The Mistress of Bonaventure

CHAPTER XXI

AGAINST TIME

Dixon's prediction proved correct. When I was brought into court a second time there was still no news of Wilkins, and after further testimony of no importance the case was again adjourned. This time, however, bail was allowed, and Boone and Rancher Gordon stood surety for me. The latter was by no means rich, and had, like the rest of us, suffered severe losses of late. Dixon was the first to greet me when I went forth, somewhat moodily, a free man for the time being.

"You don't look either so cheerful or grateful as you ought to be," he said.

"You are wrong in one respect. I am at least sincerely grateful for your efforts."

Dixon, in defiance of traditions, smote me on the shoulder. "Then what's the matter with the cheerfulness?"

"It is not exactly pleasant to have a charge of this description hanging over one indefinitely, and I have already lost time that can never be made up," I said. "Lane will no doubt produce his witness when he considers it opportune, and there is small encouragement to work in the prospect of spending a lengthy time in jail while one's possessions go to ruin."

"You think Lane had a hand in his disappearance?" Dixon asked thoughtfully; and when I nodded, commented: "I can't quite say I do. My reasons are not conclusive, and human nature's curious, anyway; but I'm not sure that Wilkins will, if he can help it, turn up at all. However, in the meantime, the dinner we're both invited to will put heart into you."

He slipped his arm through mine, and led me into the leading hotel, where, as it was drawing near the time for the six o'clock supper, every man turned to stare at us as we passed through the crowded bar and vestibule. I was making for the general dining-room when Dixon said: "Go straight ahead. It was not easy to manage, but our hosts were determined to do the thing in style."

He flung a door open, and Boone and Gordon greeted me in turn, while I had never seen a menu in a Western hostelry to compare with that of the following meal. Perhaps Gordon noticed my surprise, for he said: "It was Adams who fixed up all this, and came near having a scrimmage with the hotelkeeper about the wine. 'This comes from California, and I prefer it grown in France. Those labels aren't much use to any man with a sense of taste,' says he. This brand, wherever they grew it, is quite good enough for me, but I'm wondering where Adams learned the difference."

Boone smiled at me. "I have," he said, "a good memory, and learned a number of useful things during a somewhat varied experience."

The meal was over and the blue cigar smoke curled about us, when I turned to Gordon: "There are two things I should like to ask you. First, and because I know what losses you have had to face, how you raised the money to liberate me in the generous way you did; and, second, how many acres are left unsown at Crane Valley?"

The gaunt rancher fidgeted before he answered: "You have said 'Thank you' once, and I guess that's enough. You're so blame thin in the hide, and touchy, Ormesby; and it wasn't I who did it – at least not much of it."

Dixon appeared to be amused, and when Gordon glanced appealingly at Boone the latter only smiled and shook his head; seeing which, I said quietly: "In short, you sent round the hat?"

There was no doubt that the chance shot had told, for Gordon rose, very red in face, to his feet. "That's just what I didn't. Don't you know us yet? Send round the hat when the boys knew you were innocent and just how I was fixed! No, sir. They came right in, each bringing his roll of bills with him, and if I'd wanted twice as much they'd have raised it. And now I've given them away – just what they made me promise not to."

I had anticipated the answer, but it stirred me, nevertheless, and while Gordon stared at me half angry, half ashamed of his own vehemence, I filled a wine-glass to the brim. "Here's to the finest men and stanchest comrades on God's green earth," I said, looking steadily at him.

It was Dixon who brought us down to our normal level, for, setting his glass down empty, he commented: "You're not overmodest, Ormesby, considering that you are one of them. Still, I think you're right. People in the East are expecting a good deal from you and the good country that has been given you."

Gordon joined in the lawyer's laugh, but I broke in: "You have not answered my second question."

"Well!" and the rancher smiled mischievously. "You're so mighty particular that I don't know what to say. Still, things looked pretty tolerable last time I was down to Crane Valley."

Dixon accompanied us to the station when it was time to catch the train, and as he stood on the car platform said to me: "It's probably no use to tell you not to worry, but I'd sit tight in my saddle and think as little as possible about this trouble if I were you."

