Bindloss Harold
By Right of Purchase

"There are hundreds ruined, and whole crops destroyed," she said. "Perhaps the men who sowed them worked as hard as Charley. It would be dreadful if it came to us."

"I am afraid it would," said Eveline Annersly. "Still, I don't think it would have troubled you when you first came out. That is not so very long ago, is it?"

Carrie smiled. "I think I have grown since then," she said.

CHAPTER XXII
HAIL

A thin crescent moon hung low in the western sky. The prairie was wrapped in silent shadows. Leland stood outside the homestead, with the bridle of an impatient horse in his hand, and talked with his wife. There was only one light in the house behind them, and everything was very still, but Leland knew that two men who could be trusted to keep good watch were wide awake that night. The barrel of a Marlin rifle hung behind his shoulders, glinting fitfully when it caught the light as he moved. Without thinking of what he was doing, he fingered the clip of the sling.

"The moon will be down in half an hour, and it will be quite dark before I cross the ravine near Thorwald's place," he said. "Jim Thorwald is straight, and standing by the law, but none of us are quite sure of all of his boys. Anyway, we don't want anybody to know who's riding to the outpost."

Carrie laid her hand upon his arm. "I suppose you must go, this once at least."

"Of course!" said Leland with a smile. "If I'm wanted, I must go again. The trouble's spreading."

"Then," said Carrie, "why can't they bring more troopers in? Why did you ever have anything to do with it, Charley?"

"It seemed necessary. A man has to hold on to what is his."

Carrie's fingers tightened on his arm. "Perhaps it is so; I suppose it must be; but, after all, I don't think that was your only reason. I mean, when you started the quarrel. No, you needn't turn away. I want you to look at me."

"It's dark, my dear, and I'm glad it is. I don't want to talk of those times, and if it were light enough to see you, I'm afraid it would melt the resolution out of me."

"Still," Carrie persisted, "you know you first quarrelled with the rustlers because you were angry with me."

Leland laughed softly. "Well, perhaps that was the reason, though I would sooner believe it was because I recognised what I owed the State."

"But it is all different – you are not in the least angry with me now?"

The moonlight was very dim, and showed no more than the pale white oval of her face; but Leland felt the appeal in her voice, and knew that it was also in her eyes.

"My dear," he said quietly, "how could I be?"

Carrie lifted her hand and laid it on his shoulder. "Charley, I can't stop you now, but I want you to promise you will not go back again. Do you know that I sit still, shivering, when darkness comes while you are away, trying not to think of what you may be doing? I daren't think. Can't you understand, Charley, that I have only you?"

Feeling how hard it was to leave her, and fearing that further tenderness from her might weaken his firm purpose, he sought refuge in a frivolous retort.

"There are still a few of your relatives at Barrock-holme," he said.

"They never write me. Perhaps I couldn't expect them to. I thought you knew that I had offended them."

"Offended them?"

Carrie laughed a trifle harshly. "Oh," she said, "it is a wife's duty to take her husband's part; but, after all, that is not the question. I hadn't meant to mention it. It doesn't matter in the least."

"Well," said Leland, "I almost think it does. Anyway, if it worries you. What have you been falling out with them over, Carrie?"

"That is not your business. They don't care about me now, but you do."

Leland had only one free hand, but he slipped it round her waist. She sighed contentedly as she felt his protecting clasp.

"Charley, you will not go back again?" she said once more.

The man drew his arm away. Though she could scarcely see his face, he appeared to be looking down upon her gravely.

"It is a little hard not to do what you ask me straight away, but I think you can understand," he said. "Whatever I went into the thing for, I am in it now. Practically, I'm leader. It is not the Sergeant the boys look to, but me, and I'm not quite sure they would have kept the thing up if I hadn't worried them into doing it. Still, they'll go on now, and they would only think of two reasons if I backed down. Would you like them to fancy the rustlers had bought me over, or made me afraid of them?"

"Could any one think that?" and Carrie laughed scornfully, though her voice grew suddenly soft again. "It wouldn't matter in the least to me what anybody said."

