Kitabı oku: «A Prairie Courtship», sayfa 8

CHAPTER X
THORNE RESENTS REPROOF

Farquhar was sitting with his wife and Alison on the stoop in the cool of the evening a week or two after the house-raising, when Thorne rode up out of the prairie, leading a second horse. He tethered the two beasts to a fence before he approached the house, and Alison noticed that he looked very lean and jaded. He sat down wearily and flung off his hat when he had greeted the party.

"I've come to borrow your mower, Farquhar," he announced. "I suppose I may as well get some hay in."

"You don't seem very sure about it," remarked Farquhar.

"As a matter of fact, I'm not enthusiastic about cutting that hay. I've been putting in sixteen hours a day lately, and I expect I'm getting a little stale. Among other things, I'd got most of the shingles on the house when one of the boys came along and told me I'd fixed them wrong. Then the police have been round again worrying me."

"Have you got your horse back?" asked Mrs. Farquhar.

"Yes," replied Thorne, with a soft laugh. "It was found near the railroad a day or two after it disappeared, and a friend of mine sent it along. I understand, however, that Corporal Slaney has failed to pick up Winthrop's trail."

Mrs. Farquhar regarded him severely.

"Why did you mix yourself up in that affair?"

"The thing rather appealed to me," declared Thorne. "I believe Jake was justified ethically; and anybody who takes a way that's not the recognized one has my sympathy."

"Now you've reached the point," Farquhar laughed. "On the whole, the fact you mention is unfortunate."

"I'm not sure," Thorne answered moodily. "Plodding along the lauded beaten track now and then palls on one, and it isn't the least bit easier than the other. Anyway, I only did what I had to; Lucy said she had counted on me."

This last confession, which he seemed to make in a moment of forgetfulness, stirred Alison to a sense of irritation that astonished her a little.

"Were you compelled to help a defaulting debtor escape?" she demanded. "I understand that is what Winthrop is."

"If you knew the whole story you would hardly call him that," Thorne retorted with an indignant sparkle in his eyes.

"But he borrowed money on his cattle, among other things, didn't he, and then sold them, and ran away when the man who lent it to him wanted it back?"

"He did," Thorne assented with some dryness. "I'm sorry I must confess it, because a baldly correct statement of the kind you have just made which leaves out all extenuating details is often a most misleading thing."

"How can a statement of fact be misleading?"

Farquhar smiled and Thorne made a grimace.

"The aspect of any fact varies with one's point of view. You evidently can't get away from the conventional one."

Alison was growing angry, though subsequent reflection convinced her that this was not due to his last observation. She had sympathized with his attitude when he had in the first instance mentioned his dislike of Nevis; and his willingness to side with the injured against the oppressor had certainly pleased her. In the abstract, it appeared wholly commendable; but, in particular, that it should have led him to take up the cause of a girl against whom for no very clear reason she felt prejudiced was a different thing.

"Well," she responded, "it has by degrees become evident to society in general that it can only look at certain matters in a certain way; and if you insist on doing the opposite, you must expect to get into trouble. I'm not sure you don't deserve it, too."

"That," returned Thorne, grimly, "is their idea in England, and I must do them the justice to own that they act up to it. I had, however, expected a little more liberality – from you. Anyway, I'm not in the least sorry for what I've done."

He rose and turned toward his host.

"Hadn't we better get that mower, Farquhar?"

They strolled away, Thorne leading his team, and Mrs. Farquhar laughed.

"Mavy's very young in some respects. I'm almost afraid you have succeeded in setting him off again."

"Is the last remark warranted?"

Mrs. Farquhar nodded.

"He has been sticking to what he probably finds a very uninteresting task with a patience I hardly thought was in him. Just now he's no doubt ready for an outbreak."

"An outbreak?"

"I'll say a frolic. It won't be anything very shocking, though I should expect it to be distinctly original."

Alison made a sign of impatience.

"Isn't it absurd that he should fly off in this unbalanced fashion because of a few words?"

"One mustn't expect perfection; and it wasn't altogether what you said – that merely fired the train. Mavy has been going steady for an unusual time, and as a rule it doesn't take a great deal to drive him into some piece of rashness. For instance, he was quite willing to involve himself in trouble with the police at a word from Lucy Calvert."

