By Right of Purchase Part 17

"Or of those who dwell in it?"

A little tinge of colour showed in the girl's cheek. "Well," she said with faint scorn, "I don't mind admitting that, too. They are a distinctly primitive people."

Mrs. Annersly said nothing further. She had her fancies respecting the reason for the girl's bitterness, and did not think that her marriage accounted for all of it. This was, in a way, as she would have it. She sat silent until Carrie pulled the team up close to the dry-goods store.

A crowd was collecting in front of it, and they could get no further.

While they sat there, a clamour broke out, and amidst a sound of scuffling, two men reeled across the verandah of the hotel opposite them. Their faces were not at first visible, and Carrie smiled contemptuously when the crowd encouraged them as they grappled with each other.

"That," she said, "is evidently considered the correct thing when Western gentlemen have a difference of opinion. You will notice that n.o.body makes any attempt to put an end to it. After all, since they cannot keep their brutality under restraint, there is something to be said for the use of pistols."

In another moment one of the men brought his fist down with a dull thud upon the other's half-concealed face, and a little spark of scornful anger crept into the girl's eyes.

"It is a little disgusting, but we cannot get on without driving over somebody, and it would be a trifle absurd to have to go away again," she said. "What brutes men of their kind are!"

"Still, there is something to admire in their brutality," said her companion. "That man has both lips cut open. One would have fancied the blow would have stunned him, but he seems to be disregarding it, and is holding on."

She stopped a moment, with a little catching of her breath. "Ah," she said, "there will be no more of it."

One of the men loosed his hold and reeled down the stairway. Then for the first time they saw the face of the other clearly as he leant upon the rails. It was not wholly pleasant to look at, for there was pa.s.sion in it, and blood trickled from the swollen lips. Carrie's hands tightened convulsively on the reins as she urged the team forward. Her cheeks were almost colourless, but she met Eveline Annersly's eyes steadily, and her voice had a bitter ring in it.

"Yes," she said, "it is my husband. No doubt his comrades would expect me to be pleased with him."

She stopped a moment and pulled the team up again. "I wonder if you can guess what it will cost me to go into that store, but I am going. After all, it would be a little absurd for Charley Leland's wife to be particular."

Mrs. Annersly's face was compa.s.sionate. "My dear," she said, "he had probably a reason for it."

"Of course!" said Carrie, languidly. "No doubt they differed over the points of a steer, or one of them was too attentive to the waiting-maid.

I believe they have two at the Occidental."

She swung herself down, ignoring the hand of a man who had seized the reins, and, when Mrs. Annersly had descended, went into the big store.

She was perfectly conscious that everybody was watching her, but she made her purchases with a cold serenity, and then drove away. She did not inquire for Leland, and was unaware that the object on the verge of the prairie was his waggon. Had she known it, she would have held her team in a little, for she had not the least desire to overtake him.

This, however, was scarcely likely, for it was a long way to Prospect, and she intended to break the journey for an hour or so at an outlying farm to which the trail turned off in a league or two.

In the meanwhile, Leland drove on as fast as his weary team could go, until he reached the crossing of the ravine where Sergeant Grier had waylaid the outlaws. The trail dipped in sharp twists between the birches into the hollow, and he had raised himself a trifle on the driving-seat to swing the team round a bend when one side of the waggon dropped suddenly beneath him. In another moment he went out headlong, and, coming down heavily on his shoulder, lay as he fell, half dazed for a time. When he pulled his scattered senses together, he saw that the team had stopped and that one of the waggon wheels lay not far away from him. He rose with difficulty, feeling very sore and very dizzy, but, finding that he could walk, picked the wheel up. The bra.s.s cap of the hub had gone, and so had the nut which locked the bush on the axle. He had put a new one on not long before, and felt sure it had not come off of itself, as he remembered how tightly it had fitted. Still, it was evident that, if anybody had loosened it, the sudden strain upon the wheels as the waggon swung round the bend might have jarred it off, even after it had held that far.

That question could wait. Rolling the wheel downhill, he attempted to put it on the hub. An unloaded prairie waggon is usually so light that a strong man can lift one side of it, but Leland was badly shaken by his fall. Indeed, he sat down more than once, gasping and dripping with perspiration, before he accomplished it. It was a mighty task for any man to attempt after a long day's ploughing, a night spent upon the trail, and a sixty-mile drive.

Although he was bothered with a distressing headache, and found that a branch had scored his cheek, nevertheless, when he had fitted on another nut from the tool-box in the waggon, he drove ahead, reaching Prospect almost as worn out as the team. Still, after a bite of food, he climbed up into the driving-seat of the big gang-plough. Summer is short in the Northwest, and the wheat that goes in late runs a risk of freezing, so he needed in his struggle the efforts of every man he could get. He drove the threefold furrow through the ripping sod until at last the copper sun dipped below the prairie's verge. Then, leaving his team to the men, he went back to the house, too weary to carry himself erect.

The birches swayed in a cold green transparency, the crisp air had vim in it, but the weary man noticed nothing as he plodded, heavy-eyed, through the crackling stubble.

He had just finished his lonely supper, and was sitting, dressed as when he came in, with the dust of the journey on him, and smears of the soil upon his heavy boots and leggings, when his wife, who apparently did not know he was there, entered the room. She started a little as she saw him, and Leland drowsily raised his hand to the raw red scar on his face. He had not remembered that his lips were twice their natural size and very unpleasant to look at, though they pained him.

