Winston of the Prairie Part 39

Stimson saluted and shook his bridle, and rather less than an hour later faintly discerned a rattle of wheels that rose from a long way off across the prairie. Then he used the spur, and by and by it became evident that the drumming of their horses' feet had carried far, for, though the rattle grew a little louder, there was no doubt that whoever drove the wagon had no desire to be overtaken. Still, two horses cannot haul a vehicle over a rutted trail as fast as one can carry a man, and when the wardens of the prairie raced towards the black wall of birches that rose higher in front of them, the sound of wheels seemed very near. It, however, ceased suddenly, and was followed by a drumming that could only have been made by a galloping horse.

"One beast!" said the Sergeant. "Well, they'd have two men, any way, in that wagon. Get down and picket. We'll find the other fellow somewhere in the bluff."

They came upon him within five minutes endeavoring to cut loose the remaining horse from the entangled harness in such desperate haste that he did not hear them until Stimson grasped his shoulder.

"Hold out your hands," he said. "You have your carbine ready, trooper?"

The man made no resistance, and Stimson laughed when the handcuffs were on.

"Now," he said, "where's your partner?"

"I don't know that I mind telling you," said the prisoner. "It was a low down trick he played on me. We got down to take out the horses when we saw we couldn't get away from you, and I'd a blanket girthed round the best of them, when he said he'd hold him while I tried what I could do with the other. Well, I let him, and the first thing I knew he was off at a gallop, leaving me with the other kicking devil two men couldn't handle. You'll find him rustling south over the Montana trail."

"Mount and ride!" said Stimson, and when his companion galloped off, turned once more to his prisoner.

"You'll have a lantern somewhere, and I'd like a look at you," he said.

"If you're the man I expect, I'm glad I found you."

"It's in the wagon," said the other dejectedly.

Stimson got a light, and when he had released and picketed the plunging horse, held it so that he could see his prisoner. Then he nodded with evident contentment.

"You may as well sit down. We've got to have a talk," he said.

"Well," said the other, "I'd help you to catch Harmon if I could, but I can prove he hired me to drive him over to Kemp's in the wagon, and you'd find it difficult to show I knew what there was in the packages he took along."

Stimson smiled dryly. "Still," he said, "I think it could be done, and I've another count against you. You had one or two deals with the boys some little while ago."

"I'm not afraid of your fixing up against me anything I did then," said the other man.

"No?" said Stimson. "Now, I guess you're wrong, and it might be a good deal more serious than whisky-running. One night a man crawled up to your homestead through the snow, and you took him in."

He saw the sudden fear in his companion's face before he turned it from the lantern.

"It has happened quite a few times," said the latter. "We don't turn any stranger out in this country."

"Of course!" said the Sergeant gravely, though he felt a little thrill of content as he saw the shot, he had been by no means sure of, had told. "That man, however, had lost his horse in the river, and it was the one he got from you that took him out of the country. Now, if we could show you knew what he had done, it might go as far as hanging somebody."

The man was evidently not a confirmed law breaker, but merely one of the small farmers who were willing to pick up a few dollars by a.s.sisting the whisky-runners now and then, and he abandoned all resistance.

"Sergeant," he said, "it was 'most a week before I knew, and if anybody had told me at the time, I'd have turned him out to freeze before I'd have let him have a horse of mine."

"That wouldn't go very far if we brought the charge against you," said Stimson grimly. "If you'd sent us word when you did know, we'd have had him."

"Well," said the man, "he was across the frontier by that time, and I don't know that most folks would have done it, if they'd had the warning the boys sent me."

Stimson appeared to consider for almost a minute, and then gravely rapped his companion's arm.

"It seems to me that the sooner you and I have an understanding, the better it will be for you," he said.

They were some time arriving at it, and the Sergeant's superiors might not have been pleased with all he promised during the discussion.

Still, he was flying at higher game, and had to sacrifice a little, while he knew his man.

"We'll fix it up without you, as far as we can, but if we want you to give evidence that the man who lost his horse in the river was not farmer Winston, we'll know where to find you," he said. "You'll have to take your chance of being tried with him if we find you're trying to get out of the country."

It was half an hour later when the rest of the troopers arrived and Stimson had some talk with their officer aside.

"A little out of the usual course, isn't it?" said the latter. "I don't know that I'd have countenanced it, so to speak, off my own bat at all, but I had a tolerably plain hint that you were to use your discretion over this affair. After all, one has to stretch a point or two occasionally."

"Yes, sir," said Stimson. "A good many now and then."

The officer smiled a little and went back to the rest. "Two of you will ride after the other rascal," he said. "Now, look here, my man, the first time my troopers, who'll call round quite frequently, don't find you about your homestead, you'll land yourself in a tolerably serious difficulty. In the meanwhile, I'm sorry we can't bring a charge of whisky-running against you, but another time be careful who you hire your wagon to."

Then there was a rapid drumming of hoofs as two troopers went off at a gallop, while when the rest turned back towards the outpost. Stimson rode with them quietly content.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE REVELATION

Winston's harvesting prospered as his sowing had done, for by day the bright suns.h.i.+ne shone down on standing wheat and lengthening rows of sheaves. It was in the bracing cold of sunrise the work began, and the first pale stars were out before the tired men and jaded horses dragged themselves home again. Not infrequently it happened that the men wore out the teams and machines, but there was no stoppage then, for fresh horses were led out from the corral or a new binder was ready. Every minute was worth a dollar, and Winston, who had apparently foreseen and provided for everything, wasted none.