"Well," said Leland gravely, "I 'most think it would, and I should like it to. Anyway, if I backed down, it would be because I was afraid. In fact, I'm afraid now, though I never used to be. It's a little difficult to tell you this, though you know it, but, when I stirred the boys up, I could not be sure you would ever be what you are to me. It didn't seem likely then, but I made no conditions when the rest stood in with me. Now I think you see I can't go back on them."

Carrie made a little nod of agreement, and, with an effort, repressed a sigh, for she knew that she had failed. Her husband's code was simple, and, perhaps, crude, but it was, at least, inflexible. After all, honour and duty are things well within the comprehension of very simple men. Indeed, it is often the case that, where principles are concerned, the simplest men have the clearest vision.

"Ah," she said, with something like a sob, "then you must go. But stand still a minute, Charley. I want to see if the clip I bought you in the Winnipeg gun-shop is working properly."

Leland smiled as she pressed a little clasp and then, dropping one hand smartly, caught the rifle as the sling fell apart. Carrie had changed suddenly and curiously. The pride that was in her had awakened, and she was at one with her husband and wholly practical.

"It is ever so much quicker than passing it over your shoulder; and, after all, you must go," she said.

She stretched up her arms and kissed him. When the man had swung himself into the saddle, she looked long after him, with eyes that were hazy. When he became a blur in the distance, she went slowly to the house, head proudly erect. There Eveline Annersly greeted her.

"My dear," she said, "you need not tell me. You have been trying to hold your husband back, and you have failed. The thing was out of the question. You might have known."

Carrie made a little half-wistful gesture, though there was a faint glow in her eyes. "Yes, I did what I could, and now I shall not rest until he comes back again. Still, I think I deserve it, and I'm not sure that I would have him different. I think nothing would change Charley. I used to wonder more than I do now how he, who was born on the prairie, came to have all the real essential things which were not in any of us at Barrock-holme."

Eveline Annersly's eyes sparkled, and her manner was sardonic. "It's not very explicit, but I think I know what you mean. Haven't you lost your faith in the old fetish yet? Men are men – good, bad, and indifferent – the world over, and, though it would be rather nice to believe it, we haven't, and never had, a monopoly in our own class of what you call the essentials. Indeed, I'm not quite sure one couldn't go a little further."

She was standing near the open window, with the light, which was low, some distance away from her. Turning, she drew Carrie within the heavy curtains. "The very old and the very new are apt to meet," she said. "There is an example yonder."

Carrie looked out into the soft moonlight, and saw a mounted figure cut against the sky on the crest of a low rise. It was indistinct and shadowy, but, as she gazed, she twice caught the gleam of the pale cold light on steel, and knew it for the flash of a rifle-barrel.

"Oh," she said, "since I came to this country I have felt it too. That was how the border spears rode out six hundred years ago… Of course, you were right a little while ago. I think the things that are essential must always have been the same – primitive and unchangeable. Faith and courage have always been needed, as they are needed still. After all, we cannot get away from death and toil and pain."

The lonely figure vanished into the night, and, as her companion moved away, Carrie let the curtain fall behind her with a little sigh. "It is getting late, and I can only wait and try to think there is no danger, until he comes back to me. No doubt others have done it, back through all the centuries."

She went out, but Eveline Annersly sat a while thoughtfully by the open window. What she had expected had at last come to pass, and she had the satisfaction which does not always attend the efforts of the matrimonial schemer; for there was no longer any doubt that Carrie Leland loved her husband. Once more, as Nature will often have it, like had drawn to unlike, with a fusion of discordant qualities in indissoluble and harmonious union, that what the one lacked the other might supply. The pair she had brought together were no longer two but one, which, while she was quite aware that it did not always happen, was, when it did, like the springing up of the wheat – a mystery and a miracle.

Eveline Annersly was old enough to know that there are many mysteries, but that by love alone man may come nearest to their comprehension.

