The Mistress of Bonaventure
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Boone's face was plain before me under the moon. It was quietly confident, calm, and yet stamped with a solemn purpose. He had, it seemed, mastered his passions, and would perhaps be the more dangerous because he followed tirelessly, with brain unclouded by hatred or impatience. I felt that there was much I should say in the shape of encouragement and sympathy, but the only words that rose to my lips were: "He has fiendish cunning."
"And I was once a careless fool!" said Boone. "Still, the most cunning forget, and blunder at times. I, however, can never forget, and when he does, it will be ill for Lane. I have – I don't know why – spoken to you, Ormesby, as I have spoken to no man in the Dominion before, and I feel I need ask no promise of you. I am going east with the sunrise, but I must be alone now."
I left him to keep his vigil with his dead, and camped in a hollow some distance away. That is to say, I tethered the horse, rolled a thick brown blanket round me, and used the saddle for a pillow. There was no hardship in this. The grasses, if a trifle damp, were soft and springy, the night still and warm; and many a better man has slept on a worse bed in the Western Dominion. Slumber did not, however, come at first, and I lay watching the stars, neither asleep nor wholly awake, until they grew indistinct, and a woman's figure, impalpable as the moonlight, gathered shape upon a rise of the prairie.
It was borne in on me that this was Helen Boone risen from her sleep; for she was ethereal, and her face with its passionless calmness not that of a mortal, while no shadow touched the grasses when she passed, and, fading, gave place or changed into one I knew. Haldane's elder daughter looked down at me from the rise, but she, too, seemed of another world, wearing a cold serenity and a beauty that was not of this earth. She also changed with a marvelous swiftness before my bewildered vision, and it was now Lucille Haldane who moved across the prairie with soft words of pity on her lips and yet anger in her eyes. She, at least, appeared not transcendental, but a living, breathing creature of flesh and blood subject to human weaknesses, and I raised myself on one elbow to speak to her.
The prairie was empty. Nothing moved on it; even the horse stood still, while, when I sank back again, moonlight and starlight went out together; and perhaps it was as well, for, sleeping or waking, a plain stock-raiser has no business with such fancies, and next morning I convinced myself that I had dreamed it all. I had doubtless done so, and the explanation was simple. The influence of the night, or the words of Boone, had galvanized into abnormal activity some tiny convolution of the brain; but, even that once granted, it formed the beginning, not the end, of the question, and Boone had, it seemed, supplied the best solution when he said we know so little as yet.
The sun was lifting above the prairie when I set out in search of Boone with my horse's bridle over my arm. I met him swinging across the springy sod in long elastic strides, but there was nothing about him which suggested one preyed upon by morbid fancies or the visionary. His eyes were a little heavy, but that was all, for with both of us the dreams of the night had melted before the rising sun. The air had been freshened by the dew, and the breeze, which dried the grasses, roused one to a sense of human necessities and the knowledge that there was a day's work to be done. I was also conscious of an unfanciful and very prosaic emptiness.
"I wonder where we could get anything to eat. I have a long ride before me," said Boone, when he greeted me.
"It can hardly be safe for you to be seen anywhere in this neighborhood," I said; and Boone smiled.
"I walked openly into the railroad depot and asked for a package yesterday. You forget that I partly changed my appearance, while, so far as memory serves, only two police troopers occasionally saw me. The others? – you should know your own kind better, Ormesby. Do you think any settler in this region would take money – and Lane offered a round sum – for betraying me?"
"No," I answered with a certain pride; "that is to say, not unless he were a nominee of the man you name."
No proof of this was needed, but one was supplied us. A man who presently strode out of a hollow stopped and stared at Boone. He was, to judge from his appearance, one of the stolid bushmen who come out West from the forests of Northern Ontario – tireless men with ax and plow, but with little knowledge of anything else.
"I'm kind of good at remembering faces, and I've seen you before," he said. "You are the man who used to own my place."
"How often have you seen me?" asked Boone.
"Once in clear daylight, twice back there at night," answered the stranger.
"Did you know that you could have earned a good many dollars by telling the police as much?" asked Boone; and the other regarded him with a frown.
"I'm a peaceable man when people will let me be; but I don't take that kind of talk from anybody."
