By Right of Purchase Part 14

They stood listening for a minute or two, intent and high-strung, and heard only the wailing of the wind, for the birches once more swayed about them. It was almost dark, for the moon was still behind a cloud.

As he moved his mittened hands on the Marlin rifle, Leland forgot that he was stiff in every limb. Then a voice rang, harsh and commanding, out of the shadows above them.

"Stop right there," it said. "We have got you covered."

It was followed by the whip-like crack of a pistol-shot, there was the louder jarring ring of a carbine or a farmer's rifle, and a confused din broke out. Men shouted and scuffled in the gloom, loaded beasts blundered among the trees and the undergrowth, while through it all there rose the detached beat of hoofs.

"One or two of them lit out, anyway," said the trooper. "Guess they'd slash the pack lariat, and get into the saddle when they'd let the whisky go. That sounds like one of the boys after them. Chancing a gallop, too. They'll break their necks certain, if they ride that way through the bluff."

He stopped a minute, and just then a faint silvery radiance swept athwart the birches as the moon shone down. It sparkled on the dropping smear of snow-sheeted trail, and the lad ran forward a pace or two fumbling with his carbine.

"Look out, Mr. Leland!" he shouted. "There are two of them riding slap down on us."

Two indistinct objects swept out of the shadows, and a moment later resolved themselves into men and galloping horses. They were thundering headlong down the sharply falling trail, and Leland felt his nerves tingle as he watched them. He was in a particularly unpleasant temper that night, and the prospect of an encounter stirred the half-frozen blood in him. He glanced over his shoulder, and saw the trooper standing a few paces away from him, and then fixed his gaze up the trail ahead.

The hors.e.m.e.n were coming on at a mad gallop, taking their chances of a stumble, and he could see the powdery snow whirl about them like dust.

Then they saw him standing grimly still in the middle of the trail, for one shouted a warning to the other, and the trooper cried aloud:

"Hold on! Pull up before we plug you," he said.

There was no answer. The riders were hard and fearless men, probably wanted by Montana sheriffs for things they had done during the cattle war, and they showed no sign of drawing bridle. One of them howled shrilly as he whirled a whip about his shoulders, and for a moment Leland saw him sway in the saddle with the beast stretched out beneath him.

Then there was a flash, and a detonation he scarcely heard, a cloud of smoke that floated up the trail, and man and horse came thundering down on him. He felt the jar of the Marlin rifle on his shoulder as he aimed at the flying form of a horse. In another moment the outlaw was almost upon him. Then in savage recklessness he leapt forward instead of back, with a hand that sought the bridle and an arm the rider's leg. His fingers closed on something--bridle, or saddle, or stirrup--and he clung with a stiffened grasp, while his feet were torn from under him and a rifle flashed.

Exactly what happened after that he did not know, but he was hurled forward, still clutching at something, with feet that sc.r.a.ped the snowy ice of the creek; and then there was a heavy crash, and what he held was torn away from him. He felt himself driven into a bank of snow, and lay there for perhaps a minute wondering vaguely if the life had all been smashed out of him, and listening to a sound of scuffling and floundering close by. Next he essayed to draw one of his feet up, and, to his astonishment, found that he had no great difficulty in accomplis.h.i.+ng it. That done, he raised himself shakily, and, scrambling to one of the birches, leaned against it, gasping a little. A few seconds earlier he had been almost certain that he would never stand up again.

In the meanwhile the moonlight had grown a trifle brighter, for he could see a horse that lay near the middle of the creek still moving convulsively. Nearby, wrapped in an old fur coat, was an object that did not move at all. The trooper, who now had no carbine, stood stooping a little as he looked down on it, and there was a curious significant stillness in his att.i.tude, whilst as much as could be seen of his young face appeared a trifle colourless. It was a moment or two before he became aware that Leland was on his feet again.

"He's dead, sure. It's the first man I ever plugged," he said, and his voice rang strained and harsh in the frosty air. "He just pitched off and never moved. Guess it couldn't have hurt him."

One could have fancied he was anxious about the point, but in another moment he turned away with a little deprecatory gesture, and commenced to grope about for his carbine.

"Anyway, I couldn't help it, and it was that quick--he never wriggled any--he couldn't have felt it."

The thing had its effect on Leland, though he had seen something very like it happen before, and he laid his hand rea.s.suringly on the lad's shoulder.

"I don't think you need worry," he said. "He took his chances when he wouldn't stop, and it's not your responsibility. Anyway, we may as well make quite sure that he is dead."

There was no doubt on that point when he dropped on one knee beside the man, and he nodded as he glanced at the trooper.

"A sure thing. I'd like some kind of notion of what happened," he said.

"You jumped at him yonder, but I didn't quite see what you got hold of.

Anyway, you went along with the horse--and him--until I pulled off, and you all came down together. You went down on the ice with a bang 'most fit to break it, and then into the snow-bank yonder. Guess you plugged the horse in a soft place when you fired. In the meanwhile the other man went by--whooping--like a whirlwind."

That was about all the explanation Leland ever got, but in another moment or two the trooper, who seemed to be looking at him curiously, spoke again.

"I'm kind of dazed," he said. "There's quite a lot of blood running down your forehead. I've been watching, and it never struck me you'd better know. I'll go up now and tell the Sergeant 'bout the other fellow who lit out."

Leland, who thrust back his fur cap and felt the gash on his forehead, decided that he was a little confused too, or he would have noticed that there was a warm trickle running down the outside of his nose. His mittens showed red smears in the moonlight when he tried to brush it away. When he next looked round, the trooper had disappeared; and, moving rather shakily, for his fall had not been without its effect, he too plodded up the climbing trail.

When he reached the level, he found several dejected men with manacled hands, and a line of loaded horses with two of the troopers watching them. The Sergeant, who appeared to be giving instructions to one of the troopers, turned to him.

"We have got four of them and most of the horses, but, so far as I can figure, two or three must have got away," he said. "The boys will try to pick their tracks up, and I'll ask you to give us a hand with the pack-horses as far as the forking of the trail."

Leland contrived to drive two of the loaded train, though his head was aching and he felt very dizzy. When at last he was about to turn off into a second sledge-track, the Sergeant pulled up his horse beside him.

"We are much obliged, Mr. Leland, and you'll hear all that's done," he said. "Still, it's a kind of pity one of the two you fell in with got away."

"I don't suppose you are particularly pleased any of them broke through, for that matter," said Leland.

The Sergeant made a little impressive gesture. "The point is that they'd both have got off, if it hadn't been for you, and that fellow's partner isn't going to blame--the trooper. That's all in the business. Well, if I were you, I'd keep clear of the bluffs and ravines if you have to go out when it's dark."

He shook his bridle and rode on, whilst Leland stood a minute or two watching the others straggle out along the trail. Last of all a trooper led a horse which carried an amorphous burden wrapped in a fur coat, and lashed on with a pack-lariat. Something that looked like a moccasined foot trailed down on one side in the snow, and, judging from the trouble the beast gave its driver, it did not like what it carried.

"It's quite likely that fellow's partner will try to get even," he said.

CHAPTER XI

SEEDTIME

The snow had gone, and the frost-bleached prairie lay steaming under the warm April sun, when Carrie Leland pulled her team up on the crest of a low rise. The waggon she drove, a light vehicle of four high wheels with a shallow, box-like body, had been made especially for her. It was hung on comfortable springs, and the harness and horses matched it. There were few broncho teams on the prairie to compare with hers. They were young, but Carrie liked a mettlesome beast, and Leland had carefully chosen and broken them.

It was the same with everything he had given her. Only the best that could be had seemed good enough for her, and at times she almost resented his generosity. Save when he lost his temper, which happened not infrequently, she could not put him in the wrong, and she often felt that it would be easier for her if she could charge him with neglect, or had something to forgive him. He was gravely considerate for her comfort, but it was very seldom that he went any further. While this should have pleased her, she was not quite sure that it did.

