Part 38 (2/2)

”No,” said Colonel Barrington. ”We only stopped in pa.s.sing. The crop will harvest well.”

”Yes,” said Winston, turning with a little smile to Miss Barrington.

”Better than I expected, and prices are still moving up. You will remember, madam, who it was wished me good fortune. It has undeniably come!”

”Then,” said the white-haired lady, ”next year I will do as much again, though it will be a little unnecessary, because you have my good wishes all the time. Still, you are too prosaic to fancy they can have anything to do with--this.”

She pointed to the wheat, but, though Winston smiled again, there was a curious expression in his face as he glanced at her niece.

”I certainly do, and your good-will has made a greater difference than you realize to me,” he said.

Miss Barrington looked at him steadily. ”Lance,” she said, ”there is something about you and your speeches that occasionally puzzles me.

Now, of course, that was the only rejoinder you could make, but I fancied you meant it.”

”I did,” said Winston, with a trace of grimness in his smile. ”Still, isn't it better to tell any one too little rather than too much?”

”Well,” said Miss Barrington, ”you are going to be franker with me by and by. Now, my brother has been endeavoring to convince us that you owe your success to qualities inherited from bygone Courthornes.”

Winston did not answer for a moment, and then he laughed. ”I fancy Colonel Barrington is wrong,” he said. ”Don't you think there are latent capabilities in every man, though only one here and there gets an opportunity of using them? In any case, wouldn't it be pleasanter for any one to feel that his virtues were his own and not those of his family?”

Miss Barrington's eyes twinkled, but she shook her head. ”That,” she said, ”would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on.”

In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as they drove slowly past the wheat, his niece had another view of the toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash of the binders' wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those sounds often before, and attached no significance to them, but now she knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them, she could hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.

Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise, and had pa.s.sed from view behind it, when a mounted man rode up to Winston with an envelope in his hand.

”Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement and the telegraph clerk gave it him,” he said. ”He told me to come along with it.”

Winston opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, ”Send me five hundred dollars. Urgent.”

Then he thrust it into his pocket, and went on with his harvesting when he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the affair, and then the note he wrote was laconic.

”Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be ill. In case of necessity you can forward your doctor's or hotel bills,” it ran.

It was with a wry smile he watched a man ride off towards the settlement with it. ”I shall not be sorry when the climax comes,” he said. ”The strain is telling.”

In the meanwhile Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or two he unbent so far as, in the face of the regulations, to refresh himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian revenue. Now the lonely ranchers have as a rule few opportunities of friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant's geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished him. In consequence of this he rode out one night with two or three troopers of a Western squadron.

His apparent business was somewhat prosaic. Musquash, the Blackfeet, in place of remaining quietly on his reserve, had in a state of inebriation reverted to the primitive customs of his race, and taking the trail, not only annexed some of his white neighbors' ponies and badly frightened their wives, but drove off a steer with which he feasted his people. The owner following came upon the hide, and Musquash, seeing it was too late to remove the brand from it, expressed his contrition, and pleaded in extenuation that he was rather worthy of sympathy than blame, because he would never have laid hands on what was not his had not a white man sold him deleterious liquor. As no white man is allowed to supply an Indian with alcohol in any form, the wardens of the prairie took a somewhat similar view of the case, and Stimson was, from motives which he did not mention, especially anxious to get his grip upon the other offender.

The night when they rode out was very dark, and they spent half of it beneath a birch bluff, seeing nothing whatever, and only hearing a coyote howl. It almost appeared there was something wrong with the information supplied them respecting the probable running of another load of prohibited whisky, and towards morning Stimson rode up to the young commissioned officer.

”The man who brought us word has either played their usual trick and sent us here while his friends take the other trail, or somebody saw us ride out and went south to tell the boys,” he said. ”Now, you might consider it advisable that I and one of the troopers should head for the ford at Willow Hollow, sir.”

”Yes,” said the young officer, who was quite aware that there were as yet many things connected with his duties he did not know. ”Now I come to think of it, Sergeant, I do. We'll give you two hours, and then, if you don't turn up, ride over after you; it's condemnably s.h.i.+very waiting for nothing here.”

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