Part 22 (1/2)

Acre by acre, gleaming chocolate brown against the gray and green of the prairie, the wheat loam rolled away, back to the ridge, over it, and on again. It was such a breadth of sowing as had but once, when wheat was dear, been seen at Silverdale, but still across the foreground, advancing in echelon, came lines of dusty teams, and there was a meaning in the furrows they left behind them, for they were not plowing where the wheat had been. Each wave of l.u.s.trous clods that rolled from the gleaming shares was so much rent from the virgin prairie, and a promise of what would come when man had fulfilled his mission and the wilderness would blossom. There was a wealth of food stored, little by little during ages past counting, in every yard of the crackling sod to await the time when the toiler with the sweat of the primeval curse upon his forehead should unseal it with the plow.

It was also borne in upon Maud Barrington that the man who directed those energies was either altogether without discernment, or one who saw further than his fellows and had an excellent courage, when he flung his substance into the furrows while wheat was going down. Then as the hired man pulled up the wagon she saw him.

A great plow with triple shares had stopped at the end of the furrow, and the leading horses were apparently at variance with the man who, while he gave of his own strength to the uttermost, was asking too much from them. Young and indifferently broken, tortured by swarming insects, and galled by the strain of the collar, they had laid back their ears, and the wickedness of the bronco strain shone in their eyes. One rose almost upright amid a clatter of harness, its mate squealed savagely, and the man who loosed one hand from the head-stall flung out an arm. Then he and the pair whirled round together amid the trampled clods in a blurred medley of spume-flecked bodies, soil-stained jean, flung-up hoofs, and an arm that swung and smote again. Miss Barrington grew a trifle pale as she watched, but a little glow crept into her niece's eyes.

The struggle, however, ended suddenly, and hailing a man who plodded behind another team, Winston picked up his broad hat, which was trampled into shapelessness, and turned towards the wagon. There was dust and spume upon him, a rent in the blue s.h.i.+rt, and the knuckles of one hand dripped red, but he laughed as he said, ”I did not know we had an audience, but this, you see, is necessary.”

”Is it?” asked Miss Barrington, who glanced at the plowing. ”When wheat is going down?”

Winston nodded. ”Yes,” he said. ”I mean, to me; and the price of wheat is only one part of the question.”

Miss Barrington stretched out her hand, though her niece said nothing at all. ”Of course, but I want you to help us down. Maud has an account you have not sent in to ask you for.”

Winston first turned to the two men who now stood by the idle machine.

”You'll have to drive those beasts of mine as best you can, Tom, and Jake will take your team. Get them off again now. This piece of breaking has to be put through before we loose again.”

Then he handed his visitors down, and Maud Barrington fancied as he walked with them to the house that the fas.h.i.+on in which the damaged hat hung down over his eyes would have rendered most other men ludicrous.

He left them a s.p.a.ce in his bare sitting-room, which suggested only grim utility, and Miss Barrington smiled when her niece glanced at her.

”And this is how Lance, the profligate, lives!” said she.

Maud Barrington shook her head. ”No,” she said. ”Can you believe that this man was ever a prodigal?”

Her aunt was a trifle less astonished than she would once have been, but before she could answer Winston, who had made a trifling change in his clothing, came in.

”I can give you some green tea, though I am afraid it might be a good deal better than it is, and our crockery is not all you have been used to,” he said. ”You see, we have only time to think of one thing until the sowing is through.”

Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled. ”And then?”

”Then,” said Winston, with a little laugh, ”there will be prairie hay to cut, and after that the harvest coming on.”

”In the meanwhile, it was business that brought me here, and I have a check with me,” said Maud Barrington. ”Please let us get it over first of all.”

Winston sat down at a table and scribbled on a strip of paper. ”That,”

he said gravely, ”is what you owe me for the plowing.”

There was a little flush in his face as he took the check the girl filled in, and both felt somewhat grateful for the entrance of a man in blue jean with the tea. It was of very indifferent quality, and he had sprinkled a good deal on the tray, but Winston felt a curious thrill as he watched the girl pour it out at the head of the bare table. Her white dress gleamed in the light of a dusty window, and the shadowy cedar boarding behind her forced up each line of the shapely figure.

Again the maddening temptation took hold of him, and he wondered whether he had betrayed too much when he felt the elder lady's eyes upon him. There was a tremor in his brown fingers as he took the cup held out to him, but his voice was steady.

”You can scarcely fancy how pleasant this is,” he said. ”For eight years, in fact ever since I left England, no woman has ever done any of these graceful little offices for me.”

Miss Barrington glanced at her niece, and both of them knew that, if the lawyer had traced Courthorne's past correctly, this could not be true. Still, there was no disbelief in the elder lady's eyes, and the girl's faith remained unshaken.

”Eight years,” she said, with a little smile, ”is a very long while.”

”Yes,” said Winston, ”horribly long, and one year at Silverdale is worth them all--that is, a year like this one, which is going to be remembered by all who have sown wheat on the prairie, and that leads up to something. When I have plowed all my own holding, I shall not be content, and I want to make another bargain. Give me the use of your unbroken land, and I will find horses, seed, and men, while we will share what it yields us when the harvest is in.”

The girl was astonished. This, she knew, was splendid audacity, for the man had already staked very heavily on the crop he had sown, and while the daring of it stirred her she sat silent a moment.

”I could lose nothing, but you will have to bring out a host of men, and have risked so much,” she said. ”n.o.body but you and me and three or four others in all the province is plowing more than half his holdings.”