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{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\LARGE\strut{THE SETTLER}}
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{\noindent}%
\noindent
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the \hyperlink{project-gutenberg-license}{Project Gutenberg License}
included with this eBook or online at
{http://www.gutenberg.org/license}.
\par

\noindent
\par

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\begin{container}
\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
\noindent
Title: The Settler
 \\

 \\
Author: Herman Whitaker
 \\

 \\
Release Date: September 14, 2013 {[}EBook \#40680{]}
 \\

 \\
Language: English
 \\

 \\
Character set encoding: UTF-8
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*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SETTLER ***
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{\noindent}%
\noindent
Produced by Al Haines.
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{\LARGE\strut{THE SETTLER}}
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{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\normalsize BY}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\normalsize HERMAN WHITAKER}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\normalsize AUTHOR OF
 \\
"THE MYSTERY OF THE BARRANCA"
 \\
"THE PLANTER" ETC.}}
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\vs{3}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\normalsize HARPER \& BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
 \\
NEW YORK AND LONDON}}
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{\footnotesize{COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY HARPER \& BROTHERS}}
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{\footnotesize{PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA}}
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{\normalsize TO
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ALYSE}}
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{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{CONTENTS}}}}
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\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
\noindent
{\footnotesize{CHAP.}}
\par

\begin{itemize}
\item[I.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-park-lands}{The Park Lands}
\par

\item[II.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{a-deputation}{A Deputation}
\par

\item[III.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-trail}{The Trail}
\par

\item[IV.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-coyote-snaps}{The Coyote Snaps}
\par

\item[V.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{jenny}{Jenny}
\par

\item[VI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-shadow}{The Shadow}
\par

\item[VII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{mr-flynn-steps-into-the-breach}{Mr. Flynn Steps into the Breach}
\par

\item[VIII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{when-april-smiled-again}{When April Smiled Again}
\par

\item[IX.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-devil}{The Devil}
\par

\item[X.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{friction}{Friction}
\par

\item[XI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-frost}{The Frost}
\par

\item[XII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-break}{The Break}
\par

\item[XIII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-camp}{The Camp}
\par

\item[XIV.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-red-teamster}{The Red Teamster}
\par

\item[XV.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{travail}{Travail}
\par

\item[XVI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{a-house-party}{A House-party}
\par

\item[XVII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{and-its-finale}{—And Its Finale}
\par

\item[XVIII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-persistence-of-the-established}{The Persistence of the Established}
\par

\item[XIX.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-wages-of-sin}{The Wages of Sin}
\par

\item[XX.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{is-death}{—Is Death}
\par

\item[XXI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{persecution}{Persecution}
\par

\item[XXII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{denunciation}{Denunciation}
\par

\item[XXIII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-charivari}{The Charivari}
\par

\item[XXIV.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{without-the-pale}{Without the Pale}
\par

\item[XXV.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-sunken-grade}{The Sunken Grade}
\par

\item[XXVI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{winnipeg}{Winnipeg}
\par

\item[XXVII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-nature-of-the-cinch}{The Nature of the Cinch}
\par

\item[XXVIII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-strike}{The Strike}
\par

\item[XXIX.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-bluff}{The Bluff}
\par

\item[XXX.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{fire}{Fire}
\par

\item[XXXI.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{wherein-the-fates-substitute-a-change-of-bill}{Wherein the Fates Substitute a Change of Bill}
\par

\item[XXXII.] 
\noindent
\hyperlink{the-trail-again}{The Trail Again}
\par
\end{itemize}

\label{the-park-lands}%
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{}

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{\centering
{\bfseries{{\LARGE\strut{THE SETTLER}}}}
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{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{I}}}}
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\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE PARK LANDS}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
The clip of a cutting axe flushed a heron from the
bosom of a reedy lake and sent him soaring in
slow spirals until, at the zenith of his flight, he
overlooked a vast champaign.  Far to the south a yellow
streak marked the scorched prairies of southern
Manitoba; eastward and north a spruce forest draped the
land in a mantle of gloom; while to the west the woods
were thrown with a scattering hand over a vast expanse
of rolling prairie.  These were the Park Lands of the
Fertile Belt—a beautiful country, rich, fat-soiled, rank
with flowers and herbage, once the hunting-ground of
Cree and Ojibway, but now passed to the sterner race
whose lonely farmsteads were strewn over the face of
the land.  These presented a deadly likeness.  Each
had its log-house, its huge tent of firewood upreared
against next winter's drift, and the same yellow
strawstacks dotted their fenceless fields.  One other thing,
too, they had in common—though this did not lie to
the eye of the heron—a universal mortgage, legacy of
the recent boom, covered all.\par

At the flap of the great bird's wing a man stepped
from the timber and stood watching him soar.  He was
a tall fellow, lean as a greyhound, flat-flanked, in color
neither dark nor fair.  His eyes were deep-set and
looked out from a face that was burned to the color of
a brick.  His nose was straight and large, cheeks well
hollowed; the face would have been stern but for the
humor that lurked about the mouth.  Taken together,
the man was an excellent specimen of what he was—a
young American of the settler type.\par

"Gone plumb out of sight," he muttered, rubbing his
dazzled eyes.  "An' he wasn't no spring chicken.  Time
to feed, I reckon."\par

A few steps carried him to his team, a rangy yoke of
steers which were tied in the shade.  Having fed them,
he returned to his work and chopped steadily until,
towards evening, his wagon was loaded with poplar
rails.  Then hitching, he mounted his load and
"hawed" and "geed" his way through the forest.  As he
came out on the open prairie the metallic rattle of a
mower travelled down the wind.  Stopping, he listened,
while a shadow deepened his tan.\par

"Comes from Morrill's big slough," he muttered,
whipping up the oxen.  "Who'll it be?"\par

Morrill, his near neighbor, was sick in bed, and the
rattle could only mean that some one was trespassing
on his hay rights—or rather the privilege which he
claimed as such—for trespass such as he suspected
was simply the outward sign of a change in the
settlement's condition.  In the beginning the first-comers
had found an abundance of natural fodder growing in
the sloughs, where, for lack of a water-shed, the spring
thaws stored flood-waters.  There was plenty then for
all.  But with thicker settlement anarchy ensued.  New
neighbors grabbed sloughs on unsettled lands, which
old-timers had sealed to themselves, and so forced them
to steal from one another.  Morrill and the man on
the wagon had "hayed" together for the last three
seasons, which fact explained the significance he
attached to the rattle of the alien mower.\par

"It's Hines!" he muttered when, five minutes later,
he sighted the mower from the crown of a roll.  "The
son of a gun!"\par

The man was running the first swath around a mile-long
slough which lay in the trough of two great rolls.
It was a pretty piece of hay, thick, rank, and so long
that one might have tied two spears together across a
horse's back.  Indeed, when the settler rattled down
the bank and stopped his oxen they were hidden to
the horns, which fact accounted for Hines not seeing
them until his team brought against the load.\par

"Hullo!" he cried, startled.  "Didn't expect to see
you, Carter!"\par

"Don't reckon you did," the settler replied.  The shadow
was now gone from his face.  Cool, cheerful, unconcerned,
he sat in the mower's path, swinging an easy leg.\par

Hines gave him an uneasy glance.  "Been cutting
poles?" he asked, affecting nonchalance.\par

"Yes.  Corral needed raising a couple of rails,"
Carter carelessly answered.\par

Encouraged, Hines made an observation about the
crops which the other answered, and so the talk drifted
on until Hines, feeling that he had established a footing,
said, "Well, I must be moving."  But as he backed
his horses to drive around, the steers lurched forward
and again blocked the way.\par

"Pretty cut of hay this."  Carter ignored the other's
savage glance.  "Ought to turn Morrill thirty tons,
don't you reckon?"\par

Hines shuffled uneasily in the mower seat.  "I didn't
allow," he growled, "as Morrill would want hay this year?"\par

"No?"  The monosyllable was subtly sarcastic.\par

Hines flushed.  "What kin a dead man do with
hay?" he snarled.\par

"Is Morrill dead?"\par

"No!  But Doc Ellis tol' me at Stinkin' Water as he
couldn't live through winter."  He almost yelled it;
opposition was galling his savage temper.\par

"So you thought you'd beat the funeral?" Carter
jeered.  "Savin' man!  Well—he ain't dead yet?"\par

The challenge was unmistakable.  But though brutal,
ferocious as a wolf, Hines shared the animal's preferences
for an easy prey.  Corner him and he would turn, snarling,
but his was the temper which takes no chances with
an equal force.  Now he lived up to his tradition.
Viciously setting his teeth, he awaited the other's action.\par

But Carter was in no hurry.  Leaning back on his
load, he sprawled at ease, turning his eyes to the
fathomless vault above.  Time crept on.  The oxen ceased
puffing and cropped the grass about them, the horses
switched impatience of the flies.  The sun dropped and
hung like a split orange athwart the horizon, the hollows
blued with shadows, which presently climbed the knolls
and extinguished their golden lights.  Soon the last red
ray kindled the forest, silver specks dusted the
darkening sky, only the west blushed with the afterglow.\par

Hines tired first.  "Quitting-time," he growled, backing
his horses.\par

"Took you a long time to find it out," Carter drawled,
giving the words a significance the other had not
intended.  "But grace is always waiting for the sinner.  So
long!  But say!" he called after the disappearing figure,
"if you hear any one inquiring after this slough, you can
tell them as Merrill's goin' to cut it to-morrow."\par

Whipping up his oxen, he swung up the bank and
headed south on Merrill's hay trail.  Fresh from their
rest, the steers stepped out to a lively rattling of chains,
and in a quarter of an hour stopped of their own volition
before his cabin.\par

As Carter entered, the sick man leaned on his elbow
and looked up at his magnificent inches: he loomed
like a giant in the gloom of the cabin.  There was envy
in the glance but no spite.  It was the look the sick
bestow on the rudely healthy.  For Carter's physique
was a constant reminder to Morrill of his own lost
strength—he had been a college athlete, strong and
well set-up, the kind of man to whom women render
the homage of a second lingering glance.  Three years
ago, inherited lung trouble had driven him from the
Eastern city in which he had laid the foundation of a
pretty law practice, but the dry air and open life of the
central plains had not checked the ravages of the
disease.  Still, though but the wraith of his former self,
he had kept a brave face, and now he cheerfully
answered Carter's greeting.\par

"Cast your eye over this," he said, holding out an
open letter.  "It's from my sister Helen."\par

Handling it as tenderly as though it were a feather
from the wing of love, Carter held the letter to the lamp.
It was written in a small, feminine hand which took all
manner of flourishes unto itself as it ran along the lines.
Carter regarded them with a look in which surprise
struggled with respect.  "Oh, shore!" he laughed at
last.  "Them curly cues is mighty pretty, Bert, but it
would take too long for me to cipher 'em out.  What's
it all about?"\par

"She's coming out.  Arrives in Lone Tree day after
to-morrow."\par

"Phew!" Carter whistled.  "Short notice."\par

He thoughtfully stroked his chin.  Lone Tree lay
sixty miles to the south and the Eastern mail-train came
in at noon.  But this was not the cause of his worry.
His ponies could cover the distance within the time.
But there was Hines.  If he did not try the slough,
others might.  Morrill mistook his silence.\par

"I hate to ask you to go," he said, hesitatingly.
"You've done so much for me."\par

"Done nothing," the big man laughed.  "'Twasn't that.
Jes' now I warned Hines off that big slough o' yours,
an' I intended to begin cutting it to-morrow morning."\par

Morrill impulsively extended his hand.  "You're a
good fellow, Carter."\par

"Shucks!" the other laughed.  "Ain't we two the
only Yanks in these parts?  But say! won't she find
this a bit rough?"\par

Morrill glanced discontentedly at the log walls, the
soap-boxes which served for seats, the home-made table,
and the peg ladder that led to the loft above.  Three
years' hard work had rubbed the romance from his
rough surroundings, but he remembered that it had
once been there.  "Oh, I don't know," he answered.
"She'll like it.  Has all the romantic notions about
keeping home in a log-house, you see."\par

"Never had 'em," the other mused, "though mebbe
that was on account of being born in one.  What's
bringing her out?"\par

"Well, now that father's dead I'm all the kin she's
got.  He didn't leave anything worth mentioning, so
Helen has to choose between a place in a store and
keeping house for me.  But say! your team's moving!
Don't tell her I'm sick," he called, as Carter rushed for the
door.  "She'd worry, and think I was worse than I am."\par

"Couldn't very well," Carter muttered, as he ran
after his team.  "No, she really couldn't," he repeated,
as he caught up and climbed upon his load.  "Poor
chap!—An' poor little girl!"\par

\label{a-deputation}%
\hypertarget{a-deputation}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{II}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize A DEPUTATION}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Fifty miles in a day is big travel in the East, yet a
team of northern ponies will, if the load be light, run
it on three legs.  The fourth, unless cinched with a
kicking-strap, is likely to be in the buck-board half the time;
but if the driver is good at dodging he need not use a strap.\par

Starting next morning at sunrise, Carter ran through
the settlements, fed at the mission in the valley of the
Assiniboin at noon, then, climbing out, he rattled
south through the arid plains which cumber the earth
from the river to Beaver Creek.  There Vickery, the
keeper of the stopping-house, yelled to him to put in
and feed.  He had not seen a man for two weeks, and
his wells of speech were full to overflowing.  But Carter
shook denial.  Far off a dark smudge rose from under
the edge of the world—the smoke of the express, he
thought.  One would have believed it within a dozen
miles, yet when, an hour later, he rattled into Lone
Tree, it seemed no nearer than when first it impinged
on the quivering horizon.  This appearance, however,
was deceptive as the first, for he had scarcely unhitched
at the livery before an engine and two toy cars stole
out from under the smudge.\par

"General manager's private car," the station agent
answered Carter's inquiry.  "The old man lays over
here to talk with a deputation.  It's over at the hotel
now, feeding and liquoring up."\par

"The old grievance?" Carter asked.\par

The agent nodded.  "That and others.  They say
we're coming their flesh and blood.  You should hear
old man Cummings orate on that.  And they accuse
us of exacting forty bushels of wheat out of every
hundred we tote out to the seaboard."\par

"Wheat at forty-five, freight to Montreal at
twenty-seven?" Carter mused.  "Don't that pretty near size
it, Hooper?"\par

"Is that our fault?" the agent ruffled, like an irate
gobbler.  "Did we freeze their wheat?  Sound grain is
worth sixty-eight, and if they will farm at the north pole
they must expect to get frozen."\par

"And if you will railroad at the north pole," Carter
suggested, "you ought to—"\par

"Get all that's coming to us," the agent finished.
"But we don't.  Our line runs through fifteen hundred
miles of country that don't pay for axle-grease.  We
must make running expenses, and ought to pay a
reasonable interest to our stockholders, though we haven't
yet.  The settled lands have to bear hauling charges
on the unsettled.  But these fellows don't see our side
of it.  Where would they be without the line, anyway?
Now answer me that, Carter."\par

"Back East, landless, homeless, choring for sixteen a
month an' board," Carter slowly answered.  "I'm not
bucking your railroad, Hooper.  But here's the point—your
people and the government sent out all sorts of
lying literature an' filled these fellows with the idea
that they were going to get rich quick; whereas this is
a poor man's country an' will be for a generation to
come.  Five generations of farmers couldn't have built
this line which one generation must pay for.  There's
the point.  They've clapped a mortgage an' a
fifteen-hundred-mile handicap on their future, an' the interest
is going to bear their noses hard down on the grindstone.
They'll make a living, but they ain't going to have much
of a time.  Their children's children will reap the profit
off their sweat."\par

"No," the agent profanely agreed, "they ain't going
to have a hell of a time."  Having spent his mature
years in one continuous wrangle over freights and rates,
it was positively disconcerting to find a farmer who
could appreciate the necessities of railroad economics,
and after a thoughtful pause the agent said, "You ain't
so slow—for a farmer."\par

"Thank you," Carter gravely answered.  "Some day,
if I'm good, I may rise to the heights of railroading."\par

The agent grinned appreciatively.  "Coming back to
the deputation, these fellows might as well tackle a
grizzly as the old man.  There's not enough of you to
supply grease for a freight-train's wheels."\par

"Oh, I don't know," Carter gently murmured.\par

Ten minutes ago the agent would have hotly proved
his point; now he replied, quite mildly: "If you think
different, tag on to the deputation.  Here it comes, all
het-up with wrongs and whiskey."\par

"There's Bill Cummings!" Carter indicated an elderly
man, very white of beard, very red of face, and
transparently innocent in expression.\par

"He's bell-wether," the agent said, grinning.  Then,
as the approaching locomotive blew two sharp blasts,
he added, "Blamed if the old man won't make mutton
of the entire flock if they don't clear out of the way!"\par

A quick scattering averted the catastrophe while
increasing the heat of the deputation.  Very much
disrumpled, it filed into the car, with Carter tagging on
behind.\par

The general manager, who was smoking by an open
window, tossed out his cigar as he rose.  Not a tall
man, power yet expressed itself in every movement of
his thick-set body; it lurked in his keen gray glance;
was given off like electrical energy in his few crisp words
of welcome.  From the eyes, placed well apart in the
massive head, to the strong jaw his every feature
expressed his graduation in the mastership of men; told
eloquently of his wonderful record, his triumphs over
man and nature.  Beginning a section hand, he had
filled almost every position in the gift of his road,
driving spikes in early days with the same expertness he
now evidenced in directing its enormous affairs—the
road which had sprung from his own fertile imagination;
the road which, from nothing, he had called into
being.  Where others had only discerned mountains,
gulfs, cañons, trackless forest, he had seen a great trunk
line with a hundred feeders—mills, mines, factories,
farms, and steamships plying to the Orient for trade.
And because his was the faith that moves mountains,
the magnificent dream had taken form in wood and iron.\par

Purblind to all but their own interests, the settlers
saw only the proximate result of that mighty
travail—the palace-car with its luxurious fittings.\par

"We pay for this," Carter's neighbor growled.\par

"My, but I'd like his job!" another whispered.  "Nothing
to do but sit there and dictate a few letters."\par

A third gave the figures of the manager's salary, while
a fourth added that it was screwed out of the farmers.
So they muttered their private envy while Cummings
voiced their public grievance.  When surveys were run
for the trunk line, settlers had swarmed in, pre-empting
land on either side of the right of way, and when, to
avoid certain engineering problems, the surveys were
shifted south, they found themselves from fifty to sixty
miles from a market.  A branch had been promised—\par

"When settlement and traffic justify it."  The
manager cut the oration short.\par

He had listened quietly while Cummings talked of
rights, lawsuits, and government intervention; now he
launched his ultimatum on the following silence:
"Gentlemen, our road is not run for fun, but profit, and
though we should very much like to accommodate you,
it is impossible under the circumstances.  I am pleased
to have met you, and"—the corners of the firm mouth
twitched ever so slightly—"and I shall be pleased to
meet you again when you can advance something more
to our advantage than costs and suits.  I bid you good-day."\par

Business-like, terse, devoid of feeling, the laconic
answer acted upon the deputation like a blow in the face.
Cummings actually recoiled, and his expression of
sheep-like surprise, baffled wonder, innocent anger set
Carter chuckling.  He was still smiling as he shouldered
forward.\par

"A minute, please."\par

The manager glanced at his watch.  "I can't spare
you much more."\par

"I won't need it," Carter answered, and so took up
the case.\par

Humorously allowing that Cummings had stepped off
with the wrong foot, that he and his fellows had no case
in law, Carter went on, in short, crisp sentences, to give
the number of settlers on the old survey, the acreage
under cultivation and of newly broken ground, the
lumbering outlook in the spruce forests north of the
Park Lands, the number of tye-camps already there
established, finishing with a brief description of the rich
cattle country the proposed line would tap.\par

Ten minutes had added themselves to the first while
he was talking, but the manager's gray glance had
evinced no impatience.  "Now," he commented, "we
have something to go on.  The settlements alone would
not justify us in building, but with the lumber—and
colonization prospects—"  He mused a while, then, after
expressing regrets for the haste that called him away, he
said, "But if you will put all this and other information
into writing, Mr. Carter, I'll see what we can do."\par

"He's big, the old man."  Nodding at the black trail
of smoke, the agent thus commented on his superior five
minutes later.  Then, indicating the deputation which
was making its jubilant way back to the clapboard
hotel, he said, "They ain't giving you all the credit, are
they?"\par

Shrugging at the last remark, Carter answered the
first.  "He's a big man, shorely.  But, bless you"—he
flipped a thumb at the delegation—"they don't see it.
Any of 'em is willing to allow that the manager has had
chances that didn't fly by his particular roost—just as
though the same opportunity hadn't been tweaking him
by the nose this last twenty years.  There it lay, loose,
loose enough for people to break their shins on, till this
particular man picked it up.  He's big.  Puts me in
mind of them robber barons you read of in history.
Big, powerful chaps, who trod down everything that
came in their own way while dealing out a rough sort
of justice.  There's a crowd"—he looked at the agent
interrogatively—"that haven't had what's coming to
them.  In their times moral suasion, as the parsons call
it, hadn't been invented and folks were a heap blooded.
A little bleeding once in a while kept down the temperature,
and I've always allowed that the barons prevented
a sight more murder than they did."  Then, nailing his
point, he finished: "The historians fixed a cold deck for
them like the one they'll deal this general manager.
But you can't stop the world.  She waggles in spite of
them, and it's the big men that make her go.  But
there!  I must eat.  What does your ticker say of the
express?"\par

"Half an hour late.  You'll just have nice time."  And
as he watched the tall figure swinging across the
tracks, the agent gave words to a thought that was
even then in the general manager's mind—"There's a
division superintendent going to seed on a farm."\par

Having made up ten minutes, however, the train
rolled in while Carter was still at dinner, and as—for
some motive too subtle for even his own definition—he
had not mentioned her coming, Miss Helen Morrill had
become a subject of bashful curiosity to assembled Lone
Tree before he came dashing across the tracks.  Apart
from his size, sunburn, and certain intelligence of
expression, there was really nothing to distinguish this
particular young man from the people who, at home,
were not on her visiting-list, and if polite the girl turned
rather a cold ear to a magnificently evolved and smoothly
told set of lies as he escorted her over to the hotel.
Morrill was busy with the hay, and as he, Carter, had to
come to town for a mower casting he had agreed to bring
her out.  Her brother was well!  A bit delicate!  He
dare not raise her hopes too high.  Oh, he'd pull through!
This clear northern air—and so forth.\par

That clear northern air!  Glowing with color, infinite,
flat, the prairies basked under the afternoon sun.  From
the car windows the girl had seen them unfolding: the
great screeds of God on which he had written his
wonders.  Now nothing interposed between her and their
vast expanse.  Swimming in lambent light they reached
out through the quivering distance till merged with the
turquoise sky.  After she had dined, Carter showed her,
from the hotel veranda, the train from which she had
dismounted, no larger than a toy, puffing defiance at a
receding horizon.  Other things he told her—curious facts,
strange happenings drawled forth easily with touches of
humor that kept her interested and laughing.  Not until
the moon's magic translated the prairie's golden sheen
to ashes, and she unconsciously offered her hand as she
rose to retire, did she realize how completely she had
cancelled her first impression.\par

It was then that Lone Tree closed in on Carter with
invitations to drink and requests for verification of a
theory that the northern settlement was spreading itself
on educational lines.  "She's a right smart-looking girl,"
said the store-keeper, its principal exponent, "and Silver
Creek is surely going to turn out some scholars."\par

But he clucked his sympathy when he heard the
truth.  "An' you say he's having hemerrages?  Shore,
shore!  Here, come over to the store.  That girl don't
look like she'd been raised on sow-belly, an' sick folks is
mighty picky in their eating."\par

So, by moonlight, the buck-board was loaded up with
jams, jellies, fruits, and meats, the best in stock and of
fabulous value at frontier prices.  While the evil deed
was being perpetrated neither man looked at the other.
The store-keeper cloaked his villany by learned
discourse of freight rates, while Carter spoke indifferently
of crops.  Only the parting hand-shake revealed each
conspirator to the other.\par

\label{the-trail}%
\hypertarget{the-trail}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{III}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE TRAIL}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
"To make Flynn's for noon," Carter had said the
preceding evening, "we shall have to be early
on the trail."  And there was approbation in his glance
when he found Helen Morrill waiting upon the veranda.\par

"What pretty ponies!" she exclaimed, quickly adding,
"Are they—tame?"\par

"Regular sheep," he reassured her.\par

However, she still dubiously eyed the "sheep," which
were pawing the high heavens in beliance of their pacific
character, until, catching the humorous twinkle in
Carter's eye, she saw that he was gauging her courage.
Then she stepped in.  As they felt her weight the ponies
plunged out and raced off down the trail; but Carter's
arm eased her back to her seat, and when, flushed and
just a little trembling, she was able to look back Lone
Tree lay far behind, its grain-sheds looking for all the
world like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet.  Over
them, but beyond the horizon, hung a black smudge,
mark of a distant freight-train.  Wondering if one ever
lost sight of things in this country of distances, she
turned back to the ponies, which had now found a
legitimate outlet for their energies, and were knocking
off the miles at ten to the hour.\par

Carter drew a loose rein, but she noticed that even
when talking he kept the team in the tail of his eye.\par

"Yes," he answered her question, "that Devil horse
will bear watching, and Death, the mare, is just about
as sudden.  Why did I name her that?"  He twinkled
down upon her.  "You mightn't feel complimented if
I told."\par

"Well—if I must," he drawled when she pressed the
question.  "You see there's two things that can get
away with a right smart man—death and woman.  So,
being a female—there!  I told you that you wouldn't be
complimented."\par

"Oh, I don't mind," she laughed.  "Like curses,
slights on my sex come home to roost, Mr. Carter.
You are not dead yet."\par

"Nor married," he retorted.\par

This morning they had taken up their acquaintanceship
where it was laid down the night before, but now
something in his manner—it was not freedom; assurance
would better describe it—caused a reversion to her first
coldness.\par

"Doubtless," she said, with condescension, "some
good girl will take pity on you."\par

He looked squarely in her eyes.  "Mebbe—though
the country isn't overstocked.  Still, they've been
coming in some of late."\par

The suddenness of it made her gasp.  How dare he?
Even if he had been a man of her own station!  Turning,
she looked off and away, giving him a cold, if pretty,
shoulder, till instinct told her that he was making good
use of his opportunities.  But when she turned back
he was discreetly eying the ponies, apparently lost in
thought.\par

His preoccupation permitted minute study, and in
five minutes she had memorized his every feature, from
the clean profile to the strong chin and humorous mouth.
A clean, wholesome face she thought it.  She failed,
however, to classify him for, despite his homely speech,
he simply would not fit in with the butchers, bakers,
and candle-stick makers of her limited experience.  One
thing she felt, and that very vividly: he was not to be
snubbed or slighted.  So—\par

"Do we follow the railroad much farther?" she asked.\par

"A smart mile," he answered.  Then, with a sidelong
glance at the space between them, he added, "I wouldn't
sit on the rail."\par

"Thank you," she said, coldly.  "I'm quite comfortable."\par

"Tastes differ," he genially commented.  Then, stretching
his whip, he added, "See that wolf!"\par

In a flash she abolished the space.  "Oh, where?  Will
he—follow us?"\par

"Mebbe not," he said, adding, as he noticed a disposition
on her part to edge out, "But he shorely looks
hungry."\par

It was only a coyote, and afterwards she could never
recall the episode without a blush, but the fact remains
that while the grizzled apparition crowned a roll, she
threw dignity overboard and clung to Carter.  It was
well, too, that she did, for more from deviltry than fear
of the gray shadow the ponies just then bolted.\par

Ensued a minute of dust, wind, bumpings; then,
without any attempt to check their speed, Carter got
the mad little brutes back to the trail.  Several furious
miles had passed before, answering a gasping question
as to whether he couldn't stop them, that imperturbable
driver said:\par

"I ain't trying very hard.  They're going our way,
and we've got to hit this trail some licks to make Flynn's
by noon.  He's the first settler north of the valley."\par

They did hit it some "licks."  One after another the
yellow miles slid beneath the buck-board, deadly in their
sameness.  With the exception of that lone coyote, they
saw no life.  Right and left the tawny prairies reached
out to the indefinite horizon; neither cabin nor
farmstead broke their sweep; save where the dark growths
of the Assiniboin Valley drew a dull line to the north,
no spot of color marred that great monochrome.  Just
before they came to the valley Carter dashed around
the Red River cart of a Cree squaw.  Shortly after they
came on her lord driving industrious heels into the ribs
of a ragged pony.  Then the trail shot through a
bluff—rugged, riven, buttressed with tall headlands to whose
scarred sides dark woods clung, the mile-wide valley lay
before them.  Up from its depths rose the cry of a bell.
Clear, silvery, resonant, it flowed with the stream,
echoed in dark ravines, filled the air with its rippling
music.\par

"Catholic mission," Carter said, and as he spoke the
ponies plunged after the trail which fell at an angle of
forty-five into a black ravine.  The girl felt as though
the earth had dropped from under, then, bump! the
wheels struck and went slithering and ricochetting
among the ruts and bowlders.  A furious burst down
the last slopes and they were galloping out on the
bottom-lands.\par

"Oh!" she exclaimed, regaining breath.  "What recklessness!"\par

"Now do you really call that reckless?"  His mild
surprise would have been convincing but for the wicked
twinkle.\par

"Of course—I do," she said, choking with fright and
indignation.  "I believe—you did it on purpose."\par

"Well, well."  He shook a sorrowful head.  "And to
think I shouldn't have knowed it!  Look out!"\par

They had swung by the log mission with the black-robed
priest in the door, circled the ruins of a Hudson
Bay fort, and now the Assiniboin Ford had suddenly
opened before them.  Fed fat by mountain streams, the
river poured, a yeasty flood, over the ford, a roaring
terror of swift waters.  While the girl caught her breath
they were in to the hubs, the thills; then the green
waters licked up through the buck-board staves.  Half
wading, half swimming, the ponies were held to the
narrow passage by that master-hand.  On either side
smooth, sucking mouths drew down to dangerous currents,
and, reaching, Carter flicked one with his whip.\par

"Cree Injun drowned there last flood."\par

A moment later he turned the ponies sharply
upstream and told of two settlers who had lingered a
second too long on that turn.  Indeed, it seemed to Helen
as though each race, every eddy, perpetuated the
memory of some unfortunate.  She sighed her relief when,
with a rush, the ponies took them up the bank, out of
the roar and swirl, into the shade of a ravine.\par

Glancing up, she caught Carter regarding her with
serious admiration.  "You'll do," he said.  Then she
realized that this man, whom she had been trying to
classify with her city tradesmen, had been trying her
out according to his standards.  The thought brought
sudden confusion.  She blushed.  But with ready tact
he turned and kept up a rapid fire of comment on the
country through which they were passing till she
recovered her composure.\par

For they were now in the Park Lands, the antithesis
of the arid plains on the other side of the river.
Flower-bespangled, dotted with clump poplar, retaining in
August a suggestion of spring's verdure, the prairies
rolled off and away in long earth billows.  Everywhere
rank herbage bowed in sunlit waves under the wind.
Nor was there lack of life.  Here an elk sprang from
behind a bluff.  A band of jumping deer followed him
over the horizon.  There a covey of prairie-chickens rose
on whirring wing; a fox grinned at them from the crest
of a sand-hill.  A rich country, the girl was remarking
on the lack of settlers when Carter extended his whip.\par

"There's the first of them.  That's Flynn's place."\par

Speeding through the enormous grain-fields west of
Winnipeg, Helen had seen from the cars solitary cabins
of frame or sod, pinned down, as it were, in the exact
centre of a carpet of wheat, emphasizing with their
loneliness that vastness about them.  But this was different,
more homelike, if quite as strange.  Built of hewn logs
and lime-washed, Flynn's house nestled with its stables
and out-buildings under the wing of a poplar bluff.
Around it, of course, stretched the wheat; but here it
was merely an oasis, a bright shoal in the sea of brown
that flowed on to a distant dark line, the spruce forests
of the Riding Mountains.\par

Bathed in sunshine, with cattle wandering at will,
knee-deep in pasture, it made a beautiful picture.  The
girl came under its spell.  She felt the freedom, the
witchery of those sun-washed spaces; their silences,
whispers, cloud-shadows, the infinity which broods upon
them.\par

"Is our place like this?" she asked.\par

"Prettier."  Carter indicated the distant forest line.
"We are close in to the bush and the country is broken
up into woodland, lake, and rolling prairie."\par

"Then I can be happy," she sighed.\par

Quickly averting his eyes that their sympathy might
not dampen her mood, he drew her attention to a man
who was cutting green fodder on the far side of the
wheat-field.\par

"There's Flynn."\par

\label{the-coyote-snaps}%
\hypertarget{the-coyote-snaps}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{IV}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE COYOTE SNAPS}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
A tall Irishman of the gaunt Tipperary breed,
Flynn straightened as Carter reined in, and thrust
out a mighty paw.  "Ye're welcome, ma'am; an' ye've
come in season, for the woman's just called to dinner.
Just drive on an' unhitch before the door."\par

"Yes, it's a fine stand of wheat."\par

Walking beside them, he replied to Carter's comment:
"Too foine.  It's a troifle rank to ripen before the
frost."  A wistful shade clouded his face, extinguished the
mercurial twinkle in his eye.  "It 'll freeze, shure."  The
accent on the last syllable was pitiable, for it told of long
waiting, hope deferred, labor ill-requited.  It was the
voice of one who bolsters himself that the stroke of
fate may not utterly kill, who slays expectation lest it
betray him.  Yet in its pessimism dead hope breathed.
"Yes, it 'll freeze," Flynn assured the malicious fates.\par

At close range the house was not nearly so picturesque.
A motley of implements strewed the yard: ploughs, harrows,
rakes, a red-and-green binder, all resting hap-hazard
among a litter of chips, half-hewn logs, and other debris.
The stables were hidden by huge manure piles.  The
place lacked every element of the order one sees on an
Eastern farm—rioted in the necessary disorder of
newness.  Flynn's generation were too busy making farms;
tidiness would come with the next.\par

Not realizing this, Helen was drawing unfavorable
parallels from the pervading squalor, when Mrs. Flynn,
who was simply Flynn in petticoats, came bustling out
with welcomes.  Miss Morrill must come right in!  It
was that long since she, Mrs. Flynn, had set eyes on a
woman's face that she had almost forgotten what they
looked like!\par

"An' you that fond av your glass, mother?" Flynn teased.\par

"Glass, ye say?" Mrs. Flynn retorted.  "Sure an'
'twas yerself that smashed it three months ago.  It's
the bottom av a milk-pan he's been shaving in ever
since, my dear," she added.\par

Flynn winked.  "An' let me advise you, Carter.  If
ivir ye marry, don't have a glass in the house an' ye'll
be able to see ye'self in ivery tin."\par

Out at the stable the merriment died from his face,
and facing Carter he asked: "Phwat's up between ye
and Hines?  I was taking dinner with Bender yesterday,
an' while we was eating along came Hines.\par

"'There's a man,' he says, spaking to Bender av you.
'There's a man! big, impident, strong.  Ye're no chicken,
Bender, but ye couldn't put that fellow's shoulders to
the ground.'  I'm not needing to tell you the effect on
Bender?" Flynn finished.\par

Carter nodded.  He knew the man.  Big, burly,
brutal, Bender was a natural product of the lumber-camps
in which he had lived a life that was little more
than a calender of "scraps."  Starting in at eighteen
on the Mattawa, he had fought his way to the head of
its many camps, then passed to the Michigan woods and
attained the kingship there.  He {\itshape{lived}} rather than {\itshape{loved}}
to fight.  But, though in the northern settlements Carter
was the only man who approximated the lumberman's
difficult standard in courage and inches, so far fate had
denied him cause of quarrel.\par

"The coyote!" Flynn exclaimed, when Carter had
told of Hines's attempt on Morrill's hay-slough.  "An'
him sick in bed, poor man.  I wouldn't wipe me feet on
Hines's dirty rag av a soul.  But he's made ye some
mischief.  'Ye're a liar, Hines!' Bender growls.  'I can
lick him er any other man betwixt this an' the Rockies.'\par

"Hines didn't like the lie, but he gulped it.  'Talk's
cheap,' he snarls.\par

"'Carter's a good neighbor,' Bender answers.  'But if
he gives me a cause—'\par

"'A {\itshape{cause}}?' Hines cackles, laughing.  'Why, him an'
Morrill have grabbed all the best hay in Silver Creek an'
defy anny man to touch it.  Run your mower into their
big slough an' ye'll have cause enough.'\par

"That made Bender hot.  'I'll do it!' he roars, 'this
very day.'  But," Flynn finished, "he had to run out to
the blacksmith's to fix his mower sickle, so he won't get
out till to-morrow morning."\par

"If ye need anny help—" he said, tentatively, as
Carter pondered with frowning brow.  Then, catching the
other's eye, he hastily added: "Ye'll pardon me!  But
Bender's a terr'ble fighter!"\par

His alarm was so palpable that Carter laughed.
"Don't bother," he said.  "I'm not going to roll, bite,
chew, or gouge with Bender."\par

"Look here!" Flynn interposed, with additional alarm.
"Ye'll not be after making anny gun-plays?  This is
Canada, ye'll mind, where they hang folks mighty easy."\par

Carter laughed again.  "There won't be any fight.
Listen!"\par

And Flynn did listen.  As he grasped the other's
meaning, his face cleared and his hearty laugh carried
to the house where Helen was making the acquaintance
of the smaller Flynns.  Six in number, bare-legged, and
astonishingly regular in gradation, they scampered like
mice on her entrance and hid behind the cotton partition
that divided bedroom from kitchen.  For a while they
were quiet, then Helen became aware of a current of
stealthy talk underflowing Mrs. Flynn's volubility.\par

"Ain't her waist small?"\par

"Bet you she wears stays the hull time."\par

"Like them mother puts on to meetin'?"\par

"Shore!"\par

"Git out; her face ain't red.  Mother nearly busts
when she hitches her'n."\par

"Ain't that yaller hair pretty?"  This sounded like a
girl, though it was hard to decide, for all wore a single
sexless garment.\par

"Bet you it ain't all her'n.  Dad says as them city
gals is all took to pieces when they go to bed."  This was
surely a boy, and, unfortunately for him, the remark
sailed out on a pause in his mother's comment.\par

"James!" she exclaimed, raising shocked hands.
"Come right here."\par

He came slowly, suspiciously, then, divining from his
parent's look the enormity of his crime, he dived under
her arm, shot out-doors, and was lost in the wheat.  After
him, a cataract of bare limbs, poured the others, all
escaping but one small girl whom Helen caught, kissed,
and held thereafter in willing bondage until, after
dinner, Carter drove round to the door.\par

Though they had rested barely an hour after their
forty-mile run, the ponies repeated the morning's
performance, to the horror of Mrs. Flynn; then, as though
realizing that they had done all that reputation required,
they settled down to a steady jog—in which respect,
colloquially, they were imitated by their human freight.
A little tired, Helen was content to sit and take silent
note of the homesteads which now occurred at regular
intervals, while Carter was perfecting his plan for the
discomfiture of the warlike Bender.  Slough, lake,
wood-land, farm passed in slow and silent procession.  Once
he roused to answer her comment as they rattled by
some Indian graves that crowned a knoll.\par

"To keep the coyotes from robbing the resurrection,"
he explained the poplar poles that roofed in the graves.\par

He spoke again when the buck-board ran in among a
score of curious mud pillars.  About thrice the height
of a man, inscriptionless, they loomed, weird guardians
of that lonely land till he robbed their mystery.\par

"Them?  Mud chimneys.  You see, when a Cree
Indian dies his folks burn down the cabin to keep his
spirit from returning, and as mud won't burn the
chimneys stand.  Small-pox cleaned out this village."  Then,
with innocent gravity, he went on to tell of a stray
scientist who had written a monograph on those very
chimneys.  "'Monoliths' he called 'em.  Allowed that
they were dedicated to a tribal god, and was used to
burn prisoners captured in war.  It was a beautiful
theory and made a real nice article.  Why did I let
him?  Well, now, 'twould have been a sin to enlighten
him, he was that blamed happy poking round them
chimneys, and the folks that read his article wouldn't
know any better."\par

Chuckling at the remembrance, he relapsed again to
his planning, and did not speak again till they had
crossed the valley of Silver Creek from which the
northern settlement took its name.  Then, indicating a black
dot far off on the trail, he said:\par

"There comes Molyneux."\par

"Two in the rig," he added, a few minutes later.  "A
man and a woman.  That 'll be Mrs. Leslie."\par

Unaccustomed to the plainsman's vision, which senses
rather than sees the difference of size, color, movement
that mark cattle from horses, a single rig from a double
team, Helen was dubious till, swinging out from behind
a poplar bluff, the team bore down upon them.  Two
persons were in the rig: a man of the blackly handsome
type, and a stylish, pretty woman, who, as Carter turned
out to drive by, waved him to stop.\par

"Monopolist!" she scolded, when the rigs ranged side
by side.  "Here I'm just dying to meet Miss Morrill
and you would have whisked her by.  Now do your duty."\par

"Captain Molyneux," she said, introducing her
companion in turn.  "A neighbor.  We just heard this
morning that you were coming and I was so glad; and
I'm gladder now that I've seen you."  Her glance
travelled admiringly over Helen's face and figure.  "You
know there are so few women here, and they—"  Her
pretty nose tip-tilted.  "Well, you'll see them.  Soon I
shall make my call; carry you off for a few days, if your
brother will permit it.  But there!  I'm keeping you
from him.  Good-bye.  Now you may go, Mr. Carter."\par

A touch of merry defiance in the permission caused
Helen to glance up at her companion.  Though Mrs. Leslie's
glance was almost caressing whenever it touched
him, he had stared straight ahead of him while she
chatted.\par

"You don't like them?" the girl asked.  "Why?  She
likes you."\par

His sternness vanished and he smiled down upon her.
"Now, what made you think that?"\par

"I didn't think; I felt it."\par

"Funny things, feelings, ain't they?  I mind one that
took me fishing when I ought to have been keeping
school.  'Twas a beautiful day.  Indian-summer back
East.  You know 't: still, silent, broody, warm; first
touch of gold in the leafage.  I just {\itshape{felt}} that I had to
go fishing.  But when dad produced a peeled hickory
switch that night he told me: 'Son, feelings is treacherous
things.  This will teach you the difference between
thinking and knowing.'  It did—for a while."\par

"But you don't like them?" she persisted, refusing to
be side-tracked.  Then she blushed under his look of
grave surprise, realizing that she had broken one of the
unwritten canons of frontier etiquette.  "I beg your
pardon," she said, hastily.  "I didn't mean to—"\par

His smile wiped out the offence.  Stretching his whip,
he said, "There's your house."\par

Helen cried aloud.  Nestling under the eaves of green
forest, it faced on a lake that lay a scant quarter-mile
to the south.  North, west, and south, trim clump
poplar dotted its rolling land and rose in the fields of
grain.  Here nature, greatest of landscape-gardeners,
had planned her best, setting a watered garden within
a fence of forest.  Just for a second the house flashed
out between two green bluffs, a neat log building,
lime-washed in settler style, then it was snatched again from
her shining eyes.\par

But Carter had seen a figure standing at the door.
"Clear grit!" he mentally ejaculated.  "Blamed if he
ain't up and dressed to save her feelings."  Then, aloud,
he gave her necessary warnings.  "Now you mustn't
expect too much.  He's doing fine, but no doubt pulled
down a bit since you saw him."\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Two hours later Carter stepped out from his own
cabin.  He and Morrill had "homesteaded" halves of
the same section, and as he strode south the latter's
lamp beamed a yellow welcome through the soft night.
Already he had refused an invitation to supper, deeming
that the brother and sister would prefer to spend their
first evening alone together, and now ignoring the
lamp's message, he entered Merrill's stable, saddled the
latter's cattle pony in darkness thick as ink, led him out,
and rode quietly away.\par

Now of all equines, your northern cross-bred pony is
the most cunning.  For three black miles Shyster
behaved with propriety, then, sensing by the slack line
that his rider was preoccupied, he achieved a vicious
sideling buck.  Well executed, it yet failed of its intent.\par

"You little devil!" Carter remonstrated, as he applied
correctives in the form of quirt and spurs.  "Rest don't
suit your complaint.  To-morrow you go on the mower."\par

"Hullo!" a voice cried from the darkness ahead.
"Who's that cussing?"\par

It was Danvers, an English remittance-man, a typical
specimen of the tribe of Ishmael which is maintained in
colonial exile on "keep-away" allowances.\par

"Are you lost?" Carter asked.\par

"Lost?  No!"  There was an aggrieved note in Danvers'
tone.  "You fellows seem to think that I oughtn't
to be out after dark.  There's Jed Hines going about
and telling people that I knocked at my own door one
night to inquire my way."\par

"Tut, tut," Carter sympathized.  "And Jed counted
such a truthful man!  You'll find it hard to live that
down.  But where might you be heading for now—if
it's any of my darn business?"\par

"Morrill's.  Heard his sister had arrived.  I'm going
to drop in and pay my respects."\par

"Humph! that's neighborly.  They've had just two
hours to exchange the news of three years; they'll
shorely be through by this.  Keep right on, son.  In
five-and-twenty minutes this trail will land you at Jed
Hines's door."\par

"Oh, get out!" Danvers exclaimed.\par

"Sir, to you?" Carter assumed a wonderful stiffness.
"I'll give you good-night."\par

"Oh, here!" the youth called after him.  "I didn't
mean to doubt you."\par

Carter rode on.\par

Ridden by a vivid memory of the jeering Hines,
Danvers became desperate.  "Oh, Carter!  Say, don't
get mad!  Do tell a fellow!  How shall I get there?"\par

Carter reined in.  "Where?  To Hines's?  Keep right
along."\par

"N-o!  Morrill's?"\par

"Oh, let me see.  One—two—three—take the third
fork to the left and second to the right; that ought to
bring you—to your own door," he finished, as he
listened to the departing hoof-beats.  "That is, if
you follow directions, which ain't likely.  Anyway," he
philosophically concluded, "you ain't agoing to bother
that girl much to-night."\par

Spurring Shyster, he galloped on, and in ten
minutes caught Murchison, an Englishman of the yeoman
class, out at his stables.  Receiving a hearty affirmative,
rounded out with full-mouthed English "damns," in
answer to his question, he declined Murchison's
invitation to "put in," and rode on—rode from homestead to
homestead, asking always the same question, receiving
always the same answer.  Remittance-men, Scotch
Canadians, Seebach, the solitary German settler, alike
listened, laughed, and fell in with the plan as Flynn had
done.  He covered many miles and the moon caught
him on trail before he permitted the last man to carry
his cold legs back to bed.  It was long past midnight
when he unsaddled at Morrill's stable.\par

Softly closing the door on his tired beast, he stood
gazing at the house.  Far-off in the woods a night-owl
hooted, a bittern boomed on the lake shore, the still air
pulsed to the howl of a timber-wolf.  Though born of
the plains, its moods had never palled upon him.
Usually he had been stirred.  But now he had no ears for the
night nor eyes for the lake chased in rippled silver.
He listened, listened, as though his strained hearing
would drag the girl's soft sleep breathing from the
house's jealous embrace.  Soon he leaned back against
the door musing; and when, having inspected the cabin
from one side, the moon sailed over and looked down
on the other, he was still there.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
As the first quivering flushes shot through the grays
of dawn Bender came out of his cabin.  He intended
to be at work on Merrill's big slough at sunrise.  But as
he rammed home the sickle into its place in the
mower-bar a projecting rivet caused it to buckle and break.
That spelled another journey to the blacksmith's, and
the sun stood at noon before the sickle was in place.
Falling to oiling with savage earnestness, that an ancient
Briton might have exhibited in greasing his scythe-armed
war-chariot, Bender then stuffed bread and meat
into his jumper, hitched, and drove off north, looking
for all the world like a grisly pirate afloat on a yellow
sea.\par

Half an hour's easy jogging would carry him to
Merrill's big slough, but on the way he had to pass two
smaller ones.  The first, which had a hundred-yard belt
of six-foot hay ringing its sedgy centre, tempted him
sorely, yet he refrained, having in mind a bigger prey.
At the next he reined in, and stared at a dozen cut
swaths and a mower with feeding horses tied to its
wheels.\par

It was Molyneux's mower, and to Bender its presence
could only mean that the settlement was rushing the
sick man's sloughs.  "Invasion of the British!" he
yelled.  "What 'll Carter say to this?  Remember Yorktown!"\par

He was still laughing when a buck-board came rattling
up the trail behind him.  It was Hines.\par

"Cut that slough yet?" he asked.\par

"Just going there," Bender answered; then gave the
reason of his delay, garnished with furious anathema on
the maker of sickles.  "But ain't that a joke?" he said,
indicating Molyneux's mower.\par

Hines whinnied his satisfaction.  "Didn't think it was
in the Britisher.  But my! won't that gall the long-geared
son of a gun of a Yank?  Drive on an' I'll follow
up an' see you started—mebbe see some of the fun," he
added to himself, "if Carter's there."\par

Quarter of an hour brought them to the big slough,
which, on this side, was ringed so thickly with willow-scrub
that neither could see it till they reined on its
edge.  Both stared blankly.  When Hines went by that
morning a mile of solid hay had bowed in sunlit waves
before the breeze.  Save a strip some twenty yards wide
down the centre, it now lay in flat green swaths, while
along the strip a dozen feeding teams were tied to as
many mowers.\par

"A bee, by G—!" Bender swore.\par

"Hell!" Hines snarled even in his swearing.  "Bilked,
by the Almighty!"\par

For a moment they stood, staring from the slough to
each other, the lumberman red, angry, foolish, Hines
the personification of venomous chagrin.  Presently his
rage urged him to a great foolishness.\par

"You an' your casting!" he sneered.  "Scairt, you
was—plumb scairt!"\par

Astonishment, the astonishment with which a bull
might regard the attack of an impertinent fly, obliterated
for one moment all other expression from Bender's
face.  Then, roaring his furious anger, he sprang from
his mower.\par

Realizing his mistake, Hines had already lashed his
ponies, but even then they barely jerked the buck-board
tail from under the huge, clutching fingers.  Foaming
with passion, Bender gave chase for a score of yards,
then stopped and shook his great fist, pouring out
invective.\par

"To-morrow," he roared, "I'll come over and cut on you."\par

"What's the matter?  You seem all het up?"  Carter's
quiet voice gave Bender first notice of the buckboard
that had come quietly upon him from the grassy
prairie.  With Carter were Flynn, Seebach, and two
others.  Not very far away a wagon was bringing others
back from dinner.\par

"We're all giving Morrill a day's cutting," Carter went
on, with a quiet twinkle.  "I called at your place this
morning with a bid, but you was away.  We're right
glad to see you.  Who told you?"\par

Gradually a grin wiped out Bender's choler.  "You're
damn smart," he rumbled.  "Well—where shall I begin?"\par

\label{jenny}%
\hypertarget{jenny}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{V}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize JENNY}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Thus did the bolt which Hines forged for Carter
prove a boomerang and recoil upon himself.  For
next morning Bender started his mower on a particularly
fine slough which Hines had left to the last because
of its wetness.  Moreover, Hines had ten tons of cut
hay bleaching near by in the sun and dare not try to
rake it.\par

It was oppressively hot the morning that Bender
hitched to rake the stolen slough; fleecy thunder-heads
were slowly heaving up from behind the swart spruce
forest.\par

"'Twon't be worth cow-feed if it ain't raked to-day,"
the giant remarked, as he overlooked his enemy's hay.
Then his satisfaction gave place to sudden anger—a
rake was at work on Hines's hay less than a quarter-mile away.\par

"Hain't seen me, I reckon," Bender growled.  Leaving
his own rake, he crouched in a gully, skulked along
the low land, gained a willow thicket, and sprang out
just as the rake came clicking by.\par

"Now I've got you!" he roared.  Then his hands
dropped.  He stood staring at a thin slip of a girl, who
returned his gaze with dull, tired eyes.  It was Jenny
Hines, Jed's only child.\par

"Well," Bender growled, "what d' you reckon you're doing?"\par

"Raking."  Her voice was listless as her look.  Just
eleven when her mother died, her small shoulders had
borne the weight of Jed's housekeeping.  Heavy
choring had robbed her youth, and left her, at eighteen,
nothing but a faded shadow of a possible prettiness.\par

Bender coughed, shuffled.  "Where's your dad?"\par

"Up at the house.  He allowed you wouldn't tech
me.  But," she added, dully, "I'd liefer you killed me
than not."\par

Bender's anger had already passed.  Rough pity now
took its place.  His furious strength prevented him
from realizing the killing drudgery, the lugging of heavy
water-buckets, the milking, feeding of pigs, the hard
labor which had killed her spirit and left this utter
hopelessness; but he knew by experience that a young
horse should not be put to a heavy draw, and here was
a violation of the precept.  Bender was puzzled.  Had
he come on a neighbor maltreating a horse, a curse
backed by his heavy fist would have righted the wrong;
but this frail creature's humanity placed her wrongs
outside his rough remedial practice.\par

He whistled, swore softly, and, failing to invoke
inspiration by these characteristic methods, he said,
kindly: "Well, for onct Jed tol' the truth.  Must have strained
him some.  Go ahead, I ain't agoing to bother you."\par

Having finished raking his own hay, he fell to work
with the fork, stabbing huge bunches, throwing them
right and left, striving to work off the pain at his heart.
But pity grew with exertion, and, pausing midway of
the morning, he saw that she also was plying a weary
fork.\par

"You need a rest," he growled five minutes later.
"Sit down."\par

She glanced up at the ominous sky.  "Can't.  Rain's
coming right on."\par

Lifting her bodily, he placed her in a nest of hay.
"Now you stay right there.  I'm running this."\par

Picking up her fork, he put forth all his magnificent
strength while she sat listlessly watching.  It seemed
as though nothing could banish her chronic weariness,
her ineffable lassitude.  Once, indeed, she remarked,
"My, but you're strong!" but voice and words lacked
animation.  She added the remarkable climax, "Pa says
you are a devil."\par

"Yes?" he questioned.  "An' you bet he's right, gal.
Keep a right smart distance from men like me."\par

"Oh, I don't know," she slowly answered.  "I'd liefer
be a devil.  Angels is tiresome.  Pa's always talking
about them.  He's a heap religious—in spells."\par

Pausing in his forking, Bender stared down on the
small heretic.  Vestigial traces of religious belief
occupied a lower strata of his savage soul.  Crude they
were, anthropomorphic, barely higher than superstitions,
yet they were there, and chief among them was an idea
that has appealed to the most cultured of men—that
woman is incomplete, nay, lost, without religion.\par

"Shore, child!" he protested.  "Little gals shouldn't
talk so.  That ain't the way to get to heaven."\par

"D' you allow to go there?" she demanded, with
disconcerting suddenness.\par

Bender grimaced, laughed at the ludicrousness of the
question.  "Don't allow as I'd be comfortable.
Anyway, lumbermen go to t'other place.  But that don't
alter your case.  Gals all go to heaven."\par

"Well!"  For the first time she displayed some animation.
"I ain't!  Pa's talked me sick of it.  I allow
it's them golden streets he's after.  He'd coin 'em into
dollars."\par

Seeing that Hines had not hesitated in minting this,
his flesh and blood, Bender thought it very likely, and
feeling his inability to cope with such reasonable heresies
he attacked the hay instead.  Having small skill in
women—the few of his intimate experience being as free
of feminine complexities as they were of virtue—he was
sorely puzzled.  Looking backward, he remembered his
own pious mother.  Hines's wife had died whispering of
religion's consolations; yet here was the daughter
turning a determined back on the source of the mother's
comfort.  It was unnatural to his scheme of things,
contrary to the law of his vestigial piety.  He would
try again!  But when, the hay finished, he came back
to her, he quailed before her pale hopelessness; it called
God in question.\par

Limbering up her rake, he watched her drive away, a
small, thin figure, woful speck of life under a vast gray
sky.  For twisting cloud masses had blotted out the
sun, a chill wind snatched the tops from the hay-cocks
as fast as Bender coiled them, blots of water splashed
the dust before he finished his task.\par

Black care rode home with him; and as that night
the thunder split over his cabin, he saw Jenny's eyes
mirrored on the wet, black pane, and it was borne dimly
upon him that something besides overwork was
responsible for their haunting.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Bender had a friend, a man of his own ilk, with whom
he had hit camp and log-drive for these last ten years.
At birth it is supposable that the friend inherited a
name, but in the camps he was known only as the
"Cougar."  A silent man, broad, deep-lunged, fierce-eyed,
nature had laid his lines for great height, then
bent him in a perpetual crouch.  He always seemed
gathering for a spring, which, combined with tigerish
courage, had gained him his name.  Inseparable, if
Bender appeared on the Mattawa for the spring drive,
it was known that the Cougar might be shortly
expected.  If the Cougar stole into a Rocky Mountain camp,
a bunk was immediately reserved for his big affinity.
Only a bottle of whiskey and two days' delay on the
Cougar's part had prevented them from settling up the
same section.  However, though five miles lay between
their respective homesteads, never a Sunday passed
without one man riding over to see the other, and it
was returning from such a visit that Bender next fell
in with Jenny Hines.\par

It was night and late, but as Bender rode by the
forks where Hines's private road joined on to the Lone
Tree trail, a new moon gave sufficient light for him to
see a whitish object lying in the grass.  He judged it a
grain-sack till a convulsion shook it and a sob rose to
his ears.\par

"Good land, girl!" he ejaculated, when, a moment
later, Jenny's pale face turned up to his, "what are you
doing here?"\par

"He's turned me out."\par

"Who?"\par

"Jed."  The absence of the parental title spoke
volumes—of love killed by slow starvation, cold sternness,
of youth enslaved to authority without mitigation of
fatherly tenderness.\par

Without understanding, Bender felt.  "What for?"
he demanded.\par

Crowding against his stirrup, she remained silent, and
the touch of her body against his leg, the mute appeal
of the contact, sent a flame of righteous passion through
Bender's big body.  Indecision had never been among
his faults.  Stooping, he raised her to the saddle before
him, and as she settled in against his broad breast a
wave of tenderness flowed after the flame.\par

"No, no!" she begged, when he turned in on Jed's
trail.  "I won't go back!"  And he felt her violently
trembling as he soothed and coaxed.  She tried to slip
from his arms as they approached the cabin, and her
terror filled him with such anger that his kick almost
stove in the door.\par

"It's me!" he roared, answering Hines's challenge.
"Bender!  I came on your gal lying out on the prairies.
Open an' take her in!"\par

In response the window raised an inch; the moonlight
glinted on a rifle-barrel.  "Kick the door ag'in!"  Jed's
voice snarled, "an' I'll bore you.  Git! the pair
of ye!"\par

"Come, come, Jed."  For her sake Bender mastered
his anger.  "Come, this ain't right.  Let her in an'
we'll call it by-gones."\par

"No, no!" the girl protested.\par

Though she had whispered, Jed heard, and her
protest touched off his furious wolfish passion.  "Git!
Won't you git!" he screeched, following the command
with a stream of screamed imprecations, vile abuse.\par

If alone Bender would have beaten in the door, but
there was no mistaking Hines's deadly intent.  Warned
by the click of a cocking hammer, he swung Jenny in
front again, galloped out of range; then, uncertain
what to do, he gave his beast its head, and half an hour
later brought up at his own door.\par

"There, sis," he said, as he lit his lamp, "make yourself
happy while I stable Billy.  Then I'll cook up some
grub, an' while we're eating we can talk over things."\par

She smiled wanly yet gratefully.  But when he
returned she was rocking back and forth and moaning.\par

"Don't take on so," he comforted.  "To-night I'll
sleep in the stable; at daybreak we'll hit south for
Mother Flynn's."  But the moans followed in quick
succession, beaded sweat started on her brow, and as
she swung forward he saw that which, two hours before,
had turned Jed Hines into a foaming beast.\par

"Oh, my God!"  The exclamation burst from him.
"You pore little thing! you pore little child!  Only a
baby yourself!"\par

Stooping, he lifted her into his bed, tucked her in,
then stood, doubtful, troubled, looking down upon her.
Two-thirds of the settlers in Silver Creek were of Scotch
descent; were deeply dyed with the granite hardness,
harsh malignancy, fervid bigotry which have caused the
history of their race to be written in characters of blood.
Fiercely moral, dogmatically religious, she could expect
no mercy at their hands.  Hard-featured women, whose
angular unloveliness had efficiently safeguarded their
own virtue, would hate her the more because her fault
had been beyond their compass.  Looking forward,
Bender saw the poor little body a passive centre for a
whorl of spite, jealousy, virulent spleen, and the rough
heart of him was mightily troubled.  In all Silver Creek,
Mrs. Flynn was the only woman to whom he felt he
might safely turn.  But Flynn's farm lay eighteen miles
to the south—too far; the child was in imminent labor.
What should he do?\par

"Jenny," he said, "any women folk been to your
house lately?"\par

When she answered that they had been without a
visitor for three months, Bender nodded his satisfaction.
"Lie still, child," he said.  "I'll be back right smart."\par

He was not gone long—just long enough to drive over
to and back from Carter's.  "I'm not trusting any of
the women hereabouts," he told Carter.  "Though it
ain't generally known, the Cougar was married once.
The same Indians that did up Custer cleaned up his
wife and family.  An' as he always lived a thousand
miles from a doctor, he knows all about sech things.
So if you'll drive like all hell for him, I'll tend to the
little gal."\par

And Carter drove.  In one hour he brought the
Cougar, but even in that short time a wonderful
transformation was wrought in that rough cabin under
Bender's sympathetic eyes.  From the travail of the
suffering girl was born a woman—but not a mother.  For of
the essence of life Jenny had not sufficient to endow the
child of her labor.  The spark flickered down in herself,
sank, till the Cougar, roughest yet gentlest of nurses,
sweated with apprehension.\par

"It's death or a doctor," he told Carter, hiding his
emotion under a surly growl.  "Now show what them
ponies are good for."\par

And that night those small fiends did "show what
they were good for";—made a record that stood for
many a year.  Roused from his beauty-sleep, Flynn
caught the whir of hot wheels and wondered who was
sick.  It was yet black night when Carter called Father
Francis, the silent mission priest, from his bed.  By
lantern-light they two, layman and priest, spelled each
other with pick and shovel in the mission acre, and when
the last spadeful dropped on the small grave, Carter
flew on.  At cock-crow he pulled into Lone Tree, sixty
miles in six hours, without counting the stop at the
mission.\par

"I doubt I've killed you," he murmured, as the ponies
stood before the doctor's door, "but it just had to be
done."\par

The doctor himself answered the knock.  A heavy
man, grizzled, gray-eyed, sun and wind had burned his
face to leather, for his days and nights were spent on
trail, pursuing a practice that was only limited by the
endurance of horse-flesh.  From the ranges incurably
vicious broncos were sent to his stables, devils in brute
form.  He used seven teams; yet the toughest wore
out in a year.  Day or night, winter or summer, a
hundred in the shade or sixty below, he might be seen
pounding them along the trails.  Even now he had just
come in from the Pipe Stone, sixty miles southwest, but
he instantly routed out his man.\par

"Hitch the buckskins, Bill," he said, "and let him
run yours round to the stables, Carter.  He'll turn 'em
out prancing by the time we're back."\par

It took Bill, the doctor, and Carter to get the buckskins
clear of town, but once out the doctor handed the
lines to Carter.  "Now let 'em run."  Then he fell
asleep.\par

He woke as they passed the mission, exchanged words
with the priest, and dozed again till Carter reined in at
Bender's door.  Then, shedding sleep as a dog shakes
off water, he entered, clear-eyed, into the battle with
death.\par

It was night when he came out to Bender and Carter,
sprawled on the hay in the stable.\par

"She'll live," he answered the lumberman's look,
"but she must have woman's nursing.  Who's to be?
Mrs. Flynn?" He shook his head.  "A good woman,
but—she has her sex's weakness—damned long-tongued."\par

Bender looked troubled.  "There ain't a soul knows
it—yet."\par

The doctor nodded.  "Yes, yes, but I doubt whether
you can keep it, boys."\par

"I think," Carter said, slowly, "that if it was rightly
put Miss Morrill might—"\par

"That sweet-faced girl?"  The doctor's gray eyes lit
with approval, and the cloud swept back from Bender's
rugged face.\par

"If she only would!" the giant stammered, "I'd—"  He
cast about for a fitting recompense, and finding none
worth, finished, "There ain't a damn thing I wouldn't
do for her."\par

The doctor took doubt by the ears.  "Well, hitch
and let's see."\par

Realizing that the girl would probably have her fair
share of the prejudice, he opened his case very gently
an hour later.  But he might have saved his diplomacy.\par

"Of course!" she exclaimed, as soon as she grasped
the facts.  "Poor little thing!  I'll go right over with
Mr. Bender.\par

"And remember," the doctor said, finishing his
instructions, "she needs mothering more than medicine."\par

So, satisfied, he and Carter hit the back trail, but not
till he had examined Morrill with stethoscope and
tapping finger.  "Must have some excuse for my trip," he
said, "and you'll have to serve.  So don't be scared if
you happen to hear that you have had another hemorrhage.
Good!  Good!" he exclaimed at every tap, but
once on trail he shook his head.  "May go in a month;
can't last six.  Be prepared."\par

A fiery sunset was staining the western sky when, on
his way back from Lone Tree, Carter stopped at Bender's
door.  The glow tinged the furious cloud that rose
from the Cougar's pipe.\par

"Doing well," he laconically answered.  "Never saw
a gal pull round better from a fainting spell."\par

Nodding comprehension, Carter mentioned a doubt
that had nettled him on the trail.  "Jed?  Do you
think he'll—"\par

Sudden ferocity flamed up in the Cougar's face.  "I
tended to him this morning," he said, slowly, ominously.
"He's persuaded as he mistook the girl's symptoms.
Anyway, he ain't agoing to foul his own nest so long as
no one knows."\par

"Wants her back, I suppose?"\par

The Cougar nodded.  "She's worth more to him than
his best ox-team.  But he ain't agoing to get her.
Don't go!  Miss Morrill's inside an' wants to run over
home for some things.  Fine gal that."  The Cougar's
set fierceness of face almost thawed as he delivered his
opinion.\par

Driving homeward, Helen opened the subject just
where the Cougar had left it.  "She won't go back to
her father," she said, "and I don't blame her.  But she
can't stay here."\par

However, Jenny's future was already provided.
"You needn't to worry," Carter said.  "The doctor's
fixed things.  He and his wife have neither chick nor
child of their own; they'll take her in."\par

The girl exclaimed her surprised gladness.  To her,
indeed, the entire incident was a revelation.  Here three
rough frontiersmen had banded successfully together to
protect a wronged child and keep her within their rough
social pale.  Through all they had exhibited a tact and
delicacy not always found in finer social stratas, and
the lesson went far in modifying certain caste ideas—would
have gone farther could she have known the fulness
of their delicacy.\par

Only once was the cause of Jenny's illness ever hinted
at among the three; that when Carter and Bender lay
waiting for the doctor in the stable.\par

"You don't happen to have made a guess at the
man?" Carter had asked.\par

"She hain't mentioned him," the giant answered, a
little stiffly.\par

But he thawed when Carter answered: "You'll pardon
me.  I was just wondering if a rope might help her
case."\par

Bender had shaken his head.  "Las' year, you'll
remember, one of Molyneux's remittance-men uster drive
her out while Jed had her hired out to Leslie's.  But
he's gone back to England."\par

Also Helen had learned to look beneath Bender's
scarred surface.  Every day, while Jenny lay in his
shanty, he would slip in between loads of hay to see
her.  At first the presence of so much femininity
embarrassed him.  One petticoat hanging on the wall while
another floats over the floor is enough to upset any
bachelor.  Only when sitting with Jenny did he find
his tongue; then, giant of the camps, he prattled like a
school-boy, freeing thoughts and feelings that had been
imprisoned through all his savage years.  It was
singularly strange, too, to see how Jenny reciprocated his
feelings.  She liked Helen, but all of her petting could
not bring the smile that came for Bender, in whom she
sensed a kindred shy simplicity.\par

Helen was to get yet one other light from these
unpromising surfaces, a light bright as those of Scripture
which are said to shine as lamps to the feet.  A few
days after Jenny's departure Bender rode up to the
door where Carter sat talking with Morrill.\par

"Got any stock to sell?" he inquired.  "Cows in calf?"\par

"Going in for butter-making?" Carter inquired, grinning.\par

"Nope!"  The giant laughed.  "'Tain't for myself
I'm asking.  I'm a lumberman born an' bred; the
camps draw me like salt-licks pull the deer.  I'd never
have time to look after them.  Farming's play with me.
On'y I was thinking as it wouldn't be so bad if that little
gal had a head or two of her own growing inter money.
You kin let 'em run with your band summers, an' I'll
put up winter hay for them an' the increase.  How are
you, miss?"  He nodded as Helen came to the door.\par

It was her first experience in such free giving, and she
was astonished to see how devoid his manner was of
philanthropic consciousness.  Plainly he regarded the
whole affair as very ordinary business.  Carter's answer
accentuated the novel impression—"What's the matter
with me contributing them heifers?"\par

"Da—beg pardon, miss."  Bender blushed.  "No you
don't.  This is my funeral.  But I'm no hawg.  Now if
you wanter throw in a couple of calves—"\par

