The Homesteaders Part 9

"That ain't what I asked you. You can't make steam with sorrow. What have you been foolin' about?"

"I haven't been fooling. As to what delayed me--well, you're delaying me now. Better jump on and ride up with me."

"So you won't tell me, eh? You think you can do what you like with my team and my time, and it's none of my business. We'll see whose business it is."

Harris came threateningly toward the wagon, but was met only by the imperturbable smile of his hired man. He thrust his foot on a spoke of the wheel and prepared to spring on to the tank, but at that moment the horses stirred and his foot slipped. Seeing that the farmer was about to fall Travers seized him by the collar of his s.h.i.+rt, but in so doing he leaned and lost his own balance, when the weight of the falling man came upon him, and the two tumbled on to the gra.s.s in each other's arms.

Allan, having satisfied himself that the engine would take no harm, had followed his father, and came over the crest of the ridge above the coulee just in time to see Jim apparently strike his employer and the two struggling on the gra.s.s together. In an instant the young man's hot blood was in his head; he rushed forward, and just as Jim had risen to his knees he struck him a stinging blow in the face that measured him again in the gra.s.s.

It was only for an instant. Travers sprang to his feet, a red line slowly stretching down his cheek as he did so. Allan came upon him swinging a tremendous blow at the jaw; but Jim guarded skilfully, and answered with a smash from the shoulder straight on the chin, which laid his adversary's six feet prostrate before him.

Allan rose slowly, sober but determined, and for a moment it looked as though a battle royal were to be fought on the spot, both men strong, lean, rigid, hard as iron, and quick as steel; Allan angry, careful, furious; Jim calm, confident, and still smiling. But Harris rushed between them and seized his son by the arms.

"Stop it, Allan; stop, I say. You mustn't fight. Jim didn't hit me--I'll say that for him. Now quit it. As for you" (turning to Jim), "I'm sorry for this, but you have yourself to blame. I'll give you one more chance to answer me--what kept you?"

"I don't choose to answer," was Jim's reply, spoken in the most casual tone. His eye was rapidly closing where Allan's blow had fallen on it, but his white teeth still glistened behind a smile.

"All right," said Harris. "You can go to the house and tell Mrs.

Harris to pay you what is coming." And the farmer climbed on to the wagon and took the reins himself.

When Jim entered the kitchen he was received with astonishment by Mrs. Harris and Beulah. "Why, whatever has happened?" they exclaimed.

"Has there been an accident? You're hurt!"

But Jim smiled, and said: "No accident at all. I have merely decided to go homesteading." And he went up the stairs to pack his belongings.

CHAPTER VIII

INTO THE NIGHT

Harris and Allan drove straight to the engine, never looking back to see what became of the hired man. On the way the farmer explained to his son what had taken place; that words had pa.s.sed between them, but no blows had been struck, until Allan appeared on the scene.

"Well, if that's the way of it, I'm sorry I hit him," said the young man, frankly, "and when I see him I'll tell him so. I plugged him a good one, didn't I?--though, to be honest, he was hardly on his feet.

But he sure landed me a stem-winder on the chin," he continued, ruefully rubbing that member, "so I guess we're about even."

"He might 've broke your neck," said Harris. "You're too hot-headed, both of you...I can't make out what got into Jim, that he wouldn't answer a civil question. Jim was a good man, too." Perhaps the disturbing suggestion entered Harris's mind that the question had been none too civil, and he was really beginning to feel that after all Jim might be the aggrieved party. But he crushed down such mental sedition promptly. "It don't matter how good a man he was," he declared, "as long as I pay the piper I'm goin' to call the tune."

"It puts us up against it for a water-man, though," said Allan, thoughtfully.

"So it does," admitted Harris, who up to that moment had not reflected that his hasty action in dismissing Travers would result in much more delay than anything else that had occurred. "Well, we'll have to get somebody else. We'll manage till noon, and then you better ride over to Grant's or Mormon's. They'll be able to lend a man or one of the boys for a day or two." It was significant that although Harris was planning a considerable venture with Riles, when he wanted a favour his thought instinctively turned to his other neighbours, Grant and Morrison.

At noon Jim's chair was vacant, and the family sat down to dinner amid a depressing silence. No mention was made of the morning's incident until the meal was well advanced, when Harris, feeling that he ought in some way to introduce the subject, said: "Is Jim gone?"

"Yes, he's gone," blazed Beulah. "You didn't expect he'd wait to kiss you good-bye, did you?"

"One in the family is enough for that treatment," put in Allan, whose swollen chin and stiff neck still bia.s.sed him against Travers.

"He didn't, either. And if he did it's none of your business, you big--"; she looked her brother straight in the face, her swollen eyes telling their own story, and repeated deliberately, "you big coward."

Allan bit his lip. "You're about the only person, Beulah, that could say that and get off with whole skin. I suppose he told you I hit him before he was on his feet."

"Well, he didn't. He didn't say you hit him at all, but he couldn't deny it, so we knew the truth. And we knew you must have taken some mean advantage, or you'd never have got near enough to leave a mark on him."

"Jim's quite a hero, all right. It's too bad he's gone."

"It's a good job he's gone," said Harris. "By the way Beulah talks things have gone far enough. I don't want my daughter marrying a farmer."

"Her grandmother's daughter did," said Mary Harris.

"Yes, I know, but things are different now. I look for something better for Beulah."

It was characteristic of Harris, as of thousands of others, that, although a farmer himself, he looked for "something better" for his daughter. He was resigned to Allan being a farmer; his intimate, daily relations.h.i.+p with his son shrank from, any possibility of separation. But for his daughter--no. He had mapped out no career for her; she might marry a doctor, lawyer, merchant, tradesman, even a minister, but not a farmer. It is a peculiarity of the agriculturist that, among all professions, he holds his own in the worst repute. As a cla.s.s he has educated himself to believe that everybody else makes an easy living off the farmer, and, much as he may revile the present generation for doing so, he is anxious that his children should join in the good picking. In later years has come a gradually broadening conception that farming, after all, calls for brain as well as muscle, and that the man who can wrestle a successful living from Nature has as much right to hold up his head in the world as the experimenter in medicine or the lawyer playing hide-and-seek with Justice through the cracks in the Criminal Code. Herein is a germ of the cityward migration: the farmer himself is looking for "something better" for his children.

"Jim was a good man," persisted his wife. "Don't you think you were--well, perhaps, a little hasty with him?"

Harris sat back. It was his wife's business to agree. For twenty years and more she had been faithful in the discharge of that duty.

That she should suggest an opinion out of harmony with his indicated a lack of discipline, not very serious, perhaps, but a seed which, if permitted to flourish, might develop to dangerous proportions.

"So you're goin' to take his part, too? It's a strange thing if I can't handle my hired help without advice from the house."

Mary flushed at the remark. Any open quarrel with her husband, especially before the children--for she still thought of the man and woman to her left and right as "the children"--was more painful to her than, any submission could have been. It would be so much easier to change the subject, to follow the line of least resistance, and forget the incident as quickly as possible. That had been her constant policy after the first few years of their married life. At first there had been troubles and difficulties, but she had gradually adjusted herself to her niche, and their lives had run smoothly together because she never interrupted the current of his. But of late the conviction had been coming home to her that some time, somewhere, she must make a stand. It was all very well meekly to fall in line as long as only her own happiness was concerned, but if the future of her children should be at stake, or if the justice of their dealings with others should be the issue, then she would have to fight, and fight it out to a finish. And, quite unbidden, a strange surge of defiance welled in her when her husband so frankly told her to mind her own business.

"I was under the impression we were managing this farm together, you and I, John," she said, very calmly, but with a strange ring in her voice. "When we came West I understood it was to build _our_ home. I didn't know it was just to be _your_ home."

The look of surprise with which Harris greeter her words was absolutely genuine. A hot, stinging retort sprang to his lips, but by a sudden effort he suppressed it. His wife's challenge, quiet, unruffled, but with evidence of unbending character behind it, in some way conjured something out of the past, and he saw her again, the greying locks restored to their youthful glory and the careworn cheek abloom with the colour of young maidenhood as they had been in the gathering shadows that night when they swore to build their own home, and live their own lives, and love each other, always, only, for ever and ever...And yet, to let her defiance go unchecked, to have his authority challenged before his own children--it would be the beginning of dissolution, the first crumblings of collapse.

"We will talk about that some other time, Mary," he said. "If Jim had answered my question fairly, as he had a right to, instead of beatin'

around the bush, I might 've let him off. But when I wanted to know what kept him he simply parried me, makin' a fool of me and rubbin'

it in with that infernal smile of his."

"So that's what started it!" exclaimed Beulah. "Well, I'll tell you what kept him, if he wouldn't. The cattle got into the oats through a break in the fence, and I couldn't get them out, and the dog went ki-yi-ing over the prairie after a rabbit, and just as I was beginning to--to--condense over it Jim came up and saved the situation. What if he did keep your old engine waiting? There are more important things than ploughing."

"Aha!" said Harris, knowingly. "Well, I guess it's just as well it happened as it did. Jim was gettin' altogether too good at runnin' at your heels."

"That's all the thanks he gets for working late and early, like no other hired man in the district. All right. You and Allan can milk the cows to-night, for I won't--see?"

Harris was accustomed to his daughter's frankness, and as a rule paid little regard to it. He was willing enough to be flayed, in moderation, by her keen tongue; in fact, he look a secret delight in her unrestrained sallies, but that was different from defiance. He could, and did, submit to any amount of cutting repartee, and felt a sort of pride in her vigour and recklessness, but he had no notion of countenancing open mutiny, even from Beulah.

"We'll talk about that some other time, too," he said. "And you'll milk the cows tonight as usual."

Beulah opened her lips as though to answer, but closed them again, arose, and walked out of the kitchen. For her the controversy was over; the die was cast. Her nature admitted of any amount of disputation up to a certain point, but when the irresistible force crashed into the immovable object she wasted no wind on words. With her war was war.

Harris finished his meal with little relish. His daughter was very, very much to him, and an open rupture with her was among the last things to be imagined...Still, she must learn that the liberty of speech he allowed her did not imply equal liberty of action...His wife, too, had behaved most incredibly. After all, perhaps he had been hasty with Jim. No doubt he would meet the boy in Plainville or somewhere in the district before long, and he would then have a frank little talk with him. And he would say nothing more of the incident to his wife. He was beginning to feel almost amiable again when recollection of Beulah, and the regard which she was evidently cultivating toward Travers, engulfed his returning spirits like a cold douche. It must not come to that, whatever happened.

"You better get over to Grant's, Allan, if you're goin'," he said as he left the table. "I've some shears to change that'll keep me busy until you get back."