Harding of Allenwood

After finding a suitable office, he called on a number of business men and the flour-millers who were then beginning what was to become the leading industry of the city. He wanted to learn their views about the kind of wheat best suited to their use, and to enter into direct relations with them. On the whole, he succeeded better than he had hoped, and had now only to appoint an agent. Two or three suitable men had offered their services, and it was difficult to decide.

He was thinking over the matter in the newly opened office, when Gerald came in. The Mowbray black sheep seemed to feel no embarrassment in meeting him, for his manner was inclined to be patronizing. Sitting down, he lighted a cigarette.

"This is a new venture. I don't know that it will meet with general approval at Allenwood," he remarked.

"One mustn't expect too much," Harding answered. "I guess the people who object now will come round by and by."

"I wonder how long you think it will be before my father falls into line," said Gerald with a careless laugh. "Everything considered, I rather admire your pluck."

Harding let this pass. It was not a tactful allusion to his engagement to Beatrice, and he was annoyed by Gerald's manner. He had not expected much gratitude, but the fellow did not even seem to realize that Harding had saved him from jail.

"I suppose you know I have been turned out of Allenwood," Gerald resumed.

Harding admitted that he had been told so.

"Since then I've heard from the Government people that they're not likely to want me for the new survey. As a matter of fact, I'm not sorry. The last man I went into the woods with was a sour, exacting brute."

"They've got to be hard. It isn't easy to run a line through a rough country."

"Nobody knows that better than I do," Gerald replied with feeling. "Well, I've been here a week, and can't find any congenial occupation."

"You don't look worried about it."

Gerald laughed.

"Oh, I'm not, as a rule, despondent; and I knew that I could as a last resort fall back on you. This explains my call. I believe you want an agent to manage your office."

Harding's expression indicated ironical amusement.

"Do you think what you have just told me is a recommendation for the job?"

"It seems to prove my need of it."

"But not your suitability. I'm not looking for a man whom nobody else will have."

Gerald looked at him in astonishment. Though he had not given the matter much thought, he had imagined that Harding would be glad to do him a favor for his sister's sake. It was something of a shock to be refused. And the manner of the refusal was mortifying. The fellow was a coarser brute than he had thought; but Gerald did not mean to let his resentment run away with him.

"I have a few useful qualifications," he said. "Some of the bigger implement dealers and the heads of the milling firms are men of taste and education. It's possible they might rather deal with me than with a drummer fellow, or a raw farmer fresh from the soil."

"I'm fresh from the soil, but I guess I could run this end of the business," Harding returned.

Gerald saw that he had blundered; but he did not feel beaten yet.

"Perhaps I'd better mention that I spoke to Kenwyne and Broadwood, and they were willing that I should have the agency."

"That's so. I have a letter from Kenwyne, who says he'd like to give you a lift, but leaves me to decide."

"Then his wishes ought to count. You must see that your position at Allenwood won't be easy; it will need some tact to make it comfortable, and your giving me the post would go a long distance in your favor. You can't afford to disregard our people's feelings until you've made your footing good."

"Can I not?" Harding's patience was exhausted. "Have I ever tried to gain your friends' favor by indulging any of their crank notions? If necessary, I'll put my plans through in spite of the crowd!" He checked himself. "But this has nothing to do with the matter. You're not the man I want."

"May I inquire what kind of a man you do want?"

"First of all, one I can trust."

Gerald colored, but he got up with some dignity and moved toward the door.

"You may regret your decision," he said threateningly.

Harding sat silent until the door closed, and then he went over to the window and looked out at the narrow street with a frown. He was angry, but he did not think he had been too severe. It was plain that he might have made things easier for himself by falling in with Gerald's suggestion; the fellow was a favorite at Allenwood, where his last offense was known only to one or two people. Harding had no doubt that Mowbray would have appreciated his giving his son another chance; and Beatrice would have thought it generous. For all that, the business of the settlement could not be done by wastrels; and Harding felt that he could not secure a personal advantage by a breach of trust.

