A Prairie Courtship

CHAPTER XXIII

AN UNEXPECTED DISASTER

Several weeks had slipped away since the evening Nevis drove out of Graham's Bluff in search of Corporal Slaney, and there had been no news of Winthrop, when Thorne plodded across the prairie beside his team, hauling in a load of dressed lumber for the new creamery. Hunter had contracted with him to convey the necessary material from the railroad, and in the interval between sowing and reaping Thorne had found the arrangement a profitable one. He had a use for every dollar he could raise, and all through the heat of the summer he had worked double tides.

It was blazing hot that afternoon, and the wide plain lay scorching under a pitiless glare. Thorne was not sorry when the Farquhar homestead with its encircling sea of wheat took shape ahead. The trail led past it, and, though time was precious to him then, he felt that he could put up with an hour or two's delay in case Mrs. Farquhar invited him to wait for supper. It was now a fortnight since he had seen Alison.

The wooden buildings rose very slowly, though he several times urged the jaded horses. They had made a long haul that day, and the man, who had trudged at their head since early morning, was almost as weary. On the odd days that they had spent in the stable he had toiled arduously on his house and half-finished barn, beginning with the dawn and ceasing at dark. Now he was grimed with dust and dripping with perspiration, and a tantalizing cloud of flies hovered over him. All this was a decided change from driving a few hours daily in a lightly loaded wagon, but what at first had appeared an almost unexplainable liking for the constant effort had grown upon him. He would not have abandoned it now had that course been open to him.

By degrees the sea of grain grew nearer, its edge rising in a clean-cut ridge above the flat white sweep of dazzling plain. It had changed from green to pale yellow in the past few weeks, but there were here and there vivid coppery gleams in it. It promised a bounteous yield when thrashing was over, and he thought of his own splendid crop with the clean pride of accomplishment. Then he noticed that a buggy was approaching from the opposite direction, and when he reached the homestead a man in white shirt and store clothes had just pulled up his horse. He shook hands with Thorne, who had already recognized him as a dealer in implements and general farming supplies from the railroad settlement.

"Glad I met you. It will save my going on to your place," he said.

Thorne noticed that the man, who was usually optimistic and cheerful, looked depressed.

"Did you want to see me about something, Grantly?" he asked.

"Yes. To cut it short, I'm going out of business."

The full significance of this announcement did not immediately dawn upon Thorne.

"I expect most of the boys will regret it as much as I do," he said. "One could rely on anything sent out from your store, and there's no doubt that you have always treated us liberally."

"That's just the trouble. I've been too blamed easy with some of you. If I'd kept a tighter hand on the folks who owed me money it's quite likely I'd have been able to meet my bills."

"Is it as bad as that?" Thorne inquired with genuine sympathy.

Grantly turned to Farquhar, who had joined them in the meanwhile.

"The fact is, things have been going against me the last three years. Nevis has been steadily cutting into my trade; but I held on somehow, expecting that a record harvest or a high market would put me straight. I'd have been able to get some of my money in again then. In the meanwhile I was getting behind with the makers who supplied me, and now one or two of them have pulled me up; I guess it was the hail that decided them. It's a private compromise, but the point is that Nevis takes over my liabilities."

Thorne's face suddenly hardened, and Farquhar looked grave.

"It's bad news," said the latter. "Is he paying cash?"

"Part," Grantly answered. "The rest in bills. He has Brand, of Winnipeg, behind him, and he's good enough. In fact, I believe the man has been backing Nevis right along." He turned to Thorne. "Anyway, I've got to give the store up, and you'll have Nevis for a creditor instead of me. That's really what brought me over. The note you gave me calls for a good many dollars and it's due very soon."

Thorne endeavored to brace himself after the blow, which had been as unexpected as it was heavy. He had obtained all his implements and most of the materials he required for his house-building from Grantly, giving him a claim upon his possessions as security, in addition to a promise to pay at a date by which harvest was usually over; but owing to an exceptionally cold spring, harvest was late that year.

"It was understood that you wouldn't press me if I should be a few weeks behind," he reminded him.

"That's quite right," Grantly assented. "The trouble is that it was only a verbal promise, and it won't count for much with Nevis. He's been after you for some time, and I guess he'll stick to the date on the note. If you're not ready with the money he'll break you."

Farquhar made a sign of concurrence.

"I'm afraid it's very probable. What are you going to do about it, Mavy?"

Thorne stood silent for almost a minute, and the bronze faded a little in his face, which was very grim.