He dropped lightly from the platform, cigar in hand, as the train pulled out, and, though most unlike the traditional lawyer in speech or agility, left me with a reassuring confidence in his skill.

It was early morning when I rode alone towards Crane Valley, feeling, in spite of Dixon's good advice, distinctly anxious. It is true that Thorn and Steel were both energetic, but no man can drive two teams at once, and it was my impression that, having more at stake, I could do considerably more in person than either of them. I had small comfort in the reflection that, after all, the question how much had been accomplished was immaterial, because there was little use in sowing where, while I lay in jail, an enemy might reap, and I urged my horse when I drew near the hollow in which the homestead lay, and then pulled him up with a jerk. Gordon had said things had been going tolerably well, but this proved a very inadequate description. The plowed land had all been harrowed and sown, and beyond it lay the shattered clods of fresh breaking, where I guessed oats had been sown under the sod newly torn from the virgin prairie. Ten men of greater endurance could not have accomplished so much, and I sat still, humbled and very grateful, with eyes that grew momentarily dim, fixed on the wide stretch of black soil steaming under the morning sun. It seemed as though a beneficent genie had been working for my deliverance while I lay, almost despairing, in the grip of the law.

Then Steel, springing out from the door of the sod-house, came up at a run, with Thorn behind him. It was strangely pleasant to see the elation in their honest faces, and Steel's shout of delight sent a thrill through me.

"This is the best sight I've seen since you left us," he panted, wringing my hand. "Thorn's that full up with satisfaction he can't even run. We knew Dixon and Adams would see you through between them."

"Has Dixon been down here?" I asked, for the lawyer had not told me so; and Thorn, who came up, gasped: "Oh, yes; and a Winnipeg man he sent down went round with Adams 'most everywhere. Say, did you strike Niven for compensation?"

"No," I answered, a trifle ruefully. "I am only free on bail, and not acquitted yet."

Steel's jaw dropped, and his dismay would have been ludicrous had it not betrayed his whole-hearted friendship, while Thorn's burst of sulphurous language was an even more convincing testimony. Again I felt a curious humility, and something enlarged in my throat as I looked down at them.

"If I can't stand Lane off with you two and the rest behind me I shall deserve all I get, and we must hope for the best," I said. "But if you could handle three teams each you could not have done all this."

Thorn, who was not usually vociferous in expressing his sentiments, appeared glad of this diversion, and, after a glance at the plowed land, strove to smile humorously. "Think you could have done it any better yourself?"

"It's a fair hit," I answered. "You know exactly how much I can do. Let me down easily. How did you manage it?"

"We didn't manage anything," said Thorn. "No, sir. The boys, they did it all. Everybody came or sent a hired man, and blame quaint plowing some of them cow-chasers done. Put up a dollar sweepstake and ran races with the harrows, they did, and Steel talked himself purple before he stopped them. They've busted the gang-plow, and one said he ought to have been a dentist by the way he pulled out the cultivator teeth."

"And where did you come in?" I asked, and duly noted the effort it cost Steel to follow his comrade's lead.

"We just lay back and turned the good advice on," he said. "Tom, he led the prayer meeting when, after supper, they turned loose on Lane. Oh, yes, we rode in and out for provisions. Sally, she would have the best in the settlement, and sat up all night cooking. Don't know how you'll feel when you see the grocery bill."

"I can tell you now," I said. "I feel that there's nothing in the whole Dominion too good for them – or you – and I'd be glad, if necessary, to sell my shirt to pay the bill."

We went on to the house together, and Sally, hiding her disappointment, plunged with very kindly intentions into a spirited description of her visitors' feats. "That's a testimonial," she said, pointing through the window to an appalling pile of empty tins. "I just had to get them when some of the boys brought their own provisions in. I set one of them peeling potatoes all night to convince him."

"Peeling potatoes?" I interpolated; and Steel, smiling wickedly, furnished the explanation.

