By Right of Purchase Part 8

He stopped a moment, and, seeing she made no response, went on:

"All the way out I have thought of you sitting here. Since my mother, no woman but Mrs. Nesbit has crossed my threshold. It has been all work and loneliness with me. Won't you try to make it different now?"

He laid his other hand gently on her shoulder, and the girl who bore his name felt her cheeks burn as she turned her eyes away. A caress would have been in one sense a very little thing, but she could not bring herself to invite it then, and she was further warned by what she saw in her companion's eyes.

Leland for a moment closed one of his hard hands. Presently he smiled again and, drawing another of the chairs up, sat down beside her.

"Well," he said, "you will get used to me by-and-bye, and I only want to please you in the meanwhile. And now about Mrs. Nesbit. We'll send her away if it would suit you, and you can get somebody from Winnipeg, though I don't know that it wouldn't be better to let Jake do the cooking and cleaning as before. It's quite difficult to get maids in this country, and, when you've had them 'bout a week, they marry somebody. Anyway, that's your business. The one thing to be done is what you like, but if you could see your way to keep Mrs. Nesbit, it would please me."

It was almost the only thing he had asked of her, and she was willing to humour him in this. "Of course," she said. "In fact, I rather like her.

Who is she?"

"A widow, the mother of one of the boys who drives a team for me. Wages come down when there's little doing with the snow upon the ground, and he's away railroading. I told him I'd see the old lady was looked after until he came back again."

"But how could you have done that, if I had sent her away?"

"I'd have boarded her out with Custer at The Range, whose wife wants help and can't hire it. Mrs. Nesbit would never have known where the money came from."

Carrie Leland smiled. It was only a few months since she had first set eyes upon the man, but she felt that, if she had been his housekeeper, a device of that kind would not have availed with her. There was no doubt that he had his strong points.

Then another young man came in, and was presented to her as Tom Gallwey.

He called her husband "Charley", and spoke with a clean English intonation.

"I'm going round to give the boys their instructions," he said. "We have cleaned out the sod granaries as you cabled. Are we to break into the straw-pile to-morrow?"

"Yes," said Leland. "You'll go on hauling wheat in with every team."

"I suppose you know what has happened to the market? One would fancy it wasn't a good time to sell."

"Still, you'll haul that wheat in. We'll go into the rest to-morrow.

Will you come back to supper?"

The young man glanced at Carrie. "If Mrs. Leland will excuse me, I think not," he said, and departed, as he evidently considered, tactfully.

"An Englishman?" said the girl, with a trace of colour in her face.

"I've never asked him, but he talks like one. I struck him shovelling on a railroad, and looking very sick, two or three years ago. Now he gets decent pay for looking after things for me."

Just then another man in weirdly patched blue-jean, who limped in his walk and carried the tray with his left hand, brought in supper. He gazed at Carrie so hard that he spilled some of the contents of the dishes, and, when he went out, she glanced at her husband with a smile.

"I suppose that is another pensioner?" she said.

"No," said Leland. "He earns his pay, and all I did was to make it a little easier for him. He got himself mixed up with a thres.h.i.+ng mill at another place a while ago."

"And he naturally came to you?"

Leland's eyes sparkled shrewdly. "Well," he said, "I guess I get my full value out of him. Won't you come to supper?"

Carrie took her place at the head of the table, and found the pork, fried potatoes, apples, flapjacks, and hot corn-cakes much more palatable than she had expected. She also looked very dainty sitting there in the great bare room, and was not displeased when Leland told her so. In fact, the more she saw of him, the more favourably he impressed her, and, though she remembered always that she was a Denham of Barrock-holme, and he a Western farmer of low degree, she did what she could to be gracious to him. It was not until the meal was over that a trace of the bitterness she had felt towards him came back to her.

"I suppose you posted the letter I gave you at Winnipeg?" she said.

Leland showed some little embarra.s.sment. "I did. I was going to talk to you about it in a day or two, because it wouldn't be quite convenient to have Mrs. Heaton out from Chicago just now."

Carrie glanced at him sharply. "You told me I could fill the house with my friends, if I wished."

