Part 15 (1/2)
CHAPTER XII
THE SELLING OF GASPARD'S TRAIL
The surroundings were depressing when, one evening, Steel and I rode home for the last time to Gaspard's Trail. The still, clear weather, with white frost in the mornings and mellow suns.h.i.+ne all day long, which follows the harvest, had gone, and the prairie lay bleak and gray under a threatening sky waiting for the snow. Crescents and wedges of wild fowl streaked the lowering heavens overhead as they fled southward in endless processions before the frost. The air throbbed with the beat of their pinions which, at that season, emphasizes the human shrinking from the winter, while the cold wind that shook the gra.s.ses sighed most mournfully.
There was nothing cheering in the prospect for a man who badly needed encouragement, and I smiled sardonically when Steel, who pushed his horse alongside me, said: ”There's a good deal in the weather, and this mean kind has just melted the grit right out of me. I'll be mighty thankful to get in out of it, and curl up where it's warm and snug beside the stove. Sally will have all fixed up good and cheerful, and the west room's a cozy place to come into out of the cold.”
”You must make the most of it to-night, then, for we'll be camping on straw or bare earth to-morrow,” I said. ”Confound you, Steel! Isn't it a little unnecessary to remind me of all that I have lost?”
”I didn't mean it that way,” said the other, with some confusion. ”I felt I had to say something cheerful to rouse you up, and that was the best I could make of it. Anyway, we'll both feel better after supper, and I'm hoping we'll yet see the man who turned you out in a tight place.”
”You have certainly succeeded,” I answered dryly. ”When a man is forced to stand by and watch a rascal cheat him out of the result of years of labor, you can't blame him for being a trifle short in temper, and, if it were not for the last expectation you mention, I'd turn my back to-morrow on this poverty-stricken country. As it is----”
”We'll stop right here until our turn comes some day. Then there'll be big trouble for somebody,” said Steel. ”But you've got to lie low, Ormesby, and give him no chances. That man takes everyone he gets, and, if one might say it, you're just a little hot in the head.”
”One's friends can say a good deal, and generally do,” I answered testily. ”How long have you set up as a model of discretion, Steel?
Still, though there is rather more sense than usual in your advice, doesn't it strike you as a little superfluous, considering that Lane has left us no other possible course?”
Steel said nothing further, and I was in no mood for conversation.
Gaspard's Trail was to be sold on the morrow, and Lane had carefully chosen his time. The commercial depression was keener than ever, and there is seldom any speculation in Western lands at that time of the year. It was evidently his purpose to buy in my possessions.
A cheerful red glow beat out through the windows of my dwelling when we topped the last rise, but the sight of it rather increased my moodiness, and it was in silence, and slowly, we rode up to the door of Gaspard's Trail. Sally Steel met us there, and her eyelids were slightly red; but there was a vindictive ring in her voice as she said: ”Supper's ready, and I'm mighty glad you've come. This place seems lonesome. Besides, I'm 'most played out with talking, and I've done my best to-day. Those auctioneering fellows have fixed up everything, but it isn't my fault if they don't know how mean they are. They finished with the house in a hurry, and one of them said: 'I can't stand any more of that she-devil.'”
”He did! Where are they now?” asked Steel, dropping his horse's bridle and staring about him angrily; but, after a glance at Sally, who answered my unspoken question with a nod, I seized him by the shoulder.
”Steady! Who is hot-headed now?” I said.
Steel strove to shake off my grasp until his sister, who laughed a little, turned towards him. ”I just took it for a compliment, and there's no use in your interfering,” she said. ”I guess neither of them feels proud of himself to-night, and a cheerful row with somebody would spoil all the good I've done. They're camping yonder in the stable, but you'll tie up the horses in the empty barn.”
Sally Steel was a stanch partisan, and, knowing what I did of her command of language, I felt almost sorry for the men who had been exposed to it a whole day in what was, after all, only the execution of their duty. Before Steel returned, one of them came out of the stable and approached me, but, catching sight of Sally, stopped abruptly, and then, as though mustering his courage, came on again.
”I guess you're Mr. Ormesby, and I'm auctioneer's a.s.sistant,” he said.
”One could understand that you were a bit sore, but I can't see that it's my fault, anyway; and from what we heard, you don't usually turn strangers into the stable.”
The man spoke civilly enough, and I did not approve of his location; but the rising color in Sally's face would have convinced anybody who knew her that non-interference was the wisest policy.
”It is about the first time we have done so, but this lady manages my house, and, if you don't like your quarters, you must talk to her,” I said.
The man cast such a glance of genuine pity upon me that it stirred me to faint amus.e.m.e.nt, rather than resentment, while the snap, as we called it on the prairie, which crept into Sally's eyes usually presaged an explosion.
”If that's so, I guess I prefer to stop just where I am,” he said.
We ate our supper almost in silence, and little was spoken afterwards.
Sally did her best to rouse us, but even her conversation had lost its usual bite and sparkle, and presently she abandoned the attempt. I lounged in a hide chair beside the stove, and each object my eyes rested on stirred up memories that were painful now. The cl.u.s.ter of splendid wheat ears above the window had been the first sheared from a bounteous harvest which had raised great hopes. I had made the table with my own fingers, and brought out the chairs, with the crockery on the varnished shelf, from Winnipeg, one winter, when the preceding season's operations had warranted such reckless expenditure. The dusty elevator warrant pinned to the wall recalled the famous yield of grain which--because cattle had previously been our mainstay--had promised a new way to prosperity, and now, as I glanced at it, led me back through a sequence of failure to the brink of poverty. Also, bare and plain as it was, that room appeared palatial in comparison with the elongated sod hovel which must henceforward shelter us at Crane Valley.
The memories grew too bitter, and at last I went out into the darkness of a starless night, to find little solace there. I had planned and helped to build the barns and stables which loomed about me--denied myself of even necessities that the work might be better done; and now, when, after years of effort and sordid economy, any prairie settler might be proud of them, all must pa.s.s into a stranger's hands, for very much less than their value. Tempted by a dazzling possibility, I had staked too heavily and had lost, and there was little courage left in me to recommence again at the beginning, when the hope which had hitherto nerved me was taken away. Steel and his sister had retired before I returned to the dwelling, and I was not sorry.
The next day broke gloomily, with a threat of coming storm, but, as it drew on, all the male inhabitants of that district foregathered at Gaspard's Trail. They came in light wagons and buggies and on horseback, and I was touched by their sympathy. They did not all express it neatly.