"Sally was busy in the shed when he came along, and wanted to help her considerable. 'Feel like peeling half a sackful?' says Sally; and when the fool stockman allowed he'd like it better than anything, says she, 'Then, as I'm tired, you can.' She just left him with it, while she talked to the other man; but there was grit in him, and he peeled away until morning. Wanted to marry her, too, he did."

Sally's glance foreboded future tribulation for the speaker, and Thorn frowned; but Steel, disregarding it, concluded gravely: "Dessay he might have done it, but he heard Sally turn loose on me one day, and took warning."

In spite of the shadow hanging over me, it was good to be at home, and perhaps the very uncertainty as to its duration made the somewhat sordid struggle of our life at Crane Valley almost attractive. Lane, it seemed only too probable, would crush us in the end, but there was satisfaction in the thought that every hour's work well done would help us to prolong our resistance. So the days of effort slipped by until I received a notice to present myself at court on a specified date, and, there being much to do, I delayed my departure until the last day. Steel insisted on accompanying me to the railroad, but protested against the time of starting. "One might fancy you were fond of jail by the hurry you're in to get back to it," he said. "We could catch the cars if we left hours later."

"It's as well to be on the right side," I said; for I had been in a state of nervous impatience all day. Wilkins had been found, and now that a decision appeared certain, I grew feverishly anxious to learn the best – or the worst.

It was a day in early summer when we set out and pushed on at a good pace, though already the sun shone hot. Steel, indeed, suggested there was no need for haste, but after checking my beast a little, I shot ahead again. "It might be your wedding you were going to!" he said.

We had covered part of the distance left to traverse on the second day when a freighter's lumbering ox-team crawled out of a ravine, and Steel pulled up beside him. "I don't know if you're mailing anything East, but you're late if you are," said the teamster.

"Then there's something wrong with the sun," said Steel. "If he's keeping his time bill we're most two hours too soon."

"You would have been last week," answered the other; while a sudden chill struck through me as I remembered the promised acceleration of the transcontinental express. "They've improved the track in the Selkirks sooner than they expected, and they're rushing the Atlantic hummer through on the new schedule this month instead of next."

Before he concluded I had snatched out my watch and simultaneously touched the beast with the spurs. The next moment the timepiece was swinging against my belt, and, with eyes fixed on the willows before me, I was plunging at a reckless gallop down the side of the ravine. The horse was young and resented the punishment, but I had no desire to hold him, and the further he felt inclined to bolt the better it would please me. So we smashed through the thinner willows, and somehow reeled down an almost precipitous slope, reckless of the fact that there was a creek at the bottom, while the trail wound round towards a bridge, until the hoofs sank into the soft ground, and we came floundering towards the tall growth by the water's edge. There the spurs went in again, and the beast, which knew nothing of jumping, rather rushed than launched itself at the creek. There was a splash and a flounder, a fountain of mire and water shot up, and green withes parted before me as we charged through the willows on the farther bank. The slope was soft and steep beneath the climbing birches, and by the time we were half way up the beast had relinquished all desire to bolt; but my watch showed me that go he must, and it was without pity I drove him at the declivity. Meantime, a thud of hoofs followed us, and when, racing south across the levels, we had left the ravine two miles behind, Steel came up breathless.

"Can you do it, Harry?" he panted.

"I'm afraid not," I shouted. "Still, if I kill the horse under me, I'm going to try. He's carrying a good many poor men's money."

A hurried calculation had proved conclusively that if the train were punctual I should miss it by more than an hour, and there was, of course, not another until the following day. Still, it was a long climb from Vancouver City up through the mountains of British Columbia to the Kicking Horse Pass in the Rockies, and there then remained a wide breadth of prairie for the mammoth locomotives to traverse. Sometimes, when the load was heavy, they lost an hour or two on the wild up-grade through the cañons. I was ignorant of legal procedure, but greatly feared that my non-appearance in the court would entail the forfeiture of the sureties, and, as the session was near an end, postpone the trial indefinitely. Therefore the train must be caught if it were in the power of horseflesh to accomplish it, and I settled myself to ride as for my life.

"Wouldn't the Port Arthur freight do?" shouted Steel.

