"Fletcher," I said. "You and your advocate worked up a lying charge against me. Shall I ask your wife before you whether it's true? Do you know that in half an hour I could bring the police on you?"

"I guess you won't," said Tetley, laying his hand significantly on the rifle behind him; while Fletcher answered sullenly, "You needn't. I know now it isn't true. But I was mad, and believed it at first, and afterward it was either that or five years. There were other counts against me; and what could a poor man do?"

Minnie looked at him with disgust, and shivered as she s.n.a.t.c.hed one of her hands from his grasp. "It was very good of your sister, Ralph," she said, "and I knew you would forgive me for borrowing the horse; he is there in the stable, and Tetley will find Tom another. It was an awful journey, even before we reached Fairmead, where I hid him in the bottom of the sleigh; and they brought me in here almost frozen stiff."

"I thought she was gone, poor thing!" said Mrs. Tetley, who was cooking something on the stove; and her husband broke in: "She looked like it.

Cuss them police! But we euchred them. A young trooper rides up to the door and drives me round prospecting with a lantern. Of course, he found nothing, and when he rode off I began to tumble. Found your friends in the log-trail and brought them in, knowing them blame troopers wouldn't come back again. Sergeant Angus is a smart man, but he doesn't know everything, and I'll see Fletcher and his missis safe in the hands of a friend who will slip them over the border."

"I'm not going," said Minnie. "Ralph--and you all can listen--my husband came to me desperate and hopeless in fear of the law. Oh, it's no secret, all the prairie knows that he used me scandalously--but he was my husband--and I could not give him up. So I took the few dollars I had and hired the sleigh, and when the horse fell dead lame we came to Fairmead. I knew, though we had wronged you, I could trust you. Now he's in safe hands; I'm going no further with him. There are some things one cannot forget. I shall tell the story to the people who employed me; they are kind-hearted folk, but it doesn't matter if they give me up. I'm sick of this life, and nothing matters now."

She broke out half-sobbing, half-laughing wildly, and though Fletcher growled something sullenly, hanging his head with the air of a whipped hound, I fancied that he seemed relieved at this decision, and was slightly surprised to see he had even the decency to appear ashamed of himself. Then, knowing that the people she worked for would do their best for Minnie, I determined to write to them, and I asked Tetley to bring out the horse.

"Can't I give you a shakedown in the stable until morning?" he said. "The missis will look after Mrs. Fletcher, and see she gets back safe," and he added so that the others could not hear him, "Fletcher's meaner than poison, and I'd let the troopers have him and welcome, only for the sake of the woman, and because he knows enough about some friends of mine to make things lively if he talked."

Tetley was of course a rascal, but there was a certain warped honesty in his dealings with brother rogues--at least so rumor said--and I knew if he had given his promise he could be trusted, while a few of his perfectly honest neighbors were sorry when not long afterward Sergeant Angus proved too sharp for him.

"No, thanks," I answered. "My horse would be worth a great deal in Dakota, and I'll clear out while I'm sure of him."

"Good-bye, Ralph," said Minnie, when I donned the fur cap and mittens. "I don't suppose I shall ever see you again--no, of course you won't be sorry; but you and Jasper were the only two who ever showed me kindness in this hard, hard country. I wish, oh, how I wish I had never seen it! Tell my father to forget me, the sooner the better. I have chosen my own way, and must follow it. It's leading me to prison now."

She appeared about to relapse into hysterics, and knowing that I could not help her at the moment, and might only make matters worse, I stopped Fletcher with a threatening gesture as he prepared to address me, and hurried out with Tetley, who showed me the horse.

"You'll strike Cranton's heading, due east by the chain sloos, in a league," he said. "He deals with us sometimes, and you needn't fear his talking. Don't trouble about Mrs. Fletcher. She's all right."