She fancied from Alison's expression that this was where the grievance lay, but the girl made no comment, and they sat silent for a while until Farquhar came back alone.

"Mavy's gone off with the mower – he wouldn't come back," he explained. "In fact he seemed a little out of temper."

Farquhar was correct in this surmise. Thorne was somewhat erratic by nature, and any insistence on the strictly conventional point of view, even when it was backed by sound sense, usually acted upon him as a red rag. After all, he could not help his nature, and he had been reared in an atmosphere of straight-laced respectability which had imposed on him an intolerable restraint. What was, perhaps, more to the purpose, he had been demanding too much of his bodily strength during the last two months, and had been living in a Spartan fashion on badly cooked and very irregular meals, until at length his nervous system began to feel the strain. That being so, he felt himself justified in resenting Alison's censorious attitude; though it was not the mere fact that she had disagreed with what he had done that he found most irritating. It was, he knew, because she had disappointed him. He had regarded her as a broad-minded, clear-sighted girl, emancipated from the petty prejudices and traditions which were the bane of most young Englishwomen, and now he had discovered that she was as exasperatingly narrow as the rest of them.

It was late when he reached his homestead, and after sleeping a few hours he rose with the dawn, and lighting a fire, left the kettle to boil while he clambered to the roof to nail on cedar shingles. He could not, however, get them to lie as he wanted them, and, being very dry, they split every now and then as he drove in the nails. Besides this, it was difficult to work upon the narrow rafters, and when at length he descended for breakfast he found that the fire had gone out in the meanwhile. He surveyed it and the kettle disgustedly, with brows drawn down; and then, restraining a strong desire to fling the vessel into the birches, he sat down and fished out of the congealed fat in the frying-pan a piece of cold pork left over from the previous day. This, with a piece of bread that had acquired a rocky texture from being left uncovered, formed his breakfast, and when he had eaten it he went back moodily to the roof. He had for some time in a most determined manner concentrated his energies on a task generally regarded as a commendable one in that country, but there was no doubt whatever that it was beginning to pall on him.

He lay up on the rafters for several hours with a hot sun blazing down on his neck and shoulders while he nailed on shingles; but in spite of every effort, things would go wrong. Nails slipped through his fingers; he dropped his hammer and had to climb down for it; while every now and then a shingle he had just secured rent from top to bottom. Finally, in a state of exasperation, he struck a vicious blow at a nail which had evaded his previous attacks, and hit his thumb instead. This was the climax, and he savagely hurled the hammer as far as he could throw it out upon the prairie. Then he swung himself down, and, walking resolutely to his tent, dragged out a box containing about a dozen small cheap mirrors. There were a few gramophone records in another box; and after putting both cases, a blanket or two and a bag of flour into his wagon, he drove away across the sweep of grass at a gallop. The horses, which had done nothing worth mentioning for the last few weeks, seemed as pleased with the change as he did.

The next morning a man who was passing Farquhar's homestead pulled up his team to deliver its owner a note.

"Mavy sent you this," he said with a grin. "Guess he's out on the trail again. He had the boys sitting up half last night at the Bluff Hotel."

Farquhar read the note, which was curt.

"Thanks for the mower. Better go for it if you want the thing," it ran. "I'm off for a change of air, and haven't the least notion when I'm coming back. I've discovered that one has to get seasoned to a quiet life."

Going back into the house, he handed the note to his wife, who was sitting with Alison at breakfast, and she gave it to the girl in turn when she had read it.

"It's too bad, though I must say I expected it," she remarked, regarding her with reproachful eyes.

"If he has a singularly unbalanced nature, can I help it?" Alison asked.

Her companion appeared to consider.

"I don't know which to be most vexed with; you or Lucy. He would be quietly cutting prairie hay now if you had both left him alone."

Farquhar watched them with a smile.

"Mavy," he observed, "will in all probability require a good deal of breaking in; but that's no reason why one should despair of him. I've known a young horse turn out an excellent hauler and go steady as a rock in double harness, after in the first place kicking in the whole front of the wagon."

"Why double harness?" his wife inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Well," replied Farquhar, "perhaps I was anticipating things."