Then she remembered that it was getting late, and, leaving the window open, for the night was hot and still, sought her room, and in another half-hour was sound asleep. She had slept several hours, when she was awakened by a queer sound that seemed to come from outside through the open door. It was a dull noise, which, accustomed as she had grown to the beat of hoofs, suggested a company of mounted men riding up out of the prairie. The sound kept increasing, until she could have fancied that it was made by a regiment, and then suddenly swelled into the roar of a brigade of cavalry going by on the gallop. The house seemed to reel as under a blow, the doors swung to with a crash, and there was a clatter of things hurled down in the adjoining room. Then she rose and flung on a dressing-gown, and, crossing the room, stopped when she had clutched the door handle, almost afraid to open it, bewildered by the indescribable tumult. At last a gleam of light appeared between the chinks. Mustering courage to open the door, she saw Carrie standing in the room, half dressed, with a candle in her hand. That was just for a moment, for the feeble gleam went out, and she groped her way through black darkness towards the girl.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"The hail!" said Carrie, hoarsely. "Come with me. We must shut the window quick."

It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered, and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white.

"Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and Charley ruined."

It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach of surf-rolled stones.

The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage; so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury, and, shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her.

"Will the house stand?" she gasped.

The girl's laugh rang harshly through the roar of the hail. "I don't know. What does that matter, anyway? Can't you understand? The wheat will all be cut down. I have ruined Charley."

Then there was a lull for a minute or two, and Carrie, reaching up a hand, gripped her companion's arm.

"Did you ever hear how much I cost my husband?" she said.

Terrified as she was, Eveline Annersly started at the question. It was not expressed delicately, but, after all, there was no doubt that the girl's marriage had been more or less a matter of bargaining. "Of course not," she said.

"I don't know, either, but I'm sure it was ever so much," and Carrie's fingers trembled on her arm, though her eyes were fierce. "In one way, I am glad it was. I like to feel that he was willing to offer everything that was his for me. It isn't in the least degrading to belong to Charley Leland, however I came into his possession. Not in the least. How could it be? Still, once it seemed horrible even to think of it."

She stopped a minute with a little indrawing of her breath. "Besides, I am glad in another way, because, if he is really ruined, I am going to get all I cost him back again. Jimmy and my father would call it a loan."

Eveline Annersly was distinctly startled, though she understood that all restraint had been flung aside, and Carrie Leland had responded to the influence of this storm that had brought her face to face with a crisis in her husband's affairs, the raw human nature in her had come uppermost, and she was for the time being merely a woman with primitive passions raised, ready to fight for her mate. It was, her companion recognised, a thing that not infrequently happened – a part, indeed, of Nature's scheme that had a higher warrant; but, for all that, she was sensible again that there was in the girl's set face something from which people of fastidious temperament, who had never felt the strain, might feel inclined to shrink.

"Carrie," she said, "the thing is out of the question. They are your father and brother. You cannot force them into an open rupture. You must put it out of your mind."

The girl gripped her arm cruelly. "One must choose sometimes, and I am my husband's flesh and blood. Once that seemed a curious fancy, repugnant too, but it is real now – one of the great real things to Charley and me."

Eveline Annersly said nothing, and the wind beat upon the house as the girl went on. "Aunt," she said, "before Charley is ruined, I will make them repay the loan. They would have to if I insisted, for they would never dare let me tell that tale."

Once more her laugh rang harshly through the uproar of the hail. "Oh," she said, "Charley would pour out his blood for me, and what do I owe my father and Jimmy but a badge of shame?"

She was shaking with passion and very white in face. Eveline Annersly at last realised how deeply the shame had bitten before love had come to lessen the smart of it. The girl's temperament had been, as she knew, distinctly virginal, and it was, perhaps, not astonishing, under the circumstances, that she had at first shrunk from her husband almost with hatred, and certainly with instinctive repulsion. Indeed, it was clear to Eveline Annersly that had not Leland been what he was, a man accustomed to restraint, she would in all probability have continued to hate him until one of them died. Yet the contrast between the girl who had always borne herself with a chilling serenity at Barrock-holme and the passionate woman who crouched at her side was a very wonderful thing.