On the morning in question, Eveline Annersly, who had been at Prospect a month now, sat beside her rejoicing in the suns.h.i.+ne and rush of warm wind. She had reached the age when one looks for little and makes the most of what comes, and the warmth and freshness of the morning delighted her. The prospect would also in all probability have had its attractions for any one with eyes to see and a nature that could respond to the reawakening pulse of life in the land.

Round three-fourths of the horizon the bleached prairie, tinged now with sunny ochre, melted into the sweep of l.u.s.trous blue, but in the foreground the sod was gemmed with little crocus-like flowers and already flecked here and there with creeping green. All this was waste and virgin, but on the fourth side tall bands of golden stubble, and belts of ashes where golden stubble had once been, were narrowed down by the steaming chocolate-tinted clods of the plough's upturning. Grain ran up in long rippled ridges from Prospect, where the birches gleamed silver, across the wide dip of basin and over its fringing rise, into the luminous blueness of the sky. That was man's work, and man at Prospect worked unusually hard, for it was not his part there to plough where others had also sown, but to grapple with the wilderness, and subdue it, in fulfilment of the charge given him when the waters dried.

The wilderness was there, leagues of it, but it required a stout heart and a steadfast toil to break it and cover it with red-gold wheat when wheat was a drug upon a falling market.

Eveline Annersly, faded and frail, was dainty still. As she sat smiling in the waggon, with the sunlight lying warm on her beautiful hands, she was a part of the colour scheme in her soft, grey-tinted draperies.

Some women of the cities would have been a blotch on it. She was the figure of tranquil autumn when the wealth of fruits had gone, but her companion with the crimson lips and dusky eyes was spring, when as yet Nature is only stirring and has not awakened to riotous life at the burning kiss of the sun. Eveline Annersly realised this vaguely, and at times felt a thrill of concern, for she knew there was fire beneath that cold exterior. When the awakening should come, much would depend upon whether the sudden untrammelled growth of the girl's nature would cling for warmth and shelter to the man who was her husband.

In the meanwhile, she watched the toiling teams coming on across grey gra.s.s and golden stubble in echelon. Men sat above the horses' heads on the driving-seats of the big gang-ploughs, and from amidst the curling brown clods came the twinkling flash of steel. The men had brown faces, and some of them bare, brown arms. Sun and wind had burned and beaten them and their garments to the colour of the soil they sprang from. They seemed almost a part of it, as they and the patient beasts did their share in the great, harmonious scheme which in return for the sweat of effort gives man bread to eat. This was not English farming, mixed and variable, but an unlocking of Nature's long-stored wealth in mile-long furrows that should fling the golden wheat by trainload and s.h.i.+pload on the markets of the world. Even Eveline Annersly, who was not greatly interested in agriculture, could realise that.

"It is a tremendous farm," she said. "We have nothing like it in England. The length of those furrows appeals to one's imagination. How big is it, Carrie?"

The girl smiled a trifle languidly. "I really don't know," she said.

"Charley has told me, but I never could remember things like that. He seems rather proud of having broken--I believe that is the right word--most of it out of the prairie. In fact, he is easily content. To break so many acres every year seems his one object in life. I don't think it's anybody's. Presumably, it's a question of temperament. My husband appears to like his occupation, and absorbs himself in it."

"Which, of course, is just as you would have it?"

The girl made a little half-petulant gesture. "Oh," she said, "I suppose so. I naturally did not expect Charley Leland and I would have many mutual interests when I married him. It would have been in several respects a trifle ridiculous. Still, he is, in his own way, very good to me."

"So I should have fancied"; and Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "Did it ever occur to you that he might have expected a good deal from you?"

A flicker of colour showed in Carrie's cheek. "In that case, he, at least, shows no sign that he misses anything. As you know, we scarcely see him for two or three days together every now and then. I believe these teams are in the field by six in the morning, and it usually is dark when he comes in again."