By Right of Purchase Part 20

She started when she saw him, but it was evident that he was very fast asleep, so she stood for several minutes looking down on him. One arm was flung out on the coverlet, bare to the elbow, sinewy and brown. She noticed the hardness of the hand, and her heart grew soft towards him as she saw how worn his face was with the resolution melted out of it. The man looked so weary in his sleep. When she glanced round the room, his very clothes, from which the water had spread across the uncovered floor, were suggestive of the hard fight he had fought and the weariness it had brought him. There had been no care in his face at Barrock-holme.

She, she reflected, had brought him trouble. At the thought, there came over her a feeling of disgust with herself and compa.s.sion for him. It was not love, perhaps, but it was, at least, regretful tenderness, and she drew nearer with a sudden impulse, the blood creeping into her cheeks. He lay very still, apparently fast asleep, and she knew that further trouble awaited him on wakening.

Then the impulse, illogical as she felt it was, grew stronger, until it became uncontrollable, and she bent down swiftly and kissed his cheek.

He made no sign, but she rose with her blood tingling, and, not daring to look back at him, slipped out of the room. She met Gallwey on the stairway, and he looked at her in amazement, for he had never before seen that colour in her face or that softness in her eyes.

"If one might be permitted to mention it, the loss of sleep and the alarm last night seem to have agreed with you," he said. "You are looking as fresh as the prairie after the rain."

Carrie laughed softly, and it seemed to the man that her voice was also gentler than usual. "I'm afraid I can't make you an equal compliment,"

she said. "You look very woe-begone."

"I expect I do," and Gallwey made a little whimsical gesture. "In fact, I wish it was any other person's duty to inform your husband what has happened. I suppose I am in a way responsible, and his remarks are rather vigorous occasionally."

"You are not going to waken him now?"

"I'm afraid I must. The King's command, madam. I have already gone a little further than was advisable in giving him an extra hour."

"But," said Carrie, "you don't seem to remember that there is a Queen at Prospect, too. Let him sleep until nine o'clock. You have my dispensation."

Gallwey made her a little inclination, and it was more deferential than joking, though he smiled.

"With that, madam, I will risk my head," he said. "I wonder if I may dutifully mention that we have wanted a Queen for a long while--one who will rule."

Carrie felt her cheeks glow, and she was glad when he turned and went down the stairs in front of her.

It was two hours later when Gallwey, with some difficulty, and not a few misgivings, awakened Leland, but the latter's first indignation died away when his comrade mentioned why he had not done so earlier. Gallwey, who was Carrie Leland's devoted servant, contrived to hide his smile, though he had drawn his own inferences and was satisfied. By the time he had said all he had to say, Leland's face had, however, grown grim again, and that he was quiet was not a favourable sign.

"I will be down in five minutes, and come with you," he said. "One of the whisky boys or I would have needed burying if I had known of this last night."

Ten minutes had pa.s.sed when he and Gallwey walked towards the stables across the wire-fenced paddock. The rain had ceased, and bright suns.h.i.+ne was licking up the gleaming moisture from the sod, but Leland saw only a wide s.p.a.ce of sodden ashes, and the blackened ruins of the log-stables, of which the roofs had fallen in. The birch-trunks that still stood were charred and tottering, and a little steam rose from them. They went in among them together. Leland stopped suddenly, with hands tight clenched and the veins on his forehead standing out, when he saw what lay among a ma.s.s of half-burnt and fallen beams.

"Four of them," he said hoa.r.s.ely. "Brave old Bright, and Valerie. Many a long furrow have they ploughed for me. Voyageur and Blackfoot, too!"

He swung round fiercely. "Tom, I'd almost sooner the--hogs had crippled me. Teams I'd broke and driven year by year. They've done 'most as much for Prospect as I have. By the Lord, when next I run up against the boys who did it, there's going to be a reckoning. You are sure of what you tell me?"

Gallwey touched his arm. "Come and see."

They went out together, across the s.p.a.ce of ashes that ran back several hundred yards from the stables. Then Gallwey stooped beside a half-burnt tussock of taller gra.s.s, and pointed to a little card of pasteboard sulphur matches. They were, as usual, joined together at the bottom of the card, and the heads had melted off them; but Gallwey, stooping, picked up a single half-burnt match, and fitted it to the place from where it had evidently been broken off.

"I left them there for you to see," he said. "As a rule n.o.body ever finds out how a gra.s.s-fire starts, but I think the origin of this one is tolerably plain. You will, of course, have noticed that it is within the guard-furrows. Perhaps the fellow didn't remember the matches, or he may have left them as a hint. I suppose it is gratifying to feel that your enemy knows you intended it when you hurt him."

Gallwey's face hardened, and he went on:

"Jake wakened first, and we had the boys out in five minutes, but the fire was on the stables then. We couldn't get the door open, either, and had to wait while one of them brought an axe. I don't know what jammed it, because, when I went back to see, it was burnt, but it never stuck fast before. Well, we did what we could, but we couldn't save the four horses you saw, and, if it hadn't been for the rain, we might have lost them all."

