He did not know how long he remained in the doorway, but by degrees the stillness became oppressive, and at last he started as a sound rose suddenly out of the darkness. It was a faint, metallic rattle, and he leaned forward a little, listening in strained attention. The noise was so unexpected that it jarred on him.
Then he recollected that some of his neighbors were addicted to dumping empty provision cans and similar refuse into a clump of willows which straggled close up to the back of the town not far away, and he decided that one of them had fallen down or rolled over. After that he went back to his table, leaving the door open for the sake of coolness, and he was once more occupied with his papers when he heard a sharp knocking at the front of the store. Pushing his chair back he took out his watch. Somebody who was going west by the train that was almost due apparently desired to see him, though it seemed a curious thing that the man had not called earlier. He rose and entered the store, where he fell against the projecting handle of a plow in the darkness. This ruffled his temper, and he spent some time impatiently fumbling for and undoing the fastenings of the outer door. Then he flung it open somewhat violently, and strode out into the darkness. There was, so far as he could see, nobody in the vicinity, and when, moving forward a few paces he called out, he got no answer.
Feeling slightly uneasy as well as astonished, he stood still for, perhaps, a minute, gazing about him. He could dimly see the houses across the street, with the tall false fronts of one or two cutting black against the sky, but there was not a light in any of them, and there was certainly no sound of footsteps. He was neither a nervous nor a fanciful man, and it scarcely seemed possible that his ears had deceived him. Swinging around suddenly, he went back into the store and fastened the outer door before he reentered his office. The door at the back of the office and the safe stood open just as he had left them. Crossing the room he looked into the safe.
As a rule, a man's possessions are as secure in a small prairie town as they would be in, for example, London or Montreal, but Nevis seldom kept much money in his safe. He usually made his collections after harvest, and remitted the proceeds to a bank in Winnipeg. A small iron cash-box, however, occupied one shelf, and it was at once evident that this had not been touched, which seemed to prove that nobody with dishonest intentions had entered the place in his absence. This was satisfactory, but a few moments later it struck him that one of the bundles of docketed papers was not lying exactly where he had last placed it. He could not be quite sure of this, though he was methodical in his habits, and he took the bundle up and examined it. The tape around it was securely tied and the papers did not seem to have been disturbed. Besides this, they were in no sense marketable securities.
He laid them down again and closed the safe. Then, locking the outer door behind him, he proceeded through the silent town toward the track. As he did so the clanging of a locomotive bell broke through a slackening clatter of wheels, and when after a smart run he reached the station, hot and somewhat breathless, the lights of the long train were just sliding out of it. He strode up to the agent, who stood in the doorway of his office shack with a lantern in his hand.
"Did anybody get on board?" he asked.
"No," replied the agent. "Nobody got off, either. Did you expect to catch up any one?"
"I fancied somebody called at the store a few minutes ago. It occurred to me that the man might want to leave some message and had forgotten it until he was going to catch the train."
"I guess it must have been a delusion," remarked the agent.
Nevis had almost arrived at the same conclusion. He waited a few minutes, and then they walked back together through the settlement. The agent left him outside the store, above which he had a room, and dismissing the matter from his mind he went tranquilly to sleep half an hour later.
CHAPTER XIX
THE MORTGAGE DEED
Alison was sitting alone in the general living-room of the Farquhar homestead about an hour after breakfast when she laid down her sewing with a start as a man whom she had not heard approaching suddenly appeared in the doorway. He stood there, looking at her with what she felt was a very suspicious curiosity, and there was no doubt that his appearance was decidedly against him. His clothing, which had been rudely patched with cotton flour-bags, was old and stained with soil; his face was hard and grim; and she grew apprehensive under his fixed scrutiny.
"Where's the rest of you?" he asked after an unpleasant silence of a few moments.
Alison felt that it would be singularly injudicious to inform him, and while she hesitated, wondering what to answer, he strode into the room and fell heavily into the nearest chair.
"You'll excuse me," he apologized. "I'm played out."
The signs of weariness were plain on him, and Alison became a little reassured. After all, she remembered, there was nothing of very much value in the homestead; and she had never as yet had any reason to fear the men she had come across upon the prairie. In fact, though one had wanted to marry her offhand, their general conduct compared very favorably with that of one or two whom she had met in English cities.
"Have you come far?" she asked.
"From the railroad – on my feet," answered the man. "I left it about midnight two nights ago, and since then I've only had a morsel of food." Then he smiled at her. "You haven't told me yet where Harry Farquhar and his wife have gone."