"I was sure, or I shouldn't have asked you," said Boone. "They don't raise mean Canadians yonder in the country you came from among the rocks and trees. You're not overrich, either, are you? to judge from my own experience, for I put more money into the land than I ever took out of it. However, that doesn't concern the main thing. Just now I'm a hungry man."
The big axman's face relaxed, and he laughed the deep, almost silent, laugh which those like him learn in the shadow of the northern pines. There is as little mirth in it as there is in most of their hard lives, but one can generally trust them with soul and body.
"Breakfast will be ready soon's I get home. You just come along," he said.
We followed him to the log-house which had risen beside Boone's dilapidated dwelling. A neatly-dressed, dark-haired woman was busy about the stove, and our host presented us very simply. "Here's the man who shot the money-lender, and a partner, Lou."
The woman, who laid down the pan she held, cast a quick glance of interest at my companion. "We have seen you, and wondered why you never looked in," she said.
"Did you twice do a great kindness for me?" asked Boone.
The woman's black eyes softened. "Sure, that was a little thing, and don't count for much. The posies were so pretty, and I figured they'd keep fresh a little longer," she said.
"It was one of the little things which count the most," said Boone.
Thereupon the woman's olive-tinted face flushed into warmer color, while her long-limbed spouse observed: "She's of the French habitant stock, and their ways of showing they haven't forgotten aren't the same as ours."
Breakfast was set before us, and I think Boone had made firm friends of our hosts before we finished the meal. He had abilities in this direction. They, on their part, were very simple people, the man silent for the most part, rugged in face, and abrupt when he spoke, but shrewd in his own way it seemed withal, and probably as generous as he was hard at a bargain. His wife was of the more emotional Latin stock, quick in her movements, and one might surmise equally quick in sympathy.
"You are not the man who bought the place at the sale," said Boone, at length. "I can remember him tolerably well, and, if I couldn't, one would hardly figure you were likely to work under Lane."
"No!" and the farmer laughed his curious laugh again. "No. I shouldn't say. We never worked for any master since my grandfather got fired for wanting his own way by the Hudson's Bay, and I guess neither Lane nor the devil could handle the rest of us. He once came round to try."
"How?" I asked, and the gaunt farmer sighed a little as he filled his pipe. "This way. He was open to finance me to buy up a poor devil's place, and if I'd had a little less temper and a little more sense I might have obliged him, and landed a good pile of money, too."
"He's just talking. Don't you believe him," broke in the woman, with an indignant glance at her spouse.
I fancied Boone saw the drift of this, which was more than I did, and the farmer nodded oracularly in his direction when I asked: "What did you do instead?"
"Just reached for a big ox-goad, and walked up to him like a blame millionaire or a hot-headed fool. Them negotiations broke right off, and he lit out across the prairie talking 'bout assaults and violences at twenty mile an hour. Some other man will know better, and that's just how Lane will get badly left some day."
The woman laughed immoderately. "It was way better'n a circus," she said. "He didn't tell you he rammed the ox-goad into the skittish horse, and Lane he just hugged the beast."
The picture of the full-fledged Lane, who made a very poor figure in the saddle at any time, careering panic stricken across the prairie with his arms about the neck of a bolting horse appealed to me; but as to the possibility of the usurer's future discomfiture I was still in the dark, and asked for enlightenment.
"It's easy," said the farmer. "Lane he squeezes somebody until he can't hold on to his property, then he puts up the money and another man buys the place dirt-cheap for him, in his own name. Suppose that man goes back on Lane? 'This place is my own,' says he. Well, he's recorded owner, isn't he? and I figure Lane wouldn't be mighty keen on dragging that kind of case into the courts."
"But he wouldn't put any man in unless he had him by the throat," said I; and the farmer grinned.
"Juss so! He'll choke some fellow with grit in him a bit too much some day, and when the wrong breed of scoundrel is jammed right up between the devil and the sea, it's quite likely he'll go for the devil before he starts swimming."
"I" – and Boone regarded the farmer fixedly – "quite agree with you. Do you mind telling me what you gave for this place?"
