Winston of the Prairie Part 36

"The risks!" said Courthorne, with an unpleasant smile.

"Yes," said Winston wearily, "I have a good deal on hand I would like to finish here and it will not take me long, but I am quite prepared to give myself up now, if it is necessary."

Courthorne laughed. "I don't think you need, and it wouldn't be wise.

You see, even if you made out your innocence, which you couldn't do, you rendered yourself an accessory by not denouncing me long ago. I fancy we can come to an understanding which would be pleasanter to both of us."

"The difficulty," said Winston, "is that an understanding is useless when made with a man who never keeps his word."

"Well," said Courthorne dryly, "we shall gain nothing by paying each other compliments, and whether you believe it or otherwise, it was not by intention I turned up at the Grange. I was coming here from a place west of the settlement, and you can see that I have been ill if you look at me. I counted too much on my strength, couldn't find a homestead where I could get anything to eat, and the rest may be accounted for by the execrable brandy I had with me. Any way, the horse threw me and made off, and after lying under some willows a good deal of the day, I dragged myself along until I saw a house."

"That," said Winston, "is beside the question. What do you want of me?

Money in all probability. Well, you will not get it."

"I'm afraid I'm scarcely fit for a discussion now," said Courthorne.

"The fact is, it hurts me to talk, and there's an aggressiveness about you which isn't pleasant to a badly-shaken man. Wait until this evening, but there is no necessity for you to ride to the outpost before you have heard me."

"I'm not sure it would be advisable to leave you here," said Winston dryly.

Courthorne smiled ironically. "Use your eyes. Would any one expect me to get up and indulge in a fresh folly? Leave me a little brandy--I need it--and go about your work. You'll certainly find me here when you want me."

Winston, glancing at the man's face, considered this very probable, and went out. He found his cook, who could be trusted, and said to him, "The man yonder is tolerably sick, and you'll let him have a little brandy and something to eat when he asks for it. Still, you'll bring the decanter away with you, and lock him in whenever you go out."

The man nodded, and making a hasty breakfast, Winston, who had business at several outlying farms, mounted and rode away. It was evening before he returned, and found Courthorne lying in a big chair with a cigar in his hand, languidly debonair but apparently ill. His face was curiously pallid, and his eyes dimmer than they had been, but there was a sardonic twinkle in them.

"You take a look at the decanter," said the man, who went up with Winston, carrying a lamp. "He's been wanting brandy all the time, but it doesn't seem to have muddled him."

Winston dismissed the man and sat down in front of Courthorne.

"Well?" he said.

Courthorne laughed. "You ought to be a witty man, though one would scarcely charge you with that. You surmised correctly this morning.

It is money I want."

"You had my answer."

"Of course. Still, I don't want very much in the meanwhile, and you haven't heard what led up to the demand, or why I came back to you.

You are evidently not curious, but I'm going to tell you. Soon after I left you, I fell very sick, and lay in the saloon of a little desolate settlement for days. The place was suffocating, and the wind blew the alkali dust in. They had only horrible brandy, and bitter water to drink it with, and I lay there on my back, panting, with the flies crawling over me. I knew if I stayed any longer it would finish me, and when there came a merciful cool day I got myself into the saddle and started off to find you. I don't quite know how I made the journey, and during a good deal of it I couldn't see the prairie, but I knew you would feel there was an obligation on you to do something for me. Of course, I could put it differently."

Winston had as little liking for Courthorne as he had ever had, but he remembered the time when he had lain very sick in his lonely log hut.

He also remembered that everything he now held belonged to this man.

"You made the bargain," he said, less decisively.

Courthorne nodded. "Still, I fancy one of the conditions could be modified. Now, if I wait for another three months, I may be dead before the reckoning comes, and while that probably wouldn't grieve you, I could, when it appeared advisable, send for a magistrate and make a desposition."

"You could," said Winston. "I have, however, something of the same kind in contemplation."

Courthorne smiled curiously. "I don't know that it will be necessary.

Carry me on until you have sold your crop, and then make a reasonable offer, and it's probable you may still keep what you have at Silverdale. To be quite frank, I've a notion that my time in this world is tolerably limited, and I want a last taste of all it has to offer a man of my capacities before I leave it. One is a long while dead, you know."

Winston nodded, for he understood. He had also during the grim cares of the lean years known the fierce longing for one deep draught of the wine of pleasure, whatever it afterwards cost him.