Gerald's feelings about the matter were far from pleasant. Returning to his second-class hotel he endeavored to solace them with a drink before he sat down in the untidy lounge to consider. He had been grossly insulted; but he persuaded himself that this did not trouble him most. The worst was that Harding was a coarse, low-bred brute, and was, unfortunately, going to marry Beatrice. Gerald had not hesitated about sacrificing his sister to save himself, but it was easy for him now to feel that she was making a grave mistake. It was perhaps curious that he had preserved a keen sense of family pride, and a belief that people of his station must keep up their dignity; but he was honest as far as he went. He knew that he had by no means lived up to his creed; but, while some allowances must be made for men, this did not apply to women. It was essential that they should remember what was due to their birth and rank. On no account should a well-bred girl marry beneath her.

He went to the bar for another drink, and afterward became convinced that Beatrice's marriage to Harding could only end in disaster. It must, therefore, be prevented. He could not see how this was to be done, but chance might provide a means.

In the meanwhile he was confronted by the stern necessity for earning his living. Taking up a newspaper, he studied the advertisements; but unfortunately there seemed to be no demand for people with refined tastes and polite accomplishments in Canada. Farm teamsters were wanted, and shovel hands for a branch railroad; but these occupations did not appeal to Gerald. A clerk was required at a new hotel. Well, that was more in his line, and he set off to interview the proprietor. After a few curt questions the man dismissed him, and Gerald spent the next day or two moodily walking about the town, until it occurred to him that he had better see what Davies could do. The fellow, who knew the worst of him, owed him something. He felt much less bitter against the moneylender, who had helped to ruin him, than he did against Harding, whom he had injured.

Davies was disengaged when Gerald entered.

"So you're up against it!" he remarked. "Your friends at Allenwood have no use for you?"

"It looks like that. Otherwise I wouldn't have come here."

"I see they're opening an office in this city."

"Harding's in charge. I don't get on with him."

"Well, perhaps that's natural." Davies was keen enough to notice the rancor in Gerald's tone. He was afraid his plans about Allenwood might have to be abandoned, but if he were able to go on with them, Harding would prove his most dangerous opponent.

"I guess Mr. Harding talked pretty straight to you?" he suggested.

"He took an unfair advantage of my position!"

"So you thought you'd strike me for a job? I guess you know you're not worth much."

Gerald winced at this, but he could not resent it. His father had disowned him, and, except for a surreptitious gift from his mother, he had no resources.

"It's plain that I can't insist upon good terms," he replied. "I quite expected you to see it."

Davies considered. He did not suspect Mowbray of any fondness for steady work, and he thought his services as a clerk would be dear at five dollars a week; but the fellow was shrewd and plausible, and had what Davies called tone. Well-brought-up young Englishmen and a few Americans of the same stamp were coming into Manitoba looking for land, and Mowbray, who understood these people, might act as a decoy. Then, he knew all about Allenwood, and this knowledge might be useful later. On the whole, Davies thought he would take the risk of employing him.

"Well," he said, "I'll make you an offer."

It was not an advantageous one for Gerald, but after some objections he accepted it, and the next day reluctantly set to work. His occupation, however, proved less unpleasant than he had feared, and at the end of a few weeks Davies thought he had acted wisely. Mowbray was intelligent and unscrupulous, his judgment was good, and Davies began to take him into his confidence.

Harding, in the meanwhile, appointed an agent and went home. He hired a horse at the railroad settlement, and the first of the Allenwood farmsteads were rising above the edge of the plain when a mounted figure appeared near a bluff that the trail skirted. The figure was small and distant, but it cut sharp against the evening light, and Harding's heart beat fast as he recognized it. Touching his horse with the quirt, he rode on at a gallop and pulled up near Beatrice with an exultant gleam in his eyes.

"This is very kind!" he cried.

She looked at him shyly, with some color in her face.

"Didn't you expect me to meet you? How far have you ridden at that furious pace?"

"Since I saw you quite a way back. The horse wouldn't come fast enough!"

She smiled at him.

"If you are not in a great hurry to get home, let's walk as far as the ridge," she suggested.

Harding, springing down, held out his hand, and when she slipped from the saddle he caught her in his arms and held her fast while he kissed her. Beatrice was not demonstrative, but he felt her arms tighten about his neck, and the soft pressure of her cheek upon his face, and it gave him a thrill of triumph. Now he realized all that he had won.