"No," I answered. "It's the Atlantic Express or nothing! You can pick those things up on your homeward journey."

Without checking the beast I managed to loosen the valise strapped before me, and hurled it down upon the prairie. It contained all I possessed in the shape of civilized apparel except what I rode in, and that was mired all over from the flounder through the creek; but the horse already carried weight enough. It was now blazing noon, and in the prairie summer the sun is fiercely hot. Here and there the bitter dust of alkali rolled across the waste, crusting our dripping faces and the coats of the lathered beasts. My eyelashes grew foul and heavy, blurring my vision, so that it was but dimly I saw the endless levels crawl up from the far horizon. A speck far down in the distance grew into the altitude of a garden plant, and, knowing what it must be, I pressed my heels home fiercely, waiting for what seemed hours until it should increase into a wind-dwarfed tree.

It passed. There was nothing but the dancing heat to break the great monotony of grass, while the gray streak where it cut the sky-line rolled steadily back in mockery of our efforts to reach it. Yet I was soaked in perspiration, and Steel was alkali white. There was a steady trickle into my eyes, and the taste of salt in my mouth, while the drumming of hoofs rose with a staccato thud-thud, like distant rifle fire, and the springy rush of the beasts beneath us showed how fast we were traveling. Steel shook his head as we raced up a rise which had tantalized me long, stirrup to stirrup and neck to neck, while the clots from the dripping bits drove past like flakes of wind-whirled snow.

"If you want to get there, Ormesby, this won't do," he said. "You'd break the heart of the toughest beast inside another hour."

"The need would justify a worse loss," I panted, snatching out my watch. "We have pulled up thirty minutes, but are horribly behind still. Men who can't afford to lose it have put up the stakes I am riding for."

Steel made a gesture of comprehension, but once more shook his head. "My beast's the better, and he's carrying a lighter weight, but he'll never last at the pace we're making. Save your own a little, and when he's dead beat I'll let up and change with you. I'll hang on in the meantime in case one of them comes to grief over a badger-hole. It's your one chance if you're bent on getting through."

I would at that moment have gladly sold the rest of my life for the certainty of catching the train. To give my enemy no advantage was a great thing, and I felt that absence when my name was called would prejudice the most confiding against me. But that was, after all, a trifle compared with what I owed the men who had probably stripped themselves of necessities to help me, and I felt that if I failed them a shame which could never be dissipated would follow me. Nevertheless, Steel's advice was sound, and I tightened my grip on the bridle with a smothered imprecation. Then my heart grew heavier, for the horse needed no pulling, and responded with an ominous alacrity.

We were still leagues from the railroad, and the miles of grasses flitted towards us ever more slowly. The last clump of birches took half an hour to raise, and the willows which fled behind us had been five long minutes taking the shape of trees. My watch was clenched in one hand, and, while bluff and ravine crawled, its fingers raced around the dial with an agonizing rapidity in testimony of the feebleness of flesh and blood when pitted against steel and steam. The clanging cars had swept clear of the foothills long ago, and the track ran straight and level across the prairie, a smooth empty road for the Accelerated to save time on in its race between the Pacific and the Laurentian waterway. When the prairie grew blurred before us, as it sometimes did, I could see instead the two huge locomotives veiled in dust and smoke thundering with a pitiless swiftness down the long converging rails, while the drumming of hoofs changed into the roar of wheels whose speed would brand me with dishonor. Yet we were doing all that man or beast could do, and at last a faint ray of hope and a new dismay came upon me. The difference in time had further lessened, but my horse was failing.

"Go on as you're going," shouted Steel, edging his whitened beast nearer. "I'm riding a stone lighter, and this beast has another hour's work left in him."

I went on, the horse growing more and more feeble and blundering in his stride, until at last, when it was a case of dismount or do murder, I dropped stiffly from the saddle. Steel was down in a second, and in another my jacket and vest were off, and I laid my foot to the stirrup in white shirt and trousers, with a handkerchief knotted around my waist.

"You'll startle the folks in Empress, and you can't strip off much more," said Steel.