"It was that which induced you to look for a little relaxation at the settlement at my expense," he said. "A trifle paltry, wasn't it?"

Courthorne laughed. "It seems you don't know me yet. That was a frolic, indulged in out of humor, for your benefit. You see, your role demanded a good deal more ability than you ever displayed in it, and it did not seem fitting that a very puritanical and priggish person should pose as me at Silverdale. The little affair was the one touch of verisimilitude about the thing. No doubt my worthy connections are grieving over your lapse."

"My sense of humor had never much chance of developing," said Winston grimly. "What is the matter with you?"

"Pulmonary hemorrhage!" said Courthorne. "Perhaps it was born in me, but I never had much trouble until after that night in the snow at the river. Would you care to hear about it? We're not fond of each other, but after the steer-drivers I've been herding with, it's a relief to talk to a man of moderate intelligence."

"Go on," said Winston.

"Well," said Courthorne, "when the trooper was close behind me, my horse went through the ice, but somehow I crawled out. We were almost across the river, and it was snowing fast, while I had a fancy that I might have saved the horse, but, as the troopers would probably have seen a mounted man, I let him go. The stream sucked him under, and, though you may not believe it, I felt very mean when I saw nothing but the hole in the ice. Then, as the troopers didn't seem inclined to cross, I went on through the snow, and, as it happened, blundered across Jardine's old shanty. There was still a little prairie hay in the place, and I lay in it until morning, dragging fresh armfuls around me as I burnt it in the stove. Did you ever spend a night, wet through, in a place that was ten to twenty under freezing?"

"Yes," said Winston dryly. "I have done it twice."

"Well," said Courthorne, "I fancy that night narrowed in my life for me, but I made out across the prairie in the morning, and as we had a good many friends up and down the country, one of them took care of me."

Winston sat silent a while. The story had held his attention, and the frankness of the man who lay panting a little in his chair had its effect on him. There was no sound from the prairie, and the house was very still.

"Why did you kill Shannon?" he asked, at length.

"Is any one quite sure of his motives?" said Courthorne. "The lad had done something which was difficult to forgive him, but I think I would have let him go if he hadn't recognized me. The world is tolerably good to the man who has no scruples, you see, and I took all it offered me, while it did not seem fitting that a clod of a trooper without capacity for enjoyment, or much more sensibility than the beast he rode, should put an end to all my opportunities. Still, it was only when he tried to warn his comrades he threw his last chance away."

Winston s.h.i.+vered a little at the dispa.s.sionate brutality of the speech, and then checked the anger that came upon him.

"Fate, or my own folly, has put it out of my power to denounce you without abandoning what I have set my heart upon, and after all it is not my business," he said. "I will give you five hundred dollars and you can go to Chicago or Montreal, and consult a specialist. If the money is exhausted before I send for you, I will pay your hotel bills, but every dollar will be deducted when we come to the reckoning."

Courthorne laughed a little. "You had better make it seven fifty.

Five hundred dollars will not go very far with me."

"Then you will have to husband them," said Winston dryly. "I am paying you at a rate agreed upon for the use of your land and small bank balance handed me, and want all of it. The rent is a fair one in face of the fact that a good deal of the farm consisted of virgin prairie, which can be had from the Government for nothing."

He said nothing further, and soon after he went out Courthorne went to sleep, but Winston sat by an open window with a burned-out cigar in his hand staring at the prairie while the night wore through, until he rose with a s.h.i.+ver in the chill of early morning to commence his task again.

A few days later he saw Courthorne safely into a sleeping car with a ticket for Chicago in his pocket, and felt that a load had been lifted off his shoulders when the train rolled out of the little prairie station. Another week had pa.s.sed when, riding home one evening, he stopped at the Grange, and as it happened found Maud Barrington alone.

She received him without any visible restraint, but he realized that all that had pa.s.sed at their last meeting was to be tacitly ignored.

"Has your visitor recovered yet?" she asked.

"So far as to leave my place, and I was not anxious to keep him," said Winston, with a little laugh. "I am sorry he disturbed you."

Maud Barrington seemed thoughtful. "I scarcely think the man was to blame."

"No?" said Winston.

The girl looked at him curiously, and shook her head. "No," she said.

"I heard my uncle's explanation, but it was not convincing. I saw the man's face."