By Right of Purchase Part 40

"No," said Carrie with a little flash in her eyes. "Why should I be?"

"Well," said Eveline Annersly, reflectively, "one would almost fancy that when Jimmy marries, he would sooner his wife did not see everything that came for him. It was a letter that first made the trouble between Captain and Ada Heaton. In such cases, it not infrequently is."

Carrie turned upon her with a red spot in her cheek. "You will succeed in making me angry presently. You know there is nothing Charley would keep from me."

"That, I think, is saying a good deal; but, while you are no doubt right, my dear, any one who had only seen you in England would be inclined to wonder what had happened to you lately. If I had suggested anything of the kind once upon a time, you would only have looked at me with chilling disdain, but now a word against Charley Leland brings a flash into your eyes. That, however, is by the way. I wonder if you have heard that Heaton has at last taken proceedings?"

"I haven't. I never hear from home."

"I have had a letter and a paper. The decision was in his favour. There was practically no defence. There couldn't very well have been in face of the disclosures, and, while I had a certain sympathy with Ada at first, I have none now."

Carrie sat silent a minute, a faint flush in her face. Then she suddenly raised her head.

"Aunt," she said, "I suppose you don't know it was about Ada that Charley and I quarrelled? In fact, it was on her account I nearly drove him away from me altogether. In that, too, it seems that I was wrong. I wonder sometimes how he ever forgave me, or why I have so much I never deserved to have at all."

She said nothing further, and went out presently. That afternoon and for several subsequent days, she opened Leland's letters, finding nothing that must be kept back from him. But one evening, however, she sent for Gallwey when he came in from harvesting, and, signing him to sit down, handed him a letter from the Winnipeg broker.

"Will you tell me what you think I ought to do?" she said. "You will see that the man must have an answer."

Gallwey studied the letter carefully for several minutes. When he laid it down, he felt a certain sympathy with Mrs. Leland, though he fancied she would show herself equal to the occasion.

"It's rather unfortunate it should have come just now," she said.

"Still, it is here, and I want your views."

Gallwey looked thoughtful. "The thing is rather a big one. As I daresay you know, there are different kinds of wheat, but our hard red is rather a favourite with millers. There is, it seems, a man who, subject to one or two conditions about samples being up to usual grade, is willing to buy about half the crop from Charley at a cent the bushel more than he previously offered. I wonder if you quite grasp the significance of that."

"Prices are rising?"

"Not necessarily, though they are certainly steadier. This man may have orders for some special flour for which our grade of red is preferable, though he could, of course, get other wheat which would, no doubt, do almost as well. Still, prices have, at least, stiffened. It is what is called a rally, and it may last a week or so, though it is somewhat strange it should happen now, when everybody has wheat to sell."

He stopped a moment. "If you sell this wheat, and prices fall, you will have made an excellent bargain, though the figure doesn't cover expenses. On the contrary, if prices go up, you will have thrown a good deal of money away. You have to bear in mind that it represents about half the crop, which makes it evident that a good deal depends upon a right decision."

"Have you any idea what prices will do?"

Gallwey made a little gesture. "To be frank, I haven't, and I should shrink from mentioning it if I had. There are thousands of people up and down this country trying in vain to reason it out, and I have no doubt that some of the keenest men in the business find the same difficulty. I daren't advise you."

Carrie sat silent for at least a minute, and then looked at him gravely.

"If I sell, we shall not cover expenses; if I hold, we may be ruined altogether or it might pour hundreds of dollars into Charley's bank?"

"Yes," said Gallwey. "That is it exactly."

Again there was silence, and then Carrie looked up with a little sparkle in her eyes. "Charley's not so well to-day, and this would certainly make him ill again. It seems I must not shrink from the responsibility.

When he does not know exactly what to do, it is the boldest course that appeals to him. Write the man in Winnipeg that I will not sell a bushel."

Gallwey rose and made her a little inclination. "It shall be done," he said. "I wonder if one might venture to compliment you on your courage?"

Now the thing was decided, Carrie Leland sat still, somewhat limp, and pale in face again.

After that, some ten days pa.s.sed uneventfully until the doctor came back. He did not appear particularly pleased with Leland's condition, and repeated his instructions about keeping him quiet and undisturbed.

He left Carrie anxious, for she could not persuade herself that her husband was looking any better. He was, however, rapidly becoming short in temper, and, soon after the doctor had gone, she had another struggle with him. Entering the room quietly, she found he had raised himself on the pillows and was looking about him.

"If you would tell me where my clothes are, I'd be much obliged," he said. "That man's no good at his business. I'm going to get up."

He made an effort to rise then and there. With some difficulty, Carrie induced him to lie down again. He listened to what she had to say with evident impatience, and then shook his head.

"I'm to keep quiet, and not worry. There's no sense in the thing," he said. "How can I help chafing and fuming when I have to lie here, while everything goes wrong, and n.o.body will tell me what is being done? I felt a little dizzy just now, or you wouldn't have got me back again, but I'm going to make another attempt to-morrow. You have to remember that when I get up I get better. I've never been tied up like this before, and the only thing that's wrong with me is that I've had a doctor."

