Part 11 (1/2)

”Bring him in,” said a low voice; and before the sergeant could prevent her, the speaker, s.n.a.t.c.hing up the lantern, moved forward to meet the bearers. It was no sight for young eyes, and I saw Steel shudder; but there was wild Erse blood in the girl, and, holding one arm up, she stood erect, facing us again.

”This was my father, and he was a kind man to me,” she said, with a choking gasp that was not a sob, and from which her voice broke high and shrill. ”For the sake of a few acres and cattle he was driven to his death, and may black sorrow follow the man who ruined him. Sorrow and bitterness, with the fear that will drive sleep from him and waste him blood and bone until he takes the curse of the widow and orphan with him into the flame of h.e.l.l!”

Then the eerie voice sank again, and it was with a strange dignity she concluded: ”I thank you, neighbors. You can bring him in.”

Another paler flash lit up the prairie as they carried Redmond in, and, when a wagon came bouncing up to the fence, Steel said: ”Here's Mrs.

Gordon; they have lost no time. Are you coming back, Ormesby? I've had about enough of this.”

I had no wish to linger, and when we rode homewards through the deluge that now thrashed our faces, the sergeant, who overtook us, said: ”Man, I feel creepy! She's no' quite canny, and yon was awesome.”

”It was impressive; but you can't attach much importance to that poor girl's half-distracted raving,” I said, partly to convince myself.

”Maybe no,” said Sergeant Mackay. ”Superst.i.tion, ye say; but I'm thinking there's a judgment here as well as hereafter, and I'd no' care to carry yon curse about with me.”

CHAPTER IX

A PRAIRIE STUDY

So Redmond came home, and we buried him the following night by torchlight on a desolate ridge of the prairie. It was his daughter who ordered this; and if some of those who held aloft the flaming tow guessed his secret they kept it for the sake of the girl who stood with a stony, tearless face beside the open grave. He had doubtless yielded to strong compulsion when driven into a corner from which, for one of his nature, there was no escape, and now that he was dead, I had transferred my score against him to the debit of the usurer. As we rode home after the funeral I said something of the kind to Steel, who agreed with me.

”If you concluded to try it, Thorn and Jo and I, taking our affidavits as to what we saw that night, might make out a case for you; but I don't know that we could fix it on Lane, and it strikes me as mean to drag a dead man into the fuss for nothing,” he said. ”Redmond has gone to a place where he can't testify, but he has left his daughter, and she already has about all she can stand.”

”Strikes me that way, too; and Lane's too smart to be corraled,” added Thorn.

”We'll get even somehow without Redmond, and to that end you two will have to run Gaspard's Trail,” I said. ”I'm going down to Montreal with Carolan's cattle.”

A project had for some little time been shaping itself in my mind. I had a small reversionary interest in some English property, and though it would be long before a penny of it could accrue to me, it seemed just possible to raise a little money on it. Considering Western rates of interest, n.o.body in Winnipeg would trouble with such an investment, but I had a distant and prosperous kinsman in Montreal who might find some speculator willing. Montreal was, however, at least two thousand miles away, and traveling expensive; but the Carolan brothers had promptly accepted my offer to take charge of their cattle destined for Europe, which implied free pa.s.ses both ways. It was not the mode of traveling one would have expected a prosperous rancher to adopt, but I needed every available dollar for the approaching struggle, and was well content when, after the untamed stock had nearly wrecked the railroad depot, we got them on board the cars.

The only time I ever saw Sergeant Mackay thoroughly disconcerted was that morning. We came up out of the empty prairie riding on the flanks of the herd. The beasts had suffered from the scarcity of water and were in an uncertain temper, while, as luck would have it, just as they surged close-packed between the bare frame houses, Mackay and a trooper came riding down the unpaved street of the little prairie town. There was no opening either to right or to left, and the more prudent storekeepers put up their shutters.

”Look as if they owned the universe, them police,” said the man who cantered up beside me. ”Sure, it would take the starch out of them if anything did start the cattle.”

Mackay pulled up his horse and looked dubiously at the ma.s.s of tossing horns rolling towards him. ”'Tis not in accordance with regulations to turn a big draft loose on a peaceful town. Why did ye not split them up?” he said. ”Ye could be held responsible if there's damage done.”

”I'm afraid these beasts don't understand regulations, and I had to bring them as best I could,” I answered; and my a.s.sistant shouted, ”Get out of the daylight, sergeant, dear, while your shoes are good.”

Mackay seemed to resent this familiarity, and sat still, with one hand on his hip, an incarnation of official dignity, though he kept his eyes upon the fast advancing herd until the big freight locomotive which was awaiting us set up a discordant shrieking, and backed a row of clanging cars across the switches. That was sufficient for the untamed cattle.

With a thunder of pounding hoofs they poured tumultuously down the rutted street, and I caught a brief glimpse of the sergeant hurriedly wheeling his horse before everything was blotted out by the stirred-up dust. The streets of a prairie town are inches deep in powdered loam all summer and in bottomless sloughs all spring.

A wild shout of ”Faugh-a-ballagh!” rang out; and I found myself riding faster than was prudent along the crazy plank sidewalk to pa.s.s and, if possible, swing the stampeding herd into the railroad corral. How my horse gained the three-foot elevation and avoided falling over the dry-goods bales and flour bags which lay littered everywhere, I do not remember; but my chief a.s.sistant, Dennis, who, yelling his hardest, charged recklessly down the opposite one, afterwards declared that his beast climbed up the steps like a kitten. Then, as I drew a little ahead, Mackay became dimly visible, riding bareheaded, as though for his life, with the horns, that showed through the tossed-up grit, a few yards behind him. Fortunately the stockyard gates were open wide, and Dennis came up at a gallop in time to head the herd off from a charge across the prairie, while a second man and I turned their opposite wing.

Mackay did his best to wheel his horse clear of the gates, but the beast was evidently bent on getting as far as possible from the oncoming ma.s.s, and resisted bit and spur. Then there was a great roar of laughter from loungers and stockyard hands as the dust swept up towards heaven and the drove thundered through the opening.

”Where's the sergeant?” I shouted; and Dennis, who chuckled so that his speech was thick, made answer: ”Sure, he's in the corral. The beasts have run him in, but it's mighty tough beef they'd find him in the old country.”

Dennis was right, for when the haze thinned the sergeant appeared, as white as a miller, flattened up against the rails, while a playful steer curveted in the vicinity, as though considering where to charge him. He was extricated by pulling down the rails, and accepted my apologies stiffly.

”This,” he said, disregarding the offer of a lounger to wash him under the locomotive tank, ”is not just what I would have expected of ye, Rancher Ormesby.”

While the stock were being transferred to the cars amid an almost indescribable tumult, I met Miss Redmond on the little sod platform.