Then suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the hail commenced to die away. It no longer roared upon the shingles, but sank in a long diminuendo, drawing further and further away across the prairie. There was a deep impressive stillness as it ceased altogether.

Carrie rose abruptly. "I'm going out," she said in a strained voice. "Are you coming too?"

Eveline Annersly had little wish to go. The storm had left her shaken and unwilling to move, but she forced herself to get up, for it seemed that Carrie might have need of her. So they went out together. There was now a little light in the sky, and the bluff showed up black and sharp against it. The air was fresh and chill. Carrie, however, noticed nothing as she moved swiftly through the wheat, through the melting ice that lay thickly upon the sod. Other shadowy figures were also moving in the same direction, and there was a murmur of voices when at last she stopped.

"It's Mrs. Leland," said somebody, and the group of men drew back a little.

Then Carrie caught her breath with a sob, for the tall wheat had gone, and, so far as she could see, ruin was spread across the belt of ploughing. The green blades lay smashed and torn upon the beaten soil. The crop had vanished under the dread reaping of the hail. The light was growing clearer, and it seemed to Eveline Annersly, who remembered how the roar had suggested the beat of horses' hoofs, that instead of a brigade of cavalry, an army division, with guns and transport, had passed that way through the grain. Then something in the fancy struck her as especially apposite, and she turned to Carrie, who stood rigid, as though turned to stone.

"Look!" she said; "it isn't everywhere the same."

A man came up, and she recognised him as Gallwey. He apparently heard her, for he beckoned to them.

"Will you come forward, Mrs. Leland?" he said. "We have a good deal to be thankful for."

They went with him a hundred yards or so. Then Carrie gasped at what she saw in the growing light of dawn.

"Oh," she cried joyously, "it hasn't reached the rest of it!"

"No," said Gallwey, "we are on the dividing line. I don't know how many bushels it has reaped, but, by comparison, it is not enough to worry about. A little wonderful. Still, I believe it's not unusual, and I have seen very much the same thing once before."

"Is there no more of the wheat damaged?" asked Carrie, and there was still a tension in her voice.

"Not a blade," said Gallwey. "I've been all round."

Then all the strength seemed to leave the girl. Moving shakily, with her hand on Eveline Annersly's arm, she turned towards the house, as the pearly greyness crept into the eastern sky. Eveline Annersly said nothing, for she could feel that her companion was trembling, and hear her catch her breath. Carrie stopped when they reached the homestead, and looked eastward with tear-dimmed eyes.

"Ah," she said, "I wonder why this favour was shown me. I felt I had ruined Charley a little while ago."

Then she pulled herself together. "Aunt Eveline," she said softly, "did you ever hate and despise yourself?"

Eveline Annersly said nothing, but she smiled with comprehension in her eyes, for she understood what was in Carrie Leland's mind.

CHAPTER XXIII
GALLWEY'S ADVENTURE

The night was still dark, and there was not then or afterwards any sign of hail when Sergeant Grier halted his little force under the Blackfoot Ridge. There were, in all, eight of them, excellently mounted, and most of them rode with a magazine rifle slung across their shoulders. In front of them a deep ravine wound away into the Ridge, which, though sometimes called a mountain, consisted of a long, broken rise, perhaps two hundred feet above the level of the rest of the prairie. Stunted birches, and, where the grounds were moister, a dense growth of willows, clothed its sides. Behind the first rise lay a rolling, deeply fissured plateau, lined here and there with trees. It stretched away before them, a black and shadowy barrier, and Sergeant Grier sat with his hand upon his hip, looking at it reflectively.

"I guess your news can be relied on, Mr. Leland?" he said.

Leland patted his fidgeting horse. "I wouldn't have worried you with it unless I had felt tolerably sure," he said. "Two waggons, driven by strangers, passed through the Cannersly settlement three days ago. I don't know what was in them, but they were full of something, and I have my notion as to what it was. The same night four men, who asked about those waggons, rode into Cannersly. They stayed there just five minutes, and that appeared significant to me."