Thus, without deed, oath, or mortgage, but with a
certainty that none of these forms could afford, did little
Jenny Hines become a young lady of property.  The
matter disposed of, Bender called Carter off to the
stable, where, after many mysterious fumblings, he
produced from a package a gorgeous silk kerchief of
rainbow hues.\par

"You'll give Miss Morrill this?"\par

But Carter balked, grinning.  "Lordy, man; do your
own courting."\par

"Say!" the giant ejaculated, shocked.  "You don't
reckon she'd take it that way?"\par

Carter judiciously considered the question, and after
mature deliberation replied: "I've seen breach-of-promise
suits swing on less.  But I reckon you're safe
enough—if you explain your motive."\par

The giant sighed his relief.  "Did you ever give a gal
anything, Carter?"\par

"Did I?  Enough to stock a farm if 'twas collected."\par

"How'd you go about it?"\par

"Why, jes' give it to her.  You're bigger'n she is;
kain't hurt you."\par

"Oh, Lordy, I don't know."  Bender sighed again.
"It's surprising what them small things kin do to you.
Say, there's a good feller.  You take it in?"\par

But Carter sternly refused, and five minutes later
Bender might have been seen, stern and rigid from the
desperate nature of his enterprise, sitting on one of
Helen's soap-boxes.  In the hour he talked with Morrill,
he never once relaxed a death-grip on his hat.  His eye
never once strayed towards Helen, and it was late that
evening when she found the kerchief under his box.\par

It speaks well for her that she did not laugh at its
gorgeous colors; and her smile as she scribbled a little
note of thanks that was delivered by Carter was far too
tender for ridicule.  Truly she was learning.\par

\label{the-shadow}%
\hypertarget{the-shadow}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{VI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE SHADOW}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Down a half-mile furrow that gleamed wetly black
against the dull brown of "broken" prairie, Carter
followed his oxen.  He was "back-setting," deep-ploughing
the sod that had lain rotting through the summer.
For October, it was hot; an acrid odor, ammoniacal
from his sweating beasts, mingled with the tang of the
soil and the strong hay scent of scorching prairies.
Summer was making a desperate spurt from winter's
chill advance, and, as though realizing it, bird, beast,
insects, as well as men, went busily about their business.
The warm air was freighted with the boom of bees,
vibrated to the whir of darting prairie-chicken, the
yells of distant ploughmen; for, stimulated by an
answer from the railroad gods, the settlers were striving
to add to their wheat acreage.\par

"In certain contingencies," the general manager
answered the petition, "we will build through Silver Creek
next summer."\par

Judging by a remark dropped to his third assistant,
"uncertain" would have expressed his meaning more
correctly.  "A little hope won't hurt them, and ought
to go a long way in settling up the country.  By-the-way,
who signed these statistics?  Cummings?  That
wasn't the tall Yankee who spoke so well.  He never
would have sent in such a jumble."\par

Blissfully ignorant, however, of railroad methods, the
settlers interpreted the guarded answer as an iron
promise.  Forgetting Carter's part in getting them a
hearing, Cummings and his fellows plumed themselves
upon their diplomacy, took to themselves the credit—in
which they evidenced the secret malevolence that a
rural community holds against the man who rises above
its intellectual level.  Human imperfection is invariable
through the ages.  Plebeian Athens ostracised the just
Aristides.  Similarly, Silver Creek evidenced its petty
jealousy against its best brains.  "Oh, he's too damned
smart!" it exclaimed, whenever Carter was mentioned
for the council, school trustee, or other public office, nor
paused to consider its logic.\par

Slowly, with heavy gaspings, the oxen stopped at the
end of the furrow, and as he sat down on the plough while
they rested, Carter blessed the happy chance that had
caused him to "break" clear down to Morrill's boundary.
Helen sat in the shade of her cabin, thus affording him
delicious glimpses of a scarlet mouth, slightly pursed
over her sewing, a loose curl that glowed like a golden
bar amid the creamy shadows of her neck, the palpitant
life of the feminine figure.  Small wonder that he
lingered on that turn.\par

"It's that warm," he hypocritically remarked, fanning
himself, "those poor critters' tongues are hanging to
their knees."\par

The girl bowed to hide her smile.  "They always seem
to tire at this end of the field."\par

"Discerning brutes," he answered, nowise nonplussed.\par

She broke a silence.  "It is considered bad manners
to stare."\par

"Yes?" he cheerfully inquired.  "I'll make a note of that."\par

A few moments later she remarked, "You have a
poor memory."\par

"Thank you for telling.  In what way?"\par

"You were staring."\par

"N-o."\par

"You were."\par

"Beg your pardon.  It takes two to make a stare.
If I keep on looking you in the eye—that's staring.  If
I'm looking when you ain't supposed to know
it—that's—that's—"\par

"Well?" she prompted.\par

"Mighty pleasant," he finished, rising.\par

As he moved off she looked curiously after.  While
he was talking, some fleeting expression, trick of speech
had recalled him as she first saw him at Lone Tree—a
young man, tall, sunburned, soft of speech, ungrammatical,
and the picture had awakened her to a change in herself.
In this her fourth month in the settlement she felt she
had lost the keen freshness of the stranger's point of
view.  She now scarcely noticed his idiom, accent,
grammatical lapses.  Oddities of speech and manner that at
first would have provoked surprise or laughter no longer
challenged her attention.  If the land's vast rawness still
impressed, she was losing the clarity of first perceptions.\par

She was being absorbed; her individuality was slowly
undergoing the inevitable process of addition and
cancellation.  How dim, indefinite the past already seemed.
Some other girl might have lived it, gone through the
round of parties, balls, associated with the well-groomed
men, refined girls of her acquaintance.  How vivid,
concrete was the present!  She contemplated her hands,
roughened by dish-washing.  Did it foretell her future?
Would this equilibration with environment end by
leaving her peer of the gaunt, labor-stricken women of the
settlements?  She shuddered.  The thought stamped
her mood so that, returning on the other round, Carter
passed on, thinking her offended.\par

"Why so grave, sis?"  Her brother smiled down upon
her from the doorway.  Since her arrival he had had
many ups and downs, alternating between bed-fast and
apparent convalescence.  To-day the fires of life would
flare high, to flicker down to-morrow like a guttering
candle that wastes the quicker to its end.  Not for the
world would she increase his anxiety with her foreboding.
Hiding the dejection with a quick smile, she turned
his question with another.\par

"Bert, why does Mr. Carter dislike Captain Molyneux,
the Leslies, and—"\par

"The English crowd in general?" he finished for her.
"Does he?  I never heard him say much against them."\par

"No, he's one of your silent men.  But actions count
more than words.  When he drives me to or from
Leslies' he invariably refuses the invitation to come in,
pleading hurry."\par

"Well, he has been pretty busy."\par

Morrill stated a fact.  Carter had spent the haying
months in the forest sloughs, where they cut the bulk
of their fodder.  There, with the deep woods smothering
every errant breeze, mercury at a hundred, the fat
marsh sweating underfoot, he had moved, raked, or
pitched while sand-flies took toll of his flesh by day and
mosquitoes converted his homeward journey into a feast
of blood.  Eighty head of cattle, his and Merrill's, had
to be provided for, and he alone to do it.  And it was
from these heavy labors that he had stolen time to drive
Helen back and forth.\par

"But he repels their every attempt at friendliness!"
she protested.  "Positively snubbed Captain Molyneux
the other day."\par

Morrill laughed.  "Why do they persist in their overtures?
Carter is flesh and blood of the frontier, which
makes no bones over its likes and dislikes.  With him a
friend is a friend.  He has no use for civilization which
calls upon its votaries to spread their friendship in a
thin veneer over a vast acquaintance.  Having,
courteously enough, intimated that he doesn't desire closer
acquaintance, he expects them to heed the hint.  Failing,
they may expect to have it stated in stronger terms.
Molyneux has lived long enough in the north to know
that."  His answer, however, simply completed the
circle and brought them back to the starting-point.\par

She restated the issue.  "But why doesn't he like them?"\par

Morrill answered her question with another.  "Why
do you like them?"\par

"They are nice."\par

"Mrs. Leslie?" he catechised.\par

"A trifle frivolous, perhaps, but—I like her."\par

"Leslie, Danvers, Poole, and the rest of them?"\par

"Impractical," she admitted, "thoroughly impractical,
all but Captain Molyneux.  His farm is a model.
Yet—I like them."\par

She spoke musingly, as though examining her feelings
for cause, analysis of which would have shown that the
wide differences between herself and her new acquaintances
had added to the glamour and sparkle which are
given off by fresh personalities.  She liked their
refinement, courtesy, subtleties, and grace of conduct which
shone the brighter in that rough setting.  To her their
very speech was charming, with its broad vowels,
leisurely drawled, so much softer than the clipped
American idiom.\par

They were, indeed, over-refined.  Five centuries ago
the welding of Celt, Saxon, Roman, Norman into one
homogeneous whole was full and complete; since then
that potent mixture of blood had undergone slow stagnation.
Noble privilege and laws of entail had checked
in the motherland those selective processes which sweep
the foolish, wicked, and vicious from the face of the
earth.  Protected by the aristocratic system, the fool,
the idler, the roué had handed their undesirableness
down the generations, a heavy mortgage on posterity.
Ripe fruit of a vicious system, decay had touched them
at the core; last links of a chain once strong, they had
lacked the hot hammering from grim circumstance that
alone could make them fit to hold and bind.\par

Morrill laid his thin finger on the spot.  "All right,
Nell, they are harmless."  He laughed as he used the
scornful term which the Canadian settlers applied to
their English neighbors.  "You must have some company.
I don't dislike them myself, and would probably
like them better if it was not for their insufferable
national conceit and blind caste feeling.  They look
with huge contempt on all persons and things which
cannot claim origin in the narrow bit of English society
from which they sprang.  I'm not denying their
country's greatness.  But, like the Buddhist, lost in
contemplation of his own navel, they have turned their
eyes inward till they're blind to all else.  On we
Americans they are particularly hard, regarding us with the
easy tolerance that one may extend to the imperfections
of an anthropoid ape.  Now don't fire up!  They have
always been nice to me.  Still I can feel the superiority
beneath the surface.  With Carter it is different.  Him
they classify with the Canadian settlers, and you may
fancy the effect on a man who, in skill of hands and
brain, character, all the things that count in life, stands
waist-high above them.  He sees them cheated, cozened
by every shyster.  Men in years, they are children in
experience, and if help from home were withdrawn not
one could stand on his own legs.  They are the
trimmings of their generation, encumbrances on the family
estate or fortune, useless timber lopped off from the
genealogical tree.  Do you wonder that he despises them?"\par

"I think," she said, after a thoughtful pause, "that
he is too stern in his judgments.  Impracticability isn't
a crime, Bert, and people ought not to be blamed for
the conditions that made them."\par

"True, little wisehead."\par

"He ought," she went on, "to be more friendly.  I'm
sure Mrs. Leslie likes him."\par

Morrill smothered a laugh.  "Carter's a mighty
handsome man, young lady, and Mrs. Leslie is—a shade
impressionable.  But in social affairs women decide on
women, men on men."\par

She nodded, puckering her brow.  "Yes, but he
behaved dreadfully to Captain Molyneux."\par

Her genuine distress prevented the laugh from
escaping.  "Tell me about it," he sympathized.\par

"It was the other evening when he came to drive me
home.  Despite his reserve, the younger boys all like
him, and when Captain Molyneux brought me out he
was telling Mr. Poole and Mr. Rhodes about a horse
that Danvers had bought from Cummings.  'The critter,'
Carter said, 'is blind, spavined, sweenied, and old
enough to homestead.'\par

"'Well,' the captain added, 'Danvers has always
needed a guardian, Mr. Carter.'"\par

"In his patronizing way?" Morrill commented.\par

"A little, perhaps," she admitted.  "Then, looking
straight at us, Carter answered, 'He could have picked
a worse.'  What did he mean, Bert?  The captain
reddened and the boys looked silly."\par

Morrill grinned.  "Well—you see, Nell, Molyneux's
income is mostly derived from the farming of pupils
who are apprenticed to him by a firm of London lawyers
while under the impression that colonial farming is a
complex business that requires years of study.  Having
whacked up from five hundred to five thousand dollars
premium, they find, on arrival, that they have simply
paid for the privilege of doing ordinary farm work.
You said Molyneux's place was a model.  No wonder,
when he draws pay where other men have to hire.  No,
the business isn't exactly dishonorable!"  He anticipated
her question.  "He does teach them something, and
prevents them from falling into the hands of Canuck
shysters who would bleed them for hundreds when he
takes fifties.  But—well, it isn't a business I'd care to
be in.  But there!  I've talked myself tired, and
Molyneux is coming at three to drive you up to Leslie's.
You have just half an hour to dress."\par

"But I won't go," she protested, "if you're not feeling
well."\par

"Bosh!" he laughed.  "I'm dying to be rid of you.
Expect to get quiet sleep this afternoon."\par

But as, half an hour later, he watched her drive away,
his face darkened, and he muttered: "This will never
do.  She can't settle down to this life.  Just as soon—"  A
fit of coughing left him gasping; but, under the
merciful hallucination that attends consumption, he finished,
"I'll sell out as soon as I'm rid of this cough and go
back to the law."\par

Carter also watched her go.  As, dank with sweat,
grimed with dust and labor, he "geed" his oxen around
the "land," she went by, a flutter of billowy white,
deliciously dainty, cool, and clean.  The contrast
emphasized the difference between them so strongly that a
sudden feeling of bitter hopelessness caused him to
return only a stern nod to her bow and smile.  Surprised,
she looked back, and gleaning, perhaps, an intuition of
his feeling from the dogged set of his face and figure,
she was swept with sudden pity.\par

For a mile she was quiet; but while the sun shines
youth may not hobnob with care, and that was a
perfect day.  Autumn's crimsons mottled the tawny
prairies; waves of sunshine chased one another over the
brown grasses to the distant forest line; and as, with
cheerful clatter of pole and harness, the buggy dipped,
swallow-like, over the long earth rolls, her spirits rose.
She laughed, chatted, within five miles was involved in
a mild flirtation.  That was wicked!  Of course!
Afterwards, in private, she mortified the strain of coquetry
that made such shame possible.  Yet it was very
natural.  Given a handsome man, a pretty maid, and
isolation, what else should follow?  Molyneux had travelled
in far countries and talked well of them and their savage
peoples.  He knew London, the Mecca of womankind,
like a book; abounded in anecdotes of people and places
that had been awesome names to her.  Also he was
skilled in subtle flattery, never exceeding by a
hair's-breadth the amount which her vanity—of which she
had a pretty woman's rightful share—could easily
assimilate.  Small wonder if she forgot the grim figure at the
ploughtail.\par

Forgetfulness, however, was not for Carter.  As he
followed the steady rhythm of his furrows in heat and
dust, heavy thought now loosened, now tightened the
corners of his mouth.  But bitterness did not hold him
long.\par

"Baby!  You are going to get her.  But that ain't
the way to play the game," he said, as the buggy
disappeared.  And she saw only friendliness in his smile on
her return that evening and the score of other occasions
on which he watched her goings and comings.\par

He "played his game" like a man, and with a masterly
hand.  Never obtrusive, he was always kind, cheerful,
hopefully sympathetic during Merrill's bad spells.  At
other times his dry humor kept her laughing.  He was
always helpful.  When the snows blanketed the prairies
he instructed her in the shifts of winter housekeeping—how
to keep the cabin snug when the blizzard walled it
in fleecy cloud; how to keep the frost out of the cellar
and from the small stock of fruits in the pantry.
Together they "froze down" a supply of milk against the
time when it would be cruel to keep cows milking.  A
night's frost transmuted her pans of milk into oval
cakes, which he piled out-doors like cordwood.  A milk
pile!  The snows soon covered it, and how she laughed
when, drawing home wood from the forest, he mistook
the pile for a drift and so upset his load.\par

Indeed, he wrought well!  Kindliness, good temper,
consideration, these are splendid bases for love.  Not
that he ever hinted his hope.  He was far too shrewdly
circumspect.  It speaks for the quality of his wit that
he recognized that, given differences in rank and station,
love must steal upon her from ambush.  Startled, she
would fly behind ramparts that would be proof against
the small god's sharpest arrows.  So he was very careful,
masking his feeling under a gentle imperturbability;
sure that, if not alarmed, she must turn to him in the
coming time of trouble.\par

For Morrill had steadily failed since winter set in.
During the Christmas week he rallied, recovered voice
and color, improved so much that Helen yielded to his
wish for her to attend a New Year's party at Mrs. Leslie's;
and as she kissed him good-bye there was nothing
to indicate that this was but the last flash, the leaping
flame which precedes the darkness.\par

A genuine frontier party, it was to be an all-day affair,
and Carter drove her up in the morning.  New Year had
broken beautifully: clear, bright, almost warm; for the
first time in a month the mercury had thawed long
enough to register twenty-eight below.  There had been
no wind or drift for a week, so the trail was packed hard,
and as the ponies swept its curves, balancing the cutter
on one or the other runner, rapid motion joined with
pleasurable anticipation to raise the girl's spirits to the
point of repentance.\par

"Here I'm laughing and chatting," she said, soberly,
"when I ought to be home with Bert."\par

"Nonsense!"  Carter glanced approvingly upon the
glow which the keen air had brought to her cheeks.
"You haven't been out for a month, and you were
getting that pale and peaked.  I shall be with him.  Now
you just go in for a good time."\par

His generous solicitude for her happiness, for she was
going among people he did not like, touched her.  "I
wish you were coming," she said.  Then she added,
"Won't you come in—just for a little while—if
Mrs. Leslie asks you?"\par

He returned her coaxing smile.  "I'll see."  And as
the men were all away, clearing a slough for skating,
he stayed long enough to drink a toast with Mrs. Leslie.\par

That lady's eyes shone with soft approval as, standing
by the table that was already spread with glass,
silver, and white napery, he bowed.  "To your continued
health and beauty."\par

"Now wasn't that pretty?" she exclaimed, after he
was gone.  "Do you know, standing there in his furs,
so tall and strong, he reminded me of one of those old
Norsemen who sometimes strayed into degenerate
southern courts.  You are happy in your cavalier, my dear.
If he asked me, I believe I'd run away with him."  And
there was a sigh in her laugh.  For though a good fellow,
Leslie was prodigiously chuckle-headed, and she had
moods when his simple foolishness was as unbearable as
her own frivolity—dangerous moods for a woman of her
light timber.\par

"I wish," she added, a little later, "that we could
have persuaded him to stay."\par

He knew better.  Striding, a conqueror, into southern
halls, the Norseman cut a mighty figure where he would
have made but a poor appearance as an invited guest.
A thought that was expressed in Carter's meditation on
the homeward drive.\par

"She meant it, shorely!  But, bless her! you ain't to
be drawn into such a brace game.  You'd look nice
among those dudes."\par

He had left no fire in his cabin, but he was not
surprised when, afar off, he saw his stove-pipe flinging a
banner of smoke to the crystal air.  As yet the northland
had not achieved refinements in the shape of locks
and bolts, and, coming in from a forty-mile drive from
a Cree village, Father Francis, the priest of the
Assiniboin mission, had put in and brewed a jug of tea.\par

Easy, courteous in bearing, upright despite his silvered
years, the priest came to the door and welcomed Carter
home.  "Not much travel beyond the settlements," he
said.  "It was pretty heavy going and my ponies are
tired.  So I'll just accept the old invitation, son, and
stay the night—that is"—his mellow laugh rang
out—"if my presence won't make you anathema maranatha
unto your neighbors."\par

Carter knew them, their rigid dogmatism, the bigotry
which made them look askance at this man who, for
thirty years, had fought the devil over the face of a
parish as big as an Eastern State.\par

"I don't allow that they'll more than excommunicate
me," he grinned, "and if they do I reckon that you'd
drop the bars of your fold."\par

"Gladly!" the priest laughed.  "They are always
down, son."  So, seated by the humming stove with the
jug steaming between them, the two settled down to
exchange the news of the neighborhood—an elastic term
that stretched over territory enough to set an Old-World
kingdom up in business.\par

It was strange gossip.  To the north of them—and
not very far at that; old Fort Pelly lay within twenty
miles—the Hudson Bay Company, the oldest of chartered
traders, still lorded it over the tribes.  In dark woods,
on open prairies stood the forts with their storehouses,
fur lofts waiting groups of Indians.  There Factor,
Clerk, the Bois Brulés still lived and loved in the
primitive fashion, careless of the settlement, first wave of
civilization that was lipping around their borders.  So
the talk ran on fur packs, mishaps by trail or river,
sinister doings in the far north, where the aftermath
of the Metis rebellion was still simmering.  A wild
budget!  What between it and Carter's choring, dark was
settling as he and the priest entered Morrill's cabin.\par

Both started at what they saw.  Despite Carter's
optimism in Helen's presence, he had been fully alive
to Morrill's condition, yet—he now stood, shocked,
grieved in the presence of the expected.\par

The sick man was wellnigh spent, yet the stroke of
death brought only a spark from his iron courage.
"Another hemorrhage!" he whispered.  "Shortly after
you left.  No, don't go for Helen.  She gets so little
pleasure.  It is all over.  I'll be all right to-morrow."\par

But it was {\itshape{not}} all over—though it would be "right"
on the morrow.  The rising moon saw Carter's ponies
scouring the ghostly snows.\par

It had been a jolly party, skating in the afternoon,
music and dancing in the evening; then, as reserve
thawed under the prolonged association, they had fallen
to playing Christmas games.  Forfeits were being
"declared" as Carter reined in at the door, and Mrs. Leslie's
merry tones fell like blasphemy upon his ear.\par

"Fine or superfine?"\par

"Superfine?  Then that must be Helen!  Captain
Molyneux will—"  The penalty was drowned in uproar,
which also smothered his knock.  Followed loud laughter,
and the door quivered under the impact of struggling
bodies.\par

"Don't—please!"\par

Now, under Christmas license no girl is particularly
averse to being kissed, and had Molyneux gone a little
more gently about it, Helen had probably offered no
more than the conventional resistance.  But when he
forced her head back so that her lips would come up to
his with all the abandon of lovers, she broke his grip,
and when pinned again against the door, struggled madly.\par

"Don't!"\par

There was no mistaking her accent.  A flame of
anger, leaping, confusing, blinded Carter.  His every
muscle contorted.  From his unconscious pressure, hasp and
handle flew from the door; as Mrs. Leslie shrieked her
surprise, his hand dropped on Helen's shoulder, and
from that small leverage his elbow sent Molyneux
staggering back to the wall.\par

The action cleared his brain, calmed the great muscles
that quivered under his furs with primordial impulse to
break and tear.  The flush faded from his tan, the flash
from his eye.  The hasp lay on the floor with the
handle he had forgotten to turn.  He saw neither them nor
the guests in their postures of uneasy astonishment.
Before his mental vision rose the scene he had just left,
the priest kneeling in prayer beside a dying man.\par

The reaction of his shove had thrown Helen in against
him, and her touch recalled his mission.  "Your
brother—" he began, then paused.  He had meant to break
it gently, but the confusion of conflicting emotions left
him nothing but the fact.  "Is—" he went on, then,
appalled by a sudden sense of the ruthlessness of it, he
stopped.  But, reading the truth in his eyes, she
collapsed on his arm.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
To Carter, waiting outside in the moonlight for Helen,
came Molyneux, and the door closing behind him shut
in the hum of wonder and the sobbing that came from
the bedroom where the women were putting on their wraps.\par

Molyneux was smoking, though, to give him his due,
he did not require that invaluable aid to a cool bearing.
Regarding the spirals, curling sharply blue in the
moonlight, he remarked, "I don't quite understand your
methods, my friend."  The insolence of the "my friend"
is indescribable.  "It may be fashionable in Stump town
to announce bad news by breaking down a gentleman's
door, but with us—it savors of roughness."\par

"{\itshape{Roughness?}}"  Carter scrutinized the dim horizon.
"It wasn't all on one side of the door—{\itshape{my friend}}."  His
mimicry was perfect.\par

The captain hummed, cleared his throat.  "A little
Christmas foolery—perfectly allowable."\par

Carter's gaze shifted to the nimbus about the moon,
a clear storm warning.  "Foolery becomes roughness
when it ain't agreeable to both parties."\par

"Who told you it wasn't?"\par

"My ear.  If yours didn't—it needs training."\par

Molyneux smoked out a pause that perhaps covered a
slight confusion.  "Well, I don't care to accept you for
a music-master.  Under the distressing circumstances,
I shall have to let it pass—for the present.  But I shall
not forget."\par

Carter smiled at the moon.  "Looks like storm?"\par

\label{mr-flynn-steps-into-the-breach}%
\hypertarget{mr-flynn-steps-into-the-breach}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{VII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize MR. FLYNN STEPS INTO THE BREACH}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
After putting forth a feeble straggle on the morning
of the funeral, the pale winter sun retired for
good as the north wind began to herd the drift over
vast white steppes.  Though fire had been kept up all
night in Merrill's cabin by Mrs. Flynn, who had come
in to perform the last offices, a pail of water had frozen
solid close to the stove.  After a quarter of an hour in
the oven, a loaf of bread yet showed frost crystals in its
centre at breakfast; a drop of coffee congealed as it fell
in the saucer.\par

It was, indeed, the hardest of weather.  By noon a
half-inch of ice levelled the window-panes with the sash;
pouring through the key-hole a spume of fine drift laid
a white finger across the floor.  Outside, the spirit
thermometer registered forty-five below.  The very air was
frozen, blanketing the snow with lurid frost clouds.
Yet, though a pair of iridescent "sun-dogs" gave storm
warnings, a score of Canadian settlers, men and women,
assembled for the service in the cabin.  Severe, silent,
they sat around on boards and boxes, eying Mrs. Leslie
and other English neighbors with great disfavor,
inwardly critical of the funeral arrangements.  For
ceremony and service had been stripped of the lugubrious
attributes which gave mournful satisfaction to the
primitive mind.  Helen herself, in her quiet grief, was
a disappointment; and she wore no black or other
grievous emblem.  Worse!  The casket-lid was screwed
down, and, filched of their prerogative of "viewing the
corpse," they turned gloomy faces to the theological
student who had come out from Lone Tree.\par

Here was an additional disappointment.  Afterwards,
in the stable, it was held that he had not improved the
occasion.  Of Morrill, who had been so lax in his
attendance at occasional preachings as to justify a suspicion
of atheism, he could have made an edifying text, thrilling
his hearers with doubts as to whether the man was
altogether fallen short of grace.  But there was none of
this.  Just a word on the brother's sunny nature and
brave fight against wasting sickness, and he was passed
without doubt of title to mansions in the skies.\par

"I don't call that no sermon," Hines growled, as he
thrust a frosty bit into his pony's mouth.  "Missed all
the good points, he did."\par

"Never heerd the like," said Shinn, his neighbor,
nearest in disposition as well as location.  "Not a bit
of crape for the pall-bearers.  I know a person that
ain't going to be missed much."\par

"I've heerd," another man said, "as he doubted the
Scriptures.  If that is so—Is it true as the Roman
priest was with him at the last?"\par

Hines despondently nodded.  "We'll hope for the
best," he said, with an accent that murdered the hope.\par

Shinn, however, who never could compass the art of
suggestion, gave plainer terms to his thought.  "There
ain't a doubt in my mind.  It's a warning to turn from
the paths he trod."\par

"You needn't be scairt."  From the gloom of the far
corner, where he was harnessing the team that was to
draw the burial sleigh, Bender's voice issued.  "You
needn't be scairt.  There ain't a damn one of you
travelling his trail."\par

Ensued a silence, then Hines snarled, "No, an' I ain't
agoing to follow him on this.  If you fellows want to
tag after priests' leavings, you kin.  I'm pulling my
freight for home."\par

"You're what?"\par

Hines quailed as Bender's huge body and blue-scarred
face materialized from the gloom.  "I said as 'twas too
cold to go to the grave."\par

"You did, eh?  Well, you're going.  Not that your
presence is necessary, but just because you ain't to be
allowed to show disrespect to a better man than
yourself.  Tie up that hoss.  You're agoing to ride with
me.  An' if there's any other man as thinks his team
ain't fit to buck the drifts"—his fierce eyes searched
for opposition—"he'll find room in my sleigh."\par

So with Hines—albeit much against his will—heading
the procession, a long line of sleighs sped through the
mirk drift to the lonely acre which had been set apart
for the {\itshape{long}} sleep.  A few posts and a single wire
marked it off from white wastes, and through these the drift
flew with sibilant hiss, piling against the mounded grave
which Flynn and Carter had thawed out and dug, inch
by inch, with many fires, these last two days.  And there
was small ceremony.  King Frost is no respecter of
persons, freezes alike the quick and the dead.  Removing
his cap to offer a short prayer, the student's ears turned
deathly white; while he rubbed them with snow, the
mourners spelled one another with the shovels, working
furiously in vain efforts to warm chilled blood.  Roughly
filled, the grave was left to be smoothed in warmer
season; the living fled, leaving the dead with the drift, the
frost, the wind, stern ministers of the illimitable.\par

No woman had dared the weather.  Lying in the
bottom of a sled, under hides and blankets, with hot
stones at hands and feet, Helen had gone home with
Mrs. Leslie.  Coming back from the grave she formed
the subject of conversation between Flynn and Carter,
who rode together.\par

To Flynn's inquiry Carter replied that, as far as he
was aware, she had no private means.  Her father, a
physician in good practice in a New England town, had
lived up to every cent of his income, and the insurance
he carried had been mortgaged to start the brother out
West.\par

"Not having any special training," Carter finished,
"she had to choose between a place in a store or
keeping house for him."\par

"It's no snap in them sthores," Flynn sighed.  "Shmall
pay an' big temptations, they're telling me."  Then,
giving Carter the tail of his eye, he added, "But there'll
be nothing else for it—now?"\par

"Oh, I don't know," Carter mused.  "Flynn, are you
and the other married folks around here going to let
your families grow up in ignorance?  Ain't it pretty
nigh time you was forming a school district?"\par

In the slit between his cap and scarf the Irishman's
eyes twinkled like blue jewels.  Affecting ignorance,
however, he answered, "An' phwere would we be after
getting a teacher in this frozen country?"\par

"Miss Morrill."\par

Flynn subdued his laugh out of respect to the
occasion.  "Jest what's in me own mind.  An' there'll be
no lack av children for the same school, me boy, when
you—There, don't be looking mad!  'Tis after the
order of nature; an' I'm not blaming ye, she's sweet
as she's pretty.  Putting you an' me out av the
question, I'd do it for her.  An' it shouldn't be so
hard—if we can corral the bachelors.  But lave thim to me."\par

And Flynn went about it with all the political sagacity
inherent in his race.  "We'll not be spreading the
news much," he told the married men to whom he broached
the subject.  "Not a word till we get 'em in meeting,
or they'll organize an' vote us down."\par

Accordingly the summons to gather in public meeting
was issued without statement of purpose, a mystery
that brought out every settler for twenty miles around.
An hour before time, some fifty men, rough-looking
fellows in furs, arctic socks, moose-skins, and
moccasins, crowded into the post-office, which, as most
centrally located, was chosen for the meeting.\par

The expected opposition developed as soon as the
postmaster, who presided, mentioned "eddycation."\par

"More taxation!" a bachelor roared.  "You're to
marry the girls an' we're to eddycate the kids!"\par

"Right you are, Pete!" others chorused.\par

But Flynn was ready.  "Is that you, Pete Ross?"  He
transfixed the speaker with his blue twinkle.  "An'
yerself coorting the Brown girl so desprit that she don't
get time to comb her hair anny more?\par

"An' you, Bill MacCloud," he went on, as Peter,
growling that he "wasn't married yet," carried his
blushing face behind the stove, "you that's galloping
your ponies so hard after the Baker girl.  Twins it was,
twice running, in her mother's family, an' well ye know
it.  A public school ain't good enough for you, Bill?
Which is to be—a governess, or a young ladies'
siminery?"\par

So, one after another, Flynn smote the bachelors.
Had a man so much as winked at a girl, it made a text
for a sermon that was witty as {\itshape{risque}}.\par

Yet he was so good-tempered about it that by the
time he had finished grilling the last victim the
first-cooked were joining their laughter to that of the
married men.\par

Then Flynn turned his eloquence upon a common
evil.  Everywhere the best of the land had passed into
the hands of non-resident speculators, who hindered
settlement and development by holding for high prices.
"Was it a question of increased taxation?" Flynn asked.
Then let the non-residents pay.  Under the law they
could expend eight hundred dollars on a building.  Well,
they would distribute the contracts among themselves—one
man cut logs, another hew them, a third draw them,
and so on!  Every man should have a contract, an' who
the divil would care if taxes were raised on the
speculators.\par

It was his closing argument, however, that finished
the bachelors.  "Now me an' Jimmy have spotted a
teacher, a right smart young woman—"\par

A howl of applause cut him short—the bachelors
would call it settled!\par

Thus it came to pass that as, a week or so after the
funeral, Carter was driving Helen from Leslie's back to
her cabin, a deputation consisting of Mr. Flynn and
Mr. Glaves was heading in the same direction.\par

All that week the cabin had stood, fireless, a mournful
blot on the snowscape, but though she was only to be
there for the hour required to pack her belongings,
Carter had swept out the drift that morning and put on
the fires.  So the place was cosey and warm.  Yet, with
all its cheer, on entering, she relapsed into the first
passionate grief.  For nothing is so vividly alive as the
things of a dead person, and everywhere her glance fell
on objects her brother had used.  Divining the cause,
Carter left her to have her cry out on pretence of stable
chores, and when he returned she was busily packing.\par

So while she worked he talked, explaining her affairs
as related to himself through his partnership with
Morrill.  Their cattle were worth so much, but as it
would require a summer's grazing to fit them for
market, he would advance the money on her share.  He
did not mention the fact that he would have to borrow
it himself at usurer's interest.  As to the homestead:
Land was unsalable since the bottom fell out of the
boom, but in any case it was advisable to hold for the
values that would accrue with the coming of the railroad.
He would rent it, on settler's terms, paying roadwork
and taxes for use of the broken land.\par

As, kindly thoughtful for her interests, he ran on,
she rose from her packing, grasped his hand impulsively,
squeezed his arm to her bosom.\par

"You have been so good!"  The sunsets in her cheeks,
the softness of her glance, her touch, almost upset his
reason.  But he resisted a mad impulse.\par

"Nonsense!" he said, when he could trust himself to
speak.  "I'm going to make money off you."\par

"Really?" she asked, smiling.\par

"Really," he smiled back.\par

"I—wish you could," she sighed.  "But I am afraid
you are saying that to please me.  Well, you know best.
Do as you please."\par

Had he done as he pleased, the question of their mutual
interests would have been simply solved.  But the time
was not ripe.  He was too shrewd to mistake gratitude
for love.\par

"Now," he said, resolutely thrusting away temptation,
"if it's any of my darn business—what are your plans?"\par

"My plans?"  Leaning on the table beside him, she
gazed dreamily upon the frosted panes.  The question
forced in upon her the imminence of impending change
and brought a feeling of strong revulsion.  The ties that
death forges are stronger than those of life.  It was
inexpressibly painful, just then, to think of leaving the
land which held her recent dead.\par

"My plans!" she mused, knitting her brows.  "I
haven't any—yet.  Of course I have relatives, back
East.  But as father did not like them, I hardly know
more than their names.  I shall have to do something,
but Mrs. Leslie is so good.  She won't hear of me leaving
until spring.  I have heaps of time to plan."\par

But having bucked trail all morning, the solution of
her immediate future just then heralded its arrival by
the groan of frosty runners.\par

"Me an' Jimmy," Mr. Flynn explained, after he had
introduced his co-trustee, "is a depytation.  Being as
it's the only crop the frost won't nip, Silver Creek is
going to raise a few legislators.  We want the young
lady to teach our school."\par

"But," Helen objected, when she had assimilated the
startling news, "I never taught school."\par

"You'll nivir begin younger," Flynn comforted; to
which he added, "An' it's the foinest training agin the
time ye'll have a few av your own."\par

Mr. Glaves solemnly contemplated the blushing
candidate.  "You kin sum, ma'am—an' spell?"\par

"Oh yes," she assured him.  "I graduated from high-school."\par

"You don't say!"  Both trustees regarded her with
intense admiration, and Glaves said, "We didn't expect
to get that much for our money, so we'll jest have you
go a bit easy at first, lest there'll be some sprained
intellec's among the kiddies."\par

\label{when-april-smiled-again}%
\hypertarget{when-april-smiled-again}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{VIII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize WHEN APRIL SMILED AGAIN}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
"We'll begin right soon on the building," Mr. Glaves
had said at parting.  So when the mercury
began to take occasional flights above zero in the last
days of February, a gang turned loose in the bush.
For two weeks thereafter falling trees and the bell-like
tinkle of a broadaxe disturbed the forest silence.  Then
spring rode in on the back of a Chinook wind and caught
them hauling.  Ensued profanity.  Thawing quickly,
the loose snows slid away from the packed trails, causing
the sleds to "cut off"; the bush road was mottled with
overturned loads.  Also the brilliant sun turned the
snowscape into one huge reflector.  Faces frizzled.
Dark men took the colors of raw beefsteak, fair men
peeled and cracked like over-ripe tomatoes.  Yet they
persisted, and one day in early April stood off to look
on their finished work.  "Chinked," sod-roofed,
plastered, the log school-house gleamed yellow under the
rays of the dying sun—education, the forerunner of
civilization, had settled in the land.\par

As his cabin was nearest the school, the honor of
boarding the teacher fell to the postmaster; and though
her choice caused heart-burnings among others who
had coveted the distinction, it was conceded wise.  For
not only did the Glaves's establishment boast the only
partitioned room in the Canadian settlement, but his
wife, a tall, gaunt woman, excelled in the concoction of
carrot-jams, turnip-pies, choke-cherry jellies, and other
devices by which skilled housewives eke out the
resources of an inhospitable land.\par

In the middle of April school opened; a dozen small
thirsters after knowledge arranged themselves in demure
quiethood before authority that was possessed of its
own misgivings.  Teacher and scholars regarded one
another with secret awe.  But this soon wore off and they
toiled amicably along the road which winds among
arithmetical pitfalls and grammatical bogs to academic
glories.  It was milestoned by deputations, that road,
said visitations generally consisting of one
person—mostly unmarried and very red in the face—who
inquired if the "kids was minding their book," then went
off chuckling at his own hardihood.  Also it seemed as
though all the stray cattle for fifty miles around headed
for the school.  Helen grew quite expert in ringing
variations on the fact that she "had not seen a
strawberry steer with a white patch on the left flank."  Her
smile always accompanied the answer, and the owners
of the hypothetical estrays would carry away a vision of
a golden and glorified school-ma'am.  What of these
pleasant interests, and an unexpected liking which she
had developed for the work itself, she became very
happy in a quiet way as time dulled the edge of her sorrow.\par

But during the three months that preceded school
opening the fates had not been idle.  Attending strictly
to their knitting, they had run a tangled woof in and
out the warp of several lives.\par

"She's so good!" Helen had exclaimed, in her gratitude
of Mrs. Leslie; but analysis of that lady's motives
would have shown them not altogether disinterested.\par

Excluding a certain absence of principle that was
organic, and therefore hardly chargeable against her
till philosophers answer the question, "Can the leopard
change his spots or the Ethiop his skin?" Mrs. Leslie
was not fundamentally vicious.  Like the average of
men and women, she would have preferred to have been
good, and, given a husband whom she feared and loved,
she might have developed into a small Puritan mightily
jealous for their mutual prestige.  Lacking this,
however, she was as a straw in a corner, ready to rise at
the first wind puff.  If, so far, she had lived in the fear
of Mrs. Grundy, her conformity inhered in two causes—no
man in her own set had stirred her nature, and, till
Helen came, the winds of Opportunity had blown away
from Carter.\par

What drew her to him she herself could hardly have
said; and if the cause is to be found outside of the
peculiar texture of her own nature, it must be in the
natural law which makes opposites attract.  Nature
wars incessantly against the stratification which
precedes social decay.  Whether of blood or water, she
abhors stagnation.  Her torrential floods cleanse the
backwaters of languid streams; passionate impulses, such
as Mrs. Leslie's, provide for the injection into worn-out
strains of the rich corpuscles that bubble from the soil.
Carter's virile masculinity, contrasting so strongly with
the amiable effeminacy of her own set, therefore attracted
Mrs. Leslie, and, having now lassoed Opportunity—in
the shape of Helen—she hitched the willing beast and
drove him tandem with inclination.\par

Either by intuition or knowledge subtly wormed from
himself or others, she learned Carter's habits, and no
matter the direction of the drives which she and Helen
took together, it was pure accident if they did not come
in touch with him.  Also at intervals they called at his
cabin, after one of which visits Mrs. Leslie put the
house-cleaning idea into Helen's head, insinuating it so
cleverly that the girl actually thought that it originated
with herself.\par

"Did you {\itshape{ever}} see anything {\itshape{so}} untidy?" she exclaimed,
as on that occasion they drove homeward.  "Harness,
cooking-pots, provisions, all in a tangle.  Bachelors are
such grubby creatures!  But really, my dear, he deserves
to be comfortable.  Couldn't we do something?—hire
some one to—"\par

If she had counted on the girl's grateful enthusiasm,
it did not fail her.  "Let's do it ourselves!" she
exclaimed.  "I'd love to!"\par

So, in Carter's absence, the two descended upon the
cabin with soap, pails, and hot water.  Mrs. Leslie, the
delicate, white-armed woman who kept a girl to do her
own work, rolled up her sleeves and fell to work like a
charwoman; and it is doubtful if she were ever happier
than while thus expending, in service, her reserve of
illegal feeling.  There was, indeed, something pitiful in
her tender energy.  When, the cleaning done, she sat
demurely mending a rent in Carter's coat, she might
have been the young wife of her imaginings.\par

Her sentimental expression moved Helen to laughter.
"You look {\itshape{so}} domestic!" she tittered.  "So soft and
contemplative.  One would think—"\par

Mrs. Leslie was too clever for transparent denial.
"I don't care," she answered.  "I like him.  He's
awfully dear."  And her expressed preference affected
Helen—helped to break down the last barriers of caste
feeling between herself and Carter.  Till then she had
always maintained a slight reserve towards him, but
when, coming in unexpectedly, he caught them at their
labors, she was as free and frank with him as she had
ever been with a man of her old set.  The change
expressed itself in her hand-shake at parting, though it fell
far short of Mrs. Leslie's lingering pressure.\par

In his surprise at the quantity and quality of the
latter, Carter may have returned it, or Mrs. Leslie may
have mistaken the reaction of her own grip for answer.
Anyway, she thought he did, and on the way home plead
weariness as an excuse to indulge luxurious contemplations.
She fed on his every look, tone, accent, coloring
them all with her own feeling, an indulgence for which
she would pay later; indeed, she was even then paying,
in that it was eating away her weak moral fibre as acid
eats a metal, preparing her for greater licenses.  At first,
however, she was timorous—content with small touches,
accidental contacts, the physical sense of nearness when,
as often happened, they coaxed him to take them for a
drive behind his famous ponies.\par

But such slight fare could not long suffice for her
growing passion.  Having observed, outwardly, the laws
of social morality only because, so far, they had
consorted with inclination; knowing, inwardly, no law but
that of her own pleasure, it was only a question of time
until she would become desperate enough to balance
reputation against indulgence.\par

This came to pass a couple of months after Helen had
opened up school, and would have happened sooner but
that even a reputation cannot be given away without a
bidder.  Not that Carter was ignorant or indifferent to
her feeling.  Two thousand years have failed to make
man completely monogamous and he is never displeased
at a pretty woman's preference.  A condition had
interposed between the fire and the tow.  In every man's
life there comes a time when, for the moment, he is
impervious to the call of illicit passion.  A first pure
love bucklers him like a shining ægis, and while certain
pure eyes looked out upon Carter from earth, air, and
sky, wherever his fancy strayed, he would not barter a
sigh for the perishable commodity Elinor Leslie offered.
Having, however, formed her judgments of men from
the weak masculinity about her, she could not realize
this.  Imagining that he would come at the crook of
her finger, she tried to recapture Opportunity.\par

"Mr. Carter was so kind and considerate of Helen
that I think we ought to take him up," she said to her
husband one day; and Leslie, whose good-natured
stupidity lent itself to every suggestion, readily agreed.\par

Unfortunately for her scheme, Carter proved unfelicitously
blind to his interest—as she saw it.  Negatively,
he refused to be "taken up," offering good-natured
excuses to all of Leslie's invitations.  So nothing was
left but the occasional opportunities afforded by Helen's
week-end visits.  And these did not always lend
themselves to Mrs. Leslie's purpose.  When Molyneux brought
her up—as happened half the time—he made full use of
his monopoly; while Carter, in his turn, often drove her
down to see Jenny in Lone Tree.\par

To do the young lady justice, she held a fairly even
balance between those, her two cavaliers.  According
to the canons of romance she ought to have fallen so
deeply in love with one as to hate the other.  Instead
she found herself liking them both.\par

There was, of course, a difference in the quality of her
feeling.  Strange feminine paradox! she was drawn to
Molyneux by the opposite of the qualities on which she
based her feeling for Carter.  At heart woman is a
reformer, and once convinced of his sincerity towards
herself, the fact that Molyneux was reputed something
of a sinner increased rather than lessened her interest.
She experienced the joys of driving the lion in
leading-strings, ignoring the danger of the beast turning upon
her with rending fangs.  Feeling her power, she tried
to exercise it for his good, and felt as virtuous over the
business as if it were not a form of vanity, and a
dangerous one at that.  Anyway, she rode and drove with
him so much that spring and summer that she practically
annihilated Mrs. Leslie's chances of seeing Carter.\par

That lady could, however, and did observe him in
secret.  Riding from home while Leslie was busy
seeding, she would make a wide détour, keeping the
lowlands, and so bring up, unobserved, in a poplar clump
that afforded a near view of Carter's fields.\par

One day will example a score of others.  It was, as
aforesaid, seeding-time.  Stripped of her snowy bodice,
the earth lay as some brown virgin, her bosom bared to
man's wooing and the kisses of the sun and rain.  From
her covert Mrs. Leslie could see his ox-team slowly
crawling upon the brown fields which, as yet, had known
no bearing yoke.  Those days love was suggested by
everything in nature.  The air quivered in passionate
lines down the horizon.  Warmth, light, love were
omnipresent.  By every slough the mallard brooded.
Overhead the wild goose winged northward to bring forth her
kind on the rim of polar seas.  Prairie cocks primped
and ruffled on every knoll before their admiring hens.
To her it seemed that birds and beasts, flesh and fowl
were happier than she in their matings.  Passionately,
with bursting sighs, she strained at her chains, wildly
challenging the marriage institution which has slowly
evolved from the travail of a thousand generations.\par

Hers was the old struggle between the flesh and the
spirit, the struggle that gave the sexless desert its
hermit population.  With this difference: Ancestry had
bequeathed to her no spirit.  She had nothing to pit
against the flesh but her own unruly inclination.  For
her the battle offered no meed of victory in the form of
chastity triumphant.  The "dice of God were loaded";
she was striving against the record of foolish or vicious
fathers.  And she played so hard!  At times, little
heathen in spite of her culture, her eyes looked out upon
him from the spring greenery with the tender longing
of a mother deer; again they blazed with baffled fires;
often she threw herself down in a passion of tears.  So,
feeding upon its very privations, her distemper waxed
until, one June evening, it burst all bounds.\par

Returning through late gloaming with his weekly
mail, Carter came on her holding her horse by the trail.
Her voice, low yet vibrant, issued from the gloom.\par

"I'm afraid I shall have to trouble you for a ride,
Mr. Carter; my saddle-girth has burst."\par

"Your hand is wet.  It's blood!" he exclaimed, as he
handed her in.\par

"I fell on a sharp stone.  Will you please tie this
handkerchief."\par

Bending to comply, he saw that the wound was clean-cut,
and this may have caused him to examine the girth
before he threw the saddle on behind.  Then he knew—was
certain as though he had seen her slash it with the
penknife that lay in the scrub near by.\par

Picking up a stone, he pounded the severed edges on
the wheel-tire; pounded them to a frazzle while she
looked on, her pupils dilated in the half light, large, soft,
black as velvet, intensifying a curious mixture of
expectation and content.  But if she read consent in the
pains he was at with her excuse, alarmed surprise
displaced expectation when, climbing in, he drove on
without a word.\par

She glanced up, tentatively, once, twice, a dozen
times at the erect figure, but always he stared ahead.
Again and again her scarlet lips trembled, but she
choked; sound halted on its bitten thresholds.  Once
she touched his arm, but he drew sharply away and his
hand rose and flung beaded sweat from his brow.  So,
for a tumultuous age it seemed to her, they whirled through
the gathering night, rattled on until a slab of light burst
through the darkness.\par

Followed Leslie's voice.  "Hullo, Elinor!  What's the
matter?"\par

She stiffened—Carter felt her stiffen as in a mortal
rigor—but she answered, in level tones: "Oh, nothing
much.  My saddle-girth burst and Mr. Carter kindly
drove me home.  Won't you come in?  Well—I'm ever
so much obliged.  Good-night."\par

Whirling homeward through the soft dusk, the tumult
which had confused Carter resolved into its elements,
shame, chagrin, wonder, and disgust.  Each swayed
him in turn, then faded, leaving pity.  Flaring up in
his cabin, his match revealed only concern on his
sunburned face.  Taking a packet from under the pillow
of his bunk, he unfolded it upon the table, exposing a
glove, a ribbon, and some half-dozen hairs that gleamed,
threads of gold, under the lamplight.  One by one he
had gleaned them, picking the first from the back of
Helen's coat one day coming out of Lone Tree.\par

As he leaned over the trove there was no mawkish
sentimentality in his look, rather it expressed wonder,
wonder at himself.  For his life had not always jibed
with the canons.  To him in their appointed seasons
had come the heats of youth; and if now they had
merged in the deeper instinct which centres on a single
mate, the change had been sub-conscious.  The house
he had built, the land he tilled, the herds he had gathered
about him were all products of this instinct, provision
against mating, for the one—when he should find her.
Yet, though found, he wondered; wondered at the
powerful grip which that small hand had wound into his
heart-strings, that those golden threads should be able
to bind with the strength of cables.\par

He did not puzzle long.  Presently concern again
darkened his countenance, and he murmured, "Poor
little woman! poor little thing!"\par

Could he have seen her just then!  Leslie was out
talking horse with Molyneux at the stables, so no eye
saw her when, in the privacy of her bedroom, she
snatched the mask from her soul.  At first stupefied,
she stared dully at familiar objects until her glance
touched a portrait of Helen on the dresser.  That fired
her passion, started the wheels of torture.  Dashing
it to the floor, she ground her heel into the smiling
face, raving in passionate whispers; then flinging at
length on the bed she writhed like a hurt snake, struck
her clinched fists into the pillows, bit them, her own
hands, soft arms.  She agonized under the scorn that
belittles hell's fury.  Truly, out of her indulgences, her
pleasant mental vices, the gods had twisted whips for
her scourging!\par

But if whips, as claimed, are deterrents of physical
crimes, they stimulate moral diseases; and whereas,
previously, Mrs. Leslie had been merely good-naturedly
frivolous, she came from under the lashes a dangerous
woman—the more dangerous because there was no
outward indication of the inward change.  With Helen,
whom Molyneux brought up at the next week-end,
she was, if anything, kinder in manner, loving her with
gentle pats that gave no suggestion of steel claws
beneath the velvet.  These, however, protruded, when the
girl borrowed her horse to pay a visit to Carter.\par

Mrs. Leslie and Molyneux watched her away from
the door.  The lady had plead a headache in excuse
for staying at home, but her eyes were devoid of weary
languor.  They had flashed as she averted them from
the mended saddle-girth.  They glittered as she now
turned them on Molyneux.\par

"Calvert, you amuse me."\par

"Why?" he asked, flushing.\par

"Such devotion in that last lingering glance.  It was
worthy of a boy in a spasm of calf-love rather than the
dashing cavalryman who has tried to add my reputation
to the dozen that hang at his belt."\par

Molyneux shrugged denial.  "That's not true, Elinor.
I'm too good a hunter to stalk the unattainable."\par

She laughed, bowing.  "Do I sit on such high peaks
of virtue?"\par

"Or of indifference.  It amounts to the same.  Anyway,
I saw that there was no chance for {\itshape{me}}."\par

Again she laughed.  "What {\itshape{significance}}!"\par

"Well—I'm not blind, as—Leslie, for instance.  I
only wonder."\par

"At what?"\par

"Your taste."\par

She made a face at Helen's distant figure.  "I might
return your thought.  After all, Calvert, from our
viewpoint, you know, she's only a higher type of
native—dreadfully anthropomorphic."\par

"Exactly," he answered.  "And that's why I"—pausing,
he substituted an adverb more in accordance
with Mrs. Leslie's ironical mood—"like her.  She's
fresh, sound, and clean of body and mind.  Clings to
the ideals we chucked overboard a hundred years ago—lives
up to them with all the vim and push of her race.
She stirs me—"\par

"As a cocktail does a jaded palate," Mrs. Leslie
interposed.  "And a good enough reason; it will serve for
us both, since you are so frank, Calvert.  It is not your
fancy I am laughing at, but your diffidence, the morbid
respectability with which you wait till it pleases her to
give that which you have been accustomed to command
from others.  It is quite touching....  But why this
timidity?  Why do you linger?"\par

"Because—"  He paused, feeling it impossible to
yield the real reason up to her mockery; to tell that the
girl had touched a deeper chord of feeling than had ever
been reached by a woman's hand; that she had broken
the cynical crust which had been formed by years of
association with the sophisticated women of the army
set.  He threw the onus back on her.  "That's rich,
Elinor.  Here, for months, you have fenced her about;
given her steady chaperonage; warned me to tone
down to avoid giving offence.  Now you ask why?
Have you forgotten how you rated me for my violence
in pressing her under the mistletoe?"\par

"Pish!"  She contemplated him scornfully.  "I only
advised caution.  And then—"  She also paused; then,
thrusting reserve to the winds, went on: "And then
she hadn't come between me and—my wish.  Now she
has.  And let me tell you, my friend"—she returned to
her "cocktail" simile—"that while you linger, inhaling
virginal aromas, a strong hand will slip in and drain the
glass.  Will you stand by and see her sweetness sipped
by another?  Now, don't strike me."\par

He looked angry enough to do it, but contented himself
with throwing back her question, "Why do you linger?"\par

"Because I cannot drain my cup"—her lips quivered
thirstily—"till yours is out of the way.  He has the
bad taste to prefer her spotlessness to my—"\par

"Sophistication?" he supplied.\par

She nodded.  "Thanks.  And he will continue to do
so until you take her out of the way.  So—it is up to
you, as the boys say.  I think, too, that she suspects
that my interest is not altogether platonic, and as a
commodity enhances in value as it is desired by others,
her liking may be spurred into love.  At present she's
balanced.  Likes you, I know.  Better strike while the
iron is hot."\par

"I would if I thought—" he began, then went on,
musingly: "But I've sized it up as slow-going.  Didn't
think she was the kind that can be rushed."\par

Mrs. Leslie snorted her disdain.  "You?  With all
your experience!  To set her on a pinnacle!  How long
before you men will learn that we would rather be taken
down and be hugged.  While the saint worships at the
shrine the sinner steals the image.  I warrant you my
big American won't waste any time on his knees.
However, I've warned—here comes Fred from the stables."\par

That was not the end of their talk.  It recurred at
every opportunity; and by the time Helen returned
Molyneux was persuaded against his better judgment
that he had gone too easily about his wooing.\par

"What thou doest, do quickly," she whispered, as he
went out to hitch to take Helen home.  And as they
drove away she gazed long after them from the door.\par

What was she thinking?  Given a woman of firmer
texture, one whose acts flowed from steady impulses, in
turn the effects of settled character, thought may be
guessed.  But Mrs. Leslie's light nature veered to every
wind of passion.  She could not even hate consistently.
Was she swayed altogether by revenge, or, as hinted by
her talk with Molyneux, was hope beginning to rise from
the ashes of despair?\par

\label{the-devil}%
\hypertarget{the-devil}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{IX}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE DEVIL}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
If, as said, the devil can quote Scripture for his own
purposes, it does not follow that said purposes are
always fulfilled.\par

Molyneux had better have followed his intuition and
"gone slowly."  But if, in brains and capacity, he
towered above the average of his remittance-fellows, the
taint of his ancient blood yet showed in a pliability to
suggestion, a childish eagerness to snatch unripe fruit.
Whereas, by a quiet apology, he had long ago repaired
his error in the Christmas games, he must now commit
greater foolishness.\par

Consciously and unconsciously, in varying degrees,
Helen aided his blundering.  She could not help looking
her prettiest.  But her delicacies of cream and rose,
the tender mouth, the bosom heaving under its lace,
did not require the accentuation of coquetry.  It was
the healthy coquetry of the young animal, to be sure,
unconscious, as much as can be.  She need not,
however, have authorized his gallantries with laugh and
smile—would not, had she realized his limitations, his
confused morality, subordinance to passion, emotional
irresponsibility.\par

Afterwards she had but a confused notion how the
thing came to pass.  They laughed, chatted, jested,
while the tenderness in his manner bordered more and
more on the familiar.  He had been telling her of the
strange marriage custom of an Afghan tribe and had
asked how she would like such a forceful wooing.\par

"I think," she answered, "that a strain of the primitive
inheres in our most cultured women.  I'm sure I
could never love a man who was not my master."\par

She spoke thoughtfully, considering the proposition
in the abstract; but he, in his blind folly, interpreted
concretely.  In the sudden lighting of his face she read
her mistake.  But before she could put out a hand in
protest, his arms were about her, his searching lips
smothered her cry.  She fought wildly, spent her
strength in a desperate effort, then capitulated—lay,
panting, while he fed on her face, neck, hair, her lips.
And it was well she did.  Prolonged resistance would
only have provoked him to freer license.  As it was,
mistaking quiescence for acquiescence, he presently held
her off that his hot eyes might share the spoil.\par

She now fully realized her danger.  His expression,
the glassy look of his eyes filled her with repulsion, but
she summoned to her aid all the craft that centuries of
dire need have bred in her race.  She smiled up in his
face, rather a pallid smile, but sufficient for his fooling.
A playful hand held him back from another kiss.\par

"You are very rough," she whispered.\par

"Consider the provocation," he answered, dodging the hand.\par

She tried not to shrink.  "You upset me," she murmured.
"I am quite faint.  Is there any water near by?"\par

She had noticed a slough ahead.  Driving into it, he
bent over and wet her handkerchief.\par

"Now if I could only drink."\par

He stepped ankle-deep into the water.  "Out of my
hands."  But as he stooped, with concave palms, there
came a rattle behind him.\par

Uttering an oath, he sprang—too late.  As he waded
to dry land she swung the ponies in a wide circle and
reined in about fifty yards away.  While he looked
sheepishly on, she wiped her face with the kerchief,
rubbed and scrubbed till the skin shone red where his
lips had touched, then tossed the kerchief towards him
and drove on.\par

A prey to remorse, shame, he stood gazing after.
All said, a man's ideals are formed by the people about
him.  A virtuous woman, a leal friend, raise his
standard for the race; and just then Molyneux would have
given his life to place himself in the friendly relation
that obtained between them a half-hour ago.\par

But he could not.  Nor could all of Helen's vigorous
rubbing remove the memory of those shameful kisses.
Her bitten lips were scarlet when, a quarter-hour later,
she rattled up to Carter's shanty; her eyes were heavy
with unshed tears.\par

Now here was a first-class opportunity for him to play
the fool.  An untimely question, a little idiotic
sympathy would have put him in a worse case with her than
Molyneux.  But though inwardly perturbed, shaking
with anxiety, he kept a grip on himself.\par

"Such reckless driving!" he exclaimed, harking back
to her own words on that first drive from Lone Tree.
Then solemnly surveying Molyneux's hat, which was
perched funnily on the seat beside her, he went on,
"Looks like you've lost a passenger."\par

His twinkle removed the tension.  Looking down on
the hat, she laughed; and if, a minute later, she cried,
the tears that wet his shoulder were not cast against him.\par

"If you will return the ponies," she said, when her
cry was out—she had already told him enough to
explain the situation—"I'll stay here till you come back
and then you may drive me home—if you will?"\par

"And I'll find him?"  She laughed at his comical
accent as he intended she should.\par

"About three miles back."\par

"Any message?"\par

She sensed the menace.  "Oh no!  If you quarrel,
I'll never, never forgive you.  Now, please!"  She placed
her hand on his arm.\par

"All right," he agreed, and, five minutes later drove
off with the Devil pony in leash behind.\par

From afar Molyneux saw him coming and braced
for the encounter, but Carter had gotten himself well
in hand.  "Miss Morrill," he said, "is real sorry she
couldn't hold the ponies.  But, Lordy, man, you oughtn't
to have gone picking flowers."\par

"He's lying!" Molyneux thought, but followed the
lead.  "Yes, it was careless.  But, you know, it is
always the unexpected that happens."\par

"You're dead right there."\par

The significance caused Molyneux to redden; but he
tried to carry it off easily.  "And I'm much obliged to
you, Mr. Carter.  Can't I drive you home?"\par

Turning from cinching his saddle, Carter regarded
him steadily.  "Obliged to you, sir.  I'm a bit
particular in my choice of company."\par

The contempt stung Molyneux to retort: "You are
plain-spoken, but I'm told the trait is common in
Americans.  Fortunately for us outsiders, your women are
more complaisant."\par

It only led him deeper.  Giving a last vicious tug at
the cinch, Carter vaulted into the saddle.  "Yes," he
shot back, as he arranged his bridle, "they make a
mistake now and then, but it don't take 'em long to
find it out."  And he galloped away with easy honors.\par

Reining in at his own door half an hour later, he
regarded with astonishment a transformation which had
occurred in his absence.  Instead of the woman,
beautiful in her angry tears, a demure girl came out to meet
him.  While he was gone she had bathed her red eyes,
then, to relieve a headache, had let down her hair and
braided it into a plait of solid gold.  Thick as Carter's
wrist, it hung so low that, obedient to his admiring
suggestion, she easily knitted it about her waist.\par

"You look," he said, "more like school-girl than
school-marm."\par

With that simple coiffure displaying the girlish line
of her head and neck, she might, indeed, have easily
passed for eighteen.  It accentuated a wee tip-tilt of
her pretty nose, a leaning to the {\itshape{retroussé}} that had been
the greatest trial of her youth and still caused her
occasional qualms.  Could she have realized the piquancy
it lent to features that, otherwise, had been too regular
or have known the sensation it caused her companion
as he looked down on it and her eyelashes fluttering up
from eyes that were wide and grave with question.\par

One glance reassured her.  His unruffled calm, the
ironic humor of his mouth, all expressed his mastership
of the late situation.  Satisfied, she mounted beside him
when he had hitched the ponies and settled in against
him with a sigh of relief.  Not that she had so easily
forgotten her late trouble.  The injured droop of her
mouth, the serious face moved him to vast sympathy
and anger.  He longed to smooth the knit brow with
kisses, to take her in his arms and soothe her as a little
child.  For a second time that day her mouth stood in
hazard, but, bracing himself against temptation, he tried
to wean her from her brooding by ways that were safer
if less sweet.\par

"Any one," he said, twinkling down upon her, "would
think you'd lost your best friend—"\par

"Instead of my worst," she anticipated.\par

"Glad you put it that way."  He nodded his satisfaction.
"And since you do, why waste regrets?  Jest
wipe him clean off your books."\par

"It is bitter to learn that you have been deceived,"
she answered.  "More bitter to feel yourself misread.
Most bitter"—her voice dropped to a whisper—"to
learn it in such a shameful way."\par

He did not say, "I warned you."  Only his big brown
hand closed on hers with a sympathetic squeeze that
almost expelled the pain in her heart.  She did not
withdraw it; rather she drew in closer, and thus, hand
in hand, they rattled south over the vast green
prairies which now were all shotten with the iridescence
of myriad flowers.  The trail wound through seas of
daisies, bluebells, white tuft.  Slender golden-rod
trembled in the breeze; dandelions and tiger-lilies flaunted
their golden beauty under turquoise skies.  It was,
indeed, difficult to remain sad with such company in
such surroundings; for not content with mute
sympathy, he strove to divert her thought by talk of the
animals or plants which they saw or passed, astonished
her with his wide knowledge of curious traits in their
nature or history.  So, gliding from subject to subject,
he weaned her from her trouble, and so, by easy stages,
came to speaking of himself, modestly introducing the
subject with a letter.\par

It was from the office of the traffic manager of the
trunk line acknowledging a bid for tie and trestle
contracts for the projected branch through Silver Creek.
While Cummings, Hines, and their confrères were
fulminating against the railroad pantheon, Carter had
ridden over the spruce ranges of the Riding Mountains,
had secured options on cutting permits from the
provincial government, had driven down the old survey, and
then submitted an estimate which caused the construction
department of the railway to gasp its astonishment.\par

The chief engineer even carried the estimate to the
traffic manager.  "Ties and timbers, this fellow Carter
comes within a few thousand feet of old Sawyer's
estimate," he said.  "Moreover, he is ready to deliver the
goods.  Gives references to the Bank of America, which
is to finance his enterprise.  Who is he?"\par

One would hardly expect the traffic manager to have
remembered, but he had; and thus it came about that
the postscript of the letter was in his own big sprawl.
He regretted the fact that construction had been put
off for another year, "but," he added, "I have placed
your bid on my own files and shall see that it receives the
earliest consideration when we are ready for construction."\par

Helen exclaimed her satisfaction.  "I'm so glad.  I
never knew that—you could do this kind of work.
Why didn't you tell me?  I'm so interested.  Will it
be a large contract?"\par

Her eyes testified to her words, and as, obedient to
her wish, he ran on giving details, they grew larger and
more luminous.  A touch of awe dwelt in their hazel
depths.  Feeling always the attraction of his fine
physique, respecting his strength of will, clean character,
he now commanded her admiration on another score.
Was he not proving himself "fit" in the iron struggle of
an economic age?  And she, delicate bloom, crowning
bud of the tree of evolution, being yet subject to the
law that, of old, governed the cave maiden in her choice
of a mate, felt the full force of this last expression of
his power.\par

As never before, she responded to his thought and
feeling.  When, after a sudden lurch, he left his
supporting arm on the rail across her waist, she did not
draw away; nay, she yielded to a luxurious sense of
protection and power, leaning in against his shoulder.
That day all things had conspired in his favor—even
her pique at Molyneux—and now the rapid movement,
caressing sweep of the wind, riot of color and sunlight,
all helped to influence her judgment in a situation that
was rapidly approaching.\par

It lay, the situation, in a deep pool, ten feet below
the bank of Silver Creek.  As before noted, Death and
the Devil, those lively ponies, were, as Carter put it,
"worth watching" any and all the time on the dead
level, and the fact that he held a loose line on them
running down trail into the valley proved how very,
very far he had departed from his usual imperturbable
mood.  Small wonder, for the hazel glances he had
sustained this last hour would have upset the coolest
head.  But if his condition was perfectly natural, so
also was the innate deviltry that caused the ponies to
bolt the trail and plunge over the aforesaid bank.\par

Helen could never tell just how it happened.  After
two seconds' furious bumping, she felt herself lifted
bodily.  Followed a crash as they fell.  That was the
impact of the buggy wheel with Carter's head.  The
arms loosened as she took the icy plunge, then came a
half-minute's suffocating struggle while the current was
carrying her out to the shallows.  Wet, draggled, she
stumbled shoreward; then, as the water cleared out of
her eyes, she turned and plunged wildly back.  Face
downward, Carter was floating over a two-foot shallow
and another second would have carried him into a longer
and deeper pool.\par

As for him, returning consciousness brought him
sensations of something soft under his splitting
head—that was Helen's bosom; of arms about his neck;
lips that wildly kissed his and which opened with a
glad cry when he moved.\par

"Oh, I thought you were dead!"\par

For one blissful moment she allowed him to gaze in
at the clear windows of her soul; then remembering the
unusual but effective restorative she had used in the
case, she flamed out in sudden colors, the banners of
discovered love.  Never was maid in such a predicament!
Was it fair to expect that she would let fall a
head that had been damaged in her cause?  She could
only wait until, having fed his eyes full on her sweet
distress, he reached up and pulled her blushing face
down upon his own.  The sun, the wind, the rippling
water alone witnessed her surrender.  After a while a
grizzled badger peered at them from his hole, pronounced
them harmless, and so came forth upon his errands.  A
colony of gophers laid aside serious business to note,
heads askew, loves that differed so little from their own.
A robin cried shame upon them from a willow near by.
But they were not ashamed.  An hour slid by without
either thinking of such sub-lunary matters as damaged
heads or wet clothing; at the end of which Death and
the Devil, having accomplished the complete destruction
of the buck-board, came back to look for their
master—probably associating him with the evening feed
of oats—and fell to cropping the grass along the creek.\par

Then she spoke, softly, blushing again.  "You must
think me shameless, but—I did—I really thought you
were dead."\par

"Ain't you glad I'm not?"  She never noticed the
"ain't," this young lady who had originally sized him
as an underbred person.\par