"I'd ride into the depot naked sooner than rob the boys," I said; and was mounted before my comrade could reopen his mouth. When he did so his "Good luck!" sounded already faint and far away.

Steel's horse had more life left in him – one could feel it in his stride; but now that there was some hope of success I rode with more caution, sparing him up the low rises, and trying, so far as one might guess it, to keep within a very small margin of his utmost strength. So we pressed on until all the prairie grew dim to me, and my only distinct sensation was the rush of the cool wind. Then a flitting birch bluff roused me once more to watch, and minute by minute I strained my eyes for the first glimpse of the tall poles heralding the railroad track. At last a row of what looked like matches streaked the horizon, and grew in size until something that rose and fell with the heave of the prairie sea became visible beneath. Then, as we topped one of its grassy waves, a cluster of distant cubes loomed up, and a glance at the watch's racing fingers warned me that I was already behind the time that the train was due to reach the settlement. It might have passed; and a new torture was added until, when in an agony of suspense, I strained my eyes towards the west, a streak of whiteness crept out of the horizon.

The run of the Accelerated was at that time regarded as a national exploit, forming, as it did, part of a new link binding Japan and London – the East and the West; and I knew the conductor would hardly have waited for one of his own directors. The white streak rapidly grew larger; something sparkled beneath it, and there was flash of twinkling glass through the dust and steam. I fixed my eyes on the station, and taxed every aching sinew in hand and heel, for the weakening beast must bring me there in time or die. A smoke cloud, with bright patches beneath it, rolled up to the station when I was nearly half a mile away. The horse was reeling under me, the power had gone out of the leaden hands on switch and bridle, and – for the tension had produced a vertigo – my sight was almost gone.

Hearing, however, still remained, and shouts of encouragement reached me, while I could dimly see the station close ahead, and shapeless figures apparently waving hats and arms. The clang of a big bell rang in my ears, the twin locomotives snorted, and I fell from the saddle, sprang towards the track, and clutched at the sliding rails of a car platform. I missed them; the car, swaying giddily, so it seemed, rolled past, and I hurled myself bodily at the next platform. Somebody clutched my shoulder and dragged me up, and I fell with a heavy crash against the door of a vestibule.

"Just in time," said a man in uniform. "Say, are you doing this for a wager, or are some mad cow-chasers after you?"

CHAPTER XXII

BAD TIDINGS

The dust was rolling about the cars and the gaunt poles whirled past before I could recover breath to answer the astonished conductor. Then it was with a gasp I said: "Won't you get me a little water?"

The man vanished, and I sat still vacantly noticing how the prairie reeled behind me until the door slid open and he returned with a tin vessel and a group of curious passengers behind him. A piece of ice floated in the former, and a man held out a flask. "I guess it won't hurt him, adulterated some," he said.

Never before had I tasted so delicious a draught. Hours of anxiety and effort under a blazing sun had parched and fouled my lips, and my throat was dry as unslaked lime. The tin vessel was empty when I handed it back, and the railroad official looked astonished as he turned it upside down for the spectators' information. "I guess a locomotive tank would hardly quench that thirst of yours," he said.

"Thanks. I'll get up. It was not for amusement I boarded your train as I did," I said, and the rest opened a passage for me into the long Colonist car. There was a mirror above the basins in the vestibule, and a glance into it explained their curiosity. The white shirt had burst in places; the grime of alkali had caked on my face, leaving only paler circles about the eyes. Hardened mire crusted the rest of my apparel, and each movement made it evident to me that portions of the epidermis had been abraded from me.

"It's not my business how passengers board these cars, so long as they're tolerably decent, and can pay their fare," observed the conductor. "Still, although we're not particular, we've got to dress you a little between us; and it mightn't be too much to ask what brought you here in such an outfit?"

It was evident that the others were waiting to ask the same question, and I answered diplomatically: "I have money enough to take me to Empress at Colonist fare, and was half way to the depot to catch the cars on the old schedule before I discovered you had commenced the accelerated service. Then I flung off every ounce of weight that might lose me the race."