Beatrice Haldane always expressed herself quietly, but few men would have ventured to disregard her implied wishes, and I took the hint, fearing I had already said too much. Gaspard's Trail was not yet the finest homestead on the prairie, and the time to speak had not arrived.

When we joined Haldane it was a somewhat stirring sight we looked upon.

A draft of my own cattle came up towards the corral at a run, mounted men shouting as they cantered on each flank, while one, swinging a whip twice, raced at a gallop around the ma.s.s of tossing horns when the herd would have wheeled and broken away from the fence in a stampede. The earth vibrated to the beat of hoofs; human yells and a tumultuous bellowing came out of the dust; and I sighed with satisfaction when, cleverly turned by a rider, who would have lost his life had his horse's speed or his own nerve failed him, the beasts surged pell-mell into the enclosure. Much as I regretted to part with them, their sale should set me free of debt.

Then the flutter of a white dress caught my eye, and I saw Lucille Haldane, who, it seemed, had already pressed the foreman into her service, applauding when Thorn, cleverly roping a beast, reined in his horse, and, jerking it to a standstill, held it for her inspection. It no doubt pleased him to display his skill, but I saw it was with Thorn, as it had been with the sergeant, a privilege to interest the girl. She walked close up to the untamed creature, which, with heaving sides and spume dripping from its nostrils, seemed to glare less angrily at her, while Thorn appeared puzzled as he answered her rapid questions, and Haldane leaned on the rails with his face curiously tender as he watched her. Trooper Cotton, coming up, appropriated Miss Haldane with boyish a.s.surance, and her father turned to me.

"My girl has almost run me off my feet, and now that she has taken possession of your foreman, I should be content to sit down to a quiet smoke," he said. "Will you walk back to the house with me?"

I could only agree, but I stopped on the way to speak to one of the men who had brought in the cattle. He was a struggling rancher, without enterprise or ability, and generally spoken of with semi-contemptuous pity. "I'm obliged to you, Redmond, for suggesting that you would take my draft along; but why didn't you come in and take supper with the rest? This sort of banquet strikes me as the reverse of neighborly," I said.

The man fidgeted as he glanced at the dirty handkerchief containing eatables beside him. "I figured you had quite enough without me, and I don't feel in much humor for company just now," he said. "This season has. .h.i.t me mighty hard."

"Something more than the season has. .h.i.t him," commented Haldane, as we proceeded. "If ever I saw a weak man badly ashamed of himself, that was one. You can't think of any underhand trick he might have played you lately?"

"No," I answered lightly. "He is a harmless creature, and has no possible reason for injuring me."

"Quite sure?" asked Haldane, with a glance over his shoulder as we entered the door. "I've seen men of his kind grow venomous when driven into a corner. However, it's cool and free from dust in here. Sit down and try this tobacco."

Haldane was said to be a shrewd judge of his fellowmen, but I could see no cause why Redmond should cherish a grudge against me, and knew he had spoken the truth when he said the seasons had hit him hardly. It was currently reported that he was heavily in debt, and the stock-rider had suggested that Lane was pressing him. When Haldane had lighted a cigar he took a roll of paper off the table and tossed it across to me, saying, "Is that your work, Ormesby?"

"No. I never saw it before," I answered, when a glance showed me that the paper contained a cleverly drawn map of our vicinity, and Haldane nodded.

"To tell the truth, I hardly expected it was. Some of your recent visitors must have dropped it, and as my daughter found it among the litter during the course of her improvements, and asked whether it should be preserved, I could not well help seeing what it was. Look at the thing again, and tell me what you conclude from it."

"That whoever made it had a good eye for the most valuable locations in this district," I answered, thoughtfully. "He has also shaded with the same tint part of my possessions in Crane Valley."

"Exactly!" and Haldane gazed intently into the blue cigar smoke. "Does it strike you that the man who made the map intended to acquire those locations, and that, considering the possible route of the railway, he showed a commendable judgment?"

"It certainly does so now," I answered; and Haldane favored me with a searching glance. "Then when you discover who it is, keep your eyes on him, and especially beware of giving him any hold on you."

I suspected that Lane had made the map, and it is a pity I did not take Haldane into my full confidence; but misguided pride forbade it, and we smoked in silence until the opportunity was lost, for he rose, saying: "No peace for the wicked; the girls are returning. Great heavens! I thought the child had broken her neck!"

