Ranching for Sylvia Part 23

They followed her to the mound, and after an inspection of it, Flett nodded.

"You'd make a mighty smart tracker, Miss Grant. I was against this mound being the firing place, because, to get to it, the fellow would have to come out into the open."

"Would that count? It was a bull he was after."

"It was," Flett agreed. "This fixes the thing."

George looked at him meaningly.

"Have you made up your mind about anything else?"

"Oh, yes," said Flett. "It was done with malicious mischief. If a poor white or an Indian meant to kill a beast for meat, he wouldn't pick a bull worth a pile of money, at least while there was common beef stock about."

"Then what do you mean to do?"

Flett smiled.

"Sooner or later, I'm going to put handcuffs on the man who did this thing. If you'll give me the sketch, Miss Grant, I'll take it along."

Flora handed it to him, and he and Edgar went away shortly afterward, leaving George with the girl. She sat still, looking down at him when he had helped her to the saddle.

"I'm afraid you have a good many difficulties to face," she said.

"Yes," a.s.sented George. "A dry summer is bad for wheat on my light soil, and that is why I thought of going in for stock." He paused with a rueful smile. "It doesn't promise to be a great improvement, if I'm to have my best beasts shot."

She pointed to the west. The gra.s.s about them was still scorched with fierce suns.h.i.+ne, but leaden cloud-ma.s.ses, darkly rolled together with a curious bluish gleam in them, covered part of the sky.

"This time it will rain," she said. "We will be fortunate if we get no more than that. Try to remember, Mr. Lansing, that bad seasons are not the rule in western Canada, and one good one wipes out the results of several lean years."

Then she rode away, and George joined Edgar. He felt that he had been given a warning. On reaching home, he harnessed a team and drove off to a sloo to haul in hay, but while he worked he cast anxious glances at the clouds. They rolled on above him in an endless procession, opening out to emit a pa.s.sing blaze of suns.h.i.+ne, and closing in again.

The horses were restless, he could hardly get them to stand; the gra.s.ses stirred and rustled in a curious manner; and even the little gophers that scurried away from the wagon wheels displayed an unusual and feverish activity. Yet there was not a drop of rain, and the man toiled on in savage impatience, wondering whether he must once more resign himself to see the promised deluge pa.s.s away.

It was a question of serious import. A night's heavy rain would consolidate the soil that blew about with every breeze, revive the suffering wheat and strengthen its abraded stalks against any further attack by the driving sand. Indeed, he thought it would place the crop in security.

He came home for supper, jaded, dusty, and morose, and found that he could scarcely eat when he sat down to the meal. He could not rest when it was over, though he was aching from heavy toil; nor could he fix his attention on any new task; and when dusk was getting near he strolled up and down before the homestead with Edgar. There was a change in the looks of the buildings--all that could be done had been effected--but there was also a change in the man. He was leaner, his face was getting thin, and he looked worn; but he maintained a forced tranquillity.

The sky was barred with cloud now; the great breadth of grain had faded to a leaden hue, the prairie to shadowy gray. The wind had dropped, the air was tense and still; a strange, impressive silence brooded over everything.

Presently Edgar looked up at the clouds.

"They must break at last," he said. "One can't help thinking of what they hold--endless carloads of grain, wads of dollar bills for the storekeepers, prosperity for three big provinces. It's much the same weather right along to the Rockies."

"I wasn't considering the three provinces," said George.

"No," retorted Edgar. "Your attention was confined to the improvement the rain would make in Sylvia Marston's affairs. You're looking forward to sending her a big check after harvest."

"So far, it has looked more like facing a big deficit."

"You mean your facing it."

George frowned.

"Sylvia has nothing except this land."

"It strikes me she's pretty fortunate, in one way. You find the working capital and bear the loss, if there is one. I wonder what arrangements you made about dividing a surplus."

"That," said George, "is a thing I've no intention of discussing with anybody but my co-trustee."

Edgar smiled; he had hardly expected to elicit much information upon the point, having failed to do so once or twice already.

"Well," he said, "I believe we'll see the rain before an hour has pa.s.sed."

Soon after he had spoken, a flash leaped from overhead and the prairie was flooded with dazzling radiance. It was followed by a roll of thunder, and a roar as the rain came down. For a few moments the dust whirled up and there was a strong smell of earth; then the air was filled with falling water. George stood still in the deluge, rejoicing, while the great drops lashed his upturned face, until Edgar laughingly pushed him toward the house.

"As I'm wet through, I think I'll go to bed. At last, you can rest content."

George, following his example, lay down with a deep sense of thankfulness. His cares had gone, the flood that roared against the board walls had banished them. Now that relief had come, he felt strangely weary, and in a few minutes he was sound asleep. He did not hear the thunder, which broke out again, nor feel the house shake in the rush of icy wind that suddenly followed; the ominous rattle on roof and walls, different from and sharper than the las.h.i.+ng of the rain, began and died away unnoticed by him. He was wrapped in the deep, healing slumber that follows the slackening of severe mental and bodily strain; he knew nothing of the banks of ragged ice-lumps that lay melting to lee of the building.

It was very cold the next morning, though the sun was rising above the edge of the scourged plain, when Edgar, partly dressed and wearing wet boots and leggings, came into the room and looked down at George compa.s.sionately.

The brown face struck him as looking worn; George had flung off part of the coverings, and there was something that suggested limp relaxation in his att.i.tude; but Edgar knew that his comrade must bear his load again.

"George," he said, touching him, "you had better get up."

The man stirred, and looking at him became at once intent as he saw his face.

"Ah!" he exclaimed. "Something else gone wrong?"

Edgar nodded.

"I'm sorry," he answered simply. "Put on your things and come out.

You had better get it over with."

In three or four minutes George left the house. Holding himself steadily in hand, he walked through the drenched gra.s.s toward the wheat. On reaching it, he set his lips tight and stood very still.

The great field of grain had gone; short, severed stalks, half-buried in a ma.s.s of rent and torn-up blades, covered the wide stretch of soil where the wheat had been. The crop had been utterly wiped out by the merciless hail. Edgar did not venture to speak; any sympathy he could express would have looked like mockery; and for a while there was strained silence. Then George showed of what tough fiber he was made.

"Well," he said, "it has to be faced. After this, we'll try another plan; more stock, for one thing." He paused and then resumed: "Tell Grierson to hurry breakfast. I must drive in to the b.u.t.te; there's a good deal to be done."

Edgar moved away, feeling relieved. George, instead of despairing, was considering new measures. He was far from beaten yet.

CHAPTER XIII

SYLVIA SEEKS AMUs.e.m.e.nT

It was a fine September afternoon and Sylvia reclined pensively in a canvas hammock on Herbert Lansing's lawn with one or two opened letters in her hand. Bright suns.h.i.+ne lay upon the gra.s.s, but it was pleasantly cool in the shadow of the big copper beech. A neighboring border glowed with autumn flowers: ribands of asters, spikes of crimson gladiolus, ranks of dahlias. Across the lawn a Virginia creeper draped the house with vivid tints. The scene had nothing of the grim bareness of the western prairie of which Sylvia was languidly thinking; her surroundings shone with strong color, and beyond them a peaceful English landscape stretched away. She could look out upon heavily-ma.s.sed trees, yellow fields with sheaves in them, and the winding streak of a flas.h.i.+ng river.