She did not answer, but he mightily appreciated the
sudden tightening of her arms.  "But what must you
think of me?"\par

He told all—of his resolution the moment he saw
her on the Lone Tree platform; of his hope, fears, dark
despair, the hell he had suffered on Molyneux's account.
A soft hand cut short this last revelation, and immediately
they fell again into one of love's deep silences, an
eloquent pause that endured until the westering sun
threw long shadows across the creek.  Then, rising, he
caught the ponies and arranged saddles with blankets
and straps from the broken harness, while she looked
on with soft attention.\par

Mounted, they paused and looked back at the stream,
ruby red under the dying sun, the clay bank, the
bordering willows, then they kissed each other soberly and
rode on.  Dusk was blanketing the prairies when they
drew up at Flynn's cabin, yet it was not too dark for
Mrs. Flynn's sharp eyes to pick their secret.\par

"It's the new school-ma'am ye'll need to be looking
for," she told Flynn.  "Why?  Man, didn't ye see him
look at her, an' her that lovely red, her eyes pretty as a
mother deer's, an' her voice soft an' cooing as a dove's.
Flynn, Flynn! ye've forgotten your own courting."\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
One fine morning, two months later, Molyneux's drivers
spun out of his stable enclosure and rattled south
at a pace that did not keep up with their driver's impatience.\par

These two months had certainly been the unhappiest
of his life.  A man's opinions, philosophy, must, if they
have vitality at all, be formed upon the actions of those
about him, upon the phenomena which life presents to
his reason.  This, however, does not altogether annul
the force of those ideals of conduct for himself and
others which were learned at his mother's knee.
Always they persist.  Granted that loose life may smother
the plant so that it produces neither fruit nor leafage,
yet the germ is there—the assurety that beyond the
rotten pale of fast society lies a fair land where purity,
chastity, goodness, the virtues one firmly incarnates in
the person of mother, sister, or girl friend, do grow and
flourish.  Under the foulness of the most determined
roué lies the ineradicable belief that had Lot sought
righteousness among the women of Sodom that wicked
city had never been destroyed.  One clean, wholesome
girl will shake a man's faith in baseness, torture him
with a vivid sense of his own backslidings, and now
that passion's scales were fallen from his eyes, Molyneux
appreciated at their full worth the naïve mixture of
innocence and womanly wisdom, the health, strength,
and wholesomeness of character that set Helen apart
from his light acquaintance.\par

"Fool! fool!" he had told himself again and again.
"She is worthy of a king—if one could be found worthy
of her.  And you had a fair chance!  Oh, you fool!"\par

Nor had he failed to write her a letter of apology.  He
had done that in the first agonies of repentance, six weeks
ago, and, receiving no answer, had taken the ensuing
weeks to screw his courage to the point of asking pardon
in person.  But now that it was there he was possessed
of a wild exhilaration that took no thought of refusal.
She could hardly fail to pardon a suppliant for crimes
that were instigated by her own beauty, and one so
becomingly repentant!  Full of the consciousness of his
own virtuous intention, it was quite easy for him to
credit Helen with the magnanimity that would be its
reciprocal feeling; and this once established, himself
pardoned in thought, he passed to day-dreams.  Her
smile, the sweet tilt of her pretty nose, her glory of
golden hair, her every physical and mental charm, passed
in mental review, beguiling the tedium of the trail till
the school-house thrust up over the horizon.\par

Then his mood changed.  Its squat, obtrusive materiality
thrust into his consciousness, shattering the filmy
substance of his dreams, and as he noticed the closed
windows, shut door, doubt replaced elation, depression,
the black antithesis of his late mood, settled down upon
him.\par

As he sat staring a voice hailed him.  "Been riding
ahint of you this half-hour, but you never looked back.
Fine haying weather, ain't it?"\par

Startled, Molyneux turned to find Jed Hines surveying
him with an irritating smile.  His expression plainly
revealed that not only did he know Molyneux's errand, but
that he was viewing it under the light of humorous secret
knowledge.  Restraining an impulse to remodel the
expression, he said, nonchalantly as he could: "What is the
matter here?  School closed?"\par

Hines nodded.  He had all the Canadian's traditional
hate of the remittance-man; Molyneux, in especial, he
detested, because, perhaps by his superior shrewdness,
he gave less cause for contempt than the race in general.
That he had paused to speak was proof sufficient that he
had unpleasant news.  He would, however, take his own
time in delivering it—prolong the torture to the limit.\par

"Midsummer holidays," he laconically answered.\par

Molyneux ignored his curtness.  "Miss Morrill at
Glaves's place, do you know?"\par

Jed's grin widened.  "You hain't heard, then?"\par

"Heard what?"\par

Jed gazed off and away over the prairies.  "No, you
won't find her at Glaves's."\par

How Molyneux longed to spoil the grin.  But a deadly
anxiety constrained him.  "Where is she, then?"\par

"Nowheres around here."\par

"Do you know?"\par

"You bet!"  The grin gave place to malignant satisfaction.
"Yes, I know—that is, I kin guess, though I
wouldn't if I thought it would do you any good.  As it
won't—Let me see—she was married a week ago by
the Roman priest.  Jedging by averages, I reckon as
you orter find her in Carter's arms."\par

If he had expected his news to produce a disagreeable
impression he was not disappointed, for its visible
manifestation landed full in his face, and he dropped flat on
his shoulders.  Not lacking a certain wolf courage, primitive
ferocity of the cornered rat, he sprang up, lunged at
Molyneux, and went down a second time.  Then he stayed,
watching until the other had jumped into his buggy
and driven away.\par

"I never saw the devil!" he muttered, shaking his fist,
"but your face, jes' then, came mighty near the preacher's
description."\par

\label{friction}%
\hypertarget{friction}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{X}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize FRICTION}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Once upon a time a man wrote a book that proved
how easily a cultured Eastern girl might fall in
love with and marry a Western cow-boy.  It was a
beautiful story, about people who were beautiful or
picturesque according as they were good or bad, but it
ended just where, in real life, stories begin.  After the
manner of fairy tales, the author assured us that the
girl and the cow-boy lived happily ever after.  Now I
wonder if they did?\par

A year later a big bull-fly thudded at the screen door
of Carter's cabin in vain efforts to enter and take toll of
Helen's white flesh.  By the gentlemen who ordain the
calendar, a year is given as a space of time between
points that are fixed, immutable as the stars.  Sensible
folk know better.  Years vary—are long or short according
to the number, breadth, and depth of the experiences
their space covers.  This year had marked Helen.  She
was fuller lipped, rounder, enveloped by the sensuous
softness of young wifehood.  Sitting at table with her
white blouse tucked in at the neck for coolness, she had
never looked prettier.  But granting these attributes of
her changed condition, a keen observer would have
missed that gentle brooding, ripe fruit of content which
exhales from the perfectly mated woman.  As, time and
again, her glance touched Carter, sitting opposite, she
would sigh, ever so gently, yet sigh; the direction of her
glance told also that her discontent was associated in
some way with his shirt-sleeves, rolled to the elbow, and
his original methods in the use of his knife and fork.
Grasping these implements within an inch of their
points, he certainly secured a mighty leverage, yet
undoubtedly lost in grace what he secured in power, besides
pre-empting more elbow-room than could be accorded to
one person at a dinner-party.\par

"Tut! tut!" she observed, timidly, after tentative
observation.\par

"Oh, shore!  There I go again!"  His quick answer
and the celerity with which his hands crawfished back
to the handles told of many corrections; yet five
minutes later they had stolen out once more to the old
familiar grip.\par

She sighed again.  It was not that she had wished
to hobble her frontiersman, to harness him to the
conventions.  Her feeling flowed from a larger source.
Believing him big of brain and soul as of body, she
would have had him perfect in small things as he was
great in large, that her ideal should be so filled and
rounded out as to leave no room for sighs.  To this end
she had, from the first, attempted small polishments,
which he had received with whimsical good-humor that
took no thought of how vital the matter was with her.
Had he realized this he might have made a determined
effort instead of a slack practice which flows from easy
complaisance; but, not realizing it, he made no
headway.  In these last months she had gained insight into
that philosophical axiom: It is easier to make over a
dozen lovers than one husband.  Unlike the girl in the
aforesaid beautiful story, she had begun reconstruction
at the wrong side of the knot.\par

Not that this unwelcome truth would or could, of
itself, have affected her love in quality or quantity.
At times she agonized remorsefully over her tendency
to criticism, tutoring herself to look only for the large
things of character.  Again, when, of nights, she would
slip to his arms for a delightful hour before retiring, she
would wonder at herself: every last vestige of
discontent evaporated with her murmured sigh of perfect
happiness.  These were great moments for both.  Lying
so, she would look up in his bronzed face and listen
while, in his big way, he talked and planned, unrolling
the scroll of their future—listen patiently until he
became too absorbed, when she would interrupt with some
kittenish trick to draw him back into the delightful
present.  Pretty little tricks, loving little tricks, that
one would never have dreamed lay hidden under the
exterior of the staid young school-ma'am.\par

But these, after all, were moods, and there had been
other and real cause of discontent.  First, the railway
gods had again broken faith with the settlers; and every
cent that Carter could raise or borrow had been required
to meet rents on his timber concessions.  Though not in
actual want, they had had to trim expenses, reduce their
living to the settler scale.  Having all of a pretty
woman's natural love of finery, Helen could see no way
of restoring her depleted wardrobe.  Moreover, there was
the choring, washing, milking of cows, feeding of calves,
inseparable from pioneer settler life—a burden that was
not a whit the less toilsome because self-assumed.\par

Carter would have spared her all that—was, indeed,
angry when, coming in late one night, he caught her
toiling at the milking.  "I didn't know it was so hard,"
she pleaded, holding up her swollen wrists.  "But I
couldn't bear to see you come in, tired, at dark, then go
on with the chores while I sat in the house."\par

He had made her promise not to do it again.  But
she did, and his protests, vigorous at first, slackened,
until, finally, the choring had come to be regarded as
hers as a matter of course.\par

Even the climate was against her, conspiring against
her peace of body if not of mind.  The previous winter
had been the bitterest in a score of years, temperatures
ranging from forty below zero, with a yard of snow on
the level, fifty-foot drifts in the bluffs, and hundred-mile
winds to drive cold and snow through the thickest of
log walls.  For days she had sat in her furs by the
red-hot stove, while the blizzard roared about the cabin,
walling it in fleecy snows—sat listening to the agonized
shout of wind-blown trees, the squeal of poplar brake,
the smash of rent branches, the thunderous storm voice
that was spaced only by distant crashes as the lords of
the forest went down to stiff ends.  North, south, east,
west had veered these terrible winds, freighting always
their inexhaustible snows.  The trails were blown from
earth's face; solitary blotch, their cabin rose like a reef
from an ocean of whiteness; and they, castaways, were
practically divorced for days, and sometimes weeks, from
all communication with their kind.  Hardly less terrible
had been the calms, the vast frozen silences as of
interplanetary space that followed the blizzard, ruling the
snowy steppes.  They filled her with a terrifying sense
of the illimitable, those silences, vivid as though she, a
lonely soul, were travelling through vast voids of time
and space.  She shrank under them, afraid.\par

Followed a mosquito year in a mosquito country.
Fattened by the heavy snows, stagnant sloughs held
water till late in the summer and so bred the pests by
myriads of myriads.  Of nights the tortured air whined
of them.  By day their cattle hung about the corrals,
cropping the grass down to the dust, or if they did
wander farther afield, came galloping madly back to the
smudges.  For two months any kind of travel had been
impossible; clouds of the pests would settle on hands,
face, neck quicker than one could wipe them off.
Milking and choring had to be done under cover of a
thick reek to an accompaniment of lashing tails, with
frequent and irritating catastrophes in the way of
overturned pails.  The acrid odor of smoke clung to
everything—hair, clothing, flesh; the cabin was little better
than a smoke-house until the heat had mitigated the
pests while adding its own discomforts.\par

It was a dull life enough for men whose tasks were
broken by periodical trips to market; it was
martyrdom for housefast women.  Always around the shanty
mourned the eternal winds of the plains.  Wind!  Wind!
Wind in varying quantity, from a breeze to a blizzard,
but always wind.  Its melancholy dirge left a haunting
in the eyes of men.  Its ceaseless moan prepared many
a plainswoman for the madhouse.\par

With bright hope at heart to gild the future, she
might have endured both discomfort and drudgery, but
the postponement of construction work on the branch
line had killed immediate hope.  With dismay she
realized a certain coarsening of body and mind, a thickening
of finger-joints, roughness of skin, an attenuation
where milking had turned the plump flesh of her arms
into gaunt muscle.  And to her the thought of that
far-off summer day recurred with increasing frequency—would
this equilibration with environment end by leaving
her peer to the scrawny, flat-chested women of the
settlements?  She who had excelled in the small
arts—music, painting, modelling in wax and clay?  Her past,
in such seasons of depression, seemed now as that of
some other girl—a girl who had worn pretty dresses and
been admired and petted by father, brother, and friends.
Of all her gifts, her voice, a sweet contralto, was only
left her; and of late it had naturally attuned itself to
her sadder moods.  So she had felt her life shrink and
grow narrow, until looking down the vista of frozen
winters, baking summers, they seemed, those weary
years, to draw to a dull, hard point, the wind-swept acre
with its solitary grave.  Conditions had certainly
combined to produce in her a subconscious discontent that
might develop into open revolt against her lot at the
touch of obscure and apparently insignificant cause; they
reinforced and made dangerous the irritation caused by
his little gaucheries.\par

As aforesaid, her dark moods alternated with spasms
of remorse—fits of melting tenderness in which she
condemned herself for her secret criticism of him.  Peeping
through their bedroom window only the preceding night,
the moon had caught her bending over his sleep.  The
tender light absorbed his tan, softened the strong
features without taking from their mobility; deeply shading
the hollows, it gave his whole face an air of clear-cut
refinement.  Its wonderful alchemy foreshadowed the
possibilities of this life, lying so quiescent beneath her
eyes.  For a long hour she held the vigil, while thought
threw flitting shadows athwart her face; then, stooping,
she softly kissed him under cover of her clouding hair.\par

It was a momentous caress, registering as it did her
acceptance of a lowered ideal, marking her realization
of the friction which follows all marriages and is
inevitable to such as hers.  Yet it had not removed the cause;
that remained.  It is easier far to overlook a great
sin than a daily gaucherie, to rise to vast calamity than
to brook the petty irritations which mar and make life
ugly.  The cause remained, surely!  To see her quiet
and pensive at table this day, who would have dreamed
that the morrow would see the thin edge of the wedge
driven in between them?\par

"There's to be a picnic in the grove by Flynn's lake
to-morrow, Nell," he said, as he rose from dinner.
"Let's take a day off?"\par

"All right!" she agreed; and the kiss with which she
rewarded the prospect of even such a slight break in the
dulness of life may easily be regarded as the first tap
on the wedge.\par

How quickly personality responds to atmosphere!
When, next morning, Helen climbed into the buck-board
beside Carter, she was frankly happy as a woman can be
in the knowledge that she is looking fit for the occasion.
Cool, clean, and fresh in a billowy white dress of her own
laundering, excitement and Carter's admiring glances
intensified her naturally delicate color.  As they rattled
over the yellow miles, doubt and misgiving vanished
under the spell of present happiness.  She returned him
eyes that were lovingly shy as those of their honeymoon;
was subdued, sedate, sober, or burst out in small trills
of song as the mood seized her.  Not until she was
actually upon the picnic-ground did she realize the real
nature of this, her first appearance at a public function
since her marriage.\par

A clear sky and a breeze that set yellow waves chasing
one another over the far horizon had brought out the
settlers in a fifty-mile circle—even the remittance-men,
who had been wont to spell amusement in the red letters
of the London alphabet, were there.  Like most country
picnics, it was pseudo-religious in character, with a
humorous speech from the minister figuring as the greatest
attraction.  Amusements ran from baseball and
children's games for youth to love-making in corners by
shamefaced couples.\par

Leaving Carter to put up his team, Helen carried
their basket over to where a crowd of officious matrons
were arranging tables under the trees, and so gained
first knowledge of what was in store for her.  The latest
bride, she was the centre of attraction, target for glances.
Approaching a group of loutish youths, she felt their
stares, flushed under the smothered laugh which greeted
her sudden change of direction.  Girls were just as
unmannerly.  Ceasing their own rough flirtations, they
gathered in giggling groups to observe and comment on one
who had already achieved that which they contemplated.\par

Nor was she more comfortable among the matrons.
While she was teaching school, the halo of education
had set her apart and above them, but now they wished
her to understand that her marriage had brought her
down to their level.  They plied her with coarse
congratulations, embarrassed her with jokes and prophecies
that were broader than suggestive.  Time and again she
looked, for rescue, at Carter, but he was talking railroad
politics in an interested group, did not join her till
lunch was served, and afterwards was hauled away to
play in a baseball game—married men {\itshape{versus}} single.\par

So she had but a small respite.  With his departure
the women renewed their onslaughts, as though
determined to beat down her personal reserve and reave her
nature of its inmost secrets.  No subject was too sacred
for their joking—herself, her husband, the intimacies of
their lives.  There was no satiating their burning
curiosity; her timid cheeks, monosyllabic answers, served
only to whet their sharp tongues.  Shocked, weary,
cheeks burning with shame, she sat on, not daring to go
in search of Carter and so brave again the fire of eyes,
until, midway of the afternoon, she looked up to see
Molyneux and Mrs. Leslie approaching.\par

It was the crowning of her humiliation.  With the
exception of a duty-call on her return to Silver Creek,
and which she had not returned, it was the first time
that Helen had seen Mrs. Leslie for more than a year.
"As you think best," Carter had said, when she had
debated the advisability of renewing the friendship.
"You wouldn't care to meet Molyneux again, would
you?  He's sure to be there."  And, departing from his
usual sane judgment, he made no further explanations,
said nothing of his drive in the dusk with the love-sick
woman, knowledge of which would surely have killed
Helen's friendly feeling.  Lacking that knowledge, she
had pined for the one woman who could give her the
social and intellectual companionship her nature craved,
pined with an intensity of feeling that was only equalled
by her present desire to avoid a meeting.\par

If they would {\itshape{only}} pass without seeing her, she
prayed, bowing her head in shame.  But Mrs. Leslie
had been watching from afar.  "Poor little thing!" she
had exclaimed to Molyneux.  "Alone among those
harpies!  Come, let's rescue her!"  And whatever her
motive, the kiss she bestowed on the blushing girl was
warm and natural.  "Why, Helen," she said,
"whatever are you doing here?  Come along with us."\par

"We are going to organize a race for three-year-old
tots, Mrs. Carter," Molyneux explained.  "We really
need your assistance."\par

His deferential air as he stood bareheaded before her,
the languid correctness of his manner, even the
aristocratic English drawl, pierced that atmosphere of
vulgarity like a breath of clean air.  The easy insolence
with which he ignored the settler women was as balm
to her wounded pride.  She recovered her poise; her
drooping personality revived.\par

"I should like to—very much," she answered, adding,
a little timidly, "But I was waiting for my husband."\par

"Dutiful child," Mrs. Leslie laughed.  "Well, he is so
busy running up the batting average for the Benedicts
that he has forgotten you.  Come along!"\par

"We might go round—" Helen began, tentatively,\par

She would have finished "his way," but, glancing over at
the game, she saw that in his interest he really had
forgotten her.  "Very well!" she substituted; and, rising, she
strolled off between the two, passing within a few yards of
Carter.  Busy with his game, he did not see her, nor would
have known what company she was keeping but for Shinn,
a near neighbor of Jed Hines and fellow of his kidney.\par

"Your wife," he remarked, "seems to be enjy-ing
herself."  His sneer caused a titter among both players
and spectators, but before it subsided Carter came quickly
back.  Throwing a careless glance after Helen, "That's
more'n I can say for yourn."\par

The titter swelled to a roar that caused Helen to look
back.  Mrs. Shinn, poor drudge, had not strayed twenty
feet from her cook-stove in as many squalid years, as
every one knew well.  Grinning evilly, Shinn subsided,
while, after carelessly waving his hand at Helen, Carter
returned to his batting.  If he disapproved of her escort,
not a lift of a line betrayed the fact to curious eyes—not
even when he drove around and found her still with
Molyneux and Mrs. Leslie.\par

They were both silent on the homeward drive.  In
Helen's mind Carter was associated with the coarse and
sickening humiliations of the day.  As never before, she
felt the enormous suction from below; she battled against
the feeling with the desperation of the swimmer who feels
the whirlpool clutching at his heels.\par

Her mood was defiant, and if, just then, he had taken
her to task for her truancy, she would have flamed up in
open revolt.  But he did not.\par

"You are tired," he said, very gently, when the ponies
had run them far out from the press of teams and rigs.
She appreciated that; yet when he slipped an arm about
her waist she moved restlessly within its circle.\par

The wedge was well entered.\par

\label{the-frost}%
\hypertarget{the-frost}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE FROST}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
One noon, a week after the picnic, Carter stood and
looked out over his hundred-acre field of wheat
from his doorway.  A golden carpet, sprigged with the
dark green of willow bluffs, it ran back into a black,
environing circle of distant woodland.  As a vagrant
zephyr touched it into life, Helen remarked, looking
over his shoulder:\par

"The serrated ears in restless movement give it the
exact appearance of woven gold.  Isn't it beautiful!"\par

The dramatist loves to make great events follow in
rapid sequence.  It is the need of his art.  But in life
the tragic mixes with the commonplace.  Even Lady
Macbeth must have, on occasion, joked or talked scandal
with her handmaidens.  And as these two looked out
over the wheat, there was naught to indicate the shadow
which lay between them.\par

"Finest stand I ever saw," Carter answered.  "Five-foot
straw, well headed, plump in the grain; ought to
grade Number One Extra Hard.  We'll make on that
wheat, little girl."\par

"Do you really think so?"\par

He turned quickly.\par

"Those women at the picnic—-"  She explained her
dubious tone.  "They said you were foolish to put in
so much wheat.  'What kind of a darn fool is your
husband, anyway?' that Mrs. MacCloud asked me.  'He
kain't never draw all that wheat to Lone Tree.  Take
him a month to make two trips.  'Tain't no use to raise
grain without a railroad.  We folks hain't put in more'n
enough for bread an' seed.'"\par

He laughed, as much at her clever mimicry as at
Mrs. MacCloud's frankness.  "If they had put in more I
wouldn't have sown any.  Could have bought it cheaper
from them.  But as they didn't—  Do you know that
every man in this settlement makes at least one trip a
month to Lone Tree during the winter?  Well, they do,
and they'll be glad to make expenses freighting in my
wheat.  With grain at seventy a bushel, a load will
bring thirty dollars at the cars, and I can hire all the
teams I want at three a trip."\par

"Why"—his foresight caused her a little gasp—"how
clever!  I should never have thought of that."\par

His eyes twinkled his appreciation of her wifely
admiration, and, taking her chin between his hands, he
looked down into her eyes.  "What's more, when that
wheat money comes in, you an' me 'll jest run down to
Winnipeg an' turn loose on the dry-goods stores."\par

It was the first hint of his knowledge of the turning,
dyeing, the shifts she had made with her wardrobe, and
he made a winning.  The knowledge that he had seen
and understood caused the wedge to tremble and almost
fall out.\par

"Can we—afford it?" she asked, willing now to go
without a thing.\par

"Don't have to afford necessities.  Breaks me up to
see you going shy of things."\par

For the last three days he had bestowed the parting
kiss.  This morning he received it—a warm one at
that—and as he strode off stableward, her burst of singing
echoed his cheerful whistle.  She was quite happy the
next few days planning for their descent on the shops.
She sang at her work—warbling that was natural as that
of the little bird which prinks and plumes for its mate in
the morning sunlight.  Reflecting her happy mood,
Carter was humorously cheerful—so pleased and satisfied
that she stared when, one evening, he came in, gloomy
and depressed.\par

His black mood had come out of the east with a
moaning wind that now herded leaden clouds over dun
prairies.  For one day rain pelted down, then, veering
north, the bitter wind blew hard for a second day.
That evening it died, and a pale sun swung down a
cloudless sky to a colorless horizon.  Under its cold
light the wheat stood erect, motionless, devoid of its
usual sighing life.  A hush, portentous of change,
brooded over all.\par

From their doorway Helen heard Hines, three miles
away, rating his dog.  "Hain't no more gumption than
an Englishman, durn you!  Sick 'em, now!" followed
the maligned animal's bark and the thunder of scurrying
hoofs.\par

"How clear and calm it is!" she commented, as Carter
came up from the stables.\par

He glanced at the thermometer beside the door.  "Too
clear.  I'm afraid it is all off with the wheat."\par

"Why?  What do you mean?"\par

He turned from her astonished eyes.  "Frost."\par

"Frost?  You are surely mistaken?  See how sunny
it is!"\par

Shaking his head, he laid a forefinger on the thermometer.
"Six o'clock, and the silver is down to thirty-five."\par

At dusk it had lowered another degree, and
throughout the northland a hundred thousand farmers were
watching, with Carter, its slow recession.  On the fertile
wheat plains of southern Manitoba, through the vast
gloom of the Dakotas, to the uttermost limits of
Minnesota, the mercury focussed the interest of half a million
trembling souls whose fire-fly lanterns dusted the
continental gloom.  Prayers, women's tears, men's agonized
curses marked its decline, that, like an etching tool,
graved deep lines on haggard faces in Chicago, Liverpool,
and London far away.\par

At thirty-two Carter lit the smudges of wet straw, and
simultaneously the vast spread of night flamed out in
smoke and fire.  "I don't go much on it," he told Helen.
"But some believe in it, and I ain't agoing to miss a
chance."\par

He was right.  Pale thief, the frost stole in under the
reek and breathed his cold breath on the wheat.  Holding
his instrument, at ten o'clock, in the thickest smoke,
Carter saw that it registered twenty-seven.  Five degrees
of frost and the cold of dawn still to come!  Raising the
glass, he dashed it to pieces at his feet.\par

It was done.  Reverberating through the land, the
smash of his glass typified the shattering of innumerable
fortunes, the crash of business houses.  The pistol-shot
that wound up the affairs of some desperate gambler
was but one echo.  Surging wildly, the calamity would
affect far more than the growers of wheat.  Iron-workers,
miners, operatives in a hundred branches of industry
would shiver under the cold breath of the frost.
For now the farmer would buy less cotton, the operative
pay more for his flour, the miner earn a scantier wage.\par

True, the balance swings ever even.  This year ryots
of India, Argentine peons, Egyptian fellaheen would
reap where they had not sown, gather where they had
not strawed.  Another year a Russian blight, Nile
drouth, hot wind of Argentine would swing prices in
favor of the northland.  But in this was small comfort
for the stricken people.\par

"All gone!" Carter exclaimed at midnight.  "The
feathers are frozen offen them bonnets."\par

Helen sensed the bitterness under his lightness.
"Never mind, dear," she comforted.  "I really don't
care.  You did your best."\par

{\itshape{He had done his best}}!  To a strong man the phrase
stabs, signifying the victory of conditions.  He winced,
as from an offered blow.  It was the last drop in his
cup, the signal of his defeat.  It marked the destruction
of this his last plan for her.  He had not, in the
beginning, intended that she should ever set her hand to
drudgery.  His love was to come between her and all
that was sordid, squalid.  If the railroad contract had
materialized, she should have had a little home in
Winnipeg where she might enjoy the advantages of her early
life.  He had planned for a servant—two, if she could
use them—and all that he asked in return was that she
should bring beauty into his life, adorn his home, sweeten
his days with the aroma of her delicate presence.  In this
small castle of Spain he had installed his beauty of the
sweet mouth, golden hair, pretty profile; and now, out of
his own disappointment, he read reproach in the hazel
eyes that looked out from the ruins.\par

Long after her sleep-breathing freighted the dusk of
their bedroom, he lay gazing wide-eyed into the black
future.  A sudden light would have shown his eyes
blank, expressionless, for his spirit was afar, questing
for other material with which to rebuild his castle.  In
thought he was travelling Silver Creek, from its
headwaters in the timber limits to its source where it flowed
into the mighty Assiniboin.  It was a small stream—too
small to drive logs except for a month on the snow
waters.  But with a dam here—another there—a third
on the flats—rough structures of logs with a stone and
gravel filling, yet sufficient to conserve the falling
waters!  The drive could then be sent down from dam
to dam!  During the night he travelled every yard of
the stream, placing his dams, and at dawn rose, content
in his eyes.\par

Slipping quietly from the house, he saddled the Devil
and led him quietly by while Helen still slept, and an
hour later rode up to Bender's cabin.  The Cougar was
also there, and from dubious head-waggings the two
relapsed into thoughtful acquiescence as Carter unfolded
his plans.\par

"She'll go down like an eel on ice!" Bender enthusiastically
agreed.  "All you want now is backing.  Funny,
ain't it, that nobody ever thought o' that before?  Say"—he
regarded Carter with open admiration—"you're
particular hell when it comes to thinking.  If I'd a
headpiece like yourn—"\par

"You hain't," the Cougar coldly interrupted, "so
don't waste no time telling us what you might ha' done.
Get down to business.  I know a man"—he thoughtfully
surveyed Carter—"that financed half a dozen big
lumbering contrac's on the Superior construction work.
He'll sire anything that looks like ten per cent. an' this
of yourn will sure turn fifty.  Come inside an' I'll write
you a letter."\par

What of the Cougar's inexperience with the pen, the
morning was well on when Carter rode back to his cabin.
If Helen had looked closely she might have seen the
new resolution that inhered in his smile, but she had been
concerned with her own reflections.  Somehow, things
had not appeared this morning as they did last night.
Crude daylight shows events, like tired faces, in all their
haggardness, and their complexion was not improved
by the steam from her wash-tub.  Time and again she
had paused to survey her hands, creased and wrinkled
by cooking in hot water.  Her bare arms recalled her
first party-dress, and set her again in the sweet past.
Beside it the present seemed infinitely hopeless, squalid,
dreary.  As she rubbed and scrubbed on her wash-board,
life resolved itself into an endless procession of wash-days,
and tears had mingled with the sweat that fell from her
face to her bosom.\par

Noting her red eyes, Carter was tempted to disclose
his new hope, but remembered the failure of previous
plans and refrained.  As yet nothing was certain.  He
would not expose her to the risk of another disappointment.
He rightly interpreted her sigh when he told her
that he would have to go down to Winnipeg on business
about the timber limits, and his heart smote him when,
looking back, he saw her standing in the door.  Dejection
resided in the parting wave of her hand, utter hopelessness.\par

That lonely figure in the log doorway stuck in his
consciousness throughout his negotiations, causing him
to hustle matters in a way that simply scandalized the
Cougar's man, a banker of the old school.  Yet his
hurry served rather than hurt his cause.  While the
very novelty of it made him gasp, the banker was
impressed.  In private he informed his moneyed partners
that such a chance and such a man rarely came together.
"He's a hustler, and the profit is there," he said, in
consultation.  "A big profit.  We can cut lumber ten per
cent under the railroad price and yet clear twenty-five
cents on the dollar."\par

That settled it.  Half a day later Carter was on his
homeward way, bearing with him the power to draw on
Winnipeg or Montreal for moneys necessary for supplies,
men, and teams.  Running home from Lone Tree, he
whiled away the miles with thoughts of Helen's joy.
He pictured her, radiant, flushed, listening to his news,
and, quickening to the thought, he raced, full gallop,
the last mile up to his door.\par

His face burst into sunshine as, in response to his call,
he heard her cross the floor.  Then his smile died, and
he stared at Mrs. Leslie.  With the exception of an
occasional glimpse as they met and passed on trail, it
was the first he had seen of her since the soft summer
evening when she laid illicit love at his feet.  But no
hint of that bitter memory inhered in her greeting.\par

"How are you, Mr. Carter?" she cried, in her old, gay
way.  "I think you are the meanest man in Silver Creek.
Married a year, and neither you nor Helen have set foot
in our house.  You are a regular Blue beard.  But you
needn't think that you can hide from us forever.  I
just pocketed my pride, ignored your snub, and made
my third call.  Yes"—she emphatically nodded her
pretty head—"the {\itshape{third}}, sir.  But I forgive you; come
in and have some tea.  Helen is down at the stables
hunting eggs to beat up a cake."\par

Covering his vexation with some light answer, he drove
on to the stables, the life and light gone out of him, his
face the heaviest that Helen had ever seen.  "She
called," she answered his abrupt question, "and I have
to entertain her."  Then, piqued by his coldness, she
went on: "For matter of that, I do not see why you
should try to cut me off from her companionship!  She
is the only woman I care for in the settlements!"\par

If he had only told her!  But causes light as the falling
of a leaf are sufficient to deflect the entire current of a
life, and it was perfectly natural that, in his bitter
disappointment, he also should give way to a feeling of pique.
The reason trembled to his lips, and there paused, stayed
by the resentment in her eyes.\par

"As you see fit," he answered.  "Now I have to drive
over to see Bender, on business."\par

"Won't you wait for some tea?"\par

"No.  And don't wait supper.  I may be late."\par

Hurt, she watched him drive away; then, as he
suddenly reined in, she dashed the tears from her eyes.
"Here's a letter for you," he called.  "Got it from the
office as I came by."\par

He nodded in answer to Mrs. Leslie's cheery wave as
he rolled by the cabin.  It was more than cold, yet,
sitting chin on hands, that lady smiled cheerfully when
Helen came up from the stable.  "Don't apologize, my
dear," she laughed.  "Men are {\itshape{such}} fools.  Always
doing something to hurt their own happiness.  Just banish
that rueful expression and read your letter."\par

"What's the matter?"  The question was called forth
by Helen's sudden cry of dismay.  She glanced at the
wedding-cards that Helen offered.  "Hum!  Old flame
of yours, eh?  These regrets will assail one."\par

However, she knit her straight brows over the enclosure.
In part, it ran: "We were so pleased to hear of
your wonderful marriage from your auntie Crandall.  It
was just like you to announce the bare fact, but she told
us all about it.  A railroad king!  Just fancy!  He must
be nice or our delicate Helen would never consent to bury
herself in the wilderness.  Do you know I have been just
{\itshape{dying}} to see him, and now I shall, for we are passing
through your country on our way to the Orient.  Which
is your station?"  Followed sixteen pages of questions,
description of trousseau, and other feminine matters
which Helen reserved for future consumption.\par

Could she have laid tongue, just then, on Auntie Crandall,
that lady had surely regretted her enlargements on
Helen's modest statement of her husband's prospects.
Lacking that easement of feeling, she cried.  This visit
capped her misery, brought the long record of misfortune,
discomfort, disaster to a fitting climax.\par

"Poor child!"  Mrs. Leslie patted her shoulder.  "But
why did you tell her such crammers?  It was the good
auntie?"  She tilted her nose.  "For the honor of the
family, we lie, eh?  Heaven help us!  Your friend—what's
her name?—Mrs. Ravell—she's rich, of
course?  Thought so—couldn't be otherwise—trust
the malignant fates for that.  Well—"  She glanced
meditatively about the cabin.  Instead of lime-washing
the logs, settler fashion, Helen had left them to
darken with age, ornamenting them with a pair of
magnificent moose horns and other woodland trophies.
Tanned bear-skins covered a big lounge that ran across
one end; buffalo robes and other skins took the place of
mats on the floor.  Mrs. Leslie nodded approval.  "Not
bad.  Quite wild-westy, in fact.  You will simply have
to live up to it.  You have given up your town-house
for the present and are rusticating while your hubby
directs some of his splendid schemes for the regeneration
of this section—"\par

"Oh!" Helen burst in.  "I couldn't say that.  It
would be—"\par

"Lying?  Nonsense, child!  Have you a town-house?
No!  Well, what are you kicking about?"  Mrs. Leslie's
descent to the vernacular was as forcible as confusing.
Before Helen had time to differentiate between the
status involved by "not having a town-house" and
giving one up her temptress ran on.  "That is it.  You
are rusticating.  Now, I can lend you some of my
things—glass, china, and so on.  When do they arrive?"  She
consulted the letter.  "Hooray!  Your husband will be
gone all next week, and they come—let me see: one, two,
three—next Friday.  Couldn't be better."\par

Helen blushed under her meaning glance.  "No, no!
It would be wicked."\par

"Why not?"  Mrs. Leslie laughed merrily.  "They
just dropped in and there's no time to send for him.
Quite simple."\par

"Do you think I'm ashamed of him?" Helen asked, flushing.\par

Mrs. Leslie trimmed her sails to the squall.  "Certainly
not.  He's a dear.  You know I always liked him.
But—if your friends were to make a long stay it would
be different.  You couldn't hide his light under a bushel.
But a two days' visit?  What could they learn of him
in that time?  The real him?  They would no more
than gather his departures from the conventional.  I
wouldn't expose him to unfriendly criticism.  Frankly,
I wouldn't, dear, at the cost of a little fib!"\par

The flush faded, yet Helen shook her head.\par

"As you will."  Rising, the little cynic shrugged as
she drew on her riding-gloves.  "But at least take a day
to think it over."\par

"No!"  Helen shook vigorous denial.  "I shall tell
him to-night."\par

She was perfectly sincere in her intention, and if
Carter had returned his usual good-natured self she
would certainly have told him.  But Mrs. Leslie's
presence had angered him and destroyed his native
judgment.  He remembered that this was the outcome of
Helen's invitation to Mrs. Leslie at the picnic, and his
heart swelled at the thought that she should, of her
own volition, go back to friends whom she knew that
he despised.  He felt the folly of his brooding, even
applied strong language to himself for being many kinds
of a fool.  But his reasonable intention to open his
budget of good news on his return was never carried
out because of the coldness of her reception.  Nervous
from her own news, piqued by his curt leave-taking, she
served his supper in silence or answered his few remarks
in monosyllables.  Nothing was said that night, and he
retired without offering the usual kiss.\par

There he offended greatly.  Her woman's unreason
would, for that, accept no excuse.  So when, after
working off his own mood next morning, he came in to
breakfast, he found her still the same.  Really offended,
she served him, as at the previous meal, in silence, and
as, afterwards, she went about her work, her lashes
veiled her eyes, her lips pouting.\par

It was their first real quarrel, and the very
strangeness, novelty of her mood made it charming.  But
when, under urge of sudden tenderness, he tried to
encircle her waist, she drew away, and, afflicted with a
sense of injustice, he did not try again.  There again he
made a mistake.  Justice has no concern with love.
It is empirical, knows no law but its own.  She wanted
to be taken and kissed in spite of herself, as have all
women on similar occasions, from the cave maidens down.\par

It so happened that she was in the bedroom when he
left the house, and she did not see that he had taken
with him the bundle she had packed the preceding night.
She still intended to mention the letter.  Indeed, as she
heard his step on the threshold, she thought, "He'll stop
at the door for his clothes."\par

But he did not; and hurrying out at the sound of
scurrying hoofs, she was just in time to see him vanish
behind a poplar bluff.  She called, called, and called,
then sat down and wept, the more miserable because of
a secret, guilty feeling of relief.\par

\label{the-break}%
\hypertarget{the-break}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE BREAK}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
For three days a brown smoke had hovered over
the black line of distant spruce.  It was far away,
fifty miles at least.  Yet anxious eyes turned
constantly its way until, the evening of the fourth day,
the omen faded.  Then a sigh of relief passed over the
settlements.  "Back-fired itself out among the lakes,"
the settlers told one another.  Then, being recovered
from their scare, they invidiously reflected on the
Indian agent who permitted his wards to start fires to
scare out the deer.  Nor did the fact that the agent
was blameless in the matter take from the satisfaction
accruing from their grumblings.\par

That evening five persons sat with Helen at supper,
for she had invited the Leslies and Danvers, Molyneux's
farm pupil, to meet her guests.  For her this meal was
the culmination of days of anxious planning.  To set
out the table she and Mrs. Leslie had ransacked their
respective establishments, and she blushed when Kate
Ravell enthused over the result.\par

"What beautiful china!" she exclaimed, picking up
one of Mrs. Leslie's Wedgwood cups.  "We have
nothing like this."  Then, glancing at the white napery,
crystal, and silver, she said, "Who would think that we
were two thousand miles from civilization?"\par

It was, indeed, hard to realize.  Obedient to Mrs. Leslie's
orders, her husband and Danvers had fished—albeit
with reluctance—forgotten dress-suits from bottom
deeps of leather portmanteaus.  She herself looked
her prettiest in a gown of rich black lace superimposed
on some white material, and, carrying her imperative
generosity to the limit, she had forced one of her own
dinner-dresses upon Helen.  Of a filmy, delicate blue, it
brought out the young wife's golden beauty.  From the
low corsage her slender throat and delicate face rose
like a pink lily from a violet calyx.  Usually she wore
her redundant hair coiled in a thick braid around the
crown of her head for comfort; but to-night it was done
upon her neck in a loose figure of eight that revealed its
mass and sheen.  Looking from Mrs. Leslie to Helen,
Kate Ravell had secretly congratulated herself upon
having, despite her husband's protest, slipped one of
her own pretty dresses into his valise.\par

His laugh, a wholesome peal that accorded with his
good-humored face, followed her remark.  "She didn't
think that at Lone Tree," he said.  "A lumber-wagon
was the best the liveryman could do for us in the way
of conveyance, and when Kate asked if he hadn't a
carriage he looked astonished and scratched his head.\par

"'Ain't but one in town,' he answered, 'an' it belongs
to Doc Ellis.  'Tain't been used sence he druv the
small-pox case down to the Brandon pest-house.  I 'low
he'd let you have it.'"\par

His wife echoed his laugh.  "It was a little rough,
but this—it's great!"  She pointed out through the
open door over the wheat, golden under the setting sun,
to the dark green and yellow of woods and prairies.
"You are to be envied, Nell.  Your house is so artistic.
The life must be ideal—"\par

Inwardly, Mrs. Leslie snorted: "Humph!  If she
could see her milking, up to ankles in mud on rainy
days—or feeding those filthy calves?"  Aloud, she said,
"Unfortunately, Helen isn't here very often—spends
most of her time in Winnipeg."  Ignoring Helen's
pleading look, she ran on, "Did you store your things, my
dear, or let the house furnished?"\par

Thus entrapped, Helen could only answer that her
goods were stored, and her embarrassment deepened
when Mrs. Leslie continued: "It is such a pity,
Mrs. Ravell, that you could not have met Mr. Carter!  He
is such a dear fellow, so quiet and refined.  Fred"—Leslie's
grin faded under her frown—"what is the matter?"\par

"A crumb, my dear," he apologized.  "Excuse me, please."\par

"We shall have to return you to the nursery."  Her
glance returned to Kate Ravell, and, oblivious of the
entreaty in Helen's eyes, she ran on in praise of Carter.
He was so reserved!  The reserve of strength that goes
with good-nature!  Resourceful—and so she flowed on
with her panegyrics.  She was not altogether insincere.
Helen caught herself blushing with pleasure whenever,
leaving her fictions, Mrs. Leslie touched on some sterling
quality.  Twice she was startled to hear put into words
subtilties that she herself had only felt, and on each
occasion she narrowly watched Mrs. Leslie, an adumbration
of suspicion forming in her mind.  But each time
it was removed by absurd praise of hypothetical qualities
or virtues Carter did not possess.  So Mrs. Leslie praised
and teased.\par

What influenced her?  It is hard to answer a question
that inheres in the complexities of such a frivolous
yet passionate nature.  Naturally good-natured, she
would help Helen out in all things that did not cross her
own purposes.  The sequel proves that she had not yet
got Carter out of her hot blood.  Given which two things,
her action, teasings, and panegyrics are at least
understandable.\par

"We are very sorry," Kate Ravell said when Mrs. Leslie
gave pause.  "We did wish to see him.  Do you
suppose, Helen, that we might if we stayed another day?"\par

It was more than possible, but Ravell relieved Helen
of a sudden deadly fear.  "Can't do it, my dear.  We
are tied down by schedule.  Should miss the Japan
steamer and have to lay over in Vancouver two weeks."\par

Kate sighed.  Newly married, she had all of a young
wife's desire to see her girl friend happy as herself; nor
would aught but ocular demonstration satisfy the
longing.  She was expressing the hope that Carter and
Helen should some day visit them in their Eastern home,
when she suddenly paused, staring out-doors.  Following
her glance, Mrs. Leslie saw a man, a big fellow in
lumberman's shirt and overalls.  The garments were
burned in several places, so that blackened skin showed
through.  His eyes were bloodshot, his face sooty, which
accounted for Mrs. Leslie's not recognizing him at once.\par

"Mr. Carter!" she exclaimed, after a second look.\par

Helen was pouring tea, but she sprang up at the name,
spilling a cup of boiling tea over her wrist.  She did not
feel the scald.  Breathless, she stood, a hand pressed
against her bosom, until Mrs. Leslie, the always ready,
burst into merry laughter.\par

"What a blackamoor!  How you frightened us!
Where {\itshape{have}} you been?"\par

Coming up from the stables, Carter had heard voices,
laughter, the tinkle of teacups, and the sound had
afflicted him with something of the feeling that assails
the wanderer whose returning ears give him sounds of
revelry in the old homestead.  He had suffered, during
his absence, remorse for his own obstinacy mingling in
equal proportions with the pain of Helen's coldness.
Absence had been rendered endurable by the thought
that it would make reconciliation the easier; but now
that he was returned, ready to give and ask forgiveness,
to pour his good news into her sympathetic ear, he found
her merrymaking.\par

His was a hard position.  Between himself, rough,
ragged, dirty, and these well-groomed men in evening
dress, there could be no more startling contrast.  He
felt it.  The table, with its snowy napery, gleaming
appointments, was foreign to his sight as the {\itshape{décolleté}}
dresses, the white arms and necks.  Yet his natural
imperturbability stood him bravely in place of
sophistication.\par

"Been fighting fire," he answered, with his usual
deliberation.  "Suppose I do look pretty fierce."\par

His glance moved inquiringly from the Ravells to
his wife.\par

But she still stood, eyes wide, breath issuing in light
gasps from her parted lips.  For her also the moment
was full of bitterness.  There was no time for thought.
She only felt—a composite feeling compounded of the
misgiving, discontent, humiliation, disappointment,
disillusionment of the last few months.  It all culminated
in that moment, and with it mixed deep shame, remorse
for her conduct.  Also she had regret on another score.
If she {\itshape{had}} told him, he would at least have been prepared,
have achieved a presentable appearance.  Now she was
taken in her sin!  Foul with smoke, soot, the dirt and
grime of labor, he was facing her guests.\par

Starting, she realized that they were waiting, puzzled,
for introductions—that is, Kate was puzzled.  Ravell
was busily employed taking admiring note of Carter's
splendid inches.  Poor Helen!  She might have been
easier in her mind could she have sensed the friendly
feeling that inhered in Ravell's cordial grip.\par

"We were just deploring the fact that we were not to
meet you, Mr. Carter," he said.  "We felt sure of
finding you home after the notice we gave Mrs. Carter.  We
were really quite jealous of your affairs, but now we
shall go away satisfied."\par

Given a duller man, the word "notice" supplied the
possibilities of an unpleasant situation.  But though he
instantly remembered the letter, Carter gave no sign
till he and Helen had passed into their bedroom.  Even
then he abstained from direct allusions.\par

"Friends of yourn?" he questioned, as she set out
clean clothing.\par

"Kate is an old school-fellow.  Wait; I'll get you
clean towels."  She bustled about, hiding her
nervousness from his gray inquisition.  "They are on their
honey-moon.  Going to the Orient—Japan, China, and
the island countries.  They stayed off a couple of days
to see us."\par

"To see you," he corrected.\par

She colored.  Her glance fluttered away from his
grave eyes.  She hurried again into speech.  "Wait,
dear!  I'll get you some warm water."\par

He refused the service, he who had loved to take
anything from her hands.  "Thanks.  I think the lake fits
my case.  Give me the towels and I'll change down there
after my swim."\par

The meal was finished, and she, with the others, had
carried her chair outside before he came swinging back
from the lake.  He was wearing the store clothes of her
misgivings, but the ugly cut could not hide the magnificent
sweep of his limbs.  She thrilled despite her misery.
As she rose to get his dinner, Mrs. Leslie also jumped up.\par

"Poor man, you must be famished!" she exclaimed.
"No, Helen, you are tired.  Stay here and entertain the
men.  Mrs. Ravell and I will wait on Mr. Carter.  And
you, Mr. Danvers, may act as cookee."\par

Thus saved from an uncomfortable téte-à-téte, Helen
suffered a greater misery than his accusing presence.
While chatting with Ned Ravell, her ears were strained
to catch the conversation going on inside.  She listened
for Carter's homely locutions, shivering as she pictured
his primitive table manners.  As a burst of laughter
followed his murmured bass, she wondered whether they
were laughing {\itshape{with}} or {\itshape{at}} him.\par

She might have been easy, for the laugh was on
Danvers.  As yet that young gentleman was still in the
throes of the sporting fever which invariably assails
Englishmen new to the frontier.  Any day he might be
seen wriggling snakelike on the flat of his belly through
mud towards some wary duck, and an enthusiastic
eulogium on the shooting qualities of a new Greener gun
had drawn from Carter the story of Danvers' first kill.\par

"Prairie chicken's mighty good eating an' easy
shooting," he remarked, with a sly look at Kate Ravell.
"But nothing would satisfy his soaring ambitions but
duck.  Duck for his, sirree! an' he blazed away till the
firmament hereabouts was powder-marked and riddled.
Burned up at least three tons of powder before he got
my duck."\par

"{\itshape{Your duck?}}" Danvers protested.  "Just hear him,
Mrs. Leslie.  It was a wild duck that I shot down here
by the lake."\par

Carter chuckled and went on with his teasing.  "I
came near being called as a witness to that cruel murder,
for I was back-setting the thirty acres down by the lake
when I heard a shot an' a yell.  I read it that he'd got
himself, an' was jes' going after the remains, when up he
comes on a hungry lope, gun in one hand and a mallard
in the other.  The bird was that mussed up its own
mother couldn't have told it from a cocoanut door-mat.
Looked like it had made foolish faces at a Gatling; yet
he tells me that he gets the unfortunate animal at eighty
yards on the wing."\par

"You know how close that old gun of mine used to
shoot," Danvers interrupted.  "It was choke-bored,
Mrs. Ravell.  At eighty-yards it would put every shot
inside of a three-foot circle."\par

"The feather marking looked sort of familiar to me,"
Carter went calmly on.  "An' he admits, on cross-examination,
that he murders this bird in front of my cabin."\par

"What of it?" Danvers eagerly put in.  "Wild ducks
light any old place."\par

"But it jes' happens that the confiding critter has
raised her brood in the sedges there, being encouraged
an' incited thereto by my wife, who throws it bread an'
other pickings.  Taking Danvers' gun-barrel for some
new kind of worm, when he pokes it through the sedge
she sails right up and is examining the boring thereof,
when, bang! she's blown into a railroad disaster."\par

"Don't believe him, Mrs. Ravell," Danvers pleaded.
"It was a wild duck, and I shot it flying."\par

"So if the new gun's what you say it is," the tormentor
finished, "you'd better to practise on prairie chicken an'
don't be misled by Mrs. Leslie's hens."\par

"As though I couldn't tell a hen from a prairie chicken!"\par

Carter joined in the laugh which Danvers' indignant
remonstrance drew from the women, yet under the
laugh, beneath his humorous indifference, lay a sad
heart.  "She knew they were coming!  She didn't tell
me!"  Down by the lake he had reasoned the situation
out to its cruel conclusion—"She's ashamed of me!"  How
it hurt!  Yet the flick on the raw served him well
in that it set him on his mettle, nerved him to carry off
the situation.\par

He did not try to transcend his limitations, to clog
himself with unfamiliar restrictions of speech or
manners.  But within those limitations he did his best, and
did it so well that neither woman was conscious of social
difference.  He showed none of the bashfulness which
might be expected from a frontiersman sitting for the
first time at table with fashionable women in dinner-gowns.
On the contrary, he admired the pretty dresses,
the white arms, the hands that handled the teacups so
gracefully; and when he spoke the matter so eclipsed
the manner that it is doubtful whether Kate Ravell
noticed a single locution.  His shrewd common-sense,
quaint humor, the quickness with which he grasped a
new point of view, and the freshness of his own impressed
her with his strong personality.  Pleased and amused,
she had no time to notice grammatical lapses or small
table gaucheries that had irritated Helen by constant
repetition.\par

"He's delightful," she told her husband, in a conjugal
aside.\par

In the conversation which ensued after they joined
the others outside, Carter also took no mean part.  Of
things he knew, and these ranged over subjects that
were the more interesting because unfamiliar to the
town-bred folks, he spoke entertainingly; and on those
foreign to his experience he preserved silence.  On every
common topic his opinion was sound, wholesome.  His
keen wit punctured several fallacies.  The quaint respect
of his manner to the women served him as well with the
men.\par

"Big brain," Ravell told his wife in that conference
which all married folk have held since the first pair
retired to their bedroom under the stars at the forks of
the Euphrates.  "That fellow will go far."\par

"So gentle and kind," Kate added.  "I think Helen
is lucky.  Those English people are nice," she went on,
musingly; "but if I were Helen I'd keep an eye on
Mrs. Leslie."\par

"Yes," she answered his surprised look, nodding
vigorously.  "She is in love with Mr. Carter.  How do
I know?"  She sniffed.  "Didn't I see her eyes—the
opportunities she made to touch him while handing him
things at supper?  Helen is safe, though, so long as she
treats him properly.  He doesn't care for Mrs. Leslie."\par

He shook his head reprovingly.  "You shouldn't
make snap judgments, Kate."\par

Had he witnessed a little scene that occurred just
before the Leslies drove away!  Good-byes had been
said, and Helen had gone in-doors with her guests.
Danvers, who was riding, had galloped away.  Then, at
the last moment, Leslie remembered that he had left
his halters at the stable.  While he ran back Carter
stood beside the rig.  Brilliant northern moonlight
showed him Mrs. Leslie's eyes, dark, dilated, but he
ignored their knowledge till she spoke.\par

"{\itshape{I}} wouldn't have done it."\par

"Done what?"\par

His stoicism could not hide the sudden flash of pain.
She saw it writhe over his face like the quivering of
molten lead ere his features set in stern immobility.\par

"It is very chivalrous of you."  She smiled bitterly.
"But why wear a mask with me?"\par

"You have the advantage of me, ma'am," he stiffly
answered, and moved round to the ponies' heads.\par

Leslie was now returning, but she spoke again, quickly,
eagerly, with the concentration of passion.  "It is
always the way!  The more we spurn you the hotter
your love, and—"  She paused, then, hearing her husband's
foot-fall, whispered: "Vice versa.  Remember!  {\itshape{I}}
wouldn't have done it!"\par

After their departing rattle had died, Carter threw
himself on the grass before the house and lay, head on
clasped hands, staring up at the moon; and Helen, who
was using unnecessary time making a temporary bed,
paused and looked out from the open door.  The dark
figure loomed stern and still as the marble effigy of some
crusader.  There was something awful in his silence; the
soft moonlight quivered around and about him, seemed
a sorrowful emanation.  Frightened, remorseful, she sat
locking and unlocking her fingers.  What was he thinking?\par

Part of his thought was easy to divine.  It would be
common to any man in his situation—the hurt pride,
jealous pain, misgiving, unhappiness, but beyond these
was an unknown quantity, the product of his own
peculiar individuality.  His keen intellect had already
analyzed the cause of her shame.  He was rough, crude,
unpolished!  Any man might also have reached that
conclusion.  It was in the synthesis, the upbuilding of
thought from that conclusion, that he branched from the
common.  He was humble enough in acknowledging his
defects.  Yet his natural wit showed him that humility
would not serve in these premises.  Forgiveness for the
crime against his personality would not remove the cause
of the offence.  Far-sighted, he saw down the vista of
years his and her love slowly dying of the same similar
offences and causes.  That, at least, should never be!
He had reached a decision before she came creeping out
in her night-dress.\par

"Aren't you coming to bed, dear?"\par

He sensed the remorse, sorrow, pity in her voice, but
these were not the feelings to move his resolution.  Pity!
It is the anodyne, the peaceful end of love.  Rising, he
stretched his great arms and turned towards the stables.\par

"Where are you going?" she called, sharply, under the
urge of sudden fear.\par

"To turn in on the hay."\par

She ran and caught his arm, and turned her pale face
up to his.  "Why?  I have made our bed on the couch.
Won't you come in?"\par

"No!"\par

"Why?" she reiterated.  "Oh, why?"\par

"Because it is shame to live together when love has
fled."\par

She clasped his arm with both hands.  "Oh, don't say
that!  How {\itshape{can}} you say it?  Who says I do not love you?"\par

"Yourself."  His weary, hopeless tone brought her
tears.  "In love there is no shame, an' you was ashamed
of me."\par

"I did mean to tell you."  Desperate, she caught his
neck.  How valuable this love was becoming, now she
felt it slipping from her!  "I did!  But you went away
without saying good-bye."\par

"There was opportunity, plenty.  You could have
sent for me."\par

His sternness set her trembling.  "Then—I thought—I
thought—they were only to be here for one day.  Such
a short visit.  I thought they might misjudge—I didn't
want to expose you to hostile criticism."\par

"You've said it.  Love knows no fear.  Good-night."\par

"Oh!—please—{\itshape{don't}}!" she called after him, as he
strode away.  Pity, woman's weakness, the conservative
instinct that makes against broken ties, these were all
behind her cry, and his keen sensibility instantly detected
them.  He closed the stable door.\par

According to the canons of romance, it would have
been very proper for that jarring echo to have unstoppered
the fountains of her love and all things would have
come to a proper ending.  But, somehow, it did not.
After a burst of crying into her lonely pillow, she lay
and permitted her mind to hark back over her married
life.  Hardship, squalor, suffering, misfortune passed in
review till she gained back to the days when Molyneux
had also paid her court.  What share had anger and
pique in affecting her decision?  Angry pride was, just
then, ready to yield them the larger proportion.  Later
came softer memories.  She was troubled as she thought
of his generous kindness.  Under the thought affection,
if not love, revived, and conscience permitted no sleep
until she promised to beg forgiveness.\par

However, circumstance robbed her of the opportunity.
Before the Ravells retired, Carter had said good-bye, as
he intended to start back for the woods before sunrise.
"You needn't to get up, either," he had told her.  "I'll
take breakfast with Bender."  But now she promised
herself that she would rise, get him a hot meal, and then
make her peace.  But at dawn she was awakened by his
wheels, and, running to the door, she was just in time to
see him go by.  She would have called only, as the cry
trembled to her lips, his words of the night before
recurred to memory—"Marriage without love is
shame!"  Suddenly conscious of her night-gear, she shrank as a
young girl would from the eye of a stranger, and the
chance was gone.\par

"I'll tell him when he returns," she murmured, blushing.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
But he did not return; and two days later Bender
and Jenny Hines drove up to the door.\par

In the neatly dressed girl, with hair done on top of
her head, it was difficult, indeed, to recognize the
forlorn creature whom Bender had picked up on that night
trail.  Though she was still small—a legacy from her
drudging years—she had filled and rounded out into
a becoming plumpness.  Her pale eyes had deepened,
were full of sparkle and color.  Two years ago she would
have been deemed incapable of the smile she turned on
Helen.\par

"I'm so glad to see you, Mrs. Carter; an' I'm to stay
with you all winter while your husband's up at the camp.
The doctor didn't want to let me go," she said, not
noting Helen's surprise, "an' he wouldn't to any one but
you."\par

"The camp?  What camp?"\par

It was Jenny's turn to stare.  As for Bender, he gaped,
while his colors rivalled those of a cooked beet.  Sweating
under her questions, he looked off and away to escape
the spectacle of her white misery as he explained Carter's
new enterprise and its glorious possibilities.  He finished
with an attempt at comfort.\par

"I ain't surprised that he didn't tell you.  I allow he
was going to spring it on you all hatched and full-fledged.
Me an' Jenny here was real stupid to give it away.  Might
just as well have said as she'd come on a little visit.  I
allow he'll be hopping mad at the pair of us.  An' now
I'll have to be going after the Cougar.  He'll do the
chores till we kin get you a hired man."\par

If the fiction eased the situation, it deceived neither
her nor them.  Having, a week later, delivered the new
hired man, a strong young Swede, Bender delivered his
real opinion with dubious head-shakings while carting
the Cougar away.  "Don't it beat hell, Cougar?  Him
that straight an' good, her that sweet an' purty, yet they
don't hitch.  It's discouraging."\par

"Well," the cynic grunted, "take warning."\par

Bender eyed him wrathfully.  "Now what in hell do
you mean?"\par

But he blushed under the Cougar's meaning glance.\par

"I reckon he'll drop in on his way up," Bender had
assured Helen.  But he did not.  She yet allowed herself
to hope—hoped on while the weeks drew into months,
each of which brought a check for household expenses.
Soon the snows blanketed the prairies; heavy frost vied
with the cold at her heart; and he had not come.
Jenny's reticence kept the truth from leaking out; but
such things may not be hid, and about Christmas-time
it was whispered through the settlements that Carter
had left his wife.\par

\label{the-camp}%
\hypertarget{the-camp}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XIII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE CAMP}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
That was a hard winter.  From five feet of snow
the settlements thrust up, grim, ugly blotches on
the whiteness.  And it was very cold.  Once the spirit
dropped down, down, down to seventy-two below zero—one
hundred and four degrees of frost.  Fifty was normal,
forty, rather warm.  Also it stormed, and when the
blizzard cut loose, earth, air, or sky was not merged in
blanched chaos.\par

Nestling snugly in the heart of the spruce, Carter's
camp, however, was free of the blizzard.  Let the forest
heave to upper air-currents, tossing skeleton branches
with eerie creakings, yet the gangs worked in comfort,
cutting and hauling logs, while outside a hundred-mile
wind might be herding the drifts.\par

By New Year's his work was well in hand.  Eight
million feet of logs lay on the ice, filling Silver Creek
bankful like a black flood for a long half-mile.  Not that
this had been accomplished without friction.  Such
jettison of humanity as drifts to a lumber-camp does not
shake down to work in a day.  From earth's four
corners a gallows crew of Swedes, French, Russians, Irish,
Canadians, Yankees drifted in, and for one month
thereafter internecine war raged in the bunk-houses.  Then,
having bit, gouged, and kicked itself into some sort of a
social status, the camp concentrated upon the boss.\par

The choppers, strangers to him, soon took his measure.
A swift answer to a mutinous glance, an order quietly
drawled, and the relation was duly fixed.  But it was
different with the teamsters.  They, with their teams,
were all drawn from the settlements and knew him
personally or by report.  Even Hines had condescended to
accept three dollars a day and board at the hand of his
enemy.  But than this no man can greater offend against
his neighbors—to rise superior in the common struggle
for existence.  From them he obtained no credit for the
initiative which had conjured the camp out of nothing.
Now that it was in full swing, each man felt that he could
have done the trick himself.  A man may have no honor
in his own country; so, as always was, always will be,
they, the weak, snarled at him, the strong carrying their
envious spite to the length of trying to kill the goose
which was laying the golden egg.  Though the money
earned this winter would make an easy summer, they
struck at the source of supply—wasted his fodder, tipped
over his sleds, cast logs off to lighten their loads,
manifested their jealousy in a hundred mean ways.\par

The matter of the fodder he easily corrected.
Discovering the teams one evening bedded to their bellies
with his choicest hay, he sent for Bender, who expressed
himself profanely over the waste.\par

"If this keeps up we'll be out of hay an' a job in
another month," Carter said.  "What's got into them?"\par

"Search me," the giant foreman answered.  "They
know a heap better.  Pure malice, I reckon."\par

"Got a good man in your gang?"\par

"Big Hans, the loader.  He's licked every man in his
outfit."\par

"Well, put him in charge of the stables, with fifty
cents a day raise."\par

"Don't need the raise," Bender suggested.  "He'd
sooner fight than eat."\par

"Oh, give it to him."\par

Events justified the expenditure.  At the end of a
week it were, indeed, difficult to locate a feature of Big
Hans's face—to distinguish nose from cheek or discover
his mouth.  But beyond this uncertainty of visage there
was nothing undecided about Hans.  He had worked
steadily through the teamsters and come out on top.
The waste stopped.\par

The derelict logs and loads were not so easily settled.
Once, sometimes twice, a month business called Carter
to Winnipeg, and, though Bender ruled the camp with
an iron fist, one pair of eyes cannot keep tab on fifty
teamsters.  Driving in one evening, Carter counted
fifteen cast-off loads between the dumps and the skidways.
The last lay within three hundred yards of the skids,
where a halloo would have brought the Cougar—loading
boss—and a dozen men to the teamster's aid.\par

That was the last straw.  Through gray obscurity of
snowy dusk Carter stared at the dark mass as though it
incarnated the mulish obstinacy which dogged his
enterprise.  Perhaps it did, to him, for he muttered: "I'm
real sorry for you.  Must have troubled you some to
make back to the stables.  Guess you wasn't late for
supper."\par

Vexed, indignant, he drove slowly by the  skidways,
where the sleds stood loaded for the morning trip.
Enormous affairs, built on his own plans, fourteen feet
across the bunks, they were loaded squarely with four
tiers of logs, then ran up to a single log.  In the gloom
they loomed like hay-stacks, and a stranger to the
woods would have sworn that no single team could start
one.  But they ran on rounded runners over iced tracks,
and Carter knew that they were not overloaded.\par

"No kick there," he muttered.\par

Farther on a rise in the trail gave him a view of the
camp across a wide slough: a jumble of log buildings
that shouldered one another over the inequalities of a
narrow, open strip between slough and forest.  Under
the rising moon the sod roofs, flat and snow-clad,
gleamed faintly.  Patches of yellow, frosted windows blotched
the mass of the walls.  Beyond, dark spruce towered
against the sky-line.  It spread, that gloomy mantle of
spruce, illimitable as night itself, northward to the
frozen circle, its vast expanse unbroken by other centre
of warmth and light.  Solitary splash of life, the camp
emphasized the profundities of environing space,
accentuated their loneliness.\par

Reining in, Carter gazed thoughtfully at this, the work
of his hands.  The clear air gave him many voices.  He
could hear Big Hans swearing quaintly in the stables.
A teamster sang on his way to the cook-house.  An
oblong of brighter yellow flashed out of a mass.  That
was the cook-house door opening to admit the singer.
Came a murmur and clatter of dishes; then light and
sound vanished.  Suddenly, far off, a long howl troubled
the silence.  Wild, mournful, tremulous, it was
emblematic of his problem.  Here, a hundred miles beyond
the stretch of the law's longest finger, the law of the
wolf pack still obtained—only the strong hand could rule.\par

The howl also signalled his arrival at a conclusion.
"They're at supper," he muttered.  "I'll tackle them
there an' now."\par

First he went to the office, a rough log-hut which he
shared with Bender.  The giant lay, smoking, in his
bunk, but he sprang up at Carter's news.  "An' I busted
the head of the Russian on'y yesterday for pitching off
a load!  Who's at the bottom of it?  Now you've got
me.  Michigan Red's as mean as any.  Jes' this morning
he busted two whiffle-trees running, an' I happened along
jes' in time to save the third.  Of course, his runners was
froze down hard, an' him snapping his heavy team like
all get out.\par

"'From your looks,' I says to him, 'I'd have allowed
you'd sense enough to loosen your bobs!'  He on'y
grinned.  'Clean forgotten, boss.  Kick that hinter
bunker, will you?'  That man," Bender finished, "has
gall enough to fix out a right smart tannery."\par

Carter frowned.  The man, a red-haired, red-bearded
fellow, with a greenishly pale face and cold, bleak eyes,
had come in from the wheat settlements about the
Prairie Portage, driving a huge team of blacks.  The
one, a stallion, rose sixteen and a half hands to the crest
of his swelling shoulder.  Reputed a man-killer, he
wore an iron muzzle in stable or out.  His mate, a
rat-tailed mare, equally big, differed only in the insignia
of wickedness, wearing a kicking-strap in harness,
a log-chain in the stable.  Man and team were well mated.\par

"If he'd make his pick on me!" Bender growled on,
"'twould have been pie-easy.  I'd have smashed him
one, an' you could have handed out his walking-papers.
But no!  It's you he's laying for.  'Your boss ain't
big enough to do it,' he says, when I tell him that
there'll be other things than busted whiffle-trees if
he don't look out.  'You're a privileged character
till I'm through with him.'  An' that's just the way
of it.  He'll swallow all I kin give him while waiting
for you."\par

Carter's nod confirmed Bender's reasoning.  No one
else could play his hand in this game of men.  The giant
had deferred to that unwritten law of the woods which
reads that every man must win his own battles.  "Know
anything of him?" he asked.\par

"Cougar ran acrost him once in Michigan.  Don't lay
no stress on his character, but says he's mighty good
with his hands."\par

"Well, come along to the cook-house."\par

As they opened the cook-house door a hundred men
looked up from the three tables which ran the length
of the long log-hut.  These bristled with tinware, and
between them and the stove three cookees ran back
and forth with smoking platters of potatoes, beans, and
bacon.  At the upper end a reflector lamp shed a bright
light over the cook and his pots; but tables were dimly
lighted by candles stuck upright at intervals in their
own grease.  Their feeble flicker threw red shirts and
dark, hairy faces into Rembrandt shadow.  Hot, oily,
flushed from fast and heavy eating, intensely animal,
they peered through the reek of steaming food at Carter.\par