I rode out leading one of the horses, and in due time reached Cranton's, though I nearly beat the door in before I roused him, and I left him the next morning with his curiosity unsatisfied. That was the last I ever saw of Thomas Fletcher. Neither did Sergeant Angus find his trail, for Tetley knew every foot of the prairie, and enjoyed the reputation of being unequaled in his own somewhat mysterious business, which I understood demanded a high proficiency in evading the watchfulness of the police.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE RECALL OF ADAM LEE

When I returned to Fairmead I wrote two letters. One was to Minnie's employer, who kept a flourishing implement store further down the line, to which he had lately added a somewhat primitive hotel, in whose management I understood Minnie a.s.sisted. He was an enterprising, good-natured Manitoban, and everybody spoke well of his wife, so, having had dealings with him, I requested an interview.

In the other I told Harry all that had pa.s.sed, asking him to transmit as much as he thought proper to Lee, and then awaited developments. The first result was a note from storekeeper Moran saying that as he was looking up orders for implements he would call on me, which he did presently, and proceeded to discuss the matter with frankness.

"My wife has taken a fancy to Mrs. Fletcher," he said. "We just call her Minnie because there's no particular reason to handicap her with her husband's name. She's a mighty smart honest woman, and we knew that story about you was a lie from the beginning--did our best to keep it from her, but I think she knew. We were startled some when she lit out with the sleigh, but she came back half-dead, and we asked no questions until she told us. She's been sick and fretful since, but I guess there's nothing you can do. When we can't keep a sick woman who has done good work for us a while we'll give up the business. She'll be pert again directly."

"You are a very kind man," said Aline, glancing at him critically.

"Thank you, miss," Moran answered. "You just make your mind easy about Mrs. Fletcher; and now, Lorimer, we'll talk business. You'll want a new binder if you're putting in much of a crop, and I've got the latest machines coming in from Toronto."

Aline burst into a hearty laugh, in which I joined her, for the speech was characteristic of the native prairie inhabitants' character. Frugal, but open-handed, hard to beat at a bargain, they are equally swift to seize upon all chances that lead to business and do the stranger an unostentatious kindness, though they have no false delicacy in forthwith establishing commercial relations with the man they benefit.

"Don't see any joke!" said Moran. "You want a binder. I've seen the old one, and I've got lots to sell. Of course we'll look after Mrs. Fletcher, but that's no reason I should miss a deal."

The result was that I ordered an expensive binder which I had hoped to do without, and presently Moran departed with the order in his pocket.

"I think he was very sensible," said Aline, "and you know you said the old machine would hardly have lasted."

Harry answered promptly, and said he expected I should see Lee very soon.

He had been restless ever since he heard of Fletcher's blacksliding, and had, among other things, embarked upon two unpopular crusades. He even seemed disappointed, Harry added, because there was so little drunkenness and loose living for him to grapple with.

"That is so like a man," said Aline when she read the letter. "Where is your boasted consistency? He ought to be thankful. But you have missed the postscript about Uncle Martin. This is what Harry says: 'I met him in long boots one day when I went up to see Calvert, trailing a survey chain not far from the Day Spring mine, and when I asked him what he was doing it for, and whether snow-slush was good for lumbago, he smiled and answered in the silver tongue of your native country something I failed to comprehend. For a respectable cotton-spinner, as I told him, he has developed curious ways.'

"You will see by-and-by, and so will that arrogant Colonel," said Aline.

"He has offended him bitterly, and I shouldn't like to be an enemy of Uncle Martin's."

There was an interlude of quietness, and then, when at last the winter showed signs of relaxing its iron grip, and the snow grew soft at noon, events commenced to follow fast upon one another. Jasper drove up from the railroad one afternoon bringing Lee with him, and then departed with, I thought, undue precipitancy, leaving myself and the old man alone, for I had increased the accommodation at Fairmead, and Aline discreetly withdrew. He had of course read the papers, though not until some time after the trial, and was good enough to say he never doubted my innocence.

Still, I had to repeat all the unpleasant details, until at last Aline returned to prepare supper.

Then he sighed as he said: "It's a bad business, but I feared from the start this would be the end of it. And now I'm going to tell thee something. I've served thee and thy partner as well as I could, and I've saved some money doing it. It's a gradely life up yonder, in spite of the snow and cold--ay, I would ask no better than to end my days there, but it's over easy and peaceful in a world that's br.i.m.m.i.n.g with misery, and I've been feeling like Jonah when he fled with his message."

