"I wonder," she said with an amused air, "why you should make an exception of me?"
"I suppose it lessens my sense of obligation. I feel I"ve done some little thing to pay you back."
"I"m not sure that was very happily expressed. Is it painful to feel that you owe anything to your neighbors?"
George flushed.
"That wasn"t what I meant. Do you think it"s quite fair to lay traps for me, when you can count on my falling into them?" He turned and pointed to the great stretch of grain that clothed the soil with vivid green. "Look at your work. Last fall, all that plowing was strewn with a wrecked and mangled crop; now it"s sown with wheat that will stand the drought. I was feeling nearly desperate, wondering how I was to master the sandy waste, when you came to the rescue and my troubles melted like the dust in summer rain. They couldn"t stand before you; you banished them."
She looked at him rather curiously, and, George thought, with some cause, for he was a little astonished at his outbreak. This was not the kind of language that was most natural to him.
"I wonder," she said, "why you should take so much for granted--I mean in holding me accountable?"
"It"s obvious," George declared. "I understand your father; he"s a very generous friend, but the idea of sending me the seed didn"t occur to him in the first place; though I haven"t the least doubt that he was glad to act on it."
"Ah!" said Flora, "it looks as if you had been acquiring some penetration; you were not so explicit the last time you insisted on thanking me. Who can have been teaching you? It seems, however, that I"m still incomprehensible."
George considered. It would be undesirable to explain that his enlightenment had come from Edgar, and he wanted to express what he felt.
"No," he said, in answer to her last remark; "not altogether; but I"ve sometimes felt that there"s a barrier of reserve in you, beyond which it"s hard to get."
"Do you think it would be worth while to make the attempt? Suppose you succeeded and found there was nothing on the other side?"
He made a sign of negation, and she watched him with some interest; the man was trying to thrash out his ideas.
"That couldn"t happen," he declared gravely. "Somehow you make one feel there is much in you that wants discovery, but that one will learn it by and by. After all, it"s only the shallow people you never really get to know."
"It would seem an easy task, on the face of it."
"As a matter of fact, it isn"t. They have a way of enveloping themselves in an air of importance and mystery, and when they don"t do so, they"re casual and inconsequent. One likes people with, so to speak, some continuity of character. By degrees one gets to know how they"ll act and it gives one a sense of reliance." He paused and added, diffidently: "Anything you did would be wise and generous."
"By degrees?" smiled Flora. "So it"s slowly, by patient sapping, the barriers go down! One could imagine that such things might be violently stormed. But you"re not rash, are you, or often in a hurry?
However, it"s time I was getting home."
She waved her hand and rode away, and George, getting into the saddle, started his team, and thought about her while he listened to the crackling of the stubble going down beneath the hoofs, and the soft thud of thrown-back soil as the lengthening rows of clods broke away from the gleaming shares. What she might have meant by her last remark he could not tell, though so far as it concerned him, he was ready to admit that he was addicted to steady plodding. Then his thoughts took a wider range, and he began to make comparisons. Flora was not characterized by Sylvia"s fastidious refinement; she was more virile and yet more reposeful. Sylvia"s activities spread bustle around her; she required much a.s.sistance and everybody in her neighborhood was usually impressed into her service, though their combined efforts often led to nothing. Flora"s work was done silently; the results were most apparent.
Still, the charm Sylvia exerted was always obvious; a thing to rejoice in and be thankful for. Flora had not the same effect on one, though he suspected there was a depth of tenderness in her, behind the barrier. It struck him as a pity that she showed no signs of interest in West, who of late seemed to have been attracted by the pretty daughter of a storekeeper at the settlement; but, after all, the lad was hardly old or serious enough for Flora. There was, however, n.o.body else in the district who was nearly good enough for her; and George felt glad that she was reserved and critical. It would be disagreeable to contemplate her yielding to any suitor unless he were a man of exceptional merit.
Then he laughed and called to his horses. He was thinking about matters that did not concern him; his work was to drive the long furrow for Sylvia"s benefit, and he found pleasure in it. Bright sunshine smote the burnished clods; scattered, white-edged clouds drove across the sky of dazzling blue, flinging down cool gray shadows that sped athwart the stubble; young wheat, wavy lines of bluff, and wide-spread prairie were steeped in glowing color. The man rejoiced in the rush of the breeze; the play of straining muscles swelling and sinking on the bodies of the team before him was pleasant to watch; he felt at home in the sun and wind, which, tempered as they often were by gentle rain, were staunchly a.s.sisting him. By and by, all the foreground of the picture he gazed upon would be covered with the coppery ears of wheat.
He had once shrunk from returning to Canada; but now, through all the stress of cold and heat, he was growing fond of the new land. What was more, he felt the power to work at such a task as he was now engaged in to be a privilege.
CHAPTER XXVII
A SIGN FROM FLETT
Summer drew on with swift strides. Crimson flowers flecked the prairie gra.s.s, the wild barley waved its bristling ears along the trails, saskatoons glowed red in the shadows of each bluff. Day by day swift-moving clouds cast flitting shadows across the sun-scorched plain, but though they shed no moisture the wheat stood nearly waist-high upon the Marston farm. The sand that whirled about it did the strong stalks no harm.