'"I won't keep you a minute," he answered the resentment
which his interruption had called to all the faces.
"I jes' want to say that too many logs have been
dumped by the trail of late.  Now if any teamster
thinks that the loaders are stacking it on him, he can
report to the foreman, who'll see him righted.  But if,
after this—"\par

"More beans!"  A laugh followed the harsh interruption.
The faces turned to Michigan Red.  When the
others paused he had continued eating, and now, his
greenish face aglow with insolence, he was holding an
empty platter out to the nearest cookee.\par

It was a difficult situation.  There was no mistaking
his intent, yet the interruption was timed so cunningly
as to leave no actual cause of offence.  Behind Carter,
Bender bristled with rage, ready to sweep casuistical
distinctions aside with his fist.  Malignantly curious, the
faces turned back to Carter.\par

He waited quietly till the red teamster was served;
paused even then, for, as the latter fell to his eating,
shovelling beans into his mouth with knife loaded the
length of the blade, Carter experienced an uncomfortable
twinge of memory.  The squared elbows, nimble knife,
bent head grossly caricatured himself in the first days
of his marriage, and vividly recalled Helen's gentle
tutelage.  For a second he saw himself with her eyes, then
pride thrust away the vision.\par

"After this"—he began where he had left off—"any
teamster who dumps a load without permission or
good cause will be docked time and charged for his
board."\par

"More pork!"  It was the red teamster again.  Resting
an elbow on the table while he held out the plate
behind him, he permitted his bleak glance to wander
along the grins till it brought up on Carter.\par

Choking with anger, Bender stepped, but Carter laid
a hand on his arm while he spoke to the cook.  "This
man has a tape-worm.  Send him the pot."\par

Blunt and to the point, the answer exactly suited
lumberman primitive humor.  As the door closed behind
them Bender's chuckles echoed the men's roaring laugh.
"Fixed him that time," he commented.  "But he come
back right smart."\par

"Can't come too soon.  It all helps to fill in."\par

Bender sensed the sadness in his tone, and the big
heart of him was troubled.  These months past he had
seen Carter pile task on task, seeking an anodyne for
unhappiness in ceaseless toil.  Every night the office
lights burned unholy hours.  Waking this particular
night, long after twelve, Bender saw that Carter was
still at his desk.\par

"Time you hired a book-keeper," he remonstrated.
"Trail you are travelling ends in the 'sylum."\par

"Book-keeper couldn't do this work."\par

"No?"  Bender sat up.  "What's the brand?"\par

"Figuring—grading contrac's, bridges, trestles, timbering."\par

"For what?"\par

"A railroad."\par

Bender snorted.  "Shore!  You ain't surely calculating
on the C.P.'s building the branch?"\par

"No."\par

The monosyllable discouraged further questioning,
but Bender stuck to his main objection.  "Well, if you
keep this gait you'll railroad yourself into the graveyard.
It is two now; at five you'll be out with the loaders."\par

"Correct."\par

The giant straightened up in his bunk.  "Good God,
man!  Don't you never sleep?"\par

"I'll sleep to-morrow night.  Now, shut up!"\par

Growling, Bender subsided, and long after he had slid
again into the land of dreams, Carter stared at the
opposite wall with eyes that gave him neither the bales,
boxes, ranged along its length, nor the shirts, socks,
overalls, and other lumbermen's supplies on the rough
shelving.  He saw only Helen's flower face blossoming
out of the blackness of the far corner.\par

The replica of himself that he had seen that night in
Michigan Red was but the climax of similar, if milder,
experiences.  Naturally enough, his Winnipeg trips had
brought him in contact with people of more or less
refinement.  He met them at hotels, or in the parlors of
his business acquaintances when, as sometimes happened,
they invited him to dinner.  Such circumstances had
simply forced him to set a guard on his speech and
manners—to imitate those about him.  There had been
nothing slavish in his imitation—no subtraction from the
force of his personality.  It was rather the grafting of
the strong, wild plant with the fruit of hot-house culture.
It inhered in a dawning realization that manners,
courtesy, social customs were based on consideration for
others' happiness, besides being pleasant of themselves.\par

Not that he was ready to admit the fact as sufficient
excuse for Helen's treatment of himself.  Hurt pride
forbade.  "She didn't give me a chance," he murmured.
"I'd have come to it—in time.  She was ashamed."\par

Yet each concession to social custom became an argument
for her, and was turned against him in the nightly
conflict between pride, passion, love, and reason.  Often
love would nearly win.  While her face smiled from the
corner, love would whisper: "She is yours.  Six hours'
ride will take you to her."\par

But pride always answered, "Wait till she sends for
you."  And he would turn again to his figuring.\par

For pride had enlisted ambition in its aid.  Long ago
his clear sight had shown him the need of a competing
railroad, and gradually a scheme had grown upon him.
What man had done, man could do.  If a great trunk
road could develop from the imagination of one man, a
transverse line that should strike south and find an
outlet on the American border could hatch from the
brain of another.  He would build it himself.  Already
he had broached the matter to his financial backers, and
they had given it favorable consideration—more, were
interesting other capitalists in the project.  So, in camp,
on trail, his every spare moment was given to the
working out of construction estimates.\par

Only once was his resolution shaken.  From Lone Tree
the camp "tote" trail slid due northeast, passing the
settlements a half-dozen miles to the east.  Save on this
one occasion, when the need of men and teams caused
him to take the other, he always used the "tote" trail.
And even this time he did not dally in the settlements.
Having advertised his need at the Assiniboin mission,
Flynn's, and the post-office, he headed up for the camp
as dusk blanketed the prairies.  Dark brought him to
his own forks, where, reining in, he gazed long at a
yellow blotch on the night, his own kitchen light.  A
five-minute trot would put him with her!  Love urged
go!  Pride said nay!  And while they battled his ponies
shivered in the bitter wind.  He waited, waited, waited.
Which would have won out will never be known, for
presently a cutter dashed out of the gloom, swung round
on his trail, and, as he turned out to let it by, he caught
voices, Helen's and Mrs. Leslie's, in lively chatter.\par

Leaning over, he lashed his ponies, raced them into
the camp.\par

After that he turned with renewed assiduity to his
figures.  Still, they are dry things, matters of intellect,
useless for the alleviation of feeling.  One emotion
requires another for its cure, and the trouble with Michigan
Red promised more forgetfulness than could be obtained
from the most intricate calculations.  That is why he
had said, "He can't come back too soon."\par

He quickened at the thought of the coming struggle.
In himself the red teamster embodied the envy, spite,
disaffection which, from the first, had clogged Carter's
enterprise.  He materialized the vexatious forces,
impalpable things that Carter had been fighting, and he
felt the relief which comes to the man who at last drives
a mysterious enemy out to the open.\par

\label{the-red-teamster}%
\hypertarget{the-red-teamster}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XIV}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE RED TEAMSTER}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
As Bender prophesied, Michigan Red came back
"right smartly."\par

The following Sunday was one of those rare winter
days when the mercury crawls out of its ball sufficiently
to register a point or two.  At noon the silver column
indicated only four below zero, and, accustomed to sterner
temperatures, the men lolled about the camp bare-headed
and shirt-sleeved.  One hardy group was running
a poker game on a blanket under the sunny lea of a
bunkhouse; the younger men, choppers and teamsters,
skylarked about the camp essaying feats of strength: some
tossed the caber, others put the shot, a third squad startled
the forest with the platoon fire of a whip-cracking
contest.  Standing in his doorway, the cook, autocrat of the
camp, remarked patronizingly on the latter performance.\par

"Pretty fair," he judicially observed, as one young
fellow raised the echoes—"pretty fair, Carrots, but
Sliver there has you beat.  Needn't to look so cocky,
though, Sliver," he qualified his praise, "or I'll call up
Michigan to teach you how to crack a whip."\par

"Oh, shucks!  I ain't scared o' him," Sliver grinned.
Then, rising to his slim height, he writhed body and arm
and let forth a veritable {\itshape{feu de joie}}.\par

"You would, would you?" the cook warned.  "Here,
Red!" he called to the gamblers.  "Get up an' give this
kid a lesson."\par

"You go plumb to—"  The location was drowned by
Sliver's second volley.\par

"Oh, come, Red!" the cook urged.  "This kid makes
me tired."\par

The red teamster went on playing, and would, no
doubt, have indefinitely continued the game but that,
looking up to curse the importunate cook, he saw the
stable roustabout interestedly watching the whip-crackers.
A man in years, the latter was a child in intellect,
simple to the point of half-wittedness.  Picking him up,
starving, in Winnipeg, Carter had brought him up to the
camp early in the winter, and ever since he had served
as a butt for the camp's jokes.\par

Michigan rose.  "Lend me your whip, Carrots!"\par

"Now you'll see!" the cook confidently affirmed, as
the long lash writhed about Michigan's head.  Exploding,
it sent a trail of echoes coursing through the forest.
As is the pop of a pistol to the roar of a cannon, so was
his volley compared to that of Sliver.  Then, to prove
himself in accuracy, Michigan snapped a fly from the
cook's bare arm.\par

"A trifle close," he exclaimed, rubbing the spot.  "Do
it ag'in, Red, an' I cut out your Sunday pudding."\par

Grinning, Michigan swung again, turned, as the lash
writhed in mid-air, and cracked it explosively within an
inch of the roustabout's ear.  "Stan' still, you son of a
gun!" he swore, as the poor simpleton flinched.  "Keep
him in, boys.  Stan' still, or I'll take it clean off nex'
crack....  Now we'll play you've a fly on the tip of
your nose."\par

The play was too realistic, drawing a spot of blood.
Yelling with pain, the roustabout swore, begged, pleaded
piteously to be let alone.  But a circle of grinning
teamsters hedged him in on all sides save where the red
teamster stood with his whip.  Man, in the aggregate, is
always cruel.  Let a few hundred blameless citizens,
fathers of families, husbands, brothers, be gathered
together and flicked with passion's whip, and you have a
mob equal to the barbarities of Caligula.  And these
men were raw, wild as the woods.  Shoving the
simpleton back whenever he tried to break, they stood
grinning while Michigan cut cracking circles about his head.
Sometimes his hair moved under the wind of the lash;
sometimes it grazed his nose.  There was no telling
where it would explode.  He could not dodge it.
Trying, the whip drew blood from his neck.\par

"Stan' still, then!" the red teamster answered his yell
of pain.  "I ain't responsible for your cavortings."\par

"Spoiling Red's aim!" the cook admonished, severely.
"I never seed your like!"\par

"Now open your mouth wide," the tormentor went on.
"I'm agoin' to put the tip in your mouth without
techin' your lips—if you don't move.  Open wide!"\par

But the man's small wits were now completely gone.
He opened his mouth obediently, then, uttering a scream,
a raucous, animal cry, he sprang at his tormentor.  But
a dozen hands seized and dragged him back.\par

"Hold him, boys!  I'll skin the tip of his nose for
that."\par

As Michigan swung his whip the roustabout sent forth
scream on scream.  Foam gathered on his lips.  Terror
had driven him insane.\par

"No, no!" the cook remonstrated.  "That's enough,
Red—that's enough!"\par

Unheeding, the teamster took aim, swung, then—another
lash tangled in his.  Yelling with the sudden
pain of a twisted wrist, he swung round on Carter.
Unobserved, he had run across from his office, snatched
up Sliver's whip, tangled Michigan's lash, and jerked it
over his shoulder.\par

"Boys"—he now faced the flushed crowd—"I don't
allow to mix up with your fun, but what do you call this?"\par

One glance at the bloody weal on the roustabout's
neck and the brutal mob resolved into its individual
components, each a unit of sorrow for its share in the
torture.\par

"Jest a poor fool at that."  Carter laid his hand on
the simpleton's shoulder.\par

"Shore, shore!  Yes!" the cook agreed.  "It's too bad.
We didn't go to do that.  No.  We jest calculated to
have a little fun, an' carried it a leetle too far."\par

"That's so!  That's so!"  Carrots, Smith, and Sliver
all seconded the cook, all voicing repentant public
opinion.\par

"No, Red didn't go to do that," the cook continued.
"He moved.  Red didn't mean it; did you, Red?"\par

After that one yell of pain the red teamster's eyes
had glued to a handspike which lay near by.  But the
useless wrist checked the impulse, and he stood, sullenly
noting changed opinion.\par

"Is this a Sunday-school?" he answered, sneering.
"Or mebbe a Young Folks' Christian Endeavor?  Sliver,
what's the golden text?"\par

"Oh, shore, Red!" Sliver remonstrated.\par

"It's this."  Carter looked round the group.  "Any
man who lays a hand on this poor lad again gets his
time."  His glance fixed on Michigan Red.\par

The red teamster shrugged.  His chance had gone by,
and he was acute enough to recognize the fact.  Not
that he lacked courage or strength to try it out, man
for man—bite, gouge, kick, in the brutal fashion of the
lumber woods.  Taken by surprise, he had lost his
vantage, and now saw that his adversary had cleverly
ranged against him an adverse opinion.\par

"It's not him I'm laying for," he growled.  "Some
other day!"\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
The "other day" came a week later.  Entering the
stables at noon in search of Brady, the water-hauler,
Carter saw the red teamster perched on the top rail of
the black stallion's stall, in his hand the iron muzzle
which he had unstrapped that the brute might feed with
ease.  As the beast snapped, rather than ate, his oats,
he cast vicious, uneasy glances from the tail of his eye
at Red; but, indifferent to the brute's mood and the
anxious glances of his fellows, the teamster calmly
chewed his tobacco.\par

It was by just such tricks that he had gained
ascendency over his fellows.  Whereas it was worth another
man's life to step into their stall, the blacks would stand
and sweat in rage and fear while Michigan slapped and
poked their ribs.  The devil in the beasts seemed to
recognize a superior in the pale-green fiend in the man.\par

"Brady here?" Carter asked.  "Oh, there you are!"\par

He stood immediately behind the stallion, and as he
spoke Michigan brought the iron muzzle down with a
thwack an the brute's ribs.  Snorting, it lashed out,
just missing Carter.  One huge, steel-shod heel, indeed,
passed on either side of his head.  Under such circumstances
a start was a little more than justifiable; yet
after that tribute to surprise Carter stepped quietly
beyond range and went on talking to Brady.\par

"This afternoon you can hitch to the water-cart an'
ice the track in to them new skidways."\par

Then, turning, he eyed Michigan Red.  "That's a
techy beast of yourn, friend."\par

"Techy?" Michigan sneered.  "There ain't another
man in this camp as kin put the leathers on him!"\par

"No?"\par

"No!"  Swinging his heels against the stall, Michigan
added, "Not a damned man."\par

Picking up a spear of hay, Carter chewed it while he
looked over the beast, now foaming with rage.  It was
a dare.  He knew it—saw also the amused interest in
the on-lookers.  They felt Michigan had him in the door.
"The leathers," he remarked, "are on him."\par

It was a skilful move, throwing the initiative back to
the teamster.  Not one whit fazed, however, he
exclaimed, in mock surprise, "Why, damme, so they
are!"  Sliding down, he laid a hand on the stallion's crest.
Instantly the brute ceased his plunging, uneasy stepping,
and while the man stripped off the harness only long,
slow shivers told of smothered fury.\par

"There you are!"  He threw collar and harness at
Carter's feet.\par

"Look here, boss!" Brady remonstrated, as Carter
picked them up.  "I wouldn't go to do it.  Shure I
wouldn't.  The baste is a man-killer be Red's own
word.  Luk at him for the proof."\par

Ears laid flat to his neck, glossy hide shivering, the
whites of his eyes showing viciously, chisel teeth
protruding through grinning lips, the stallion's appearance
bore out his reputation.\par

"I wouldn't!" a dozen teamsters chorused.\par

Unheeding, Carter entered the stall.  As he ranged
alongside, the stallion tried to rear, but was snapped
back by his halter-chain.  So foiled, he humped his
shoulders, dropping his head between his knees; then,
just when the teamsters expected to see the sixteen
hundred pounds of him grind Carter against the stall,
he suddenly straightened and stood still as before, save
for the slow shivers.\par

"Mother of God!" Brady exclaimed.  "What 'll that mane?"\par

Carter's hand rested on the beast's crest.  What did
it mean?  Only the red teamster knew.  But whether
the animal shook to the memory of some torture, or
merely mistook the firm hand for that of his master, he
moved but once while Carter adjusted and buckled the
harness.  That was at the cinching of the bellyband;
but he quickly quieted.  The click of the breeching-snaps
sounded like breaking sticks through the stable,
and as he stepped out from the stall a score of breaths
issued in one huge sigh.\par

"Now hurry, Brady," he said.  "The job will keep
you humping till sundown."\par

Respectful glances followed him away from the stable.
He had touched his men in a vulnerable spot, and though,
hereafter, they might growl and grumble—the lumberman's
sole relaxation—he could count on a fair amount
of obedience from all but such malingerers as Shinn and
Hines, or a natural anarchist like Michigan Red.  The
latter took on the yoke of authority only to defy it;
and though even his bleak face lit up as sunlight
struggles through frost of a winter's morning, he soon found
cause for further trouble.\par

Dropping into the smith's shop a few days later,
Carter found Seebach, the German smith, ruefully
contemplating a half-dozen disabled sleds.  "Herr Gott!"
he exclaimed.  "In one half-day these haf come in.
Alretty yet I works like t'ree tefils, an' this iss the
leedle games they play on me.  It is that you gifs me a
helper or I quit—eh?"\par

Too surprised to laugh over the other's ludicrous
anger, Carter puzzled over the breakage.  As aforesaid,
the sleds had been built on his own plans to carry
enormous loads.  To four-by-six runners, shod with an
inch of steel, hardwood bunkers a foot square were
fastened with solid iron knees braced with inch
iron.  Every bolt and pin was on the same massive plan.
The best of a dozen patterns of as many logging-camps
had gone into the making of those sleds.  Yet, though
they ought to have been good for twenty tons oh the
roughest kind of a road, they were racked, split, or
twisted, bunkers torn off, ironwork on all badly sprung.\par

Carter whistled.  "How did they do it?"\par

"Brady, he says it vas the new roat into the pridge
timbers.  In one place it goes like hell over a pank down
to a lake, with a quick turn at the pottom.  'The Pig
Glide,' Brady calls it."\par

"I'll go out an' look at it."\par

A half-hour's walk brought him to the hill.  Debouching
from heavy timber, the trail inclined for two hundred
yards, then sheered down at an angle of forty-five
degrees to a lake below.  As the smith had said, an abrupt
turn at the bottom added to the trail's difficulties.  Too
steep for ice-sledding, hay had been spread over the face
of the hill, and with this to ease the descent Carter
could see no reason for the broken sleds.\par

A man had been told off to respread the hay after
each passage, and he grinned at Carter's question.
"Bust 'em here?  You bet!  How?  Well, they come
down on a gallop.  Teams is coming now, so if you set
down in the scrub there you'll see 'em do it."\par

It was as he said.  One after the other the teams
emerged from the forest, gathered speed on the incline,
and came flying down the hill, the great sleds cracking
and groaning under the strain of enormous loads as they
skidded around the bottom turn.  Michigan Red came
last, and Carter's anger could not altogether drown a
thrill as he watched the red teamster take the hill.
Whooping, whip-cracking, blacks stretched on the gallop,
he tore down that plumb hill-side and skidded round the
turn, load balanced on one runner.  It split, with a
pistol report, but the steel shoe held and he passed
safely on and down the lake.\par

"He was the first to cut loose," the trackman
explained.  "T'others followed his dare."\par

"Well, they'll have to quit it.  Warn each man, Joe,
an' report all to me that disobey."\par

When, that evening, Joe reported that all but Michigan
Red had obeyed the order, he sensed hot anger under the
boss's calm.  Expecting an explosion, he was the more
surprised when, after a thoughtful pause, Carter
dismissed him with an order to take a couple of
hand-rakes out on the job the following morning.  To the
Cougar he gave orders that the red teamster was to load
last.  Obedient, the Cougar sent Michigan Red to break
track into a new skidway; thus all of his fellows had
passed on down the glide while Michigan was still
loading.\par

"Load him light—dry logs, an' not too many," Carter
had ordered.  But, incensed at the delay, the teamster
indulged in such sarcastic allusions to the frailty of the
loaders' female ancestors that the ribald crew piled the
logs on till his load bulked like a hay-stack.  None other
than the blacks could have started the sled out from the
skids; and while, with jerks and sudden snatches, the
fierce brutes worked it out of deep snow to the iced
tracks, the loaders looked admiringly on.  It was a
triumph in driving.  Man and team worked like a clock,
and, returning blasphemous answers to the loaders'
compliments, Michigan slid off down the trail.\par

To make up for his lost time, he urged the blacks to a
trot, and so came swinging down the incline at twice his
usual speed.  Not till he reached the very edge did he
see that the hay had been raked off the face of the hill.
A mask of ice, it glittered in the sun.\par

Half-way down Carter stood with Joe.  Looking up,
they saw Michigan poised on the top log, a red, sinister
figure against the sky.  He seemed to pause, throw back
on his lines—a quick, involuntary movement.  Then,
craning forward, he glanced down that glittering stretch—a
comprehensive look that took in Carter, Joe, and
their plan.\par

"Give him a forkful under the runners as he goes by,"
Carter whispered.  "Otherwise we'll kill his team."\par

A second, as aforesaid, the red teamster paused; then,
loosing his lines, he leaned over and lashed the stallion
under the soft of the belly.\par

"My God!" Joe cried.\par

He saw the black brute rear, snorting—saw the
blacksnake bite the mare's flank—saw the pair plunge over
the grade; then water bathed his eyes.  He heard,
however—heard the rush and roar, a thunder of hoofs as the
long, steel calkings cut through the ice and struck fire
from the face of the hill.  He felt the wind as the sled
passed, and waited for the crash—which did not come.\par

A voice, cold, deliberate, restored his vision.  "I
didn't think it was in horse-flesh."  Carter was gazing
after team and sled, now a black patch on the snow of
the lake.  "Beat us this time, Joe," he continued; "but
we'll fix him to-morrow."\par

That evening, however, the red teamster enjoyed the
fruits of his exploit.  It seasoned the beans at supper,
sweetened the stable choring.  Opinion agreed that it
was now "up" to the boss, but split on his probable
action, one-half the stable agreeing with Hines that
Michigan surely earned his discharge, the other half
holding that settlement by battle would be the certain
ending.  Neither event, however, had come to pass by
bedtime, and the mystery was intensified by the
chucklings of the road gang, which came in from work long
after the teamsters retired.  Next morning, too, the
loaders—evidently in the secret—added to the suspense
by asking the teamsters if they intended to toboggan
down the glide that trip.\par

"Bet you don't!" they yelled after Michigan Red.\par

Though not exactly nervous, the mystery yet affected
the red teamster.  As his load slid through the forest
uneasiness manifested itself in thoughtful whistlings,
broken song snatches, unnecessary talk to his horses.
Not that he was a whit afraid.  The half-dozen or so
men whom he expected would try to enforce the new
order could not have prevented him from at least sending
his team at the grade.  The fierce soul of him thrilled
at the thought of opposition, and, coming out of the
forest, he set a pace that would have ridden down
opposition.\par

But he reined in at the hill.  Instead of the force of
his imaginings, only Joe Legault stood at the foot of the
glide.  The hay had been respread on its face, but—the
road gang had built a rough bridge over a deep gully,
and now the glide led, straight as an arrow, out to the
lake.  The racking curve was utterly abolished.\par

Grinning, Joe said: "The boss allows that it's your
privilege to kill your own horses.  So go it if you
wanter.  Hain't going to hurt his sleds none."\par

Michigan walked his horses.\par

Carter had won out.  Moreover, he had done it without
the loss of prestige that would have ensued by the
usual brutal methods in vogue in lumber-camps.  Law,
of a man or people, cannot endure, of course, without
force behind it.  Yet behind his imperturbability, quiet
taciturnity, the men felt the power to enforce his
commands.  So his authority was no more called in question.
Not that envious spite ceased to dog him.  Hines, Shinn,
and their coterie stood always ready to stir up discontent,
foment trouble.\par

It was their sympathy that caused the cook to
maintain one can of poor baking-powder to be valid excuse
for leaving.  But Carter disposed of minor troubles with
the same easy good-humor that he had given to big ones.\par

"I reckon you've been scandalously mistreated," he
told the cook.  "I'm right sorry to lose you.  Must you
go?"\par

Mollified, the cook stayed.\par

Then Baldy, chief of the "tote"-trail teamsters, rose
to the point that "thirty hun'red was load enough for
drifted trails."\par

"Thirty it is, Baldy," Carter cheerfully answered, and
Baldy yanked forty and forty-five hundred all winter
over the worst of trails.\par

He had proved himself in the mastership of men just
at the time that opportunity was holding out her hand,
and proof and fruit of his winning came the very day
that saw the last load delivered at the dumps.  "It is a
go!"  The wire which announced, with this bit of slang,
the successful financing of his railroad projects was
brought in by Baldy from Lone Tree, and with it
buttoned against his heart Carter made his way to the
stables where the teamsters were, as they thought,
bedding up for the last time.\par

"We have feed for three months left," he said, "and
I can promise work through the summer.  At what?"  He
turned, smiling, on Brady.  "Never mind; all those that
want it kin have it till freeze-up.  In the mean time I'll
feed an' care for your teams till the log-drive is down."\par

Grumblers from the cradle, kickers born, teamsters
and choppers had looked forward to this last day in
camp, swearing all that ten dollars a day would not hire
them for an hour longer.  No, sirree—not an hour!  Now
they looked their doubt.\par

"What's the pay?" Brady asked.\par

"Half a dollar a day more'n you're getting."\par

"That beats farming in these parts.  You kin sign me, boss."\par

And me—me—me!  The answers floated in from all
over the stable.  Only a few of the older men elected to
return to their farms, and after all had spoken Carter
turned to Michigan Red, who occupied his old perch on
the stallion's stall.\par

"Well, Red?"\par

"Didn't s'pose you'd need me."\par

Carter went on writing.  He could afford to be
generous.  He had beaten the man at every point; to retain
him where another would have discharged him was,
indeed, the crowning of his victory, and Michigan knew it.
Had he doubted, he had but to read it in the countenances
of his fellows.  A good gambler, however, he hid
resentment, and where a poor loser would have taken
his discharge he accepted re-employment.\par

His red beard split in a sneering grin.  "Oh, guess I'll
trouble you for a little longer."\par

The day was eventful for another reason.  Coming up
from a short visit to the settlements, Bender handed
Carter a letter that evening, the superscription of which
sent the dark blood flooding over his neck, for it was
the first he had seen of Helen's writing these months.
Was this the answer of his longing?  Had she sent—at
last?  His fingers trembled as he tore the wrapping,
then he paused, staring.  It was his last check, returned
without an explanatory scrap.\par

"She's hired to teach her old school again."  Bender
answered his blank look.\par

\label{travail}%
\hypertarget{travail}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XV}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize TRAVAIL}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
If the white months seemed to lag with Carter up
at the camp, they dragged wearily with Helen down
in the settlements.  Christmas had been particularly
dreary, for it did not require a woman's marvellous
memory for anniversaries for her to live over again every
incident and experience of last Yuletide.  In their
living-room Carter had built a chimney and fireplace of mud,
Cree style, and on Christmas Eve she had cuddled in
against his broad breast and talked of a sweet possibility.
They had the usual pretty quarrel over sex and names—has
the tongue one good enough for the first-born?
Then he had hung her stocking, and none other would
suit him, forsooth, but the one she was wearing.  He had
laughed away her blushing protestations, and had kissed
the white foot and toes that squirmed in his big hand.
Sitting alone this Christmas, she had blushed at the
memory; then a gush of tears had cooled her hot cheeks,
tears of mingled sorrow and thankfulness that their
pretty dream had not taken form in flesh.\par

One January morning she sat, chin in hands, and
stared across the humming stove at the white drift
outside.  Nels, the Swedish hired man, had killed three pigs
for winter meat the day before, and with a touch of
humor that was foreign to his bleached complacency had
set them on all-fours in the snow.  Stiff, frozen—so
hard, indeed, that the house-dog retired disconsolately
after a fruitless tug at an iron ear—they poked marble
shoulders out of a drift.  The eye of one was closed in
a cunning wink.  His neighbor achieved a grin.  The
mouth of the third was open and thrown back, as though
defying death with derisive laughter.\par

Steeped in thought, Helen did not see the grim grotesques.
These months she had undergone three distinct
changes of feeling.  First she was becomingly repentant.
Viewed under the softening perspectives of time and
distance, Carter's crudities waned, while his strength and
virtues waxed.  The insignificant sloughed away from
his personality, leaving only the strong, the virile.
During this stage she formed small plans towards reconciliation,
and bided patiently at home, ceasing her visits to
Mrs. Leslie.  Not that she felt them wrong, but, besides
the shame natural to her position, she liked to feel that
she was gratifying what she deemed her husband's
prejudice; she experienced the satisfaction which accrues
from a penance self-imposed.\par

When, however, he did not return, she relapsed into
hurt silence—would not speak of him to Jenny, nor
listen when Bender dropped in on one of his periodical
visits with news from the camp.  Lastly came cold
resentment, anger at the grass-widowhood that was being
thrust upon her, a feeling that was the more unbearable
because she secretly admired his boldness in cutting the
knot of their difficulties.  She recognized the wisdom of
the act.  Had he not taken the initiative, the process of
disenchantment would have continued till she herself
might have taken the first step to end their misery.  But
the knowledge did not mitigate the sting.  He had forced
the separation!  The thought rankled and grew more
bitter day by day.\par

This morning she was in a particularly dangerous mood.
Conscious of her original good intention, knowing that
her fault had been the product of conditions as much as
her own weakness, she was ripe for revolt against the
entire scheme of things that had forced the lot of crabbed
age upon her flushed youth, compelling her to sit by a
lonely fire.  And as she sat and brooded a clash of bells
broke up her meditations; the door opened, letting in a
bitter blast that froze the warm interior air into chilly
fog, from the centre of which Mrs. Leslie emerged,
heavily furred and voluble as ever.\par

"Anchorite!" she screamed.  "Or is it anchoress?
Three, four—no, six visits you owe me.  Explain!  Bad
weather?  Hum!"  She tilted her pretty nose.  "If I
couldn't fib more artistically, Helen, I'd adhere to the
painful truth.  You were afraid—of hubby."\par

"I—I wasn't!"\par

Mrs. Leslie surveyed the girl's flushed anger with
sarcastic pity.  "Tut! tut!  More fibs.  Huddled over
that stove, you make the loveliest study of despair.  You
have been crying, too."\par

"I—I haven't!"  The lines of Huddled Despair flowed
into Radiant Anger.\par

"Your eyes are red?"\par

"Well, if they are—if I did—it was through anger."\par

Mrs. Leslie accepted the modified admission.  "That's
right, my dear.  He—no man is worth the compliment
of regretful tears.  They are all foolish, selfish, fickle as
children.  They cry for love like a child for the moon,
throw it away when the toy wearies, howl if another
tries to pick it up.  They only value the unattainable.  Bah!"\par

The ejaculation was comical in its feigned disgust, but
just then Helen had ears only for the serious or
sympathetic—preferably the latter.  "Tell me, Elinor," she
asked, "do you really think I have deserved this at his
hands?"\par

"No."  For once in her life Mrs. Leslie dealt in
undiluted truth—because, perhaps, lying would not serve
her purpose.  "One could understand his pique—"  With
incredible hardihood, considering the part she herself
had played, she commented: "Really, my dear, you
ought not to have done it.  But he has been altogether
too severe—unforgiving.  I don't see how you stand it.
I should freeze these cold nights without some one to
warm my feet on."\par

"To think"—speech was such a relief after months of
bitter silence, and Helen never even noticed the other's
funny climax—"to think that this should be dealt to me
by a man of whose very existence I was unconscious a
short two years ago!  Is he a god to exercise such
power—to command me to eat the bread-and-water of
affliction during his pleasure?  Why, I was twenty-two
before I ever saw him!  Doesn't it seem ridiculous—silly
as though one pebble on a beach were to establish limits
for another?  They roll and rub where and with whom
they list, and why shouldn't I?"  Ignoring the fact that
monogamy was her sex's greatest achievement, and that
the first woman who bartered love for protection, cookery
for maintenance, had not driven such a bad bargain, she
finished: "Wouldn't it be funny if pebbles were
condemned to rub and roll in definite pairs till winds and
waves had buried one or other affinity deep in the sands.  Why—"\par

"In other words," Mrs. Leslie interrupted, "why
should vertical distances count for more than horizontal—death
for more than distance—seven feet under the sod
carry advantages and opportunities that do not go with
seventy miles above?  There isn't any reason.  It is
just so."\par

"Well, I won't stand it!"  Rebellion inhered in Helen's
stamp.  "I won't!  I won't!  I won't!"\par

Mrs. Leslie shrugged her hopelessness.  "Thousands of
women have to.  What {\itshape{can}} you do, my dear?"\par

"Do?" the girl answered, hotly.  "I have already done
it—applied for and secured my old school.  Unfortunately,
I must remain here till the spring term opens."\par

Now to accuse Mrs. Leslie of trailing a definite purpose
were to reveal lamentable ignorance of her ruling traits.
She was no fell adventuress of romance, stealthy of plot,
remorseless in pursuit.  Persistence was foreign to her
light character.  Unstable as water, she veered like a
shuttlecock under the breath of emotion, yet, withal,
grasped speedily at such straws as the winds of opportunity
brought within reach.  If she lacked force to plot
Carter's capture, or to revenge herself for his slight
through Helen, she was willing enough now that the
wind served.\par

"In the mean time," she said, "you will stay with me?"\par

"Oh, I couldn't do that!"  Oh, complex feminine
nature!  Helen balked at the freedom of her agonizings.
The quick earnestness of her answer told of the hope
that still glowed in the ashes of despair.\par

But Mrs. Leslie turned hope against her.  "Oh yes,"
she mocked.  "You were not afraid of him; certainly
not.  But that is not the way to get him back, my dear.
If you would regain your recreant, give him a rival."\par

Now, though this piece of worldly wisdom was strictly
in line with Helen's crooked parable of the pebbles, the
idea sounded grossly common in plain words.  Hastily
she said, "You don't suppose that I would—"\par

"No! no!"  Mrs. Leslie skilfully retrieved her error.
"I only meant that it would be as well to keep him on the
anxious seat.  Never let a man feel too sure of you—it
isn't healthy, for him or you.  I wouldn't wait here till
it pleased him to extend magnificent forgiveness for so
small a fault.  Go out—visit—let him see that you can
be happy without him—that you have still attractions
for others."\par

"But I don't care.  Why do you persist, Elinor, in
hinting that I still love him?  I don't."\par

"Then you'll come with me?"\par

"I'd like to, but I can't leave Jenny alone with Nels."\par

Mrs. Leslie might have replied that this was exactly
what she would have to do when school opened;
instead, she contemplated the love which masqueraded
behind this unparalleled obstinacy from sphinxlike eyes.
"Jenny must be dying to see her friends in Lone Tree,"
she suggested.  "Let her take a vacation.  As for
Nels—he can bach it."\par

Helen looked troubled.  It was really astonishing to
see how she ran from liberty.  But she had, perforce,
to make some show of living up to her professions, so
she called Jenny and anxiously inquired if she {\itshape{didn't}}
want to visit her friends.  Unfortunately, Jennie had
been oppressed these many days with a longing to see
the good doctor, and the expression of her wish carried
the day for Mrs. Leslie.\par

"Oh, well," she sighed; and Mrs. Leslie prudently
confined her laugh within her own hollow sepultures.\par

Accepting the invitation with misgivings, she was
astonished, on her return home, to find how thoroughly
she had enjoyed her two weeks' visit.  Yet it was only
natural.  Besides the change, Mrs. Leslie had been at
pains to amuse and entertain her.  There were cosey
chats over the teacups on matters dear to the feminine
heart, and daily sleigh-rides—mad dashes over hard-packed
trails to music of jingling bells.  Once the drive
was extended as far as Regis barracks, twenty miles to
the west, and Helen was introduced to captains of the
mounted police in scarlet splashed with gold, their
ladies, the agents and clerks of the government land
office—pleasant people at first sight, of whom she was
to learn more.  Of nights, Molyneux and other
remittance-bachelors would drop in, and, with drawn curtains
excluding the vast arctic night, there would be music,
songs, games.  Small wonder that she enjoyed herself,
or that, the ice thus broken, she gravitated between
home and the Leslies' during the remainder of that
winter.\par

Speaking of Molyneux, a greater surprise inhered in
the fact that she had been able to meet him without
embarrassment, a condition that was due to the tact and
real consideration which he displayed.  At their first
meeting he paused only for a pleasant greeting; next,
he ventured a chat; and these lengthened until he felt
safe in staying out an evening.\par

He marked his greatest gain the day that—Leslie
being under the weather with a cold—she allowed him
to drive her home.  By those gentlemen, the romanticists,
this fact would not have been accorded a tender
implication.  They paint love in colors fast as patent
dyes: good girls love once; or, if a second passion be
grudgingly allowed, it is only after the first is safely
bestowed in cold storage underground.  In face of the
fact that the little god occasionally shoots a double
arrow, that the sigh of many a wife would be unwelcome
if intelligible to her husband, that many a maid has
slipped into spinsterhood between two passions, they
lay down as the basic principle of ethical romance the
canon that neither wife nor maid can entertain two loves
other than in sequence.\par

Now Helen may not have been in this case, and if she
had it goes without saying that she would never have
admitted the preference even to herself.  For she had
been raised in the very shadow of the aforesaid canon.
Yet he had certainly won on her—for good reason.  In
person he was above the average of good looks; his
manners touched standard.  In that he, alone of the
English set, had been able to wring a living from the
stern northland without the aid of a fat allowance, he
commanded her respect.  Also she thought that he was
trying to sink his past—he entertained the same
illusion—and as every good girl loves to imagine herself as an
"influence," the thought gave her satisfaction.  Molyneux
had no cause of complaint.\par

To do him justice, he tried, in a slovenly fashion, yet
still tried, to live up to this, the one pure love of his
life—purity must be interpreted as applying to his intention
rather than motive.  Of all the remittance-men who
frequented Mrs. Leslie's house, he, at this time, showed the
least moral taint.  Often he thrust in between Helen and
things offensive.  Though, during Helen's visits,
Mrs. Leslie made some attempt to put her house in order,
she could not always bridle her male guests, who smoked
Leslie's imported tobacco and offered herself veiled love.
But Molyneux sterilized most of their blackguardism,
nipping entendre with a chilly stare, destroying double
meanings by instant and literal interpretation—did it so
effectually that she never noticed the pervading
sensualism.  Indeed, he did it so much as to draw Mrs. Leslie's
fire.  "Virtuous boy," she said, teasing him one day.
"You almost convert me to the true-love theory."\par

His grimace gauged the depth of his reformation.  To
him as to Mrs. Leslie the text could be fitted: "Can the
leopard change his spots or the Ethiop his skin?"  Really
he had not changed in quality or purpose; it
was the same Molyneux in pursuit of the same end.
His tactics were merely altered to suit his game.  He
would, of course, have denied this—probably with the
warmth of honest conviction.  At times his reflections
on the subject attained highly moral altitudes.  He had
known from the first that Helen could never live with
Carter!  Duty certainly called him to end her bondage!
Yes, he believed himself honest, and would continue to
so believe until some unexpected check loosed the Old
Adam again.  This was proved by the flashes of passion
at the very thought of failure.  It would have been
much more natural for him to have attempted a raid on
Carter's Eden.  But, warned by previous experience, he
waited, waited, waited, and watched as the snake may
have watched the maiden Eve over the threshold of
Adam's garden.  Now that time seemed to have verified
his prediction, that, albeit with hesitant steps, Helen was
approaching the gate of her own accord, he held back
the hot hand that fain would have plucked her forth
lest he should startle her into flight.\par

There were many watchers of the girl's progression
during the winter months: Mrs. Leslie, who might be
said to await the moment when a shove might throw the
girl off her balance headlong into Molyneux's arms; the
settlers, who anticipated such a denouement with
scandalous tongues; the remittance-men, who betted on the
result, basing odds on her lonely condition.  To these there
could be but one end.  Always the human soul reaches
for happiness, and the fact that she had once mistaken
Dead Sea fruit for love's golden apples would not prevent
her from tiptoeing to pluck again.  Would she pluck?\par

Molyneux, for one, was sure that she would, and,
having the courage of his conviction, put his hope into
speech, choosing an opportune time.  Nels always drove
her over to Leslie's, and at first brought her home.  But
by the middle of February the latter part of the task
fell by consent of all to Molyneux, and he spoke while
driving her home one afternoon.\par

"Read this," he said, handing her a telegram that
called him to his father's death-bed.\par

"Oh, I'm so sorry!" she exclaimed, impulsively.\par

"For what," he questioned, "his sickness or my absence?"\par

"Both," she frankly answered.  "You have been—very
nice to me.  I shall miss you."\par

Now this was all very proper, but when he stated that
he should be gone at least seven weeks she ought to
have veiled her concern.  But she did not, and the
regret that swam in the hazel eyes strengthened his
purpose.  "Before I go I must say something.  How long
is our present relation to last?"\par

The raise of her eyebrows might have meant anything.
He took it as encouragement, and ran on, "You know
that I love—have always loved you."\par

Here, according to the canons, she ought to have
withered him.  Instead she gave him the truth.  "I am
not blind."\par

"Thanks for your candor.  Now, a step further—do
you intend to remain his bondwoman?"\par

This was harder, yet her answer correctly interpreted
her feeling.  "I—I—really don't know."\par

The doubt spurred him.  "You do not love him.  You
could not—after the way he has treated you.  You must
have love.  A glance at your face would tell a dullard
that it is as necessary to your existence as air or water.
You cannot be happy without it.  It is life to you; more
than sustenance.  You must be wrapped in it, touch it
at every point, feel it everywhere around you.  Your
being cries out for a passion all-absorbing; you will
take nothing less.  I would—"\par

"Give me such love?"  She had thrilled under his
truthful analysis of her nature, and now she cried out
the passion of her sex, the eternal desire for a love
everlasting as that of a mother.  "Is such possible?—a love
that never stales, that endures after the hot blood cools
and beauty fades?  Could you love me through old age?
No, no!  A woman can, but never a man!"\par

"I can!  By God!  I can!" he cried, blazing in response
to her passion.  "I'll prove it, for sooner or later
you are going to love me."\par

She laughed a little wearily.  "There spake the bold
man.  Well—you have my good wishes."\par

"Your—good—wishes?"\par

"Don't flatter yourself."  Her staying hand checked
his enthusiasm.  "You said just now that I didn't
love—my husband.  Perhaps you are right.  I don't know.
I have no standard by which to judge, and only love
could supply one.  So far—you have failed to do so.
I like you—very much; but—if I ever love again, the
man must lift me out of myself, make me forget—him,
myself, the whole world."\par

"I'll do it!" he confidently exclaimed; then, sobering,
added: "I want you to promise one thing.  It isn't
much—simply to give serious thought to your position
while I am away—to remember what I have just told
you and to forget that first foolish mistake that cost
me so much.  Now will you?"\par

"Surely," she honestly answered.\par

"And—if possible—give me an answer?"\par

She nodded, and he was content to leave it there.
They were now on the last mile, and they made it in
silence, he plunged in delicious reverie, she very
thoughtful.  Looking up as the cutter rolled and bumped over
the frozen stable-yard, he caught her looking at him with
soft compassion.\par

"Well?"\par

She smiled.  "Did you really—suffer?"\par

"Hell!"\par

Grasping her hand, he had almost kissed it when she
jerked it suddenly away.  "There's Karl—and
Jenny—standing in the door."  Noting his sudden
discomposure, she added: "Never mind, she didn't see you.
Won't you come in?"\par

"Can't—put me late for the choring."\par

This was only one of a dozen times that he had refused
the invitation.  A little surprised, she watched him turn
and drive away, then she saw Nels coming up from the
stable, and the thought was lost in wonder as to whether
or no he had seen Molyneux take her hand.\par

Now, as a matter of fact, Nels had; moreover, he
mentioned it to Jenny as he helped her wipe the supper
dishes, and thereby earned much trouble.  "I tank," he
observed, "something is doings.  Cappan he taken the
mistress hand.  Pratty soon the boss no have womans."\par

His chuckle died under her wrathful stare.  "Mention
that to any one, Nels, an' Mr. Bender 'll break every bone
in your body."\par

It was not so easy to dispose of her own misgivings.
As, that evening, she arranged the dishes in the
homemade plate-rack, she turned sombre eyes on Helen,
musing by the stove.  Often her lips opened, but sound
trembled on its thresholds.  She kept her own counsel
till Bender dropped in on his next visit.\par

It was perfectly natural for her to turn to him for
counsel.  Coming to her as he did, in the moment of
her sore trouble, her girl's heart had opened and vented
on him the love that had been prisoned since the death
of her mother; and ever since a perfect understanding
of kindred natures had obtained between them.\par

"They're talking about her in the settlements something
scan'lous," she told him.  "Tongues is clacking
from here to Lone Tree.  Why {\itshape{don't}} Mr. Carter come
home?  Kain't you persuade him?"\par

But Bender shook his head.  "No, he's stiffer'n all
he—  Beg your pardon!  I mean he's dreadful sot in
his mind.  I wouldn't envy the one that went to advise him."\par

Before going away Bender touched on a matter that
was now old history in their intercourse.  "Changed
your mind yet, little girl?"\par

It was now Jenny's turn to sorrowfully shake her head.
"It would be my an' pleasure to be wife to a big, good
man like you.  But I just kain't bring myself to put
you where any man could cast my shame in your face."\par

"Oh, shore!" he protested.  "You was that little—a
teeny bit of a thing, jes' seventeen—on'y a baby.  Who'd
be holding it agin you?  Besides—he's in England."\par

"Yes—he's in England," Jenny slowly repeated.  "But—"\par

He did not see the queer look she sent after him as he
rode away.\par

\label{a-house-party}%
\hypertarget{a-house-party}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XVI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize A HOUSE-PARTY}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
One morning, some three weeks after Molyneux's
departure, Helen sat in her doorway reading, as
certain an indication of coming spring as the honk of
the wild geese speeding northward on the back of the
amorous south wind.  As yet the prairie sloughs wore
mail of ice, but from dizzy heights those keen-eyed
voyagers discerned tricklings and wee pools under sheltered
forest banks, sufficient till the laggard sun should smite
the snows and fill the air with tinklings and gurglings,
loose the strange sound of running waters on the frozen
silence.  Another month would do it.  Already the
drifts were packing, and the hard trails traversed the
sinking snows like mountain chains on a relief map.
In Helen's door-yard stratas of yellow chips, debris of
the winter's furious firing, were beginning to appear;
with them, lost articles; indeed, Nels was gobbling joyously
over the retrieval of an axe, when Leslie's team and
cutter came swinging into the yard.\par

Mrs. Leslie was driving, and, seeing Helen, she screamed
from a hundred yards: "They are coming!  All of 'em!"\par

"Who?" Helen asked, when the ponies stopped at the door.\par

"Why, Edith Newton, Mrs. Jack Charters, Sinclair
Rhodes—you remember?  I told you that I should give
a house-party for the Regis folks when the frosts let up.
Hurry and pack up your war-paint!  They'll be here
to-morrow, and I need your help.  No refusal!  Fred
is going in to Lone Tree to-morrow and Jenny can go
down with him.  Nels will cook for himself, won't you, Nels?"\par

"I tank I can cook, yes."  Nels ceased his jubilations
over the axe long enough to season his assent with a
bleached grin.\par

"There!  It's all fixed."  Bustling inside, she talked
volubly while assisting in Helen's selections.  "Yes,
take that; you look your sweetest in it; and I imported
Captain Chapman especially for you.  That also; you'll
need it evenings.  No, Captain Charters isn't coming.
Some Indian trouble called him west.  Oh, Mrs. Jack
won't care—I'm the loser, for he was always my cavalier."\par

Driving home, she rattled steadily, entertaining Helen
with descriptions of her expected guests, giving their
pedigrees, aristocratic connections, while she spiced her
discourse with malicious fact.  Sinclair Rhodes had
secured his appointment as land agent at Regis through
distant cousinship to the governor-general.  And why
not?  The offices ought to go to well-bred people!  He
had money, must have, for his salary and expenses were
out of all proportion—so much so as to cause comment
by malicious people, envious souls!  What if he did make
a little, as they said, on the side?  The government
could afford it; and every one knew what Canadians
were in office!  People who live in glass houses, and so
forth!  It was simply racial envy!  She was also
becomingly indignant over the action of certain Canadians who
had made trouble for Captain Chapman in the matter of
mounted-police supplies.  What figure did a few tons of
provisions cut in a gentleman's accounts?  These
commercial intellects, with their mathematical exactness,
were horrid.  Newton?  He was an appointee of Rhodes.
No, no relation.  She waived further description of the
Newtons, omitted the pregnant fact that Charles
Newton's presence cut as little figure in his wife's social
calculations as Captain Charters' absence did in those
of Mrs. Jack.\par

Caution, doubtless, counselled the omission.  The quail
is not flushed till the net be spread.  Yet the
reservation was hardly necessary in the light of Helen's
condition.  Judgment of another's action is colored by one's
own mental state, and she was not so likely to be
shocked by one who had defied the conventions against
which she herself was in open mutiny.  Anyway, she
liked Mrs. Jack at first sight, despite the scandalous
manner in which she flirted with Charles Newton the
first night at table.  Big, tall, and fair, large eyes
expressed her saving grace, an unparalleled frankness that
seemed to sterilize her flirtations and rob them of
impropriety.  Twice during the meal she retailed Newton's
tender asides to his wife, asking, laughingly, if she
recognized the vintage.\par

However, being as yet in happy ignorance of many
things that would soon cause her serious disquiet, Helen
thoroughly enjoyed that first evening.  The well-appointed
table, with its sparkling glass, silver, snowy napery;
the well-groomed people and their correct speech alike
fed her starved æsthetic senses while they aroused
dormant social qualities.  She laughed, chattered, capped
Mrs. Jack's sallies, displaying animation and wit that
simply astonished Mrs. Leslie.  Her wonder, indeed,
caused Edith Newton to whisper in Mrs. Jack's ear:\par

"Elinor looks as though she had imported a swan in
mistake for a duckling.  Look at Sinclair—positively
smitten.  Giving her all his attention, though he took
Elinor in.  The girl seems to like him, too."\par

Mrs. Jack's big eyes turned to the laughing face that
was raised up to Rhodes.  "Don't believe a word he
says, my dear," she suddenly called across the table.
"And look out for him.  He's dangerous."\par

Though she laughed, Rhodes must have sensed a serious
motive, for he glanced up in quick annoyance.  "Do
I look it?" he asked, turning again to Helen.\par

Nature does not lie.  His narrowly spaced eyes,
salient facial angles, dull skin, heavy lips carried her
certificate of degeneracy.  A physiognomist would have
pronounced him dangerous to innocence as a wild beast on
less evidence, but to Helen's inexperience he appeared
as a man unusually handsome, profile or front face.
The significant angles did not alter the good modelling
of his nose and chin or affect the regularity of his
features.  Tall, slim, irreproachable in manner and dress,
there was no scratch to reveal the base metal beneath
his electroplate refinement.\par

"You certainly don't," she answered, laughing.\par

"Then," he said, with mock gravity, "I can patiently
suffer the sting of calumny."\par

"Calumny?" Mrs. Jack echoed, teasingly.  "{\itshape{Calumny}}?
What's that?"\par

"Synonyme for conscience," Edith Newton put in, with
a spice of malice.  For though the conquest of Rhodes—to
which Regis gossip wickedly laid Newton's presence
in the land office—was now stale with age and tiresome
to herself, she was selfish enough to resent his defection.\par

"Sinclair found it while rummaging Fred's coat for
matches," her husband added.  Leslie's simplicity was
as much of a joke to them as it was with the Canadian
settlers, and, under cover of the laugh, Chapman—a big
blond of that cavalry, mustached type which wins
England's cricket matches while losing all her wars—leaned
over and whispered in Newton's ear: "Leslie will lose
more than his conscience if he doesn't look out.  La belle
Elinor is madly smitten."  Aloud, he said, "Sinclair
would hardly know what to do with it, Mrs. Newton."\par

"Hearken not to the tongue of envy, Mrs. Carter,"
Rhodes retaliated upon his tormentors.  "I'm a very
responsible person, I assure you."\par

She laughed at his mock seriousness, and, believing it
all fooling, gave him so much of her attention that
evening as to cause more than one comment.  "Rhodes is
making heavy running," Newton remarked once to
Chapman, who replied, conceitedly stroking his mustache,
"Wait till I get in my innings."\par

"After me," Newton answered.  "I come next at the bat."\par

Ignorant of this and other by-play, however, Helen
thoroughly enjoyed the first days of the party.  On the
frontier, amusement is a home-made product, and shares
the superiority of domestic jams, jellies, and pickles over
the article of commerce.  They caught the fickle damsel
Pleasure coming and going, reaping the satisfaction of
both spectator and entertainer.  By day they skated,
drove, or curled on a rink which the male guests laid out;
nights, they sang, danced, played games, and romped
like children.\par

Apart from a certain freedom in their intercourse,
which she attributed to long acquaintance, Helen found
nothing objectionable in the demeanor of her new friends
during those first few days.  On the contrary, she
thought them a trifle dull.  Their preglacial and
ponderous humor excited her risibility; she laughed as often
at as with them.  At other times she could not but feel
that they regarded her as alien, a pretty pagan without
their social pale, and she would revolt against their
enormous egotism, insolent national conceit.  She broke
many a lance on that impregnable shield.\par

"You English," she flashed back when, one evening,
Newton reflected on American pronunciation of certain
English family names—"you English remind me of the
Jews, with their sibboleth and shibboleth.  Is your
aristocracy so doubtful of its own identity that it is
compelled to hedge itself against intrusion by the use of
passwords.  You may call 'Cholmondeley' 'Chumley,'
if you choose, but we commit no crime in pronouncing
it as spelled."\par

Again, when Edith Newton rallied her on some crude
custom which she maintained was peculiarly American,
Helen delivered a sharp {\itshape{riposte}}.  "No, I never saw it
done at home; but I have heard that it is quite common
among English emigrants on transatlantic liners."  Such
tiffs were, however, rare; and, to do them justice, men
and women hastened to sacrifice national conceit on the
altars of her wounded susceptibilities.\par

Offence came later, and on quite another score.  At
first she liked the attentions paid her; the gallantry of
the men put her on better terms with herself, renewed
the confidence which had diminished to the vanishing-point
during her months of loneliness.  But when constant
association thawed the reserve natural to first
acquaintance, and freedom evolved into familiarity, her
instincts took alarm.  Distressed, she observed the other
women to see if she had been singled out.  But no, they
seemed quite comfortable under similar attentions, and
they rallied her when she unfolded her misgivings at
afternoon tea.\par

"You shouldn't be so pretty, my dear," Mrs. Jack
said, laughing.  "What can the poor men do?"  Then
they made fun of her scruples, satirizing conventions and
institutions which she had always regarded as necessary,
if not God-ordained.\par

"Marriage," Edith Newton once cynically exclaimed,
"is merely a badge of respectability, useful as a shield
from the slings and arrows."  Then, from the depths of
her own degeneracy, she evolved the utterance: "Men
are all beasts beneath the skin.  Wise women use them
for pleasure or profit."\par

Helen revolted at that; it transcended her mutiny.
But few people are made of martyr stuff—perhaps
fortunately so; martyrs are uncomfortable folk, and, wise
in her eternal generation, nature sprinkles them lightly
over the mass of common clay.  The average person
easily takes the color of environment, so why not Helen?
Thinking that perhaps she was a little prudish, she
stifled her fears, tried to imitate the nonchalance of the
others.  She even made a few tentative attempts at
daring.  Alas! as well expect a rabbit to ruffle it with
wolves.  Such immediate and unwelcome results followed
that she retired precipitously behind ramparts of
blushing reserve.  But the damage was done.
Thereafter Chapman, Newton, Rhodes, one or another, was
constantly at her elbow; she was unpleasantly conscious
that, having let down her fences, they looked upon her
as free game.\par

The thought stirred her to fight.  Chapman she
disposed of with a single rebuff that sent him back to
Mrs. Jack's side.  But Newton proved unmanageable.
Impervious to snubs, his manner conveyed his idea that her
modesty was simply a blind for the others.  His
familiarities bordered on license.  A good singer, he always
asked her to play his accompaniments of evenings, and
she would sicken as he used the pretence of turning a
leaf to lean heavily upon her shoulder.  At other times
he made occasion to touch her—would pick threads from
her jacket; lean across her to speak to her neighbor at
table.\par

By such tactics he brought her, one morning, to great
confusion.  A Cree Indian had driven in from the
Assiniboin reserve with bead-work, moccasins, and
badger-skin mittens which he wished to trade for flour
or bacon.  With the other women Helen was bending
over to examine his wares, when Newton entered the
kitchen.  Stepping quietly up from behind, he laid a
hand on Helen's hair.  Taking him for one of the other
women, she suffered his fondling till Mrs. Leslie, who
knew he was there, asked his opinion on a tobacco-pouch.
Then, before she could move, speak, cast off
his hand, he pressed her head against his wife's dark
curls.\par

"Just look at the contrast!" he admiringly exclaimed,
and so robbed her anger.\par

Yet so evident was the intent behind the excuse that
even the Cree detected the sham.  From Helen his dark
glance travelled to Newton and back again.  "He your
man?" he asked.\par

Vexed to the point of tears, she shook her head and
bent over the bead-work to hide her embarrassment.
But the Cree's rude notions of etiquette had been jarred.
"He touch your hair!"\par

So simple, his comment yet pierced to the heart of the
matter.  Newton had fondled her hair, crown and
symbol of her womanhood, a privilege of marriage.  In an
Indian tribe the offence would have loosed the slipping
knife; a settler would have resented it with knarled fist.
But here the women tittered, while Chapman, who just
then sauntered in, laughed.\par

Emboldened, perhaps, by immunity, the man's offensiveness
developed into actual insult the evening of that
same day.  They had all been pulling taffy in the
kitchen, and, passing through a dark passage to the
living-room, Helen felt an arm slip about her waist.
Newton's face was still tingling from a vigorous slap
when she confronted him before them all in the living-room.
Even his hardihood quailed before her flushed
and contemptuous anger; he was not quite so ready
with his excuse.\par

"I {\itshape{beg}} your {\itshape{pardon}}, Mrs. Carter!  Really, I mistook
you for my wife."\par

It was a lie on the face of it, and, barbed with stinging
truth, her retort drew a peal of laughter from the others.
"Indeed?  Your excuse is more remarkable than your
mistake."\par

Offended as much by the laugh as the insult, she
seated herself on a lounge by Leslie, the one man with
whom she always felt safe.  In him the stigma of
degeneracy took another form; the tired blood expressed
itself in a prodigious simplicity.  He lacked even the
elements of vice.  As his wife put it, "Fred is too
stupid to be wicked."  Yet, withal, he was very much
of a man as far as his chuckleheadedness permitted, and
now he offered real sympathy.\par

"It was a caddish trick, Mrs. Carter, and I mean to
tell him so."\par

"Oh no!" she pleaded.  "It wouldn't improve matters
to make a scene, and he's not likely to offend again.
Please don't?  Stay here—with me."\par

"But I'm your host.  Really, he deserves a thrashing."\par

"No, no!  Stay here!  I don't feel equal to the others."\par

"I never do."  Sitting again, he turned on her a look
of beaming fellowship.  "The girls all yawn and look
terribly bored when I try to amuse them—except you.
They don't seem to care for horses and dogs, the things
that interest me."\par

If, as a conversationalist, he did not shine, he at least
brought her the first easy moments she had known that
day, and she turned a sympathetic ear to some of his
prattle.  Indicating Rhodes, who was leaning over
Mrs. Leslie, he said: "You know I don't like that sort of
thing.  Elinor says I'm old-fashioned, and I suppose
she knows.  Of course she wouldn't do anything that
wasn't proper, but a fellow has his feelings, and it
doesn't take a crime to hurt them, does it?  She's up
on the conventions; but it does seem to me that if a
fellow has anything to say to another fellow's wife he
ought to say it aloud."\par

Astonished that his dulness should have sensed the
pervading sensualism, she studied him while he watched
his wife, in his eyes something of that pitiful pleading
one sees in those of a beaten dog.  His words banished
her doubts as to whether her own misgivings did not
root in hypercritical standards—restored her viewpoint.
All week the atmosphere had thickened, as constant
association banished reserve, and to-day freedom had
attained its meridian.  It was not the matter but the
manner of conversation that filled her with a great
uneasiness—the whispers, asides, smiling stares, conscious
laughter.  The vitiated atmosphere caused her a feeling
of suffocation, and in the midst of her sick revulsion
Leslie dropped a remark that came to her like a breath
of ozone.\par

"I was awfully sorry to hear of the trouble between
you and Carter.  I always thought him {\itshape{such}} a fine
fellow.  He hadn't much use for me—any of us—still I
liked him.  He was a bit on the rough, of course; but, I
tell you, character counts more than culture, strength
than refinement."\par

Character counts more than culture, strength than
refinement?  To his simplicity had been vouched
wisdom worthy of a philosopher.  The phrase stabbed her.
Before her rose a vision of her husband as she had seen
him that last miserable night, cold, stern, inexorable, in
the loom of the moonlight.  In view of that colossal
memory, the Englishmen about her dwarfed to effeminate
insignificance.  Vividly her own doubting recurred.
And she had traded him—for this!  The thought brought
wretchedness too great for concealment.  Her uneasiness
was so manifest as to form the theme of a bedroom
conversation.\par

Though comfortable—the one frame house in the
settlements, a palace to Canadian eyes—Leslie's house
boasted only two bedrooms; so while the men made
shift on shake-downs, Helen shared Mrs. Leslie's rooms,
Edith Newton and Mrs. Jack the other.\par

As she braided her hair for the night, the latter lady
opened the conversation.  "Did you notice how uncomfortable
little Carter was this evening?  She is a nice
little thing, but she doesn't mix.  I don't see why
Elinor invited her."\par

"You don't, eh?"  Edith Newton mumbled a mouthful
of pins.  "You are slow, Maud."\par

"No—only lazy.  Why should I puzzle over things
when you are here?  I'll bet you have pumped
everybody dry long ago.  Now—dispense!"\par

"I don't go round with my eyes shut," the other
calmly answered.  "To begin: Calvert Molyneux is
completely gone on little Carter, whose husband, it seems,
left her because of some slight."\par

"Hum!"  Mrs. Jack elevated her straight brows.
"Foolish man to leave her to Calvert.  So that is why
he went home!  Exits till the tarnished pearl be
regulped by the conjugal oyster?  Clever!"\par

"On the contrary"—she curled a full red lip—"he
contemplates {\itshape{honorable}} marriage—dalliance, Dakota,
divorce, everything that begins with D, down to eventual
desertion, if I know anything of Calvert.  But fancy—HE!"\par

"'The devil in love, the devil a husband would be,'"
Mrs. Jack misquoted.\par

"'The devil married, the devil a husband was he,'"
Edith Newton finished.  "But he is not married yet.
She holds him off—foolishly.  For you know Calvert,
good in streaks, but ruled by his emotions and ruthless
when they command.  If she turns him down—"\par

"She'll need to keep him at longer distance than this
house affords.  But Elinor?—this doesn't explain her.
She's beastly selfish under her jolly little skin.  Why is
she posing as aid and advocate of love?"\par

"In love with Carter hubby—or was would be more
correct, in view of her carryings-on with Sinclair.  But the
Carter attack, I understand, was very severe while it lasted.
Think of it, Maud, Elinor to fall in love with a settler!"\par

Mrs. Jack elevated naked shoulders.  "Not at all
surprising.  Just the itch of her rotten blood for a few
sound corpuscles.  I've felt it myself at times.  Don't
look so shocked—you know we are rotten."\par

"Maud!  Maud!"\par

Humming a bar of "La Boheme," Mrs. Jack regarded
her companion through narrowed lids.  "I believe, Edith,
you keep up appearances with yourself.  Why not be
natural for a change?  But, as you say, Elinor seems to
have made a complete convalescence.  Did you {\itshape{ever}} see
a woman make {\itshape{such}} a projectile of herself?  Positively
hurls herself at Sinclair.  But tell me more about the
Carter man.  How did he treat her rabies?"\par

"Cold-water cure.  Turned her down—flat."\par

"So in revenge she's trying to besmirch the wife?
The little devil!  I call that pretty raw, Edith."\par

The other shrugged.  "Oh, well, it is her pie, and if
she prefers it uncooked it is none of our business.
Better keep your fingers out of it, Maud.  Struggle with
your good intentions."\par

Mrs. Jack smiled sweetly.  "My dear, am I in the
habit of messing alien pies?"\par

"Not unless you covet the meat."\par

"Well, I'm not hankering after either Calvert or Carter
hubby, though I must say that I like his specifications.
Showed awfully good taste both in selecting his wife and
rejecting Elinor.  Fancy! a virtuous man—in this day!"\par

By this time Edith Newton was disposed in bed.  A
sleepy answer came from under the clothing.  "Proves
he hadn't the honor of your acquaintance."\par

"Nor yours," Mrs. Jack retorted.\par

Her flippancy masked a disquiet so grave as to drive
away the desire for sleep.  Clad only in her bed-gown,
she drew a chair up to the stove, which returned her
thoughtful gaze through two red monocles of isinglass.
In her fair-play was associated with its companion
virtue frankness, and in no wise could she read a mite
of the former quality into Elinor Leslie's intent towards
Helen.  After many uneasy shruggings, she rose, took
the lamp, and walked into the other bedroom.\par

"Misplaced my comb," she answered Mrs. Leslie's
sleepy inquiry.  "Lend me yours."  Then she paused
at the foot of the bed.\par

Helen had coiled her hair for the night, but its unruly
masses had loosened and ran, a perfect cataract of gold,
over her pillow.  Against that auriferous background
lay her head and face, with its delicate creams and pinks
sinking into the plumpness of one white arm.  The other
was folded over the softness of her bosom.  Mrs. Jack
thought her asleep till her eyes opened, then, returning
the girl's smile, she tiptoed back to her fire.\par

"It's a damned shame," she told herself, profanely,
but truly, and with such vigor that Edith Newton sleepily
asked: "What's the matter?  Aren't you ever coming
to bed, Maud?"\par

"Saying my prayers.  Go to sleep."\par

"Put in a word for me," the other murmured.\par

"The Lord knows that you need it."  Mrs. Jack
glanced at the bed, then returned to her musings.  "Of
course she's a little fool.  If she goes back to her
husband she will have to settle down to the humdrum of
settler life—raise calves, chickens, pigs, and children in
the fear of the Lord, with only a church picnic or some
such wild dissipation to break the deadly monotony.  A
pleasing prospect, I must say.  But if it suits her—well,
I'm not going to see her delivered, bound and bleating,
into the hands of the devil, {\itshape{alias}} Calvert Molyneux.
It seems a shame, either way, but she undoubtedly
loves her settler hubby, and she's just the kind to eat
her heart out through remorse and shame.  And here
is Elinor blackening her reputation with the pig settlers
to whom she must look for a living, making reconciliation
impossible!  Well, I'm going to speak to the little
fool to-morrow."\par

This she did, making her opportunity by carrying
Helen off to her bedroom, where, having disposed her
victim in a comfortable chair, she herself snuggled down
upon the bed and went with customary frankness
straight to the heart of her subject.  "I want to know,
Helen Carter, why you are here?"\par

Puzzled, Helen stared; then, interpreting by the smile,
she answered, "I—really, I—don't know."\par

"A—pretty—poor—reason!"  She shook her finger in
affected anger.  "Don't you {\itshape{know}} that you don't belong?
Now don't flare up!  If I were Edith Newton, or Elinor,
the cat, you might suspect a reflection.  It isn't that
you are below grade—just the opposite.  Frankly,
my dear, we are a rotten lot.  A sweet girl, with
conscience and morality has no business among us.  We
couldn't scrape up enough of either article to outfit a
respectable cat.  Don't blush.  I'm not envying you
your conscience.  It is a most uncomfortable asset, and,
given choice of two evils, I'd take a harelip.  But, as
you have one—well, you'd better mizzle—go home, you know."\par

Having eased herself by this delivery, Mrs. Jack sighed,
sat up, rolled herself a cigarette, and went on, after a
contented puff: "Don't tell on me, my dear.  Not that
I care a whoop—that's American, isn't it?  I love your
slang; it is so expressive and comfortable to the feelings.
But, you see, rakishness has no attractions for the fool
male of our species.  He resents any infringement of his
monopoly.  Even such a degenerate ass as Charles
Newton prefers school-girl simplicity.  So one must needs
simulate virgin innocence, however painful.  That's more
of your delightful slang.  Now—when are you going?"\par

The question anticipated the conclusion of Helen's
midnight tossings; but, if unchanged in substance, this
had nevertheless been modified by cooler morning
reflections.  She stated the qualifications—Jenny was
visiting in Lone Tree, and would not return till Saturday.
Only two more days!  Her visit would then come to a
natural end, so why offend by abrupt departure?\par

Mrs. Jack laughed.  "I don't think Elinor would be
so very dreadfully offended.  Why?  Well, it is ungracious
to criticise one's hostess, but—you have trapped
her rabbit."\par

"Her—rabbit?"\par

"Yes—Sinclair Rhodes."\par

"Why, he paid me less attention than any of the
others; was less—you'll pardon me—offensive.  I even
thought he tried to keep them away."\par

"As the lion drives the jackals.  Avoid him, my dear.
Well, I suppose that a couple more days won't hurt.
We are to stay a week longer, and if Elinor asks
you—which she won't—you {\itshape{must}} refuse.  Now let us go out
before they begin to suspect a conspiracy."\par

"But first let me thank you.  I have been so miserable,
and you have done me {\itshape{so}} much good."\par

Mrs. Jack gently patted the hand that caught her arm,
an action totally at variance with her answer.
"Self-interest, I assure you.  Elinor is not the only sufferer.
You have depleted the entire preserve.  Not a man has
looked at me the last three days.  There, there!  You
needn't believe it if you don't want to."\par

Could Mrs. Jack's frank eyes have pierced the
immediate future, she would have made her warning against
Rhodes more specific.  On Thursday of that week Leslie
drove his heavy team and bobs into Lone Tree for
supplies, and, what of the thawing trails, could not possibly
be back till all hours Saturday night.  Not knowing this,
Mrs. Jack made no objection when, Saturday morning,
Danvers drove over with Molyneux's double cutter and
carried off herself and the Newtons to visit a friend west
of the Assiniboin.\par

"You'll be here till after supper," she said to Helen,
leaving.  "So I won't say good-bye."\par

But she miscalculated both the warmth of the friend's
welcome and the heavy sledding.  When she returned,
long after dark, she found Mrs. Leslie reading a novel
by her bedroom stove.  In a loose wrapper, crossed feet
comfortably propped on the plated stove-rail, a plate of
red apples at her elbow, and the light comfortably
adjusted on the table behind her, she was the picture of
comfort.  "Having a jolly good time all by myself," she
explained.  "Fred's not home yet, and Captain Chapman
went over to win a little from Ernest Poole at poker.
Helen?  Just gone.  She waited and waited and waited,
but you were so late that we both thought you had
concluded to stay the night.  Didn't you pass her at the
Forks—or hear the bells?  That double string of Fred's
can be heard to heaven on a still night."\par

"Oh, was that she?  Hired man came for her, I
suppose?" Mrs. Jack indifferently inquired, as she laid
off her furs.\par

"No.  Sinclair drove her with our ponies.  What's
the matter?"\par

Eyes dark and dilated with fear, Mrs. Jack faced her.
"Do you mean to tell me—"  Breaking hastily off, she
ran through bed and living rooms, almost upsetting
Newton on her way to the outer door.  "Mr. Danvers!
Oh, Mr. Danvers!  Mr. Danvers!  Mr.—Danvers!" she
called.\par

But the night returned only the clash of his bells.\par

Sweeping back in, she faced Mrs. Leslie, flushed with
the one righteous emotion of her fast life.  "You let
her go out—alone—with that—"  Choking, she ran into
her own room and slammed the door, leaving the other
two women staring.\par

Edith Newton answered the lift of the other's
eyebrows.  "Another of Maud's raves."\par

\label{and-its-finale}%
\hypertarget{and-its-finale}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XVII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize —AND ITS FINALE}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
But for the bells and groan of runners, which drowned
sound for them even as it did for Danvers, Helen
and Rhodes were near enough to have heard Mrs. Jack's
call.  Interpreting the latter's warning morally, Helen
had accepted Rhodes's escort as the lesser of two evils,
or, if she had speculated on tentative attempts at
flirtation, had not doubted her own ability to snub them.\par

A sudden frost, winter's last desperate clutch at the
throat of spring, had hardened the sun-rotted trails; and
as the cutter sped swiftly over the first mile, she chatted
freely, without thought of danger.  Of the three male
guests, Rhodes had, as aforeseen, pestered her least, so,
ignorant of the pitiless brutality masked by his reserve,
she was paralyzed—almost fainted—when his arm
suddenly dropped from the cutter-rail to her waist.\par

Recovering, she spoke sharply, "Take it away!"\par

Instead, he drew her tighter.  She could not see his
face; but as she struck, madly, blindly, at its dim whiteness,
his laugh, heartless, cynical, came out of the dusk,
"Kick, bite, scratch all you want, my little beauty," he
said, forcing his face against hers, "your struggles are
sweet as caresses."\par

Yet, withal his boast, he found it difficult to hold her.
Twice she broke his grip and almost leaped from the
sleigh; and as she fought his face away, her hand
suddenly touched the reins that were looped over his arm.\par

In the black confusion he was unable to specify just
what happened thereafter.  He knew that, alarmed by
the scuffling, the ponies had burst into a gallop; but,
though he felt her relax, he could not see her throw all
of her weight into a sudden jerk on the left rein.  Ensued
a heaving, tumultuous moment.  Pulled from the trail,
the ponies plunged into deep drift.  The cutter bucked
like a live thing, and as it dropped from the high trail
a runner cracked with a pistol report.  Simultaneously
they were thrown out into deep, cold snow.\par

They fell clear of each other, and Helen heard Rhodes
swearing as he ran to the ponies' heads.  The sound
spurred her to action.  She could only count on a
minute, and, rising, she ran, stumbling, falling headlong
into drifts to rise and plunge on, in her heart the terror
of the hunted thing.  Each second she expected to hear
his pursuing foot.  But he had to tie the ponies to a
prairie poplar, and by that time she had gained a bluff
two hundred yards away, and was crouched like a chased
hare in its heart.\par

That poor covert would not have sufficed against a
frontiersman.  Tracking by the fainter whiteness of
broken snow, he would soon have flushed the trembling
game, but it was ample protection from Rhodes's
inefficiency.  Alarmed when he saw that she was gone, he
ran back and forth, shouting, coupling her name with
promises of good behavior.  As her line of flight had
angled but slightly from the trail, she heard him plainly.\par

"My God!  You'll freeze!  Mrs. Carter!  Oh, Mrs. Carter!
Do come out!  I was only joking!"\par

She did not require his assurance as to the freezing.
Already her limbs were numb, her teeth chattered so
loudly she was afraid he would hear.  But she preferred
the frost's mercy to his, and so lay, shivering, until, in
despair, he got the ponies back to the trail and drove
rapidly away.  Then she came out and headed homeward
like a bolting rabbit.  Twice she was scared back
into the snow: once when Rhodes turned about and
dashed down and back the trail; again just before she
picked Leslie's voice from passing bells.  He was merely
talking to his horses, but never before had his voice
fallen so sweetly on pretty ears.\par

As at some wan ghost, he stared at the dim, draggled
figure that came up to him out of the snows; indeed,
half frozen and wholly frightened, she was little more
than the ghost of herself.  "The cad!" he stormed,
hearing her story.  "I'll punch his head to-morrow!"  And
he maintained that rude intention up to the moment
that he dropped her at her own door.\par

"Don't!" she called after him.  "Elinor won't like
it."  But the caution was for his own good, and she was
not so very much cast down when he persisted.\par

"Then she can lump it!" he shouted back.\par

The proverb gives the trampled worm rather more
than due credit when one remembers that a barrel-hoop
can outturn the very fiercest worm, but it should be
remembered in Leslie's favor that he mutinied in the
cause of another.  Having all of the obstinacy of his
dulness, he went straighter to his end because it was
allied with that narrow, bull-dog vision which excludes
all but one object from the field of sight.  Meeting
Rhodes, Chapman, and Newton, with lanterns, at the
point where the sleigh had capsized, he rushed the
former and was living in the strict letter of his intention
when the others pulled him away.  They could not,
however, dam his indignant speech.  On that vast, dark
stage, with the lanterns shedding a golden aureole about
Rhodes and his bleeding mouth, he gave them the
undiluted truth, as it is said to flow from the mouths of
babes and sucklings.\par

Arrived home, moreover, he staggered his wife by his
stubborn opposition.  "It is no use talking, Elinor," he
said, closing a bitter argument.  "To-morrow I go to
the bush for a load of wood, and if that cad is here when
I return I'll break a whip on his back."  Then, ignoring
her bitten lips, clinched hands, the bitter fury that was
to produce such woful consequences, he went quietly
off to bed.\par

Of all this, however, Helen remained in ignorance until
after the denouement that came a few days later along
with a scattering of new snow.  Those were days of
misery for her—of remorseful brooding, self-reproach,
hot shame that set her at bitter introspection that she
might find and root out the germs of wickedness that
had brought these successive insults.  As hundreds of
good girls before her, as thousands will after her, she
wondered if she were really the possessor of some
unsuspected sensuousness.  Comparisons, too, were forced
upon her.  Revolting from the rough settler life, she
had turned to the English set only to find that their
polished ease was but the veneer of their degeneracy,
analogous to the phosphorescence given off in the dark
by a poisoned fish, and equally indicative of decay.
She could not fail to contrast her husband's sterling
worth with their moral and intellectual leprosy.\par

The nights were still more trying.  She would sit,
evenings, and stare at the lamp as though it were the
veritable flame of life, while her spirit quested after the
cause of things and the root of many enigmas.  Why, for
instance, is it that pitilessness, ferocity, ruth, which
were good in the youth of the world, should cause such
evil in its old age?  For what reason the cause of the
lily willed also its blight?  Why conditions make fish
of one woman, flesh of another, and fowl of a third, and
wherefore any one of them should be damned for doing
what she couldn't help in following the dictates of her
nature?  In fact, from the duration of her reveries, she
may have entertained all of the hundred and odd
questions with which the atom pelts the infinite, and,
judging from her dissatisfaction, she received the usual
answer—Why?  It is nature's wont to deliver her lessons
in parables, from which each must extract his or her own
meanings; and a momentous page was turned in Helen's
lesson the day that she rode over to Leslie's to verify a
rumor which Nels had brought from the post-office.\par

As sleighing was practically over and wheeling not
yet begun, she went horseback.  As aforesaid, a scattering
of new snow covered the prairies, and she rode
through a bitter prospect.  Everywhere yellow grass
tussocks or tall brown weeds thrust through the scant
whiteness to wave in the chill wind.  Under the sky's
enormous gray, scrub and bluff and blackened drifts
stood out, harsh studies in black and white.  Nature
was in the blues, and all sentient things shared her dull
humor.  Winging north, in V or harrow formations, the
wild ducks quacked their discontent.  Peevish snipe
cursed the weather as they dipped from slough to slough.
A lone coyote complained that the season transcended
his experience, then broke off his plaint to chase a
rabbit, of whose red death Helen was shuddering witness.\par

The settlement was even less cheerful.  Such houses
as she passed rose like dirty smudges from the frozen
mud of their dooryards.  Moreover, the looks of the few
settlers she met were not conducive of better spirits.
MacCloud, a bigoted Presbyterian of the old Scotch-Canadian
school, gave her a malignant grin in exchange
for her nod.  Three Shinn boys, big louts, burst into a
loud guffaw as their wagon rattled by her at the forks
of Leslie's trail.  Their comment, "Guess she hain't
heard!" increased her apprehension.\par

She could now see the house, smokeless, apparently
lifeless, frowning down from a snow-clad ridge.  But
when, a minute later, she knocked, Leslie answered, and
she entered.  The living-room, with its associations of
gayety, was dank, cold, cheerless.  Ash littered the
fireless stove; the floor was unswept; the air gave back her
breath in a steamy cloud.  Through the bedroom door
she saw drawers and boxes wide open, their contents
tossed and tumbled as though some one had rummaged
them for valuable contents.  And amid these ruins of a
home Leslie sat, head bowed in his hands.\par

"You poor man!" she cried.  "You poor, poor man!"\par

He turned up his face, and its sick misery reminded
her of a worm raising its mangled head from under a
passing wheel as though questing a reason for its
sudden taking off.  His words strengthened the impression:
"I couldn't seem to satisfy her, and she was angry
because I took your part against him.  Of course she
isn't so much to blame.  I did as well as I could, but
I'm neither clever nor ornamental, like Rhodes.  But I
tried to treat her well, didn't I?  You shall judge."\par

"You did—of course you did, poor man!" she sobbed.\par

"Then why did she leave me?"\par

Somehow his blind questioning raised the prairie
tragedy in her mind.  The rabbit's death-scream was equally
sincere in its protest against inscrutable fate in the
coyote's green eyes.  Its innocence was blameless as this.
Yet—how could she answer problems as unsolvable as
her own?\par

"I have been a fool," he went on; and his next words
helped to lessen the astonishment, though not the pain,
which his calamity had brought her.  "A blind fool!
When we used to drive out to Regis last summer it
was going on—I can see it now.  They did their billing
and cooing under my very eyes.  Yet they were not so
clever, after all, were they?  I trusted her—with my
honor, expecting her to protect it as I would have
defended her virtue.  Was I at fault?  If a man can't
trust his wife, what can he do?  Surely not lock her up.
What could I do?"\par

Puzzled, she stood and looked down upon him.  But
under its delicate complexities the feminine mind is ever
practical, and her attention quickly turned to his physical
welfare.  He must be taken away—weaned from
his sick brooding, blind questioning.  "Have you eaten
to-day?" she asked.  "Not for {\itshape{three}} days!  Go out and
harness your ponies at once, and come home with me to
supper."  Anticipating objection, she added, "Really,
you must, for I am too tired to ride back again."\par

Her little fiction was hardly necessary, he found it so
easy to let her do his thinking.  He obeyed as one in a
trance; and not till they drove away, leading her pony
behind, did action dissipate his lethargy.  Then he began
to display some signs of animation.\par

It was a silent and uncomfortable drive.  Instead of
the usual lively jingle, pole and harness rattled dully,
the light snow hushed the merry song of the wheels to a
slushy dirge.  The raw air, bleak sky, slaty grays of the
dull prospect were eminently oppressive.  Nature had
shed her illusions and, fronting her cold materialism,
there was no dodging issues.  Facts thrust themselves
too rudely upon consciousness.  Leslie spoke but once,
and the remark proved that the chill realities had set
him again at the riddle of life.\par

"I shall sell out," he said, as the ponies swung in on
Carter's trail.  "Go to South Africa.  My brother is a
mining superintendent on the Rand."\par

She sighed.  "I can't go to South Africa."\par

Rousing from his own trouble, he looked at her.
"You don't need to.  You'll see.  Carter will come
home one of these days."  And during the few days
that he stayed with her he extended such brotherly
sympathy that she felt sincerely sorry when, having
placed the sale of his farm and effects in the hands of
Danvers, he followed his faithless wife out of her life
and this story.\par

\label{the-persistence-of-the-established}%
\hypertarget{the-persistence-of-the-established}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XVIII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE PERSISTENCE OF THE ESTABLISHED}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Save for a few dirty drifts in the shadows of the
bluffs, the snow was all gone when, one morning a
week or so after Leslie's departure, Helen went south
under convoy of Jimmy Glaves to open school.  The day
was beautiful.  Once more the prairies wore the burned
browns of autumn, but to eyes that had grown to the
vast snowscape during a half-year of winter the huge
monochrome rioted in color.  In fact it had its values.
There a passing cloud threw a patch of black.  Bowing
to the soft breeze, last year's grass sent sunlit waves
chasing one another down to the far horizon.  Here and
there a green stain on the edge of cropped hay-sloughs
bespoke the miracle of resurrection, eternal wonder of
spring, the young life bubbling forth from the decay and
death of parent plants.  Also the prospect was
checkered with the chocolate of ploughed fields.  On these
slow ox-teams crawled, and the shouts of the drivers,
the snapping crack of long whips, alternated as they
drove along with the cheep of running gophers, the
"pee-wee" of snipe, song of small birds.  Noise was luxury
after the months of frozen silence.  The warm, damp
air, the feel of balmy spring, the sunlight on the grasses
were delightfully relaxing.  Helen gave herself up to
it—permitted sensation to rule and banish for the moment
her tire and trouble.  She chatted quite happily with the
trustee, who, however, seemed gloomy and preoccupied.\par

A philosopher coined a phrase—"the persistence of the
established"—to explain the survival of phenomena after
the original cause lies dead in the past.  It admirably
defines the trustee's mental condition, which was a
product of causes set up by Helen in these last months.
Ignorant of the change in her feeling towards her
English friends, he was vividly aware of the prejudice which
her dealings with them had aroused in the settlers.  In
the beginning he and Flynn had earned severe criticism
by giving her the school.  Since the Leslie scandal he
doubted their ability to keep her in it.  At meeting,
"bees," on trail, her name was being coupled with grins
or gloomy reprobation according to the years and
character of the critics.  The women had plucked her
character clean as a chicken, and were scattering their
findings to the four winds.  Just now, of course, the heavy
work of seeding sadly interfered with these activities
and diversions, but Jimmy looked for trouble in the
slack season.  If, in the mean time, she could be weaned
from her liking for the English Ishmael, they might be
able to weather the prejudice.  To which end he steered
the conversation to the greenness, credulity, and
execrable agriculture of the remittance-people.\par

"I kain't see," he said, among other things, "what a
fine gal like you kin see in 'em.  They're dying stock,
an' one o' these days the fool-killer will come along an'
brain the hull biling.  Brain, did I say?  The Lord
forgive me!  Kedn't scratch up the makings of one outen
the hull bunch."\par

Had she known his mind she might easily have laid
his misgivings.  Instead, she tried to modify his bitter
opinion.  "They are certainly inefficient as farmers.
But as regards their credulity, don't you think it is
largely due to a higher standard of business honor?
Now when a Canadian trades horses he expects to be
cheated, while they are only looking for a fair
exchange."\par

Jimmy's face wrinkled in contemptuous disparagement.
"Hain't that jes' what I said?  A man that expects
to get his own outen a hoss-trade kain't be killed
too quick.  It's tempting Providence to leave him loose.
As well expect a nigger to leave a fat rooster as a
Canadian to keep his hands off sech easy meat.  'Tain't
human natur'.  As for their honor—"  He sniffed.  "Pity
it didn't extend to their morals."\par

"It is, indeed."\par

Afterwards they had many a tilt on this same subject.
Smoking in his doorway of evenings, Jimmy would emit
sarcasms from the midst of furious clouds, while she, as
much for fun as from natural feminine perversity, took
the opposite side.  And neither knew the other's
mind—until too late.  But placated by her low answer, he now
let the subject rest.\par

Three feet of green water was slipping over the river
ice when they forded Silver Creek, and they had to
dodge odd logs, the vanguard of Carter's drive.
"Another week," the trustee remarked, "an' we couldn't
have crossed."\par

He was right.  That week a warm rain ran the last
of the snows off several thousand square miles of watershed,
feeding the stream till it waxed fat and kicked like
the scriptural ox against the load Carter had saddled
upon it.  Snarling viciously, it would whirl a timber
across a bend, then rush on with mad roar, leaving a
mile of logs backed up behind.  But such triumph never
endured.  With axe, pevees, cant-hooks, Bender and
his men broke the jams; whereupon, as though peevish at
its failure, the river swept out over the level bottoms
and stranded timbers in backwaters among dense scrub.\par

To see this, the first log-drive on Silver Creek, the
children who lived near the valley scuttled every day
from school, and they would gaze, wide-eyed, at
Michigan Red riding a log that spun like a top under his
nimble feet, or watch the Cougar, shoulder-deep in
snow-water, shoving logs at some ticklish point.  Then they
would hang about the cook's tent, while that functionary
juggled with beans and bacon or made lumberman's
cake by the cubic yard.  Also there were peeps into the
sleeping-tents, where men lay and snored in boots and
wet red shirts, just as they had come out of the river.
Of all of which they would prattle to Helen next day
at school, reciting many tales, chief among them the
Homeric narrative of the cutting of a jam—in which she
had a special interest, and which proved, among other
things, that Michigan Red was again at his old tricks.\par

It was Susie Flynn who brought this tale.  Dipping
down, one end of a bridge timber had stuck at an acute
angle into the river-bed.  A second timber swung
broadside on against its end, then, in a trice, the logs had
backed up, grinding bark to pulp under their enormous
pressure.  "Mr. Bender," Susie said, "he was for
throwing a rope across from bank to bank so's they ked cut
it from above.  But one wasn't handy, an' while they
was waiting a big red man comes up an' hands Mr. Carter
the dare.\par

"'If you're scairt, gimme the axe an' I'll show you
how we trim a jam in Michigan.'\par

"But Mr. Carter wouldn't give it.  'No,' he says,
awful quiet, yet sorter funny, for all the men laughed—'no.
They'll need you to show 'em again.'  Then he
walks out on the jam an' goes to chopping, with
Mr. Bender calling for him to come back an' not make a
damn fool of himself."\par

The scene had so impressed the child that she reproduced
every detail for her pale audience of one—Carter
astride of the key-log; his men, bating their breath with
the "huh" of his stroke; Bender's distress; the cynical
grin of Michigan Red.  Once, she said, a floating chip
deflected the axe, and he swore, easily, naturally, turning
a smile of annoyance up to the bank.  It drew no
response from eyes that were glued to the log, now
quivering under tons of pressure.  A huge baulk, it broke with
a thunderous report when cut a quarter through, and
loosed a mile of grinding death upon the chopper.\par

Then came his progress through the welter.  As the
jam bore down-stream, timbers would dip, somersault,
and thrash down on a log that still quivered under the
spurn of his leap.  Young trees raised on end and swept
like battering-rams along the log he rode.  Yet, jumping
from log to log, he came up from death out of the turmoil
in safety to the bank.\par

"Brought his axe erlong, too!" Susan triumphantly
finished.  "An' you should have jes' seen that red
man—he looked that sick an' green through his wishy-washy
smiling.  But Mr. Carter!  Ain't he a brave one?  You
must be awful proud of him, ain't you, Miss Helen?"\par

What could she answer but "Yes," though the
trembling admission covered only a small portion of her
psychology?  Misery, fear, regret made up the rest.
The remainder of that day dragged wearily by to a
distant drone of lessons.  She, who had tried to eject
her husband from her life, shuddered as she thought
how nearly her wish had come to accomplishment.
Death's cold breath chilled resentment, expunged the
memory of her months of weary waiting.  It would
return, but in the mean time she could think of nothing
but his danger.  Hurrying home, she asked Glaves to
saddle her a horse, saying that she would try to gallop
off a headache.\par

Heartache would have been more correct; but she
certainly galloped, rode westward, then swung around
north on a wide circle that brought her, at dusk of the
short spring day, out on a bald headland that sheered
down to the river.  Beneath her lay the camp, with its
cooking-fires flickering like wind-blown roses athwart
the velvet pall of dusk, and in either direction from that
effulgent bouquet a crimson garland of sentinel fires laid
its miles of length along the valley.\par

Men moved about the nearer fires, appearing to her
distant eyes as dim, dark shapes.  But what sight
refused hearing supplied.  She heard the cook cursing his
kettles with a volubility that would have brought shame
on the witches in Macbeth—the imprecations of some
lumber-jack at war with a threatened jam.  Above all
rose the voice of a violin, quivering its infinite travail,
expressing the throbbing pain of the world; then, from
far up the valley, a lonely tenor floated down the night.\par

{\advance\leftskip\parindentamount{}\advance\rightskip\parindentamount{}
\vs{1}
\begin{verse}
{\vl {\noindent}%
"He went to cut a key-log an' the jam he went below,\par}
{\vl He was the damnedest man that ever I did know."\par}
\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
\end{verse}
}

\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
Some lumberman was relieving his watch by chanting
the deeds of a hero of the camps, and as, like a dove of
night, the voice floated high over the river's growl
through a score of verses, it helped to drive home upon
Helen a sense of the imminent jeopardy Carter had
passed through that day.  While her beast pawed its
impatience, she sat for an hour trying to pick his voice
from the hum of the camp.  It was easy to distinguish
Bender's.  His bass growl formed the substratum of
sound.  She caught, once, the Cougar's strident tones.
Then, just as she was beginning to despair, a command,
stern and clear, rose from the void.\par

"Lay on there with that pevee!  Quick! or you'll
have 'em piled to heaven!  Here!—Bender, Cougar!—lend
a hand! this fellow's letting them jam on him!"\par

She started as under a lash.  All that day she had
lived in a whirl of feeling, and, just as a resolvent
precipitates a chemical mixture, the stern voice reduced
her feeling to thought.  Unfortunately, the tone was not
in harmony with her soft misery.  If it had been—well,
it was not.  Rather it recalled his contempt under
the moonlight, her own solitary shame.  Whirling her
bronco, she cut him over the flank and galloped, at
imminent risk of her neck, over the dark prairies in vain
attempt to escape the galling recurrence of injured pride,
the stings of disappointment.\par

"He doesn't care for me!  He doesn't care for me!"  It
rang in her brain.  Then, when she was able to think,
she added, in obedience to the sex instinct which will not
admit Love's mortality, "He never did, otherwise he
couldn't have left me!"  Her conclusion, delivered that
night into a wet pillow, revealed the secret hope at the root
of her disappointment.  "I won't ride that way again."\par

But she did, and her changed purpose is best explained
by a conversation between Carter and Bender as they
stood drying themselves at the cook's fire after
averting the threatened jam.\par

Carter began: "I reckon you can get along well
enough without me.  Of course I'd have liked to seen
the drive down to the Assiniboin, but in another week
the frost will be out enough to start prairie grading.
I'll have to go.  Let me see....  One week more on the
creek, two on the Assiniboin—three weeks will put the
last timber into Brandon.  In less than a month you'll
join me at the Prairie Portage."\par

Turning to bring another area of soaked clothing next
to the fire, his face came under strong light.  These
seven months of thought and calculation had left their
mark upon it—thinned and refined its lines, tooled the
features into an almost intellectual cast.  His mouth,
perhaps, evidenced the greatest change, showing less
humor, because, perhaps, self-repression and the habit of
command had drawn the lips in tighter lines.  Deeper
set, his eyes seemed darker, while a straight look into
their depths revealed an underlying sadness.  Sternness
and sadness, indeed, governed the face, without,
however, banishing a certain grave courtesy that found
expression in pleasant thanks when, presently, the cook
brought them a steaming jug of coffee.  Lastly,
determination stamped it so positively that only its lively
intelligence saved it from obstinacy.  One glance
explained Bender's answer to Jenny: "He's stiffer'n all
hell!"—his attitude to Helen.  In him will dominated the
emotions.  Summed, the face, with its power, dogged
resolution, imperturbable confidence, mirrored his past
struggles, gave earnest for his future battles.\par

A hint of these last inhered in a remark that Bender
slid in between two gulps of coffee.  "They're saying
as the C.P. will never let you cross their tracks?"\par

Carter smiled.  "Yes?  Who's saying it?"\par

"Oh, everybody.  An' the Winnipeg paper said
yesterday as 'Old Brass-Bowels'"—he gave the traffic
manager his sobriquet—"will enjoin you an' carry the
case through the Dominion courts to the British privy
council.  The newspaper sharp allows that would take
about two years, during which the monopoly would
either buy out or bust your crowd by building a
competing line."\par

This time Carter laughed heartily, the confident laugh
of one sure of himself.  "So that's what the paper
said?  Well, well, well!  That scribe person must be
something of a psychic.  What's that?  Oh, a fellow
who tells you a whole lot of things he don't know
himself.  Now, listen."  (In view of what occurred six
months later, his words are worth remembering.)\par

"Courts or no courts, privy council to the contrary,
we'll run trains across 'Brass-Bowel's' tracks before
next freeze-up."\par

"Hope you do," Bender grinned.  "But the old man
ain't so very slow."\par

They talked more of construction—tools, supplies,
engineering difficulties, the hundred problems inherent
in railroad-building.  Midnight still found them by the
fire, that twinkled, a lone red star, under the enormous
vault of night.\par

But, though interesting and important, in that the
success of the enterprise involved the economic freedom
of a province, the conversation—with one exception—is
not germane to this story, which goes on from the
moment that, two days later, a Pengelly boy carried the
news of Carter's departure to Helen at school.\par

The exception was delivered by the mouth of Bender,
as he rose, stretching with a mighty yawn, to go to his
tent.  "Of course it's none of my damn business, but
do you allow to call at the school as you go down to-morrow?"\par

Carter's brows drew into swift lines, but resentment
faded before the big fellow's concern.  "I didn't reckon
to," he said, gently; yet added the hint, "—since you're
so pressing."\par

But Bender would not down.  "Oh, shore!" he pleaded.
"Shore! shore!"\par

Carter looked his impatience, yet yielded another point
to the other's distress.  "If Mrs. Carter wished to see me,
I allow she'd send."\par

"Then she never will! she never will!" Bender cried,
hitting the crux of their problem.  "For she's jes' as
proud as you."\par

With that he plunged into the environing darkness,
leaving Carter still at the fire.  From its glow his face
presently raised to the valley's rim, dim and ghostly
under a new moon, ridged with shadowy trees.  It was
only six miles to Glaves's place, a hop, skip, and jump in
that country of distances.  For some minutes he stood
like a stag on gaze; then, with a slow shake of the head,
he followed Bender.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
"An' he ain't coming back till winter," the small boy
informed Helen.  "He'll be that busy with his railroading."\par

After two days of embittered brooding, Helen had
come to consider herself as being in the self-same mood
that had ruled her the January morning when Mrs. Leslie
broke in on her months of loneliness.  But this
startling news explained certain contradictions in her
psychology—for instance, her startings and flushings
whenever her north window had shown a moving dot
on the valley trail these last two days.  Moreover, her
pallor was hardly consistent with the assertion, thrice
repeated within the hour, that even if he did come she
would never, never, {\itshape{never}} forgive him {\itshape{now}}!  Not that
she conceded said contradictions.  On the contrary, she
put up a gorgeous bluff with herself, affected indifference,
and—borrowed Jimmy's pony that evening and rode
down to the ford.\par

Bender had built a rough bridge to serve traffic till
the drive should clear the ford.  Reining in at the
nearer end, Helen looked down on the pool, the famous
pool wherein her betrothal had received baptism by
total immersion—at least she looked on the place where
the pool had been, for shallows and sand-bar were
merged in one swirl of yellow water.  But the clay bank
with its bordering willows was still there, and shone
ruddily under the westering sun just as on that memorable
evening.  Here, on the straight reach, the logs floated
under care of an occasional patrol.  A rough fellow in
blue jeans and red jerkin gave her a curious stare as he
passed, whereafter there was no witness to her wet eyes,
her rain of tears, convulsive sobbing, the break-up of
her indifference—that is, none but her pony.  Reaching
curiously around, the beast investigated the grief
huddled upon his neck with soft muzzle, rubbing and sniffing
"cheer up," and she had just straightened to return his
mute sympathy when a voice broke in on the bitter and
sweet of her reverie.\par

"Well met, fair lady!"\par

Turning, startled, she came face to face with
Molyneux.  The heavy mud of the bottoms had silenced his
wheels, and now he sat smiling at the sudden fires that
dried up and hid her tears.  "Not there yet," he answered
her question as to his return home.  "Do you imagine
I could go by without calling?  The school was closed,
but a kid—a Flynn, by his upper lip—told me that you
had ridden this way; and as it was Friday evening I
judged you were going north to Leslie's, and so drove
like Jehu on the trail of Ahab.  Better turn your horse
loose and get in with me.  He'll go home all right.
Why not?"\par

Again she shook her head.  "Didn't Mr. Danvers
write you—?"  Remembering that a letter would have
crossed him on the Atlantic, she stopped.\par

"What's the matter?  No one dead?  Worse?"  He
laughed in her serious face when she had told.  "Oh,
well, that's not so bad.  After all, Leslie was an awful
chump.  If a man isn't strong enough to hold a woman's
love he shouldn't expect to keep her."\par

He was yet, of course, in ignorance of all that had
transpired in his absence—the house-party and the
complete revulsion it had wrought in Helen's feelings.
He knew nothing of her shame, vivid remorse, passion of
thankfulness for her escape.  To him she was still the
woman, desperate in her loneliness, who had challenged
his love two short months ago.  Withal, what possessed
him to afford that glimpse of his old nature?  It coupled
him instantly in her mind with her late unpleasant
experience.\par

Not understanding her silence, he ran gayly on: "I
can now testify to the truth of the saying, 'Absence
makes the heart grow fonder.'  How is it with you?
Have I lost or gained?"\par

Laughing nervously, she answered: "Neither.  We
are still the same good friends."\par

He shook his head, frowning.  "Not enough.  I want
love—must, {\itshape{will}} have it."\par

Any lingering misapprehension of the state of her
feelings which she may have entertained now instantly
vanished.  How she regretted the weakness which
entitled him to speak thus!  She knew now.  Never, under
any conditions, could she have married him, but, warned
by dearly boughten experience, she dared not so inform
him.  Frightened, she fenced and parried, calling to her
aid those shifts for men's fooling that centuries of
helplessness have bred in woman's bone.\par

"Well, well!" she laughed.  "I thought you more
gallant.  I on horseback, you in a buggy.  Love at such
long distance!  I wouldn't have believed it of you!"\par

It was a bad lead, drawing him on instead of away.
"That is easily remedied.  Get in with me—or, I'll tie
up to that poplar."\par

She checked his eagerness with a quick invention.
"No, no!  I was only joking.  No, I say!  There's a
man, a river-driver, just behind that bluff."  How she
wished there were!  Praying that some one might come
and so afford her safe escape, she switched the
conversation to his journey, and when that subject wore out
enthused over the sunset.  How beautiful was the sky—the
shadows that fell like a pall over the bottoms—the
lights slow crawling up the headlands!\par

Preferring her delicate coloring to the blushes of the
west, he feasted on her profile, delicately outlined against
a golden cloud, until she turned.  Then he brought her
back to the point.  "Well—have you forgotten?"\par

"What?"  She knew too well, but the question killed
a moment.\par

"The answer you promised me?"\par

She would dearly have loved to give it, to cry aloud:
"I love!  I love!  I love—him, not you!"  Ay, she
would have flaunted it in all the proud cruelty of
love—had she dared.  Instead, she answered: "You forget!
I am a married woman."\par

"No, I don't," he urged.  "That is easily settled.
Three months' residence across the line, in Dakota, and
you are free of him."\par

"But not of myself."\par

"What do you mean?"\par

Alarmed by the sudden suffusion of venous blood on
his face and neck, the reddish glow of his eye, she forged
hasty excuses.  "You see, I never thought of it—in that
way.  I must have time to get used to the idea.  Won't
you give me a week?"  Her winning smile conquered.
He had stepped his ponies alongside, and, snatching her
hand, he covered it with kisses.\par

"By God, Helen, you must say yes!  I'm mad—mad
with love of you.  If you refuse—"\par

"Hush!"  She snatched away her hand as a man
came in sight from behind a bluff, coming up-stream.
"It is Mr. Bender!" she exclaimed—so thankfully.  Then,
mindful of her part, she added: "What a nuisance!  I
wonder if he—saw you?"\par

"Oh, he'll go by."\par

"No, no!  Leave me the shreds of my character.  You
must go.  {\itshape{Must!}} I said, sir."\par

"Very well.  But remember—one week."  Nodding
significantly, he drove off, leaving her struggling with
mixed feelings of relief and apprehension.  She
wondered if Bender had seen Molyneux kiss her hand.\par

Though in a few minutes of shy conversation Bender
showed no knowledge of the cause that had set her to
rubbing the back of her hand against her skirt, it
nevertheless formed the subject of a rough scrawl that Baldy,
the tote-trail teamster, delivered to Jenny in Lone Tree
two days later.  "You said I was to tell if I saw or
heard anything more.  Well, he is back, and—"  Followed
the kisses, and the scrawl ended, "If you kin
do anything like you thought you ked, do it quick, else I
shall have to tell the boss and give him a chance to look
after his own."\par

Jenny did "do it quick," and thereby initiated a
sequence of cause and event that was to entirely change
the complexion of a dozen lives.  An extract from her
letter to Helen explains itself: "'Twas on the tip of my
tongue to tell it to you every time he druv you home last
winter, but 'twas so much easier for me to have you all
believing as it was the man that went back to England.
But 'twasn't, Miss Helen; 'twas him—Capen Molyneux."\par

Poor Jenny!  She alone knew the magnitude of the
man's offence against her weak innocence, but, small
stoic, she had hugged the knowledge to her soul while
waiting in dull patience for the punishment she never
doubted.  Immunity would have challenged the
existence of the God on whom, despite small heresies of
speech, she devoutly leaned.  She read his sentence in
that most tremendous curse of the oppressor, the One
Hundredth and Ninth Psalm, the bitter cry of David:
"For he hath rewarded me evil ... hatred for my love.
When he shall be judged, let him be condemned; and
his prayer become sin....  Let his children be continually
vagabonds, seek their bread in desolate places.  Let the
extortioner catch all that he hath; the stranger despoil
his labor.  Let there be none to extend mercy to him....
Let his posterity be cut off and his generation blotted
out ... that He may cut off the memory of them from
the earth."  Ay, she had believed that it would come
to pass in some way—by lightning-flash, sudden sickness,
a weary death.  But she had never imagined herself as
the instrument which this letter was to make her.  What
the confession cost her!  Tears, shameful agonizings!
Small wonder that, in her trembling confusion, she
mis-shuffled notes and slid Helen's into Bender's envelope.\par

\label{the-wages-of-sin}%
\hypertarget{the-wages-of-sin}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XIX}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE WAGES OF SIN}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
On the afternoon following Baldy's delivery of the
shuffled notes, the May sun diffused a tempered
warmth upon Molyneux's veranda, thereby intensifying
certain comfortable reflections which accompanied his
after-dinner pipe.  He had material cause of satisfaction.
To begin, his father's death placed him in possession
of a sum which—a mere pittance in England—loomed
large as a fortune in the thrifty settlements.
Next, Messrs. Coxhead \& Boxhead, exploiters of the
Younger Son, and his London solicitors, had forwarded
through that morning's mail indentures of apprenticeship
to colonial farming of three more innocents at one
thousand dollars a head per annum.  This more than
made up for the defection of Danvers, who, having
learned how little there was to be learned in the
business, was adventuring farming for himself.  It also
permitted the retention of the bucolic Englishman and wife,
who respectively managed Molyneux's farm and house.\par

With their service assured, the life was more than
tolerable, infinitely superior to that which he would have
led at home.  There he would have been condemned to
the celibate lot of the younger son—to be a "filler" at
dinners and dances, useful as the waiters, ineligible and
innocuous to the plainest of his girl partners as an
Eastern eunuch; or, accepting the alternative, trade,
vulgar trade, his pampered wits would have come into
competition with abilities that had been whetted to a
fine edge through centuries on time's hard stone.  Like
a leaden plummet, he would have plunged through the
social strata to his natural place in the scheme of things.
Here, however, he was of some importance, a magnate
on means that would hardly have kept up his clothes
and clubs at home.  A landed proprietor, moreover, he
escaped the stigma of trade, and the resultant prejudice,
should he ever return to live in England.\par

Then the life glowed with the colors of romance.  His
farm occurred on the extreme western edge of that vast
forest which blackens the Atlantic seaboard, and so
marches west and north over a thousand rugged miles
to the limit of trees on the verge of the Barren Lands.
Within gunshot the old ferocious struggle for life
continued as of yore.  Through timbered glades the wolf
pursued and made his kill; echo answered the clash of
horns as big elk fought for a doe; over lonely woodland
lakes, black with water-fowl, the hoo-haugh crane spread
ten feet of snowy pinion; across dark waters the loon's
weird lament replied to the owl's midnight questioning.
In winter the moose came down from their yards to feed
at his prairie hay-stacks; any night he could come out
on the veranda and thrill to a long howl or the scream
of a lynx.\par

Opening before him now, the view was pleasantly
beautiful.  His house, a comfortable frame building,
and big barn and corrals, all sat within the embrace of
a half-moon that prairie-fires had bitten out from the
heart of a poplar bluff.  Southward his tilled fields ran
like strips of brown carpet over the green earth rolls.
Beyond them spread the Park Lands, with his cattle
feeding knee-deep in the rank pasture between clump
poplar.  Further still, his horses scented the wind from
the crest of a knoll, forming a dull blotch against the
soft blue sky.  These were growing into money while
he smoked, and what of free grazing, free hay, and labor
that reversed the natural order of things and paid for the
privilege of working, he could see himself comfortably
wealthy in not too many seasons.  He would still be
young enough for a run through Maiden Lane, London's
Mecca for the stage and {\itshape{demi-mondaine}}.  However, he
put that thought behind him as being inconsistent with
contemplation of the last thing necessary for perfect
happiness—a pretty wife.  Through the haze of sunlit
tobacco reek, he saw himself in possession of even that
golden asset, and thereafter his reflections took the
exact color of those of the rich man before death came
in the night: "Soul, soul!  Thou hast much goods laid
up in store!  Eat, drink, take thine ease, and be merry!"\par

"It is really time that I settled," he murmured.
"Thirty-four, my next birthday.  By Jove! six more
years and I shall be forty!"\par

The thought deflected his meditation into channels
highly becoming to a person of the age he was contemplating,
and from virtuous altitudes he looked back with
something of the reproving tolerance that kindly age
accords to youthful indiscretion.  He maintained the
"you-were-a-sad-dog" point of view till a sudden
thought stung his virtuous complacency through to the
quick.  "Oh, well"—he ousted reproach with exculpatory
murmur—"if the girl had only let me, I would
have got her away from here and have done something
handsome for her afterwards.  But it was just as
well—seeing that it passed off so quietly.  I wonder how she
managed it?  Nobody seems to know."  Then, ignoring
the fact that every seeding brings its harvest, not
knowing that the measure of that cruel sowing was even then
coming home to him on a fast trot, he smothered
conviction under the trite reflection, "A fellow must sow his
wild oats."\par

Still the thought had marred his reverie, and, tapping
his pipe on the chair-rung, he rose.  He intended a visit
to the barn, where his man was dipping seed wheat in
bluestone solution to kill the smut; but just then a
wagon, which had been rattling along the Lone Tree
trail, turned into his private lane.\par

"It is Glaves," he muttered.  "And his wife.  What
can they want?  Must have a message—from her;
otherwise they would never come here."\par

His thought did not malign the trustee, who had
positively refused the commission till assured that its
performance would sever Helen's relations with his natural
foes.  Yet he did not like it, and though retribution
might have presented herself in more tragic guise, she
could not have assumed a more forbidding face than
that which he now turned down to Molyneux.\par

Than they two there have been no more violent
contrast.  Beak-nosed, hollow-eyed, the hoar of fifty
winters environed the trustee's face, which wind and
weather had warped, seamed, and wrinkled into the
semblance of a scorched hide.  He was true to the
frontier type; and beside his bronzed ruggedness, the
Englishman, though much the larger man, seemed, with
his soft hands, smooth skin, and polished manner, to be
small and effeminate.\par

As might be expected, the trustee refused Molyneux's
invitation to put in and feed.  "No; me an' the wife is
going up to see her brother, north of Assissippii, an' we
have thirty miles to make afore sundown."\par

He did, however, return curt answers to a few questions,
though it would be a mistake to set his scant
conversational efforts to the account of politeness.  Rather
they were the meed of malignance, for, while talking, he
secretly exulted over the thought of Molyneux's coming
disappointment.  They would be gone a week, he said.
The mails?  Mrs. Carter would attend to sech letters as
straggled in.  She'd be there alone?  Yes.  Lonesome?
Mebbe, but she was that well-plucked she'd laughed at
the idea of spending her nights at Flynn's.  A fine girl,
sirree!  Having accorded five minutes to Helen's perfections,
the trustee drove off, but turned, as he rattled out
of the yard, and nudged his wife, grinning, to look at
Molyneux.\par

Stark and still as one of his own veranda-posts, the
man stood and stared down at Jenny's pitiful letter.
Across the top Helen had written, "This explains itself,"
and that scrap of writing represented three letters now
torn up and consigned to the flames.  The first
antedated her receipt of Jenny's letter, and had run: "I
want you to believe me innocent of coquetry, and you
must pardon me if I have, by speech or action, seemed
to sanction the hope you expressed the other day.  I
now perceive that it was my desperate loneliness that
caused me to lean so heavily upon your friendship.  I
might have told you this personally but for certain
experiences which have made me timid."  There was
more—regret, pleasant hope that the future might bring
with it friendly relations, wishes for his happiness.  This
letter she had withdrawn from the mail to burn, along
with one that was full of reproach, and a third that
sizzled with indignation.\par

Suffused with dark, venous blood, Molyneux faced
discovered sin.  If ever, this was the accepted time for his
attempts at reconstruction to bring forth fruit.  He had
pictured himself remorseful, but now that the wage of
sin was demanded, he flinched like a selfish child,
reneged in the game he had played with the gods.  It
was not in him to play a losing hand to the logical end.
Instead of remorse, anger possessed him, for, tearing the
letter, he cried in a gust of passion:\par

"She sha'n't throw me a second time!  By God, she sha'n't!"\par

Needs not to follow his turbulent thought as he
hurried out to the barn—his flushes, the paroxysms that
set his face in the colors of apoplexy.  Sufficient that
flooding passion swept clean the superstructure of false
morality, sophistical idealism, that he had erected on
the rotten foundation of his vicious heredity.  A minute
of action explains a volume of psychology.  Hitching his
ponies, he drove madly southward, one idea standing
clearly out in his whirl of thought—she would be alone
that night.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Just about the time that Molyneux swung out on the
Lone Tree trail, Helen arrived home from school with
the eldest Flynn boy, who had volunteered to help her
with the chores, her undertaking of which had made
possible Mrs. Glaves's rare holiday.  Under distress of
their bursting udders, the cows had come in of their own
accord from the fat, rank pastures, and now called for
easement, with low, persistent "mooing," while she
changed her dress.  When she finally came out, with
sleeves rolled above elbows that had regained their
plump whiteness, they even fought for precedence,
horning each other aside until the bell-cow made good
her prerogative as leader; then frothing streams soon
drew tinkling music from her pail.  For his part, the
boy fed pigs and calves, carried in the milk, then
departed, leaving her to skim and strain, and wash pans
and pails, itself no light task in view of Mrs. Glaves's
difficult standards of cleanliness.  That done and her
supper eaten, she placed a lamp on the table and sat
down to think over the events of the day.\par

A little fatigued, she leaned a smooth cheek on her
hand, staring at the lamp, whose golden light toned
while it revealed the changes these distressful months
had wrought in her appearance.  Her eyes were weary,
her face tired; but if she was paler than of yore, the
pallor was becoming, in that it was altogether a mental
product and accorded well with her plump, well-nourished
body.  Her mouth, if wofully pouted in agreement
with her sad thought, was scarlet and pretty as ever.
In every way she was good as new.\par

At first she had found it extremely difficult to realize
the full meaning of the letter which the Cougar had
brought in from the camp early that morning.  For
Bender would trust it in no other hand; whereby he
discovered not only his wisdom, but also an unexpected
fund of tact in his rough messenger.  Anticipating some
display of emotion, the Cougar discharged his office in
the privacy of Helen's own room; and if her red eyes
afterwards excited Jimmy Glaves's insatiable curiosity,
only the Cougar witnessed her breakdown—sorrowful
tremblings, blushes, tearful anger.  Not that she had
doubted the girl's word.  Only it had seemed monstrous,
incredible, impossible, until, through the day, jots and
tittles of evidence had filtered out of the past.  She had
connected Jenny's gloomings on the occasions that
Molyneux drove her (Helen) home with his refusals to enter
and warm himself after their cold drives.  Even from
the far days of the child's trouble, small significances had
come to piece out the solid proof.  So now nothing was
left for her but bitter self-communion.\par

These days it did seem as though the fates were bent
on squeezing the last acrid drop into her cup; for to the
consciousness of error was now added knowledge of the
utter worthlessness of her tempter.  She burned as she
recalled their solitary rides; writhed slim fingers in a
passion of thankfulness as she thought of her several
escapes; was taxing herself for her folly when a sudden
furious baying outside brought her, startled, to her feet.\par

It was merely the house-dog exchanging defiances
with a lone coyote; but—after she had satisfied herself
of the fact—it yet brought home upon her a vivid sense
of her lonely position.  Sorry now that she had not gone
home with the Flynn boy, she glanced nervously about
the room, which, if small, was yet large enough to own
shadowy corners.  On top of the pigeon-holed mailing-desk,
moreover, a few books were piled in such a way
as to cast a shadow, the silhouette of a man's profile,
upon the wall.  Lean, hard, indescribably cruel, its thin
lips split in a merciless grin as she moved the lamp, then
suddenly lengthened into the semblance of a hand
and pointing finger.  Then she laughed, nervously, yet
laughed because it indicated one of the hundred
summonses, writs of execution, and findings in judgment
that were pasted up on the walls.\par

"By these summons," Victoria Regina called upon
her subject, James Glaves, to pay the moneys and taxed
costs herein set forth under pain of confiscation of his
goods and chattels.  Usually recording debt and disaster,
the instruments certified, in Jimmy's case, to numerous
victories over implement trusts, cordage monopolies,
local or foreign Shylocks.  "Execution proof," in that
his wife owned their real property in her own right, he
could sit and smoke at home, the cynosure of the
country-side, in seasons when the sheriff travelled with the
thresher and took in all the grain.  To each document
he could append a story, the memory of such a one
having caused Helen's laugh.\par

Indicating this particular specimen with his pipe-stem
one evening, he had remarked: "Yon jest tickled the
jedge to death.  'Mr. Glaves,' he says, when he handed
it down, 'they've beat you on the jedgment, now it's up
to you to fool 'em on the execution.'  An' you bet I
did."\par

Reassured, Helen returned to her musings, only to
start up, a minute later, with a nervous glance over her
shoulder at the window.  Is there anything in thought
transference?  At that moment Molyneux was rattling
down into the dark valley, and is it possible that his
heated imaginings bridged the miles and impressed
themselves upon her nervous mental surfaces?  Or was it
merely a coincidence of thought that caused her to see
his face pressed against the black pane.  Be this as it
may, she could not regain her composure.  Taking the
lamp, she locked herself in her bedroom; then she sought
that last refuge of frightened femininity, the invulnerable
shield of the bedclothes.\par

\label{is-death}%
\hypertarget{is-death}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XX}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize —IS DEATH}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Though Silver Creek still ran fat and full, its
sources were now nearly drained of flood-waters;
any day might see it suddenly shrink to its usual
summer trickle.  Anticipating the event, Bender went miles
down-stream that morning to superintend the building
of the first dam, and so did not see the Cougar till that
worthy came into camp at night from his own place at
the tail of the drive.\par

This, the hour for changing shifts, was the liveliest of
camp life—the social hour, one might term it, replete
with a certain rough comfort.  With them, from up
and down river, the reliefs poured in, a stream of red
shirts, drowning with oaths, song, and laughter the
rattle of tin-ware in the cook-tent.  Spread over fifteen
miles of river, the arrival was equally irregular, and
those who had already eaten were grouped about a
huge camp-fire, the red glow of which enriched weathered
skins and softened the corrugations of iron faces.
After the cold and wet of the day, its warmth spelled
luxury in capitals—luxury such as no millionaire may
command from his palatial clubs, for pleasure may only
be measured in degrees of health with accompanying
intensity of sensation.  As they moved and turned like
huge red capons on an old-style spit, bringing fresh
areas of soaked clothing under the blaze, they smoked
and revamped the day's haps, its dips, jams, duckings,
while the river—the river that yielded their hard bread
in exchange for annual toll of a life or two—rebuked
with angry growl their jokes and jestings.\par

A candle in Bender's tent showed the giant squatted
upon his blankets, chin on hands, big torso hunched
between knees and elbows.  A night and day of heavy
brooding had sunk his eyes; despair had cross-ploughed
and deepened the furrows across his blue, scarred face.
The attitude bespoke deepest dejection, and his look,
when the Cougar entered, caused the latter's weird
fierceness to flux in vast sympathy.\par

"Well?" Bender inquired.\par

The Cougar pulled a paper out of his shirt-bosom.
"Here's your letter that she got by mistake."\par

It was only a scrap to say that she would do her best—she
had done it, too, poor girl!—that and an admonition
to be careful in drying his clothes at nights.  Usually
the warning would have dissolved Bender's grimness,
but it caused no relaxation of his gravity.\par

"How did she take it?"\par

"Hard.  Cried an' said as 'twas more'n she deserved
at the little gal's hands.  Blamed herself—dreadful cut
up.  Seems, too, as 'twasn't necessary, as she'd already
mailed Mr. Man his walking-papers."\par

"Too late—now.  It's done."\par

The Cougar looked awkwardly down upon him.  Pity
had been foreign to their rough comradeship; it was,
indeed, nearest of kin to shame; the words of sympathy
choked in his throat.  "Come, come!" he presently
growled.  "Chipper up!  'Tain't any worse than it was."\par

A convulsion seized and shook the big body.  "You
don't know, Cougar.  You don't know what it is—"  He
stopped, aghast at the sudden appalling change in
the other.  He had straightened from his crouch, and
his eyes flared like blue, alcohol flames in his livid face.
As at the touch of a secret spring, the man's fierce
taciturnity raised, exposing the tortured soul behind.\par

"I—don't?"  The whisper issued like a dry wind
from drawn lips.  "Me?—that saw my wife an' baby—"  Though
frontiersmen tell, shivering, of the horror he
mentioned, no pen has been found callous enough to set
it forth on paper.  "God, man!"  His arms snapped
outward and his head fell forward in the attitude of
the crucifixion.\par

"Cougar!" Bender grasped his shoulder.  "Cougar!
Cougar, man!  I'd forgotten."\par

But as one in a trance the man went on: "It's always
with me—through these years—day an' night.  I'd have
killed myself—long ago—on'y whenever I'd think of
that, she'd come—sweet an' smiling—with a shake of
her pretty head.  She wouldn't let me do it."  The
thought of her smile seemed to calm him, and he
continued, more quietly: "I never could make out why
'twas done to her.  A sky-pilot tol' me onct as 'twas
the will o' God, but I shocked him clean out of his
boots.\par

"'I'll know on the Jedgment Day, will I?' I asks
him.  'Shorely,' he answers, pat.  'An' I'll be close in
to the great white throne you was talking about?'  He
nods.  'Then do you know what I'll do?' I asks him
again.  'If I find out as how that God o' yourn ordered
that done to my little gal, I'll stick a knife into Him an'
turn it round.'\par

"At that he turned green an' tried to saddle the dirty
business onto the devil.  But, Lordy, he didn't know.
She does, though, else she wouldn't come smiling.  She
knows; so I've allus reckoned as if she could bear her
pain I can worry through to the end.  There! there!
I'm all right again.  You didn't go to do it.  An', after
all, I don't know but that you are right.  For while my
gal's at peace, yourn has to live out her pain.  It's
puzzling—all of it.  Now there's {\itshape{him}}.  Where does he come
in?  What about him?"\par

"What about him?"  Bender's bulk seemed to swell in
the dim light to huge, amorphous proportions.  "That's
simple.  He's got to marry her."\par

What the conclusion had cost him!—the suffering,
self-sacrifice.  To the sophisticated, both sacrifice and
conclusion may seem absurd, provoking the question as to
just how wrong may be righted by the marriage of a
clean girl with an impure man; yet it was strictly in
accord with backwoods philosophy.  As yet the scepticism
of modernity had not infected the plains, nor had
the leprosy of free thought rotted their creeds and
institutions.  To Bender's simplicity, marriage appealed
as the one cure for such ills as Jenny's, while both he
and the Cougar had seen the dose administered with aid
of a Colt's forty-five.  So, absurd or not, the conclusion
earned the latter's instant approval.\par

There was something pathetic, too, in the serious
way in which, after discussing ways and means, they
spoke of Jenny's future.  "She'll be a lady," the Cougar
commented.  "Too big to look at you an' me."\par

Bender's nod incarnated self-effacement, but he
bristled when the Cougar suggested that Molyneux might
not treat her rightly, and his scowl augured a quick
widowhood in such premises.  "We'll go up for him
to-morrow."\par

"An' after it's all over?"\par

"Oregon for you an' me—the camps an' the big timber."\par

The big timber!  The Cougar's bleak face lit up with
sudden warmth.  Giant pines of Oregon woods; rose-brown
shade of cathedral redwoods; the roaring unrest
of lacy cataracts; peace of great rivers that float the
rafts and drives from snow-capped Rockies down to
the blue Pacific; these, and the screaming saw-mills
that spew their product over the meridians, the pomp
of that great piracy; the sights, sounds, resinous odors
that the Cougar would never experience again were
vividly projected into his consciousness.\par

"Man!"  He drew a deep breath.  "It can't come
too quick for me.  I'm sick of these plains, where a man
throws a shadow clean to the horizon.  I'm hungry for
the loom of the mountains."  After a pause, he added,
"Coming back to yourself—have you eaten to-day?"\par

The language he accorded to Bender's negative would
shake the type from a respectable printer's fingers, yet,
in essence, was exactly equivalent to the "You poor
dear!" of an anxious wife or mother.  Striding off, he
quickly returned with coffee and food, which Bender
was ordered to eat under pain of instant loss of his liver,
lights, and sundry other useful organs.  Then, being
besotted in his belief in action as a remedy for mental
disorders, he suggested a visit to the turn above the
bridge where the logs had jammed twice that afternoon.\par

Another day would put the last log under the bridge
and see the temporary structure dismantled and afloat;
but though only the tail of the drive remained above,
the jams had backed it up for a couple of miles, so that
the logs now filled the river from bank to bank.  They
floated silently, or nearly so, for the soft thud of
collisions, mutter of grinding bark, merged with the low roar
of the stream.  But a brilliant northern moon lit the
serried array; when the men crossed they could pick the
yellow sawed ends from the black of the mass.\par

Under urge of the same thought, they paused on the
other side and looked back along the northern trail.
With the exception of the cook, whose pots proclaimed his
labors with shrill tintinnabulation, the camp now slept,
its big watch-fire burning red and low.  Beneath that
bright moon scrub, bluff, scour, ravine, and headland
stood out, lacking only the colors of day, and they could
see the trail's twin ruts writhing like black snakes across
the ashen bottoms into the gorge by which it gained the
prairies.\par

The Cougar's quick eye first discerned a moving blot,
but Bender gave it identity.  "That's shore Molyneux's
rig.  He'd a loose spoke when he went by t'other day.
Hear it rattle."\par

It was clear and sharp as the clatter of a boy's stick
along a wooden paling, and the Cougar whispered: "It's
sure him.  Where kin he be going?  Do you reckon—"\par

The same thought was in Bender's mind.  "An' she
there alone.  No one ever starts out for Lone Tree this
time o' night."  After a grim pause, he added, "But
that's where he's going."\par

A strident chuckle told that the Cougar had caught
his meaning.  "That's right.  Saved us trouble, hain't
he?  Kind of him.  Jes' step into the shadow till he's
fairly on the bridge."\par

If they had remained in the moonlight he would never
have seen them.  Dusk had brought no surcease of his
mad thought; rather its peace stimulated his excitement
by shutting him out from the visible world.  What were
his thoughts?  It takes a strong man to face his
contemplated villanies.  From immemorial time your
scoundrel has been able to justify his acts by some sort of
crooked reasoning, and Molyneux was no exception to
the rule.  "Why do you muddy the water when I am
drinking?" the wolf asked of the lamb.  "How could I,
sir, seeing that the stream flows from you to me?" the
lamb filed in exception.  "None of your insolence!" the
wolf roared as he made his kill.\par

In the same way Molyneux excluded from thought
everything that conflicted with his intention—the first
rudeness that lost him Helen's maiden confidence, his
insidious attempts to wean her from her husband, her
undoubted right to reject his advances.  He twisted his
own crime to her demerit.  "She didn't know about
that when she was drawing me on!" he exclaimed,
whenever Jenny's letter thrust into his meditation.  "Why
should it cut any ice now?  It is just an excuse to
throw me a second time.  But she sha'n't do it, by God! no,
she sha'n't, she sha'n't!  She's a coquette!—a damned
coquette!  I'll—"  Then a red rage, a heaving, tumultuous
passion, would drown articulate thought so that his
intention never took form in words.  But one thing is
certain—he was thoroughly dangerous.  In that mood
Helen would have fared as illy at his hands as the lamb
at the paws of the wolf.\par

The sudden stoppage of his ponies, midway of the
bridge, broke up his reverie.  As the moon struck full
in his own face, he saw the two men only as shadows;
but there was no mistaking Bender's bulk, and, after a
single startled glance, Molyneux hailed him.  "Is that
you, Mr. Bender?"\par

"It's me, all right.  Where might {\itshape{you}} be heading for?"\par

It was the usual trail greeting, preliminary to
conversation, but Molyneux sensed a difference of tone, savor
of command, menace of authority, that galled his
haughty spirit.  Vexed by the impossibility of explanation,
his disdain of the settler tribe in general would not
permit him to lie; from which conflict of feeling his stiff
answer was born.\par

"I don't see that it is any of your business."\par

"You don't?"  Equally stiff, the reply issued from
the huge, dim shape.  "Well, I'll make it mine.  You're
going to Lone Tree."\par

Puzzled, Molyneux glanced from Bender's indefiniteness
to the Cougar's dim crouch.  He was not afraid.
In him the courage of his vices was reinforced by
enormous racial and family pride—the combination that
made the British fool the finest of officers until
mathematics and quick-firing artillery replaced the sword and
mêlée.  Mistaking the situation, he attempted to carry
it off with a laugh.\par

"What have you chaps been drinking?  Here; pass
the bottle."\par

"Not till we wet your wedding," the Cougar
interjected, dryly.\par

Astonished now, as well as puzzled, Molyneux yet
rejected a sudden suspicion as impossible.  Out of
patience, galled by this mysterious opposition, he said,
testily: "Are you crazy?  I do not intend—"\par

"—To go to Lone Tree," Bender interrupted.  "Yes,
we know.  You was heading up for Glaves's place."\par

Seriously disconcerted, Molyneux hid it under an
ironical laugh.  "I must say that I marvel at your
intimate knowledge of my affairs.  And since you are
so well posted, perhaps you can tell me why I am going
to Lone Tree?"\par

"I kin that."  The huge, dim figure, with its crouched,
attendant shadow, moved a pace nearer, then the man's
stern bass launched on the quivering moonlight, reciting
to an accompaniment of rushing waters this oldest of
woodland sagas.  Beginning at the night he picked
Jenny up on the trail, he told all—Jed Hines's cruel fury;
birth and burial of his, Molyneux's child; the outcast
girl's subsequent illness; Helen's kindness; the doctor's
philanthropy; the kindly conspiracy that protected her
from social infamy.  "An' us that saw her through her
trouble," he finished, "are bound to see her righted."\par

If the lime-lights of history and fiction were thrown
more often upon motives and psychology, and less on
deeds and action, characters would not appear in such
hard colors of black and white.  It were false to paint
Molyneux irredeemably black.  "{\itshape{Your child!}}"  He
winced at the phrase, and, perhaps for the first time,
an inkling of the enormity of his offence was borne in
upon him.  {\itshape{His}} child?  It was the flesh of his own
loins that had suffered midnight burial at the hands of
Carter and the kindly priest!  The thought struck with
enormous force—then faded.  For back of him was that
vicious generation whose most cultured exponent wrote
to his own son that a seduction or two was necessary
to the education of a gentleman.  Through pride of
family, the dead hands of haughty and licentious
forebears reached to throttle remorse.\par

Was he to be called to account by common settlers,
the {\itshape{savages}} of the scornful English phrase?  Anger
colored his next remark: "Waited till you were good and
ready, didn't you?  Your diligence falls short of your
zeal, my friends, or—"\par

"Don't flatter yourself," Bender sternly interrupted.
"You kin thank her for the delay.  If we'd known,
you'd long ago have been either dead or married.  But
she kep' her own counsel till she thought as some one
else's welfare called her to speak.  'Twasn't needed.
T'other'd already found you out for herself."\par

Molyneux blinked under the savage contempt, but
answered, stiffly enough: "Now listen.  I deny nothing,
though she received attentions from one of my pupils,
and it might very well have been—"\par

"You lie!"\par

The lie never comes so unpleasantly as when asserting
a truth; so, though he knew that he had lied, Molyneux's
eyes glinted wickedly, his hand tightened on his whip.
A glance right and left showed him the river, only a
light hand-rail between him and dark waters.  There
was not room to turn; the giant blocked the way.
Under constraint, he spoke quietly: "Neither do I
profess sorrow.  What is done is done.  If the girl had
taken me into her confidence—"\par

"Likely, wasn't it?"\par

A line of Jenny's letter, a damnable fact, flashed into
Molyneux's mind, but he went on: "—I'd have taken
care of her—am willing to do so yet, in a certain way.
Marriage, of course, is out of the question.  We are
unfitted for each other—"\par

"No one's denying that."\par

He ignored the sarcasm.  "—could not be happy together."\par

"Who said anything about your living together?"\par

The interruptions were most disconcerting, but he
continued: "Now if you, as her representatives,
self-appointed or otherwise"—he could not refrain from the
sarcasm—"if you will name a sum—"\par

"{\itshape{What?}}"\par

Twenty rods away the camp now slept, steeped in the
drug of labor—all but the cook, who came running out
of his tent and was thus witness of the event.  Looking
up-stream, he saw them blackly silhouetted against the
moonlit sky, a shadow show, play of marionettes upon
the bridge.\par

"Out of my way!  Let go!"\par

Followed the swish and crack of Molyneux's whip, as
he lashed Bender over the face, then fell to flogging his
horses.  But stinging pain freed in the giant those
bulldog passions that had made him king of the camps in
other years.  He hung on, while the plunging beasts
drowned the river's roar in thunder of iron hoofs.
Unable to break his grip, they reared—their smooth,
elongated bodies conveying to the cook an odd
impression of slugs reaching upward through moonlit
dew—then, stooping quickly under the nigh beast, the mad
giant took its full weight on his shoulder and with a
mighty heave sent team and rig crashing sideways off
the bridge.\par

A quick leap saved Molyneux—for the moment.  All
through the action had moved with kinetoscopic quickness,
and it accelerated so that the cook could scarcely
establish its sequence.  Like an angry bull, Bender shook
the hair from his eyes; then, as he rushed, came a
report; a puff of smoke curled bluely up from Molyneux's
hand; the giant thudded at length on the bridge.
Followed a yell, a piercing cry suitable to the animal after
which the Cougar was named.  As Bender fell, he rushed.
The pistol spoke again.  While the cook was running
twenty yards, a black, furious tangle writhed over the
bridge, and as he came darting out from behind a bunch
of willow scrub he saw that it was gone.  Bender lay
alone under the moonlight.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Now this was the cook of a lumber-camp, equivalent
to saying that he was a man of parts.  He had cooked
on B Contract, Superior Construction Division of the
Trunk Line, and so had seen a liberal sprinkling of his
grumblers go into the dump—a grisly foundation for
track, surely yet what better could the builders of the
road desire than to be cradled under the ties and sleep,
sleep, sleep, to the thundering lullaby of the fast
express?  Which intimacy with the pale terror is
responsible for his prompt action in these unusual premises.
Molyneux's bullet had merely grazed Bender's temple.
He rose, staggering, as the cook made the bridge, and,
seeing that he was too sick and dizzy to handle the
situation, the latter took it into his own able hands.\par

As before mentioned, a drive camp sleeps in its boots,
and the shots had brought a score out from their sleep
on a hunt for causes.  "Man drove offen the bridge!"
he yelled.  "An' Cougar went after him!  They're both
under the drive!  Scatter down-stream an' skin your
eyes for bubbles!"\par

Thus, on the spur of the moment, the cook wrote
history—as accurately, perhaps, as the run of historians;
for after the drive once closed serried ranks over the
struggling men, they were never seen again, so none
could rise with an opposing theory.  When, a few days
later, the water was drawn off at the first dam, the horses
floated out on the shallows.  But the men—?  The river
carried them to its secret places; buried them in some
scour or pothole, free at last, one of his passions—the
incubus of his generations—the other from his pain.
That night, if such things be, the Cougar was joined,
after his years of suffering, in perfect knowledge with
his "little girl."\par

\label{persecution}%
\hypertarget{persecution}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize PERSECUTION}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Yes, the cook made history, for though the event
furnished gossip for the ninety days which, on the
lonely frontier, corresponds with the world's nine days'
wonder, his story was never questioned.  The truth lay
buried between him and Bender, and if either visited
her grave, it was never in company with the other.
Up to the time that delirium tremens removed the
cook from the snows of a Rocky Mountain camp to
a sphere where pots are said to boil with or without
watching, Bender never knew just how much or little
he really knew.\par

To others the event appeared under varying complexions.
Helen and Jenny were shocked at Molyneux's
death, the latter without astonishment, though her firm
belief that sin had at last received its full wage was
without trace of malignance; both were sorrier than
they had any right to be; and both mourned the
Cougar.  As for the settlers, they regarded the affair
rather in the light of a special dispensation of
Providence.  Flocking to the auction of Molyneux's effects a
month later, they caballed against high bidding, paid
for chattels they bought at ridiculous prices in
long-time notes, for that was the "Black Year," and
throughout Manitoba nothing could be sold for cash.\par

Poverty, sociologists tell us, is the mother of crime,
and as those hard times subsequently influenced the
settlers in their attitude towards Helen, they are surely
worthy of mention.  To begin, the country was practically
bankrupt.  The frost of the preceding fall had
left the wheat useless, and but for the fact that the
provincial government had imported and distributed
free seed, not an acre of grain would have been sown
that year.  The seriousness of the crisis may be gauged
by the legislature's further action in enacting an
exemption law that practically excluded all of a farmer's
goods and chattels from legal execution.  This was good,
but in that it was not, nor could be made retroactive,
it benefited only the new-comers and left the pioneers,
who had spent their little all opening up the country,
still liable to foreclosure and execution.\par