The Sergeant sat silent a moment, and then turned to the rest.

"Boys," he said, "I've been worrying the thing out most of the way. The whisky boys have friends round Barber, and they'd get pack-horses there. West of the settlement, the folks are shy of them, and it's easy figuring they'd push on to get up north, beyond my reach. Well, it would cost them a day to work a traverse round the mountain, and that's why I'm putting down my stake on their coming through. There's only one good trail, and we're here to block it; but a man who knew the way might bring them out by the Willow Coulee. I guess it's not more than two miles away." He raised his voice a little. "Trooper Standish, you and Tom Gallwey will ride up the coulee, and lie by in the old herder's hut. If you hear anything, a shot will bring us in at a gallop. Trooper Cornet, you'll push on straight ahead for half an hour with Mr. Custer, and hide your horses clear of the trail. I guess once the boys get into the mountain they're going to have some trouble getting out again."

The troopers saluted, and four shadowy men melted into the darkness. When they passed out of hearing, the Sergeant swung himself from the saddle.

"Lead your horses well back among the trees, boys, and tether them," he said. "Then we'll camp down here. I figure we're not going to see the whisky boys before the morning."

They did his bidding. Presently Leland and one or two of the others lay down among the first of the birches. The Sergeant sat close by, with his back to one of the trees, his pipe in his hand.

"It's 'bout time we got in a blow," he said. "Things are going bad, and, with the new country opening up north, I can't get more men. Now, we wouldn't be long running off the regular whisky men; the trouble is that every blamed tough between here and the frontier is standing in with them, and, unless you catch him out at night, you've nothing to show against him. When he comes home, he's a harmless settlement loafer, or an industrious pre-emptor. A good year would kill the thing, but I guess there's more in whisky than wheat, at present figures."

"There's more in running off horses," said one of the others. "The boys get them for nothing, and I've lost three of mine. How much have they taken out of you altogether, Charley?"

"Most of four or five thousand dollars, one way or another, and I have a notion they've not done with me yet. In fact, it seems to me that either the whisky boys or I will have to get out of this part of the prairie."

The Sergeant nodded. "It will be the whisky boys," he said. "You can bluff the law for awhile, if you're smart enough, but it's quite hard to keep it up, and the first mistake you make, it's got you sure. In another way, Mr. Leland's right. I'd have done nothing with my few troopers if he hadn't brought you in. We have nothing to raise trouble over – a few steers and horses missing, a grass fire raised. They're things that happen all the time. The whisky boys know it as well as I do, and, since I can't get more troopers, it means that what is done must be done by you. They know that, too, and it's running up quite a big account against the man who's leading you."

There was a little murmur of concurrence, and Leland laughed.

"Well," he said, "there's a per contra claim, and I fancy it's going to be settled by-and-bye. I've had about enough to pull against this season, and I don't feel kind towards the men who have made it harder still for me."

Though he calmly filled his pipe, one or two of those who heard him fancied that the reckoning he looked forward to would be a somewhat grim one when it came. Leland of Prospect was, as they were aware, not the man to submit patiently to an injury, and his quietness had its significance. Still, he was only one man, and his enemies were many – men who struck shrewdly in the dark, and left no sign to show who they were. None of those who rode with him envied their unofficial leader.

In the meantime, Gallwey and the young trooper picked their way along the edge of the bluff. The night was dark and hazy, and there were no stars in the sky. The smoke of a big grass fire drifted in a grey mist athwart the sweep of the plain. Now and then a crimson blaze leapt up and faded on the horizon, and the still air was heavy with the smell of burning. It was advisable to ride cautiously, for there were a good many badger-holes, and here and there the ground was seamed by a watercourse. Brittle branches occasionally snapped in the dense silence.

"I guess I could hear myself a mile away," the trooper said. "Still, that horse of yours is making row enough for a squadron."