It was clear that he had already satisfied himself that they were out, and Alison reluctantly admitted it.
"Mrs. Farquhar has driven over to the bluff," she said. "She took her husband with her, but she was to drop him at the ravine where the birches are. He wanted to cut some poles."
The look of annoyance in the man's face further reassured her, as it implied that he regretted Farquhar's absence almost as much as she had done a few moments earlier.
"It's a sure thing I can't wait till they come back, and the trouble is I can't make Mrs. Calvert's place without a rest, either."
He paused and gazed searchingly at Alison.
"You're Miss Leigh, aren't you? I guess you could be trusted; I've heard of you."
Alison's astonishment was evident, and he smiled.
"It's quite likely," he added dryly, "that you've heard of me. My name's Jake Winthrop."
Alison sat very still, and it was a moment or two before she spoke.
"What do you want?" she asked.
"Breakfast, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. Then, as Farquhar's out, there's a piece of paper I'd like to give you. Guess it would be safer out of my hands; the police troopers are after me."
Alison set the kettle and frying-pan on the stove. She was compassionate by nature, and the man looked very jaded and weary. When she sat down again he handed her a rather bulky folded paper which appeared to be some kind of legal document.
"What am I to do with this?" she asked.
"You can give it to Farquhar, or keep it and hide it," said the man. "I guess the last would be wisest. Nobody would figure you had the thing, and I can't give it to Lucy, because Nevis would sure get after her."
"Is it very important?"
"It might be. I can't go and ask a lawyer now. Guess the man would feel it was his duty to put Slaney on my trail, and I couldn't go near the settlement in daylight without doing the same. Anyway, it's my mortgage deed, and I have a notion that it might give me a pull on Nevis if the troopers get me. If I'm right, he'll be mighty anxious to get it back again."
"I don't understand," returned Alison. "If he was afraid of your using it against him, he wouldn't have given it to you at all."
Winthrop grinned.
"He didn't. I got him out of his office late at night and crept in for it. I knew where he kept the thing because I'd seen him put it in his safe."
Alison was far from pleased with this confession, but while she considered it another point occurred to her.
"But don't people generally get a duplicate of a paper of this kind?" she asked.
"I had one, but Nevis wanted me to do something that didn't seem quite what we had agreed on, and I went over with the deed to show him he was wrong. He said I'd better leave it, and somehow or other I could never get it out of his hands again."
"Ah," said Alison softly, "I think I wouldn't mind helping you against that man. But you must tell me exactly what you mean to do."
"I'm going across to see Lucy – and out West somewhere after that. If I can get away, and strike anything that will pay me, it's quite likely that I'll leave Nevis alone. If I can't, or there's a reason for it later, I'll write you, and Farquhar or Thorne could take the deed to a lawyer and see if he could get at Nevis with it. In the meanwhile it would be wiser if you just hid the thing away. If Farquhar knows nothing about it, I guess it would save him trouble."
Alison did not answer for a moment or two. She felt that she was acting imprudently in allowing herself to be drawn into the affair, but she was sorry for the man. He was a friend of Thorne's, and that counted for a good deal in his favor. In addition to this, the idea of playing a part, and possibly a leading part, in something of the nature of a complicated drama appealed to her, and there was, half formulated at the back of her mind, the desire to prove to Thorne just what she was capable of.
"Well," she said at length, "you may leave it with me."
Then she set about getting him a meal, and a little while later he limped wearily away. He left her with the impression that it would be wise of Nevis to abandon his pursuit of him, for there was something in the man's manner which indicated that he might prove dangerous if pressed too hard. The morning had slipped away before she could get the thought of him out of her mind.
In the meanwhile, he was plodding across the white wilderness under a scorching sun. The atmosphere was crystallinely clear, and an almost intolerable brightness flooded the wide levels. A birch bluff miles away was etched in clean-cut tracery upon the horizon, but though the weary man kept his eyes sharply open he felt reasonably safe from observation, which it seemed desirable to avoid. He did not believe that any of the scattered farmers would betray him, even if some pressure should be put upon them with the view of extracting information, but it was clear that they would be better able to evade any attempts Nevis or Slaney might make to entrap them into some incautious admission if they had none to impart. Winthrop based this decision on the fact that a man certainly cannot tell what he does not know.