He lounged out, and Alison went on with her breakfast with an expressionless face, though Mrs. Farquhar noticed that she seemed preoccupied after that.

Three or four days later Thorne sat on the veranda of a little wooden hotel after supper. A couple of men lounged near him smoking, and in front of them a double row of unpicturesque frame-houses straggled beside the trail that led straight as the crow flies into a waste of prairie.

"I've had a notion that Jake Winthrop would look in here," Thorne remarked presently.

One of his companions glanced round toward the house, but there did not seem to be anybody within hearing just then.

"He did," he confided. "Baxter once worked with him on the railroad, and Jake crawled up to the back of his shack at night. Baxter gave him a different hat and a jacket."

"That's quite right," said the other man. "I figured the troopers would know what he was wearing. I drove him quite a piece toward the railroad early in the morning, and I've a notion he got off with a freight-train that was taking a crowd of boys from down East to do something farther on up the track. If he did, he must have jumped off quietly when they stopped to let the Pacific express by. Next thing, two or three troopers turned up, and I guess they heard about the train and wired up the line; but they haven't got Winthrop yet. Corporal Slaney, who sent two of them south, is in the settlement now. He's plumb sure that Jake's hanging round here waiting to make a break for the U. S. boundary."

"What had he on when he first struck you?" Thorne inquired.

Baxter told him, and he laughed.

"Then," he declared, "Slaney's trailing a man with an old black plug hat and a brown duck jacket; the latter would certainly fix him, as blue's much more common. Now if he saw that man riding south at night he'd probably call off the troopers, and they'd work the trail right down to the frontier. As they wouldn't get their man, they'd no doubt give the thing up, deciding he'd already slipped across."

"But how's he going to see him, when Jake's up the track?"

"It strikes me there ought to be a black plug hat and a brown duck jacket somewhere in this settlement," drawled Thorne. "I'll leave you to find them."

A light broke in upon his companions, and they laughed; but one of them pointed out that Thorne might find himself unpleasantly situated if Corporal Slaney overtook him. Thorne, however, smiled at this.

"I've been driving easy the last few days, and it's hardly likely the police have a horse that could run Volador down," he said. "Besides, if he should press me too hard, I could lose my man somehow in the big bluff on the mountain."

They agreed with this, and proceeded to elaborate a workable scheme. Suddenly Baxter turned to Thorne, as though a thought had just struck him.

"Why do you want to do it?" he asked. "Jake Winthrop wasn't a partner of yours."

Thorne broke into a whimsical smile. Now that he endeavored to analyze his reasons calmly, he was conscious that none of them appeared sufficient to warrant any action at all on his part. He was only certain that he disliked Nevis, and that an anxious girl had not long ago looked at him with an appeal in her eyes.

"Since you ask me the question, I don't quite know," he confessed.

Baxter laughed, and turned to his comrade.

"He's a daisy, sure. Anyway, I'll look round for a hat and jacket like the one I burned. You get him a saddle, Murray."

Thorne left them presently and drove away toward a ravine some miles from the settlement, and soon after he started Baxter saddled a horse and rode out to an outlying farm. In the meanwhile Corporal Slaney sauntered into the general room of the hotel, where Murray and several others were then sitting smoking. There was a box of crackers, a soda-water fountain, and a bottle of some highly colored syrup on one table, but that was all the refreshment the place provided.

Seating himself in a corner, the corporal sat unobtrusively listening to the conversation, which Murray presently turned into a particular channel for his especial benefit. It was a hot evening, and he sat astride a bench, clad only in blue shirt and trousers, with a glass of soda-water in front of him and a pipe in his hand. A big tin lamp burned unsteadily above him, for all the doors and windows were open, and a hot smell of dust and baked earth flowed into the room. The walls were formed of badly rent boards, and there was as usual no covering on the roughly laid floor.

"As I've often said," he observed, "the police will never get another man like old Sergeant Mackintyre. He ran his man down right away every time."

Slaney pricked his ears, and another of them broke in:

"Mackintyre would have had Jake Winthrop jailed quite a while ago. The boys aren't up to trailing now."

