By Right of Purchase Part 34

"Now," he said, "if one of you will pa.s.s me that pack-rope we'll tie him up."

It took two of them to accomplish it. During the operation, Trooper Standish contrived to kick one of them where it seemed to hurt. Still, they did tie him, and the lad lay still, breathless with fury, with wrists bound behind him, his ankles lashed together. Then the men turned to Gallwey.

"I guess your hands will be enough. Hold them out!" said one.

Gallwey did it without protesting, which, it was evident, would be of very little use. While one of the men went out of the hut, another watched him.

"n.o.body's going to hurt you if you sit quite still," he said.

Gallwey sat flat on the floor, a position far from comfortable, while Standish, who now lay with his head turned from him, did not move at all. Then another man went out, leaving only one, who stood on guard with nothing in his hand. In spite of certain notions, there are, after all, very few pistols to be seen in the West, and though a good many men have rifles they keep them because game is plentiful. It was, perhaps, ten minutes later when a beat of hoofs grew louder down the coulee, until, though the door was shut, Gallwey could hear what seemed to be a line of loaded pack-animals going by. He glanced at his jailer, who smiled sardonically.

"I guess you're not quite smart enough to play this game," he said.

"You're from Prospect, aren't you?"

Gallwey said he was a servant of Leland's.

"That's all right," said the man. "It's kind of lucky you aren't his partner. We have nothing in particular against you, but, when we get hold of Charley Leland, we'll fix him differently."

Gallwey did not answer him. The last horse had gone by when one of the men outside flung the door open.

"We have to get up and hustle," he said. "What are you going to do with them?"

"I don't quite know," said his comrade. "We might lash this one up as we have the trooper, and leave them here. They couldn't chew that pack-rope through. You have got their horses?"

The other man said he had, and Gallwey broke in.

"We couldn't get very far without our horses, and you wouldn't be taking any risk by leaving us as we are," he said. "It's quite evident that I couldn't loose the trooper, and to be tied up so you can't move at all is abominably uncomfortable."

The outlaw laughed. "Well," he said, "you have some sense in you, and, as you haven't made us any trouble, I'll put a short hobble on you. Hold your feet out."

Gallwey did so, and the man busied himself for a minute or two with a piece of rope. It was evident that he was acquainted with the secure hitches used in las.h.i.+ng a load on the pack-saddle.

"Now," he said, "you might jerk yourself along half a mile in the hour if you were careful, though it's quite as likely you'd come down on your nose. Anyway, by the time you find the Sergeant, we'll be quite a few leagues away. That's about all, I think. Good-night to you."

He went out; and, as they heard him ride away, the trooper, wriggling round, looked up.

"Can you get out?" he said.

"Yes," said Gallwey; "I think I could, though it's rather more than probable that I shall fall over in attempting it. Under the circ.u.mstances, half a mile an hour would, I fancy, be an excellent pace."

"Still, you've got to try it," said the trooper. "Get up right away, and go for the Sergeant."

Gallwey endeavoured to do so, managing to get out of the door before the rope jerked him off his feet. He fell over a good many times descending the coulee, stopping to rest for a minute or two on each occasion. Still he persevered, and made some progress. Dawn was in the sky when a farmer caught sight of him. He and his companions had just decided that Leland's informant had deceived him, or that the rustlers had gone another way, after all, when a weird figure moved out of the gloom beneath the bluff. They could not see it clearly, for there was only a faint grey light as yet, but it seemed to be moving in a most extraordinary fas.h.i.+on. "Well," said one of them, "I never saw a man walk quite like that. It is a man, anyway. There aren't any bears on the prairie."

He broke off abruptly, for the mysterious object toppled over and vanished altogether.

"It might have crawled into a hole," said another man. "No, the blamed thing's getting up again. Anyway, it's like a man. I'm going along."

They all went together. A few minutes later, they came upon Gallwey sitting in the gra.s.s. He had lost his hat, and there was a good deal of dust and gra.s.s and leaves on him. He sat still, smiling somewhat feebly.

"I don't suppose my appearance is exactly prepossessing, but that's not my fault, and I'm unusually pleased to see you, boys," he said. "As you may have surmised, the Sergeant's little plan didn't quite work out as it should have done. I'll try to tell you about it if you'll take these ropes off."

Sergeant Grier, coming up at this juncture, made several observations that are unrecordable, but after the first outbreak, he put a check on his temper.

"They have come out ahead again," he said. "Well, it's quite likely we'll get straight with them yet, and 'bout all we can do now is to pick up their trail."

But they could find no trail, for, as little dew falls on a cloudy night, the gra.s.s was dry and dusty by sunrise. They spent most of that day riding about in twos and threes, but n.o.body at the scattered farms where they made inquiries had seen a single outlaw. They and their whisky had apparently vanished altogether.

CHAPTER XXIV

LELAND MAKES SURE

The nights were growing longer, dusk was creeping up from the eastward across the leagues of whitened gra.s.s an hour earlier than it had done when they cut the hay. Leland stood outside the homestead door with a few newly opened letters in his hand. The waggon of the man who had brought them was just then lurching over the crest of the rise, and Carrie stood watching it, near her husband's side. His face was a trifle sombre, but he smiled when she glanced at him inquiringly.

"From my broker in Winnipeg," he said. "He doesn't know what to make of the market, and I can't blame him. Wheat's lower than I ever remember it, but the bears are still working their hardest to hammer prices down.

In a month or so they'll have the whole wheat of the West flung into the market to make it easier for them; but they don't seem to have it quite so much their own way as I had expected. One could almost fancy that somebody was buying quietly. Anyway, there's a man willing to take most of my crop off me, when it's ready, at a little under to-day's nominal figure. You see, the Prospect hard red's first-grade for milling."

"If you sold, how would you stand?" asked Carrie.

"Very close to ruin. The cattle run would certainly have to go, but that wouldn't count so much. It's less than half stocked now."

"Why can't you hold?"

"The trouble is that all accounts must be met at harvest, and I've got to have at least five thousand dollars to wipe out the most pressing ones. The rest might be carried over at a stiff interest. Then there are wages, harvesting and thres.h.i.+ng. Besides, if I held the grain up, I'd be taking a big risk. It may go down another two or three cents or even more, when every man west of Winnipeg rushes his crop in, and that would turn me out upon the prairie."

"Still, you mean to hold?" Carrie looked at him steadily, with a little gleam in her eyes.

"I almost think I do."

Carrie laid her hand upon his arm. The faint flush in her cheeks was born of pride. "Well," she said, "that pleases me. It is like you, Charley. Hold it, dear, every bushel, and, before you yield an inch, let them break you if they can."

She turned abruptly and glanced at the tall wheat which rolled back, dusky green with faint opal gleams in it, across the great level and over the swell of rise into the smoky crimson that lingered in the western' sky.

"It's yours," she said proudly. "You made it grow, and do you think I don't know what it has cost you? You have gone without sleep for it, and worn yourself to skin and bone. Perhaps you have always worked hard, but, I think, never quite so cruelly hard as you have done this year."

She stopped and gazed fondly on him. Then she went on.

"Oh," she said, "I understand--everything. Charley, dear, it isn't without a reason you are so thin and gaunt and brown, and your hands--the hands that have done so much for me--are hard and scarred.

Still, I want them to hold on to what is yours. You have made the splendid wheat grow, and you won't let anybody rob you of it now."

Leland smiled, though it was evident that he was stirred.

"Well," he said, "it would be a little easier to stop them doing it if I knew where to get five thousand dollars, which is one thousand pounds.

Of course, I owe a great deal more, but with that in hand to settle the odd accounts that must be met, I needn't force my wheat on the market for a month or so."