By Right of Purchase

by Harold Bindloss

He made a little involuntary gesture of weariness. "I don't think I'll be sorry. It has been getting a little hard lately, and if the market doesn't break me we'll go away when the wheat is in. You would like to go to Montreal or New York for a week or two? We would do all the concerts and theatres."

Carrie felt that she would like it very much indeed, for, after all, life at Prospect had its disadvantages; but she had reasons for not displaying too much eagerness. Finances were straitened, and Leland, in spite of his simple tastes, was apt to be extravagant where she was concerned.

"Of course!" she said. "I mean, if circumstances permitted it, but that depends upon the market, doesn't it? What has it been doing lately?"

Leland took up a circular. "Standing still for a week, and that is rather a curious thing. You see, with the first wheat pouring in, the bears quite often get their own way just now and hammer prices down, but quotations seem to have been quite steady in Chicago the last few days. They've had a bad season in Minnesota, and the hail wiped out a good deal of wheat in Dakota. What one or two States can grow doesn't count in itself so much against the world's supply, but it's now and then enough to upset a delicate balance. In Winnipeg the bears made another raid, but they couldn't break the price, and I'm inclined to fancy that all they offered was quietly taken up. The outside men, who like a little deal now and then, aren't all of them babes in the wood."

"I'm afraid I could never quite understand these things," said Carrie.

"In one way it's simple. The world wants so much wheat, though the quantity varies, because there are places where they eat other things when it gets too dear. Now, you can get statistics showing how many million bushels they have raised here and there, and it's evident that, if it's less than usual, it's going to be dearer. On the other hand, if there's more than the world has apparently any use of, the men it belongs to have some trouble in selling it, and values come down. That's the principle, but there are men who make their living by shoving prices up and down, and they're able to do it sometimes against all reason. Now and then they half starve poor folks in Europe, and now and then they ruin farmers in the Western States and this part of Canada. They have millions of dollars behind them, and they're clever at crooked games. Still, it sometimes happens that Nature turns against them, and drowns them in floods of wheat; or, when they're squeezing the life-blood out of the farmers, it strikes men up and down the country that wheat was so cheap it ought to be dearer. Then, if the bears slacken their grip a little, men who like to gamble and have the money to spare, send their buying orders in, and the bears find it hard to get the wheat they have pledged themselves to deliver. That sends prices up and up."

"You think that is likely to happen?"

Leland looked very thoughtful. "I can't say. Nobody could. There's one significant thing. Prices are steady, though the wheat is coming in. You'll get considerably more than your two thousand pounds back if they go up. We could have a month in New York then, and you'd go to operas with that crescent glittering in your hair."

Carrie said nothing, for though she had not quite understood all he said, it was sufficiently clear that if prices went down she would never put the crescent on again. She had further reasons, too, for not desiring to discuss that subject. While she sat silent, Gallwey came in, and Leland, taking up a paper, handed it to him.

"That," he said, "is a little idea of mine, and, if we'd had any sense, we would have thought of it earlier. With the new country opening up to the North, the police bosses at Regina have their hands full. They don't want to be worried, and Sergeant Grier seems kind of afraid to admit he can't put the whisky boys down, or to pitch his reports too strong."