"That note will have to be met. You told Grantly I was to be relied upon, and I'm not going back on you. It's not my intention to let Nevis do what he likes with me, either. In a general way, I'd have gone to Hunter, and I've no doubt that he would have financed me; but that's quite out of the question now. He has all the trouble he's fit to stand on his hands already."

"A sure thing," Farquhar agreed.

"Well," Thorne added, "the oats are about ripe, and though I'd rather they had stood another week or so, I'll put the binder into them at sunup to-morrow. The wheat should be nearly ready by the time I'm through, and I'll hire the help I could have borrowed if I had been able to wait a while. I'll have to let up on the haulage contract and work right on, almost without stopping, until I can get the thrashers in; but I'll put the crop on the market before the note is due!"

"You couldn't do it, Mavy, if you worked all night."

Thorne laughed in a harsh fashion.

"Just wait and see! It has to be done! In the meanwhile, please make my excuses to Mrs. Farquhar for not calling. I must be getting on."

"You can't do anything to-night," Farquhar objected.

"I can ride over to Hall's and get back to my place by sunup with his team."

He called to his horses, and with a creaking of suddenly tightened harness the wagon jolted on, but as he passed the door of the homestead Alison came out. Thorne stopped, while the team slowly plodded forward, and it seemed to her that there was a striking change in the man. Nothing in his manner suggested that he had ever regarded life as a frolic and taken his part in it with careless gaiety. His eyes were very grave and there was a look she had never seen in them before, while his face seemed to have set in sharper lines. He looked strangely determined and forceful; almost, as she thought of it, dominant.

"What is the matter? You are in some trouble?" she exclaimed.

"Yes," said Thorne simply. "Farquhar will no doubt explain the thing. There's a very tough fight in front of me. I don't think I could have undertaken it six months ago." He spread out his hands. "It's unthinkable that I should be beaten!"

Alison felt strangely stirred by something in his voice.

"Then," she urged, "you will have to win! You must; I want you to!"

Thorne looked at her with a gleam in his eyes that set her heart throbbing painfully fast.

"Now," he laughed, "the thing seems almost easy!"

He turned away after his wagon, and Alison waited until Farquhar came up with Grantly.

"What has Thorne undertaken?" she asked.

Farquhar smiled.

"I'll try to tell you after supper. In the meanwhile, I can only say that he seems determined on breaking himself up by attempting a task that in my opinion is beyond the power of any man on the prairie."

He went into the house with Grantly, and it was an hour or two later before Alison was able to form a fairly accurate idea of the situation. Then her heart grew very soft toward Thorne, and she thought of him with a sense of pride. It was for her sake he had braced himself for this most unequal fight, and she knew that he meant to win.

In the meanwhile Thorne was urging on his team, and dusk was closing in when he flung down the lumber from his wagon. After that, he drove through the soft darkness for two or three hours, and finally roused an outlying neighbor from his well-earned slumber. The man, descending, roundly abused him, but became a little mollified when he heard his story.

"The thing surely can't be done, and just now you can't count on much help, either. The Ontario boys are only just starting West, and the first of them will be snapped up before they get to Brandon. Anyway, I'll come along with you and do what I can." He moved toward a cupboard. "If you left Farquhar's when you said, you couldn't have got your supper."

"Now that you mention it," laughed Thorne, "I don't think I did."

His friend set food before him, and an hour later they drove off in the darkness, leaving Thorne's jaded team behind them. Eventually they reached his homestead in the early dawn, and Thorne, who had been on foot most of the time since sunrise on the previous morning, sat down wearily on the stoop and took out his pipe while he looked about him. Eager as he was to get to work, he could not begin just yet, for the night had been clear and cold, and the grain was dripping with the heavy dew.

He had his back to the house, which was at last almost ready for habitation, but the half-finished barn and the rude sod stable rose before him blackly against the growing light. Beyond these, the sweep of grain stretched back, a darker patch on the shadowy prairie, with another dusky oblong just discernible on the short grass some distance away. Determined as he was, his heart sank as he gazed at them. He had undertaken a task that looked utterly beyond his powers.

Had he been content to begin on his hundred-and-sixty-acre holding on the scale usual in the case of men with scanty means, he would probably have had no great trouble in harvesting all the crop he could have raised; but he had seen enough during his journeyings up and down the prairie to convince him that there was remarkably little to be made in this fashion. As a result he had staked boldly, breaking practically all his land, with hired assistance and the most modern implements that could be purchased, though this necessitated the borrowing of money. He had, in addition, secured the use of a neighboring holding, part of which had been under grain before, from a man who had worked it long enough to secure his patent and had then discovered that he could earn considerably more as a subcontractor on a new branch railroad.