While Thorn went round by the slip-rails, a slender, white-robed figure on a big gray horse sailed over the tall fence and came up towards the house at a gallop, followed by the startled foreman. Haldane, whose unshakable calm was famous in Eastern markets, quivered nervously, and I felt relieved that there had been no accident, for it was a daring leap.

Then, while Cotton and Beatrice Haldane followed, Lucille came in flushed and exultant.

"We have had a delightful time, father, and you must leave me in charge of Bonaventure when you go East," she said. "But where did you get the lady's saddle, Mr. Ormesby?"

"It is not mine," I answered, smiling. "It belongs to my neighbor's sister, Sally Steel. She rode a horse over here for Thorn to doctor."

I regretted the explanation too late. Steel was a good neighbor, but common report stigmatized his sister as a reckless coquette, and by the momentary contraction of Beatrice Haldane's forehead I feared that she had heard the gossip. If this were so, however, she showed no other sign of it.

When a delicious coolness preceded the dusk it was suggested that Cotton should sing to us, and he did so, fingering an old banjo of mine with no mean skill. I managed to find a place by Beatrice Haldane's side, and when the pale moon came out and the air had the quality of snow-cooled wine, her sister sang in turn to the trooper's accompaniment. I remember only that it was a song free from weak sentimentality, with an heroic undertone; but it stirred me, and a murmur of voices rose from the shadows outside. Then Foreman Thorn stood broad hat in hand, in the doorway.

"If it wouldn't be a liberty, miss, the boys would take it as an honor if you would sing that, or something else, over again. They've never heard nothing like it, even down to Winnipeg," he said.

The girl blushed a little, and looked at me. "They were kind to me. Do you really think it would please them?" she asked.

"If it doesn't they will be abominably ungrateful; but although we are not conventional, the request strikes me as a liberty," I said, noticing that her sister did not seem wholly pleased.

"Tell them I will do my best," was the answer, and, after a conference with Cotton, Lucille Haldane walked towards the open door. There was no trace of vanity or self-consciousness in her bearing. It was pure kindliness which prompted her, and when she stood outside the building, with the star-strewn vault above her, and the prairie silver-gray at her feet, bareheaded, slight, and willowy in her thin white dress, it seemed small wonder that the dusty men who cl.u.s.tered about the wire fence swung down their broad hats to do her homage.

Perfect stillness succeeded, save for sounds made by the restless cattle; then the banjo tinkled, and a clear voice rang out through the soft transparency of the summer night: "All day long the reapers!"

There was a deep murmur when the last tinkle of the banjo sank into silence, a confused hum of thanks, and teamster and stock-rider melted away, and Lucille Haldane, returning, glanced almost apologetically at me.

"I just felt I had to please them," she said. "Even if you older people smile, I am proud of this great country, and it seems to me that these are the men who are making it what it will some day be. Don't you think that we who live idly in the cities owe a good deal to them?"

Haldane laid his hand caressingly on his daughter's arm. "Impulsive as ever--but perhaps you are right," he said. "In any case, it will be after midnight before we get home, and you might ask for our team, Ormesby."

Every man about Gaspard's Trail helped to haul up the wagon and harness the spirited team, while, in spite of Cotton's efforts, Thorn insisted on handing my youngest guest into the vehicle; and it was with some difficulty I exchanged parting civilities with the rest as the vehicle rolled away amid the stockmen's cheers.

CHAPTER VI

A HOLOCAUST

It was late one sultry night when I sat moodily beside an open window in my house at Gaspard's Trail. I had risen before the sun that morning, but, though tired with a long day's ride, I felt restless and ill-disposed to sleep. Thomas Steel, whose homestead stood some leagues away, lounged close by with his unlighted pipe on his knee and his coa.r.s.e sun-faded shirt flung open showing his bronzed neck and the paler color of his ample chest. He was about my own age and possessed the frame of a gladiator, but there was limp dejection in his att.i.tude.

"It's just awful weather, but there's a change at hand," he said. "It will be too late for some of us when it comes."

I merely nodded, and glanced out through the window. Thick darkness brooded over the prairie, though at intervals a flicker of sheet lightning blazed along the horizon and called up clumps of straggling birches out of the obscurity. A fitful breeze which eddied about the building set the gra.s.ses sighing, but it was without coolness, and laden with the smell of burning. Far-off streaks of crimson shone against the sky in token that gra.s.s-fires were moving down-wind across the prairie.

