Part 19 (1/2)

”I don't know,” answered Mrs. Hastings; ”perhaps it's Harry's idea of having everything proportionate. The Range is quite a big, and generally a prosperous, farm. Besides, it's likely that he doesn't contemplate remaining a bachelor forever. Indeed, Allen and I sometimes wonder how he has escaped marriage for so long.”

”Is 'escaped' the right word?” Agatha asked.

”It is,” a.s.serted Mrs. Hastings with a laugh. ”You see, he's highly eligible from our point of view, but at the same time he's apparently invulnerable. I believe,” she added dryly, ”that's the right word, too.”

The Swedish housekeeper appeared again and they talked with her until she went to bring in the six o'clock supper. Soon after the table was laid Wyllard and the men came in. Wyllard was attired as when Agatha had last seen him, except that he had put on a coat. He led his guests to the head of the long table, but the men--there were a number of them--sat below, and evidently had no diffidence about addressing question or comment to their employer.

The men ate with a voracious haste, but that appeared to be the custom of the country, and Agatha could find no great fault with their manners or conversation. The talk was, for the most part, quaintly witty, and some of the men used what struck her as remarkably fitting and original similes. Indeed, as the meal proceeded, she became curiously interested.

The windows were open wide, and a sweet, warm air swept into the barely furnished room. The s.p.a.ciousness of the room impressed her, and she was pleased with the evident unity of these brown-faced, strong-armed toilers with their leader. At the head of the table he sat, self-contained, but courteous and responsive to all alike, and though they were in an essentially democratic country, she felt that there was something almost feudal in the relations between him and his men. She could not imagine them to be confined to the mere exaction of so much labor and the expectation of payment of wages due. She was pleased that he had not changed his clothing.

So strong was Agatha's interest that she was surprised when the meal was finished. Afterward, she and Mrs. Hastings talked with the housekeeper for a while, and an hour had slipped away when Wyllard suggested that he should show her the slough beyond the bluff.

”It's the nearest approach to a lake we have until you get to the alkali tract,” he said.

Agatha went with him through the shadow of the wood, and when they came out among the trees he found her a seat upon a fallen birch. The house and plowing were hidden now, and they were alone on the slope to a slight hollow, in which half a mile of gleaming water lay. Its surface was broken here and there by tussocks of gra.s.s and reeds, and beyond it the prairie ran back unbroken, a dim gray waste, to the horizon. The sun had dipped behind the bluff, and the sky had become a vast green transparency. There was no wind now, but a wonderful exhilarating freshness crept into the cooling air, and the stillness was broken only by the clamor of startled wildfowl which Agatha could see paddling in cl.u.s.ters about the gleaming slough.

”Those are ducks--wild ones?” she asked.

”Yes,” answered Wyllard; ”ducks of various kinds. Most of them the same as your English ones.”

”Do you shoot them?”

Agatha was not greatly interested, but he seemed disposed to silence, and she felt, for no very clear reason, that it was advisable to talk of something.

”No,” he said, ”not often, anyway. If Mrs. Nansen wants a couple I crawl down to the long gra.s.s with the rifle and get them for her.”

”The rifle? Doesn't the big bullet destroy them?”

”No,” returned Wyllard. ”You have to shoot their head off or cut their neck in two.”

”You can do that--when they're right out in the slough?” asked Agatha, who had learned that it is much more difficult to shoot with a rifle than a shotgun, which spreads its charge.

Wyllard smiled. ”Generally; that is, if I haven't been doing much just before. It depends upon one's hands. We have our game laws, but as a rule n.o.body worries about them, and, anyway, those birds won't nest until they reach the tundra by the Polar Sea. Still, as I said, we never shoot them unless Mrs. Nansen wants one or two for the pot.”

”Why?”

”I don't quite know. For one thing, they're worn out; they just stop here to rest.”

His answer appealed to the girl. It did not seem strange to her that the love of the lower creation should be strong in this man, who had no hesitation in admitting that the game laws were no restraint to him.

When these Lesser Brethren, worn with their journey, sailed down out of the blue heavens, he believed in giving them right of sanctuary.

”They have come a long way?” she asked.

Wyllard pointed towards the south. ”From Florida, Cuba, Yucatan; further than that, perhaps. In a day or two they'll push on again toward the Pole, and others will take their places. There's a further detachment arriving now.”

Looking up, Agatha saw a straggling wedge of birds dotted in dusky specks against the vault of transcendental blue. The wedge coalesced, drew out again, and dropped swiftly, and the air was filled with the rush of wings; then there was a harsh crying and splas.h.i.+ng, and she heard the troubled water lap among the reeds until deep silence closed in upon the slough again.

”The migrating instinct is strangely interesting,” she said.