It was consoling to remember that the wide, open prairie is by no means a bad place to hide in. A mounted figure or a team and wagon shows up for a vast distance against the skyline, while a few grass tussocks less than a foot in height will effectually conceal a man who lies down among them with the outline of his body broken by the blades from anybody passing within two or three hundred yards of him. Winthrop was aware, however, that it would be different if he attempted to run away; and once he dropped like a stone when a buggy rose unexpectedly out of a ravine. The man who drove it was an acquaintance of his, but he seemed to gaze right at the spot where Winthrop was stretched out without seeing him. The latter was not disturbed again, but he cast rather dubious glances round him as he resumed his march. There was another long journey in front of him that night, and he did not like the signs of the weather. It struck him as ominously clear.
He was, as it happened, not the only person who noticed this, for other people who had at different times suffered severely in pocket from the vagaries of the climate had arrived at much the same opinion that afternoon, with more or less uneasiness according to their temperament. The wheat was everywhere standing tall and green, and the season had been on the whole so propitious that from bitter experience they almost expected a change. As the small cultivator has discovered, the simile of a beneficent nature is a singularly misleading one, for the stern truth was proclaimed in ages long ago that man must toil with painful effort for the bread he eats, and must subdue the earth before he can render it fruitful. In the new West he has made himself many big machines, including the great gang-plows that rip their multiple furrows through the prairie soil, but he still lies defenseless against the fickle elements.
Elcot Hunter, at least, was anxious that night as he sat in the general living-room of his homestead opposite his wife. She was not greatly interested in the book she held, and she glanced at him now and then as he sat poring over a newspaper which was noted for its crop and market reports. They afforded Hunter very little satisfaction, for they made it clear that the West would produce enough wheat that season to flood an already lifeless market.
The windows of the room were open wide, and the smell of sun-baked soil damped by the heavy dew came in with the sound made by the movements of a restless horse or two. The fall of hoofs appeared unusually distinct. The wooden house, which had lain baking under a scorching sun all day, was still very hot, but the faint puffs of air which flowed in were delightfully cool, and at length Florence, who was very lightly clad, shivered as one that was stronger than the rest lifted a sheet of Hunter's paper.
"It is positively getting cold," she remarked.
"Cold?" returned Hunter. "I wouldn't call it that."
He resumed his reading, and three or four minutes had slipped by when Florence turned to him with irritation in her manner.
"Haven't you anything to say, Elcot?" she broke out. "Are those crop statistics so very fascinating?"
Hunter looked up at her with a rather grim smile. She lay in a low cane chair beneath the lamp, with her figure falling into long sweeping lines, attired in costly fripperies lately purchased in the East, but there was not the least doubt that they became her. Indeed, with the satiny whiteness of her neck and arms half revealed beneath the gauzy draperies, and her hair gleaming lustrously about a face that had been carefully shielded from the ravages of the weather, she seemed strangely out of place in the primitively furnished room of a western homestead. The man noticed it, as he had done on other occasions, with a pang of regret. There had been a time when he had expected her to rejoice in his successes and console him in his defeats, and it had hurt when she had made it clear that any reference to his occupation only irritated her. He had got over that, as he had borne other troubles, with an uncomplaining quietness, and, though she had never suspected this, he had often felt sorry for her. Still, he was a man of somewhat unyielding character, and there was occasionally friction when he did what he considered most fitting, in spite of her protests.
"Well," he said in answer to her question, "they have, anyway, some interest to a farmer who has a good deal at stake." He threw the paper down. "Things in general aren't very promising, and I may be rather tightly fixed after the harvest. I seem to have been spending a great deal of money lately."
Florence felt guilty. After all, as she was the principal cause of his expenses, it was generous of him to put it as he had done. Indeed, she decided to make a confession about the loan from Nevis sometime when he appeared to be in an unusually favorable mood.
"You have a splendid crop, haven't you?" she asked.
"The trouble is that I may not get much for it, and a wheat crop is never quite safe until it's thrashed out. I'm uncertain about the weather."
"The aneroid has gone up; I looked at it."
"It's gone up too much and too suddenly," said Hunter. "That sometimes means a bad outbreak from the north."
Florence was moved by a sudden impulse. The man was bronzed and toughened by labor, but there was, as she had noticed since she came home, a jaded look in his face.
"Elcot," she asked, "do you think I oughtn't to have gone away?"
The man seemed to consider this.