On the northern settlers times had borne particularly
hard.  During boom years all had assumed loan
indebtedness, and whereas creditors had bided patiently
successive lean seasons on the chance of a branch
railroad and bumper crop, now that the country's credit,
its very future was trembling in the balance; implement-men
and store-keepers raced with twenty-per-cent. Shylocks
to grab what they could from the wreck.  That
spring the sheriff of Brandon was the busiest man in
the country-side.  He and his deputies sowed summonses,
executions, foreclosures broadcast over the land.  Wolves
of the law, they harried the farmers till the optimism
of the brilliant emigration pamphlets was swamped,
submerged beneath inky pessimism.  Small wonder
that—coupled with idleness, breeder of mischief, in the slack
season that Glaves feared between seeding and haying—small
wonder that some of the rancor bred by hard
conditions should be vented upon Helen.\par

She may be said to have stood in an uncomfortable
position as lightning conductor between this cloud of
spleen and the earth, upon which it should have
properly been discharged.  And looking back, one may see
the storm gathering over her fair head, observing in
its approach all of the natural phenomena: first the cold
wind, social disfavor, the whispers; next, heavy drops
thudding in the dust, the snubs and slights; lastly,
thunder, lightning, rain, downright persecution.\par

The whispers, of course, she did not hear, but she could
not overlook the difference in trail greetings, which
were either far too warm or much too cool, according
to the years and disposition of the greeter.  Coldness
was endurable, but the rude stares, conscious laughter
of the younger boors often caused her to fly the hot
colors of angry shame.  Yet even this hurt less than
the sudden, shy suspicion of her pupils.  Whereas they
were wont to hang upon her skirts, they now held aloof
in play hours, and ran straight home from school.\par

"Mother says I'm not to walk with you any more,"
one tot explained her haste.  How that stung!  Having
only the faintest of ideas, little more than a suspicion
of the strength and nature of this uncomfortable
prejudice, she resented it as bitter injustice, and held a
proud head until a thing happened that almost broke
her spirit.\par

Of all the settler women, Ruth Murchison was the one
girl with whom Helen had been, or could be, on
anything like terms of intimacy.  Quiet and thoughtful,
Ruth had gone through the English common schools,
and had taken the Junior Oxford Examination, to which
passable education a taste for good reading had formed
a further bond.  Wherefore Helen was delighted when,
one day, news drifted into the post-office that Ruth was
to be married to the Probationer, the young minister
who preached Merrill's funeral sermon.\par

Borrowing a beast from Glaves, she rode north one
evening to offer congratulations, and as the Murchisons
lived several miles north of Silver Creek Valley, night
fell while she still lacked half a mile of the homestead.
From that distance the windows' yellow blaze advised
of fuss and busy preparation.  Drawing nearer, voices,
laughter, the whir of an egg-beater, clatter of cooking-gear
came down the trail merrily freighting the dusk.
Infected by the cheer, she gave a shrill halloa, spurred
to a gallop, and drew in at the door with a clatter of
hoofs.\par

"Ruth!  Oh, Ruth!" she called.  "Ruth-y!"\par

Instantly the voices hushed, then, after an uncomfortable
pause, she heard Mrs. Murchison say, in thin,
constrained tones, "Mrs. Carter is out there, father."\par

Followed a shuffling, and the door opened revealing
Murchison framed in yellow light.  Stout, robust, ruddy,
with that mottled-beef English complexion, he came of
that stout yeoman stock whose twanging long-bows
sounded France's knell at Crecy and Poitiers, of that rich
blood the slow drainage of which to her colonies has left
England flabby, ensemic, flaccid.  He had not wished to
leave, but the motherland had become industrial
without further place for her yeoman.  Over fields that
were enriched by the tilth of thirty Murchison
generations, a thousand factories were depositing soot and
blighting acids.  American wheat and beeves had wiped
out profits, while enormous rents ate up the farmer's
substance.  So Murchison, England's best, had become
partner in exile with the remittance-men, her worst.
Undoubtedly, there was no symptom of remittance
weakness in the scowl he turned on Helen.\par

Behind him Helen could see Ruth, red and embarrassed,
hanging her head over the egg-beater.  A half-dozen
girls and neighboring women, who had come in
to help in the baking and brewing, were exchanging
meaning glances across the table.\par

"Ruth?  She's well," Murchison answered her question.\par

She knew what to expect now, but nerved herself to
face the situation.  "Can't I see her?"\par

"No."\par

"Why?"\par

"Because she don't run with your kind."\par

"Oh, Mr. Murchison!"\par

He felt the heart sickness, yet glowered relentlessly,
for it had been the habit of his forebears to thrash their
women into good behavior.  He itched to do it now for
the good of her soul, but, lacking the power, he growled:\par

"If you don't like it—keep better company."\par

If he had been alone, she would undoubtedly have
challenged his reproach and, while clearing herself in
his eyes, have turned away future trouble.  But a
titter from within fired her pride.  "Very well, please
give her my congratulations."  And turning she rode
away.\par

Good-hearted as rough, Murchison stared after,
stricken with sudden compunction.  He knew that she must
have intended to stay the night, and here she was a
timorous woman riding out into the darkness.  "Here!"
he shouted.  "Come back!"\par

But she held on, eyes snapping, cheeks aflame, throat
convulsed under the strain of suppressing imminent
hysteria.  Beyond earshot she broke down, venting her
injured loneliness in broken speech between bursts of
sobbing.  "They hate—me.  Condemn me—because—my
husband left me.  It wasn't my—fault—that is,
altogether."  She hastily corrected herself.  "Of
course—I failed him.  But I was—sorry—would have done
better—if he had—given me a chance.  He's so stern—and
stiff—"  She would not even let this undoubted
truth pass unmodified.  "But then—he thought I
didn't—love him.  Perhaps I didn't—then.  I was a
little fool.  But I do!  I do!"  She stretched wild arms
to the darkness.  "I do!  I do!  I do!"  But the
velvet night returned nothing to her embrace and she
collapsed, sobbing, upon the pony's neck.  Still the cry
did her good, tided over hysteria, composed and quieted
her so that she was able to meet the trustee's glance of
spectacled inquiry as she entered the cabin.\par

Kindliness as well as curiosity inhered in his glance,
for, besides the cash and educational prestige which she
had brought to his cabin, Jimmy had come to like her
for herself.  The frost and grizzle of fifty winters thawed
under his smile as he threw a Winnipeg paper across the
table.  "Catch!  Just kem in.  Yes, there's a story
'bout him.  Now, don't eat it."\par

Metaphorically, she did, indeed, devour the article,
and while she read the trustee watched with something
of puzzled astonishment the lovely tide that flowed
out from the lace at her neck, and drowned her pale
creams to the roots of her hair.  He had ample
opportunity for study as the article was long.  Just then
Carter's line, with its promise of competition, focussed
the interest of the entire province, and some enterprising
scribe had risen to the opportunity afforded by a visit
west of the general manager of the trunk line, to
interview him upon the probable action of his road in
proceedings to condemn a crossing of its right of way.
Time, however, had not abated one iota of the manager's
sphinx like quality.  While affable, he had declined
to discuss railroad politics, remarking that his company
did not "cross bridges before they were built."  Interviewed
in his turn upon the significance of the aforesaid
remark, Carter had ventured the opinion that the trunk-line
people would not oppose the crossing, and thereby
had provoked a flaming editorial upon his artlessness.\par

"If the people behind Mr. Carter imagine that the
greediest monopoly in history will loose its grip on this
province till the law's crowbar pries off its fingers one
by one, they are mightily mistaken," the editor hotly
declared.  "Forewarned is forearmed, and we hereby
present them, gratis, with this piece of information—while
they are running their grades in peaceful confidence
that will be most appropriate in the innocent
age when lion and lamb lie down together, the monopoly
is gathering men and means, preparing to crush their
enterprise by force should the crooked enginery of the
law fail its purpose.  Why else have five hundred extra
men been distributed among the sections on either side
of the proposed crossing?  Why does a gravel-train
stand there permanently across the proposed right of
way?  Soon Mr. Carter will receive unmistakable answer
to these questions."\par

"He's dead right there, that editor man," the trustee
said when, all rosy red, Helen looked up from her
reading.  "Old Brass-Bowels was born with a nateral
insight into the nater of a dead cinch."\par

"But won't the law support my"—she paused, then
proudly finished—"my husband?  Can't he compel a
crossing?"\par

"The law?"  Sniffing, Jimmy indicated the legal
patchwork on the wall with a comprehensive sweep of
his pipe.  "The law said as I was to pay them, but did
I?  Humph!"\par

"But they'll hardly dare to fly in the face of the
province?  Public opinion is a great moral force."  She
quoted a sentence from the editorial with gusto.\par

"Yes, but 'tain't much of a club.  Did you ever see
one of my hawgs stan' aside, even when he was full, to
let another have a go at the trough?  Not till I hit him
on the snout.  Well, they ain't agoin' to cross the
trunk line these two years, an' for my part I don't care
if they never cross."\par

"Why?"  Her eyes dilated widely.  "Wouldn't a
competing line benefit you—all of the province?"\par

Nodding, he regarded her from half-shut eyes.  "Oh,
I ain't expecting to walk on gold this side o' the pearly
gates.  As for my reasons, they ain't a mile away from
here.  I'm not wishing too much success for a man
that deserts his wife."\par

Touched and very much flushed as to the face by
his genuine, if crabbed sympathy, the Reasons yet
shook her head and spoke up for the recreant
husband stoutly as she had defended him against herself.
She made, however, small headway against his obduracy.\par

"Well, that's the way I see it.  By-the-way," he added,
heading off a disposition for further argument, "did
you see the evangelist?  Pitched his tent over by
Flynn's.  You want to go.  Beats a three-ring circus
when old man Cummings hits up to his gait."\par

"Jimmy!  Jimmy!"  His wife looked up from her
ironing; then daunted, perhaps, by his twinkle, she
addressed Helen.  "He hadn't orter talk that away, my
dear.  If Mr. Cummings does go on the rampage a bit
when he gets het up, at least he's sincere.  As for
him—"  She turned a severe eye on her husband.  "We'll get
him yet."\par

"Yes, I see myself.  Her idea of heaven"—he shrugged
at the ironing-board—"is an eternal class-meeting
with everybody giving their experience—love-feast she
calls it.  I like something solider.  Give me plenty to
eat, a pipe by a warm fire, an' something to read, an'
I'll sign away my harp an' crown."  Ignoring his
better-half's remark that he would not lack the fire, he
finished: "She's going.  Wouldn't miss a meeting.
Kedn't keep her away with a club.  So if you'd alike to
see some fun—"\par

"If 'twas jes' out of curiosity I'd ask her to stay at
home," his wife interrupted.  "But she's not that kind,
an' I'll be glad to take her."\par

"If you will?" Helen assented, and so, returning to
the analogy, placed herself directly beneath the leaden
belly of the lowering storm.\par

\label{denunciation}%
\hypertarget{denunciation}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize DENUNCIATION}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
A molten sun was smouldering in the ashes of
day when, the following evening, Helen with Mrs. Glaves,
drove up to the gospel-tent.  It still lacked half
an hour of meeting-time, so, while her companion joined
the early arrivals who were passing time by holding a
service of song inside, Helen remained in the buckboard
and watched the sunset, observed herself by a group of
remittance-men and a scattering of settler youths who
sprawled near by on the grass.\par

Enthralled, she scarcely saw them; had eyes only for
the ruby sun that stained the prairies with amber
incandescences, the ribbed glories of the fiery cloud
pillars that seemed to uphold the darkling vault above.  As
the orb slid into his blankets of rose and gold, shy stars
peeped down at the violet shadows that crawled slowly
up the slopes and knolls; over all fell the hush of evening.\par

It was one of the moments when the Riddle of
Infinity, Puzzles of Time, Space, Eternity appear as
concrete though unthinkable realities; weigh down and
oppress the soul with a sense of its insignificance.
Against the black-blue vault the stars loomed as worlds;
she could see beyond, around them.  Through vast
voids planets were rushing on their courses; suns with
attendant systems swung on measured arcs obedient
to—what? ... A thin minor, querulous plaint stole out
on the hush:\par

{\advance\leftskip\parindentamount{}\advance\rightskip\parindentamount{}
\vs{1}
\begin{verse}
{\vl {\noindent}%
"Poor crawling Worm of Earth,\par}
{\vl A Child of Sin am I—"\par}
\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
\end{verse}
}

\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
It was an honest attempt at the riddle, but its
incongruity, futile insufficiency caused her to shrug with
sudden annoyance.  She wondered if, somewhere in
planetary space, other "pinches of sentient dust" were
equally afflicted with a sense of their central importance
in the scheme of things.  The apologetic whine spoiled
the sunset; she impatiently turned to watch the arrivals—the
wagons, buck-boards, horsemen—that were streaming
in on every trail.\par

"How are you, Mrs. Carter?"\par

It was Danvers, Molyneux's old pupil.  An honest
lad and merry, she always liked him, and now made him
welcome to the seat beside her, and laughed at his fire
of chaff.  Indicating Cummings, whose ovine expression
had sustained no diminution since the day he bearded
the general manager, he remarked: "He's great, Mrs. Carter;
puts it all over Henry Irving.  And there's the
sky pilot!  What a Jovelike port!"\par

There was, of course, little wit and less humor in his
chaff, but his intentions were honorable, so, ignoring the
sour looks of the arriving settlers, she gave him smiling
attention up to the moment they entered the tent
together, and so prepared the way for what followed.  For
though, going in, she left levity without, her modest and
devout bearing could not mitigate her offence in allying
herself with the English Ishmael.  It was aggravated,
moreover, by her remaining with him in close proximity
to the remittance crowd on the back benches.  Thereafter
nothing could save her; she remained a target for
sour glances throughout the service.\par

This was on the usual pattern—rousing hymns, prayer,
testimony, and exhortation—then when groans and
ejaculations testified to the spiritual temperature, the
evangelist, a stout man of bull-like build, proceeded to
cut off yards of the "undying worm," and to measure
bushels of the "fire that quencheth not" for the portion
of such as refused to view the problems of Infinity
through aught but his own wildly gleaming spectacles.
His discourse, indeed, bristled with those cant terms
which, while entirely devoid of meaning, are still
eminently conducive of religious hysteria, and his efforts
were the more successful because of the absence of the
Probationer, a thoughtful young fellow whose rare
common-sense could be depended upon to prevent religious
emotion from degenerating into epilepsy.\par

Lacking his wholesome presence, the evangelist paced
the platform under the yellow lantern-light, stretching
long, black arms, hovering over the people like some
huge, dark bird as he pleaded, threatened, thundered,
launching his fiery periods on a groaning wave of
"amens" and "hallelujahs."  As he went on, painting
heaven and hell into his lurid scheme of things, sighs
and exclamations grew in volume, flooding feeling pulsed
through the audience, wild settler youths, who had come
to scoff, exchanged uneasy glances on the back benches,
sure sign of a coming stampede.\par

This was the psychological moment, and, skilled in
his trade, the revivalist pounced upon it.  Stilling the
groaning chorus with upheld hand, he solemnly invited
all who were not {\itshape{against}} the Lord Jesus to stand, an
old revival trick and one which now, as always, turned.
For, as before said, the plains were not yet infected
with the leprosy of agnosticism, and, Episcopalians to
a man, even the Englishmen were not willing to pose
as the open enemies of God.\par

Once standing and pilloried in the public eye, it was
but a question of minutes until the back benches began
to yield up penitents.  One by one the settler youths
were gathered into the mourning bench, until at last
Helen stood alone with the Englishmen.\par

"Come ye!  Come ye to the Lord!"  The preacher
pleaded, but, haughty and coldly constrained, the
remittance-men ignored the invitation; and so, for the
space of a thunderous hymn of praise, gnostic civilization
and the fervid frontier faced each other across
the middle benches.  From that dramatic setting
anything might come.  Moment, feeling, atmosphere, all
pointed to the event that came to pass as the hymn died.\par

Leaping upon a bench, and so adding its height to
unusual tallness, a woman pointed a warning hand at
the unbelievers.  Thin, family-worn, and naturally
cadaverously yellow, she was now flushed with the fever
of delirium.  "In that day," she screeched, "the Tares
shall be separated from the Wheat and cast with the
grass into the oven!"  Then, while her finger indicated
man after man, she raised the grewsome hymn:\par

{\advance\leftskip\parindentamount{}\advance\rightskip\parindentamount{}
\vs{1}
\begin{verse}
{\vl {\noindent}%
"'I heard the Sinners Wailing, Wailing, Wailing,\par}
{\vl I heard the Sinners Wailing on that Great Day!'"\par}
\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
\end{verse}
}

\vs{1}
{\noindent}%
Travelling around the benches, her skinny finger
finally fastened on Helen, and, as the lugubrious refrain
came to an end, she burst forth in tremendous paraphrase:
"Beware ye of the Scarlet Woman!  Avoid ye,
for her portals lead down to Death; her feet take hold of
Hell!"\par

The silence of paralysis followed.  So still it was that
a mosquito's thin whine sounded through the tent, the
tinkle of a cow-bell came in from far pastures, a dog
could be heard barking a long way off.  Swinging from
the tent-pole, a circle of lanterns lit dark, flushed faces,
and thus, for the space of a long breath, Helen faced
the virago, the one glowering, malignant, the other pale
with astonishment, mutely indignant.  She was not
confused.  On the contrary, thought and vision were
surprisingly clear; she noted Mrs. Glaves's shocked look,
the vindictive settler faces, the Englishmen's blank
expressions.\par

"We had better go.  May I drive home, Mrs. Carter?"  Danvers,
the witless, the foolish, rose to the situation.\par

Low-pitched, his voice yet carried to every ear, as did
her clear reply:\par

"After the service is over."\par

It was defiance as well as answer, and as she threw
it in the lowering face of the congregation, her glance
fixed on the evangelist who, till then, had stood, mouth
open, hand arrested midway of a gesture, a bearded,
spectacled effigy of ridiculous surprise.  Starting under
her pale scorn, he flushed, looked for a second through
shining, bewildered glasses, then strode forward and
seized the virago's arm.\par

"Sister, sister!  Judge not that ye be not judged!"  Then,
himself again, he swept a pudgy hand over the
benches.  "Sit down, all!  Brother Cummings will lead
in prayer."\par

It mercifully happens that sudden calamity carries
its own anæsthetic in that it blinds, confuses, destroys
feeling, numbs the faculties that ought to register its
importance.  Under Helen's unnatural calmness she
was dimly conscious of a sick excitement, but this was
unrelated with her thought.  She saw and sensed as
usual; was aware of curious backward glances, the
sympathy of the Englishmen at her side; heard every
word of Cummings's sputtering prayer, the following
hymn and benediction; only her mind refused commerce
with these things.  Divorced from the present, it
juggled the terms of an equation in that day's lesson up
to the moment that the remittance-men came crowding
about Danvers' rig after the meeting.\par

Aside from their looseness and general inefficiency, the
lads were brave enough, and though some of them
had won or lost bets on her reputation, winners were
no more eager than losers to avenge the insult that
had been provoked by her association with themselves.\par

"Just say the word, Mrs. Carter," Danvers pleaded,
"and we'll lick the crowd."\par

"And put a head on the preacher," young Poole
added, sinfully licking his chops.\par

From the darkness that enveloped the press of rigs
and wagons rose jeering voices, sneers, laughter, the
conscious cackle of scandal.  Several times she heard
her own name.  There was provocation and to spare,
but though a word would have started a racial riot,
she desired only solitude, to flutter home like a
wounded bird to its nest.\par

"No, no!" she answered them.  "Take me home!
Only take me home!"\par

Arrived there, she flew to her own room leaving
Danvers to enlighten the trustee.  Lying face down on
her bed, she heard the rumble of their conversation,
Jimmy's violent reflections upon revivals particular and
general, his wife's whimpering protests when she
returned.  His growl extended far into the night, and
when it was finally extinguished by a robust snoring,
the girl was afflicted with a sense of lost companionship;
thereafter she had to suffer it out by herself.\par

There would be more pain than profit in describing
her reflections, agonizings.  Sufficient to know that a
knife in the breast hurts a woman less than a stab at
her reputation, and her thought was none the sweeter
for the knowledge that she had drawn the blow by
giving way to her pique.  Her resolve as expressed next
morning to Jimmy Glaves is of more concern.\par

She had turned impatiently from Mrs. Glaves's tearful
apologies, but when the old trustee laid a kindly
hand on her shoulder, as she passed him in the garden
on her way to school, she gave him honest eyes.\par

"Now, you ain't to bother.  'Twas on'y Betsy Rodd,
the old harridan.  Nobody minds her."\par

But she shook her head in accordance with her
resolution to face truth.  "She was expressing what was
in everybody's minds.  I know it, and though I didn't
intend it, I'm partly to blame, for their suspicion."  Her
mouth drew thin and firm as she finished.  "I shall
live it down."\par

"Course you will!" he heartily agreed.  "That's my
brave girl!"  But his face darkened after she had passed
on, and he slowly wagged a grave head as he plied his
hoe in the garden.\par

For he knew the difficulty, impossibility of the task
she had marked out for herself.  Of Scotch descent,
dogmatic, wedded to convention, intense clannishness
reinforced in the settlers bitter morality, racial hatred,
the condemnation of sin.  With them the offence of the
fathers was visited upon the children to the fourth
generation.  It was remembered, for instance, against
Donald Ross that his great-grandfather had died a drunkard,
and the fact had limited his choice of a wife; the
daughters of Hector MacCloud took inferior husbands because
their grandmother had been born on the easy side of the
knot.  Handing such cold charity around among themselves,
what mercy were they likely to extend to the
suspected stranger within their gates?  Jimmy was still
wagging his head when, half an hour later, the Probationer
reined in at the end of the garden.\par

Hearing of the scandal on the Lone Tree trail, the
young man had turned aside to express his sorrow, and
now listened patiently while the trustee drew invidious
parallels between the religious movement then proceeding
and his own misfit horticulture.  "You see them?"  Removing
his pipe from between his teeth, he waved it
at some half-dozen straggling apple-shoots.  "Hardiest
variety of Siberian crabs.  Professor at the gove'nment
experimental station warranted 'em to grow at the north
pole.  Remind me of your revival, they do."\par

"Why?  Don't they grow?"  The Probationer smiled.\par

"Grow?  I should swan! four feet every summer, an'
freeze off to the roots every winter—jes' like your
converts.  Get all het up at meetings, blossom with grace,
then comes the backsliding, the frost, an' nips the
leafage.  Where's the sense of it?"\par

Now the Probationer had his own doubts.  Having
turned a prentice hand at revival work, he was painfully
familiar with its characteristic phenomena—first,
hot enthusiasm, slow cooling, obstinate adherence to
the form after the spirit has fled, finally the reaction
which would leave his people less charitable, not quite
so kindly, a little poorer in the things which make for
the kingdom of Christ on earth.  He had tried to be a
real shepherd to his flock—to upraise by precept,
example, counsel, and admonition.  Avoiding dogma, he had
brought them together irrespective of cult and creed
on the broad basis of love and a common humanity,
and just when he was beginning to expect fruit from
that liberal sowing, this bitter theologian, the revivalist,
had been loosed upon him.  And this was first fruit of
his work!\par

Jimmy's illustration coincided exactly with his own
experience, yet fealty to his Church demanded some
sort of defence.  "Isn't an annual growth better than
none?" he asked.  "The green shoots certainly improve
the appearance of your garden."\par

Jimmy blew a derisive cloud over the few cabbages,
two sickly cauliflowers, a bed of onions, salvage from
worms and spring frost of half an acre's planting.  "But
you don't get results.  One sound cabbage is worth an
acre of sick saplings; a cheerful sinner discounts a
hundred puckered saints.  I'm scairt as the black knot has
got inter that orchard o' yourn, sir?"\par

"I'm afraid so," the young fellow sadly agreed.
"Well, I must try and prune it out."\par

"I'd advise the axe," Jimmy grimly commented.
"An' begin with Betsy Rodd."\par

Sorrowing, the Probationer drove on to the school,
where a very cold young lady answered his call at the
door.  A slant of sunshine struck in under the porch
twining an aureole about her golden head, creating an
auriferous nimbus for her shapely figure.  Standing
there, so cold and pale, she might have passed for a
statue of purity, and the Probationer, being young and
still impressionable albeit engaged, wondered that any
should have dared to doubt her.  Thawing when he
mentioned Ruth, she froze again as soon as he touched,
apologetically, upon the event of the night before.\par

"If religion strips them of common charity, they
would be better without it," she answered his apology,
and turned but a cold ear to his plea for his people.\par

"They were altogether subject to emotion, incapable
of a reasoned rule of life," he said.  "With the fear
of God removed from their hearts, they would drop
to unmentionable levels, to say nothing of the hope
and consolation religion brought to sweeten their hard
lives."\par

But he made little headway.  "I don't doubt they
are not quite so bad as they would like to be.  But
there, let us drop the subject.  Won't you come in and
examine the children?"\par

From this conversation it will be seen that her
resolve to "live it down" was not exactly founded upon
grounds that would appeal to a professor of ethics; yet
her attitude was very natural, and not so deplorable as
would at first appear.  Was she so much to blame?
Hardness breeds hardness, opposition its like.  Fire
flies from the impact of rock and iron.  Always like
begets like, heredity applies to mental forces.
Moreover, injured pride has stiffened more weak spines and
given better results than the command to turn the
other cheek; the desire to "show people" lies at the
root of many a bravery.  Lastly, once rehabilitated
socially, softness comes later to the injured member,
increasing in ratio to the respect of his or her
community.  And so it would have been with Helen—with
a different people.\par

\label{the-charivari}%
\hypertarget{the-charivari}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXIII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE CHARIVARI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Straddling a log in his dooryard, the trustee
whistled softly while he whittled and shaped a
pair of birch crooks into the ox-collars that, with
trace-chains, are preferred in the northland to the
old-fashioned bows and yoke.  The revival was over.  After
passing from house to house like measles, mumps, or
other dark disease, infecting men on trail, by fireside,
at the plough-tail with the prejudice he styled religion,
the evangelist had reported so many head of "saved" to
his superiors, and so had swooped like a plague upon
other settlements, leaving the Probationer to repair, as
best he might, his ravages in this.  Now, two weeks
later, symptoms in Silver Creek indicated a quick
recovery; extra meetings had altogether ceased, bi-weekly
prayer-meetings languished, remarks at the plough-tail
showed signs of former vigor; the sweat and labor of
haying would undoubtedly bring complete convalescence
and, with it, danger for Helen.  For while the religious
excitement had served her by excluding all else from
the settler mind, tongues would be the sharper, prejudice
the keener for the rest.  It was but a lull in the
storm, the hush that follows the first flash and crash of
thunder.\par

It was knowledge of this fact that inspired the trustee's
thoughtful whistling.  Already he smelled trouble
on the wind, the impression being formed on many
small significances—looks, nods, winks, and whispered
asides at "bees" and "raisings."  More important: his
cabin, which, as post-office, had been a social focus, centre
of news and gossip, a place to linger and chat, had of
late been almost deserted.  Calling for their mail, his
neighbors departed with the shortest of salutations.
So, having had a gray eye on trouble through all, he
was not surprised when she presently appeared between
Shinn and Hines in the latter's buck-board.  Indeed, his
comment while they were still a hundred yards away
signified profound distrust.  "Gummed if the coyotes
ain't running in packs this weather."  His beetling
brows, moreover, drew a grizzled line across his hawk
nose when the two reined in opposite; he glared
suspiciously while Hines glibly discoursed on crops, weather,
the ox-collars; nor hesitated to interrupt and reach for
trouble's forelock.\par

"Crops is fair to middling, nothing wrong with the
hay, the crooks is for Flynn—now, what is it?"\par

Hines blinked and looked silly, but the check worked
oppositely on Shinn.  Of that gaunt, raw-boned,
backwoods type produced by generations of ineffable
hardship and slavish labor, he stood over six feet, and
combined great strength with mean ferocity and
uncontrollable passion.  His huge mouth twitched feverishly
as he answered, "Sence you're so pressing—it's the
talk through the settlement that we orter have a new
teacher."\par

"Umph!"  Grunt could not convey greater contempt.
"Hain't you got a teacher?"\par

"Yes, but it's agreed that she ain't quite the sort to
put over innercent children."\par

This time the trustee snorted, "Might infect them
brats o' yourn with her sweet manners, eh?"\par

Shinn flushed dully under his yellow skin.  "That or
something else.  Anyway, every one's agreed that she's
gotter go."\par

"Who's everybody?"\par

"Meeting, held at my place."  Recovering, Hines
backed up his partner.\par

"Yes?  First I heard of it.  Was Flynn there?
Thought not; he ain't much of a mixer.  Didn't ask me,
did you?"\par

Hines shuffled uneasily.  "'Twas held after a
prayer-meeting—you might ha' been there."\par

"Prayer-meeting, eh?  Real Christian, wasn't it, to
try and take the bread out of a good girl's mouth?"\par

"{\itshape{Good?}}"\par

At Hines's sneer the trustee rose, hand gripping hard
on a heavy crook, eyes one gray glare under ragged brows,
temple veins ridged and swollen.  "I said 'good.'"\par

On the frontier a man must usually furnish material
proof of courage, but there are exceptions from whom
imminent fearlessness distils as an exhalation affecting
all who come within its atmosphere.  Carter was such
a one; Glaves another.  Though neither had found it
necessary to "make good" physically during the settlement's
short history, their ability to do so was never at
question.  Behind the reserve of one, crabbed sarcasm
of the other, danger lay so close to the surface that it was
always felt, could never be quite forgotten.  Indeed, as
regards Glaves, the feeling took form in the opinion
often delivered when the qualities of men were under
discussion—"If the old man ever gets started, some one
will earn a quick funeral."  Now Hines quailed, and
even the truculent Shinn observed silence.\par

Glaring on the shrinking Hines, the trustee went on:
"Never forgot how Carter bluffed you out on that hay
business, did you?  An' as you wasn't man enough to
get back at him, you 'lowed to take it out of his wife?
Well, you ain't going to.  You kin go back an' tell them
that sent you that so long as Flynn an' me sit on the
board she'll teach this school."\par

"That," Shinn retorted, "would be till nex' election,
but she won't stay that long.  Sence you're so stiff
about it, Glaves, let me tell you that you kain't fly in
the face of this settlement.  You may be big wolf, but
there's others in the pack.  If she's here at the end of
the month—there'll be something doing."  Nodding
evilly, he drove on, leaving the trustee to puzzle over his
meaning as he shaped and polished the crooks.\par

"Bluffing, I reckon," he concluded, and that, also,
was the opinion of Flynn, to whom he carried his doubts
that evening.\par

"There'll be no way for thim spalpeens to fire us av
the boord?" Flynn queried.  "No?  Phwat about an
opposhition school?"\par

"Agin the law to build one in this township."\par

"Thin 'tis all out av the big mouth av Shinn.  Thalk,
an' nothing more."\par

Both were confirmed in their opinion when the month
drew to a peaceful, if hot, end.  Tricked out in various
green, woods and prairies slumbered or sighed restlessly
under torrid heat that extracted their essential essences,
weighting the heavy air with intense odors of curing
grasses.  There was nothing to indicate that the virulent
tide of spleen was ready to burst its banks.  Knowing
that another week would bring on haying, with its attendant
wars to provide an outlet for feeling, neither trustee
anticipated the event which occurred at the full of the
moon.\par

Though the storm broke around Glaves's cabin, Flynn
received immediate notice.  In pleasant weather he and
his wife would sit on their doorstep after the children
were in bed, to enjoy the quiet hour while the peace and
cool charmed away the cares of the day; and this night
was particularly beautiful.  Over dewlit plains the moon
emptied a flood of silver and polished the slough beyond
the dooryard till it shone like burnished steel.  Rolling
off and away under that tender light, the huge earth
waves seemed to heave, swell, sigh as a lover's bosom
under the sweet eyes of his mistress, while from the
corrals near by issued the heavy breathing of contented
kine.  Always music in the ears of a farmer, it stimulated
Flynn, set him planning for the future; but he had hardly
touched on next year's increase before Mrs. Flynn seized
his arm.\par

"Phwat's that?"\par

At first Flynn thought that Glaves was "dogging"
stray cattle away from his grain-fields, but when the
iron note of beaten pans, gunshots, metallic thundering
were added to the first clash of cow-bells, he sprang up.
"A charivari!  At Glaves's!  A spite charivari!"\par

"Oh, my God, Flynn!" his wife exclaimed.  "That
poor girl!"  She knew what that orgy of sound portended.
A jest at weddings, the charivari was sometimes
used as a sinister weapon to express communal dislike or
punish suspicion of sin.  The most terrible memory of
her girlhood was associated with a party of fiercely moral
backwoodsmen that flogged a man at her father's wagon-tail
and dragged a woman, who had offended public
morals, naked and screaming through a field of thistles.
In Silver Creek were men who had participated in that
cruelty, forced to emigrate to escape the law.  Small
wonder that she agonized under the thought.  "Flynn!
Flynn, man!  Hurry, get your horse!"\par

Holding the light for him to saddle, she called after
as he rode away: "Go round be Misther Danvers'!  'Tis
on'y a mile out av your way!  Going by here at noon,
himself told me that he was to have a sthag-party the
night!  They'll jump at the chance, an' fight none the
worse for a smhell av the whiskey!"\par

A cold, with complications in the shape of rheumatic
pains, sent the trustee early to bed that evening, and
Helen was sewing by the fire with Mrs. Glaves when the
charivari turned loose outside.  As, jumping up, they
stood staring at one another, he shouted for them to bolt
the door; and as, after complying, Helen returned to the
fire he came limping out, bent, warped, and twisted by
sciatica, half dressed, but grimly resolute.\par

"Danger?" he rasped, swinging round on his wife as
the house trembled under sudden thunder of scurrying
hoofs outside.  "Listen!"  And when pained bellows
followed dropping shots, he added: "Peppering the cattle.
Scairt?  Then go an' stick your fool head under a pillow.
How is it with you?"\par

As a matter of fact, Helen's face was as white as the
fluffy shawl from which her golden head rose like a yellow
crocus above soft spring snows; but, noting the thin,
scarlet line of her mouth, the trustee nodded his satisfaction.
"You'll do.  Swing round that lounge—here, where I
can train a gun on the door.  Good!"  He eased his
length along it with a groan of relief.  "Now hand me
the gun—no, the other."  Rehanging his own long
duck-gun upon its wooden pegs, she brought him the famous
double-barrelled Greener which, having disarranged the
lock action in trying to clean it, Danvers had left with
the trustee for repairs.  "There, put out the light an'
take a look out at the window."\par

Pulling the curtain aside, she got full benefit of the
brazen clamor while learning something of its genesis,
for, while easily recognizable, the din of beaten pans,
cow-bells, gunshots, and yells formed only a minor
accompaniment to a barbarous metallic roll, louder than
a corps of beaten drums, and a discordant screech that
discounted the torment of a thousand tortured fiddles.
Now she saw two men rapidly vibrating long cross-cut
saws back and forth against the house, while others drew
a rosined plank to and fro across a log, concentrating the
discords of the world into a single excruciating note.
Closing her ears, she took further note of the score of dark
figures that came and went in the moonlight, leaping,
shouting, gesticulating strangely, as though crazed by
the frenzy of noise.  Weird, sinister shapes, they moved,
massed, and melted to units again as in some mad
carnival or distorted madman's dream.\par

The trustee pulled her skirt.  "Come away!  They
might shoot at the window."\par

Obeying, she knelt beside him—fortunately with her
back to the pane that, a few minutes later, shivered and
flew in fine rain.  "Drunk!" Glaves commented; and
as a piercing cry, clever imitation of a cougar, rang high
over a slight lull, he said, "That's sure Bill MacCloud."  He
grimly added—for, besides being dissolute, the man
was a scoffer and leader against religion: "Gosh! but the
saints are keeping queer company.  Bill ain't more'n a
mile 'way from his bottle."\par

After that one lull the tumult increased in loudness
and volume, and for a long half-hour Helen listened as
some soft maid of Rome may have hearkened to the din
of Goth or ravaging Hun in the sacred streets of the
imperial city.  To her, brought up under the shadow of
law, with its material manifestation—a policeman—always
within call, the brutal elemental passion behind that
huge, amorphous voice was very terrible.  Almost equally
fearful was the sudden cessation that set the silence
singing in her ears, the voiceless darkness, thick night
of that black room.\par

Touching the trustee, more for the comfort of his
presence than to draw his attention, she whispered,
"What now?"\par

Just then the door rattled under a heavy kick; a
strident voice answered her question: "Open, Glaves,
an' send out that —— baggage" (it was a viler word)
"or we'll burn the house over your ears!"\par

"You will—" the trustee began, but was interrupted
by a wail from his wife in the bedroom.\par

"Jimmy!  Oh, Jimmy, don't let 'em have her.  They'll
duck her in the slough—mebbe drown her like they did
Jenny Ross back in Huron."\par

"Will you shet up!" he roared, but the man outside
had heard.\par

"You bet we will.  She needs a little cooling."\par

"That's surely Mr. Shinn that's talking so fierce!"
the trustee taunted.  "Man, but you're gaining a heap
wolfish, though it did take you some time to work up
to the p'int of speech.  Why didn't you take the
shortcut through Bill's bottle?"  His tone suddenly altered
from banter to such stern command that they distinctly
heard Shinn shuffle back a step from the door.  "Burn
this house?  Get, or I'll blow the black heart out of you!"\par

A derisive yell rose outside, then silence fell again, a
hush so complete that Helen distinctly heard the tick
of the clock, her own breathing, the chirrup of a hearth
cricket.  Pulling the trustee's sleeve, she whispered,
"I've brought {\itshape{such}} trouble upon you!"\par

"Rubbish!" he snapped.  "Say that ag'in an' I'll
spank you!"  But he gently patted her hand.\par

A minute slid by without further speech; a second,
third, fourth, then she whispered, "Surely they must
have gone."\par

Before he could reply came a rapid beat of running
feet, a splintering crash, an oblong of moonlight flashed
out of the darkness at the end of the room, and quiet
reigned again.  Only the battering ram, a long log,
poked its blunt nose over the doorsill.\par

"Stand clear there!" the trustee sharply warned.
Then, as a dim, crouched figure appeared between the
jambs, he shouted, "Fair warning!" and fired; but as
the figure fell back and out, a chuckling laugh drifted
through the smoke, Shinn's coarse voice yelled: "His
gun's single barrel!  In, afore he kin reload!" and a black,
surging mass trampled over the dummy and filled the
doorway.  As aforeseen, the conclusion was justified—the
trustee's long gun was familiar as his face in the
settlement—and the click of Danvers' left trigger was
drowned by a second harsh command—"Fair warning!"\par

The report, thunderous, ear-splitting in the confined
space, certified to Shinn's mistake.  His writhing mouth,
Hines's wintry visage, the press of men in the door showed
redly under the flash, then sulphurous darkness wiped out
all.  To Helen, its smothering pall seemed to pulse with
thick life, to extend clutching fingers, horrors that were
intensified by Mrs. Glaves's sudden burst of hysterical
screaming.  Crouched behind Glaves, she listened in
agony to the swearing, sharp oaths, as men tripped and
stumbled over the furniture and one another.  There
was no escape.  They were feeling for her all over the
room, and through a sick horror she heard Shinn's
triumphant yell—\par

"I've got her!"\par

A choked gurgle, snarl of rage, as Glaves fastened onto
his throat, explained his mistake.  "Hell! has no one
a match?"  His strangled voice issued from a dark
whorl, crash of splintering furniture, as they swung and
staggered in that pit of gloom.  The struggle could have
but one ending.  Healthy, Glaves would have been no
match for Shinn, and, as a match scratched, came the
soft thud of his body as he was thrown with brutal force
against the wall.\par

Flaring up, the flame revealed Helen, white, trembling,
sick with that paralysis of fear that a mouse must feel
in the claws of a cat.  From the bedroom came the
hysterical whooping, terrible in its sameness.  Wide-eyed,
she stared, fascinated, at Shinn, but he also was
staring at a body spread-eagled before the door, its
face turned down in a black, viscid, spreading pool.  The
match went out.\par

"My God!" a man cried.  "It's Hines!"\par

But Helen did not hear that or a cry from outside
warning of approaching hoofs.  Throughout the frenzy
of noise, horror of darkness, suspense, the attack, she
had carried herself bravely; but this swift death,
following on all, broke her shaken nerves, deprived her of
consciousness.\par

The trustee, however, heard and saw the house vomit
its black life, the dark figures streaming under the
moonlight out to the bluff where the horses were tied,
panic-stricken by sudden death and uneasy memories of
outraged law.  Leaning in his doorway, bent and bruised,
he saw also Flynn and Danvers thunder by with a
score of remittance-men, a wild cavalcade hard on their
heels.  In the Irishman's hand a neck-yoke swung with
ominous rattle of iron rings; Danvers carried a cavalry
sabre he had snatched from his wall; the others brandished
clubs.  Looming an instant in the steam of their
sweating beasts, they shot on with a glad hurrah.\par

"Yoicks!  Tally-ho!" young Poole shrilled as he
passed.  "Sic 'em, Flynn!"\par

"A Flynn!  A Flynn!" Danvers squeaked as Shinn
crumpled under the neck-yoke.\par

Wild lads, under wilder leadership, they fought—as
Mrs. Flynn had predicted—none the worse for a smell
at the whiskey.  Those of the enemy who made a slow
mounting were ridden down, fell under the clubs, or
achieved uncomfortable leaps into briers and scrub, to
be afterwards caught and drubbed, while such as
escaped were run down and brought to bay by twos and
threes.  In a running fight over miles of moonlit prairie
the grudges of years were settled; jeers, gibes, many a
cheating received payment in full, with arrears of
interest.  Thus Cummings received from Danvers the
"boot" due on the mare that Carter once described as
being "blind, spavined, sweenied, an' old enough to
homestead," payment being slapped down upon the
spot where most pain may be inflicted with least
structural damage.  In like manner Poole settled with Peter
Rodd for a cannibalistic sow; Perceval with MacCloud,
arrears {\itshape{not}} due on a quarter-section of scrub; Gray with
Seebach for forty bushels of heated seed wheat.  Leaving
them to their rough auditing, the story returns with
Flynn to the cabin after the dropping of Shinn.\par

After relighting the lamp, Glaves had carried his sore
bones back to the lounge, and when Flynn entered he
found the terrible old fellow glowering upon the dead.
His wife's hysteria had slackened to a strained sobbing,
and, answering Flynn's question, he tartly replied: "No,
'tain't Mrs. Carter.  Had her fainting-spell an' kem
to without any fuss, like a sensible girl.  She's in there
tending to that old fool."  Then, beetling again on the
dead, he forecast the verdict of the sheriff's jury.  "Ye'll
bear witness, Flynn, that this man kem to his death
through running into a charge of buckshot after my
winder 'd been shot in an' door battered down."\par

\label{without-the-pale}%
\hypertarget{without-the-pale}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXIV}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize WITHOUT THE PALE}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
"I really believe that I {\itshape{ought}} to resign!"\par

When, one morning a week later, Helen delivered
herself of certain secret misgivings at breakfast, the
trustee looked up, startled, from his eggs and mush, then
proceeded to fish for motives.\par

"Scairt?  You needn't to be.  We've got this settlement
by the short hairs at last."\par

His rude metaphor roughly set forth the truth.  Without
ties, the bachelors of the charivari party had scattered
west through the territories, while Shinn, MacCloud,
and other married men had gone into such close hiding
that the sheriff had been unable to subpoena one for the
inquest.  But though she neither feared nor anticipated
further violence, Helen now knew that she never would
be able to live down the settlers' prejudice; and without
the children's love, parents' confidence, her day of
usefulness was past.\par

Glaves snorted at this altruistic reason.  "Love?
Confidence?  What's their market value?  You kedn't
hope to compete with a dollar note for the first; as for
the second—  Danvers hit it off exactly when he stuck
that sign on his stable door—'No more trading here!'  Now,
from my p'int of view, it isn't a question of love
or confidence, but one of faith."\par

"Faith?" she echoed.\par

Nodding, he went on.  "Me and Flynn backed you
up—stood by you through all, didn't we?"\par

"Indeed you did!"  She grew rosily red under warmth
of feeling.  "I shall never—"\par

"An' now you allow to throw us down?  For Shinn
and MacCloud will shorely tell how that they scared you
an' beat us out."\par

It was bad argument, poor ethics—a bald statement of
his grim intention of bending the stubborn settlers to his
inflexible purpose.  She felt, however, that it would be
still poorer ethics for her to desert and disappoint these,
her champions, defenders.  It was one of these peculiar
situations where any course seems wrong, and if
she chose that which seemed most human, she did it
with a mental reservation.  She would resign just as
soon as she could persuade him to look at things her way.\par

"Of course I'll stay—to please you.  But—"\par

"No 'buts,'" he interrupted.  "Haying begins
Monday, an' by fall it'll all be ol' hist'ry."\par

But Monday brought justification of her doubt,
proving that, if cowed, the settlers were by no means
conquered.  Only the young Flynns attended school, and
the array of empty benches loomed in her troubled
vision like a huge face, vacant, mulishly obstinate as a
blank wall, vividly eloquent of the invincible determination
that would have none of her.  Her heart sank, and
when the week passed without further attendance she
gave up, handed her resignation to Flynn and Glaves in
council at the latter's cabin.\par

Both, as might be expected, registered strenuous
objections.  "'Tain't your fault if they cut off their nose
to spite their face," Glaves argued.  And when she
replied that the children would suffer, he rasped: "What
of it?  'The sins of the fathers shall be visited on the
children to the fourth generation.'  Ye have Scripter
for that."\par

"But not the sin of the stranger," she gently objected.
"I have myself to blame for the prejudice."\par

Now, though neither trustee would admit her confession,
both were afflicted with a sneaking consciousness of
its truth.  For not only had she offended by consorting
with that public enemy, the remittance-man, but the
cause of Carter's desertion had escaped from Elinor
Leslie's indiscreet tongue.  Every man, woman, and
child in the country-side was informed as to the events
which led up to and followed the Ravells' visit.  Their
denials, therefore, were negated by that profuseness of
expression which accentuates the truth it seeks to
conceal.\par

"You know it," she answered them, and opposed further
argument with that soft feminine obstinacy which
wears out masculine strength.\par

"But what else kin you do?" Glaves cried at last, in
despair.\par

"Go to Winnipeg and take a place in an office or
store."\par

Though she affected brightness, she could not altogether
hide the dejection, homesickness that inhered in
the thought.  Now that she was to leave it, that rude
cabin, with its log walls, legal patchwork, home-made
furniture, glowed with the glamours of home.  Even
Mrs. Glaves's gaunt ugliness became suddenly dear in
the light of an indefinite future among strangers.\par

Detecting her underlying sadness, Flynn exclaimed:
"Phwat?  Wurrk in a sthore?  Sell pins, naydles, an'
such truck while I've a roof over me head?  Ye'd die in
thim lonesome hotels.  Ye 'll just come right home wid me."\par

"Likely, ain't it?" Glaves broke in, jealous for his
prerogative.  "In the first place, if she goes, she ain't
agoing to stop at no hotel, but with my own sister that
keeps a boarding-house on Main Street.  An' if she stays,
it'll be right here, with me—eh, old woman?"\par

His wife's warm assent brought Helen to tears without,
however, affecting her resolution.  For the settlement
would be by the ears, she said, just as long as she
stayed in it.\par

"Humph!" Glaves growled.  "It'll have itself be the
throat afore long.  Yesterday Poole an' Danvers ran
their mowers into Shinn's five-acre swamp, an' if that
don't bring that big Injin a-kiting from the tall timber,
I'm Dutch."\par

She was not, however, to be moved, and after an
embarrassed pause Flynn said, hesitatingly: "Thim
cities, now, is mighty ixpinsive.  A lone girl without
money—ye'll let me—"\par

Digging a shabby bill-book from the bottom depths of
his overalls, he precipitated a second kindly quarrel.
Glaring at it, Glaves snorted, "When she knows she kin
draw on me for the vally of my last head of stock down
to the dog!"\par

Having means for some months, this storm was more
easily laid than that which burst when Flynn offered to
drive her in to Lone Tree.\par

"An' her living with me?" Glaves stormed.\par

"'Tis meself that knowed her longest," Flynn argued.\par

"Humph!" Glaves sneered—"three days.  Thursday
she stopped at your house coming out from Lone Tree.
Sunday I saw her at meeting—went a-purpose an' never
tended sence.  No, she goes with me."\par

"Anyway, I knowed her longest," Flynn persisted.
"But 'tis herself shall say.  Which shall it be, ma'am?"\par

"Both," she laughed; and so, with a grizzled champion
on either hand, she rattled southward the following day.\par

By one of those strange coincidences of ironical fate,
this, the day of her departure, occurred on the third
anniversary of her first drive out with Carter, and all
things, season, sight, sound, conspired to vividly recall
that memorable occasion.  Rank growths in uncut
sloughs bowed under warm winds that freighted a
distant metallic rattle of many mowers; beyond the
settlements the Park Lands stretched to the Assiniboin
with only the chimneys of the burned Cree village to
break their spangled undulations.  As before, they came
suddenly upon the valley, rugged, riven, with its bald,
buttressing headlands, timbered ravines; the river,
writhing in giant convolutions along the level bottoms.
As before, they dropped with jolts, jerks, skidding of
wheels to the ford that now tuned its hoarse voice to
a melancholy dirge in harmony with her mood; and
from the door of the log mission Father Francis bowed
his silver head in courtly farewell.\par

After the valley came the "Dry Lands," the tawny
plains, barren of trees, cabin, or farmstead; finally Lone
Tree impinged in that huge monochrome, its grain-sheds
reminding her, as before, of red Noah's arks on a yellow
carpet.  To her the hour of departure restored the fresh,
clear vision of the stranger.  The town appeared as on
that first occasion—its one scanty street of clapboard
hotels and stores with false fronts fencing the railway
tracks that came spinning out of the western horizon to
flash on over the east; the wise ox-teams rolling along
the street; the squaws with ragged ponies hitched in
big-wheeled Red River carts; the cows pasturing amid
tomato-cans that strewed vacant lots; the loafers,
omni-present riffraff of the small frontier, holding down
nail-kegs and cracker-boxes under store verandas.\par

It was a trying drive.  Every turn of the trail brought
its reminiscences; mud chimneys, the Indian graveyard,
a lone coyote, recalled the beginnings of her love, and
now that she was leaving she vividly realized how she
had grown to this land of white silences, grave winds,
vast, sunwashed spaces.  But if she had need of the heavy
veil that she pinned on that morning, that marvellous
feminine restraint enabled her to turn a composed face
to the doctor and Jenny, who came to the station to see
her off.\par

As she passed up street, the riffraff exchanged nods
and winks, but Lone Tree furnished still other
champions.  The store-keeper, he who had loaded Carter's
buck-board with jams and jellies, came hurrying across
the tracks with good wishes and protestations.\par

"Shinn, MacCloud, Cummings—the hull gang—go off
my books," he swore to Glaves.  "Not another cent's
credit to keep 'em from starving."\par

"They can rot in their beds for me," the doctor added.
"I strike Silver Creek from my practice."  And though
the train was even then whistling for the station, Hooper,
the agent, stole time for friendly greetings.\par

If roughly expressed, their sympathy was at least
genuine; it eased the parting so that she was able to lean
out and give them a last smile as the train rolled by the
water-tank with long, easy clickings, carrying her away
beyond their tough pale.  Good enough as a farewell,
it was not, however, a success as a smile, and the woe
behind its wanness formed the subject of an indignant
caucus that convened as soon as Jenny left the platform.\par

"I can't figure out jes' what Carter means," the
storekeeper fretfully exclaimed.  "Granted that she throwed
him that onct—the charivari?—that business at the
revival?  If it had been my wife, I'd been smelling round
for—"\par

"Blood!" the agent interjected; and though he had
intended "trouble," the store-keeper accepted the amendment.\par

"What's the man looking for?" the doctor roared.
"She has beauty, amiability, intelligence, almost every
quality that a man can desire in a wife, yet he goes off
in a pout because she falls short of the angels.  He's a
damned fool.  He ought to be—"\par

"Aisy, aisy wid ye."  Flynn stemmed the tide of
wrath.  "'Tis no throuble at all to condimn whin a
purty girl's at t'other ind of the argymint.  She's sweet,
an' I'll break the face av the man as says she isn't good.
But—give the man toime.  Let be till we know that he's
heard av the rhuctions.  Thin, if he does nothing—"\par

"Well," the doctor interrupted, "he'll hear, all
right—from me, this very night."\par

"Me, too," the store-keeper added.\par

"An' don't forget to give him partickler h—l!" the
agent called after as they strolled away.\par

Nor did they.  Dipping his pen in scorn, the doctor
opened his epistle with a timely question as to the exact
number and kinds of fool that Carter considered himself,
and finished with a spirit that transcended even
Glaves's difficult requirements.  Equally thorough in his
beginnings, a rush of business prevented the store-keeper
from making an end that evening; but his default had
its advantages in that he was thus enabled to deliver the
remainder, {\itshape{viva voce}}, to Carter himself, when he stepped
off the train next morning.  Served hot, with good
frontier adjectives sizzling among the nouns and articles, his
opinion gained the admiring attention of Hooper, the
agent, who stood ready to offer advice and assistance.\par

For his part, Carter listened quietly until the
storekeeper paused for breath.  Then he turned to the agent.
"If you'd like five minutes with my character and attainments,
don't be bashful!  I've got it coming.  After that
please oblige with a little information on this charivari?
I only heard yesterday morning of that revival through
Bender's coming into camp."\par

As he listened, his natural sternness deepened to dark
austerity, then fluxed in sad pity as the store-keeper told
of Helen's departure.  Murmuring "Poor thing!—poor
little thing!" he asked for her address.\par

His face fell when the store-keeper answered: "You'll
have to go to Glaves for that.  The doc' might have it,
but him an' Miss Jenny went north this morning to settle
up her father's affairs."  Noting Carter's disappointment,
he kindly added: "You kin drive my sorrels.  They're a
third faster than the livery teams.  On'y, remember
they're fresh off the grass."\par

"I'll {\itshape{try}} not to misuse them," Carter answered, brightening,
a remark that plentifully illustrates his impatient
feeling.\par

Agent and store-keeper helped him hitch; and as he
headed the sorrels out on the Silver Creek trail—the trail
that for him, as for Helen, was one long heartache—the
agent drew a deduction from his sombre sternness.\par

"I heard that MacCloud an' Cummings were back.
Je-hosh-a-phat!  There'll be something doing if they
cross his track."\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Stepping out of his stable, after feeding the noon oats
next day, Glaves "lifted up his eyes," in biblical phrase,
and saw Carter "a long way off."  A hot morning at the
hay, and the loss of two sections of his mower-sickle by
impact with a willow snag, did not tend to alleviate his
natural crustiness.  As he recognized the tall figure
behind the sorrels, the hoar of his fifty winters seemed to
settle in the lines of his weathered visage; his eye took
the steely sparkle of river ice; his nod, when Carter
reined in opposite, was curt as his answer.\par

"Your wife's address?  Yes, I know it."\par

Forewarned by the store-keeper of the old man's
bitterness, Carter was not surprised.  "Meaning that you
won't give it to me?"\par

"Not till I know as she wants you to have it."\par

Tone and manner were superlatively irritating, but the
man had taken blood on his soul in Helen's defence, and
Carter spoke quietly.  "Don't you allow that she's a
right to decide for herself?"\par

"Now, ain't that exac'ly what I said?"\par

It was not, but contradiction would merely inflame
his obstinacy.  At a loss how to proceed, Carter switched
the heads, one by one, from a patch of tall brown pig-weeds,
using his left hand, for the right was roughly tied
up in his handkerchief.  On his part Glaves looked
steadily past him.\par

It was a beautiful day—sensuous, soft, one of the
golden days when warm winds flirt among rustling
grasses breathing the incense of smiling flowers.  Heat
hung in quivering waves along the horizon like an emanation
from the hot, prolific earth over whose bosom birds,
bumblebees, the little beasts of the prairies, came and
went on errands of love and business with songs and
twitterings.  And there, in the midst of this joy of life,
the grim old man bent frowning brows on Carter, who
was lost in bitter meditation.\par

He was laboring under an unhappy sense of error, for
his contumacy, determined absence, was not altogether
a product of hurt pride.  As he himself had dissolved
their relations, it was Helen's privilege to renew them,
and he had waited, yearning for her word.  But now
that he was dragged under the harrows of remorse, in an
agony of pity for her, he stood before Glaves as in the
presence of Nemesis, convicted of a huge mistake.\par

The initiative, after all, had lain with him.  If he had
owned to his fault, had apologized for his summary
desertion, she could have been trusted to do the rest.
Now he doubted that he was too late, for it was but
reasonable to suppose that the trustee's determined
opposition had origin with her.  He squared his big
shoulders to this burden of his own packing.\par

"Will you forward a letter?"\par

Frowning, Glaves answered without looking at him,
"You kin leave your address."'\par

"But you will forward it?"\par

"If she wants it."\par

Carter flushed, but checked a sharp answer.  "You
ain't extending too much grace to a sinner."\par

"Any less than you extended her?  What d' you
expect of me that saw her name dragged in the mud,
herself insulted—that took a life to save her body from
violence?  G—d d— you!"  His pent-up feelings
exploded, and for three minutes thereafter hot speech
bubbled like vitriol through his clinched teeth in
scathing denunciation of Carter's remissness.\par

"Part of what you say being true, we'll pass the rest,"
the latter said, when the trustee had drained his phials of
wrath.  "Now—without conceding your right to withhold
her address—will you forward some money?"\par

Glaves stared.  He had expected a blow, a violent
quarrel, at least; nay, had lusted for it.  But he was too
much of a man himself to mistake a just imperturbability
for fear, while the mention of money checked his anger
by switching his ideas.  Jealous for her honor, he looked
his suspicion.  "Whose money?"  But if accent and
tone declared against the acceptance of favors, he took
the proffered greenbacks after Carter explained that
they covered her share of the cattle he and Morrill had
owned in common—took them, that is, with a proviso.\par

"Let me see," he mused, counting five of ten bills of
one-hundred-dollar denomination.  "You'd forty head
of stock when Morrill died.  Five hundred covers her
share.  Take these back."  And to further argument
he sternly answered, "I don't allow that she's looking
for any presents from you."\par

"No, I don't allow that she is."\par

Sadness of look and tone caused Glaves to glance up
quickly, but he did not relax in his grimness up to the
moment that, having left his address, Carter drove away.
Then a shade of doubt crept into his steel eyes.  "If it
had been myself—" he muttered; then as Helen's parting
smile recurred in memory, he added: "No, damn him!
Let him suffer!"  But this was not the end.  Pausing
in his doorway as he went in to dinner, he saw the
buckboard, small as a fly, crawl over a distant knoll, and by
some association of ideas remembered Carter's hand and
wondered why it was bandaged.  And when he learned
from Poole and Danvers, who called round for their mail
that evening, his first small doubt was raised almost to
the dimension of regret.\par

Since the charivari, Glaves's opinion of the
remittance-man—as a fighting animal, at least—had risen above
zero, and he lent first an indulgent, then a rapt ear to the
boys' story.  As he himself had prophesied, the piracy
of the five-acre swamp brought Shinn out from his
hiding, but the latter's evil fate arranged matters so that as
he descended upon the remittance buccaneers from one
end of the swamp, Carter appeared on the Lone Tree trail
which cat-a-cornered the other.  The result bubbled
forth from the mouth of first one boy, then the other, in
eager interruptions.\par

"Shade of my granny!" Danvers swore.  "You never
saw such a fight!"\par

"No preliminaries," Poole declared.  "Carter just leaped
from his buggy and went for him like a cat after a mouse."\par

"And little good it did him.  He might have been a
gopher in the paws of a grizzly."\par

"Lay like a dead man for a long half-hour—"\par

"And looked like a snake that had mixed with a streak
of lightning."\par

"Blind, battered, bruised, we carried him home on his
shield—that is, on our hay-rake—"\par

"And that poor squalid wife of his looked rather
disgusted when she found that he wasn't dead."\par

While they thus poured the tale of Shinn's discomfiture
into Glaves's thirsty ears, Carter rattled steadily on
towards Lone Tree.  Passing Flynn's, he had been
tempted to put in, but remembered that the Irishman would
be out at the hay, and so ran on and by the one person
who could have furnished an approximation of Helen's
address.  For she had merely promised to write Jenny
as soon as she was settled, as he had learned when he met
the doctor, back-trailing alone, early that morning.\par

"But you'll surely find her at one of the hotels!" the
agent called to him, on the platform of the freight-train
that carried him away at midnight.\par

But Helen had gone straight to the trustee's sister.
And having wasted two days scanning hotel registers,
wandering the streets, he concluded that perhaps she had
changed her mind and gone straight through to her
friends back East.  Charging his friends and financial
backers to keep on with the search, however, he returned
to his labors in that unenviable condition of mind which
romanticist writers describe as "broken-hearted."\par

In a city of twenty thousand it ought not to be so very
difficult to locate a young lady whose style and beauty
drew the eyes of the street.  But if the search failed, the
cause inhered in other reasons than lack of diligence—in
a reason that largely accounted for Glaves's reluctance
to give her address.  Sick at heart, hopeless for the
future, she had sunk her surname with the bitter past;
resumed her maiden name while keeping the married
title.  Even with Glaves's sister, a big, good-natured
woman, she passed as a widow.\par

\label{the-sunken-grade}%
\hypertarget{the-sunken-grade}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXV}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE SUNKEN GRADE}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
The "Ragged Lands!"  Seamed, rugged, broken,
gloomy with dark spruce, sterile as a barren woman,
they cumber the earth from Lake Nipissing a thousand
miles westward to the edge of the prairies, and in all
their weary length no stretch of meadow-land occurs.
Pock-marked with sloughs, muskegs, black morasses,
peppered with sand-hills that rise suddenly like eruptive
boils in the sparse beard of its dwarf-growths, it is a
wicked country, and was held accursed by trappers and
Jesuit fathers who, of old, {\itshape{portaged}} or paddled upon its
borders.  Yet in construction days men poured into its
dark environs; one may still see Carter's camps, moss-grown,
roofless, rotting by the right of way, for his line
split a fifty-mile breadth from the western verge of that
mighty forest.\par

On the day after Carter's return from Winnipeg the
westering sun gilded a long scar, brown with the sere of
felled trees, that shore thirty miles of forest.  Ten more
miles and this, his right of way, would debouch on the
Park Lands, a day's drive southward from Silver Creek;
at its other end fifty miles of prairie grading would carry
it down to the American border.  Northerly, the cut was
masked in rolling smoke of burning brush; but where,
farther south, the spruce mantle had been torn from the
bosom of mother earth, it gaped yellow as a gangrened
wound.  Over this earth-sore men and teams swarmed
with the buzz and movement of flies, coming and going
about a steam-digger that bit hungry mouthfuls from the
bowels of a sand-hill and spat them, with hoarse coughing,
upon a train of flat-cars.  Beyond them a pile-driver
sputtered nervously upon a lean trestle; and still farther
south a track gang laid and spiked rails with furious
energy, adding their quota of noise to the roar that
combined with heat and dust to produce a miniature inferno.\par

Dipping still lower, the sun poked a golden finger
down a thin survey-line that slit the forest at the head
of the right of way, and touched into flame the yellow
head of a young man who sat on a log near Carter.
There slim poplar-brake enclosed a mossy dell, into
which the frenzy of work and noise came faintly as the
hum of a passing bee.  It was, indeed, so cool and
pleasant that the surveyor shrugged unwillingly when the
advancing shadows emphasized Carter's remark that it
was "time to be moving."\par

"What a demon of unrest!" he laughed.  "Can't keep
still for five minutes."\par

His mock disgust drew Carter's smile.  "That's all
very well—for you.  When your transit is cased, you're
done.  I have a few hundred men to look after."\par

"Oh, confound them!" the other said.  "I'll never
make a philosopher of you."  And as, shouldering his
transit, he followed, he commented humorously on
Carter's tiresome energy, affirming that he was reminded
of a steam-engine that had slipped its governors.
"Couldn't be more grovellingly industrious if you were
qualifying for a headline on a child's copy-book.  Early
to bed, early to rise, makes your boss healthy, wealthy,
and wise," he misquoted.  And as, a few minutes later,
they came out upon wood-choppers who were driving
the right of way into the forest, he grimaced, "More
misguided zeal."\par

For all his sarcasm, his eyes betrayed his appreciation,
and as, pausing, they looked on, his face lit up with
professional pride.  Following the choppers, sawyers were
cutting sizable timber into logs, piling small trees with
the brush; behind them a stumping outfit practised
rough dentistry upon the road-bed.  All were putting
in the last "licks" of a good day's work; the air whistled
of falling trees, hummed to the ringing saws; the woods
echoed laughter, shouts, cheery curses.\par

"Good boys," Carter murmured.  "Regular whales.
Jest eat it up, don't they?"\par

"Peculiar idiosyncrasy."  The surveyor resumed his
chaffing.  "They ought to have eased up while you were
away.  Can't account for it, unless—yes, it's beans!
Beans, sir!  You feed them beans and they work or—die.
Query: What effect would a bean diet have on a
philosopher?  Ugh!  I must avoid them."\par

"No"—Carter indicated a figure, gigantic in the loom
of the smoke, "it's not beans; it's Bender.  Without
him we'd have plenty converts to your theory."\par

"And now tired nature pities them."\par

In their coincidence, the last red ray might have
signalled Bender's shrill whistle, or {\itshape{vice versa}}.  Anyway,
sudden silence fell like a mantle over the clearing.
While choppers and sawyers cached tools under brush
away from rusting dews, teamsters dropped bows and
yokes, and all followed the patient ox-teams down the
right of way.\par

"Joking aside," the surveyor said, as they fell in
behind, "what has life for these fellows?  Ill-fed, worse
clothed, only an occasional spree breaks the monotony
of grinding toil."\par

Carter's nod was non-committal.  "They work hard—yes,
but then work is only terrible to the young and
shiftless; your grown man loves it."\par

"If congenial."\par

"Generally is.  You see, there's always something that
a fellow thinks he can do a bit better than any one
else—Bill, there, planes his stumps; Ole, that big Swede, is
chain lightning on a cant-hook; Michigan Red rides a
log down a rapid like a ballet-dancer, and has Jehu beat
out on the reins; Big Hans lifts more'n any other man
in camp.  Summing it, from whip-cracking to stable-cleaning
every job has its professor, who gets a heap of
fun out of proving his title.  Looking a bit closer, these
chaps get more sunshine, fresh air, and sleep than your
city workers, and if the grub is rough they ain't bothered
none with indigestion.  Hans finds a flavor in his beans
that your big financial gun doesn't get out of his
canvas-back.  As for amusement, the regular lumber-jack does
blow a year's salary on a week's bust, as you say; but
most of these are farmers, some of 'em neighbors of mine.
If they're rushed in summer they have time to burn in
winter, and what of socials, dances, picnics, they strike a
fair balance with pleasure."\par

"But what is ahead of them?"\par

Carter shrugged.  "Death, of course; in the mean
time, hard work, harder living, a family, and a mortgage
to keep 'em from oversleep.  But they'll breathe clean
and live clean, work in the sun and outlive two generations
of city people.  Barring accidents, they'll average
fourscore years, and so, when the last word is said, I
don't know but that happiness lies down instead of up
the ladder."\par

The surveyor curiously studied his thoughtful face.
"You are climbing?"\par

But Carter was equal to the contradiction.  "We was
talking of averages—"\par

"{\itshape{Were}}," the other interrupted.\par

Grimacing, Carter repeated: "{\itshape{Were}} talking of averages.
The exception gets his fun climbing, and don't find out
how much of a fool he is till he looks down from the
top."\par

"{\itshape{Doesn't}}," the other put in, and Carter resaid the word.\par

The corrections sprang from a compact that was now
as old as their acquaintance.  A graduate in engineering,
the young fellow was widely read and cultured far beyond
the needs of his profession, and as they talked, smoking,
in their office-tent of evenings, his allusions to and
illustrations from the realms of science, literature, art had
given Carter glimpses of Helen's world, a universe in
which touch, taste, smell, sight, and other things gave
place to feeling, memory, perception.  And so he had
been stimulated to conscious attempts at improvement.\par

"I feel like a two-year-old!" he had exclaimed one
evening early in their acquaintance.  "I 'd like to know
more of that.  D' you suppose I could get that book in
town?  An' say, if you catch me straddling the traces—manners,
speech, an' so forth—I wish you'd lam me one.
Of course I'm pretty set, but if I could just tone down a
bit on a few of the big things, the little ones might slip
by unnoticed."\par

In the nature of things a construction-camp is bound
to suffer a chronic drouth of news, and in default of other
subjects Carter's marital troubles had received exhaustive
and analytical treatment at the hands of the Silver
Creek men and others.  Filtering through many strata,
enough of the gossip had reached the surveyor to inform
him of the motive under this rough appeal, and he readily
consented.  So, in their talks thereafter, he had trimmed
out the wilder growths of Carter's speech, giving rule and
reason, for, as he laughingly assured him, his big pupil
had an uncanny appetite for underlying law.\par