Carrie contrived to quiet him, though she did not find it easy. When at last he had gone to sleep she went out, meeting Gallwey in the hall. He glanced at her with a little sympathetic smile.

"I came upon the doctor riding away," he said. "It appears that Charley has been telling him frankly what he thought of him. I suppose he has been trying to get up again?"

Carrie said he had, and Gallwey appeared to consider.

"Well," he said, "it might, perhaps, help to keep him quiet if you let him know that the appeal to the police authorities has been considered favourably. I met Sergeant Grier, and he told me that they have sent him half a dozen more troopers. He seems tolerably confident that he can lay hands on the rustlers' leaders, though he was in too much haste to tell me how it was to be done. By the way, I'm afraid you will have to get Charley to write a cheque in a day or two. We'll have to pay the Ontario harvesters shortly."

He left her relieved, at least, to hear that Grier saw some prospect of putting the outlaws down, but another couple of weeks had pa.s.sed before she heard anything more of him or them. In the meanwhile, the Sergeant, as he had indeed expected, met with a good many difficulties. He was supplied with plentiful information concerning the outlaws, but the trouble was that he could not always decide how much of it was meant to be misleading until he had acted upon it. After a week's hard riding, during which his men had very little sleep, he found himself one night with six of them rather more than sixty miles west of Prospect. He had that day surrounded what he had been told was one of the whisky boys'

coverts in a big bluff, and "drawn a blank," a thing that had happened once or twice already. The horses were dead weary, the men worn-out, so he decided to camp where he was in a thick growth of willows. A cooking fire was lighted, and when the men had eaten, all but two, who were left to watch the horses, lay down, rolled in their blankets.

It was about an hour before the dawn when Trooper Standish paced up and down on the outskirts of the bluff. He had been in the saddle under a hot sun most of twelve hours the previous day, and now felt more than a little s.h.i.+very as well as weary. A little breeze came sighing out of the great waste of plain, and the chill of it struck through his thin, damp clothing, in which he had ridden and slept. Trooper Standish was also more than a little drowsy, though he would not have admitted it. In fact, few men are capable of very much, either in the shape of effort or watchfulness, at three o'clock in the morning.

A hundred yards or so behind him, a comrade was standing near the tethered horses, though he might have been very much further away for all Standish could see of him. A thin fringe of willows lay between Standish and the prairie. When he turned a little, he could see the faint glow of the fire, which had not quite gone out, where the bushes were thicker. Though there was a breeze, it had no great strength, and the willows rustled beneath it fitfully with a faint and eery sighing.

As it happened, this was a little louder than usual, when Trooper Standish stopped to listen and consider. His duty in such cases was, of course, quite clear, but now that the willows had stopped rustling, there was no sound, and he was aware that the young trooper who rouses his worn-out comrades without due cause, after a hard day's ride, has usually reason to regret it. Besides this, he remembered that he had not played a very brilliant part in another affair, and he still tingled under the recollection of the others' jibes. Accordingly, he prowled cautiously through the bluff, and then sauntered back towards his comrade.

"I guess you have heard nothing suspicious?" he said.

"No," said the man. "I didn't expect to, anyway."

"You didn't hear me call out, either?"

"I didn't. If you'd made any noise, I would have heard you. Have any of the whisky boys been crawling in on you?"

Trooper Standish gazed hard at the man, who had evidently asked the question ironically. He certainly seemed wide awake, and it occurred to Standish that he might have been half asleep himself, and had only fancied that he called out. He accordingly decided that it might be just as well if he said nothing further about the matter, and he strode away on his round again.

The sun was creeping up above the prairie when one of his comrades, rising to waken the Sergeant, saw a strip of folded paper, of the kind used by the storekeepers for packing, fixed between the branches of a willow close by. Grier took it down, and his face grew intent when he saw that there was a message scribbled across one part of it.

"If you want to do Leland a good turn, get up and ride," it said. "The boys are holding Prospect up to-night."

Then Grier turned to the astonished troopers. "It may be a bluff to put us off the trail," he said. "Leland keeps good watch at Prospect, and has it full of harvesters."

"Well," said one of the others, "I don't quite know. Last time I met one of his teamsters he told me they'd have no use for most of the harvesters in a day or two. He said something, too, about the boys going out to the railroad to haul the new thresher in. I guess that would keep them away three or four days altogether."

Grier looked thoughtful. "Oh, yes," he said. "I've heard that mill's an extra big one, and they were most of a day getting the old one across the ravine. It's quite certain, too, that Leland has a good many friends up and down the country who now and then break prairie or cut hay for him, and, as some of them stand in with the rustlers, too, it's easy to figure why the man who sent us this warning didn't want to show himself.

Well, I guess we'll take our chances of being wanted, though the horses are dead played out, and I don't know where to get another within thirty miles. n.o.body who can help it is going to let us have a horse at harvest time."

Then he turned sharply. "Who was on horse-guard with Ainger?"

"Standish," said one of the men.