"Seems to me they didn't want Winthrop much," drawled Murray. "They went prowling round the homesteads, worrying folks who didn't know anything about him, while he hit the trail for the frontier."

A third man turned to Slaney.

"Didn't you send two of the boys off Dakota way, Corporal?"

"We did," answered Slaney shortly. "That's about all I'm open to tell you."

"Two troopers couldn't cover a great deal of prairie," remarked another. "Guess he might have slipped through between them; that is, if he's not hanging round here somewhere waiting for a chance to break away."

Murray saw the gleam in the corporal's eyes, and he broke in again.

"Now," he said, "when you think of it, that's quite likely, after all. There's three or four big bluffs a man could hide in, and if he was stuck for a horse he wouldn't care to try the open. If he lay by a while he might fix it up with somebody to bring him one. Of course, he might have got away up the track, but they'd wire on to watch the stations. Didn't you do that, Corporal?"

"We did," Slaney answered.

Murray turned to the others.

"Then, one would allow that Winthrop couldn't have cleared by train. If he'd done that, they'd sure have got him." He paused, and, hearing a beat of hoofs, added thoughtfully, "It looks mighty like he was still in the neighborhood."

Something in Slaney's expression suggested that he shared this opinion; but the drumming of hoofs was growing louder, and a man strolled toward the doorway.

"It's Baxter," he announced.

A few minutes later Baxter came in, flushed and dusty, and helped himself at the soda-water fountain before he turned to the others with a cracker in his hand.

"It's powerful warm, boys, and I've had a ride for nothing," he informed them. "Been over to Lorton's place and he wasn't in."

"He's at Cricklewood's," said Murray. "If you'd waited a little you would have met him on the trail."

"I didn't, anyway," was Baxter's indifferent reply; "I only met a stranger."

Corporal Slaney had no reason to suspect that the brief conversation which had followed Baxter's arrival had been carefully prearranged for his benefit.

"Where did you meet that stranger?" he asked.

"About two miles east of the bluff."

"Did you speak to him?"

Baxter smiled.

"I didn't; he didn't give me a chance. He was going south as fast as his horse could lay hoofs to the ground."

"What was he like? Did you see him clearly?"

"Well," drawled Baxter, "it's only a half-moon, and the man wasn't very close, but I think he'd a black plug hat. As most of us wear gray ones, that kind of struck me. I've a notion that his overall jacket was brown."

He sat down as Slaney vanished through the open door. In a few moments there was a clatter of hoofs, and the men crowding about the entrance saw a mounted figure riding at a gallop down the unpaved street. Then Murray looked at his comrade with a grin.

"Must have had his horse saddled ready," he chuckled. "We've fixed the thing."

CHAPTER XI
AN ESCAPADE

The night was still and clear when Thorne rode out of the ravine, in the hollow of which he had left his wagon and one hobbled horse. Reaching the level, he drew bridle and sat still in his saddle for a minute or two looking about him. The dew was settling heavily on the short, wiry grass, which shone faintly in the elusive light, with patches of darker color where his horse's hoofs had passed. Ahead, the prairie rolled away, a vast dimly lighted plain, to the soft dusky grayness which obscured the horizon, and he knew that somewhere beyond the dip of the latter stood the mountain, a broken stretch of higher ground covered with birches and willows, where if Corporal Slaney held on so long he must endeavor to evade him.

Volador seemed fit and fresh, for which he was thankful, for it was nearly twenty miles to the mountain, and he was, after all, a little uncertain about the speed of the policeman's horse, though the appearance of the beast, which he had seen in the hotel stable, did not suggest any great powers in this respect. It was, however, not the one Slaney usually rode, which he fancied might, perhaps, be significant. At length he leaned down and patted Volador's neck.

"You'll have to go to-night, old boy," he said.

The beast responded to his voice and a shake of the bridle, and they set off southward at a trot. The moon already hung rather low in the western sky, and he calculated that in another couple of hours it would have dipped beneath the grassland's rim. By then he should reach the mountain, and the darkness would be in his favor if he had not already outdistanced his pursuer. It was in a singularly buoyant mood that he rode quietly on, and it was reluctantly that he checked the horse which once or twice attempted to gallop. After the last few months of prosaic and unremitting toil, the prospect of a mad night ride, and the zest of the hazard attached to it, proved strangely exhilarating to one of his temperament. He admitted that, as Winthrop was not a particular friend of his, there was no reason why he should have undertaken the thing at all; but he remembered the appeal in Lucy Calvert's eyes, and that and the lust of a frolic was sufficient for him. There are men of his kind who, in their hearts, at least, never grow old.