Then, for wheat is seldom stacked in that country, as the days grew shorter and the evenings cool, the smoke of the big thrasher streaked the harvest field, and the wagons went jolting between humming separator and granary, until the later was gorged to repletion and the wheat was stored within a willow framing beneath the chaff and straw that streamed from the chute of the great machine. Winston had around him the best men that dollars could hire, and toiled tirelessly with the grimy host in the whirling dust of the thrasher and amid the sheaves, wherever another pair of hands, or the quick decision that would save an hour's delay, was needed most.

As compared with the practice of insular Britain, there were not half enough of them, but wages are high in that country, and the crew of the thrasher paid by the bushel, while the rest had long worked for their own hand on the levels of Manitoba and in the bush of Ontario, and knew that the sooner their toil was over the sooner they would go home again with well-lined pockets. So, generously fed, splendid human muscle kept pace with clinking steel under a stress that is seldom borne outside the sun-bleached prairie at harvest time, and Winston forgot everything save the constant need for the utmost effort of body and brain. It was even of little import to him that prices moved steadily upward as he toiled.

At last it was finished, and only knee-high stubble covered his land and that of Maud Barrington, while, for he was one who could venture fearlessly and still know when he had risked enough, soon after it was thrashed out the wheat was sold. The harvesters went home with enough to maintain them through the winter, and Winston, who spent two days counting his gain, wrote asking Graham to send him an accountant from Winnipeg. With him he spent a couple more days, and then, with an effort he was never to forget, prepared himself for the reckoning. It was time to fling off the mask before the eyes of all who had trusted him.

He had thought it over carefully, and his first decision had been to make the revelation to Colonel Barrington alone. That, however, would, he felt, be too simple, and his pride rebelled against anything that would stamp him as one who dare not face the men he had deceived. One by one they had tacitly offered him their friends.h.i.+p and then their esteem, until he knew that he was virtually leader at Silverdale, and it seemed fitting that he should admit the wrong he had done them, and bear the obloquy, before them all. For a while the thought of Maud Barrington restrained him, and then he brushed that aside. He had fancied with masculine blindness that what he felt for her had been well concealed, and that her att.i.tude to him could be no more than kindly sympathy with one who was endeavoring to atone for a discreditable past. Her anger and astonishment would be hard to bear, but once more his pride prompted him, and he decided that she should at least see he had the courage to face the results of his wrong-doing.

As it happened, he was given an opportunity, when he was invited to the harvest celebration that was held each year at Silverdale.

It was a still, cool evening when every man of the community, and most of the women, gathered in the big dining-room of the Grange. The windows were shut now, for the chill of the early frost was on the prairie, and the great lamps burned steadily above the long tables.

Cut gla.s.s, dainty china and silver gleamed beneath them amidst the ears of wheat that stood in cl.u.s.ters for sole and appropriate ornamentation.

They merited the place of honor, for wheat had brought prosperity to every man at Silverdale who had had the faith to sow that year.

On either hand were rows of smiling faces, the men's burned and bronzed, the women's kissed into faintly warmer color by the sun, and white shoulders shone amidst the somberly covered ones, while here and there a diamond gleamed on a snowy neck. Barrington sat at the head of the longest table, with his niece and sister, Dane and his oldest followers about him, and Winston at its foot, dressed very simply after the usual fas.h.i.+on of the prairie farmers. There were few in the company who had not noticed this, though they did not as yet understand its purport.

Nothing happened during dinner, but Maud Barrington noticed that, although some of his younger neighbors rallied him, Winston was grimly quiet. When it was over, Barrington rose, and the men who knew the care he had borne that year never paid him more willing homage than they did when he stood smiling down on them. As usual he was immaculate in dress, erect, and quietly commanding, but in spite of its smile his face seemed worn, and there were thickening wrinkles, which told of anxiety, about his eyes.

"Another year has gone, and we have met again to celebrate with gratefulness the fulfillment of the promise made when the world was young," he said. "We do well to be thankful, but I think humility becomes us too. While we doubted the sun and the rain have been with us for a sign that, though men grow faint-hearted and spare their toil, seed-time and harvest shall not fail."

It was the first time Colonel Barrington had spoken in quite that strain, and when he paused a moment there was a curious stillness, for those who heard him noticed an unusual tremor in his voice. There was also a gravity that was not far removed from sadness in his face when he went on again, but the intentness of his retainers would have been greater had they known that two separate detachments of police troopers were then riding toward Silverdale.

"The year has brought its changes, and set its mark deeply on some of us," he said. "We cannot recall it, or retrieve our blunders, but we can hope they will be forgiven us and endeavor to avoid them again.

This is not the fas.h.i.+on in which I had meant to speak to you tonight, but after the bounty showered upon us I feel my responsibility. The law is unchangeable. The man who would have bread to eat or sell must toil for it, and I, in disregard of it, bade you hold your hand. Well, we have had our lesson, and we will be wiser another time, but I have felt that my usefulness as your leader is slipping away from me. This year has shown me that I am getting an old man."

Dane kicked the foot of a lad beside him, and glanced at the piano as he stood up.