A Prairie Courtship

"Will you let that rein go?" she asked directly.

Nevis did not comply, and though he made a gesture of deprecation the look in his eyes warned her that he meant to let her feel his power.

"Won't you give me an opportunity for convincing you that I'm not like the vultures first? You see, they gather round the carrion, and I don't suppose you would care to apply that term to the farmers in our vicinity. Most of them aren't more than moribund yet."

It struck Florence that he was indifferent as to whether she took offense at this or not; and he was undoubtedly determined to stick fast to the rein. There were already one or two loungers watching them, and, if he persisted, she could not start the team without some highly undesirable display of force. The man, she fancied, realized this, and an angry warmth crept into her face. Then, somewhat to her relief, she saw Thorne strolling down the street behind her companion. He wore a battered, wide gray hat, a blue shirt which hung open at the neck, duck trousers and long boots, and though he was freely sprinkled with dust he looked distinctly picturesque. What was more to the purpose, he seemed to be regarding Nevis with suspicion, and she knew that he was a man of quick resource. In any case, the situation was becoming intolerable, and she flashed a quick glance at him. She fancied that he would understand it as an intimation that he was wanted, and the expectation was justified, for although she had never been gracious to him he approached a little faster. In the meanwhile Nevis, who had seen nothing of all this, talked on.

"There are, of course," he added, "people who are prejudiced against me; but on the other hand I have set a good many of the small farmers on their feet again."

"Presumably you made them pay for it?"

The man had no opportunity for answering this, for just then Thorne's hand fell heavily upon his shoulder.

"You here, Nevis?" he cried.

Nevis dropped the rein as he swung around and Florence wasted no time in starting her team. As the wagon jolted away down the rutted street Nevis, standing still, somewhat flushed in face, gazed at Thorne.

"Well," he demanded, "what do you want?"

Thorne leaned against the front of the store with sardonic amusement in his eyes.

"Oh," he replied, "it merely occurred to me that Mrs. Hunter wished to drive on. I thought I'd better point it out to you."

Nevis glanced at him savagely and then strode away, which was, indeed, all that he could do. An altercation would serve no useful purpose, and his antagonist was notoriously quick at repartee.

Thorne proceeded toward the wooden hotel and crossing the veranda he entered a long roughly boarded room, where he found Alison and Mrs. Farquhar as well as Florence Hunter waiting for supper. Mrs. Farquhar told him that supper would be served to them before the regular customers came in for theirs. They chatted a while and then a young lad appeared in the doorway and stopped hesitatingly.

"I'm sorry if I'm intruding," he apologized. "I meant to have supper with the boys, and Symonds didn't tell me there was anybody in the room."

Thorne turned to Mrs. Farquhar, and she smiled.

"Then unless you would prefer to take it with the boys, Dave, there's no reason why you should run away," he said.

He led the lad toward Alison when Mrs. Farquhar had spoken to him.

"I think you will remember him, Miss Leigh. He's the young man who boiled the fowls whole at the raising."

Alison laughed and shook hands with him, but after a word or two with her he looked at Thorne significantly and moved a few paces toward the door.

"Did you know that Winthrop was in the neighborhood?" he whispered.

Alison still stood near them and Thorne fancied that she started slightly, which implied that she had overheard, though why the news should cause her concern was far from clear to him.

"I didn't," he said sharply. "It's a little difficult to believe it now. You're quite sure?"

"I saw him," the lad persisted. "I was riding here along the trail and I'd come to the ravine. It's quite likely the birches had hidden me, for when I came out of them he was sitting on the edge of the sloo on the south side, near enough for me to recognize him, eating something. The next moment he rolled over into the grass and vanished."

"Then you didn't speak to him?"

"He was too quick. It looked as if he didn't want me to see him, and I rode on. I had to call at Forrester's and I found Corporal Slaney there. One or two things he said made it clear that he hadn't the faintest notion that Winthrop was within a mile or two of him."

He was apparently about to add something further when Thorne looked at him warningly. They were standing near the entrance, the approach to which led through the veranda, and the next moment Nevis walked into the room.