Aline smiled at me over her shoulder, and I stared at him in amaze, saying, "I never found it either particularly easy or peaceful. I don't quite understand you."

"No," said Lee, changing in a moment to his old pedantic style I had almost forgotten. "Thou hast not the message; it's thy work to till the soil, and I had thought to bide in this good land helping thee until my time came. But a voice kept on saying, 'Go back to them hopeless poor and drunkards thou left in Lancashire.' I would not listen. The devil whispered I was worn out and done, but when I talked with Harry, he, not having understanding, said: 'You're looking younger every day. If I heard those kind of things I should say it was liver.'"

Aline no longer smiled, but sat watching him and listening gravely, and I began to catch a glimmer of his meaning.

"The folks at chapel had not forgotten me," continued Lee, "and they were in trouble. There was another man took up the work I left, but he went off with t' bra.s.s they'd gathered for a new gallery, and they wrote they'd see I got back the old shop if I come home again. And because I was weak and fearful o' the grinding struggle over there, I did not go. They wrote another letter, but still I bided, until I read this paper."

He spread out a soiled English journal, and, running a crooked finger across it, read out the headings, with extracts, at some of which, remembering Aline's presence, I frowned. It was only a plain record of what happens in the crowded cities of the older land--a murder, two suicides, and the inevitable dest.i.tution and drunkenness, but he looked up with kindling eyes.

"I could not shut my ears. The call was, 'come an' help us,' an' I'm going. Going back out of the sunshine into the slums o' Lancashire."

This, I reflected, was the man who had once attempted my life--ignorant, intolerant, and filled with prejudice, but at least faithful to the light within him; and I knew that even if he failed signally, the aim he set before himself was a great one. No suitable answer, however, suggested itself, and I was thankful when Aline said, "It is a very fine thing to do. But what about your daughter?"

"Her place was by her husband," said Lee; "but her husband left her.

Minnie is going back with me. Your brother will take me to see her to-morrow."

I did so, at the risk of overtaxing the horses by a trying journey through softening snow; but I sent a telegram to Minnie, and when we left the cars she was there to meet us, looking weak and ill, with shadows in the hollows round her eyes.

"It was very good of you to come, father," she said. "I was an undutiful daughter, and I suffered for it. Now I have broken the law, and the police troopers could take me to prison. But I am tired of it all, father, and if you will have me I am going home with you."

"Thou'rt my own la.s.s," said Lee; and I found something required my presence elsewhere, for Minnie was shaken by emotion as she clung to him.

And yet this tearful woman had outwitted the tireless wardens of the prairie, and, in spite of the law's vigilance and deadly cold, smuggled her faithless husband safe across the border.

We stayed at Moran's Hotel that night, and Mrs. Moran acted with unusual good-nature, in the circ.u.mstances, for she not only suffered Minnie to leave her at the commencement of the busy season, but bestowed many small presents upon her, and it was with difficulty that I avoided giving her husband an order for sufficient implements to till the whole of the Fairmead district.

"Now that you're here you had better make sure of a bargain while you have a chance," he said. "Say, as a matter of friendship I'll put them in at five per cent. under your best offer from Winnipeg."

Though I wished them both good fortune, satisfaction was largely mingled with my regret when the next day I stood in the little station looking after the train which bore Lee and his daughter back to his self-imposed task in smoky Stoney Clough. Neither of them ever crossed my path again; but still Harry and I discuss the old man's doings, and Aline says that there was a trace of the hero hidden under his most unheroic exterior.

Not long after this Calvert called on us, and spent two days at Fairmead before he went east again. He explained his visit as follows: "The Day Spring will have to get on as best it can without my services. The fact is, I can't stand its owner any longer. I was never very fond of him--no one is, but I liked poor Ormond, and stayed for his sake. So, informing the Colonel that he could henceforward run the mine himself, I pulled out hoping to get a railroad appointment in Winnipeg. By the way, there is trouble brewing between him and your uncle."

Aline nodded toward me meaningly, and Calvert continued: