Winston of the Prairie Part 37

It was several seconds before Winston answered, and then he took the bold course.

"Well?" he said.

Maud Barrington made a curious little gesture. "I knew I had seen it before at the bridge, but that was not all. It was vaguely familiar, and I felt I ought to know it. It reminded me of somebody."

"Of me?" and Winston laughed.

"No. There was a resemblance, but it was very superficial. That man's face had little in common with yours."

"These faint likenesses are not unusual," said Winston, and once more Maud Barrington looked at him steadily.

"No," she said, "of course not. Well, we will conclude that my fancies ran away with me, and be practical. What is wheat doing just now?"

"Rising still," said Winston, and regretted the alacrity with which he had seized the opportunity of changing the topic when he saw that it had not escaped the notice of his companion. "You and I and a few others will be rich this year."

"Yes, but I am afraid some of the rest will find it has only further anxieties for them."

"I fancy," said Winston, "you are thinking of one."

Maud Barrington nodded. "Yes. I am sorry for him."

"Then it would please you if I tried to straighten out things for him?

It would be difficult, but I believe it could be accomplished."

Maud Barrington's eyes were grateful, but there was something that Winston could not fathom behind her smile.

"If you undertook it. One could almost believe you had the wonderful lamp," she said.

Winston smiled somewhat dryly. "Then all its virtues will be tested to-night, and I had better make a commencement while I have the courage. Colonel Barrington is in?"

Maud Barrington went with him to the door, and then laid her hand a moment on his arm. "Lance," she said, with a little tremor in her voice, "if there was a time when our distrust hurt you, it has recoiled upon our heads. You have returned it with a splendid generosity."

Winston could not trust himself to answer, but walked straight to Barrington's room, and finding the door open, went quietly in. The head of the Silverdale settlement was sitting at a littered table in front of a shaded lamp, and the light that fell upon it showed the care in his face. It grew a trifle grimmer when he saw the younger man.

"Will you sit down?" he said. "I have been looking for a visit from you for some little time. It would have been more fitting had you made it earlier."

Winston nodded as he took a chair. "I fancy I understand you, but I have nothing that you expect to hear to tell you, sir."

"That," said Barrington, "is unfortunate. Now, it is not my business to pose as a censor of the conduct of any man here, except when it affects the community, but their friends have sent out a good many young English lads, some of whom have not been too discreet in the old country, to me. They did not do so solely that I might teach them farming. A charge of that kind is no light responsibility, and I look for a.s.sistance from the men who have almost as large a stake as I have in the prosperity of Silverdale."

"Have you ever seen me do anything you could consider prejudicial to it?" asked Winston.

"I have not," said Colonel Barrington.

"And it was by her own wish Miss Barrington, who, I fancy, is seldom mistaken, asked me to the Grange?"

"It is a good plea," said Barrington. "I cannot question anything my sister does."

"Then we will let it pa.s.s, though I am afraid you will consider what I am going to ask a further presumption. You have forward wheat to deliver, and find it difficult to obtain it?"

Barrington's smile was somewhat grim. "In both cases you have surmised correctly."

Winston nodded. "Still, it is not mere inquisitiveness, sir. I fancy I am the only man at Silverdale who can understand your difficulties, and, what is more to the point, suggest a means of obviating them. You still expect to buy at lower prices before the time to make delivery comes?"

Again the care crept into Barrington's face, and he sat silent for almost a minute. Then he said, very slowly, "I feel that I should resent the question, but I will answer. It is what I hope to do."

"Well," said Winston, "I am afraid you will find prices higher still.

There is very little wheat in Minnesota this year, and what there was in Dakota was cut down by hail. Millers in St. Paul and Minneapolis are anxious already, and there is talk of a big corner in Chicago.

n.o.body is offering grain, while you know what land lies fallow in Manitoba, and the activity of their brokers shows the fears of Winnipeg millers with contracts on hand. This is not my opinion alone. I can convince you from the papers and market reports I see before you."

Barrington could not controvert the unpleasant truth he was still endeavoring to shut his eyes to. "The demand from the East may slacken," he said.

Winston shook his head. "Russia can give them nothing. There was a failure in the Indian monsoon, and South American crops were small.

Now, I am going to take a further liberty. How much are you short?"

Barrington was never sure why he told him, but he was hard pressed then, and there was a quiet forcefulness about the younger man that had its effect on him.

"That," he said, holding out a doc.u.ment, "is the one contract I have not covered."

Winston glanced at it. "The quant.i.ty is small. Still, money is very scarce and bank interest almost extortionate just now."

Barrington flushed a trifle, and there was anger in his face. He knew the fact that his loss on this sale should cause him anxiety was significant, and that Winston had surmised the condition of his finances tolerably correctly.

"Have you not gone quite far enough?" he said.

Winston nodded. "I fancy I need ask no more, sir. You can scarcely buy the wheat, and the banks will advance nothing further on what you have to offer at Silverdale. It would be perilous to put yourself in the hands of a mortgage broker."

Barrington stood up very grim and straight, and there were not many men at Silverdale who would have met his gaze.

"Your content is a little too apparent, but I can still resent an impertinence," he said. "Are my affairs your business?"

"Sit down, sir," said Winston. "I fancy they are, and had it not been necessary, I would not have ventured so far. You have done much for Silverdale, and it has cost you a good deal, while it seems to me that every man here has a duty to the head of the settlement. I am, however, not going to urge that point, but have, as you know, a propensity for taking risks. I can't help it. It was probably born in me. Now, I will take that contract up for you."

Barrington gazed at him in bewildered astonishment.

But you would lose on it heavily. How could you overcome a difficulty that is too great for me?"

"Well," said Winston, with a little smile, "it seems I have some ability in dealing with these affairs."

Barrington did not answer for a while, and when he spoke it was slowly.

"You have a wonderful capacity for making any one believe in you."

"That is not the point," said Winston. "If you will let me have the contract, or, and it comes to the same thing, buy the wheat it calls for, and if advisable sell as much again, exactly as I tell you, at my risk and expense, I shall get what I want out of it. My affairs are a trifle complicated and it would take some little time to make you understand how this would suit me. In the meanwhile you can give me a mere I O U for the difference between what you sold at, and the price today, to be paid without interest and whenever it suits you. It isn't very formal, but you will have to trust me."

Barrington moved twice up and down the room before he turned to the younger man. "Lance," he said, "when you first came here, any deal of this kind between us would have been out of the question. Now, it is only your due to tell you that I have been wrong from the beginning, and you have a good deal to forgive."

"I think we need not go into that," said Winston, with a little smile.

"This is a business deal, and if it hadn't suited me I would not have made it."