Our host named the sum without hesitation, adding that he would be glad to show us over it; and Boone's face grew somber as he said: "It is more than twice what it was sold for when it was stolen from me."
We walked around the plowed land, inspected the stock, stables, and barns, and when, after a cordial parting with our hosts, we rode away, Boone turned to me: "It was an ordeal, and harrowing to see what might have been but for an insatiable man's cunning and my poverty. Another half-hour of the memories would have been too much for me. Well, we can let that pass. They were kind souls, and this last lesson may have been necessary. Strange, isn't it, that the simple are sometimes shrewder than the wise?"
"For instance?" I said; and Boone smiled significantly.
"Yonder very plain farmer has hit upon a weak spot in Lane's armor which the keenest brain on this prairie – I don't mean my own, of course – has hitherto failed to see."
Soon afterwards we separated, each going his different way.
CHAPTER XIX
THE WORK OF AN ENEMY
Whatever action the police took concerning Lane's descent upon Crane Valley was not apparent, and Thorn may have been justified in deciding that they took none at all. However that may have been, Lane left us in peace for a while, and it was not by his own hands that the next bolt was launched against me. He preferred, as a rule, to strike through another person's agency, and usually contrived it so that when trouble resulted the agent bore the brunt of it.
I was tramping behind the seeder one fine morning, alternately watching the somewhat unruly team and the trickle of golden grain into the good black loam, when two horsemen appeared on the prairie. They headed for the homestead, and living in a state of expectancy, as we then did, I shared the misgivings of Thorn. "They're coming our way in a hurry, sure; and the sight of anyone whose business I don't know worries me just now," he said.
"If it's bad news we'll learn it soon enough," I said. "Go on to the end of the harrowing. That we'll have a frost-nipped harvest if we're not through with the sowing shortly is the one thing certain."
The two horsemen drew nearer, and it appeared that both wore uniform, while I caught the glint of carbines. This in itself was significant, and I wondered whether Mackay had discovered the identity of Boone. Shortly I recognized the sergeant and Cotton, who a little later drew bridle beside the seeder. Mackay's face was expressionless, but Cotton looked distinctly unhappy, and once more I felt sorry for Boone.
"I have a word for ye. Will ye walk to the house with me?" said the former. I glanced at Cotton, who, stooping, pretended to examine his carbine. Thorn appeared suspicious, for he dropped the lines he held, and his eyes grew keen.
"I'm sorry that is the one thing I can't do just now, when every moment of this weather is precious," I said. "If you can't wait until we stop at noon, there's no apparent reason why you shouldn't state your business here."
"Ye had better come," said Mackay, looking very wooden. "Forby, I'm thinking ye will sow no more to-day."
"I'm not in the humor for joking, and intend to continue sowing until it is too dark to see," I answered shortly. "Have you any authority to prevent me?"
"I have," said the sergeant. "Well, if ye will have it – authority to arrest ye on a charge of unlawfully burning the homestead of Gaspard's Trail."
Astonishment, dismay, and anger held me dumb between them for a few moments. Then, as the power of speech returned, I said: "Confound you, Mackay! You don't think I could possibly have had any hand in that?"
"It's no' my business to think," was the dry answer; "I'm here to carry out orders. What was it ye were observing, Foreman Thorn?"
"Only that Niven or Lane was a mighty long time finding this thing out; and that, while nobody expects too much from the police, we never figured they were clean, stark, raging lunatics," said Thorn.
"I'm no' expecting compliments," said Mackay. "Ye will do your duty, Corporal Cotton."
"You can put that thing back. I'm not a wild beast, and have sense enough to see that I must wait for satisfaction until some of your chiefs at headquarters hear of your smartness," I said. Then Cotton positively hung his head as he let the carbine slip back into its holster, while Mackay stared after the departing Thorn, who made for the homestead as fast as he could run.
"What is his business?" he said.
"His own!" I answered shortly. "Unless you have also a warrant for his arrest, it would be injudicious of you to stop him. Thorn has an ugly temper, and would be justified in resenting the interference. What is your program?"
"To ride in to the railroad whenever ye are ready, and deliver ye safely in Empress City."
"I suppose one can only make the best of it; but considering that you were probably consulted before a warrant was issued, I can't help feeling astonished," I said. "However, there is no use in wasting words, and an hour will suffice me to get ready in."