They would, however, so far as we could see, hurt n.o.body. Steel fidgeted nervously until I began to wonder what was the matter with him, and when he thrust his chair backwards I said irritably: "For heaven's sake sit still. You look as ill at ease as if you had been told off to murder somebody."

The stalwart farmer's face darkened. "I feel 'most as bad, and have been waiting all evening to get the trouble out," he said. "Fact is, I'm borrowing money, and if you could let me have a few hundred dollars it would mean salvation."

I laughed harshly to hide my dismay. The prairie settlers stand by one another in time of adversity, and in earlier days Steel had been a good friend to me; but the request was singularly inopportune. Two bad seasons had followed each other, when the whole Dominion labored under a commercial depression; and though my estate was worth at ordinary values a considerable sum, it was only by sacrificing my best stock I could raise money enough to carry it on.

"If I get anything worth mentioning for the beasts I'll do my utmost, and by emptying the treasury perhaps I can sc.r.a.pe up two or three hundred now. What do you want with it?" I said.

"I thought you would help me," answered Steel, with a gasp of relief.

"I've been played for the fool I am. I got a nice little book from the ---- Company, and it showed how any man with enterprise could get ahead by the aid of borrowed capital. Then its representative--very affable man--came along and talked considerable. I was a bit hard pressed, and the end was that he lent me money. There were a blame lot of charges, and the money seemed to melt away, while now, if I don't pay up, he'll foreclose on me."

I clenched my right hand viciously, for the man who had trapped poor Steel had also a hold on me, and I began to cherish a growing fear of the genial Lane.

"It's getting a common story around here," I said. "That man seems bent on absorbing all this country, but if only for that very reason we're bound to help each other to beat him. It will be a hard pull, but, though it all depends on what the stock fetch, I'll do the best I can."

Steel was profuse in his thanks, and I lapsed into a by no means overpleasant reverie. So some time pa.s.sed until a glare of red and yellow showed up against the sky where none had been before.

"Looks like a mighty big fire. There's long gra.s.s feeding it, and it has just rolled over a ridge," said Steel. "Seems to me somewhere near the Indian Spring Bottom, but Redmond and the other fellow would drive the stock well clear."

Flinging my chair back I s.n.a.t.c.hed a small compa.s.s from a shelf, laid it on the window-ledge, and, kneeling behind it, with a knife blade held across the card I took the bearings of the flame. "It's coming right down on the bottom, and though by this time the stock is probably well clear, I'm a little uneasy about it. We'll ride over and make quite sure," I said.

"Of course!" Steel answered, and seemed about to add something, but thought better of it and followed me towards the stable. Thorn, who was prompt of action, had also seen the fire, for he was already busy with the horses; and inside of five minutes we were sweeping at a gallop across the prairie. Save for the intermittent play of lightning the darkness was Egyptian; and the gra.s.s was seamed by hollows and deadly badger-holes; but the broad blaze streamed higher for a beacon, and, risking a broken neck, I urged on the mettled beast beneath me. Gra.s.s fires are common, and generally are harmless enough in our country; but that one seemed unusually fierce, and an indefinite dread gained on me as the miles rolled behind us.

"It's the worst I've seen for several seasons. Whole ridge is blazing,"

panted Steel, as, with a great crackling, we swept neck and neck together through the tall gra.s.s of a slough in the midst of which Thorn's horse blundered horribly. Then we dipped into a ravine, reeling down the slope and splashing through caked mire where a little water had been. Every moment might be precious, and turning aside for nothing, we rode straight across the prairie, while at last I pressed the horse fiercely as a long rise shut out the blaze. Once we gained its crest the actual conflagration would be visible. The horse was white with lather, and I was almost blinded with sweat and dust when we gained the summit.

Drawing bridle, I caught at my breath. The Sweet.w.a.ter ran blood red beneath us, and the whole mile-wide hollow through which it flowed was filled with fire, while some distance down stream on the farther side a dusky ma.s.s was discernible through the rolling smoke which blew in long wisps in that direction. It seemed as though a cold hand had suddenly been laid on my heart, for the ma.s.s moved, and was evidently composed of close-packed and panic-stricken beasts.