The Homesteaders Part 25

Beulah hurried to the room where her mother was rapidly dressing, "A man has been hurt, mother," she said, with suppressed excitement. "We need hot water. Will you start a fire in the range?"

Mary Harris mistook Beulah's emotion for natural sympathy over a suffering creature, and hurried to the kitchen. Mrs. Arthurs was whispering with her husband in the hall, but a moment later joined Mary at the range.

Then Beulah entered the room. The policeman was speaking to Arthurs.

"I must go into town now with my prisoner," he was saying. "I will send out a doctor at once, and in the meantime I know you will do everything possible."

Beulah turned her eyes to the bed. A man was lying there, and an old man was sitting beside it. At the second glance she recognized him, but in an instant she had herself under control. She walked with a steady step to the bed and looked for a full minute in her brother's face. Then she looked at her father.

"What have you done to him?" she said.

He threw out his hand feebly. "You do well to ask me that," he said.

"I take all the blame." He raised his face slowly until his eyes met hers. They were not the eyes she had known. They were the eyes of a man who had been crushed, who had been powdered between the wheels of Fate. The old masterful quality, the old indomitable will that stirred her anger and admiration were gone, and in their place were coals of sorrow and ashes of defeat. For a moment she held back; then, with arms outstretched, she fell upon her father's breast.

And then he felt his strength return. He drew her to him as all that remained in the world; crushed her to him; then, very gently, released her a little...He found his fingers threading her fine hair, as they had loved to do when she was a little child.

She sank to her knees beside him, and at last she looked up in his face. "Forgive me, my father," she whispered.

He kissed her forehead and struggled with his voice. "We all make mistakes, Beulah," he said. "I have made mine this twenty-five years, and there--there is the price!"

His words turned Beulah's thought to Allan, and the necessity for action brought her to her feet. "We must save him," she cried. "We must, and we will! Is the policeman gone? We must have the best doctors from Calgary." Looking about she found that Grey and Arthurs had left the room. They had slipped out to leave father and child alone with their emotion, but she found them at the front of the house.

She seized the policeman by the arm. "You must get us a doctor--the best doctor in the country," she pled. "We will spare nothing--"

"My guest, Miss Harris, Sergeant Grey," said Arthurs, and the policeman deftly converted her grasp into a handshake.

"Mr. Arthurs has told me the injured man is your brother. He shall want for nothing. And the sooner I go the sooner you will have help."

"Your prisoner seems docile enough," Arthurs remarked, as the policeman swung on to his horse.

"Rather a puzzler," said Grey. "Doesn't look the part, but was caught in the act, or next thing to it, and his revolver was found lying on the spot where the young man was shot. By the way, I had almost forgotten. One of the robbers was shot and killed. I had to leave his body, but I wish you would send a man up to stay about the place until I can get a coroner out here."

"Robbers, did you say?" demanded Beulah. "Then it was for robbery?"

"Yes, Miss Harris. It seems your father had a large sum of money on him. We have found no trace of it yet, but it is not likely that more than two were implicated, and as one was shot on the spot this other must know where the money is. We will bring it out of him in due time."

So saying he rode down to the gate, thanked the cowboy who had been keeping an eye on the prisoner, and the two started off at a smart trot down the trail.

CHAPTER XIX

PRISONERS OF FATE

Beulah returned to the house to minister to her brother, but Mrs.

Arthurs stopped her on the stairs.

"Your mother knows," she said. "They are both in the room with Allan."

Her first impulse was to rush in and complete the family circle, but some fine sense restrained her. For distraction she plunged into the task of preparing breakfast.

At length they came down. Beulah saw them on the stairs, and knew that the gulf was bridged.

"Allan is better," her mother said, when she saw the girl. "He has asked for you." And the next minute Beulah was on her knees by the white bed, caressing the locks that would fall over the pale forehead.

"How did I get here, Beulah?" he whispered. "How did we all get here?

What has happened?"

"You have been hurt, Allan," she said. "You have been badly hurt, but you are going to get well again. When you are stronger we will talk about it, but at present you must be still and rest."

"Lie still and rest," he repeated. "How good it is to lie still and rest!"

Later in the day the pain in his wound began to give much discomfort, but he was able to swallow some porridge with pure cream, and his breath came easily. His father stayed about the house, coming every little while to look in upon son and daughter, and as Allan's great const.i.tution gave evidence of winning the fight a deep happiness came upon John Harris. He was able to sleep for a short time, and in the afternoon suggested a walk with his wife. Beulah saw that they were arm in arm as they disappeared in the trees by the river.

"I haven't told you all yet," Harris said to her. "I have done even worse than you suppose, but in some way it doesn't seem so bad to-day. Last night I was in Gethsemane."

It was strange to hear a word suggestive of religion from his lips.

Harris had not renounced religion; he had merely been too busy for it. But this word showed that his mind had been travelling back over old tracks.

"And to-day we are in Olivet," she answered, tenderly. "What matters if--if everything's all right?"

"If only Allan--," he faltered.

"Allan will get well," she said. "When he could withstand the first shock he will get well. Of course he must have attention, but he is in the right place for that."

"The Arthurses are wonderful people," he ventured, after a pause.

"Mary, they have found something that we missed."

"But we have found it now John. We are going to take time to live.

That is where we made our mistake."

There was another pause, broken only by the rustle of leaves and the rus.h.i.+ng of the river.

"Beulah was right," he said, at last. "Beulah is a wonderful girl, and a beautiful."

"She will not be wanting to go back home with us," said the mother.

"So much the better. Mary, Mary, we have no home to go back to!"

She looked at him with a sudden puzzled, half-frightened expression.

"No home, John? No home? You don't mean that?"

He nodded and turned his face away. "I said I hadn't told you all,"

he managed at length..."I sold the farm."

She was sitting on a fallen log, very trim, and grey, and small, but she seemed suddenly to become smaller and greyer still.