I left the team standing before the seeder, careless as to what became of them, for, even if acquitted, I felt that my career was closed at last. No forced labor could make up for time lost now, and, because justice in the West is slow, it was perfectly clear why the charge had been made. There was a scene with Sally when we reached the homestead, and Cotton fled before her biting comments on police sagacity. Even Mackay winced under certain allusions, and when I asked him: "Am I permitted to talk to my housekeeper alone?" assented readily.
"Ye may," he said, "and welcome; I do not envy ye."
If Sally's tongue could be venomous, her brain was keen, and, as Steel was absent, it was with confidence I left instructions with her. Thorn had vanished completely, and the girl only looked mysterious when questioned concerning him. At length all was ready, and turning in the saddle as we rode away, I waved my hat to Sally, who stood in the doorway of the homestead with eyes suspiciously dim. I wondered, with a strange lack of interest, whether I should ever see either it or her again. Cotton also saluted her, and the girl suddenly moved forward a pace, holding up her hand.
"Make sure of your prisoner, Sergeant," she said. "What's the use of talking justice to the poor man when he's ground down by the thief with capital? We're getting tired – we have waited for that justice so long – and I give you and the fools or rogues behind you warning that if you jail Ormesby, the boys will come for him with rifles a hundred strong."
Mackay touched his beast with the spurs, and as we passed out of earshot, said to me: "If the boys have her spirit I'm thinking it's not impossible. Your friends are not judicious, Henry Ormesby."
"They are stanch, at least, and above being bought," I said; and Mackay stiffened.
"What were ye meaning?"
"I think my meaning was plain enough," I answered him.
Many leagues divided us from the railroad, and the way seemed very long. The dejection that settled upon me brought a physical lassitude with it, and I rode wearily, jolting in the saddle before the journey was half done. Since the memorable night at Bonaventure, when I first met Boone, trouble after trouble had crowded on me, and, supported by mere obstinacy when hope had gone, I still held on. Now it seemed the end had come, and, at the best, I must retire beaten to earn a daily wage by the labor of my hands if I escaped conviction as a felon. Lane would absorb Crane Valley, as he had done Gaspard's Trail. As if in mockery the prairie had donned its gayest robe of green, and lay flooded with cloudless sunshine.
Mackay made no further advances since my last repulse, but rode silently on my right hand, Cotton on my left, holding back a little so that I could not see him, and so birch bluff, willows, and emerald levels rolled up before us and slid back to the prairie's rim until, towards dusk on the second day, cubes of wooden houses and a line of gaunt telegraph poles loomed up ahead.
"I'm glad," said Corporal Cotton, breaking into speech at last. "I don't know if you'll believe it, Ormesby, but this has been a sickening day to me. I'm tired of the confounded service – I'm tired of everything."
"Ye're young and tender on the bit, and without the sense to go canny when it galls ye. What ails ye at the service anyway?" interposed the sergeant.
"I'll say nothing about some of the duties. They're a part of the contract," answered Cotton. "Still, I never bargained to arrest my best friends when I became a policeman."
"Friends!" said Mackay. "Who were ye meaning?" and Cotton turned in my direction with the face of one who had narrowly escaped a blunder.
"Aren't you asking useless questions? I mean Rancher Ormesby."
"I observed ye used the plural," said Mackay.
Cotton answered shortly: "When one is going through a disgusting duty to the best of his ability, he may be forgiven a trifling lapse in grammar."
The light was failing as we rode up to the station some time before the train was due, and looking back, I saw several diminutive objects on the edge of the prairie. They were, I surmised, mounted settlers coming in for letters or news, but except that the blaze of crimson behind them forced them up, it would have been hard to recognize the shapes of men and beasts. Round the other half of the circle the waste was fading into the dimness that crept up from the east, and feeling that I had probably done with the prairie, and closed another chapter of my life, I turned my eyes towards the string of giant poles and the little railroad station ahead.
There were fewer loungers than usual about it, but when we dismounted, Cotton started as two feminine figures strolled side by side down the platform, and said something softly under his breath.
"What has surprised you?" I asked, and he pointed towards the pair.
"Those are Haldane's daughters, by all that is unfortunate!"
There was no avoiding the meeting. Darkness had not settled yet, and Mackay, who failed to recognize the ladies, was regarding us impatiently. "I'll do my best, and they may not notice anything suspicious," the corporal said.
We moved forward, Mackay towards the office, Cotton hanging behind me, but, as ill-luck would have it, both ladies saw us when we reached the track, and before I could recover from my dismay, I stood face to face with Beatrice Haldane. She was, it seemed to me, more beautiful than ever, but I longed that the earth might open beneath me.
"It is some time since I have seen you, and you do not look well," she said. "You once described the Western winters as invigorating; but one could almost fancy the last had been too much for you."
"I cannot say the same thing, and if we had nothing more than the weather to contend with, we might preserve our health," I said. "I did not know you were at Bonaventure, or I should have ridden over to pay my respects to you."
Beatrice Haldane did not say whether this would have given her pleasure or otherwise. Indeed, her manner, if slightly cordial, was nothing more, and I found it desirable to study a rail fastening when I saw her sister watching me.
"I arrived from the East only a few days ago, and we are now awaiting my father, who had some business down the line. Are you going out with the train?"
"I am going to Empress," I said; and Lucille Haldane interposed: "That is a long way; and the last time he met you, you told father you were too busy to visit Bonaventure. Who will see to your sowing – and will you stay there long?"
I heard Corporal Cotton grind his heel viciously into the plank beneath him; and I answered, in desperation:
"I do not know. I am afraid so."
Perhaps the girl noticed by my voice that all was not well. Indeed, Beatrice also commenced to regard the corporal and myself curiously.
"What has happened, Mr. Ormesby? You look positively haggard?" the younger sister said. "Why are you keeping in the background, Corporal Cotton? Have you done anything to be ashamed of?" Then she ceased with a gasp of pained surprise, and I read consternation in her eyes.
"You have guessed aright. I am not making this journey of my own will," I said.
Beatrice Haldane turned with a swift movement, which brought us once more fully face to face, and, unlike her sister, she was strangely cold and grave.
"Is it permissible to ask any questions?" she said, and her even tone stung me to the quick. One whisper against the speaker would have roused me to fury.
"Everybody will know to-morrow or the next day, and I may as well tell you now," I said, in a voice which sounded, even in my own ears, hoarse with bitterness. "I am to be tried for burning down the homestead of Gaspard's Trail."
Beatrice Haldane certainly showed surprise, but she seemed more thoughtful than indignant, and still fixed me with her eyes. They were clear and very beautiful, but I had begun to wonder if a spark of human passion would ever burn within them.
"It is absurd – preposterous. Come here at once, Sergeant!" a clear young voice with a thrill of unmistakable anger in it said; but Mackay seemed desirous of backing into the station agent's office instead.
"I want you," added Lucille Haldane. "Come at once, and tell me why you have done this."
The sergeant's courage was evidently unequal to the task, for with a brief, "I will try to satisfy ye when I have transacted my business," he disappeared into the office, and I turned again to Beatrice Haldane.
"You see it is unfortunately true; but you do not appear astonished," I said.
Beatrice Haldane looked at me sharply, but without indignation, for she was always mistress of herself, and before she could speak her sister broke in: "Do you wish to make us angry, when we are only sorry for you, Mr. Ormesby? Everybody knows that neither you nor any rancher in this district could be guilty. Corporal Cotton, will you inquire if your superior has finished his business, and tell him that I am waiting?"
"The old heathen deserves it!" said Cotton aside to me, as, with unfeigned relief, he hurried away, and it was only by an effort I refrained from following him. The interview was growing painful in the extreme. Still, I was respited, for Beatrice Haldane turned from us suddenly.
"What can this mean? There is a troop of horsemen riding as for their lives towards the station," she said.
It was growing dark, but not too dark to see a band of mounted men converge at a gallop upon the station, and for the first time I noticed how the loungers stared at them, and heard the jingle of harness and thud of drumming hoofs. None of them shouted or spoke. They came on in ominous silence, the spume flakes flying from the lathered beasts, the clods whirling up, until a voice cried: