By Right of Purchase Part 13

Gallwey looked thoughtful. "Well," he said, "somebody will have to take the thing up eventually, and, when there is anything unpleasant but necessary, Charley is usually there to do it. I almost fancy he can't help it. As they say in this country, that is the kind of man he is.

Still, under the circ.u.mstances, I really think he ought to let the others take an equal risk, and it might be advisable for you to impress it upon him."

"You believe that what I said would have any influence?" asked Carrie, with a curious little smile.

"Of course!" and Gallwey gazed at her reproachfully. "Surely that ought to be evident."

"Well," said the girl, with a trace of languidness, "I have to thank you for warning me, and I will do what I can, though I am not very certain it will have any great effect on him."

Gallwey left her a few minutes later. Carrie, who was now very thoughtful, saw nothing of her husband that night or during most of the next day. He came in and asked for supper a little before dusk, and, when he had eaten it, carefully went over the lock and magazine action of a forty-four Marlin rifle. Then he put on his furs and girt himself with a bandolier. On reaching the outer door, he heard a swift patter of footsteps on the neighbouring stairs. As Carrie came up to him he stood still, with the blue rifle-barrel gleaming over his shoulder, looking like a giant in his s.h.a.ggy coat. She was dressed, as he noticed, unusually prettily, and, although he set his lips, the little sparkle crept into his eyes. As it faded, the bronzed face, barely visible beneath the fur cap, became once more impa.s.sive.

The girl walked steadily up to him, and laid a hand upon his arm.

"You have given me a good deal, but I scarcely think I have asked you for anything yet. I want you to run no risk that isn't necessary to-night," she said.

Leland started, but again he put a constraint upon himself.

"So you know?" he said.

"Of course! Did you think, when everybody else knew, you could keep it from me? Still, that isn't what I asked you. I want you to be careful."

Leland looked at her, and though she saw the blood creep slowly into his face, his restraint was also evident.

"Did you say that because you believed it was the correct thing, madam?"

he asked.

Carrie flushed, but the man, shaking her hand off his arm, laid his big mittened one upon her shoulder, and, holding her away from him, looked down on her gravely.

"You will try to forgive me that. It was a trifle brutal," he said, and his voice sank. "Still, to be quite honest, I could scarcely think that any risk I ran could cause you very much anxiety."

Carrie said nothing, for, with that steady gaze upon her, she could not pretend, even if her pride would have permitted her; and Leland smiled a trifle wistfully. His face was almost gentle now.

"Well," he said, "you needn't force yourself to say it would, if it hurts you, and I daresay it was kindness that prompted you to try.

Still, you see, I should want a good deal, and anything you didn't mean wouldn't satisfy me. After all, it would make things easier for you if I didn't come back again."

The girl s.h.i.+vered. "You surely can't believe I would think of that?"

"No," and Leland made a little gesture, which was expressive of weariness; "it was your sense of fitness that turned you against me."

He let his hand fall from her shoulder. "After all, my dear, I am sorry for you."

"And yourself?"

"It is a little rough on me, but that can't be helped. Somehow or other I guess I can bear it."

Then he stooped, and, taking one of her hands, held it between both of his before he turned and flung open the door.

Carrie saw him for a moment, a tall, black figure silhouetted against the cold blue, and then he had vanished into the night.

CHAPTER X

HOMICIDE

An almost intolerable cold had descended upon the prairie when Leland reached the coulee where Sergeant Grier was mustering his forces late at night. They were not a very strong body, three troopers of the Northwest Police, all of them rather young, two prairie farmers, Leland, Gallwey, and the Sergeant, but the latter had decided that they would be enough, for the purpose. He was aware that, in an affair of this kind, a few men who understand exactly what they have to do, and can be relied on to set about it quietly and collectedly, are apt to prove more efficient than a larger body. The unnecessary man, he knew, is usually busy getting in his comrade's way. There was also another reason which Leland had pointed out. Since his acquaintances had undertaken the business, it was advisable that they should carry it out without exposing themselves unnecessarily to the outlaws' vengeance. There were several bands of the latter acting more or less in concert, and it would lessen the risks if there were only three or four men liable to them in place of several times as many.

The Sergeant quite concurred in this, and, when Leland rode up stiff with frost, quietly sent the men out to their stations. Just there, the beaten trail that led south to the frontier dipped into one of the winding ravines, traversing the country with many a loop and bend. A sluggish creek flowed through its bottom beneath the ice, and a growth of willows and birches that there found shelter from the winds straggled up its sides. Trees fringed the crest of the dip, too, and in places overflowed into the prairie in scattered spurs. The trail ran through their midst, and there was no doubt that, if the outlaws came at all, which was not certain, they would come that way, since there are disadvantages attached to leading loaded horses through a thick birch-bluff in the darkness.

A farmer and one of the troopers were sent back to where the trees ran farther out into the prairie, and they were to lie hidden there and cut off the retreat in case the rustlers endeavoured to head back the way they had come. The main body lined the trail in the thickest of the bluff, just below the crest of the ravine, and Leland and one young trooper proceeded to the foot of the declivity. It would be their business to stop anybody who might succeed in breaking through the rest of the ambuscade. Each of them knew precisely what was expected of him, and the only uncertainty was whether the rustlers were coming, and if so, how many there would be of them.

It was a suitable night for their purpose, neither too dark nor too light. The heavens were barred with drifting wreaths of cloud, between which every now and then a half-moon and an occasional star shone down.