"Have you been picking up interesting news?" he asked. "I believe I caught Winthrop's name."

It was spoken sharply, in the expectation, Thorne fancied, that his companion, taken off his guard, would blurt out some fresh information; but the lad turned toward Nevis with an air of cold resentment.

"I was talking to Mr. Thorne," he replied.

Nevis laughed, though Thorne noticed that he did not do it easily.

"Well," he said, "I'm sorry if I interrupted you."

Then he turned toward the others as if he had just noticed them.

"I didn't know that Symonds had placed the room at your disposal; I've no doubt that will excuse me."

Nobody invited him to remain, but he withdrew gracefully, and when he had gone Thorne led the lad out on to the veranda. It was unoccupied, but as it stood some little height above the ground he walked to the edge of it and looked over before he spoke.

"Now, Dave, I want you to tell me one or two things as clearly as you can."

The lad answered his questions, and in a minute or two Thorne nodded as if satisfied. Then he pointed to the room.

"Go in and talk to Mrs. Farquhar. Keep clear of Nevis, and ride home as soon as you can after supper. If you feel compelled to mention the thing, there's no reason why you shouldn't to-morrow. It won't do much harm then."

He went down the steps and along the street, and when he came back some time later he found Alison waiting for him on the veranda.

"So you heard what Dave told me? I thought you did," he said.

"Yes," assented Alison. "The question is whether Nevis heard him too."

"He certainly heard part, but there are one or two things he can't very well know. For instance, it was Slaney's intention to ride in to the railroad as soon as he'd had supper."

"Forrester's place must be at least two leagues from here," commented Alison.

"About that," Thorne agreed with a smile. "It's far enough to make it exceedingly probable that anybody who started from this settlement when he'd had his supper would only get there after Winthrop had gone."

"But Nevis might send a messenger immediately."

Thorne shook his head.

"It strikes me as very unlikely that he'd get any one to go. There are only one or two horses in the place, and I've been round to see the men to whom they belong."

Alison's eyes sparkled approvingly.

"But suppose he goes himself?"

"He won't until after supper. Nevis is not the man to deny himself unless it seems absolutely necessary, and he'll naturally assume that Slaney is spending the night with Forrester. But there's a certain probability of his setting out immediately after the meal."

"And what are you going to do about it?"

Thorne's expression became regretful.

"I'm very much afraid I can't do anything. You see, the – arrangement – with Corporal Slaney stands in the way."

"You never thought that Winthrop would come back here when you made it," Alison suggested.

"No," acknowledged Thorne; "the point is that the corporal didn't either."

Alison appeared to reflect, and he watched her with quiet amusement.

"I've changed my mind about Winthrop," she told him at length. "I want him to get away."

Thorne made no answer, and she continued:

"Lucy Calvert is, no doubt, a good deal more anxious than I am that he should escape, and it would be only natural if you wished to earn her thanks. I think she could be very nice, and her eyes are wonderfully blue."

Thorne met her inquiring gaze with one of contemplative scrutiny.

"Yours," he said, "are usually delightfully still and gray – like a pool on a moorland stream at home under a faintly clouded sky; but now and then they gleam with a golden light as the water does when the sun comes through."

His companion hastily abandoned that line of attack. His defense was too vigorous for her to follow it up.

"You feel that your hands are absolutely tied by the hint you gave Slaney that afternoon?" she asked.

"That's how it strikes me," Thorne declared. "In this case I'm afraid I'll have to stand aside and content myself with looking on."

"But haven't you already made it difficult for Nevis to get a messenger?"

"I've certainly given a couple of men a hint that I'd rather they didn't do any errand of his to-night. That may have been going too far – I can't tell." He paused and laughed softly. "Except when it's a case of selling patent medicines, I'm not a casuist."

Alison realized his point of view and in several ways it appealed to her. He had treated the matter humorously, but, though so little had been said by either of the men, it was clear that he felt he had pledged himself to Slaney, and was not to be moved.

"Well," she urged, "somebody must stop Nevis from driving over to Forrester's."

"It would be very desirable," Thorne admitted dryly. "The most annoying thing is that it could have been managed with very little trouble."

"How?" Alison asked with assumed indifference.

Thorne, suspecting nothing, fell into the trap.

"Nevis's hired buggy is a rather rickety affair. It wouldn't astonish anybody if, when he wished to start, there was a bolt short."

A look of satisfaction flashed into Alison's eyes.

"Then he will certainly have to put up with any trouble the absence of that bolt is capable of causing. As there doesn't seem to be any other way, I'll pull it out myself. Your scruples won't compel you to forbid me?"

The man expostulated, but she was quietly determined.

"If you won't tell me what to do, I'll get Dave," she laughed. "I've no doubt he'd be willing to help me."

Thorne thought it highly undesirable that they should take a third person into their confidence, and he reluctantly yielded.

"Then," he advised, "it would be wiser to set about it while the boys are getting supper; there'll be nobody about the back of the hotel then. In the meanwhile, we'd better go in again and talk to the others."

CHAPTER XXII

ALISON SPOILS HER GLOVES

Mrs. Farquhar and her friends had finished supper, and the men who got their meals there were trooping into the hotel, when Alison found Thorne waiting on the veranda.

"You're ready, I suppose?"

"I've no intention of keeping you waiting, anyway," Thorne replied.

Alison looked at him with a hint of sharpness.

"If you would very much rather stay here, why should you come at all? Now that you have told me what to do, it really isn't necessary."

Thorne smiled.

"Well," he said, "on the whole, it strikes me as advisable."

He walked down the steps with her, and, sauntering a few yards along the street, they turned down an opening between the houses and stopped at the back of the hotel. There were only two windows in that part of the building, and the rude wooden stable would shield anybody standing close beneath one side of it from observation. Several gigs stood there to wait until their owners were ready to drive back to their outlying farms, and behind them the gray-white prairie ran back into the distance, empty and unbroken except for the riband of rutted trail. There was no sound from the hotel, for the average Westerner eats in silent, strenuous haste, and the two could hear only the movements of a restless horse in the stable.

Alison walked up to a somewhat dilapidated buggy and inspected it dubiously.

"This must be the one, and I suppose that's the bolt," she said. "There seems to be a big nut beneath it, and I don't quite see how I'm to get it off. Would your scruples prevent your making any suggestion?"

Thorne appeared to consider, though there was a twinkle in his eyes.

"I might go so far as to point out that if you went into the stable you would find a spanner on the ledge behind the door. It's an instrument that's made for screwing off nuts with."

Alison disappeared into the stable and came back with the spanner in her hand. Thorne noticed that she had put on a pair of rather shabby light gloves, with the object, he supposed, of protecting her fingers. Stooping down behind the buggy she stretched out an arm beneath the seat, and became desperately busy, to judge from the tapping and clinking she made. Then she straightened herself and looked up at him, hot and a trifle flushed.

"It won't go on to the nut," she complained. "Is it quite out of the question that you should help me?"

She saw the constraint in his face, and was pleased with it. She did not wish the man to break his pledge, and it is probable that she would have refused his assistance; but she was, on the other hand, very human in most respects, and she greatly desired to ascertain how strong the temptation to help her was.

"In the first place, you might try turning the screw on the spanner a little," he advised. "It will make the opening wider."

She did so, and had no more difficulty on that point, but the bolt was rusty and the nut very stiff. While she struggled with it there was a sound of footsteps, and Thorne, moving suddenly forward, snatched the tool from her.

"Stay there until I make it possible for you to slip away!" he whispered sharply; then he stepped swiftly back a few paces and leaned against a wagon with the spanner in his hand.

He had scarcely done so when a man came out of the opening between the houses, and Alison felt her heart throb unpleasantly fast. If the newcomer should look around toward the stables it seemed impossible that he should fail to notice Thorne. The latter, however, stood quietly still, with his shoulders resting against the wagon wheel, and the spanner in full view in front of him. The other man drew abreast of them, but he did not look around, and Alison gasped with relief when he vanished behind one of the neighboring buildings.

Then she turned impulsively to her companion.

"Oh," she cried, "you meant him to see you!"

Thorne raised his hand in expostulation.

"Hadn't you better get the thing out before somebody else comes along?"

There was no doubt that he was right in this, and Alison attacked the nut again. In two or three more minutes she moved away from the buggy with the bolt in her hand.

"What had I better do with it?" she asked.

"I might suggest dropping it into a thick clump of grass. If you don't mind, we'll stroll out a little way on the prairie. There's too much dust to be pleasant blowing down the street."

They had left the wooden buildings some distance behind when Alison next spoke to him.

"That was a generous thing you did just now."

Thorne looked confused, but he made no attempt to evade an answer.

"It was necessary."

"If the man had seen you with the spanner, Corporal Slaney would, no doubt, have heard of it afterward. That would have hurt you?"

"It certainly wouldn't have pleased me."

"Then why did you do what you did?"

"I think I have just told you."

"You said it was necessary," replied Alison, looking at him with eyes which just then had what he thought a very wonderful light in them. "You haven't convinced me that it wasn't – rather fine of you."

Thorne was manifestly more embarrassed, and embarrassment of any kind was somewhat unusual with him.

"Then," he said, "you compel me to try. If we had remained standing as we did when the man first came out from behind the houses and he had noticed you, it's exceedingly probable that he would have noticed me. Even if he hadn't, it's almost certain that several people must have seen you leave the hotel in my company. They wouldn't have had much trouble in figuring out the thing."

"Of course!" exclaimed Alison, a little astonished that this had not occurred to her earlier. Then her face grew suddenly warm. "You mean they would have recognized that I was acting – on your instructions?"

Thorne looked at her with a disconcerting steadiness.

"You haven't quite grasped the most important fact yet. They would have wondered how I was able to get you to do it – in other words, what gave me such a hold on you. The trouble is that there's an explanation that would naturally suggest itself."

"Yes," murmured Alison, with her eyes turned away from him; "that would have been unpleasant – for both of us."

Thorne did not quite know what to make of the pause, though he had a shadowy idea that it somehow rendered her assertion less positive, and left the point open to doubt. In any case, it set his heart beating fast, and he had some trouble in holding himself in hand. Outwardly, however, he was graver than usual.

"Well," he added, "I didn't think it desirable in several ways. You see, a pedler is, after all, a person of no account in this part of Canada. He has no particular interest in the fortune of the country; he doesn't help its progress; his calling benefits nobody."

"But you are a farmer now," protested Alison, glancing at him covertly.

"Strictly on probation. In fact, there's very little doubt that my new venture is generally regarded as a harmless eccentricity. It will be some time before my neighbors realize that I'm capable of anything that's not connected with an amusing frolic." He stopped a moment, and smiled at her. "On the whole, I can't reasonably blame them. My situation's a very precarious one; a frozen crop would break me."

Alison wondered what the drift of these observations could be, for she imagined that he must have had some particular purpose in saying so much. It was, so far as her experience went, a very unusual thing for a man to confess that he was an object of amusement to his neighbors, or that there was a probability of his failing to make his mark in his profession.

"I suppose," she suggested, to help him out, "you're not content with such a state of things?"

"That is just the point. It's my intention to alter it as soon as possible, and a bonanza harvest this year would go a long way toward setting me on my feet. In the meanwhile, it seems only fitting that I should put up with popular opinion, and try to bear in mind my disabilities."

He was far from explicit, but explicitness was, after all, not what Alison desired, and she fancied she understood him. It had not been without a sufficient reason that he had, to his friends' astonishment, turned farmer, and now he meant to wait until he had made a success of it, and had shown that he could hold his own with the best of them, before going any farther. This naturally suggested the question as to what he meant to do then, and she fancied that she could supply the answer. She had already confessed to herself that she liked the man, and this was sufficient for the time being.

"I heard that your wheat escaped, as Farquhar's did."

Thorne, glancing at her, surmised that this was a lead, and that he was not expected to pursue the previous subject.

