"We're about sick of fooling, and mean solid business now," it said.

"Open, and be quick about it, before we smash that door down and try moral suasion by roasting both of you."

"You should have stayed when you were in," was the ironical answer. "No doubt you have observed the light under the door. Well, the first man across the threshold will get a bullet through him before he even sees us.

Haven't you realized yet that this undertaking is too big for you?"

"Curse him; he's busted my best teeth in. Hunt round and find something for a battering ram," cried another voice, but though the a.s.sailants had possibly not caught all the answer, they evidently understood the strength of our position, for we heard them moving away.

"Gone to open the chest in the stables; they won't find much in it," said Colonel Carrington. "They will try a fresh move next time. Mr. Lorimer, of Fairmead, are you not? I wish to express my obligations again."

He took it very coolly, as it appeared he took everything, and smiled curiously as, glancing at his watch, he said half-aloud: "Well, there are worse things than a clean swift ending, and there was a time when I should not have stepped aside to let death pa.s.s. But I apologize, Mr. Lorimer, for inflicting such talk on you. Hope we shall be friends if we come out of this safely. The check?--yes, we'll put it away. It might have saved trouble to sign it, but you see it was her mother's money, and I only hold it in trust for my daughter. Neither are we as rich as some suppose us to be."

His grim face relaxed, and his voice sounded different when he spoke of Grace, while a few moments pa.s.sed before he added:

"It cannot be far from dawn, and there's not a soul in Carrington except you and myself. Grace took all my people with her to help at Lone Hollow.

So, unless you are inclined to stalk them, which I should hardly suggest, as they might be too clever for you, we must await our friends' arrival and make the best of it."

I had no inclination whatever to try the stalking. To take a kneeling shot at an unsuspecting man seemed in any circ.u.mstances almost a crime; so we sat each with a rifle laid across his knees, and for the first time in two years I tasted excellent tobacco. But the vigil grew trying. The house seemed filled with whispers and mysterious noises. My throat grew dry, and the Colonel laughed when once I moved sharply as a rat scurried behind the wainscot. Neither of us felt inclined to talk, and our eyes were fixed steadfastly upon the door, until at last the lamp seemed to rise and fall with each respiration. Then the Colonel approached the window as though listening, after glancing once more at his watch.

"It must be daybreak, and I hear something," he said. "There is probably one of them watching, but we must chance it," and he moved softly toward the door. When we stood outside the cold of the morning went through me like a knife. Still a rapid beat of horse hoofs rose out of the big coulee, and it was evident that the outlaws had heard them, for we saw two men busy with the horses at the stable door, while two more disappeared behind the bank of sods that walled off the vegetable garden. What their purpose was, unless they meant to check any accession to our strength while their comrades escaped with the coffer, was not apparent. It was blowing strongly now, and the air was thick with falling snow, but I made out two riders who resembled Harry and Ormond coming toward us at a gallop, with another horseman some distance behind. Then a hoa.r.s.e shout reached us--"Stop right there, and wheel your horses before we plug you!"

I could not see into the hollow beneath the wall because it was some distance off and the snow whirled about it, but I could imagine the Winchester barrel resting on the sods while a steady eye stared through the sights, and knew that neither Ormond nor Harry carried weapons. So I started at a flounder toward them, roaring as I went:

"Go back--for your life, go back!"

They evidently did not hear me, though we were afterwards to hear the reason for an apparent act of madness. Harry was always reckless, and Ormond coolly brave, while as I ran I saw the two horses flying at the wall. A streak of red flame blazed out low down in the snow, a mounted man pa.s.sed me leading two horses, and I neither knew nor cared whether he noticed me, for I felt suddenly dizzy, wondering whether the bullet had gone home. Neither did I hear any report at all, for my whole attention was concentrated on the black shapes of the riders breast high beyond the wall. Then one beast rose into the air, and I saw Ormond swing a riding crop round backward as though for the sword cut from behind the shoulder.

A soft thud followed, Harry's horse cleared the sods like a bird, and I blazed off my rifle at a venture toward the hollow as they thundered neck and neck past me. It was clear that empty-handed they had ridden either over or through the foe.

After that events followed too rapidly to leave a clear impression. A pair of half-seen figures which appeared at the other end of the hollow scrambled for the empty saddles, and one seemed to help his companion.

Then they vanished into the whirling haze, and Colonel Carrington's Winchester rapped as he emptied the magazine at the flying foe, while by the time the new arrivals had mastered their excited beasts there was only a narrow circle of prairie shut in by blinding snow.

"Very glad to find you safe, sir," said Ormond. "We met the Blackfoot who peddles moccasins, and he told us he had seen four men he thought were Stevens' gang heading for Carrington, so we pushed on as fast as we could.

Perhaps if we three went on with rifles we might overtake them."

Harry looked eager, and I was willing, but Colonel Carrington was wisest:

"You have done gallantly," he said, "but it would only be throwing lives away. The snow is coming in earnest, and it strikes me they have gone to their account unless they find shelter in a coulee."

Then they dismounted, and a hired man, who had lagged behind through indifferent horseflesh and no fault of his own, was despatched to prepare breakfast, and it was a merry party that a.s.sembled round the table. Even the ruler of Carrington's grim face relaxed.

"I am glad to make the acquaintance of both of you," he said. "You will make the best of Carrington I hope for a day or two."

We were nothing loth, for twenty miles of deepening snow lay between us and our homestead, where we had little to do, while to complete my satisfaction Grace and her train arrived in the Lone Hollow sleigh early the next morning, and on hearing the story her eyes glistened as she thanked me. "I am so glad I sent you," she said, "and I feel I owe my father's safety, perhaps his life, to you. It is a debt I can never repay."