"No," he answered, "I don't think that, so long as you were able to manage it with the little help I could give you." He paused a moment, and looked puzzled, for there was a suspicion of heightened color in Florence's face. "On the whole, I'm glad you went, if you enjoyed the visit."
"You don't seem very sure. Wasn't it rather dull for you here?"
It was, so far as he could remember, the first time she had displayed any interest on this point, and he smiled.
"Oh, I had the place to look after, as usual. It's fortunate that it occupies a good deal of my attention."
Florence leaned forward suddenly.
"Elcot, won't you tell me exactly how much you mean by that?"
It was a moment or two before Hunter answered.
"Well," he said gravely, "since you have suggested it, perhaps I better had, though it means the dragging in of questions we've talked over quite often already. I took up farming because I couldn't stand the cities and it seemed the thing I was most fitted for. On that point I haven't changed my opinions. Where I did wrong was in marrying you." He checked her with a lifted hand as she was about to speak. "If you had never met me, you would probably have taken the next man with means who came along."
"Yes," admitted Florence, meeting his gaze. "I think that's true. Having gone so far, hadn't you better proceed?"
"I'm trying to look at it from your standpoint; I've never been sorry on my own account."
Florence laughed in a strained fashion.
"That's a little difficult to believe. Still, one must do you the justice to own that you have, at least, never mentioned your regrets."
"I don't think I've often mentioned my expectations either. That's one reason I'm speaking now. You seem – approachable – to-night."
"I suppose they were not fulfilled?"
"If they were not, it was my own fault. I took you out of the environment you were suited to and content with."
"I wasn't," Florence declared sharply. "Things were horribly unpleasant to me then. I was struggling desperately to earn a living, and had to put up with a good deal from most disagreeable people."
Again a faint, grim smile crept into her husband's eyes.
"After all, perfect candor is a little painful now and then; but let me go on. At least, I brought you into an environment with which you were not content. The kind of life I led was irksome to you; you could not help me in it; even to hear me talk of what I did each day was burdensome to you. I couldn't speak of my plans for the future, or the difficulties that must be met and faced continually. For a while I felt it badly."
"Yes," Florence acknowledged, "it must have been hard on you, Elcot."
"It could be borne, but there was another side of the matter. It was clear that you were longing for company, stir, gaiety – and I could not give them to you. As I've often said, I'm not rich enough to make a mark in any of the cities, unless I went into business, for which I've neither the training nor inclination, and most of my money is sunk in the land here. It's difficult to sell a farm of this size for anything like its value unless wheat is dear. Besides, the friends you would wish to make wouldn't take to me. That is certain; I lived among people of their description before I met you. I couldn't in any way have helped you to make yourself a leading place in the only kind of society that would satisfy you. All this has stood between us – no doubt it was unavoidable – but it made the troubles I could share with no one a little worse to bear, and my few successes of less account to me. After all, since I could, at least, send you to the cities now and then, it was fortunate that I had my farm." He stopped a moment and added deprecatingly: "Whether you will be able to get away next winter is more than I know. As I said, the outlook is far from promising in the meanwhile."
Florence did not answer immediately. At last, she could clearly grasp the man's point of view. Indeed, she realized that during the few years they had lived together she had taken all he had to offer and had given practically nothing in return. She felt almost impelled to tell him that her last visit to the cities had brought her very little pleasure, and that she would be willing to spend the next winter with him at the lonely homestead; but she could not do so. A surrender of any kind was difficult to her, and she had by degrees built up a barrier of reserve between them that could not immediately be thrown down. Besides, there was in the background the memory of Nevis's loan.
"Things may look better by and by," she said lamely.
Neither of them spoke for a few minutes, and it seemed to Florence that the room grew perceptibly colder, while once or twice a little puff of air struck with a sudden chill upon her face. Then there was a sharp drumming, which ceased again abruptly, upon the shingled roof, and she followed Hunter when he strode out on the veranda. An impenetrable darkness now overhung most of the sky, and there was a wild beat of hoofs as three or four invisible horses dashed across the paddock. Florence knew that the beasts were young, and understood that they were valuable. Her husband moved toward the steps.
"I'll put them into the stable, or, if I can't manage that, turn them out on the prairie," he said. "I'm afraid of the new fence. They're not accustomed to it yet, and there are two barbed strands in it."
"Take one of the hired men with you," Florence called after him, but he made no answer, and the next moment a mad beat of hoofs once more broke out as the uneasy horses galloped furiously back across the fenced-in space.