By Right of Purchase

by Harold Bindloss

It was close upon the dinner hour, and the sun was almost overhead in a cloudless sky, when he approached a turning. The glare from the yellow wheat was dazzling, and the ironwork on the binder almost too hot to touch with the hand, and Leland once more found his sight grow blurred as he strove to turn his team. They did not seem to answer the guidance of the reins, and when the machine, turning short, ran in among the wheat, he raised himself a little as he called to them. That was the last thing he remembered.

The next instant, the man behind him saw him reel and topple from the saddle as the whirling arms came round. He pulled his team up, and, jumping down, ran as for his life; but, most fortunately, Leland's tired horses had stopped of their own accord in a pace or two, for, when the other man came up, their driver lay partly across the knife-sheath with his feet among the wheat. What could be seen of his face was darkly flushed, while the sleeve and breast of his dusty shirt were smeared with trickling red. The other man, startled as he was, had, however, sense enough to seize the near horse's head before he shouted to his comrades.

"Lay hold of the wheel, two of you," he said when several of them came running up. "Now get up, somebody, and pull the driving-clutch out. We don't want to saw him open."

He had kept himself in hand, but he gasped with relief when the deadly steel was thrown out of action. Then, still holding the horses, he directed the rest to drag Leland clear. It was a minute later when he pushed the others aside and bent over him. Leland lay limp and still in the dusty stubble, with eyes half closed, and a red trickle dripping into the thirsty soil beneath him. The man, who had seen a good many bad axe-wounds in the Ontario bush, rolled back the breast and sleeve of the torn shirt before he straightened himself and wiped his dripping face.

"I guess he has come off quite fortunate, in one way. There's no big vessel cut, or it would spout," he said. "The first thing to do is to get him out of the sun, and it's not very far to the house."

They picked him up, and four of them carried him to the homestead as gently as they could. At the door they met Carrie. She closed one hand hard, and turned very white when the men, who stopped, stood gasping a little and looking at her stupidly, with their burden hanging limply between them. Then, while she struggled with a numbing sense of horror, the leader awkwardly took off his hat.

"I guess it's nothing very bad. He's cut in two places, and the binder hit him on the head, but a man of his kind will soon get over that," he said. "Now, I know quite a little about cuts and things, and, if you'll send for Mrs. Nesbit, we'll soon fix him up. Get a move on, boys. Mrs. Leland will show you where to take him."

The words had a bracing effect. Carrie shook off her first terror, and, though she was trembling, went up the stairway in front of them. She was almost afraid to look round at the men, who stumbled noisily with their burden. Still, she felt a little easier when, in the course of half an hour, the Ontario man managed to stop most of the bleeding with a few simple compresses, and to get Leland, who had not opened his eyes yet, into bed. He turned to Carrie, who was standing close by with a tense, white face.

"I guess all he got after he fell off the binder is not going to worry him much, but I don't know what he had before," he said. "It might have been sunstroke, and it might just as well have been something else. He was kind of shaky all the morning. Anyway, I'll tell Tom Gallwey, and he'll send some one of the boys in to the railroad to wire for a doctor."

He went out, and Carrie was left in the darkened room kneeling by her husband's side, while Tom Gallwey drove the fastest team at Prospect furiously across the prairie. He did not send another man, but went himself, and the horses he drove had reason to remember that journey.