He had covered two or three miles when he saw a mounted man following the trail to the settlement, and he rode on across the trail with a wave of his hat. He did not feel inclined for conversation, and everything had already been arranged. The mounted figure presently sank out of sight again, and he pulled Volador up to a slow walk. He would give Baxter half an hour to reach the settlement and put Slaney on his trail, and there was no use in wasting his horse's strength in the meanwhile.

It was nearly an hour later, and he was riding slowly, a lonely, moving speck in the center of a great level waste whose boundaries steadily receded before him, when a faint drumming of hoofs came out of the silence. Then he pulled Volador up altogether, and sat still, listening, for a while, until he felt sure that his pursuer, who was apparently riding hard, would hear him. He did not wish the man to draw too close, but it would, on the other hand, serve no purpose if he rode south unless Slaney followed him. It seemed only reasonable to suppose that once the police decided that Winthrop had got safely away to Dakota they would abandon the search for him in western Canada.

Then something in the sound, which was rapidly growing louder, struck him as curious, and he listened more closely with a frown, for it was now becoming evident that instead of one pursuer he had two to deal with, which was certainly not what he had desired or expected. Touching Volador with his heels, he let him go, and for five or six minutes they fled south at a fast gallop with a thud of hoofs on sun-baked sod ringing far behind them. Then he pulled the horse up with a struggle, and listened again. He was at length certain that the police had heard him and were following as fast as possible. There was no cover until he reached the mountain; nothing but an open wilderness, unbroken by even a ravine or a clump of willows, and he must ride.

Once more he let Volador go, and the cool night air streamed past him, whipping his hot face and bringing the blood to it, while long billowy rises came back to him, looking in the uncertain moonlight like the vast undulations of a glassy sea underrun by the swell of a distant gale. Each time he swung over the gradual crest of one, a rhythmic staccato drumming became sharply audible, and sank again as he dipped into the great grassy hollows. Volador seemed fresh still, which was consoling, for there was no doubt that the sound of the pursuit was as clear as it had been. This was a fresh surprise.

Half an hour passed, and they swung out upon a wide, high level, where for the first time he twisted in his saddle and looked behind him. He could see, rather more plainly than he cared about, two dim figures, spread out well apart on the verge of the plateau, and it was evident that they were not dropping behind. It would, he recognized, lead to unpleasant complications if they overtook him. He raised a quirt he had borrowed, but, reflecting, he let his arm drop again. After all, it might be desirable to let Volador keep a little in hand. Then he glanced to the westward, and was pleased to see that the moon was rapidly nearing the rim of the plain. It would be dark when he reached the mountain.

Volador was flagging a little when at length they swept up the slope of another rise. On crossing the top of this Thorne was conscious of a difference in the drumming of hoofs behind. One of the pursuers was clearly falling back, which was satisfactory, though he fancied that the other man was still holding his own. Then he saw away in front of him a blurred mass with an uneven crest which cut dimly black against the sky. It stretched broad across his course, and he struck Volador with the quirt, for he recognized it as the mountain, and knew that he must ride in earnest now. A mounted man would make a good deal of noise descending the ravines which seamed it and smashing through the undergrowth beneath the birches, and it was desirable that he should reach their shelter well ahead of the troopers.

The horse responded gallantly, but the beat of hoofs which he longed to get away from grew no fainter, and when five minutes had flown by he plied the quirt again. He was very hot, and somewhat anxious, but the moon was now near the verge of the prairie. It was large and red, and already the light was failing, though a long black shadow still fled beside him across the dewy grass.

At last he fancied he was drawing ahead, and a mad fit came upon him as they went flying down a rugged and broken slope to a water-course, while the mountain rose higher and blacker ahead. Stones clattered and rattled under them, clouds of light soil flew up, and then there was a great splashing as the horse plunged through the creek. After that the pace grew slower as they faced the ascent; and he swung low in the saddle when they sped in among the birches. A branch struck him in the face and swept his hat away, but it had done its work and he decided that he was better rid of it.