It was late that afternoon when another sleigh drew up before the Carrington gate, and three white-sheeted troopers lifted a heavy burden out of it. The thing, which seemed a shapeless heap of snow and wrappings, hung limply between them as they carried it into the hall, while it was Sergeant Angus Macfarlane who explained their errand.

"Lay him down there gently, boys," he said. "No, stand back, Miss Carrington, these kind o' sights are no for you. We found him in a coulee after yon Blackfoot peddler had told us Stevens had fooled us, and ye'll mind it's no that easy to fool the Northwest Police. He's one o' the gang, but the poor soul's got several ribs broken, an' after lying out through the blizzard I'm thinking he's near his end. It's a long ride to the outpost, forbye we have no comforts. Maybe ye'll take him--ay, I ken he's a robber, but ye cannot leave him to perish in the snow."

He flung back the wrappings, and before I could stop her Grace bent down over the drawn white face with the red froth on the lips, while Ormond said quietly:

"Very bad, poor devil! I fancied Robin's hoofs struck something that yielded when he made a landing. You will take him in if it's only to oblige me, sir."

Grace stood upright with tender compa.s.sion shining in her wet eyes as she fixed them on the old man.

"I am a woman now, father," she said, "and I should like to help to cure him if it can be done. We shall do everything possible for him, anyway.

Bring him forward, Sergeant Angus. Geoffrey, you know something of surgery."

"I don't make war on dying men. You will do whatever pleases you, Grace,"

the ruler of Carrington answered, indifferently.

They carried their burden into another room, and I waited beside the stove, with two faces stamped on my memory. The one was that of the wounded man with its contraction of pain and gla.s.sy stare, and the other the countenance of Grace Carrington transfigured for a moment by a great pity that added to its loveliness. Still, the coming of this unexpected guest cast a gloom upon us, and we seldom saw Grace, while Ormond, who seemed to know a little of everything, once said on pa.s.sing: "I have fixed him up as well as I could, but I think a broken rib has pierced his lung, and he's sinking rapidly. However, Miss Carrington is doing her best, and he could not have a more efficient nurse."

It was late in the afternoon when, on tapping at the door in search of tidings, Ormond called me in. The daylight was fading, but I could see the limp, suffering shape on the bed, and Grace sitting near the window, leaning forward as though listening.

"Light-headed at times!" said Ormond; "but he was asking for you. Do you feel any easier now? Here's another inquirer anxious to hear good news of you."

The man turned his drawn face toward me, and tried to smile as he said: "I guess you're very good. Hope you don't bear malice. You oughtn't to anyhow--nearly broke my neck when you fired me through the doorway. All in the way of business, and I'm corralled now."

I bent my head with a friendly gesture, for even I could read death in his face, and the outlaw, glancing toward Grace, added:

"If I'd known you, Missy, we'd never have held up this homestead. White people all through, and you're a prairie daisy. What made me do it? Well, I guess that's a long story, and some of it might scare you. A big man froze me off my land, and some one rebranded my few head of stock. Law! we don't count much on that; it's often the biggest rascals corral the offices, and we just laid for them with the rifle. They were too many for us--and this is the end of it."

Grace moved toward him whispering something I could not catch, but the man smiled feebly, and I heard the grim answer:

"No; I guess it's rather too late for that. I lived my own way, and I can die that way too. Don't back down on one's partners; kind of mean, isn't it? And if it's true what you're saying I'll just accept my sentence.

Going out before the morning; but I sent two of the men who robbed me to perdition first."

Ormond raised his hand for silence, and again I could hear the shrilling of the bitter wind that was never still. Then he said softly: "You are only exciting him, and had better go," and with a last glance at Grace's slender figure stooping beside the bed I went out softly.

It was nearly midnight and a cold creepiness pervaded everything when he joined the rest of us round the stove.

"Gone!" he said simply. "Just clenched his hand and died. There was some fine material wasted in that man. Well, I think he was wronged somehow, and I'm sorry for him."

We turned away in silence, for a shadow rested upon Carrington, while the outlaw lay in state in the homestead he had helped to rob, until the Northwest Police bore what was left of him away. But before that time we rode back to Fairmead.

CHAPTER IX

A RECKONING

It was some time after the holding up of Carrington Manor before I was able, with Jasper's a.s.sistance, to fulfill my promise to Minnie Fletcher.

Jasper knew everybody within fifty miles up and down the C. P. R. Line, and at least as far across the prairie, while they all had a good word for him. So when he heard the story he drove us over to Clearwater, where an elevator had been built beside the track, only to find that the agent in charge of it had already a sufficient staff. He, however, informed us that the manager of a new creamery wanted a handy man to drive round collecting milk from the scattered homesteads who could also help at the accounts and clerking. Such a combination might not have been usual in England, but in the Western Dominion one may find University graduates digging trenches and unfortunate barristers glad to earn a few dollars as railroad hands.

"I guess we'll fix him up in that creamery," said Jasper. "The man who runs it was raised not far from the old folks' place in Ontario," and we started forthwith on an apparently endless ride across the frozen prairie.

Some of our horses are not much to look at, and others are hard to drive, but the way they can haul the light wagons or even the humble ground sleigh along league after league would surprise those not used to them. We spent one night with a Highland crofter in a dwelling that resembled a burrow, for most of it was underground, but the rammed earth walls kept out the cold and the interior was both warm and clean. We spent another in somewhat grim conviviality at the creamery, for the men whose fathers hewed sites for what are now thriving towns out of the bush of Ontario are rather hard and staunch than sprightly.

Still, the manager did his best for us, and said on parting, "Send him right along. I'll give any friend of yours a show if Jasper will vouch for him. Pay's no great thing as yet, but he can live on it, and if we flourish he'll sail ahead with us."