"It doesn't amount to much," he said deprecatingly. "I've been too busy to fix it. I got thrown out of my waggon."

Carrie became rigidly erect, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes.

"That is really a little unnecessary," she said coldly. "I didn't presume to trouble you with any inquiries."

Leland looked at her, as though puzzled, with half-closed eyes. "They wouldn't have been unnatural in the case of a man who was flung headlong out of his waggon."

"One excuse will no doubt serve as well as another. The difficulty is that I happen to have some idea as to how you got your injuries."

The man rose wearily. "I have the pleasure of telling you that I was thrown out coming down the ravine."

"And I," said Carrie coldly, "was at the settlement at the time you furnished everybody with that interesting spectacle on the hotel verandah. I don't wish to be unduly fastidious, but hitherto, so far as I know, at least you have not taken the trouble to deceive me wilfully."

Leland turned towards her with his cut lips pressed together, and his scarred face grim and hard, making a little gesture of weariness.

"Well," he said, "I guess it doesn't matter. I don't suppose I could make you think anything but hard of me."

He stopped a minute, and then laughed. "I have faced the world alone so far, and held my own with it. I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn't go on doing it."

"I believe that is, after all, what most men have to do," said Carrie.

"I shall endeavour to be as small a burden on you as I can manage."

Then she turned and left him; but, as had happened on other occasions, her heart smote her in spite of her anger, for he looked shaken and very weary and lonely in the big, desolate room.

CHAPTER XIII

CARRIE ABASES HERSELF

The warm spring day was over. In that land of contrasts, where there is no slow melting of season into season, it is often hot while the last snow-drifts linger in the shadows of the bluffs. Carrie and Mrs.

Annersly were sitting by an open window of Carrie's sitting-room. The sun had gone, but, as usual at that season, a filmy curtain of green overhung the vast sweep of prairie that had shaken off its hues of white and grey for the first faint colour of spring. Above hung a pale, sickle moon, and down the long slope, over which the harrow-torn furrows ran, lines of men and weary teams were plodding home. Round the rest of that half of the horizon, the prairie melted into the distance imperceptibly--vast, mysterious, shadowy, under a great tense silence--while the little chilled breeze that came up had in it the properties of an elixir.

The thin-faced woman who lay in Carrie's big chair was not looking at the prairie. She had watched the pageant of the seasons too often before, and to her and her husband they had usually meant only a variation in the ceaseless struggle which had left its mark on both of them. In that country, man has to contend with drought, and harvest frost, and devastating hail, for it is only by mighty effort and long endurance that the Western farmer wrests his bare living from the soil.

When seasons are adverse, and they frequently are, a heavy share of the burden falls upon the woman, too.

Mrs. Custer had borne hers patiently, but her face, which still showed traces of refinement, was worn, and her hands and wrists were rough and red. While Thomas Custer toiled out in the frost and suns.h.i.+ne from early dawn to dusk to profit by the odd fat year, or more often, if it might by feverish work be done, to make his losses good, she cooked and washed and baked for him and the boys, a term that locally signifies every male attached to the homestead. She had also made her own dresses, as well as some of her husband's clothes, and darned and patched the latter with cotton flour-bags. Yet the ceaseless struggle had not embittered her, though it had left her weary. Perhaps it is the suns.h.i.+ne, or something in the clean cold airs from the vast s.p.a.ces of the wilderness, for man holds fast to his faith and courage in that land of cloudless skies.

It was the rich, dark curtains, the soft carpet one's feet sank into, the dainty furniture, the odds and ends of silver, and the few good etchings at which the faded woman glanced with wistful appreciation. She had been accustomed to such things once, but that was long ago, and she had never seen on the prairie anything like Carrie Leland's room. With a wee, contented smile she turned to the girl.

"It was so good of you to have me here, although if Tom's sister from Traverse hadn't promised to look after him I couldn't have come," she said. "It is three years since I have been away, and to know that one has nothing to do for a whole week is almost too delightful now."

Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "I'm rather afraid that some of us have that consolation, if it is one, all our lives," she said. "They keep you busy at the Range?"

"From morning to night; and now we must work harder than ever, with one of the boys in Montreal and wheat going down. One feels inclined to wonder sometimes if the folks who buy our cheap flour would think so much of the quarter-dollar on the sack if they knew what it costs us."

She stopped a moment with a little wistful smile. "I'm afraid this is going to be a particularly lean year for a good many of us. Last year I was busy, though I had a Scandinavian maid, but I shall be single-handed now, and the grocery bill must come down, too. It's quite hard to pare it any closer when everything you take off means extra work, and, with it all, the boys must be fed."

Mrs. Annersly glanced at Carrie, who, for some reason, did not meet her gaze.

"I think you mentioned that you came from Montreal," she said. "You must have found it very different on the prairie."

"I certainly did. I had never done anything useful or been without all the money I wanted when I married Tom Custer, who had gone out a year earlier. My friends were against it, and they would probably have been more so had they seen the Range as it was then. The house had three rooms to it, and one was built of sod, while all the first summer the rain ran in. Still we made out together, and got on little by little, struggling for everything. A new stove or set of indurated ware meant weeks of self-denial. Now I seem to have been pinching a lifetime, though I am only forty; but Tom was always kind, and I do not think I have ever been sorry."