Gallwey did not contradict him, for, as it happened, the horse just then blundered into a little watercourse and plunged down the slope of it with a great smashing of undergrowth. Gallwey contrived to avoid a fall. With some noise they scrambled up the other side, though this time Trooper Standish made an effort to control his indignation.

"I guess you would report me if I told you what I think of you," he said.

Still, they made the coulee without mishap, and the trooper checked his horse as they rode into it. It opened up before them, a black and shadowy hollow, with little streamlets trickling through. Dim trees rolled up its sides, blurred masses against the sky above. Save the soft splash of the stream, no sound broke the stillness.

"Nobody here, anyway," he said. "We'll push on for the herder's hut. It was built when the Scotchman who had Lister's ranch put sheep on the mountain, but the timber wolves got most of them, and he let up. It's 'bout the only place in this country where there are any wolves, and the agent didn't think it worth while to mention it when he gave his lease out. I guess you don't have timber wolves in Scotland."

Gallwey said they didn't. He made no further observations, for his horse fell into the stream with a loud splash. After this they pushed on up the coulee as silently as they could, until Trooper Standish pulled his horse up.

"We're here," he said. "That looks like the hut. We'll get down and hitch up the horses at the back of it."

Gallwey made out a shadowy mass among the birches, and swung himself out of the saddle as his comrade did. It was not what Sergeant Grier would have done, but Gallwey knew nothing of vedette duty, and Standish was very young. He had hitched his bridle round a branch when the latter turned to him.

"We may as well go in and make ourselves comfortable," he said. "If the whisky boys come down this way, it's a sure thing that we'll hear them."

They turned back towards the door of the hut, Gallwey a few paces behind the trooper, who thrust the door open. Gallwey could barely see him, for they were in the deep shadow of the trees. Just after Standish strolled in, there came the sound of a scuffle out of the darkness. Then there was a crash, a cry, and the thud of a heavy fall.

Gallwey stood fumbling with his pistol-holster, which, as it happened, was buttoned down. The button fitted tightly, and he was clumsy in his haste. As he tore at it, he heard a sound behind him, and was swinging round when a pair of sinewy arms were wound round him. He struggled furiously, reaching back with one foot for his assailant's leg, and succeeded in so far that he and the unseen man came down heavily together. The other man, however, was uppermost, and when somebody else came running up, Gallwey lay still.

"Let him up!" said the last arrival; and when he rose shakily, his assailant jerked one arm behind him.

"Walk right into the shanty before you get hurt," he said.

Gallwey did it, since there was apparently no other course open to him. The way the man held his arm was excruciatingly painful. Somebody struck a sulphur match, and, lighting a lantern, held it up. It showed two more men, busily engaged in holding Trooper Standish, who kicked and struggled valiantly on the floor. Then the third man laid down the lantern, and, taking up a rifle, prodded the trooper with the butt of it. It was no gentle, perfunctory prodding.

"Let up and lie still before you're made. You're going to get it hard if you move again," he said, and turned to Gallwey. "Sit right down yonder."

Gallwey, who fancied that his expostulations would not be listened to, did as he was bidden. His holster was buttoned down still, and he did not think he could get it open without attracting undesirable attention. Presently one of the men unclasped the belt it was fastened to and flung it aside, while Gallwey, recognising that a conciliatory attitude was advisable, nearly laughed as he looked at Trooper Standish. The lad still lay flat upon the earthen floor, flushed in face, and hurled a stream of vitriolic compliments at his captors. One of them grinned broadly, but did not move his hands from the trooper's arms.

"Now," he said, "if one of you will pass me that pack-rope we'll tie him up."

It took two of them to accomplish it. During the operation, Trooper Standish contrived to kick one of them where it seemed to hurt. Still, they did tie him, and the lad lay still, breathless with fury, with wrists bound behind him, his ankles lashed together. Then the men turned to Gallwey.

"I guess your hands will be enough. Hold them out!" said one.

Gallwey did it without protesting, which, it was evident, would be of very little use. While one of the men went out of the hut, another watched him.

"Nobody's going to hurt you if you sit quite still," he said.