By Right of Purchase

by Harold Bindloss

The ostler from the Occidental was waiting outside with a hired horse, and Leland, swinging himself wearily into the saddle, rode down the unpaved street. A blaze of light shone out from the verandah of the little hotel, and he could hear the laughter of those inside and the hum of merry voices. Further on, somebody was playing a fiddle in a house the door and windows of which stood wide open. He sighed a little as he rode by. A year ago, he would have spent the night there or at the hotel, taking his part in the pointed badinage with keen enjoyment. His good-humour had been infectious then, and everybody had had a pleasant word for him; but things were different now.

The market was going against him, the season was getting more unpropitious. If ruin could be staved off, it would be only by unceasing toil and Spartan self-denial. After working from sunrise, he had driven forty miles that afternoon, and there was the same distance still to be covered in the saddle. He might count himself fortunate if he reached Prospect in time for barely two hours' sleep before he must set about his work again. He had never spared himself, and he had no thought of doing so now, when every effort he could make was urgently necessary. Branscombe Denham's creditors had been, if not satisfied, at least pacified for a time with the money that would have seen him through, and Leland, who knew his man, smiled grimly as he recalled that Denham had termed it a loan.

There was nobody in the rutted street, the stores were closed, and only a single light burned in the little wooden shed beside the railroad track. The place seemed deadly desolate, and Leland, whose physical weariness had reacted on his mind, shrank for once from the greater loneliness, as he rode out into the silent, empty waste. Save when the blue sheet-lightning fell with a sudden blaze, black darkness rested heavily upon the night. The drumming of his horse's hoofs rose with a jarring distinctness, the air was thick and hot, and the smell of sun-scorched earth was in his nostrils. A light, fibrous dust settled on his perspiring face.

The sod, green no longer, was turning white before its season, and broad cracks seamed its surface from want of moisture. He could remember only one or two springs that had been like this; and they, he recalled, had broken many a prairie farmer. Seed will not germinate under such conditions, and the prairie summer is usually quite short enough to ripen the crops. There was nobody to observe him, so he bent under the strain, riding slackly in his weariness, with all the vigour gone out of him. What his thoughts were, he could never quite remember. Indeed, he was not sure that he had had any definite thoughts at all, being conscious only of utter lassitude and dejection.

The horse started in alarm whenever the blue radiance flashed athwart the prairie, showing here and there a clump of willows, or a birch bluff etched black against the brightness. Then darkness followed, and he felt his way by the sound the hoofs made on the sun-baked soil of the trail. He was astonished, on making the big bluff by the ravine, to hear a beat of hoofs among the trees he had not seen until he rode into the midst of them. There were evidently a good many horses, and it flashed upon him that only the rustlers would be riding that way in a body and at that hour of night. He had no pistol, nothing in fact, but a heavy riding quirt. This he grasped by the thinner end as he rode on. In his present mood, he would not have left the trail had he known absolutely that the outlaws had come there in search of him.

They were hidden in the blackness, but he could hear them calling to their horses as they climbed the trail out of the hollow, and he stiffened himself a little, shifting his hand on the bridle, and feeling for a firmer grip with his knees. As he did so, the gap between the trunks was filled with a blue flash, and he could plainly see the white faces of the foremost of the outlaws. The light lasted long enough to show that men and beasts were dripping with wet. Then a curious thing happened. Leland's grasp of the riding quirt suddenly relaxed, and he checked his horse.

"You have had rain, boys?" he said.

"A shower," said a startled man, who had seen him for an instant. "More of it to the westwards—the creek's rising."

There was another blue flash, and Leland's horse plunged. As he swayed in his saddle, two, at least, of the others saw his face; but they stood still in the black darkness that followed, and he rode through the midst of them with a firm grasp on the bridle. Then he gave the startled horse the rein. A confused clamour rose from the blackness behind him as he swept across the bridge, and he felt that whimsical chance alone had saved him. Had he planned his moves with definite purpose, the thing he had done would have been impossible.

Reining in when he reached the level beyond the ravine, he sat listening. There was no sound of pursuit. As a big, warm drop splashed upon one hand, he started nervously. Then from out the silence came a soft murmur that rose in sharp crescendo. Suddenly a rush of rain smote his perspiring face. The patter swelled into a roar, and a heavy, steamy smell like that of a hothouse rose from the drinking earth. Leland felt his pulse quicken as the warm deluge washed his cares away. Its value could be calculated in hard cash, for it saved his wheat.