For a long while they did not speak. Then Beatrice freed herself with a soft laugh, and they walked on across the prairie. But Harding would not release one little hand, which he clung to as they climbed the trail together.

The red sunset burned in front of them with the edge of the plain cutting against it in a hard, straight line. Above the lurid glow the wide arch of sky shone a vivid green, and the great sweep of grass ran forward steeped in deepening shades of blue. There was something mysteriously impressive in the half light and the riot of color.

"What a glorious evening!" Beatrice could not help exclaiming. "I am glad I shall not have to leave the prairie."

The crimson flush on the skyline merged into rose and magenta and mauve.

"It is lighted up in your honor," Harding said.

"You have a pretty imagination; but I fear the gray days are more in keeping with the life I've led. It was often rather dreary at the Grange, and I felt that I was objectless – drifting on without a purpose." She smiled at Harding. "You can't understand the feeling?"

"No," he said. "All my life I've had too much to do. One gets self-centered through thinking only of one's work. It may be better to stop now and then and look about."

"It depends upon what you see. If your surroundings never change, you come to know them too well and begin to think that nothing different is possible. It makes one narrow. We may both need patience, Craig, before we learn to understand each other's point of view."

Harding realized the truth of this. They looked at many things differently, and there were points on which their convictions were opposed.

She gave the strong hand that held hers a slight pressure of caress.

"I wonder what would have happened if I hadn't been driven out of my way by the grass fire that night?" she questioned, woman-like.

"Nothing would have been different. I was bound to meet you sooner or later."

She laughed contentedly, and they walked on in silence for a while. Harding felt that he ought to tell her about Gerald, but he hesitated.

"Tell me what you have been doing in Winnipeg," she said, as if she had divined his thoughts.

He explained his business there carefully, and Beatrice was pleased that he took her interest and comprehension for granted.

"Gerald wanted me to make him our agent, and I refused," he ended.

She was conscious of disappointment, though she appreciated his candor.

"I'm afraid he will find things hard. Of course, it's his own fault, but that won't make his difficulties lighter. Couldn't you have taken the risk of giving him another chance?"

"No," said Harding. "I wanted to help him, for your sake, but I couldn't give him the post. You see, I was acting for others as well as for myself." He hesitated before he added: "I felt that we must have the best man we could get."

"And you could get more reliable men than my brother! Unfortunately, it's true. But the others were willing; Kenwyne told me so."

He looked at her in surprise, for there was a faint hardness in her voice.

"I don't think they quite understood how important the matter is. Anyway, they left it to me and I felt forced to do what seemed best for all."

"Well," she said, as if puzzled, "Gerald certainly wronged you."

"That didn't count; not the wrong you mean. The greatest injury he could have done me would have been in giving you to Brand. However, it was not this, but his unfitness for our work that made me refuse him."

He had blundered, and Beatrice felt hurt. She could have forgiven him for bitterly resenting Gerald's attempt to separate them, but he seemed to consider that comparatively unimportant. There was a hard strain in him; perhaps her father had been right in thinking him too deeply imbued with the commercial spirit.

He helped her to the saddle, and the misunderstanding was forgotten as they rode in confidential talk across the shadowy plain until the lights of the Grange twinkled out ahead. Harding left her at the forking of the trail, but he was thoughtful as he trotted home alone. He must exercise care and tact in future. Beatrice was proud, and he feared that he had not altogether won her yet.

CHAPTER XXVI

DROUGHT

The wheat was growing tall and changing to a darker shade; when the wind swept through it, it undulated like the waves of a vast green sea, rippling silver and white where the light played on the bending blades.

Harding lay among the dusty grass in a dry sloo, and Hester sat beside him in the blue shadow of the big hay wagon. Since six o'clock that morning Harding and Devine had been mowing prairie hay. They had stopped long enough to eat the lunch Hester had brought them; and now Devine had returned to his work, and sat jolting in the driving-seat of a big machine as he guided three powerful horses along the edge of the grass. It went down in dry rows, ready for gathering, before the glistening knife, and a haze of dust and a cloud of flies followed the team across the sloo. Harding's horses stood switching their tails in the sunshine that flooded the plain with a dazzling glare.