The birches wailed as they shook their frail twigs beneath a bitter wind. Leland was sensible of a distressing tingling in his numbed feet and hands. The young trooper beside him limped and stumbled, a shadowy, indistinct figure in his furs, stiff with cold. Their softly moccasined feet made no sound. Both of them wondered whether they could use their slung rifles, if the necessity arose.

It is possible, without feeling desperately cold, to face the frost of the Northwest in a prairie waggon when one is packed about with hay and wrapped in big fur robes, but there are times when the man who travels on horseback runs the risk of freezing, and, because horses might be wanted, farmers and police troopers had ridden instead of driving.

Leland was capable of moving, but the young trooper was in a far worse state, and sighed with relief when at last they stopped beside the creek, where a dense growth of willows kept off the stinging wind.

"I'm that cold I 'most can't hump myself," he said. "Seems to me I haven't got any feet on. I guess they're froze. Still, it's not quite so cruel as the night the corporal got one of his nipped. We were sleeping way back up Long Traverse trail in a pit in the snow, and were too played-out to waken when the fire got low. The frost had the corporal by the morning, but we'd most of twenty leagues to make, with two or three mighty cold camps on the way, and his moccasins opened up a wound. You couldn't have told he had a foot when I last saw him."

Leland said nothing. He was not inclined for conversation, and knew that instances of the kind were not uncommon. The wardens of the prairie probably know more about cold than anybody, except Arctic explorers, and they are expected to face it shelterless in the open for days together when occasion arises. They cannot always find a birch-bluff to camp in, and the snow is frequently too thin to throw up a bank between them and the wind. Only hard men continue in that service, and perhaps the prairie wolf alone knows what becomes of some of the unfit who try it.

The lad, however, seemed impelled to talk, and stamped up and down beating his mittened hands, with the swivel of his slung carbine jangling as he moved.

"One would 'most wonder why you folks took a hand in," he said. "I guess if I'd been a farmer, it's more than I'd have done myself. There seem to be a blame lot of the rustlers, and, so far as we can figure, they stand in together. The three or four of us can't be everywhere at once, and they might take a notion of getting even by playing the fire-bug when the gra.s.s is dry in harvest season. I'd plough my fire-guards twice as wide. It would be quite easy to burn up a ripening crop."

Leland was aware that there would, unfortunately, be no difficulty in doing this, but he was willing to take his chances, and did not answer the lad. Indeed, the probable loss of a crop appeared a comparatively small matter to him just then. He was sore and bitter, and a feud with the outlaws would have been almost a relief. He felt that Brans...o...b.. Denham had tricked him, but sincerely desired to stand well with his wife, in spite of her scornful att.i.tude towards him. He did not blame her for that altogether, though her words still rankled, but he would not expose himself to her disdain again, and had decided that if things were to be different, the first advances must be made by her. In the meanwhile, it was singularly unpleasant to both of them, and that night he was in a very sensitive and somewhat dangerous mood as he stood s.h.i.+vering among the willows.

"I guess they should be here by now, if the fellow who told us was playing a straight game," said the lad. "The trouble is, they've a good many friends, and n.o.body can tell exactly who's standing in with them.

It's kind of easier to pick up an odd case of whisky and say nothing than to give us the office and have a fire-stick shoved into your granary. I'm not counting too much on the Ontario man."

In the meanwhile, the others fretted at the cold, and wondered how long the outlaws meant to keep them waiting. Two of them, upon whom all the rest depended for the warning, were just then crouching, almost frozen, where the thinnest of the birches broke off abruptly, watching a group of vague, shadowy shapes moving in their direction across the white wilderness. Gallwey stood behind them. A bank of sombre cloud sailed across the moon, and left the watchers in almost utter darkness.

"I can make out four, and there are more behind," said the trooper.

"It's a sure thing. Snow's deep, and, as we figured, they'll stick to the trail. Guess you'd better get back and tell the Sergeant."

Gallwey slipped away, and there was silence for several minutes while farmer and policeman crept a little further back amidst the trees. Then a soft patter of hoofs and an occasional rattle came up the bitter wind as a line of men and horses grew into shape. They came on boldly, the men growling to one another and at the beasts. With no outriders forward, they plunged into the shadow of the birches. There the sounds grew louder, and the thud of hoofs, hoa.r.s.e voices, crackle of trodden twigs, and creaking and jolting of burdens on pack-saddles, rang startlingly distinct through the crisp air. The trooper counted at least a dozen horses, but he could not quite make out how many men, for they walked among the loaded beasts, and the trail was very dark.

They went on by, half-seen, dim shadows that jostled one another among the trees; and, when the voices and the trampling grew less distinct, the trooper moved out into the trail, with his carbine in his mittened hands. The trap was sprung, for, if one or two of the outlaws succeeded in breaking through, it was evident that they must, at least, leave their beasts behind. With the farmer close behind him he moved cautiously a little nearer his comrades and then stood still again.

It was, perhaps, five minutes later when Leland, who was pacing to and fro, stopped abruptly, and held up his hand as the young trooper materialised out of the gloom in front of him.

"Can't you hear something?" he said.

The trooper thought he could, but his ears were almost covered by the big fur cap, and whilst they stood listening the birches swayed and wailed before a bitter gust. It seemed to search them to the marrow, for the cold was keen as a knife. Then through the night there came a dull, thudding sound down from the ridge above, and the trooper flung his carbine forward.

"They're here, sure," he said. "It's even chances we don't get a whack at one of them."