A semblance of a trail that dipped into hollows and swung over rises led through the mountain, though as a rule any one riding south skirted this. Thorne had already decided that he must leave it somewhere as quietly as possible and let Corporal Slaney go by. He could not hear the trooper now, and this was reassuring, for he would have to stop soon and he did not wish his pursuer to notice that the noise in front of him had suddenly ceased.

Two or three minutes later, however, the sound he was beginning to dread once more reached him, breaking in upon the crackle of dry sticks under his horse's hoofs and the crash he made as he now and then blundered into a brake or thicket. It was very dark in the bluff; he could scarcely see the spectral trunks of the flitting trees, and to pick the way or avoid the obstacles around which the trail here and there twisted was out of the question. He faced the hazards as they came and rode savagely; but the thud of pursuing hoofs and the smashing and crackling which mingled with it sounded very close when he reached the brink of a ravine which he understood it was almost impossible to descend on horseback. To dismount would, however, as he realized, entail his capture; and setting his lips tight he drove the failing horse at the almost precipitous gully. They plunged down with soil and stones sliding and rattling after them, splashed into a creek, and were half-way up the opposite side when a second clatter of falling stones was followed by a heavy downward rush of loosened soil. Then there was a dull thud and afterward a curiously impressive silence.

Thorne pulled up his badly blown horse and, twisting in his saddle, looked back across the ravine. He could see nothing but a shadowy mass of trees which stood out dimly against a strip of soft blue sky. He could feel his heart beating, and the deep silence troubled him. Indeed, it was with difficulty that he refrained from shouting to the fallen man, but he reflected that as he had now and then spoken to Slaney, the latter would probably recognize his voice. Then he heard the man get up, and the sounds which followed indicated that he was urging his horse to rise. Thorne once more tapped Volador with his quirt.

A hoarse cry rang after him, commanding him to stop, but this was on the whole a consolation, for it did not seem likely that Slaney was badly hurt if he could shout, and Thorne rode on with a laugh. He scarcely supposed the policeman's horse would be fit for much after a heavy fall, but there was another trooper somewhere behind who might turn up at any moment. He purposely rode through a brake or two in order that the crackle of undergrowth might make it clear that he was going on, and then, when some time had passed and there was no sign of any pursuit, he turned sharply off the trail and headed into the bush. It soon became necessary to dismount and lead his horse, and finally he looped the bridle round a branch and sat down wearily.

He fancied that half an hour had passed when he heard an increasing sound which suggested that two mounted men were riding cautiously along the trail some distance away. He could hear an occasional sharp snapping of rotten branches and the crash of trodden undergrowth as well as the beat of hoofs. Listening carefully, he decided that the riders were pushing straight on, and he was sure of it later, when the sound began to die away. He sat still, however, for almost another hour, and then succeeded with some difficulty in finding the trail. Following it back until it led him out of the mountain, he stripped off his duck jacket and flung it where anybody who passed that way could not well help seeing it, and then he took out a soft gray hat he had carried rolled up in his belt. Clad in blue shirt and trousers, he rode on slowly into the prairie. The dawn found him some miles from the mountain and at least as far from any trail, in the open waste. Reaching a ravine, he lay down at the bottom of it beside a creek and ate the breakfast he had brought with him, while Volador cropped the grass. Then he went quietly to sleep.

It was midday when he awakened, and falling dusk when he eventually reached the ravine near the settlement, where he had left his wagon and the other horse. There was nothing to suggest that anybody had visited the place in his absence, and after making an excellent supper he lay down again inside the vehicle with a sigh of content. Everything had gone satisfactorily, and it was most unlikely that Winthrop would be further troubled by the police. He did not know much about the extradition laws, but it was generally believed that when a man once got across the frontier the troopers contented themselves with notifying the authorities and nothing further was heard of the matter, unless the fugitive were guilty of some very serious offense. A good deal of the boundary then ran through an empty wilderness, and it was difficult to trace any one who managed to reach the settlements on its southern side. Indeed, it was seldom that a determined attempt was made.