with mud from the shore.
* * * * *
The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so
long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers
and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.