Earlier in the season there had been drenching thunder showers, and beyond the grain the flax spread in sheets of delicate blue that broke off on the verge of the brown-headed timothy. Still farther back lay the green of alsike and alfalfa, for the band of red and white cattle that roamed about the bluffs; but while the fodder crop was bountiful George had decided to supplement it with the natural prairie hay.
There was no pause in his exertions; task followed task in swift succession. Rising in the sharp cold of the dawn, he toiled a.s.siduously until the sunset splendors died out in paling green and crimson on the far rim of the plain.
The early summer was marked by signs of approaching change in Sage b.u.t.te affairs. There were still a few disturbances and Hardie had troubles to face, but he and his supporters noticed that the indifference with which they had been regarded was giving place to sympathy. When Grant first visited the settlement after his misadventure, he was received with expressions of indignant commiseration, and he afterward told Flora dryly that he was astonished at the number of his friends. Mrs. Nelson and a few of the stalwarts pressed Hardie to make new and more vigorous efforts toward the expulsion of the offenders, but the clergyman refrained. Things were going as he wished; it was scarcely wise to expose such a tender thing as half-formed opinion to a severe test, and the failure that might follow a premature attempt could hardly be recovered from. It seemed better to wait until Grant"s a.s.sailants should be arrested, and the story of their doings elicited in court, to rouse general indignation, and he thought this would happen. Flett had disappeared some weeks ago and nothing had been heard of him, but Hardie believed his chiefs had sent him out on the robbers" trail. The constable combined sound sense with dogged pertinacity, and these were serviceable qualities.
It was a hot afternoon when George brought home his last load of wild sloo hay, walking beside his team, while Flora curbed her reckless horse a few yards off. She had ridden over with her father, and finding that George had not returned, had gone on to prevent a hired man from being sent for him. They had met each other frequently of late, and George was sensible of an increasing pleasure in the girl"s society; though what Flora felt did not appear. Behind them the jolting wagon strained beneath its high-piled load that diffused an odor of peppermint; in front the shadow of a bluff lay cool upon the sun-scorched prairie.
"I suppose you heard that Baxter lost a steer last week," she said.
"Most likely, it was killed; but, though the police searched the reservation, there was no trace of the hide. We have had a little quietness, but I"m not convinced that our troubles won"t break out again. n.o.body seems to have heard anything of Flett."
"He"s no doubt busy somewhere."
"I"m inclined to believe so, and, in a way, his silence is rea.s.suring.
Flett can work without making a disturbance, and that is in his favor.
But what has become of Mr. West? We haven"t seen much of him of late."
"He has fallen into a habit of riding over to the settlement in his spare time, which isn"t plentiful."
"Ah!" exclaimed Flora; "that agrees with some suspicions of mine.
Don"t you feel a certain amount of responsibility?"
"I do," George admitted. "Still, he"s rather head-strong, and he hasn"t told me why he goes to the b.u.t.te; though the girl"s father gave me a hint. I like Taunton--he"s perfectly straightforward--and I"d almost made up my mind to ask your opinion about the matter, but I was diffident."
"I"ll give it to you without reserve--there"s no ground for uneasiness on West"s account; he might fall into much worse hands. If Helen Taunton has any influence over him, it will be wisely used. Besides, she has been well educated; she spent a few years in Montreal."
"She has a nice face; in fact, she"s decidedly pretty."
"And that would cover a mult.i.tude of shortcomings?"
"Well," said George, thoughtfully, "mere physical beauty is something to be thankful for; though I"m not sure that beauty can be, so to speak, altogether physical. When I said the girl had a nice face, I meant that its expression suggested a wholesome character."
"You seem to have been cultivating your powers of observation," Flora told him. "But I"m more disposed to consider the matter from Helen"s point of view. As it happens, she"s a friend of mine and I"ve reasons for believing that your partner"s readily susceptible and inclined to be fickle. Of course, I"m not jealous."
George laughed.
"He"s too venturesome now and then, but he has been a little spoiled.
I"ve an idea that this affair is likely to be permanent. He has shown a keen interest in the price of land and the finances of farming, which struck me as having its meaning."
They had now nearly reached the bluff and a horseman in khaki uniform rode out of it to meet them.
"I"ve been over to your place," he said to George, when he had dismounted. "I was sent to show you a photograph and ask if you can recognize anybody in it?"
He untied a packet and George studied the picture handed him. It showed the rutted main street of a little western town, with the sunlight on a row of wooden buildings. In the distance a band of cattle were being driven forward by two mounted men; nearer at hand a few wagons stood outside a livery stable; and in the foreground three or four figures occupied the veranda of a frame hotel. The ease of their att.i.tudes suggested that they did not know they were being photographed, and their faces were distinct. George looked triumphantly excited and unhesitatingly laid a finger on one face.
"This is the man that drove off Mr. Grant"s Percheron and stabbed my horse."
The trooper produced a thin piece of card and a small reading-gla.s.s.