"It was rough on Fred that you wouldn't let him finish his pipe," Harding said.

"He went obediently," Hester answered with a smile. "I wanted to talk to you."

"I suspected something of the kind; but I can't see why you must stop me now."

"You are away at daybreak and come home late."

"Very well," said Harding resignedly. "But I've got to clean up this sloo by dark."

"Then you're not going to the Grange? You haven't been since Sunday."

"Beatrice understands that I'm busy."

"That's fortunate. It's not nice to feel neglected. Can't you take your mind off your farming for a little while, Craig?"

"It's my job. What's more, sticking to it seems the best way of making things easier for Beatrice. I'm an outsider at Allenwood and have got to justify my unorthodox notions by success. I haven't much polish and I'm not a good talker, but I can grow wheat – and luckily that comes into the scheme."

"It may, perhaps. When are you to be married, Craig?"

"I don't know. Beatrice puts it off. I had hoped it might be after harvest, but nothing's settled yet."

"Then you ought to be firm and insist upon fixing the wedding soon."

"I wish I could. But why?"

"Because it might be better not to leave Beatrice among her friends too long."

Harding looked surprised.

"Since the Colonel's given in, and Gerald's gone, I don't think there is anybody who would try to turn her against me."

"No," agreed Hester. "Her parents would be angry if she broke her engagement. Now that they have accepted you, you can count on their support, even if they're not quite satisfied with the match. The trouble is that you and they belong to very different schools. They'll try to make the best of you, but Beatrice will see how hard they find it."

"Hurrying on the wedding won't help much."

"It might. Beatrice will try to accept her husband's views, and she'll probably find it easier than she thinks; but at present all she sees and hears will remind her of the changes she will have to make. Things you do will not seem right; some of your ideas will jar. Then the other women will let her see that they feel sorry for her and think she's throwing herself away. She'll deny it, but it will hurt."

"Perhaps that's true," said Harding. "But talking of the wedding raises another question. I want a better house, and when I build I may as well locate at Allenwood."

"Then you are still determined on getting control there?"

"I don't want control, but I may have to take it," Harding answered. "The settlement will fall to bits if it's left alone, and I suspect that I'm the only man who can hold it up. I'm glad you have talked to me. What you've said makes it clear that I've not time to lose. Now, however, this hay must be cut."

He led his team into the grass when Hester went away, but although he worked hard until dark fell, his mind was busy with many things beside the clattering machine.

A few days later he had occasion to visit Winnipeg, and after some talk with his agent there, he asked him:

"Do you know how Davies is fixed just now, Jackson?"

"I don't know much about him personally, but men in his line of business are feeling the set-back. They've bought options on land there's no demand for, and can't collect accounts; farmers with money seem to have stopped coming in; and the small homesteaders are going broke. Doesn't seem to be any money in the country, and credit's played out."

"Then it ought to be a good time to pick up land cheap, and I want you to find a broker who'll ask Davies what he'll take for two or three mortgages he holds on Allenwood. My name's not to be mentioned; you must get a man who can handle the matter cautiously."

"I know one; but, if you don't mind my asking, could you put a deal of that kind through?"

"I must," said Harding. "It will be a strain, but the crop's coming on well and I ought to have a surplus after harvest."

"Isn't the dry weather hurting you?"

"Not yet. We can stand for another week or two if the wind's not too bad. Anyhow, you can find out whether Davies is inclined to trade."

When Harding went out into the street, he was met by a cloud of swirling dust. He wiped the grit from his eyes and brushed it off his clothes with an annoyance that was not accounted for by the slight discomfort it caused him. The sun was fiercely hot, the glare trying, and the plank sidewalks and the fronts of the wooden stores had begun to crack. Sand and cement from half-finished buildings were blowing down the street; and when Harding stopped to watch a sprinkler at work on a lawn at the corner of an avenue where frame houses stood among small trees, the glistening shower vanished as it fell. There were fissures in the hard soil and the grass looked burnt. But it was the curious, hard brightness of the sky and the way the few white clouds swept across it that gave Harding food for thought.