"I believe I did," said Leland. "Anyway, I meant it. Still, we're not going to worry about that to-night."

Carrie saw that he was resolute, and discreetly changed the subject. She had not yet quite shaken off the effects of the cold, and in another hour rose drowsily from beside the stove.

Leland opened the door, and stood with his hand on it. "Mrs. Nesbit will see you have everything you want," he said. "Don't come down too early--and good-night."

He took the hand she held out, and did not let it go at once. The girl felt her heart beat a wee bit faster than usual, as it had done once or twice before that day. Again she felt that it was only fitting she should offer her cheek to him, but it was more than she could do.

Then he dropped her hand, and made her a little inclination as he once more said, "Good-night."

CHAPTER VII

CARRIE MAKES HER VIEWS CLEAR

It was ten o'clock next morning when Carrie, coming down to breakfast, found that her husband had gone out two or three hours earlier. Gallwey also came in, soon after she had finished the meal, to say that Leland might not be back until the evening, and, when he offered to take her round the homestead, she decided to go with him. Mrs. Nesbit, who equipped her with a pair of lined gum-boots, helped her on with her furs, gazing at them admiringly.

"There's not another set like them on the prairie, and I expect there are very few folks in Montreal have anything quite as smart," she said.

"They must have cost a pile of money."

A little flush crept into Carrie's face, but she answered languidly.

"I suppose they did," she said. "Mr. Leland had them made for me."

"Well," said the woman, who gazed at her with an air of deprecation, "you have got a good man, my dear. There's not a straighter or a better-hearted one between Winnipeg and the Rockies--but it would be worth while to humour him a little. He has just a hard spot or two in him, and he generally gets his way."

Carrie smiled, a trifle coldly. "And so do I."

She went out with Gallwey, but the hard-handed woman stood still a moment with a shadow of anxiety in her eyes, and then sighed a little as she went on with her work again. She would have done a good deal to save Charley Leland trouble, and she foresaw difficulties.

In the meanwhile, the girl found the cold unlike anything she had felt in England, but, after the first few minutes, more endurable than she had expected. There was no trace of moisture in that crystalline atmosphere, the sun that had no heat in it shone dazzlingly, and the snow that flung the sun's rays back fell from her feet dusty and dry as flour. No cloud flecked the clear blueness overhead, and fainter washes of the same cold colour marked the beaten trails and prints of horse-hoofs that alone broke the gleaming surface of the white expanse below. On the far horizon she could see grey blurs, which were presumably trees.

Gallwey, who was wrapped in an old fur coat from cheeks to ankles, proved an agreeable companion. He led her first a little way back among the slender birches, where she could see the house. It was, she decided, by no means picturesque, a rambling, frame structure roofed with cedar s.h.i.+ngles, built round what was evidently the original hut of small birch logs; but it had a little verandah with rude pillars and trellis work on one side of it, and Gallwey a.s.sured her there were not many houses in that country to equal it. Then he showed her the barns and stables, built in part of birch logs and for the rest of sods, stretching back into the shelter of the bluff. They were primitive and almost shapeless structures, with roofs that apparently consisted of straw and soil and snow, but she fancied their thickness would keep out even the frost of the Northwest. There were, however, only a horse or two and a few brawny oxen standing in them. Last of all, he led her into one of the most curious edifices she had ever seen. Sitting down on one of the wheat bags inside it, she looked about her.

It had no definite outline, and, from the outside, it had looked like a great mound of snow, but she now saw that it had a skeleton wall of birch branches. Round this had been piled an immensity of very short straw, and the roof, which had partly fallen in as the bags beneath it had been cut out, consisted of the same material. It was filled with bags of wheat that here and there trickled red-gold grain, and she turned to Gallwey with a question.

"Is this the usual granary?" she said.

Gallwey laughed. "There are quite a few of them in this country. You see, we don't stack the grain here, but leave most of the straw standing, and thresh in the field, whilst most of the smaller men rush their grain in to the railroad elevators as soon as that is done. As a rule, they want their money, but Charley had meant to hold wheat this year."