In consequence of this, Thorne had a large crop to garner, and very little time in which to do it, for he was convinced that Nevis would press for payment immediately the note was due. It could not be met until the grain was thrashed and sold, and he realized that any delay would place him in the power of a man who would not fail to make the utmost use of the opportunity. Besides this, it would render it impossible for him to obtain any further loans, and he scarcely expected to finance his operations unassisted for some time yet. It was only Hunter's guarantee that had made the venture possible, and there was no doubt in his mind that unless he could satisfy Nevis's claim his career as a farmer would terminate abruptly before the next month was over.

Then he recalled the months of determined labor he had expended upon the house and holding, the noonday heat in which he had toiled, and the chilly dawns when he had gone out, aching all over after a very insufficient sleep, to begin his task again. Sixteen and often eighteen hours comprised his working day, and out of them he had spared very few minutes for cookery. His clothes had gone unmended, and it must be confessed that he had not infrequently slept in them when he was too weary to take them off, and that they were by no means regularly washed. In fact, once or twice when he was about to drive over to the Farquhar homestead he remembered with a slight shock that it was several days since he had made any attempt worth mentioning at a toilet. In the meanwhile, he had grown leaner and harder and browner, while there had by degrees crept into his face that curious look which one may see now and then in the faces of monks, highly trained athletes, and even of those who unconsciously practise asceticism from love of a calling that makes stern demands on them; a look which, though it does not always suggest the final triumph of the mind over the body, is never a characteristic of full-fed, ease-loving men. His eyes were strikingly clear and unwavering, his weather-darkened skin was singularly clean, and his whole face had grown, as it were, refined, though the man was as quickly moved to anger, impatience, or laughter as he had always been. It would seem that a good many purely human impulses usually survive the partial subjugation of the flesh, which is, after all, no doubt fortunate.

He rose stiffly, damp with the dew, when he had smoked one pipe out, and gazed toward where the sun was rising fiery red above the rim of the prairie. His expression was very resolute.

"A low dawn, Hall; we'll have all the heat we want by noon," he commented. "The oats will be drying by the time we're ready with the team. If you'll look after them I'll oil the binder."

His companion grinned.

"It strikes me the first thing is to set the stove going. Guess if I'm going to get on a record hustle I want my breakfast."

Thorne frowned impatiently, but he carried an armful of birch billets into the house, and when half an hour later he called in his companion, the latter glanced with undisguised disgust at the provisions on the table and the contents of the frying-pan.

"Well," he ejaculated, "if you can raise steam on that kind of truck, I most certainly can't. The first of the boys who drives by to the settlement is going to bring us out something fit to eat, if I have to pay for it."

"What's the matter with this?" Thorne asked indifferently.

Hall raised a fragment of half-raw pork upon his fork.

"It would be wasting time to tell you, if you can't smell it," he retorted.

Then he took up a block of bread and banged it down on the table.

"Not a crack in it! You want to bake some more and sell it to the railroad for locomotive brakes."

Thorne laughed.

"Send for anything you like. Hunter's hired man will probably be going in."

CHAPTER XXIV

LUCY GOES TO THE RESCUE

About four o'clock in the afternoon of the day following the beginning of his harvest, Thorne sat heavy-eyed in the saddle of a binder which three horses hauled along the edge of the grain. He had been at work since sunrise, except for a brief rest at midday, and he was wondering whether the team could hold out until nightfall. The binder had not quite reached its present efficiency then, and the traction was heavy. It was fiercely hot, and there was only the faintest breeze, while a thin cloud of dust that made his eyes smart and crept into his nostrils eddied about him. The whirling wooden arms of the machine flashed in the midst of it as they flung out the sheaves, and there was a sharp clash and tinkle as the knife rasped through the tall oat stalks.

As he neared a corner, driving wearily, he turned and glanced back along the rows of piled-up sheaves which stood blazing with light down the belt of gleaming stubble. The latter was narrow, for although it was the result of two days' determined labor, he had somehow accomplished less than he had anticipated. Half the time he had spent, turn about with Hall, in the saddle and the rest gathering up the tossed-out sheaves in the wake of the machine. It was desirable to keep pace with the binder, though the task is one that is beyond the strength of a single man in a heavy crop, and it was only by toiling with a savage persistency that he and his companion had partially accomplished it. Now, however, his heart sank as he looked round at the sea of grain.

It rose in a great oblong, glowing with tints of ochre, silvery gray and cadmium, relieved here and there by coppery flashes and delicate pencilings of warm sienna, and over it there hung a cloudless vault of blue. It looked very large, and there was another oblong yet unbroken some distance away. Thorne's head ached, and his eyes ached, and his back hurt him at each jolt of the machine. He had been almost worn-out when he began the task, and since then he had lain down for only a few hours, and then had not been able to sleep.