The soil of the Western prairie freezes deep, and, thawing slowly, retains moisture for the wheat plant for some time; but the June rain had been unusually light. Moreover, the plains rise in three or four tablelands as they run toward the Rockies, and the strength of the northwest wind increases with their elevation. It was blowing fresh in the low Red River basin, but it would be blowing harder farther west, where there are broken, sandy belts. After a period of dry weather, the sand drives across the levels with disastrous consequences to any crops in the neighborhood. This, however, was a danger that could not be guarded against.

The next day Jackson reported about the mortgages.

"Davies was keen on business and offered my man improved preemptions in a dozen different townships," he said. "Pressed him to go out and take a look at them; but when he heard the buyer wanted an Allenwood location he wouldn't trade."

"What do you gather from that?"

"The thing seems pretty plain, and what I've found out since yesterday agrees with my conclusions. Davies is pressed for money, but he means to hold on to Allenwood as long as he can. A good harvest would help him because he'd then be able to get in some money from his customers."

"A good harvest would help us all; but there's not much hope of it unless the weather changes. In the meanwhile, we'll let the matter drop, because I don't want to give the fellow a hint about my plans."

Nearing home on the following evening, Harding pulled up his horse on the edge of the wheat as he saw Devine coming to meet him.

"What's the weather been like?" he asked, getting down from the rig.

"Bad," said Devine gloomily. "Hot and blowing hard."

Harding looked about as they crossed a stretch of grass that had turned white and dry. The sunset was red and angry, but above the horizon the sky was a hard, dark blue that threatened wind. Everything was very still now, but the men knew the breeze would rise again soon after daybreak. They said nothing for a time after they stopped beside the wheat.

The soil was thinly covered with sand, and the tall blades had a yellow, shriveled look, while the stems were bent and limp. Harding gathered a few and examined them. They were scored with fine lines as if they had been cut by a sharp file.

"Not serious yet, but the grain won't stand for much more of this."

"That's so," Devine agreed. "The sand hasn't got far in, but I guess it will work right through unless we have a change. If not, there'll be trouble for both of us this fall."

"Sure," said Harding curtly. "Bring the horse, Fred, and we'll drive on to the rise."

They presently alighted where the plain merged into a belt of broken country, dotted with clumps of scrub birch and poplar. It rolled in ridges and hollows, but the harsh grass which thinly covered its surface had shriveled and left bare banks of sand, which lay about the slopes in fantastic shapes as they had drifted. Harding stooped and took up a handful. It was hot and felt gritty. The broken ground ran on as far as he could see, and the short, stunted trees looked as if they had been scorched. Glowing red in the dying sunset, the desolate landscape had a strangely sinister effect.

"The stuff's as hard and sharp as steel," he said, throwing down the sand. "There's enough of it to wipe out all the crops between Allenwood and the frontier if the drought lasts."

"What we want is a good big thunderstorm. This blamed sand-belt's a trouble we never reckoned on."

"No," said Harding. "I took a look at it when I was picking my location, but there was plenty of grass, and the brush was strong and green. Guess they'd had more rain the last two or three years. I figured out things pretty carefully – and now the only set-back I didn't allow for is going to pull me up! Well, we must hope for a change of weather; there's nothing else to be done."

He turned away with a gloomy face, and they walked back to the rig. Harding had early seen that Beatrice would not be an easy prize. It was not enough, entrancing as it was, to dream over her beauty, her fastidious daintiness in manners and thought, her patrician calm, and the shy tenderness she now and then showed for him. The passionate thrill her voice and glance brought him – spurred him rather – to action. First of all, he must work and fight for her, and he had found a keen pleasure in the struggle. One by one he had pulled down the barriers between them; but now, when victory seemed secure, an obstacle he could not overcome had suddenly risen. All his strength of mind and body counted for nothing against the weather. Beatrice could not marry a ruined man; it was unthinkable that he should drag her down to the grinding care and drudgery that formed the lot of a broken farmer's wife. He was helpless, and could only wait and hope for rain.