"Now 'tain't reasonable to suppose that you have to
learn all the individual cases," he would say, when the
surveyor tripped him on some expression; "what's the
law of it?"  And he would offer humorous opinions on the
eccentricities of the tongue.  "The darn language seems
to have grown from wild seed, an' though Lindley
Murray—ain't that his name?—lopped a bit here an' pruned
a bit there, he couldn't straighten the knarls and twists
in the trunks.  An' I don't know but that it's as well
that way Leave them grammarians alone, an' they'd
clip an' trim the language till it was tame as the cypress
hedges that my old aunt uster shape into crowing roosters,
gillypots, an' pilaster pillars at home back East."  In
saying which he touched a profound etymological truth
that is altogether ignored by the scientific inventors of
universal languages.\par

One who had not seen him for some months—Helen,
for instance—could not have failed, this evening, to
notice how his faithful delving in that wild orchard had
begun to bring forth fruit in his speech.  Evincing fewer
"aint's," it had more "ings," and even attained, on
occasion, to correct usage in "number" of verbs.  Equally
forcible, as full of curt figures, its epigrammatic quality
had gained rather than lost by better expression.\par

The silence which had fallen between them endured
till they came in sight of the camp, a string of tents and
log-cabins under the eaves of the forest.  Then the
surveyor pointed out a girl who was watching the tired
stream from the door of the nearest tent.\par

"Why, there's Dorothy!  She threatened to make the
chief bring her down, but I didn't think she'd make it.
Come along and I'll introduce you."\par

As, however, he mended his pace, Carter fell behind,
and the sadness which had become habitual to his face
deepened.  He had heard the young fellow speak of this
girl, his {\itshape{fiancée}}; and though in color and appearance she
was the opposite of Helen, the swish of her skirts as she
came to meet them, suggestion of perfume, the hundred
elusive delicacies that make up a well-bred girl's
personality, recalled his wife and oppressed him with a
vivid sense of loss.\par

Her voice, rich and low in its tones as Helen's, strengthened
the impression.  "Dad said 'No,'" she laughed,
after the introduction.  "But—"\par

"Wilful woman will have her way," a voice declared
from the interior of the tent; then the chief engineer, a
hale man of fifty, appeared in the doorway.  "Mosquitoes,
alkali water, nothing would scare her."  He was
going on with inquiries of the health of a bridge that had
developed rheumatic tendencies in its feet, when she
laughingly interrupted:\par

"Come, dad, no business till after supper.  I have
already scraped acquaintance with the cook, and he says
we are to come at once.  So run along, little boys, and
get ready."\par

"Wash our dirty faces, to put it plainly," the surveyor
echoed her happy laugh.  "Be it known unto you, fair
lady, that ablutions are held to be effeminate,
unnecessary, if not immoral, in construction work.  However,
in view of your hypersensitiveness, we will do violence
to our inclinations.  Come on, Carter—we for the tub."\par

But from a dozen yards she called him back.  "This
is the man you wrote me of?  I knew him at once.
What a splendid fellow!"\par

"Gorgeous!" he returned her whisper.  "His wife
must be a queer sort."\par

"Not necessarily."  She added, with thoughtful
intuition: "The possibilities are so many.  Your friend is
handsome and has a good face, but we girls are more
complex than our mothers.  While they were satisfied
with good temper and good provision, we demand
sympathy of taste and habit; that we touch without friction
at a hundred points of contact.  Tall as Mr. Carter is,
he may fall short of such a standard."\par

Bending, her lover gazed admiringly into her earnest
eyes.  "Such a little wisehead!  And did I pass in this
difficult examination?"\par

Carter's back was turned, the cook-house door had
just closed on the last teamster, her father had gone back
to his calculations, so her answer was sweet as satisfactory.\par

When, half an hour later, the four entered the cook-house,
two cookees were laying the table under one eagle
eye of the cook, the other being on a roast that he was
liberally basting.  "Hain't you got no nose?" he
answered Carter's question; but he smiled as, sniffing its
rich odor, Dorothy said: "It's venison!  And I'm so
hungry!"\par

"Sure!" he corroborated.  "Cree hunter brought in a
quarter of moose this afternoon."\par

Pleased with her discernment, he seated her at the
head of a table which he himself had scoured with sand
to a snowy whiteness while the cookees were grinding a
summer's tarnish from iron knives and spoons.  Her tin
plate reflected a smile that he would willingly have paid
for in turkey and truffles, but lacking these, he served
baked potatoes with the venison, hot biscuit, cake a
hand's-breadth thick, and with a flourish set the
crowning delicacy of camp life, a can of condensed cream,
beside her tin coffee-cup.  Then he packed the cookees
outside to peel the morrow's potatoes that her appetite
might not suffer from their admiring glances, an act
which they classified as tyranny and ascribed to evil
motives.\par

"She's a right smart gal," he added, after imparting a
few privacies anent their birth and breeding from the
door-step.  "None a' your picking sort.  Knows good
cooking when she sees it, she does."  Then he left them
to digest a last piece of information that the evolution
of their ancestors had been arrested in a low and bestial
stage.\par

That supper figured as an epoch in Carter's life,
because it marked a definite conscious change in his feeling
towards his wife.  With all men thought is more or less
chaotic.  Filtering slowly from feeling under pressure of
experience, it remains fluid, turgid, until some specific
act—it may be of a very ordinary nature—clears and
precipitates it into the moulds of fixed opinion.  So, though
material of a sounder, more reasonable judgment of
Helen had been gathering in his mind these months,
injured pride had held it in abeyance—in suspension, as
it were—until now that recent disappointment had left
him peculiarly susceptible to impression, a resolvent was
added; that occurred which precipitated his thought.\par

It took form in Michigan Red, who entered with
another teamster and sat down at the opposite table.
The task that delayed them had sharpened appetite, and
their attack on the food the cook set before them was
positively wolfish.  Using fingers as much or more than
forks, they shovelled greasy beans into their mouths with
knives, as stokers feed a furnace; and as they bolted
masses of pork, washed whole biscuits down with gulps
of coffee, Carter's glance wandered between them and
the delicate girl at his side.  Here, indeed, was one of
the "points of contact" of her intuitive wisdom.  Once
before he had seen, realized it.  But whereas he had
thrust the thought away the night that he watched
Michigan Red eat in the lumber-camp, he now gave it
free admittance, mentally writhed as he realized how this
and other gaucheries must have ground on Helen's sensitive
mental surfaces.  Fascinated by their gluttony, he
watched until dulled eyes and heavy, stertorous breathing
signalled repletion and the close of their meal.\par

On her part, Dorothy was quietly observing him.
Given such knowledge as the Silver Creek teamsters had
sown through the camp, it would have been easy for her
to guess the rest—if his conduct had borne out her
surmise.  But he had learned so much and so quickly
under the stings of injured pride that observation failed
to reveal any wide departures from the conventional.
She had to give it up—for the present.\par

"What a strange man!"\par

Her whisper dissipated his painful reflections, and,
looking up, he saw that, after lighting his pipe with a coal
from the stove, Michigan Red was surveying them with
cool effrontery through the tobacco smoke.  His fiery
beard split in a sneer as Carter asked if he had finished
supper.  But he did not take the hint nor move when
ordered to call Bender.\par

"{\itshape{Mister}} Bender"—he spat at the title—"is down at
the grading-camp."\par

"I said for you to call him."  Carter's tone, in its very
gentleness, caused the girl to look quickly so she caught
his queer expression.  Compounded of curiosity,
interest, expectation, his glance seemed to flicker above,
below, around the red teamster, to enfold, wrap him
with its subtle questioning.  Impressed more than she
could have been by threat or command, she waited—she
knew not for what—oppressed by the loom of imminent
danger.\par

But it was not in the teamster's book to disobey—just
then.  Lingering to pick another coal, he sauntered down
the room under flow of that curious, flickering glance,
and closed the door behind him with a bang.  Sharp as
the crack of a gun, Dorothy half expected to see smoke
curling up to the massive roof-logs.  But though her
father and lover looked their surprise, Carter resumed
his eating, and there was no comment until he excused
himself a few minutes later.\par

Tugging his gray beard, the chief engineer then
turned to the surveyor.  "Why doesn't he fire that
fellow?"\par

Shrugging, the young fellow passed the question up to
the cook.  "You've known them longest."\par

Thus tapped, the cook turned on a flow of information,
appending his own theory of Carter's patience to a short
and unflattering history of Michigan Red.  "You see,
Red thought he was the better man from the beginning,
an' it was just up to the boss to give him fair chance to
prove it.  As for him, he likes the excitement.  You've
seen a cat play with a mouse?  Well—an' when the cat
does jump—"\par

"Good-bye mouse," the surveyor finished.\par

The cook's significant nod filled Dorothy with
astonishment.  From the social heights upon which the
accident of birth had placed her, she had looked down upon
the laboring-classes, deeming them rude, simple,
unsophisticated.  Yet here she found complex moods, a
vendetta conducted with Machiavellian subtlety, a drastic
code that compelled a man to cherish his enemy till he
had had opportunity to strike.\par

The knowledge helped her to a conclusion which she
stated as they walked back to her father's tent.  "Such
pride!  I understand now why he left {\itshape{her}}.  Just fancy
his keeping on that man?"\par

"Damned nonsense, I call it," her father growled.
"That fellow will make trouble for him yet."\par

The prediction amounted to prophecy in view of a
conversation then proceeding in the bunk-house.  As
Michigan's table-mate had fully reported the scene at
supper, the teamsters were ready with a fire of chaff
when he stumbled over the dark threshold after delivering
Carter's message.\par

"Been dinin' in fash'n'ble sassiety, Red?" a man questioned.\par

"Nope!" another laughed.  "Voylent colors ain't
considered tasty any more, so the boss fired him out 'cause
his hair turned the chief's gal sick."\par

Hoarse chuckling accompanied the teamster's answering
profanity, but when, after roundly cursing themselves,
Carter, the surveyor, chief engineer, he began
on Dorothy, laughter ceased and Big Hans called a
stop.\par

"That's right."  A voice seconded Hans's objection.
"We ain't stuck on the boss any more'n you are, Red;
but this gal isn't no kin of his'n.  Leave her alone."\par

"Sure!" the first man chimed in.  "An' if he's feeling
his oats jes' now, he'll be hit the harder when we spring
our deadfall.  Did you sound the graders to-day?  Will
they—"\par

"Shet up!" Michigan hissed.  "That big mouth o'
yourn spits clean across the camp to the office."  And
thereafter the conversation continued in sinister whispers
that soon merged in heavy snoring.  Silence and
darkness wrapped the camp.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Awaking while it was still dark, the camp rubbed
sleepy eyes and looked out, shivering, on smouldering
smudges.  Outside, the air whined of mosquitoes.  At
the long hay-racks horses snorted and pawed frantically
under the winged torture; patient oxen uttered mained
lowings.  Growling and grumbling, the camp distributed
itself—teamsters to feed and rebuild smudges, choppers
and sawyers to the grindstone and filing-benches.  It
was a cold, dank world.  Pessimism prevailed to the
extent that a man needed to walk straitly, minding his
own business, if he would avoid quarrel.  But optimism
came with dawn—teamsters hissed cheerfully over their
currying, saw-filers and grinders indulged in snatches of
song—reaching a climax with the breakfast-call.  When,
half an hour later, Dorothy appeared in the cook-house
doorway, the camp had spilled its freight of men and
teams into the forest.\par

Warned by the shadow, the cook looked up and saw
her in Stetson hat, short skirt, high-laced shoes, a sunlit
vision with the freshness of the morning upon its cheeks.
"God bless you!  Come right in," he exclaimed.  "Your
daddy an' Mr. Hart hev' gone down line.  Devil's
Muskeg got hungry las' night an' swallered ten thousand
yards of gradin'."\par

As yet she knew nothing of those treacherous sinks
that gulp grades, trestles, and the reputations of their
builders as a frog swallows flies, and he went on,
answering her puzzled look: "Morass, you know, swamp with
quicksand foundation that goes clean down to China.
Nope, 'tain't Mr. Carter's loss.  He ain't such a fool as
to go an' load a muskeg down with clay and rock.  An
Easterner had it on a sub-contract, an' though Mr. Carter
warned him, he reckoned he could make it bear a grade
on brush hurdles.  Crowed like a Shanghai rooster
because it carried trains for a week.\par

"Oh, I don't know," he commented upon her pity for
the luckless contractor.  "You kain't do nothin' with
them Easterners.  He was warned.  Besides," he
vengefully added, "he shedn't ha' come crowing over us.
More coffee, miss?"\par

Leaving the cook-house, a shadow fell between her and
the sun, and Carter gave her good-morning.  "Breaks
the poor devil," he supplemented the cook's information,
"and bothers us.  Cuts off our communications.  We
shall have to move the outfits back to prairie grading
till they are re-established.  I'm going down there—now,
if you'd like a hand-car ride?"\par

Would she?  In five minutes she was speeding along
under urge of ten strong arms, over high trestles which
gave her sudden livid gleams of water far below, through
yellow cuts, across hollow-sounding bridges, always
between serried ranks of sombre spruce.  Sometimes the
car rolled in between long lines of men who were
tamping gravel under the ties.  Rough fellows at the best,
they had herded for months in straw and dirt, seeing
nothing daintier than their unlovely selves, and as they
were not the kind that mortifies the flesh, the girl was
much embarrassed by the fire of eyes.  Apart from that,
she hugely enjoyed the ride.  With feet almost touching
the road-bed, she got all there was of the motion, besides
most of the wind that blew her hair into a dark cloud
and set wild roses blooming in her cheeks.\par

She gained, too, a new view-point of Carter, who
chatted gayly, pointing, explaining, as though they were
merely out for pleasure and another had not been just
added to the heavy cares that burdened his broad
shoulders.  She learned more of the life, its hardship,
comedy, tragedy, in half an hour's conversation, than she
could have obtained for herself in a year's experience.\par

These different elements sometimes mixed—as when
he indicated a blackened excavation.  "See that?  A
man was sitting on the stump that was blasted out there.
Reckon he got sort of tired of the world," he replied to
her horrified question, "and wanted a good start for the
next."  Then, easily philosophical, quietly discursive, he
wandered along, touching the suicide's motives.  There
had been different theories—drink, religion, a girl—but
he himself inclined to aggravated unsociability.  The
sombre forest, with its immensity of sad, environing space,
had translated mere moroseness into confirmed hypochondria.
He had so bored the stumping outfit, to which
he belonged, with pessimistic remarks on things in
general that, in self-defence, they threw something at him
whenever he opened his mouth; and so, bottled up, his
gloom accumulated until, in an unusually dismal
moment, he placed a full box of dynamite under a stump
and sat down to await results.\par

"Why didn't some one pull him off?" she cried.\par

His answer was pregnant.  "Short fuse.  Anyway, the
boys didn't feel any call to mix in his
experiments—especially as he swore a blue streak at them till the
stump lifted."\par

"Horrible!" she breathed.\par

"Just what they said."  He solemnly misunderstood
her.  "They never heard such language.  'Twas dreadfully
out of place at a funeral."\par

"Oh—I didn't mean that!"  Then, considering his
serious gravity, "Was—was there—"\par

"Pretty clean."  He relieved her of the remainder of
the question.  "Mostly translated."\par

Incredulous, she glanced from him to his men and
received grisly confirmation, for one thrust out a grimy
finger to show a horseshoe ring.  "I picked it up on the
track, miss, forty rod from the—obseq'ses.  Didn't allow
he'd want it again."\par

Shuddering, she turned back to Carter, but before she
could make further comment the car rolled from a cut
out on the edge of the Devil's Muskeg.\par

She thought him cold-blooded until, that evening, she
learned from her friend, the cook, that he had been
caught on the edge of the blast as he rushed to save the
man and had been thrown a hundred feet.  A little
disappointed by his apparent callousness, she joined her
father and lover, who, with the contractor, stood looking
out over the muskeg.  Sterile, flat, white with alkali
save where black slime oozed from the sunken grade, it
stretched a long mile on either side of the right of way.
Around its edges skeleton trees thrust blanched limbs
upward through the mud, and beyond this charnel
forest loomed the omnipresent spruce.  In spring-time
its quaking depths would have opened under a fox's
light padding, but the summer's sun had dried the
surface until it carried a team—which fact had lured the
contractor to his financial doom.  A fat, gross man, he
stood mopping his brow and wildly gesticulating towards
the half-mile of rails that, with their ties, lay like the
backbone of some primeval lizard along the mud, calling
heaven and the chief engineer to witness that this
calamity was beyond the prevision of man.\par

"'Jedgment of God,' it's termed in government
contrac's," he exclaimed to the chief, who, however,
shrugged at such blackening of Providence.\par

"Well, Mr. Buckle," he answered, as Carter came up,
"the judgment was delivered against you, not us."\par

"Yes, yes!" the man grovellingly assented.  "I know—mine's
the loss.  But you gentlemen orter give me a
chance to make it up building round this cursed mud-hole?"\par

"Round what?"\par

He turned scowlingly upon Carter.  "This mud-hole,
I said."  With a greasy sneer, he added: "But mebbe
you kin build across it?"\par

"I can."\par

"What?" he screamed his angry surprise.  "Why,
hell!  Wasn't it you that tol' me it wouldn't carry a
grade?"\par

"I said it wouldn't carry yours."\par

His quiet assurance gave the contractor pause, while
engineer and surveyor looked their surprise.  "Going
to drive piles down to China?"  The contractor grew
hysterically sarcastic.  "You'll need a permit from Li
Hung Chang.  What do you know about grades,
anyway?  I was building this railroad while you was
wearing long clothes."\par

"Likely."  Carter's easy drawl set the others a-grin and
caused Dorothy to hide her smile in her handkerchief.
"But you ain't out of yours yet.  A yearling baby
wouldn't try to stack rock on top of mud.  But that
isn't the question.  D' you allow to finish the contract?"\par

"Think I'm a fool?" the man rasped.\par

"'Tain't always polite to state one's thoughts.
But—do you?"  And when the other tendered a surly
negative, he turned to the engineer.  "You hear, sir?  And
now I file my bid."\par

The chief, however, looked his doubt.  As yet
engineering science offered no solution for the muskeg
problem, and this was not the first grade he had seen
sacrificed to a theory.  "Are you serious?"\par

"As a Methodist sermon," Carter answered his grave
question.  Then, drawing him aside, he pulled a paper
from his pocket—an estimate for the work.  It was dated
two weeks back, prevision that caused the chief to
grimly remark: "Pretty much like measuring a living
man for his coffin, wasn't it?  But look here, Carter!
I'd hate to see you go broke on this hole.  I doubt—and
your figure is far too low.  What's your plan?"\par

"I'm going to make a sawdust fill with waste from
the Portage Mills."\par

Whistling, the chief looked his admiration, then grinned,
the idea was so ludicrous in its simplicity.  For, all
said, the problem resolved itself into terms of specific
gravity—iron sinks and wood floats in water; and the
muskeg which swallowed clay would easily carry a
sawdust bank.  Moreover, the idea was thoroughly
practicable.  Situated five miles from Winnipeg, the Portage
Mills were the largest in the province and their owners
would willingly part with the refuse that cumbered their
yards.\par

"You've got it!" he cried, slapping his thigh.\par

"That's not all.  If old Brass Bowels—"  Noticing
that the contractor was looking their way, he finished in
a whisper, the significance of which caused the chief's
grizzled brows to rise till lost in the roots of his hair.\par

"You'll break camp—?" he questioned.\par

"To-morrow.  Build a spur into the mills, then start
prairie grading at the American line and run north.
Ought to make a junction about the time the sink is
filled."\par

And this he did.  The few miles of spur-track being
quickly built, a yellow tide of sawdust was soon flowing
out to the Devil's Muskeg, where Bender's wood gang
directed its flow.  At first there was great argument
about this new material, some holding that one might
as well try to build a road-bed with feathers.  But it
proved itself.  Tamping hard as clay, it had greater
resilience, and soon the twisted track rose like a mained
serpent from the slimy clutch of the devil.  Yes, miles
of flat-cars, boarded up till they loomed big as houses,
moved between mill and slough through that summer,
and no one dreamed of their slow procession having
other significance up to the moment that Helen heard
newsboys crying a special in the hot streets—\par

"Monopoly refuses new line a crossing.  Section gangs
tear up Carter's diamond."\par

\label{winnipeg}%
\hypertarget{winnipeg}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXVI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize WINNIPEG}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
By that time Helen had shaken down to a life that
was new as strange—though not without travail;
shaking is always uncomfortable.\par

Coming in to the city, a natural nervousness—that
indefinite apprehension which assails the stoutest under
the frown of new adventures—had been accentuated by
heart-sickness from her late experiences, and was
justified by some to come.  She viewed its distant spires
very much as an outlaw might contemplate far-off
hostile towers.  Entering from the west, as she did, one
sees taller buildings poke, one by one, from under the
flat horizon.  For the city sits by the Red River—smoothest,
most treacherous of streams—in the midst of
vast alluvial plains, its back to the "Ragged Lands,"
facing the setting sun.  North, south, east, and west of
it they stretch, these great flat plains.  Vividly emerald
in spring-time, June shoots their velvet with chameleon
florescences that glow and blaze with the seasons, fix in
universal gold, then fade to purest white.  Dark, dirty,
the city stands out on the soft snow-curtain like a sable
blot on an ermine mantle.  Withal it is a clean city, for
if the black muck of its unpaved streets cakes laboring
wagons and Red River carts to the hubs after spring
thaws, the dirt is all underfoot.  No manufactures foul
the winds that sweep in from boreal seas with the
garnered essences of an empire of flowers.\par

Purely agricultural, then, in its functions, the bulk of
its burgesses were, as might be expected, store-keepers,
implement men, bankers, lawyers, land agents, all who
serve or prey upon the farmer; for there, also, lurked
the usurers, the twenty-per-cent. Shylocks, fat spiders
whose strangling webs enmeshed every township from
the Rockies to the Red.  Spring, fall, or winter, grist
failed not in their dark mills, which ground finer and
faster than those of the gods.  Scattering their evil seed on
the dark days, it was their habit to reap in the sunshine,
competing for the last straw with their fellows, the
business men, in their single season of profit—Harvest.
For in summer the city drowsed amid green wheat seas
that curved with the degrees over the western world; it
slept, nodding, till the wheat, its life-blood, came in huge
arterial gushes to gorge its deflated veins.\par

Thus Helen found it—asleep under the midsummer
sun.  Walking to her destination, she met few people;
after the hotel 'buses rattled by, the streets were
deserted save for an occasional buck-board or slow ox-team
chewing the peaceful cud at the wooden sidewalk.  When,
later, she walked those hot streets on that most
wearisome of occupations, the search for an occupation, she
became familiar with the city's more intimate
topography—the huge concrete foundations, vacant, gaping as
though at the folly which planned them and their
superstructures, the aërial castles that blew up with the boom;
the occasional brick blocks that raised hot red heads
proudly above surrounding buildings, the river, with its
treacherous peace; old Fort Garry, which she repeopled
with governors, commissioners, factors, and trappers of
the Hudson Bay Company.\par

Also she grew sensitive to its varied life, easily
distinguishing between emigrants, who were injected by daily
spurts into the streets, the city's veins, from the
old-timers—remittance-men, in yellow cords and putties;
trappers from Keewatin, Athabasca, the Great Slave
Lake, in fringed moose-skins; plethoric English farmers,
or gaunt Canadian settlers from the rich valley
round-about; Indians of many tribes—Cree, Sioux, Ojibway;
the heterogeneous mixture that yet lacked a drop of
the Yankee or continental blood which would flow, ten
years later, in a broad river over the American border.
But this was after she had fallen into her place in the
household of Glaves's big sister among a scattering of
teachers, up for the Normal course, a brace of lawyers,
three store-keepers, and a Scotch surgeon.\par

Just what or where that place was would be hard to
say, seeing that it varied with the view-point of each
lodger, nor remained the same in the opinion of any
specific one.  Thus did she shine, for one whole week,
the particular star in the heaven of an English teacher,
a mercurial lad of twenty; then having rejected his heart
with a pecuniary attachment of thirty-five dollars per
mensem, she fell like a shooting-star and became a mere
receptacle for his succeeding passions, which averaged
three a month.  His fellow-teachers swung on an
opposite arc.  Canadians, and mostly recruited from the
country, the soil still clung to their heavy boots.  The
profession, its aims and objects, formed their staple of
conversation.  Deeply imbued with the sense of the
central importance of pedagogy in the scheme of things,
they wore an air of owlish wisdom that was incompatible
with the contemplation of such sublunary things as
girls.  Having wives, it was not to be expected that the
store-keepers could notice a young person whose attractions
so far exceeded her known acquaintance, and
though the surgeon, a young man prodigiously bony as
to the leg and neck, really worshipped her from behind
the far folds of his breakfast newspaper, thought
transference still lay in the womb of future humbuggery and
she catalogued him as injuriously cold.\par

From this conglomerate of humanity she gained one
friend, the young wife of a lawyer who had lately come
West.  Prettily dark as Helen was delicately fair, each
made a foil for the other, which necessary base for
feminine friendships being established, their relations
were further cemented by an equal loneliness, and made
more interesting by the expectation of an event.  As it
was not yet fashionable to shoo the stork away from the
roof-tree, behold the pair fussing and sewing certain
small garments with much tucking, trimming, insertioning,
regulating said processes by the needs of some future
mystery dight "shortening"—all of which brought Helen
mixed feelings.  The young husband's part in said
operations was particularly trying.  Supposedly immersed in
his paper of evenings, he would watch them over the tip
with a delighted sagacity akin to the knowing look which
a bull-dog bestows on a crawling kitten.  At times, too,
he would descend upon the work and lay wee undervests
out on his big palm, tie ridiculously small caps over his
shut fist, ask absurd questions, and generally display the
manly ignorance so sweet to the wifely soul; while Helen
sat, a silent spectator of their happiness.  It is a
question which the acquaintance brought her most, pain or
pleasure.\par

The tale of the boarders would not be complete
without mention of Jean Glaves, a buxom woman, fair of
hair, whose strong, broad face seemed to incarnate the
very spirit of motherhood.  With her Helen's place was
never in doubt.  Opening her big heart, she took the
lonely girl right in, and proved a veritable fount of energy
in her disheartening search for work.\par

In this her first experience conformed to that usual
with a working-girl—she shivered under icy stares, shrank
from the rude rebuffs of busy men, and blushed under
smiles of idle ones; sustained the inevitable insult at the
hands of a rascally commission broker at the end of one
day's employment.  His quick, appraising glance, following
a first refusal, would have warned a sophisticated
business woman, but the innocence which betrayed
Helen later proved her best protection.  The horror in
her eyes, childlike look of hurt surprise, set the dull reds
of shame in the fellow's cheeks, but she was out in the
street with hat and jacket while he was still muttering
his apology.  Yet his grossness fell short of the vile
circumspection of her next employer.  A smug pillar of
society and something in a church, caution would not
permit him to stake reputation against possible pleasure
on a single throw, yet she labored under no illusions as to
the motive behind her second discharge.\par

"Oh, I can't bear it!  I just can't try again!" she
cried that night to Jean Glaves.\par

"You won't have to, dearie," the big woman
comforted, and having tucked her comfortably upon her
own lounge with a wet cloth upon her aching head, she
went straight to the Scotch surgeon's room.\par

Her choice of confidant may have been due either to
intuition or knowledge of what was going on behind the
ramparts of the young man's breakfast paper.  The
event proved it wise, for his giraffe neck lengthened
under his angry gulps, his bony hands and nodding head
emphasized and attested Jean's scathing deliverence
upon men in general.  "The scoundrel!" he exclaimed,
when she paused for lack of breath.  "The scoundrel!
I'd flog him mysel' but for the scandal.  But see you
he'll no' go unpunished.  He's a bid in for the hospital
supplies, and I'll be having a word with the head doctor."  And
thus, later, was the smug villain hit to the tune of
some hundreds in his tenderest place, the pocket.\par

Not content with future revenge, the Scotchman's
sympathy expressed itself in practical suggestion.  "If
ye'd think, Mistress Glaves"—he always accorded Jean
the quaint title, and it fell gracefully from his stiff
lips—"now if ye'd suppose the young leddy would like to try
her hand at nursing, there's a vacancy in the hospital."\par

While he hesitated, Jean literally grabbed opportunity
by the collar.  "You come along with me."\par

Introduced a few seconds thereafter to man and
subject, Helen exclaimed that she would love the work;
nor were her thanks less sincere for being couched in
stereotyped form.  How {\itshape{could}} she thank him?  Being
sincere to the point of pain, after the fashion of his
nation, the young man had almost answered that the
obligation lay with him in that his studies behind the
newspaper would be furthered and facilitated.  He
replied, instead, that the pay would be small, the work
hard.\par

Not to be discouraged, she was thus launched upon
what, in her condition, was the best of possible careers.
For the mental suffering which, lacking an outlet, burns
inwardly till naught is left of feeling but slag and cinders,
becomes the strongest of motor forces when expended in
service for others.  Throwing herself body and soul into
the new work, she forgot the suspicion, scandal that had
lately embittered her days, and had such surcease of
loneliness that in one month the lines of pain disappeared
from around her eyes, her drooping mouth drew again
into the old firm tenderness.\par

Besides content, the month brought her other satisfactions.
Owing to lack of accommodation at the hospital,
she still slept at the boarding-house, and dropping into
Jean Glaves's room for a chat one evening, she found her
conversing with a girl of her own age.  She would have
retired but that Jean called her back.  "Don't go!  We
were talking of you.  This is Miss Dorothy Chester, who
used to board with me.  Miss Chester—Mrs. Morrill."\par

There was, of course, nothing in the names to convey
the significance of the introduction to either.  After that
period of secret study which is covered by the feminine
amenities, each decided that she liked the other.  Helen
gladly accepted Dorothy's invitation to call, and in this
ordinary fashion began a momentous acquaintance that
soon developed through natural affinity into one of those
rare and softly beautiful friendships which are
occasionally seen between women.  And as friendship means
association in a city that has no theatre and few
amusements, it soon happened that any evening might see
Dorothy in Helen's room, or Helen on the way to her
friend's hotel.  Naturally Helen quickly learned that her
friend's father and lover were head engineers on Carter's
road, and that she had visited them in camp; and as
Dorothy was as willing to talk of her novel experience
as Helen to listen, imagine the pair in the former's cosey
bedroom, one snugged up on a lounge, the other coiled
in some mysterious feminine fashion on pillows at her
side, fair girl hanging on dark girl's lips as she prattled
of Carter, or joining in speculations as to what kind of a
woman his wife might be.\par

She positively jumped when Dorothy declared one
evening: "I'm sure he still loves her.  Ernest says that
he scoured the city for her; only gave up when he felt
sure that she had gone East to her friends.  When the
road is finished, he is going back to look for her."\par

{\itshape{He had searched for her}}!  {\itshape{Still loved her}}!  It rhymed
with her deft fingers rolling bandages; tuned her feet as
she bore medicine-trays from ward to ward; ousted the
dry anatomical terms of the daily lecture from their
proper place in her mind.  The thought illumined her
face so that maimed men twisted on their cots to watch
her down the ward.  Meeting her on the main stairs, one
day, Carruthers, the Scotch surgeon, almost mistook her
for the Virgin Mother in the stained window above the
landing.  {\itshape{He searched for me! is going back East to look
for me}}!  The days spun by to that magical refrain.\par

Why, in view of all this, did she not confide in Dorothy?
Though its roots grip deep down in woman nature, the
strange, contradictory, inconsequential, yet wise woman
nature, the reason lies close to the surface.  Physically
akin to the impulse which urges a shy doe to fly from its
forest mate, her feeling flowed, mentally, from injured
wifehood.  For all her natural sweetness and joy over
the thought of reunion, she was not ready to purchase
happiness with unconditional surrender; to make
overtures directly, or through Dorothy, that might be
construed as a bid for executive clemency.  As he had
deserted her, so he must return; and that prideful resolution
was strengthened and justified by the suffering which
had immeasurably exceeded her fault.  Yes, first he must
return, then—would she instantly forgive him?  Any
lover can answer the question; if not, let him consult
his sweetheart.  "I'd make him suffer!" she will cry,
gritting pretty teeth.  So Helen.  {\itshape{Very}} unchristian,
wicked, but natural.\par

No, she did not confide in Dorothy, went quietly about
her business, hugging her sweet secret to her own soul,
until—  But this summary of her thought and feeling
would not be complete without mention of a last,
perhaps greatest, satisfaction—her joy in reading newspaper
accounts of Carter's progress.  Editorials, politics,
reports, she read all, day by day, glowing over red-hot
denunciations of the monopoly while she thought what
good men the editors must be, and how intelligent to so
clearly discern her husband's merits.  She was mightily
troubled by the insatiate appetite of the Devil's Muskeg,
studying its rapacious dietary as though it were a
diabetes patient.  She triumphed when Carter successfully
treated its ineffable hunger with vegetarian diet of
sawdust; shivered when he was refused a crossing of the
trunk line; thrilled over the battle when Bender and
the woodmen beat back the monopoly's levies while the
trackmen laid the "diamond," and grew sick with fear,
as before mentioned, when she heard the newsboys crying
out Carter's final repulse as she was walking home to
her room about eight o'clock one evening.\par

Though very tired, she immediately turned in her
agitation, and, undeterred by the continent of blue-print
uniform that spread below her brown ulster, she hurried
to Dorothy's hotel, an old caravansary that had survived
two rebellions and the bursting of the boom.  Once chief
of the city's hostelries, the old house still attracted
people who preferred its solid comfort to the gilt, lacquer,
garish splendors of more modern rivals.  The parlor in
which she waited while her name was taken up to
Dorothy, was panelled with sombre woods; her feet
literally sank in a pile carpet, thick, green, and dark
as forest moss.  Walls were upholstered in hammered
leather; chairs, heavy table, massive furnishings, all
were of black oak.  The portraits of governors, high
commissioners, and chief factors of the Hudson Bay
Company, soldiers and traders or both, seemed ready to
step down from their frames to engage in wise council
and issue fiats that would set a hundred tribes in motion.
Time stood still in that solid atmosphere.  Heavy odors
of leather and wood, the pervading feeling of peaceful
age combined to soothe her fretted nerves, and she had
just relaxed her tired body within the embrace of a
mighty chair when passing footsteps and a voice brought
her up, tense and rigid.\par

Returning just then, the bell-boy repeated her
question: "Gentlemen who just passed, Miss?  Mr. Greer and
Mr. Smythe, people that are financing the new line, and
Mr. Carter, their head contractor.  They are dining here
with the general manager of the trunk line.  If you'd
like to see them," he added, interpreting her interest as
curiosity, "just step this way.  They've all gone in, and
you can peep through the glass doors.  It's that dark
in the passage no one will see you."\par

As she tiptoed after him down the dark hallway he
whispered further—"Reminds me of them old Romans,
the general manager; them fellows that used to invite a
man to a poisoned dinner.  He's got those chaps shooed
up into a corner, and now he's going to kill their financial
goose over the cigars and wine.  Sure, Miss, everybody
knows that Greer's on his last legs.  Bit off more than
he could chew when he went to railroading; but old
Brass Bowels will treat his indigestion.  That's him,
stout gent with his back this way.  Greer and Smythe's
either side of him.  That's Mr. Carter opposite.  T'other
gentleman, Mr. Sparks, is general superintendent of the
western division."\par

Slipping by the others her glance glued—the term is
eschewed by purists, who ironically inquire if the
adhesive used was of the carpenter variety, but it exactly
describes her steadfast gaze—her glance glued to Carter's
face.  From above an arc lamp streamed white light
down upon him, darkening the hollows under his eyes,
raising his strong features in bold relief.  This, be it
remembered, was the first she had seen of him since he
broke in upon the Ravell dinner-party, black, sooty,
smelling evilly of sweat and smoke.  And now he sat
with a waiter behind his chair, at meat with the greatest
man in the north, at a table that was spread with plate,
cut-glass, linen, all of a costly elegance that transcended
her own experience.  The champagne bucket, at his
elbow, of solid silver, with gold-crusted bottles thrusting
sloping shoulders out of cracked ice, the last accessory of
luxurious living, took on wonderful significance in that
it accentuated to the last degree their changed positions.
For surely the gods had turned the tables by bringing
her in print hospital uniform and shabby ulster to
witness this crowning of his development.\par

Be sure she felt the contrast.  How could she do
otherwise?  Yet her feeling lacked the slightest touch of
humiliation.  Above such snobbishness, she was filled
by joy and pride in his achievement, joined with
tremulous fear, for the bell-boy's remarks had quickened her
apprehension.  That distinguished company, costly
appointments, perfect service, impressed her as little as it
did Carter, which is saying a good deal, for the pomp of
civilization counts more with women than men, and he
was bearing himself with the easiness of one who has
conquered social circumstance.  He chose the right fork
for his salad, knife for his butter; broke his bread
delicately, trifled with green olives as if born to the
taste—though this edible presented itself as a new and bitter
experience—small things and foolish if made an end in
themselves, yet important in that, with improper usage,
they become as barbed thorns in the side of self-respect.
Significant things in Carter's case because they showed
that he had applied to his social relations the same
shrewdness, common-sense, keen sight that was making
him successful in large undertakings.\par

Of course she noted his improvement?  That he no
longer used knife for spoon, squared elbows over his head,
sopped bread in gravy?  On the contrary, she saw only
his face, dark and stern save when a smile brought the
old humor back to his mouth.  Her hungry eyes traced
its every line, marking the minutest changes wrought
by thought, care, sorrow, time's graving tools.  Hands
pressing her breast, she struggled for his voice with thick
oak and heavy plate-glass, and so stood, wrapped up in
him and their past, till the bell-boy spoke.\par

"Miss Chester said you was to go right up, Miss."\par

She jumped, and her tremulous fear took form in
words.  "You are sure the general manager will—"\par

"—Do things to 'em?" he finished, as he led her
upstairs.  "They're dead ones, Miss."\par

\label{the-nature-of-the-cinch}%
\hypertarget{the-nature-of-the-cinch}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXVII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE NATURE OF THE CINCH}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
The bell-boy was not alone in his opinion.  Through
that summer twenty thousand settler farmers had
kept suspicious tab on the monopoly, and now that it felt
the clutch reclosing on its throat, the entire province had
flamed up in wrath and fear.  Press, legislature, and
pulpit denounced the refusal of a crossing that was without
shadow of a claim in equity, and was plainly intended
to kill competition by tedious and costly litigation.  In
town, village, on trail, at meeting, wherever two settlers
were gathered together, the general manager's action
was damned in no uncertain terms.  Indignation flowed
like a tidal-wave over the plains.  Skimming low with
the north wind, an aeronaut would have heard the hum
of speech rise from the face of the land, angry and
continuous as the buzz of swarming bees.  It had pealed
out in clarion triumph, that huge {\itshape{vox humana}}, when the
"diamond" was laid after desperate fighting; it swelled
in furious discordance when, the previous day, Carter's
men were forced back by sheer weight of the levies that
the general manager had gathered and brought in from
the sections along three thousand miles of track.\par

It was one of those situations which require only a
touch of demagoguery to wreak great harm.  Insurrection
hung thick in the air.  Secession and coalescence
with the United States were openly advocated by men
who later read with astonishment their own words in the
papers of that stormy time.  Thousands of armed settlers
waited only for the word to fall upon the monopoly's
levies, but in face of united public opinion, backed by an
inflamed press, Carter and his people remained
quiescent—supinely quiescent, according to certain editorials.\par

A morning paper recalled its prediction of months ago:
"We warned Mr. Carter not to be deceived by the
monopoly's complaisance in bringing his construction
outfit and supplies out from the East over its tracks.
The concession was merely bait for the trap, analogous
to the handing of a rope to a fool wherewith to hang
himself.  We are loath to quote the old proverb against
Mr. Carter, yet were it not for the fact that the monopoly
snaps its fingers in the face of this province through him,
we should be tempted to show satisfaction at the plight
to which his fatuous self-confidence has brought him."\par

The article closed with a vivid word picture of the
general manager chuckling {\itshape{à la}} Mephistopheles in the
privacy of his luxurious office; which, perhaps, approximated
the reality more closely than that in the minds of
the laity.  For a composite of the popular impression
would have shown the entire railroad pantheon,
general manager, department heads, with their clerks,
sub-heads, assistants, and deputy assistants, all very lofty
of brow and solemn of face, in session over the crisis.\par

The reality was much more prosaic.  Indifferent to
the newsboys, who were crying his crimes on the streets,
the general manager sat in the office of the division
superintendent that morning, chair tilted back, feet on
the table, thumbs comfortably bestowed in the
arm-holes of his vest.  It has remained for a practical
business age to clothe itself in the quintessence of ugliness.
Imagine Julius Cæsar in a tuxedo, Hamlet wearing a
stove-pipe hat!  His black coat, check trousers would
have pleased a grocer's fancy in Sunday wear, and it
were difficult to realize that their commonplace ugliness
clothed a power greater than Cæsar's—the ability to
create and people provinces, to annihilate and build up
towns, to move cities like checkers over the map; harder
still to listen to his curt speech, issuing from blue tobacco
smoke, and believe that an empire larger than ancient
Rome paid him tribute, that the blood and sweat of a
generation had gone to grease his juggernautal wheels.
Yet the speech itself certified to the power.\par

"We made a mistake, Sparks; but who could foresee
this fellow Carter?  Here's the N.P. lusting for a chance
to cut in over the border.  Give them that crossing and
old Jim Ball will place their bonds for any amount in
exchange for reciprocal running arrangements.  So we've
got to make a quick killing.  Buy 'em out, lock, stock,
and barrel, while the fear of God's in their hearts.  They
must sell—look at this Bradstreet report on old Greer's
assets.  Just about at the end of his string.  So I want
you to write and invite them to dinner to-night—Greer,
Smythe, and Carter—though the order ought to be
reversed; he's the brains of the business.  Draw it
mild—conference with a view to amicable arrangement of
points at issue, and so forth.  But when we once get
them there—"  His nod was brutal in its significance.\par

Equally wide of popular conception was the scene in the
banking office of Greer \& Smythe when the invitation
was delivered.  Carter, who swung an easy leg from his
favorite perch on the table, seemed to have thrived on
defeat; the most elastic imagination would have failed
to invest him with the weight of a people's cares.
Indeed, he laughed when the senior partner handed him the
general manager's note.\par

"Hum!  'Will you walk into my parlor, said the
spider to the fly!'  What do I make of it?  That's easy.
Has us going—or thinks he has—and is aching to deliver
the knock-out.  A million to a minute he wants to buy
us out."\par

"Well, he never will!"  Red and plethoric, the senior
partner sprang up.  An elderly man, his clear eyes,
honest face, framed in white side-whiskers of the
Dundreary style, all stamped him as belonging to the
old-fashioned school of finance which aimed always to
advance the civic interest while turning an honest
penny.  "No, sir!" he reiterated.  "We'll break first; and
goodness knows that is not so far away.  Yesterday I
approached Murray, of the North American Bank, but
he answered me in his broad Scotch: 'Hoots, mon! get
your crossing first.  Get your crossing an' we'll
talk.'  And so with Butler, Smith, and others who
promised support."\par

"Cold feet, eh?" Carter commented.  "They'll warm
them presently chasing themselves for a chance to
come in."\par

The old gentleman ran on in his indignation.  "Yes,
we are about at the end of our financial string, but we
would rather dangle there than yield to these pirates.
Am I right, sir?"\par

Smythe, a younger man, lean, laconic, and dark as
the other was stout, florid, nodded, and his vigorous
answer was untainted by a suspicion of compromise.
"Surely, sir!  But if Mr. Carter's plan fails—"  His
shrug supplied the hiatus.\par

Carter answered the shrug.  "It won't fail."  He held
up the invitation.  "But, say!  Fancy—to-day, of all
days?"\par

"Of course we won't go," Smythe frowned.\par

"Of course we* will*," Carter grinned.  "Think what it
means?  Besides blinding them to the trap, we shall be
there when it springs, and I wouldn't miss Brass Bowels'
face for a thousand, cash.  Let me see; the bid is for
eight-thirty.  Western flyer is due at Portage station
nine-fifteen.  He'll hardly broach business before the
coffee, and with any kind of luck we ought to serve him
up a beautiful case of indigestion."\par

"With luck?" the senior partner echoed.\par

"With or without.  Everything is planned beyond
possibility of failure.  Mr. Chester goes with Mr. Hart
on the construction-train, while Bender keeps things
humming at the crossing.  By-the-way, he's in the outer
office now, with Hart, waiting for last orders, and if you
don't mind I'll have them in.  I wouldn't take a chance
even on your clerks."\par

In view of just such a contingency, Bender had invested
his bulk with store clothes of that indescribable
pattern and cut which fulfils lumberman ideals.  From
his mighty shoulders a quarter-acre of black coat fell
half-way down worsted pantaloons that were displaying
an unconquerable desire to use the wrinkles of high
boots as a step-ladder to his knees.  As collars did not
come in sizes for his red throat, he had compromised
on a kerchief of gorgeous silk, and a soft hat, flat and
black, completed a costume that was at once his pride
and penance.  In the luxurious office, with its rich fittings
in mahogany and leather, he loomed larger than ever;
was foreign as a bear in a lady's boudoir.  Uncomfortably
aware of the fact, he took the chair which the senior
partner offered with a sigh of relief, and was fairly comfortable
till the position discovered its own disadvantages—while
his coat announced every movement with miniature
{\itshape{feux de joie}} from bursting seams, his trousers ascended
his boots as a fireman goes up a hotel escape.  To
which sources of discomfort was added the knowledge
that his face mapped in fair characters the fluctuations
of the recent combat.  But he forgot all—scars, raiment,
unconventional bulk—as soon as he began to talk.\par

"All ready," he replied to Carter's question.  "Buckle
has been round the camp some lately.  Only this morning
I caught him talking to Michigan Red.  It's a cinch
that he was spotting for the railroad, but as I knew
you'd as lief he'd tip us off as not, I didn't bust his head.
Jes' allowed I didn't see him."\par

"Yes, let him talk," Carter replied, relative to the
broken contractor.  "But"—he addressed the
surveyor—"there's no whispering in your outfit?"\par

"Couldn't be," the young fellow laughed.  "Mr. Chester
only told {\itshape{me}} an hour ago.  The men know nothing—will
{\itshape{know}} nothing up to the moment we pull into
Prairie."\par

"Good.  Now, you are to leave at dusk, and don't
forget to grab the operator before he can rattle a key.
But turn him loose as soon as you are through and let
him wire in the news.  And you, Bender, start in at
eight, keep 'em busy as long as you can, then load what's
left of you in a flat-car and steam round for Mr. Hart."\par

"What's left of me?" Bender growled, as he walked
with the surveyor down-street a few minutes later.
"Hum!  Give me the Cougar and an even hundred of
old-style Michigan men, and I'd drive the last of Brass
Bowels' tarriers into the Red and beat you out laying
the diamond.  But, Lordy, what's the use o' talking!
The old stock petering out an' the new's jes' rotten with
education.  They'd sooner work than fight, an' loaf than
either, for they ain't exactly what you'd call perticler
hell on labor.  What's left of me?  Well, there'll be
some fragments, I guess.  While I was hanging round I
picked up an odd score of Oregon choppers that blew in
here las' week.  Brass Bowels' agent tried for 'em, but
they'd lumbered with me in British Columbia.  Come
out an' see 'em.  They're beauties."\par

Perhaps they were, for standards of beauty, morality,
of any old thing, are merely relative and depend so much
on local color.  To Hart, who reviewed the "beauties"
in Bender's camp, they seemed the most unmitigated
ruffians in his railroad experience; but as they strut on
this small section of the world-stage for "Positively one
appearance only," let them be judged by their record in
the rough work of that night; by the way in which they
bore themselves in the roar, surge, and tumble of a losing
fight, the echoes of which alarmed the dark city and
came with the soup to the general manager's dinner;
and let him deliver their valedictory to his guests at table.\par

Throwing a telegram—which a waiter brought in just
after Helen went up-stairs—across to Carter, the
magnate remarked: "That big foreman of yours has been at
it again.  He has put two of our heaviest engines into
the ditch and ten men into hospital.  Not bad, but—he
didn't lay the diamond."\par

"Oh, well," Carter shrugged, "better luck next time."\par

"Ah, yes—the next time?"  Repeating the phrase
with dubious inflection, he went on with his dinner, and
for an hour thereafter no one heard the rattle of the
skeleton behind the feast.  He acted the perfect host,
easily courteous, pleasant, anxious for the preference of
his guests.  As he ran on, drawing from the sources of a
wide and unusual experience for his dinner chat, it was
curious to note the shadings in his manner.  Addressing
the partners, he seemed to exhale rather than evidence
a superiority which, on their part, they countenanced
by an equally subtle homage.  Integrity and deprecation
of his policy and methods were dominated by the
orthodox business sense which forced subconscious recognition
of his title as king of their business world.  With
Carter, however, he was frankly free, as though they
two had been section-men eating their bite together on
a pile of ties, and doubtless the difference in his
manner sprang from some such feeling.  For whereas the
partners were born to their station, he recognized Carter
as a product—unfinished, but still a product—of the forces
which had produced himself and a dozen other kings and
great contractors of the constructive railroad era.  Without
invidious distinction or neglect of the others, he yet
made him the focus of attention.\par

"We heard all about your sawdust grades," he complimented,
with real cordiality.  "A mighty clever idea, sir;
pity you couldn't patent it—though we are glad you
cannot, for we intend to apply it on all our Rainy River
muskegs."\par

Approaching business at the close of the meal, he was
equally suave.  "You are to be complimented upon your
achievement, gentlemen," he said, addressing the
partners.  "We feel that while supplying a real need of the
province, you have convicted us of remissness.  But
now that we do see our duty, it would be equally criminal
for us to leave you the burden of this heavy responsibility.
We know how it has taxed your resources"—his gray
eye stabbed the senior partner—"and we are fully
prepared to relieve you."  Pausing, he lit a cigar, puffed a
moment, and finished, "We will take the enterprise off
your hands, bag and baggage, on terms that will yield
you a handsome profit."\par

A pause followed.  No man turns from an easy road
to a rocky climb without lingering backward glances,
and the partners looked at one another while the general
manager leaned back and smoked with the air of one
who had faithfully performed a magnanimous duty.
Greer spoke first.\par

"Very kind offer, I am sure."\par

"Most handsome," Smythe, the laconic, added.
"But—"  He glanced at Carter, who finished, "We are
not on the market."\par

The manager raised his brows.  Expecting a first
refusal, he was slightly staggered and irritated by its
bluntness, yet masked both emotions.  "Not on your
own terms?"\par

"On no terms," Greer emphatically answered; then,
flushing, he added: "Our chief motive in going into this
enterprise, sir, was to bring sorely needed railroad
competition into this province.  It would not be subserved
by our selling to you."\par

The manager flicked the ash from his cigar.  Then,
while smoking, he regarded the old gentleman from under
bulging lids very much as a curious collector might note
the wriggles of an impaled beetle.  "Very laudable
intention; does you credit, sir.  But you must pardon me
if I doubt that you will carry it to the length of financial
hari-kari.  You have heard of that Japanese custom?
A man commits suicide, empties himself upon a cold and
unsympathetic world for the benefit of his enemy, who
is compelled by custom to go and do likewise.  In your
case the sacrifice would be foolish because we shouldn't
follow suit.  Now when I spoke of your resources"—during
an ugly pause his glance flickered between the
partners—"I did not state our exact knowledge of their
extent.  You are—practically—broke.  In addition, we
have bought up all of your paper that we could find
floating on the market, and three months from now—we
shall be in a position to demand a receiver in bankruptcy.
Stop!"  Frowning down Greer's attempted interruption,
he dropped his suave mask and stood out, the financial
king, brutal, imperious, predatory.  "I know what you
would say.  Three months is a long time.  But no one
will make you a better offer—any offer—till you can cross
our line.  You can force a crossing?  Yes, but we'll law
you, badger you, carry the case from court to court up
to the privy council—two years won't make an end.
In the meantime—"  He had thrown himself at them,
bearing down upon them with all the force of his
powerful will, of the furiously strong personality that had
crushed financial opposition to plans and projects
beside which their enterprise was as a grain of sand to the
ocean.  Now, in a flash, he became again the polished
host.  "Take your time, gentlemen.  {\itshape{We}} are in no hurry.
Several days, if you choose.  But—be advised."\par

But big, strong, and masterful as the manager was,
every Goliath has his David, and the first stone in the
forehead came from the sling of Smythe—Smythe, who
had hardly opened his mouth through the meal save for
the admittance of food or drink.  Banging the table so
that the glass rang and a champagne bowl flew from its
thin stem, he sprang up, his dark face flushed and defiant.
"We'll take neither your advice nor your time!  God
knows that we are hard shoved, but damn a man who
sells his country!  And since you have been so outspoken,
let me tell you that we'll run trains across your
line, and that inside—"\par

"This hour."  In its quiet assurance, Carter's
interpolation came with all the force of an accomplished fact.
The manager started, and the division superintendent
upset his wine.  As their backs were to the door, neither
saw a waiter take a telegram from a messenger-boy, and
sign for its delivery after a glance at the clock, which
indicated half-past nine.  Nor could either fact have the
significance for them that their combination had for
Carter.\par

The manager recovered his poise even as the waiter
handed the telegram to his colleague, and, though puzzled,
hid the feeling behind a show of confident contempt.  "I
hardly gather your meaning, but presume you mean—war?"\par

Missing the superintendent's sudden consternation, he
was going on.  "Very well.  I {\itshape{had}} hoped—" when the
former pulled his sleeve.  "What's this?"\par

He stared blankly at the words: "Construction-train,
with men and Gatling-guns, across our tracks at Prairie.
Number ten, Western Mail, held up with three hundred
passengers."\par

During an astonished silence, the partners watched the
manager, who looked at Carter, who lightly drummed on
the table.  "Your train?" he went on, slowly, with
words that evidenced his flashing insight into the
situation.  "Hum!  Sawdust, eh?  Came down the spur you
laid to the Portage Mills at Prairie; grabbed our
operator; then extended the mill-switch across our tracks.
Know how to kill two birds with one stone, don't you?"\par

During a second silence he fenced glances, nervously
fingering the telegram, then suddenly asked: "What's
the use?  You can't hold it?"\par

"With two Gatlings and five hundred men—five thousand,
if I need them?"\par

"The law's against you."\par

"As it is against you at the crossing.  Possession is
said to be nine of its points, anyway, so we have you
just nine-tenths to the bad."  Slightly smiling, he quoted:
"'We'll law you, badger you, carry the case from court
to court up to the privy council—two years won't make
an end.'"\par

The manager raised heavy lids.  "In three months
we'll break you."\par

Carter shrugged.  "Who knows?  In the mean time—your
traffic will be suspended?"\par

Through all the superintendent had fidgeted nervously;
now he broke in: "Pish, man!  We'll build round
your old train in six hours."\par

"Will you?"  Without even a glance in his direction,
Carter ran on, addressing the manager: "You see, land
is that cheap since the boom that we took options on a
right of way from Prairie clean up to the north pole and
down to the American border.  No, you won't go around
us, but we shall go round you and come into this burg
south of your tracks."\par

"But you're out of law," the superintendent angrily
persisted.  "You haven't the shadow of a right—"\par

"Oh, shut up, Sparks," the manager impatiently
interrupted.  "What has right to do with it?  He's got us
in the door and it's no use squealing.  Now"—the glance
he turned on Carter was evenly compounded of hostility
and admiration—"terms?  You'll release our train—"\par

"When you cede our legal crossing, and call off your
dogs.  We'll hold Prairie till every man Jack of your
guards is shipped out of the city."\par

"Could you have the papers drawn—"  He had intended
"to-night," but he paused as Greer drew them
from an inner pocket and his iron calm dissolved in
comical disgust.  "Hum!  You're not timid about
grabbing time by the forelock.  But, let me see!"\par

Once more the arc lights could be heard sputtering.
In that tense moment their own fortunes swung in the
balance with the welfare of a province, and while the
manager read they waited in silence.  Trimming the
end of a cigar with careful precision, Carter masked all
feeling, but the partners could not hide their
nervousness—Smythe fidgeted, Greer locked and unlocked
clasped fingers.  Both held their breath till the
manager's pen made a rough scratch on the silence.\par

A good loser, he said, as Greer rose after buttoning
his coat over the precious document: "Don't go,
gentlemen—at least till we have drunk the occasion.  I see
another bottle there in the ice."\par

And his toast, "To our next merry meeting," formed
the premise of the deduction which Carter returned to
Greer's relieved exclamation when they stood, at last,
alone in the street.\par

"Thank God!  It is over!"\par

"On the contrary, it is just begun."\par

Passing under a street lamp, its white light revealed
the pale disturbance which banished the senior partner's
flushed content.  Stopping dead, he agitatedly seized
Carter's arm.\par

"You don't suppose he will go back on his—"\par

"Signature?  No, he won't repeat.  He's done with
the crossing."\par

"Then we can weather through," Greer said, and
Smythe echoed his sigh of relief.\par

"But—" Carter quoted the bucolic proverb which
recites the many ways in which a pig may be killed other
than by a surfeit of butter.\par

"But what {\itshape{can}} he do?" Greer persisted.\par

"Don't know," Carter slowly answered.  "Only a
man don't have to look at that bull-dog jaw of his a
second time to know that he'll do it, and do it quick."\par

"I'd give a good deal to know," Smythe frowned, then
smoothed his knotted brow as he laughed at Carter's
rejoinder.\par

"I'd give three cents myself."\par

Not feeling sleepy, Carter walked on after he had
dropped the partners at their respective doors,
aimlessly threading the dark streets that gave back his
hollow foot-fall; and so passing, by chance, under Helen's
window, he brought a pause in the anxious meditation
which had kept her restlessly tossing, and set her to
momentary speculations as to the owner of that firm
and heavy tread.  She listened, listened till it grew
fainter and died as he turned the corner.  Keeping on
in the cool silence, he presently came to the Red River
suspension bridge, where he paused and leaned on the
parapet at the very spot from which she loved to watch
Indians and chattering squaws float beneath in quaint
birch canoes.  There was, of course, nothing to warn
him of the fact any more than she could have guessed
him as owner of the solitary foot-fall.  He thought of her,
to be sure.  Always she stood in the background, ready
to claim him whenever press of affairs permitted
reflection; and now she thrust in between him and the
twinkling lights of the sleeping city.  Where was she?  And
doing—what?  How much longer before he could go in
search of her?  After long musing he swept the weary
intervening days away with an impatient gesture, and
his longing took form in muttered speech:\par

"How long?  My God! how much longer?"\par

The thought brought him back to his work and the
events of the evening.  What would be the manager's
next move?  He gazed down into the dark river intently,
as though he expected its hoarse voice to give answer.
But though he canvassed, as he thought, every possibility,
the reality—which presented itself a week or so
after he resumed operations in the Silver Creek
forests—was beyond the range of his thought.\par

\label{the-strike}%
\hypertarget{the-strike}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXVIII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE STRIKE}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
As aforesaid, it was the unexpected that opposed
Carter with a visage of stony calm when he came
from Winnipeg out to the "Ragged Lands" a week or so
later.  For whereas he had left the camp convulsed in
throes of constructive labor, the whistle of his engine
raised piercing echoes; no other sounds disturbed the
sleeping forest.  In the cut south of the camp he passed
the big digger, at rest from the roar, rattle, and clank
of chains, hiss of escaping steam.  The pile-driver loomed
idly on a distant trestle.  When engine and caboose
stopped opposite the cook-house, he saw that the
camp—which ought to have been empty—teemed with men.\par

He shrugged when Hart, who was with him, exclaimed
in wonder: "Can't prove it by me.  But we'll
soon know.  There's Bender—coming from the office."\par

"Strike," the giant replied to their questioning.
"Teamsters, graders, bridge and track men, all went out
at noon.  What for?  God knows; but I allow that
Buckle could tell.  He wasn't hanging round the
Winnipeg camp for nothing.  I'm sorry now—"  His bunched
fists, big as mauls, fully explained his regret, and
indicating a group which was arranging its progress so as
to make the office door with Carter, he finished: "But
if you're hankering for reasons, consult them gentlemen.
It's a depytation—by its scowl.  An' it's loaded to the
muzzle with statistics to fire at you."\par

Following his finger, Carter noted that Michigan Red
was of the deputation, but when it ranged up at the tent
door in sheepish yet defiant array, that worthy hung
modestly in the rear, permitting a big teamster from the
Silver Creek settlements to act as spokesman.  Blunt,
honest, tenacious as a bull-dog in holding to an idea,
the man was an ideal tool for unscrupulous hands; but
though he instantly divined the reasons behind his
leadership, Carter listened quietly to his tale—the old
tale—overwork, poor food, underpay.\par

His answer was equally quiet.  "You are certainly
to be pitied, Bill; breaks me all up just to think of your
wrongs.  I've always admired your thrift, and I sympathize
with your desire to raise the mortgage off your
farm.  Took you five years to put it on, didn't it, Bill?
And you are calculating to pay it off in the next two
months.  Well, perhaps—but you'll have to screw it out
of some one else than me."\par

Shuffling uneasily, the teamster glanced at his backers,
who, equally nonplussed, gazed at one another.  For
where an angry, or even a plain answer would have merely
incited them to dogged opposition, this quiet ridicule
sapped conceit in their cause, besides conveying an
alarming suggestion of strength in reserve.\par

"Then you don't allow to fall in with our notions?"  The
spokesman returned after a whispered conference.\par

"Meaning—an hour less and a dollar more?  You're
sure a psychic, Bill; plumb wasted on railroading.
Open an office in town and go to fortune-telling and
you'd pull that plaster off your homestead inside a
month."\par

Assured that there was no hurry, that he could take a
week to consider the matter, he gravely added: "Obliged
to you, Bill; but I don't allow to require it.  The world,
you'll remember, was made in six days, and this isn't
near such a big job.  No time like the present, and here's
my answer—same hours, same grub, same pay.  It's
fortune-telling or present rates for yours, Bill."\par

Through all he entirely ignored the delegation, and
now he leaned in the door, idly watching as it made its
way across the camp and was swallowed in the crowd
of strikers about the bunk-house.  But his face fell as he
stepped inside beyond eye and ear shot.  "Serious?"
he repeated Hart's question.  "Couldn't be worse.  Not
one of those fellows could make a quarter of the wages
or live half as well on the farm, but they'd hog it all if
I died in the ditch.  But there's more behind this than
their spite and greed.  You see, we have just about pulled
old Murray in for funds to make a clean finish, and if he
gets wind of this he'll crawfish like a one-legged crow.
I must go back at once.  And you, Bender—you, also,
Hart—see to it that not even a dog crawls out of this
camp until I return."\par

"To keep these chaps guessing," he added, after a
moment's dark reflection, "I'd better slip out after dusk.
You go over, Hart, and whisper the engineer to back out
and wait for me at the other side of the cut.  Mystery is
good as aces up in any old game, and we can't fog them
too much."\par

Pulling out at dark, he made the run back to town—fifty
miles—in an hour and a quarter, reckless running on
unballasted road.  Murray {\itshape{must}} be fully committed
before the news leaked out.  {\itshape{We must get him, must get
him, must, must, must}}!  The wheels clicked it, the steam
hissed it, the fire roared it, the wind shrieked the
imperative refrain.  But though Bender lived in the strict
letter of his instructions so that a mosquito could scarce
have escaped from the camp; though a man could not
have made the distance in two days on foot, or a wild
goose have passed the throbbing engine as it bounded
along that raw track, newsboys were yet crying the
strike as he came out on Main Street.\par

Feeling certain that the office would be closed at that
hour, he intended to go straight to Greer's house, but
seeing a light in the partners' room as he came opposite
the building, he went in and found Smythe there, alone.
With lean legs thrust out before him, hands deep in
his pockets, shoulders hunched to his ears, his attitude
incarnated deep dejection; gloom resided in his nod.\par

"Greer?" he said.  "At home—sick.  You see, we
were to have closed the deal with Murray this very
evening, and the disappointment just knocked the old man
out.  He's been running altogether on his nerve lately;
something had to give.  Why {\itshape{couldn't}} this have
happened a day later?"\par

Answering Carter's question, he went on: "We heard
it at noon.  Papers got out an extra.  Presses must have
been running it off before you left."\par

"Noon?" Carter whistled.  "Why the men didn't
quit till two!"  Then as the significance flashed upon
him, he exclaimed: "Brass Bowels for a million!  It
was all cut, dried, and laid away for us, and they served
it hot to the minute.  Don't—it—beat—hell!"\par

His comical disgust caused Smythe a wintry grin, but,
sobering, he said: "I wouldn't mind so much for
myself.  I'm young enough to do it again.  But the old
gentleman—with that nice family!  You know he was
just about ready to retire; only took up this business
from a strong sense of public duty.  And now, in his
extremity, every rat financier in this city runs to his
hole in fear of the cat.  The poor old man!"\par

Carter nodded his sympathy.  On the occasions that
he visited their house, Greer's wife, a silver-haired old
lady, had vied with her two daughters in pleasant
attentions.  But it did not require that thought to stir him
to action.\par

"Oh, here!" he laughed.  "We are not dead yet.  To-morrow
I'll go the round of the employment offices and—"\par

Smythe threw up his hands, a gesture eloquent of
despair.  "Went round myself—this afternoon.  Harvest
is on and men scarcer than diamonds.  Besides, Brass
Bowels has left an order with every agency in town to
ship every man they can get west to the mountains."\par

"Um-m!"  Carter thought a while.  "Then we'll have
to play the last card."\par

"The last card?"  Smythe raised his eyebrows.\par

"Yes, biggest trump in the pack.  How long before—"\par

"Oh, they can't touch us for two months."\par

"Good!  Now listen."  Glancing around as though
distrustful of the very walls, he whispered in Smythe's
ear for a minute that saw the latter's dejection dissolve
in new-born hope.  "You must go with me," he finished,
aloud.  "While you pack your grip, I'll drop round and
see Greer.  He must be here to-morrow to carry out the
bluff.  And hurry—for we must make it down and back
before we are missed."\par

\label{the-bluff}%
\hypertarget{the-bluff}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXIX}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE BLUFF}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
It was the fifth day of the strike, and still no sound of
labor disturbed the sleeping forest.  Quiet and calm,
like that of the Sabbath, brooded over the camp, but not
its peace, for, being well rested, the strikers chafed under
inaction, moving restlessly among the buildings.  Michigan
Red, to be sure, was dealing interminable poker on
a blanket under a tree, while the younger men skylarked
or tried one another out in games, but neither forms of
amusement appealed to the older and more thrifty
Canadians.  Secret disquiet, moreover, underlay even the
nonchalance of the gamblers, for Bender's mysterious
looks and Carter's continued absence were rapidly
disintegrating the strikers' confidence.\par

"He ain't here," the giant had answered, when the
committee had called for another conference, and to
further questioning he had returned an irritating grin.
"When will he be back?  That's for us to know an' you
to find out."  And so, shorn of its functions, the
committee had languished like a moulting peacock.  In
addition, the cook's ominous visage at meal-times bade
the strikers beware that the curse of labor still clung to
the fruits of the earth; and the fact that almost a
month's back pay rested in Carter's hands, served as a
text and lent force to the unpreached sermon.  What if
he never came back?  The history of Western construction
abounded with cases of absconding contractors, and
the hostility of the monopoly lent substance to the
doubt.  Most of them would have hailed Carter's
advent, just then, with real if secret pleasure, and the
general uneasiness manifested itself in a grumbling
remark made as Michigan Red raked a fat "jack-pot"
into his winnings.\par

"You're the only one that's making anything these days."\par

"That's right," another grumbler added.  "An' what's
more, if we're out another five days the raise won't pull
us even by freeze-up.  Ten days lost at three-fifty is
thirty-five dollars.  Take the extra dollar seven weeks
to make it up—if the frost holds off that long."\par

Apparently indifferent, Michigan went on with his
deal.  "You're hell at figures, Chalky.  Where'd you
learn?  Figuring interest on your mortgage?  How
many cards, Bill?"\par

But Bill, spokesman of the committee, laid down his
hand.  "Look here, Red!  Chalky's right.  If we hadn't
struck we'd have had a pay-day yesterday, an' if we're
standing to lose that much we can't call it off too soon
for me."\par

"Nor me."\par

"Nor me."  The voices, pitched in altercation, had
brought the idlers crowding, and the support came in
from all around.\par

Michigan's teeth gleamed white through his red beard
while his bleak eyes took stock of the crowding faces as
though calculating just how far envy and avarice would
take them.  "You don't stand to lose a cent, Bill.
They've got to finish the contrac' before freeze-up to
reach the tie an' lumber-camps.  Otherwise the road 'll
be idle all winter, an' what's a few days' pay alongside
the freight on a hundred million feet of lumber.  He's
got to finish it.  If he kain't"—pausing, he distributed
a significant nod around the circle—"there's others as
kin an' will."\par

"But what if he don't come back?"\par

To the question which expressed the most pregnant
doubt, he returned a second meaning nod.  "Same
folks 'll make good."\par

