Harding of Allenwood Part 45

"Well," he said, "I'll make you an offer."

It was not an advantageous one for Gerald, but after some objections he accepted it, and the next day reluctantly set to work. His occupation, however, proved less unpleasant than he had feared, and at the end of a few weeks Davies thought he had acted wisely. Mowbray was intelligent and unscrupulous, his judgment was good, and Davies began to take him into his confidence.

Harding, in the meanwhile, appointed an agent and went home. He hired a horse at the railroad settlement, and the first of the Allenwood farmsteads were rising above the edge of the plain when a mounted figure appeared near a bluff that the trail skirted. The figure was small and distant, but it cut sharp against the evening light, and Harding's heart beat fast as he recognized it. Touching his horse with the quirt, he rode on at a gallop and pulled up near Beatrice with an exultant gleam in his eyes.

"This is very kind!" he cried.

She looked at him shyly, with some color in her face.

"Didn't you expect me to meet you? How far have you ridden at that furious pace?"

"Since I saw you quite a way back. The horse wouldn't come fast enough!"

She smiled at him.

"If you are not in a great hurry to get home, let's walk as far as the ridge," she suggested.

Harding, springing down, held out his hand, and when she slipped from the saddle he caught her in his arms and held her fast while he kissed her. Beatrice was not demonstrative, but he felt her arms tighten about his neck, and the soft pressure of her cheek upon his face, and it gave him a thrill of triumph. Now he realized all that he had won.

For a long while they did not speak. Then Beatrice freed herself with a soft laugh, and they walked on across the prairie. But Harding would not release one little hand, which he clung to as they climbed the trail together.

The red sunset burned in front of them with the edge of the plain cutting against it in a hard, straight line. Above the lurid glow the wide arch of sky shone a vivid green, and the great sweep of gra.s.s ran forward steeped in deepening shades of blue. There was something mysteriously impressive in the half light and the riot of color.

"What a glorious evening!" Beatrice could not help exclaiming. "I am glad I shall not have to leave the prairie."

The crimson flush on the skyline merged into rose and magenta and mauve.

"It is lighted up in your honor," Harding said.

"You have a pretty imagination; but I fear the gray days are more in keeping with the life I've led. It was often rather dreary at the Grange, and I felt that I was objectless--drifting on without a purpose." She smiled at Harding. "You can't understand the feeling?"

"No," he said. "All my life I've had too much to do. One gets self-centered through thinking only of one's work. It may be better to stop now and then and look about."

"It depends upon what you see. If your surroundings never change, you come to know them too well and begin to think that nothing different is possible. It makes one narrow. We may both need patience, Craig, before we learn to understand each other's point of view."

Harding realized the truth of this. They looked at many things differently, and there were points on which their convictions were opposed.

She gave the strong hand that held hers a slight pressure of caress.

"I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been driven out of my way by the gra.s.s fire that night?" she questioned, woman-like.

"Nothing would have been different. I was bound to meet you sooner or later."

She laughed contentedly, and they walked on in silence for a while.

Harding felt that he ought to tell her about Gerald, but he hesitated.

"Tell me what you have been doing in Winnipeg," she said, as if she had divined his thoughts.

He explained his business there carefully, and Beatrice was pleased that he took her interest and comprehension for granted.

"Gerald wanted me to make him our agent, and I refused," he ended.

She was conscious of disappointment, though she appreciated his candor.

"I'm afraid he will find things hard. Of course, it's his own fault, but that won't make his difficulties lighter. Couldn't you have taken the risk of giving him another chance?"

"No," said Harding. "I wanted to help him, for your sake, but I couldn't give him the post. You see, I was acting for others as well as for myself." He hesitated before he added: "I felt that we must have the best man we could get."

"And you could get more reliable men than my brother! Unfortunately, it's true. But the others were willing; Kenwyne told me so."

He looked at her in surprise, for there was a faint hardness in her voice.

"I don't think they quite understood how important the matter is.

Anyway, they left it to me and I felt forced to do what seemed best for all."

"Well," she said, as if puzzled, "Gerald certainly wronged you."

"That didn't count; not the wrong you mean. The greatest injury he could have done me would have been in giving you to Brand. However, it was not this, but his unfitness for our work that made me refuse him."

He had blundered, and Beatrice felt hurt. She could have forgiven him for bitterly resenting Gerald's attempt to separate them, but he seemed to consider that comparatively unimportant. There was a hard strain in him; perhaps her father had been right in thinking him too deeply imbued with the commercial spirit.

He helped her to the saddle, and the misunderstanding was forgotten as they rode in confidential talk across the shadowy plain until the lights of the Grange twinkled out ahead. Harding left her at the forking of the trail, but he was thoughtful as he trotted home alone. He must exercise care and tact in future. Beatrice was proud, and he feared that he had not altogether won her yet.

CHAPTER XXVI

DROUGHT

The wheat was growing tall and changing to a darker shade; when the wind swept through it, it undulated like the waves of a vast green sea, rippling silver and white where the light played on the bending blades.

Harding lay among the dusty gra.s.s in a dry sloo, and Hester sat beside him in the blue shadow of the big hay wagon. Since six o'clock that morning Harding and Devine had been mowing prairie hay. They had stopped long enough to eat the lunch Hester had brought them; and now Devine had returned to his work, and sat jolting in the driving-seat of a big machine as he guided three powerful horses along the edge of the gra.s.s.

It went down in dry rows, ready for gathering, before the glistening knife, and a haze of dust and a cloud of flies followed the team across the sloo. Harding's horses stood switching their tails in the suns.h.i.+ne that flooded the plain with a dazzling glare.

"It was rough on Fred that you wouldn't let him finish his pipe,"

Harding said.

"He went obediently," Hester answered with a smile. "I wanted to talk to you."

"I suspected something of the kind; but I can't see why you must stop me now."

"You are away at daybreak and come home late."

"Very well," said Harding resignedly. "But I've got to clean up this sloo by dark."

"Then you're not going to the Grange? You haven't been since Sunday."