CHAPTER XIII.
THE QUARREL.
When Colina returned she said immediately: "Ambrose, can you stay at
Fort Enterprise a little while longer?"
His heart leaped up. "As long as I can help you!" he cried.
They looked at each other wistfully. They wanted so much to be friends—but the black shape was still there in the room.
"I'd be glad to have you stay here in the house," said Colina.
Ambrose shook his head. "I'd much better stay in camp."
She acquiesced. "There are three white men here," she went on,
"Giddings, Macfarlane the policeman, and Mr. Pringle the missionary.
Each is all right in his way, but—"
"They're all in love with you," suggested Ambrose.
She smiled faintly. "How did you know?"
Ambrose shrugged. "Deduced it."
"You see I cannot take any of them into my confidence."
"Colina!" he said. "If you would only let me—"
"Ah, I want to!" she returned. "If only, only you will not abuse him—wounded and helpless as he is!"
Here was the black shape again.
"I suppose Gordon Strange will run the business," said Ambrose.
"Naturally," said Colina. "He knows everything about it."
"If you want my advice," Ambrose said diffidently, "do not trust him too far."
She looked at him in astonishment. "Mr. Strange is almost like one of the family. He's been father's right-hand man for years and years. Father says he's the best servant the company possesses."
"That may be," said Ambrose doggedly, "but a good servant makes a bad master. After all, he is not one of us. If you value my advice at all you will never let him know he is running things."
"How can I help it? I haven't told him yet what has happened; but Dr. Giddings and I agreed that he must be told. He never mixes with the natives."
"Of course he must know your father was wounded, but he needn't be told how seriously. If I were you I would make him inform me of every detail of the business on the pretext of repeating it to your father. And I would issue orders to him as if they came from your father's bed."
"How can I?" said Colina. "I know nothing of the business."
"I can help you," said Ambrose—"if you want me to. I know it."
"But, Ambrose," she objected, "what reason have you to feel so strongly against Mr. Strange?"
"No reason," he said; "only an instinct. I believe he's a crook."
"Father relies on him absolutely."
"Maybe his influence with your father was sometimes unfortunate."
Colina's eyebrows went up. "Influence! Father would hardly allow his judgment to be swayed by a breed."
"You're a woman," said Ambrose earnestly. "You should not despise these feelings that we have sometimes and cannot give a reason for. I saw Strange on my way here. I exchanged only half a dozen words with him, yet I am as sure as I can be that he was glad of the accident to your father and hopes to profit by it somehow."
Colina was still incredulous.
"Look what he wrote me this morning!" she cried. "It sounds so genuine."
She handed him a note from the desk. He read:
DEAR MISS COLINA:
They are saying that your father has been taken ill; that the doctor has been with him all night. I am more distressed than I can tell you. You know what he is to me! Do send me some word. He was so cheerful and well yesterday that I cannot believe it can be serious. Native gossip always magnifies everything.
If it is all right to speak to him about business, will you remind him that a deputation from the farmers is due at the store this morning to receive his final answer as to the price of wheat this year. As far as I know his intention is to offer one-fifty a bushel, but something may have come up to cause him to change his mind. Unless he is very ill, I would rather not take this responsibility upon myself.
Do let me have word from you.
G.S.
"Anybody can write letters," said Ambrose. "It sounds to me as if he was just trying to find out how bad your father is. He could easily put the farmers off."
"I can't believe he's as bad as you say," said Colina gravely. "Why, he was here long before I was born. But I will be prudent. With your help I'll try to run things myself."
Ambrose sent her a grateful glance—shot with apprehension. He dreaded what was still to come.
"This question of the price of the wheat," Colina went on; "we have to give him an answer or confess father is very ill."
Ambrose nodded gloomily.
"Fortunately that is easy," she continued; "for he spoke about it at dinner last night. He means to pay one-fifty." She moved toward the desk. "I'll send a note over at once."
The critical moment had arrived—even more swiftly than he feared. He could not think clearly, for the pain he felt.
"Ah, Colina, I love you!" he cried involuntarily.
She paused and smiled over her shoulder.
"I know," she said, surprised and gentle. "That's why you're here."
"I've got to advise you honestly," he cried, "no matter what trouble it makes."
"Of course," she said. "What's the matter, Ambrose?"
"You should offer them one-seventy-five for their wheat."
The eyebrows went up again. "Why?"
"It's only fair. Two dollars would be fairer."