Beyond the grain, the prairie stretched away, intolerably white in the sun-glare, to the horizon. Thorne fancied that he had seen a moving object upon it some time earlier. The machine had, however, engrossed most of his attention, and he was not sure. He reached the turning and was proceeding away from the house when a voice hailed him, and as he pulled up the team Lucy Calvert appeared.

"What brought you over?" he asked in dull astonishment.

Lucy smiled coquettishly.

"It's generally allowed that you and I are friends. Anyway, if you'd rather, I can go home again."

Thorne looked at her with drawn-down brows. He was worn-out, his brain was heavy, and he did not feel equal to any attempt at repartee.

"You had better stop for supper first," he suggested.

"I guess I'm going to," Lucy laughed. "Still, you won't want it for two hours yet, and it looks as if there's something to be done in the meanwhile. I didn't come over for supper or to talk to you; I met Farquhar on the prairie, and he told me all about the thing."

She turned and pointed to a row of sheaves which were still lying prone.

"Why haven't you got those on end? Where's Hall?"

"Gone over to his place for my team."

"Then," said Lucy, "you can get off that machine right now and set the sheaves up while I drive. I'll stay on until it's too dark to see, and come round again first thing in the morning. We don't expect to get our binders in for a week yet."

Thorne was touched, and his face made it plain. He needed assistance badly, and did not know where to obtain it, for his friends whose crops the hail had spared were either beginning their own harvest or preparing for it. Besides, there was not the slightest doubt that Lucy was capable.

"Get down right away!" she ordered laughingly. "I don't want thanks from – you."

Thorne was never sure afterward whether he attempted to offer her any, but he set to work among the sheaves when she took her place in the saddle and the binder went clinking and clashing on again. In spite of his efforts, it drew farther and farther away, though he toiled in half-breathless haste and the perspiration dripped from him. As he was facing then, the sun beat upon his back and shoulders intolerably hot. At length, when the shadows of the stooked sheaves had lengthened across the crackling stubble in which he floundered, Lucy stopped her team a moment and looked back at him.

"I'll unyoke them at the corner and get supper," she said. "You get into the shade there and lie down and smoke. If I see you move before I call you, I'll go home again."

She drove away before he could protest, but it was, after all, a relief to obey her, and flinging himself down with his back to a cluster of the sheaves, he took out his pipe. It was a little cooler there, and his eyes were closing when a summons reached him across the grain. Getting up with an effort, he walked toward the house, and was hazily astonished when he entered it. Exactly what Lucy had done he could not tell, but the place looked different. For the first time it seemed comfortably habitable. There was a cloth, which was a thing he did not possess, on the table, and his simple crockery, which shone absolutely white, and his indurated ware made a neat display. The provisions laid out on it looked tempting, too; in fact, he did not think that Hall could have found any fault with them, and it presently struck him that they included articles which he did not remember purchasing.

He sat down when Lucy told him to, and it was pleasant to find what he required ready at hand, instead of having to walk backward and forward between the table and the stove. He did not remember what she said, but they both laughed every now and then, and after the meal was over he was content to sit still a while when she bade him. The presence of the girl somehow changed the whole aspect of the room; but he was conscious of a regret that it was she and not another who occupied the place opposite him across his table. It was not Lucy Calvert he had often pictured sitting there. At length he pointed through the doorway to the grain.

"Lucy," he said, "that crop doesn't look by any means as hard to reap as it did an hour ago."

"I guess it's the supper," Lucy suggested cheerfully.

"I don't think it's that exactly, though there's no doubt it's the best meal I've had for a considerable time."

Lucy leaned back in her chair.

"Well," she observed, "it's company you want, and it's quite nice being here. You and I kind of hit it, don't we, Mavy?"

"Of course. We always did," Thorne assented, though there was a hint of astonishment in his tone.

"Then if you'll get rid of Hall – send him off again for something – I'll get supper for you the next two or three evenings."

"I don't see why he should be done out of his share," protested Thorne cautiously. He felt that Lucy was more gracious than there was any occasion for.

"Don't you, Mavy?" she asked, with lifted brows. "Now, I've a notion that anybody else would kind of spoil things."

Until lately Thorne had seldom shrunk from any harmless gallantry, but he did not respond just then with the readiness which the girl seemed to expect.

"It's a relief to hear you say it," he declared. "I'm afraid I'm a dull companion to-night."