"Yes," he replied, "I'm thankful to say it did. Most of the grain a few miles to the west of us was blotted out, including Hunter's – I'm sorry for him. The storm seems to have traveled straight down into Dakota, destroying everything in its path. My place lay just outside it, and at present everything promises a record crop." He broke off, and glanced down at her hands. "Have you noticed your glove?"

Alison held it up and displayed a large rusty stain across the palm and part of the back of it.

"Yes," she answered; "I did that getting the bolt out, and I'm rather vexed about it. Mrs. Farquhar will, no doubt, notice the stain, and I don't feel anxious to explain how it was done."

"Then you'll have to take the glove off," advised Thorne.

Alison smiled.

"I'm not sure that simple expedient would get over the difficulty. Of course, I might leave them behind altogether." Then she shook her head. "No; the person who found them would see the stain and guess whose they were. I don't think that would do, either."

"It wouldn't," Thorne agreed.

Then they began to talk of something else, and presently they turned back together toward the hotel. When they reached it, Florence Hunter and Mrs. Farquhar were sitting on the veranda, while two or three men occupied the lower steps, and another group lounged about near them, pipe in hand. A few minutes later Nevis appeared striding down the street with his lips set and some signs of temper. He stopped in front of the hotel, and Alison glanced at Thorne significantly when he turned to the lounging men.

"You folks seem mighty prosperous in spite of the hail," he sneered. "I can't find a man in this town who's open to earn a couple of dollars."

Some of them grinned, but none made any answer. His tone was offensive, in the first place, and, while nobody is overburdened with riches on the prairie, the average Westerner has his own ideas as to what is becoming.

Nevis signed to one of them.

"Get my buggy, Bill!"

The man hesitated, and though he strolled off toward the stables, Nevis's sharpness cost him several minutes' unnecessary delay. Eventually the buggy was brought out, and nobody said anything when Nevis got in and flicked the horse smartly with a whip, though the tilt of the seat must have been evident to most of the lookers-on. Alison touched Thorne's arm.

"Hadn't you better call to him?" she suggested.

The next moment the warning was rendered unnecessary, for there was a crash, and the seat of the buggy collapsed. Nevis lurched violently forward, but he managed to recover his balance and pull up the horse. Then he swung himself down, and after crawling under the vehicle, stood up with a frowning face while the loungers began to gather about him.

"There's a bolt out. I didn't notice it when I drove up," he grumbled. "It's three-eighths by the hole, I think. Ask Bill if he's got anything of the kind in the stable."

Bill, who had been standing near, sauntered away, and it was at least five minutes before he came back, empty-handed.

"I've nothing that will fit," he announced.

"Then go in and see if they've got one at the hardware store," ordered Nevis. "I ought to have thought of that earlier."

Bill was away a long while this time, and when he returned he held up an unusually long bolt for inspection.

"Guess it won't be any use," he said. "Thread doesn't go far enough to let the nut to the plate."

"Then what in thunder did you bring it for?" Nevis asked with rising anger.

Alison looked at Thorne and laughed.

"Have you been giving that man a hint?" she inquired.

"No," answered Thorne, smiling; "it would have been wasted in any case. Nevis has succeeded in riling him. He couldn't have managed the thing better if I had prompted him."

In the meanwhile Bill languidly affected to consider Nevis's question.

"I guess I wanted to be quite sure it wouldn't fit," he replied at length. "If it doesn't, I could see if he has got a shorter one in another package."

Nevis flung out his arms in savage expostulation.

"Well," he cried, "I've never yet struck anybody quite as thick as you. Couldn't you have brought the shorter one along?"

"Those bolts," Bill answered solemnly, "don't run many to the dollar, and I'd a kind of notion I might find a big nut or some washers I could fill up with in the stables."

"No," snapped Nevis; "you have wasted time enough! If it won't do, take the thing back into the store and ask Bevan to cut the thread farther along it!"

Bill strolled away at a particularly leisurely gait, and Thorne took out his watch.

"It's highly probable that Slaney will have left Forrester's before our friend gets off," he said. "In that case, it will no doubt be noon to-morrow before the police make their first attempt to get on Winthrop's trail. I wonder whether anybody except Dave can have seen him."