"But father said one-fifty."
"Your father is wrong in this instance."
Colina frowned ominously.
"How do you know?" she demanded.
"I know the price of flour at the different posts," he said deprecatingly. "I know the risks that must be allowed for and the fair profit one expects."
"Do you mean to say that father is unfair?" she cried.
He was silent. An unlucky word had betrayed him. He could have bitten his tongue. Still, he reflected sullenly, it was bound to come. You can't make black white, however tenderly you describe it.
Colina sprang to her feet.
"Unfair!" she cried. "That is to say a cheat! You can say it while he is lying up-stairs desperately wounded!"
"Colina, be reasonable," he implored. "The fact that he is suffering can't make a wrong right."
"There is no wrong!" she cried. "What do you know about conditions here?"
"They come to my camp," he said simply, "one after another to beg me to help them."
"And you were not above it," she flashed back, "murderers and others!"
An honest anger fired Ambrose's eyes. "You're talking wildly," he said sternly. "I'm trying to help you."
Colina laughed.
With a great effort he commanded his temper, "What do you see yourself in your rides about the settlement?" he asked. "Poverty and wretchedness! How do you explain it when times are good—when this is known as the richest post in the north?"
Colina would have none of his reasoning. "These are just the dangerous ideas my father warned me against!" she cried passionately. "This is how you make the natives discontented and unruly!"
"You will not listen to me!" he cried in despair.
"Listen to you! I see him lying there—helpless. I am sick with compassion for him and with hatred against the creatures who did it. And you dare to attack him, to excuse them! I will not endure it!"
"I am not attacking him. Right or wrong, he has brought about a disastrous situation. He's the first to suffer. We're all standing on the edge of a volcano. We are five whites here, and three hundred miles from the nearest of our kind. If we want to save him and save ourselves we've got to face the facts."
Of this Colina heard one sentence. "Do you mean, to say that father brought this on himself?" she demanded, breathlessly angry.
Ambrose made a helpless gesture.
"I am to understand that you justify the breed?" she persisted.
"You have no right to put words into my mouth!"
Colina repeated like an automaton. "Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"
"I will not answer."
"You've got to answer—before you and I go any farther!"
"Colina, think what you're doing!" he cried. "We must not quarrel."
"I'm not quarreling," she said with an odd, flinty quietness. "I'm trying to find out something necessary for me to know. You might as well answer. Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"
Ambrose, baited beyond endurance, cried: "I do! He went into the man's house and laid hands on his property. Even a breed has rights."
Colina bowed her head as if in polite acceptance. "You had better go," she said in soft tones more terrible than a cry. "I am sorry I ever saw you!"
The bitterness of lovers' quarrels is in ratio with their passion for each other. These two loved with complete abandon, consequently each could wound the other maddeningly.
But the plant of their love, vigorous as it was, was not rooted in old acquaintance. When the top withered under the blasts of anger there was no store of life below. Now each was secretly terrified by the strangeness of the being to whom he had yielded his soul.
Ambrose, wild with pain, no longer recked what he said. "You make a man mad!" he cried. "You will not listen to reason. A thing must be so just because you want it that way. I rack my brains for words to save your feelings, and this is what I get! Very well, you shall have the bald truth."
"Leave the house!" cried Colina.
"Not until I have spoken out!"
She clapped her hands over her ears.
"That is childish!" he said scornfully. "You can hear me! Throughout the whole north your father is called the slave-driver!"
Colina faced him still and white. This was the very incandescence of anger. "Go!" she said. "I'm done with you!"
"One thing more," he said doggedly. "The price of wheat. I shouldn't have said anything about justice. Putting that aside, it will be good business for you to pay the farmers their price. Otherwise you'll have red rebellion on your hands!"
As Ambrose made for the door he met Gordon Strange coming in.
"Wait!" Colina commanded. "I want you to hear this."
It was impossible to tell from her set face what she meant to do,
Ambrose waited, hoping against hope.
"You want to know about the wheat?" said Colina.
"First, your father," said Strange, anxious and compassionate.
"He is not dangerously ill," said Colina.
"Ah!" said Strange. "Yes, the farmers are waiting."
Colina said clearly: "The price is to be one-fifty per bushel."
"That's what I thought," said Strange. "I will tell them." He went.
"Ah, Colina!" cried Ambrose brokenly.
She left the room slowly, as if he had not been there.
Ambrose could not have told how he got out of the house.