"Back pay?" Bill pressed.\par

"Back pay."\par

"On whose say so?"\par

"Ain't mine good enough?"  Ruffling, he turned a
stream of fierce profanity upon Carrots Smith, his
questioner.  "Want Bible and oath for yours, eh?  There's
some things that kain't be told to idiots—"\par

"Yes, yes, Red!" Bill soothed.  "We know—that's all
right, Red.  Don't mind him, he's only a suckling kid."\par

"Sure, Red!  You know what you're talking about.
Go on!" others chorused, and having gained his point by
the show of anger, real or false, the teamster allowed
himself to be placated.\par

"If 'twas necessary," he continued, "we could tie up
the road with a laborer's lien.  But 'twon't be—I have
somebody's word for it.  If Carter goes under, we jes'
go right on."\par

"With the raise?"\par

"With the raise."\par

"But if he comes back?"  Chalky raised another doubt.
"What about lost time?  Freeze-up is freeze-up, an' we
kain't make it up if we're docked for the lay-off."\par

"That's easy.  Who's to blame for it?"  He threw it
at the circle.\par

"Him!  He wouldn't give the raise."\par

"Then let him pay for his fun.  We've got him coming
or going, an' we draw time, at the new rates, for every
idle day before we touch a tool.  Ain't that right?"\par

It was not, yet his crooked logic exactly matched their
envious cupidity.  Confidence once more returned; the
younger men returned to their sports; Bill picked up his
hand, and the game proceeded until interrupted, a
half-hour later, by a sudden shout and shrill neighing from
the horse lines.\par

"The stallion's loose!"\par

Shouting, the roustabout tore across the clearing and
just escaped the rush of the vicious brute by nimbly
climbing the projecting logs at the cook-house corners.
At his cry, a youth dropped the shot he had poised for a
throw, the gamblers their cards, and, balking in the
take-off for a broad jump, Carrots Smith led the rush for
cover.  A minute saw them all on top of cook or bunk
houses, and thus defrauded of his preference, the stallion
ran amuck among the horses which were tied at long
hay-racks, kicking, rearing, biting.  Though built massively
of logs, the racks gave way with splintering crashes under
the combined pull of a hundred frightened beasts; and
bunching, the string tore round the clearing, squealing
their fear.\par

To give the beast ease with his oats, Michigan had
removed the iron muzzle according to his custom, and
now, a free, wild thing, he bounded along in hot pursuit,
curveting, caracoling, satanic in his jet-black beauty.
Tossing his wild mane, he would call the mares with
stridulous cachinnations, yet for all his exultant passion
left them to chase a belated teamster, nose lowered, ears
wickedly pricked, thrice around the cook-house.  Balked
again, he reared, kicked, and was plunging once more
after the string when a whistle outshrilled his neigh, and
an engine with caboose attached rolled out of the cut
south of the camp.\par

But for the pounding hoofs, the collective whisper,
"It's the boss!" would have carried to Carter, who, with
Smythe, stood looking out at the door of the caboose;
and his first remark, "Regular circus, isn't it?" was
eminently applicable to the situation.  Upholding the
sky's blue roof, black spruce cones formed bulky pillars
for the natural amphitheatre in which the horses circled
and recircled, a kicking, squealing stream, before the
audience on the roofs.\par

"Where are you going?" Smythe exclaimed, as Carter
leaped to the ground.\par

"To rope that beast before he runs a season's flesh off
the teams.  There's a riata in the office."\par

"Better shoot him," Smythe counselled.  "Here! come
back!"  But he was already half-way across the clearing.\par

Choosing his time, he passed from the smithy to the
bunk-house, thence to the cook-house, and so working
from building to building under the eyes of his men, he
gained the office at last and shot in, barely escaping the
mad cavalcade.  As he emerged, coiling the riata, Smythe's
gaze drew to a second actor in this woodland drama.\par

When the poker players broke for cover, Michigan
Red had paused long enough to pocket the stakes along
with his winnings, then picking up the blanket he walked
over to the cook-house, and had watched all from the
angle formed by the jutting corner logs.  "A bit closer
would have suited better," he had grumbled, as Carter's
last rush carried him from under the hoofs.  Now he
commented: "Going to rope him, are you?  Not if I
know it."  Knowledge of his fellows' liability to lapses
of hero-worship inhered in his conclusion.  "If there's
to be gran'stan' plays I'll make 'em myself."\par

"Fools!" he snarled, as the beat of feet warned him
that the strikers on the roof were watching Carter, who
had taken position behind the next corner.  He heard
also the swish of the circling noose, its quickened whir
as the horses swooped around on the next lap; then, just
as the band passed, he sprang out, uttering a sudden
harsh command, directly in the stallion's path.\par

A desperate play, it drew gambler's luck.  A frontier
superstition has it that the equine eye magnifies objects,
and whether or no the red teamster with his pale-green
face loomed in the stallion's sight as some huge and
passionate fiend, he reared back on strung haunches, ploughing
the sod in a desperate effort to stop; and while he hung
in mid-air, Michigan stepped and threw his blanket,
matador-fashion, over the ugly head.  As the brute settled
on all-fours and stood shivering, Michigan turned,
grinning, to reap the fruit of his daring.\par

But his grin quickly faded, for, flashing on to his
purpose, Carter had swung and roped the rat-tailed mare,
the stallion's mate, as the band flew by.  Worse!
Michigan choked.  Almost every man in camp had a grudge
against the mare, some vicious lunge or graze from her
snapping teeth, so a dozen strikers had jumped and were
helping Carter to choke her down, while the others
cheered them on with approving laughter.\par

Furious, he yelled: "What's the matter with you chaps
up there?  Taken to roosting like chickens?  I'd like a
picture of the bunch, it ud pass anywhere for a Methodist
convention.  An' you fellows quit yanking that mare.
'Tain't tug-o'-war you're playing."  But he made small
headway against the uproarious tide of yells and laughter,
and, remembering his snub, Carrots Smith shouted back,
"She's doin' most of the pulling, an' if she wants to hang,
why let her."\par

Worst of all, it was Carter who finally interfered on
behalf of the struggling brute, and Michigan chafed at
the ready obedience accorded his orders.\par

"Thought you fellows was on strike?" he growled at
Brady, the Irish teamster, as he retied the stallion in
the horse lines.\par

But wrathfully indicating a bloody bruise on his own
horse, the Irishman hotly retorted, "Faith, thin, an'
that's no sign that we'll be lettin' them murthering brutes
av yourn chew the necks av our teams?  If they was
mine, I'd make wolf-meat av the pair before supper."\par

Michigan sneered.  "Didn't I ketch him myself?  An'
then you fellows had to go running your legs off to suit
him.  Keep it up, an' it's you an' your strike that'll be
made into hash for his supper."\par

While Michigan thus tried to scotch incipient sympathy
with rough sarcasm, Carter carried with him to the office
the comfortable assurance that fortune had turned down
to him this accidental trick in a difficult game.
Shrugging deprecation of Hart's admiring comments on his skill
with the riata, he returned a reminiscence of his
cowpunching days to Smythe's chidings, asserting that the
stallion was not a circumstance to a long-horn steer on
an open prairie.  While talking, he helped to arrange
the contents of Smythe's grip on the rough table, piling
greenbacks by denominations between flanking columns
of silver, an imposing array.\par

"No hurry," he said, when Hart asked if he should
call the men, and, lighting a cigar, he drawled a story
which at one time explained his reason and illumined
his plan.  "I remember a kid who won three sizes out
of his class by a little judicious waiting.  His dad had
set him a spading stint in the back lot, and when this
other boy brings-to on the sidewalk and begins to heave
belligerencies over the fence, he answers, that calm and
deliberate that you'd never think he was burying his
heart under every spadeful, 'Jes' you wait till I finish my
patch.'  And he goes on digging so cheerfully that the
other kid is a mite staggered.  As I say, he was about
three sizes to the good, but as you'll remember,
Napoleon's Old Guard could put it all over a young lady's
seminary for hysteria if it was kept too long waiting.
Watching that slow spade, this lad's imagination went
to working so hard that he fought that fight thirteen
times in as many minutes, and felt that used up he just
ran like a March hare when the other kid stuck his spade
in the trench.  The wise kid?"  He twinkled on Hart.
"I was that glad, I played hookey from school an' won
a licking from the old man five sizes larger than I'd have
got from the boy.  But it was worth it.  I learned that
it always pays to give it time to soak in."\par

Outside the strikers furnished a vivid illustration of
that lesson during the next three hours he kept them
waiting.  Grouping, they made loud mouths at first,
over supposititious wrongs or affected indifference that
was belied by uneasy glances officeward.  Less loquacious
at the end of the first hour, the second left them
sullen and silent; the third, eaten by suspense.  They
started, as at a sudden explosion, when Bender finally
came out; stared blankly when he announced that the
boss was waiting to pay off the camp.\par

Affording no time for recovery, Hart called the first
name on the pay-roll, and Bender's stentorian bass sent
it rolling into the woods.  "Anderson!  Anderson!
Hurry up, Anderson!"\par

The name chanced to be the property of Bill, the
spokesman, but though used as little as his Sunday
clothes, there was more than unfamiliarity behind his
slowness.  More tenacious of idea, as aforesaid, than
quick of wit, Bill now found himself without plan,
precedent, or time for counsel in these unexpected premises,
nor could he draw inspiration from the blank looks of his
fellows.\par

"Hurry up, Anderson!" Bender crossly repeated; and
starting as though touched in some secret spring, Bill
lurched forward and in, and so found himself facing
Carter, Hart, and Smythe behind an awesome financial array.\par

Never before had Bill seen so much money at once—even
in dreams; it totalled more than the hard earnings
of his forty-odd years; would have paid his mortgage ten
times over.  The substance of modern power, its glitter
challenged the loud-mouthed assertions of him and his
fellows that, given the same luck, they could have done
as well as Carter.  By the light of its golden glow, Bill
saw himself very weak and small and foolish.  At home
he seldom saw a dollar; had trouble in scraping up
currency enough to pay his taxes, and effected his barterings
at the store in truck and trade.  With his doubts settled
as to the solvency of the firm, Bill was suddenly afflicted
with a suspicion that he had made the biggest kind of a
fool of himself.\par

Correctly interpreting his glance at the table, Carter
gave him a genial smile.  "Yes, Bill; but you don't get
it by laying off.  Here's your bit.  Touch the pen
and—  Five dollars short?  Board and feed for five days, Bill.
Man earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, you know.
Pass on, and don't forget to remember me to your wife
when you gain home."\par

As with Bill, so the others.  Filing in, they testified,
one by deeper sullenness, others by attempts at a
swagger, to the influences which had wrought on him.  Few
attained the easy insolence of Michigan Red, who
demanded an itemized account of his store bill and insisted
on signing the roll with his own hand.  Touching the
pen, railroad fashion, they passed out, while Hart signed
for them, to add their doubtings to the general mystification.\par

What was forward?  Had Carter obtained new crews,
or would the company close down work?  As the line
still fell thirty miles short of the northern settlements,
the latter thought filled the minds of the Silver Creek
men, who saw themselves left marketless by their own act,
with sick misery; brought pause to their envious cupidity,
despite Michigan's assurances that it was all a bluff.\par

"'Tain't," Bill Anderson contradicted him.  "I was just
over to the cook-house for a drink, an' the cook has orders
to serve no meals after breakfast to-morrow morning."\par

"That so?" a dozen voices questioned.\par

"Ask for yourselves.  He's at the door now calling to
supper."\par

And the cook confirmed the report, adding, moreover,
his mite to their discomfiture by malignantly
animadverting upon the ménages to which they were about to
return.  "My cooking don't suit, eh?" demanded the
offended artist.  "It's pertatoes an' sow-belly for yours
after this.  In a month you won't be able to tell your
ribs from a rail corral."  And truth so flavored his
railings that they saw, in fancy, themselves looking back
from their prairie farms upon his rude but plentiful
fleshpots—at which ripe moment the door opened to admit
Carter, Smythe, and Bender.\par

Pausing at the end of the centre table, Carter glanced
over the rows of faces which turned curiously up to him
as on the occasion that marked the beginnings of his fight
for mastery in the cook-house at the winter camp.  Very
fittingly, setting and persona for this last act of a long
struggle were almost the same as the first.  Hines and
the Cougar, to be sure, were gone over the Great Divide.
Strangers sat in place of Shinn and the handful that
returned to their farms after the log-drive.  But here were
the tables, a-bristle with tinware; dim lanterns, dependent
from the low pole-roof; the faces, peering from Rembrandt
shadows, fiercely animal, pregnant with possibilities such
as have reddened the snows of many a forest camp.
Overlooking them now, at the climax of a year-long play, he
could not but thrill to the thought that whereas they
had opposed him at every turn, those iron {\itshape{impresarios}},
the Fates, had left choice of endings with him, author of
the drama.  It was his to crush or spare—to crush and
gain the cringing respect which they accorded to frost,
drought, pestilence, stern henchmen of the illimitable; to
spare and attain next place to a fair potato-crop in their
esteem; to manage them for their and his own good.\par

To the latter end he bent his words, addressing them,
half jocularly, in their own argot.  "Well, boys, we've
played our game to a finish, but before we throw away
the deck let's count tricks.  I don't blame you for
striking.  You have a right to sell your labor in the dearest
market as I have to buy mine in the cheapest.  You
simply asked more than I felt able to pay, so while you
rested I took a jaunt down to the States to see how you
stood on the market.  What did I find?  First let us take
a look at your hand.\par

"What do you hold?  Harvest is half over and the
wheat farmers from the Portage to Brandon and down
to the Pipestone have hired their help at two dollars a
day.  No betterment there.  You can't break prairie in
the fall, so there's nothing at home except eating, and
the lumber-camps don't open up before the snows.  On
the other hand, your stake in this line is as big as mine.
Unfinished, you are without the markets you have been
shouting for these years; finished, it lets in American
competition and trebles your values in land."  Pausing,
he shook his head, and smiling, went on: "Looks as if
some one had dealt you a miserable hand, and I wonder
if it wouldn't pay you to shuffle, cut, and try another
deal?  Now before I bring in new crews—"\par

"New crews?  Where kin you get them?"\par

All through the men had given close attention, and
after a single impatient glance at Michigan Red the faces
turned back to Carter, who ignored the interruption.
Leaning eagerly forward, they took the words from his
mouth as he ran on roughly outlining his own plans,
prospecting the coming years.  Few of them, perhaps
none, were given to looking beyond the present, and the
vista to which he turned their dull eyes glimmered like
sunshine on the prairies.  This was to be no casual job!
The province, ay, and the whole Northwest, required
branch roads; would be gridironed with them before the
finish!  So what of construction in summer, logging in
winter, they could look for profitable employment the
round of the seasons!\par

"So talk it over among yourselves," he finished, "and
those who feel that a fresh deal is in order can call round
at the office after supper."\par

Long before that, nods and approving murmurs had
testified to his victory, and as the burr of hot tongues
followed them out through the open windows, Bender
exclaimed: "Whipped to a finish!  But what about them
new crews?"  Then catching Carter's grin, he burst out
in uproarious laughter.  "What a bluff!"\par

"Not a man in Minneapolis," Carter confirmed.  "But
that wasn't what we went down for.  So it didn't matter."\par

"But will they believe it?" Smythe asked.\par

"Believe it?"  Bender took it upon himself to answer
it.  "A frightened man will run from his shadow, an'
they're that badly scared 'twon't take them five minutes
to locate them crews."\par

He gave them, indeed, too much time, for, as he said,
fear destroys perspective and the strikers were almost
ready to believe that Carter could conjure men from the
trackless forest.\par

Carrots Smith led the panic with a theory, even as
he had headed the run from Michigan's horse.  "Said
he'd been prospectin' down in the States?  Minneapolis,
I'll bet you, an' the place jes' rotten with whaleback
Swedes."\par

"Sawyer's gang is through with the N.P.'s Devil's
Lake extension," another added.  "I read it in the
paper Sunday.  Old Sawyer ud on'y be too glad for a
chance to finish out the fall."\par

Other theories were not wanting, nor could Michigan Red
stem the rout.  Just twenty minutes thereafter a sheepish
delegation presented itself at the office door and delivered
itself through the mouth of Bill of the Anderson ilk.\par

"We've concluded," said Bill, "as 'twouldn't hardly
be right to leave you ditched."\par

Albeit Carter's eyes returned Hart's twinkle, he replied
in kind.  "I'm real tickled to think that you won't
desert me."\par

And so, with this bit of diplomatic comedy, ended not
only the strike, but also the bitter fight which he, like
every village Hampden, had had to wage against the
envious ignorance of his fellows.  For a while, to be sure,
their stiff necks would balk at the homage secret
consciousness dictated as his meed.  They would refuse it,
indeed, till the world outside sealed his success;
whereafter every man of them would proclaim himself as the
particular prophet who had discerned greatness in his
humble beginnings.  But in the mean time they would
refrain from further hostilities.\par

"What about that Red man?" Smythe said, as the
delegation made its jubilant way back to its fellows.
"You'll surely discharge {\itshape{him}}?"\par

"Michigan Red?" Carter said.  "Not if he wants to
stay.  His team is worth any two in camp, and his teeth
are drawn for good.  But he won't stay."\par

"That's a cinch," Bender echoed.  "He's due in Winnipeg
to report his failure sometime in the next three days."\par

\label{fire}%
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{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXX}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize FIRE}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Dawn saw the strikers going about their chores
with a cheerful alacrity that was as gall to
Michigan Red, who chewed the bitter cud of unsuccessful
leadership as he sat drumming his heels on a block by
the cook-house door.  He had come to the end of his
rope—rather, dangled there, an object of contemptuous
pity in the eyes of his fellows.  Had he doubted the fact,
it was to be easily read in their studied avoidance; but
he knew that he had failed—in what?  He could hardly
have answered the question himself; for whether or no
he had plotted in the monopoly's interest, the strike
was merely incidental to the persistent war he had waged
against Carter, to the dogged opposition which had root
in the turbulent anarchism of his nature.  Sufficient
that though his weird face held its usual bleak calm, he
writhed, mentally, under defeat, while the few who
ventured within range of his tongue sensed the lava beneath
the crust.\par

"Not with this crowd.  I draw the color line," he
rasped, when Anderson inquired if he were not going
to work, while Carrots Smith drew a curse along with the
information, "It's me for a better job.  I'm tired of
herding sheep."  So now he was left strictly alone,
though speculative glances travelled often his way.\par

"He's waiting for the boss," a teamster remarked to
his neighbor.  "Say, I'd like to see 'em at grips!"\par

"Rather him nor me," the other said, expressing
general opinion.  "The boss is a tough proposition.  They
say he beat Shinn up so badly that he'll never be more 'n
half a man again.  Red ain't no slouch, though.  Bet
you I'd like to see it."\par

However, as tools had to be reissued and a hundred
details despatched, the men were all at work before
Carter could come to breakfast, so only Smythe and the
cook witnessed that meeting.\par

It was a beautiful day.  Already the heat fulfilled the
prediction of a torrid sunrise, and, like an egg in a pan,
the camp fried within the encircling spruce which, on
their part, seemed to lift over surrounding birch and
poplar as though tiptoeing for cooler air.  The same
errand had brought the cook out from the bowels of his
own particular inferno, and as certain phases of the
encounter could not be set forth in choicer terms than
those in which he delivered himself to an interested
audience that evening, now let him speak.\par

"I was sitting in the doorway, that close to Red I
could have pulled his ear, when the boss kem along.
Stopping opposite, he looked down on Red with eyes
dark and steady as night.  They're blue, you know, by
rights, but they seemed to darken to pure black, an' I
never felt him so tall before.\par

"'Well, Red?' he says, quiet, like that; but Red's eyes
stayed down, though his lip lifted clear of his corner teeth
like you've seen a trapped coyote, and so the pair of 'em
remained for a full three minutes."\par

Imagine them—the greenish face of the one reflecting
murderous passion, troubled as waves on shaken acid;
the other darkly silent, yet, for all his quiet, oppressing
both Smythe and the cook with the loom of imminent
death.  So was fought out the silent duel of personalities—one
minute, two; at the third, sweat broke profusely
upon the teamster's face, and the cook breathed once
more.  Burning with Cain's lust, his glance travelled
but once above the other's knee, to fall as quickly again.\par

"What's the matter, Red?"  Smythe actually started
as Carter's voice broke on the quiet of the camp.
"Quitting?  What for?"\par

"No, it isn't {\itshape{exactly}} my business," he cheerfully
answered the teamster's growl.  "If you will, you
will."  Turning back after entering, he added: "Heading for
Winnipeg, I suppose?  Then give my compliments to
Friend Buckle and tell him to please hand them higher up."\par

When he came out Michigan was still there, but
Carter passed without a glance, and led Smythe down the
right of way into the forest.  Even then Michigan sat on.
It was, indeed, almost noon before he loafed over to the
horse lines, after refusing the cook's invitation to wait
for dinner.  Without returning a word of thanks for the
grub-sack which the latter sent over by a cookee, he
hitched to his wagon and drove slowly away.\par

A week's rest had freshened the blacks so much that,
if given their heads, they would have covered half the
distance to Winnipeg that day.  But he took a vicious
pleasure in balking their inclination.  Jerking the bits,
which hinged on a cruel curb, he pulled them down to a
nervous, teetering walk.\par

For a while the trail paralleled the right of way, then
swung on a wide arc around a morass, and for an hour
thereafter ran alternately among sloughs, sand-hills,
muskegs, through a country indescribably desolate and
which teemed with savage life.  Myriad frogs set his
ears singing with dismal, persistent croaking; a pole-cat
scuttled across the trail, poisoning the dank air.  From
brazen skies a hawk shrieked a malediction upon his
head; his horses threw up their heads, snorting, as a lynx
screamed a long way off.  Here, too, dark woods shut off
errant breezes and he fell a prey to a curse of sand-flies
that stung and envenomed his flesh.  There was no
escape.  They settled, by hundreds, on the hands that
wiped them off his face; stung his face as he slapped his
hands.\par

Coming back, mad with pain and rage, from this détour,
his eyes drew to a trestle—longest, highest, most
expensive of Carter's works—and, reining in, he allowed
his glance to wander lustfully over the stout timbers
which his fancy wrapped in flame.  A single match—but
reason urged that the embers would undoubtedly furnish
red lights for his hanging, and he drove on, hotter,
madder for the restraint.  He was ripe for any mischief that
offered a running chance of escape, when, midway of the
afternoon, he came on wheel-tracks that swung at right
angles from the trail into a chain of sloughs.\par

"Red River cart," he muttered, noticing the wide
gauge; then, furiously slapping his thigh, "Carter's Cree,
by G—!"\par

He meant the Indian who had brought in the venison
which formed the tidbit at Dorothy Chester's first meal
in camp.  All through the summer he had come in with
deer-meat twice or thrice a week, but though Michigan
and other teamsters had searched for his tepee during
the idle days of the strike, no one had penetrated to the
woodland lake where his squaw—a young girl, handsome,
as Indian women go—was free from rude glances, safe
from insult or worse.  Now the trail lay, plain as a
pike-road, under Michigan's nose; and, leaping down, he tied
his team to a tree and followed it along the sloughs.\par

Through a gully, patch of woodland, the tracks led
into a second long slough, and presently debouched on
the strand of a small lake, one of the thousands that gem
that black wilderness.  Bird-haunted in spring,
lonesomeness now lay thick upon it.  Uttering its weird cry,
a loon rose on swift wing, angling in its flight over the
tepee, whose bull's hide, raw, smoke-blacked, harmonized
with that savage setting.\par

Just then Michigan was in fettle to exact a vicarious
revenge.  Early in summer Carter had nipped a disposition
on the part of his men to joke and make free with
the Indian, giving strict orders that he was to be
unmolested, coming or going.  This girl who lived in his
protecting shadow would have fared ill at Michigan's hands.
But the tepee flaps were thrown wide, and though he
strained his eyes from a covert of tall reeds, he saw no
sign of her, without or within.  Save the lipping of
waters, sough of a rising wind, no sound broke the
solitude that guarded this, the lair of primitive man.  Only
those who have experienced its frightful loneliness can
know how terrible a northern solitude can be; how
awesome, oppressive.  Some note of it caused the teamster
to speak aloud, heartening himself with sound of his voice.\par

"They'll be back to-night, sure, for the ashes is banked
over the embers."\par

Gaining back to his team, he drove on a scant quarter-mile,
then turned into a slough parallel to those he had
just left, and which had its end in a wooded dell.  Here
high banks would have effectually screened a fire, yet
he endured mosquitoes till dusk smothered his smudge.
Then tying his team in the thick of its reek, he cut across
the intervening bush and followed, as before, along the
slough chain till he saw a dim cloud quivering on the
blackness ahead.\par

Beneath this, smoke from the Cree's fire, presently
appeared a rich incandescence, and after worming the
last yards on the flat of his belly, Michigan peered from
thick sedge out at the Cree woman, who sat and suckled
her child by the fire that enriched the bronze of her
bosom with a blush from its glow.  A free, wild thing,
her deep eyes now caressed her child, again searched the
fire's red mystery, giving back its flame as forest pools
reflect a hunter's flare; sombre and silent, eons of
savagery flickered in her glance.\par

From her the watcher's evil face turned to the Cree,
who was skinning a deer that hung by the hams from a
poplar crotch.  The heavy, clammy odor of fresh blood
hung thick in the air, filled his nostrils as he lay, like
primitive man by the mouth of his enemy's cave, watching
the knife slip around the carcass.  Savage could not
have been more wicked of intent.  Again and again his
hand gripped his own knife, always to fall again at sight
of the rifle that leaned against the Red River cart, close
to the Indian's hand.  And thus he waited, baleful glance
flickering between man and woman, till the deer was
dressed and loaded upon the cart.\par

That modified without changing his purpose.  "Going
to camp first thing in the morning," he thought, as he
crawled away.  "Always goes alone."\par

Back once more with his team, he kicked the wet grass
from the smudge, and after eating ravenously of the
cook's provision by its flame, he spread his blankets and
lay down, head propped on his hand, back to his team.
He did not sleep; simply stared into the fire, or listened
to the varied voices of the night.  Now there would
be a sighing, breathing among the trees, creaking of
branches, soft rustlings.  Then the night would talk
loudly on a hush as of death—a loon laughed at the owl's
solemn questioning, a fox barked among the sand-hills;
the boom of a bittern came in from some dark lake; he
heard the lynx scream again, loudly, shrilly, as a
tortured child.  Then the wind again, or a greater hush in
which he heard only the crackling of his fire as he
replenished its dying flame.\par

On these occasions a long trail of sparks would fly
upward, and one, a tiny ember, at last wrought a strange
thing.  Passing over and behind him, it nested in the
frazzle of tow at the knot of the stallion's frayed halter;
where it smoked and glowed, growing larger, brighter.
Lowering his ugly head, the beast sniffed at the strange
red flower, then backed away as it burst into a bouquet
of flame under his coaxing breath.\par

"Stan' still!" Michigan growled, without, however,
looking around.\par

The stallion stood—till the end of the burned rope
dropped to the ground.\par

Even then some time elapsed before he realized that
he was free; but when he did—he turned white, wicked
eyes on the resting man.  Was that short worm the fiend
that had ruled him?  He stepped.\par

"Stan' still!" Michigan growled again.\par

The familiar voice gave the stallion pause—a moment.
For, out of the tail of his eye, Michigan presently saw and
became cognizant of a most curious thing—of a shadow,
huge, black, upreared above himself.\par

Uttering a hoarse cry, he tried to rise—too late.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
So, in the midst of his turbulence, passed Michigan
Red, but the evil that he had done mightily all the days
of his life followed him into death, for the pounding hoofs
spread embers of his fire over a leafy carpet, where the
night wind found them.  Leaping under its breath, small
flames writhed tortuously across the glade to the thing
that had been a man—touched and tasted its clothing
with delicate lickings, then flashed up and sprang from
the smouldering cinder into thick scrub, and so ran with
incredible swiftness through the forest.  Crouched, like
a runner, at first, close to the ground, it suddenly
straightened and bounded high over a patch of dry poplar burned
by a former fire, cowered again, to crawl through thick
green spruce, and so stole softly on, as though to catch
the Cree in his sleep.\par

As well try to singe a weasel.  Already the Cree was
urging his ragged pony, with squaw and papoose, towards
Carter's camp, and, balked there, the fire swung with the
veering wind into poplar woods, and flamed on, a roaring,
ebullient tide, overtopping the tallest trees.  Under its
effulgence, black lakes and sullen tarns flashed out of
thick night with scared deer, belly-deep in the water.
Huge owls went flapping through the smoke, leading the
ducks, geese, vagrant flocks of the night, leaving hawks
and other day birds to circle, shrieking, ere they whizzed
down to a fiery death.  Gaining strength from its own
draught and the freshening wind, it flowed, at an angle,
over the railroad and poured down both sides, licking up
bridges, trestles, culverts, leaving the hot rails squirming
like scorched snakes in empty space; and so, about
midnight, roared on to the great trestle at which Michigan
had paused that afternoon, and where Carter had lined
up his men.\par

Roused by the Cree from a dream of Helen to a nightmare
of flaming skies, Carter first sent out a gang under
command of Hart and Smythe to back-fire around the
camp, then loaded the remaining crews on flat-cars and
raced the fire down to the trestle.  Bender, who was with
him in the engine-cab, leaned to his ear as the train pulled
out of the cut.\par

"Michigan Red?"\par

"Looks it."  Nodding, Carter turned to watch the
rails which gleamed under the sky-glow, running like
scarlet lines on black ribbon between dark, serried ranks
of spruce.  "Lucky it is coming at an angle," he said,
as the engine thundered over the first bridge.\par

Bender raised his big shoulders.  "If the wind
don't shift?  But it generally does about this time o'
night.  If she slips to the east—p-s-st! a puff of steam,
a crackle, an' we're gone up like flies in a baker's oven."\par

Carter returned his shrug.  "As good a way as any."  He
added, grimly smiling: "And very fit.  Give us a
chance to get acclimated.  But with luck we ought to
be able to wet her down and pull out south.  Without
it we can lie down in the creek."\par

"I like mine wet," Bender grinned.  "Drowning ain't
exactly comfortable, but if there's to be any preference
I'll take it."  And in the face of danger and disaster,
Carter smiled again.\par

Starting out, it had seemed a toss-up between them
and the fire, but the train rolled over the trestle and drew
up in a cut on the southerly side, a quarter-hour to the
good.  The creek ran under the northerly end, with a
short approach to the bank, the bulk of the trestle
leading over a quarter-mile of morass to firm ground; so
Carter, with Bender, Carrots Smith, and other
half-dozen, dropped buckets from the bridge to the stream,
thirty feet below, and passed them to the men who were
strung along the plates.  Dipping, drawing, dashing,
they worked furiously under the glare of the conflagration.
While still half a mile away, its heat set the trestle
steaming.  At a quarter of a mile, the furious draught
rained embers large as a man's hand upon the men, who
turned their faces away from the blistering heat.
Casting uneasy glances over humped shoulders, they began
to increase their distances, edging along the south
approach towards the train; but as they still maintained
communications, neither Carter nor Bender took notice
until they suddenly broke and ran.\par

"Here!  Come back!"  Bender's angry roar drowned
Carter's shout, and was lost, in turn, in a shrill whistling;
for the engineer had seen that which had been hid from
them.\par

"My God!" Carrots Smith cried; and Brady broke out
in whimpering prayer to the saints.\par

They stood, staring.\par

As aforesaid, the fire was running south and westerly
at an acute angle to—in fact, almost paralleling the
railroad, with its extreme point farthest away but already
beyond the trestle.  And now, veering swiftly southeast,
as Bender had feared, it swung at right angles and came
broadside on, a fiery tide high over the forest.  To the
engineer it seemed that the wind lifted a mass of flame
and threw it bodily into a tangle of poplar-brake, red
willow, tall reeds, and sedge at the trestle's south end.
Dry, explosively inflammable from a summer's heat, it
touched off like a magazine, whirling skyward, a twisting
water-spout of flame, and as he jerked wildly on his
whistle he saw, as under the calcium of lurid melodrama,
men running like wingless flies along the wet, black
trestle.  Careening, the column fell across them.\par

Only the few who were drawing with Carter escaped that
first explosive flame, and they gained only time to jump
as the main fire came hurdling over the trees.  Falling,
Carter saw the stream, blood-red; jagged rocks rising
swiftly to meet him.  A flash blinded his eyes, then—\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
He rubbed them—that is, he winked, for he was far
too weak for such robust exercise.  Yes, he winked it.
Was—could that be Helen's face bending low over him?\par

\label{wherein-the-fates-substitute-a-change-of-bill}%
\hypertarget{wherein-the-fates-substitute-a-change-of-bill}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXXI}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize WHEREIN THE FATES SUBSTITUTE A CHANGE OF BILL}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Carter winked again.  The face, however, did not
move.  On the contrary, it lit up with sudden
delight and said smile helped his limping consciousness
forward to the idea of a dream.  Yes, he was dreaming,
undoubtedly dreaming!  No!  Here memory took hold
and gave him back the flaming forest; wet rocks, rising
swiftly from red water, carried him back and left him
at the precise moment that he had struck a projecting
timber.  He was falling!  Involuntarily he stiffened,
expecting the shock ... but—ah! a clew!  He was
dead—of the fall; and this?  Must be heaven, or why
Helen?  {\itshape{If}} t'other place?  'Twas not so bad as long as
she was there!  Here his eye, through removal of the face,
touched the whitewashed ceiling, then wandered to blank
walls, a stand with medicine, covered glasses and spoons,
a linen-press, two chairs—he arrived at truth, a hospital!
Then, tired out by these strenuous mental exercises, his
eyes closed once more, to the ineffable relief of the
anxious watcher, and sleep, natural sleep, replaced the coma
that had held him these two days.\par

For a while Helen listened to his breathing, then, once
sure that he was really asleep, she tiptoed out to the
corridor and, under urge of relief, ran, fairly flew, with
her good news to the head doctor's office.  For these
had been days of haggard waiting, as, for the matter of
that, had the last two weeks—Bender's battles, Carter's
triumph, the strike and forest fire had all been packed
into ten short days.\par

Beginning at the morning after she saw Carter at
dinner with the general manager, her joyful prayer had
gone with the jubilant roar of press and people at the
ceding of the crossing, and for several following days her
ears drank thirstily of the plaudits which were universal
in the hospital, on the street, at her boarding-house.
When, indeed, the topic cropped up at her first
operation, her fingers trembled so over a bandage that
Carruthers excused her, thinking the sight of blood had
turned her sick.  At Jean Glaves's table she had to veil
the eager exultance of her eyes.  The merchants who
were discussing competition in freight rates on the street
would have stared could they have heard the heart-cry
of the pretty nurse then passing.\par

"He did it!  Yes, he is very clever—all that you say!
But you cannot have him, for he is mine!  I'll lend him
to you—for a while!  But I must have him back!  He's
mine! mine! mine!"\par

From breathing the rare atmosphere of these exalted
heights, she had been precipitated by the strike into
bottom deeps of despair, and while agonizing therein
over additional rumors of Greer \& Smythe's impending
failure, a morning paper came to her breakfast-table with
six-inch fire scareheads and a long tale of burns, bruises,
breakages that would have been longer but for the
softness of the morass.  Carter, Bender, Brady, Carrots
Smith, all who were on the trestle, had been more or less
injured; and six bridges, five trestles, dozens of culverts
had gone up in smoke, a maleficent memorial to Michigan
Red, before the conflagration back-fired itself out among
labyrinthian lakes.  But she paused not at the tale.
The injured were on the way to the hospital, and with
that piece of news clutched to her bosom she ran all the
way and broke, at one time, a rule that was as the law
of the Medes and Persians and the privacy of the head
doctor's study.\par

It will be easily seen that under such circumstances
her hysterical gaspings were not exactly informing, but a
man does not attain to headship of a hospital without
ability to extract truth from obscure premises—what else
is diagnosis?—and when, indicating the heading that
told of Carter's injuries, she gasped, "My husband!" the
Head grasped every detail of the situation.\par

"I must nurse him!" she pleaded.  "Must! must!"\par

A man prodigiously dignified and very solemn behind
imposing glasses, the Head offered a stereotyped
objection; but it speaks for the feeling beneath his
dessicated exterior that he eventually set rules and regulations
at defiance, and outraged the discipline and morale
maintained by the Scotch head nurse, by appointing her, a
novitiate, to a capital case.\par

"But remember," he said.  "Only if you can forget,
for the present, that he is your husband?"\par

He did not believe she could, and had been astonished
by her quiet, almost mechanical performance of duty
during those two harrowing days.  For he did not see her
leaning over the inanimate form when alone in the ward;
her strained watching, desperate listenings for the first
flutter of the returning spirit.  Now he did see her
flushed delight, and muttered to himself as Carruthers,
the under surgeon, hastened with her to Carter's
bedside: "I suppose I ought to tell {\itshape{him}}! ... What's the use;
he'll hear soon enough."\par

So her secret was kept, and being uninformed of the
matrimonial complications in the case, the surgeon set
her delighted flutterings to professional interest and so
joined her felicitations.  "'Twas touch and go," he
whispered.  "Few could stand such a crack on the
head; must have made an omelet of his brains and his
fever was hot enough to fry it.  But he'll pull through,
Mistress Morrill, and it is good that he will, for he's
a gran' character, fine and useful to the province."\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
To indulge a pleasant conceit, that refreshing sleep may
be regarded as an intimation of the fates that comedy
was about to be substituted for impending tragedy upon
the boards; and the opening of Carter's eyes may very
well be considered as the rise of the curtain on the first,
and what would also have been the last, act had he been
in the enjoyment of his usual health and strength.
Lacking these, he could only take things as he found
them; chief over all, a demure nurse who administered
bitter draughts or took his pulse without sign of
recognition, compunction, or emotion.\par

As her shapely back always hid the pencil when she
noted her observations on the chart, he could not see it
tremble; and how was he to know that the pulse-taking
was a sham?  That she could feel only her own heart
thudding five thousand thuds to the minute?  That
she had to guess the pulse by his temperature, which
cardinal crime of the nurse's calendar was partly
condoned, because if she {\itshape{had}} set down its vibrations
at the moments she held his hand, every doctor in
the hospital would have come running as to a lost
cause.\par

Ignorant of all this, he could only lie and watch her
moving about the ward, tantalizingly trim and pretty in
her nurse's dress; wait till some softening of her coldness
would justify the clean confession he ached to make.
Always the desire was with him and it waxed with the
days.  But whether or no she discerned it lurking
behind his surreptitious glances, she afforded no
opportunity, and what can a man do against a fate that nips
every approach to the tender with nasty medicine or
chill phrase—"You are not to talk."\par

"I believe you like to give me that stuff," he growled
one day.\par

"Doctor's orders," she severely replied, and her stony
face effectually repressed him while indicating that she
was not to be drawn from her vantage-ground by that
or a sudden remark—"It seems strange to see you in
that uniform."\par

"Doesn't feel so to me," she coldly answered, adding,
with a spice of malice, "If it did I should get used to it,
for I expect to wear it for the next three years."\par

He winced, and he did not see her smile as he gave her
his angry back—that or her droopings over his sleep an
hour thereafter.  Alone in the quiet ward, bent so low
that her breath moved the hair on his temples, the
occasion vividly recalled the night, long ago, when she
had watched the moon etch with line and shadow the
promise of the future upon his face.  It lay there now,
under her soft breath, the fulfilment.  For two years
stress and struggle had tooled away every roughness and
left the accomplished promise, a man wrought by
circumstance to a great fineness.\par

She also had changed—from a well-intentioned if
careless girl to a thoughtful woman.  Contact with life in
the rough had rubbed the scales from her eyes and now
she saw clearly—many things, but all centring on one.
Outside people were declaiming against the vindictive
fate that had joined with the monopoly against this
their champion.  That morning's papers had it that
Greer \& Smythe were surely ruined.  Yet she was
glad, overjoyed.  Wealthy and honored, it would have
been difficult to the verge of impossibility for her to go
back to him.  Always she would have felt that he might
doubt her motives.  But now—\par

"It's time to take your medicine!"  She sprang up as
he opened his eyes, wondering if he had felt her light
kiss.\par

Had he, it would have been "curtain" there and then,
but as he did not the play went on, and its sequence
proves that, however honorable her intentions, she had
by no means relinquished her sex's unalienable right to
bring things about in its own illogical, tantalizing,
perversely charming way.  Drooping over his sleep,
hoping that he would wake and catch her, she took care that
he should not—assumed a statuesque coldness at the
first quiver of his eyelids.  Undoubtedly, and with her
sex's habitual unfairness, she scandalously abused her
position, exercising a tyranny that was as sweet to
herself as mortifying to him.\par

"You must not do that—must do this—now go to
sleep."  She hugged her power in place of him, and
when he achieved a successful revolt against her ban of
silence by appealing to the Head for permission to talk
with Smythe, she revenged herself by injecting a
personal interest into her dealings with Carruthers.  It was
madness for him to see their heads close together over
his chart; the shining eyes she brought back from
whispered conferences in the hall.  To be sure, it was all
about pills and plasters, but how was he to know that?
And it was in revenge for this shamelessly injurious
conduct that he arranged the scene which opens the second act.\par

On the morning that he was promoted from spoon-feed
to the dignity of a tray, behold him! head bent, elbows
square with his ears, knife and fork grabbed at their
points, proving his indifference to her opinion by the
worst behavior that recent better practice permitted.
Alas! he was cast all through for a losing part.  Displaying,
before his face, the irritating curiosity which a child
bestows on a feeding lion, she privately peeped from
behind the door-screen, gloated over the old familiar
spectacle.  She caught him coming and going.  Also
she turned a delighted ear when he dropped into the
homely settler speech; listened for the old locutions; but
called his bluff when he overdid the part by running
amuck of the grammar in a manner frightful to behold.\par

"I really don't see why you talk like that," she
remarked, patronizingly.  "You speak quite well, almost
correctly, to Dr. Hammand and Mr. Smythe."\par

"Yes?" he retorted.  "I didn't notice.  Mebbe you'll
correct me if I side-step it again?"\par

But the last case of that man was worse than the
first.  "Thank you," she coldly answered.  "I have
given up teaching school."\par

He sniffed sarcastically.  "Hum!  Shouldn't have
known it.  I always heard that the spanking habit stuck
through life.  But don't give up.  Remember the copybook
line, 'If at first you don't succeed, try, try again.'"  But
she was going out of the door at the time and took
care that he should think she had not heard.  "You
were speaking?" she inquired, coming back.  And, of
course, it would not bear repetition.\par

He fared just as illy when, next morning, Bender
hobbled into the ward with the aid of a crutch and cane.
Having been visited by the lady protagonist, the giant
was fully informed on the situation and so achieved a
sly wink behind his chief's sarcastic introductions.
"Mr. Bender—Mrs. Morrill."\par

Also her quiet answer was disconcerting.  "We have
met before.  Have you heard from Jenny lately, Mr. Bender?"\par

Now Bender had.  A letter, small note, simple and
direct as Jenny herself, was even then burning his pocket,
and, blushing like a school-boy caught in the theft of
apples, he produced and read it.  If he insisted—was
perfectly certain that he couldn't get well without
her—Jenny would!\par

"'Fraid I took a mean advantage," he confessed.
"Reg'lar cold-decked her.  You see, a busted ankle
ain't much to spread on, so I hinted at complications.
She sure thinks I'm dyin,' an' when she comes she'll find
me hopping around."\par

"Oh, well."  Carter glanced stealthily at Helen.  "She
has oceans of time to pay you.  With any old luck you
are good for eighty-five, and it doesn't take a loving wife
that length of time to get even."  For which insolence
he paid instantly and doubly—first by a nasty dose,
secondly by loss of Bender, who was summarily ejected
under pretext of its being the patient's hour for sleep.\par

So the war ran, and it did seem as though circumstance
never tired of impressing allies for Helen's cause.
Take Dorothy Chester, who called with Hart next day.
She, like Carruthers, could only take the situation at face
values, and so enthused over his luck in nurses; to all of
which—in Helen's absence—Carter subscribed till
Dorothy reached her climax.\par

"And Dr. Carruthers thinks so, too.  Wouldn't it be
nice if they made a match of it?"\par

She was astounded by the heat of his reply.  "No!
A Scotch dromedary, suckled on predestination and
damnation of infants?  Pretty husband he'd make!"  But
she solved his vehemence for Hart's benefit on the
way home.  "He's in love with her himself."\par

"Between patient and doctor?  What a mix-up!"  Hart
laughed.  "Odds are on the doctor if he's up to his
job.  I'd hate to be Carter on the chance of an
overdose."  For which flippancy his ears were well pulled.\par

As he said, things were undoubtedly a little tangled,
and if at first glance it would appear that Dorothy had
not assisted in the unravelling, closer scrutiny shows
that her remark helped at least to bring affairs to a head.
For the remainder of the day Carter was very thoughtful,
so preoccupied that he forgot to misbehave over his
supper-tray while, time and again, Helen caught him
surveying herself with a dark uneasiness.  Puzzled, she
came back to the ward before leaving and stood at the
foot of his bed; but as yet his fever was confined to his
mind, and he replied that he was feeling quite well to her
question.\par

The "good-night" she wished him was not, however,
for him.  Always darkness magnifies trouble, and through
its black lens he saw suspicions as facts.  Tossing
restlessly, he heard the city clock chime the quarters, halves,
hours, until, at twelve, the night nurse's lantern revealed
him wide-eyed, staring, and knowing the efficacy of a
change of thought in producing sleep, she stayed for a chat.\par

Correct enough in theory, the treatment proved about
as successful as would the application of a blister upon
a sore; for he bent the conversation to his own uses,
steering it by a circuitous route through the girl's own
experience to Helen.\par

She was liked in the hospital?\par

Indeed she was!  The night nurse was emphatic on
that, and went on to say that beauty such as Helen's was
not generally conducive of popularity.  No, it wasn't
jealousy!  The nurse tossed her head at his question.
Simply that pretty girls didn't have to be nice, so usually
left amiability to be assumed with a double chin; and
being a frank as well as a merry creature, she confessed
to an accession of that desirable quality every time she
saw her own nose in a glass.  But Helen Morrill?  She
was sweet as she was pretty!\par

Dr. Carruthers thought so, too?\par

Well—the nurse would smile!  And everybody in the
hospital was glad of it.  They would make such a perfect
couple, an ideal match!\par

It was as good as settled, then?\par

Well—not given out yet, but every one knew!  Her
lantern being on the floor, she could not see his face, and
he lay so quiet she thought he had fallen asleep, and was
tiptoeing away when he spoke again.\par

But—{\itshape{Mrs.}} Morrill?  She had been married before!
Her husband—dead?\par

If he wasn't he ought to be—the nurse was sure of that.
There was only one place for a man who could not live
with such a nice girl.  And if he were not—divorce was
about as good in ridding one of the beast!  With which
she picked up her lantern and left him in darkness and
despair.  When she came next on her rounds she thought
him asleep, but he resumed his restless tossings as soon
as her back was turned.  Dawn, however, betrayed him,
and sent her flying to the head doctor with his pulse
and temperature.\par

"He was all right last night!" the latter exclaimed.
"Bring his chart down to the office."  Studying it while
he mixed sedatives a little later, he said: "Awake at
midnight—hum!  Talked, did he?  What about?
Mrs. Morrill?"  He snatched truth out of her as though it
had been an appendix.  "Spoke of her and
Dr. Carruthers?—ah! ha!  Well, give him this and send
Mrs. Morrill to me when she comes in."\par

If short, the interview did not lack excitement when,
a couple of hours later, Helen opposed the freshness of
the morning to the Head's angry glare.  Her delicate
colors, the eyes cleared by sleep and full of light, were
enough to have softened the heart of a Gorgon, but
served only to irritate him, who looked upon them as so
much material gone to waste.\par

"What have you done?" he roared after her.  "Look
at that!"  And went on as her distressed eyes came back
from the chart: "You have done nothing—that's the
trouble.  Why did I appoint you to this case?  Because
of your vast experience?  No, because I thought you
could administer something outside of medical practice.
And now he's dying—of jealousy.  You have done it;
you must cure him."  And taking her by the arm as
though she were a medicine-tray, he marched her to
Carter's ward, gave her a shake at the door like a
bottle that is to be "well shaken before taken," and thrust
her in with the parting admonition, "Now, do your duty."\par

Here was an embarrassing position!  Surely never
before had nurse such orders—to administer love, like
a dose, that, forsooth, to a patient who had already
turned his broad back on her charms.  Now did she pay
toll of blushes for the perversity that had checked his
every overture.  How should—how {\itshape{could}} she begin?\par

Pleating and unpleating her apron, she stood at the
foot of his bed, the prettiest picture of perplexity
ever vouchsafed to gaunt, unshaven man.  A week's
stubble did not improve his appearance any more than
his unnatural color, fixed, glazed eyes.  But soon as a
timid glance gave her these—she was on her knees
beside him.\par

"Is that you, Helen?"  Before she could speak he
burst out in a sudden irruption of speech.  "I'm so glad;
there's something I want to tell you."  Then it came, in a
flood that washed away his natural reserve, the
confession—his remorse for his obstinacy, the sorrow that had
tamed his anger, his yearning through weary months for
an overture from her; his ignorance of the settler's
persecution, scorn of scandalous rumors; his attempts to
communicate with and find her; all, down to his
observation of her liking for Carruthers, finishing: "Through
all, my every thought has been of you.  But now—I see.
It was a mistake, our marriage.  It was wrong to
couple roughness with refinement.  So if you wish—"  Her
face was now buried in her arms, and he gently
touched the golden hair.  "Last night I made up my
mind to bring no more misery into your life.  But now
... that I see you ... it is difficult; ... but ... if you
wish—"\par

He got no further, for speech is impossible when a soft
hand stoppers one's mouth.  And while he was thus
effectually gagged, she took a mean advantage: told him
just what she thought of him.  Such a stupid!  A big
man, so very strong, but oh, {\itshape{so}} silly!  Did he really
think that she—any girl—would have waited upon him
in such circumstances unless—  Here she had to release
his mouth to wipe away the streaming tears, and his
question came out like an explosion:\par

"What?"\par

She told him, or, rather, conveyed the information
in the orthodox way with lovers.  This takes time,
and becoming suddenly alive to the fact that he was
sitting up in bed, she resumed her authority to make
him lie down.  In view of his condition she was certainly
justified in using force to compel obedience; but was it
right, was it proper for her, a nurse duly accredited
to the case, to leave her arms about him?  Well, she
did, and—scandalous predicament!—her golden head
was lying beside his on the pillow when the door opened
for the matron, Carruthers, and the Head on their
morning rounds.\par

"Well—I declare!  {\itshape{Fine}} goings on!"\par

Helen's faint cry of dismay was drowned by the
matron's horrified exclamation, but Carter rose to the
situation.  "Miss Craig, doctor—my wife."  He could
not include Carruthers, who retired precipitously, and
was then just outside the door, swallowing hugely in
vain attempts to get what looked like a monstrous pill,
but was really his heart, back to its proper place.\par

"Your what?"  Having the general objections to
matrimony which come with prim old maidhood, the
matron almost screamed: "Good gracious, man!  Couldn't
you have waited till you were sure you wouldn't need a
minister to bury you?"  And she tossed a high head at
his answer.\par

"No, ma'am.  We were that impatient we got married
two years ago."\par

There she slid one in on him with a sniff of disdain.
"Two years!  Imph!  One would never have thought
it.  And just look at this ward!  Doctors' rounds and
ward unswept, bed unmade; I doubt whether you've
had your medicine!  I'll send up another nurse at once.
As for you, Mrs.—Carter"—she paused, flouncing out
of the door—"you are—"\par

She intended "discharged," but the head doctor
interposed twinkling glasses between Helen and destruction.
"She was merely giving treatment according to orders."\par

How the matron stared!  "Treatment?  Orders?
Whose orders, pray?"\par

"Mine."\par

Her response as she bustled away, "Has every one
gone mad!" set them all smiling, and Carter's remark,
"A bit too long in the oven," eloquently described her
crustiness.\par

But if long study of people from interior views had
left the matron purblind as to outward signs, sympathies,
and emotions, she was not so short-sighted but
that she came to a full stop at the sight of Carruthers,
who stood, hands clinched, like a naughty boy, face to
the wall.\par

"You poor man!"  But though her tone was gentle
as her touch on his shoulder, he threw her hand fiercely
away and strode off uttering an unmistakable "damn."\par

"Another lunatic!" she tartly commented, and was
confirmed in that flattering opinion when, instead of
pining in romantic fashion, he fell in love again and
married a sweet girl the following summer.\par

Left thus alone in the case, the head doctor nodded
his satisfaction at the patient's decided improvement,
while his further instructions were short as
pleasant—"Same treatment, continued at intervals."\par

These orders, be sure, were faithfully observed.
Indeed, he had scarcely passed out than—but the next
hour is their's, intrusion would be impertinent.
Sufficient that its confidences left each possessed of the
other's every thought and feeling throughout their
separation.\par

Her eyes dancing, she broke a happy silence to say:
"You were dreadfully transparent.  Did you really
think I couldn't see through your misbehavior?"  Then
she told of how Dorothy had confided to her his appeal
to Hart and efforts at self-improvement.  "But," she
added, with a sigh that was almost plaintive, "I wouldn't
have cared."\par

Also she told him of her proud espionage upon him at
the general manager's dinner; in return for which she
learned how he had waited at the forks of his own trail
that winter's night—waited while his ponies shivered in
the bitter wind until he picked hers and Elinor Leslie's
voices from the groan of passing runners.\par

She remembered.  "Oh, was that you?  Why didn't
you come in?"\par

"I would—at least I think I would have," he
corrected, "if you'd been alone.  By-the-way, I saw her
in Minneapolis the other day.  She was taking an order
from a fat Frenchman in a restaurant where Smythe and
I had turned in for dinner.  Luckily her back was
turned, so we got out without her seeing me.  But I
caught her profile and she looked dreadfully weak and
thin."\par

"A waitress?" Helen cried.  "Oh, the poor thing!
Couldn't you have—"  Pausing, she confirmed his
wisdom.  "No, it was better she did not see you."\par

Silence fell between them, he thinking of the
temptation in the warm gloaming, she busy with her own
memories.  Helen's watch beat like a pulse in the quiet;
a house-fly rivalled the full boom of a bee as it battered
its head against the window-pane, a futile illustration of
Elinor Leslie's folly.  Just so had she beaten at the
invisible barriers that held her back from free passion.
Now she lay, poor soul, bruised and beaten like a dying
moth, wings singed by a single touch of the unholy flame.\par

But sadness could not hold them.  Smiling, Helen
suddenly relieved herself of the astonishing remark:
"I am so glad you are ruined.  Yes, I am."  She nodded
firmly, misreading his comical surprise.  "Now we can
go back to the farm—just you and I—be ever so happy."\par

"Why?"  He listened with huge enjoyment to her
explanation, then said, with mock concern, "It would
be fine, and I'm that sorry to disappoint you, but—who
said I was ruined?"\par

"Oh, everybody—the papers said this morning that—what
is that funny name?  Yes, Mr. Brass Bowels—that
he had bought up enough of your liabilities to snow
you under."\par

"They did, did they?  Well—they have another
guess coming."\par

"Aren't you ruined?" she asked.\par

But though he laughed at her naïve distress, he
refused to say more, laughingly assuring her that she
would not be long in suspense.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Nor had she long to wait.  For as she was giving him
his medicine the following afternoon, he bobbed up under
her hand as though set on wire springs to the detriment
of the snowy quilt, which absorbed the dose.\par

"Listen!"\par

A whistle, deep-toned, fully two octaves below the
shrill hoot of the monopoly's locomotives, thrilled in the
distance.  Drawing nearer, its vibrant bass gave the
entire city pause—clerks waited, pens poised for a
stroke; lawyers dropped their briefs; store-keepers,
laborers, mechanics, the very Indians in the camps by
the river, stood on gaze; motion ceased as at the voice
of the falked siren; a hush fell in the streets, a silence
complete as that of some enchanted city.\par

It carried consternation into the offices of the monopoly,
that whistle.  Sparks, the division superintendent,
dropped his pen and stared at his chief, who was giving
last orders for the demolition of Greer \& Smythe before
he went back East.  The latter's iron nerve, however,
vouchsafed only a breathing space to surprise, then he
continued in the same dry tones: "Previous instructions
are hereby cancelled.  That's an American whistle,
Sparks—Jem Ball for a thousand.  They've won out;
it's all over but the shouting."  And as eager tumult
broke loose in the street, he added, "And there it goes."\par

The shouting?  They poured into the streets—doctors,
lawyers, clerks, laborers; carpenters jumped from new
buildings, plumbers left their braziers burning while they
swelled the stream that poured out to see the first train,
an engine with Pullman and palace-car, pull in over the
new line.\par

Shout?  They did—and more.  Your canny Canadian
is the deil at celebrating when his backslidings carry him
that way, and next morning many a worthy citizen
sweated in thinking back to the cause of his headache.
Ay, good church-members lugged flasks of old Scotch
from blameless-appearing pockets; the carpenter
exchanged news and drams with the millionaire.  The
N.P. had bought the new road!  No, only leased it!
No! no! they were merely to finance the enterprise,
market its bonds in return for reciprocal traffic
arrangements!  There were other theories, all spun round a germ
of truth, but thence to the source.\par

As the siren sounded the second time, Carter looked
at Bender, who sat opposite Helen, having dropped in
for a chat, and his remark carries back to the strike.
"Now you know why we went to Minneapolis.  What
does it all mean?"  His face lit up as he turned to Helen.
"It means cars, locomotives, rolling-stock; the use of
N.P. equipment till we can instal our own.  That we
can rebuild the burned bridges this fall, and shove a
temporary line through to Silver Creek and the camps
in the Riding Mountains.  It means that the Red
River Valley will send its wheat south to Duluth this
fall.  It means—victory for us, competition for the
province."\par

That was his hour, but Helen shared it—even when
Greer and Smythe ushered in the American railway-king.
Twin to the general manager in massive build
and strength of feature, he had come from a softer mould.
His eyes, mouth were gentler, more pleasant.  In him
the high, sloping forehead—mark of the dreamer—was
qualified by the strong jaw, wide-spaced eyes of the man
of practical affairs.  A glance told that here imagination
and constructive power went hand in hand.  Fun
rippled and ran over innumerable fine facial lines, and he
laughed out loud when Helen made to withdraw, assuring
her that their conversation would not tax her sex's
supposed weakness in the matter of secrets as they were not
to talk business.\par

"We think too much of this man to bother him with
details," he said.  "These gentlemen have attended to
everything, and all we require is his signature to a few
papers.  Celebrations won't be in order till he's well
enough to run down to St. Paul.  Then—well, you'd
better not let him come alone."  So, talking and laughing
for a pleasant half-hour, he gave off his superabundant
energy until the ward was charged, then went away
leaving the patient stimulated to the verge of open
mutiny.\par

"I'm as well as you."  He defied the Head to his face
that evening.  "Send up my clothes."\par

"In two weeks, if you are good!" the Head calmly
answered.\par

"{\itshape{Two weeks}}?  I'll be head over heels in work by
then, and there is something I want to do first.  I'll be
out of here in one."  And, albeit a trifle chalky as to
complexion and wobbly of knee, he was.  On the last
day—\par

But first the record of that week; and as Bender's bulk
overshadows all else, behold him, mid-week, hobbling into
the ward with Jenny trailing behind like a kitten in the
wake of the family house dog.\par

"Mrs. Bender, if you please," he corrected Carter,
chuckling; and for once he permitted some one else to
do the blushing.  Wherein he showed great taste, as
she did it right prettily, exhibiting, moreover, a much
superior article.\par

Next day, Dorothy, becomingly mortified because
the good news had come to her through her father out of
Smythe.  "To hear of it in such a roundabout way!"
she declared.  "You little traitor! and when I think of
your speculations about his wife!  Positively I had
resolved never to forgive you, but—"  Kisses, of course.\par

Thereafter, Brady, Big Hans, Carrots Smith—all more
or less singed and nursing various breakages—ostensibly
to see the boss, really to take a look at his pretty wife,
whom, they decided, shamed the specifications.\par

Then, to everybody's astonishment—indeed, the
Head shadowed the man along the corridor as though
he were an anarchist with a bomb in his pocket—the
{\itshape{General Manager}}! brisk, steel-like, yet twinkling.
"Trounced us, didn't you?" he laughed.  "Well, one
never can tell when one has made an end.  Competition?
Perhaps, for a while; but wait till Jem Ball and I get a
bellyful of fighting.  However, by that time you'll be
well cured of your desires for the public weal and be
ready to listen to reason.  Oh yes, you will!  We all
take 'em like chicken-pox or measles, but they are not
fatal—unless you get 'em late in life.  I feel so sure of
your eventual recovery that I just dropped in to bury
the hatchet.  Fifty years won't see the finish of our
plans, and whenever you feel a yearning for fresh
enterprises, just look me up."\par

Therewith the gray cynic hurried away to plan and
scheme, upbuild, tear down, without slack or satiety of
enormous constructive appetite; to live in travail greater
than the labor of woman, and give birth ceaselessly to
innumerable works; to inundate the plains with seas of
wheat and carry bread to Europe's teeming millions; to
sow towns, villages, cities broadcast over the north,
make farms for countless thousands; to join Occident
and Orient with gleaming rails, clipper ships, to do evil
consciously all his days and work unconscious good,
crushing the individual for the weal of the race, and
caring nothing for either; to live feared and die respected,
leaving the world bigger and better than he found it.\par

Lastly, the cook, just down from the camp with news
of Michigan Red.  Flying in front of the fire, the black
stallion had come in with the rat-tailed mare to be shot
as a murderer after the Cree had tracked down the Thing
that had been his master; and so, if there be aught in
Cree mythology, the soul of the fierce brute would fight
it out once more with the fiercer man in the place of the
teamsters.\par

While beguiling the tedium, these tales and conversations
failed to exclude from Carter's ear a distant hammering
that attended the building of his station and
freight-sheds.  Also he could hear the hoarse coughing of
locomotives going up and down his line.  And as the
{\itshape{materia medica}} contains no tonics like happiness and
success, small wonder that, as aforesaid, he demanded
his clothes at the end of the week.\par

"Once you get hold of a fellow you are never satisfied
till you have gone all through his clock-work," he replied
to the Head's objections.  "But though I sympathize
with your industry, you'll have to wait for another go
at mine.  They are needed in my business."\par

First—Helen with him, of course—he directed his
steps, or rather the wheels of a hack, to the new station
where the ring of saws, hammering, noise and bustle of
work, acted upon him like the draught of the elixir of
life, bringing color to his cheeks, stiffness to his knees,
sparkle to his eyes.  Thence they drove for a conference
to Greer \& Smythe's; whereafter nothing would suit
him but a long drive out to the prairies.  It was a
strenuous beginning, but fresh air and sunshine are ever
potent.  He gained color and strength under her anxious
eyes; seemed fresher when he dropped her at Jean Glaves's
house that evening than in the morning.\par

Throughout the happy day they had lived in the
present.  But though he had made no plan for the
future, she had trusted, and her face lit up with flashing
intuition when he said good-night.\par

"Mistress Morrill, you are to take the morning train
to Lone Tree."\par

This was the "something he wanted to do."\par

\label{the-trail-again}%
\hypertarget{the-trail-again}{}%
{}

\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
{\bfseries{{\Large\strut{XXXII}}}}
\endgraf}
\par

{\centering
{\bfseries{{\normalsize THE TRAIL AGAIN}}}}
\endgraf}
\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Skipping that long if happy night, peep with dawn
into Helen's bedroom, and see her up and singing
small snatches of song that presently brought Jean
Glaves, herself the earliest of birds, from bed to assist
at the toilet.  Should she wear this, that, or the other?
There was the usual doubt which beset a young lady who
wishes to look her best for occasion; but the result
that went forth from big Jean's hug?  A vision of
healthy beauty that drew tentative smiles from a brace
of drummers and attracted the stealthy regard of the
entire station when she finally broke, like a burst of
sunlight, on the platform.  Continuing the figure, the smile,
its crowning asset, faded like the afterglow when her
anxious eyes refused her the tall familiar figure; and
when the train pulled out without him, her disconsolate
expression filled the aforesaid drummers with manly
longings towards consolation.\par

Unpunctual?  On such an occasion?  And how silly
she would look at Lone Tree!  Slightly offended at first,
she then grew alarmed.  Perhaps he had suffered a
relapse, was ill, dying!  Be sure that her terrors
compassed the possible and impossible during an hour's
journey, and not until she saw a man come dashing across
the tracks to the Lone Tree platform did she realize the
fulness of his inspiration.  He had taken the freight out
the night before!  If thinner, paler, he was very like
the young man who had come to meet her three years ago.
There, also, was the lone poplar that had christened the
station; the ramshackle town with its clapboard hotels,
false-fronted stores, grain-sheds, sitting in the midst of
the plains that, flat and infinitely yellow, ran with the
tracks over a boundless horizon.  Lastly, there was Nels
and his bleached grin, holding Death and the Devil,
sleek, fat, and sinful as ever.\par

Carter's whispered greeting helped to keep her in the
past.  "Is this Miss Morrill?"\par

"Mr. Carter, I believe?" she had just time for the
roguish answer, then their little comedy had to be laid
aside till they were alone on trail.  For the doctor came
running from his office, the store-keeper plunged madly
across tracks, Hooper, the agent, yelled, "Well, I swan!"
and jumped to shake hands, while from a grain-shed
emerged Jimmy Glaves, who had taken a lift in with Nels.\par

Wasn't she glad to see them?  Yet a deeper happiness
enveloped her when, looking back, she again saw Lone
Tree, shrunken in the distance, its grain-sheds looking
like red Noah's arks on a yellow carpet; when she heard
only the pole and harness jigging a merry accompaniment
to the beat of quick feet, whirring song of swift
wheels.\par

It was very like that first occasion.  Though stiff
night frosts were now giving timely notice of winter's chill
approach, the clerk of the weather had made special
arrangements for a south wind; so it was warm as on
that far day.  Birds, animals, scenery, too, all helped to
bring the happy past forward to the happy present, while
Death and the Devil, those wicked ones, fostered the
illusion by frequent boltings.  Surely she remembered the
ridge where her first coyote had caused her to cling to
Carter, and earned a kiss by repetition of that shameful
performance and faithful mimicry of his accent.  "He
shore looks hungry."  Immediately thereafter they
plunged out from among scattered farms into the "Dry
Lands," but its yellow miles, generally a penance, flowed
unnoticed under the buck-board.  They were both
astonished when, suddenly as before, they rattled through
a bluff and dropped over the edge of the valley upon
Father Francis at the mission door.\par

Nothing would suit but that they must dine with him
while Louis, the half-breed stableman, fed and watered
the ponies.  But if the good priest's twinkle expressed
knowledge that another of his day's works was come to
fruitage, his quiet converse brought no jarring note into
their communings.\par

Undisturbed, they began again at the ford and continued
while the Park Lands rolled in great billows under
the wheels.  The Cree chimneys, Indian graveyards,
other well-remembered objects passed in pleasant
procession ere, coming to Flynn's, he looked at her.  A
shake of the head confirmed his doubt.  Another time!
So they swept on through vast, sun-washed spaces where
cattle wandered freely as the whispering winds under
flitting cloud-shadows, and so, about sundown, came to
their own place with but a single interruption.\par

Passing Danvers at their own forks, he grinned his
delight as he turned out to let them by and shouted after:
"Say!  I heard from Leslie!  He's doing well on the
Rand!  Sends regards to both of you!"\par

While that bit of good news was still ringing in her
ears, the house flashed out under the eaves of the forest,
warm and bright under the setting sun.  All was
unchanged—the lake, stained just now a ruby red, the
golden stubble fenced in by dark, environing woods.
Within all was neat and clean as Nels's racial passion for
soap and water could make it.  So while he stabled the
tired ponies, she donned one of her old aprons, rolled
sleeves above dimpled elbows, and cooked supper;
rather a superfluous performance aside from the grave
pleasure he took in looking on.\par

Afterwards they sat on the doorstep, she between his
knees, head pillowed against his breast, and looked
at the copper moon that hung in the trees across the
lake—watched it brighten to silver; listened to the
harmonies of the night, the loon's weird alto, the
bittern's bass, cry of a pivoting mallard, owl's solemn
choral, a wilder, freer movement than was ever chained
in a stave.  Once a snuffle, soft-lapping, drifted in, and
he replied to her start, "Bear-drinking."  Otherwise
they were silent up to the moment she arose, shivering.\par

"It is getting colder.  I think I'll go in."\par

He stayed a little longer, stretched luxuriously out on
the grass; was still there when, having made their bed,
she came to the door.  A vivid memory gave her pause.
Just so had he looked—that night—dark, still, as the
marble effigy of some old Crusader, with the moonlight
quivering about him like an emanation.\par

"Are you coming, dear?"  Perhaps the memory
tinged her tone.  Anyway, he sprang up, arms extended,
and as she came running, he lifted her clear of the ground;
carried her in and closed the door.\par


\vs{2}
{\noindent}%
Her shiver had warrant.  Within the hour the north
wind began to herd luminous clouds across the moon.
At midnight the cabin loomed darkly through a bridal
veil of white.\par


\vs{4}
{\noindent}%
{\centering
THE END
\endgraf}
\par


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