Leland, looking about him, noticed again that the fire had started just where the gra.s.s was tallest, and within the guard-furrows ploughed to cut the homestead off from the sweep of the prairie. This fire, it was very evident to him, had been started with a definite purpose that it had come very near accomplis.h.i.+ng.

"We have everything against us this year," he said, and his brown face showed very hard and stern. "Still, by the Lord, if we have to go under, there's going to be a struggle first."

CHAPTER XV

BENEFICENT RAIN

When Gallwey left him, Leland walked slowly through the bluff where the birches rustled softly under the caress of a warm, gentle breeze. There was a different note in their low murmur now, for the lace-like twigs were covered with slender leaves, and a new scent rose from the steaming mould. Leland noticed it vacantly, scarcely seeing the silver stems; for, susceptible as he was to all of Nature's moods, he was, at the time, bracing himself for the long struggle before him.

There was so much against him, and the loss of his horses had filled him with an overwhelming indignation against the men who had wantonly injured him. He was combative by nature, as every man with a strenuous purpose must necessarily be. With vindictive bitterness, he thought of the burnt and mangled beasts that had worked for him so well. Once more his lips set, and, brus.h.i.+ng heedlessly through the bluff, he clenched one hard hand. Men and circ.u.mstances might prove too strong for him; but he would, at least, go on until he was crushed, and leave his mark upon his enemies before they brought him down.

Then, coming out from among the trees, he stopped with a little indrawing of his breath as he glanced at the ploughing. It had been, when he last saw it, a waste of clods rent into hot and dusty fragments, but now all the wide basin and long slope of rise were sprinkled with flecks of green, and he stood gazing at it with softening face and glowing eyes. The kindly rain had touched the parched and dusty soil, and the old familiar miracle had again happened.

Life had emerged from darkness; the wheat was up, in token that, while man's faith may falter, and his hand grow slack, the great beneficent influences are strongest still, and seedtime and harvest shall not fail.

As those who worked for him had cause to know, and as shrewd grain buyers in Winnipeg admitted, Leland was an essentially practical man; but there was in him, as there must be in the optimist, a vague recognition of the mysterious, upholding purpose that stands behind, and is partially revealed in the world of material things. He could drive the long furrow, he could rend the clods, but there was that in the red-gold wheat that did not come from them or him. It was the essence of life, a mystery and a miracle, his to control, or even to annihilate, but a thing he could never create.

He felt something of this while he stood there with the warm wind on his face. The bitterness fell from him with his cares. Hope is eternal, and it sprang up strong in him as his softening eyes wandered over the vast sprinkling of sunny green. The harvest would follow the sowing, and toil was indestructible. His courage, which, indeed, had never faltered, changed its mood. It was no longer the grim resolution of a desperate man, but a more hopeful and gentler thing. Then, and he was not astonished, for it only seemed the natural sequence of things, his wife came out from among the birches with a smile in her eyes.

"I have come to look for you. Breakfast is ready, and I have been waiting ever so long," she said.

It was a trifling matter, but the man's heart beat faster than usual. It had not been her habit to rise in time to breakfast with him. As often happened when he felt the most, he could think of nothing apposite to say, and stood looking at her in silence.

"I was almost afraid to venture until I saw you," she said. "I had expected to find you angry. It wouldn't have been astonis.h.i.+ng."

Leland laughed softly. "I'm afraid I was," he said "Still, it didn't seem to last when I saw the wheat was up, and it was bound to vanish when you came, anyway."

"Ah," said Carrie, with a faint warmth in her cheeks, "it's a long time since you have even tried to say anything of that kind to me. Well, I have something to say, and I would like you to believe it is not merely what you once called the correct thing. I am very sorry for what has happened."

"My dear, I think I know," and Leland smiled at her. "It was very good of you, and the only thing that was needed to make my worries melt away.

I seem to feel I'm going to come out ahead of the market and the rustlers, now. Could anybody be afraid when he had seen the wheat?"

The girl turned and gazed with only partial comprehension at the vast sweep of green.

"Oh," she said, "I suppose it is a little wonderful. It looked so hopeless yesterday. I am glad one, at least, of your troubles has vanished, Charley."

"And yours?"

"Am I supposed to have any?"

She spoke without bitterness, as though questioning his faculty of comprehension, and she saw the dark colour creep into his face. Still, it was not the hue of anger, and, stooping, he gently seized the hand that wore the ring.

"My dear," he said, "you must have many. I can feel it now, and, when I married you, I was, perhaps, doing wrong. How could one expect you to be content with such a man as I am?"

He stopped a moment, and smiled wistfully. "I almost think I know how the life you lead here must look to you. You can see it stretching out in front of you, all arid and hopeless, like those furrows yesterday.

Still, now you see them green with promise. The rain has come."

"Ah," said Carrie; "still, the wheat was hidden there, and in some of us there are only weeds and tares, while, even if there is among them a little wholesome grain, who knows if the rain will ever come at all?"

She looked up at him and hesitated. "Charley, do you feel that I have cheated you very badly?"

"How?"