"Made a plot to blacken Harding, you mean? Rather far-fetched, isn't it? Whom do you suspect?"
Lance turned red, for his father's tone was sarcastic, and he thought of Gerald; but he could not drop a hint against his brother.
"I don't know yet, but I'm going to find out."
"When you have found out, you can tell me," Mowbray answered, and gave the boy an approving smile. "You're quite right in standing by your friend, and you certainly owe Harding something. If you can prove him better than we think, nobody will be more pleased than I."
Lance had to be satisfied with this. He did not know how to set about his investigations, but he determined to visit Winnipeg as soon as he could.
For the next week or two there was quietness at the Grange. The dry weather held, and boisterous winds swept the sunburned plain. The sod cracked, the wheat was shriveling, and although in public men and women made a brave pretense of cheerfulness, in private they brooded over the ruin that threatened them. To make things worse, three or four days a week, heavy clouds that raced across the sky all morning gathered in solid banks at noon, and then, as if in mockery, broke up and drove away. Few of the settlers had much reserve capital, and the low prices obtained for the last crop had strained their finances; but Harding was, perhaps, threatened most.
He had, as had been his custom, boldly trusted to the earth all he had won by previous effort, and this year it looked as if the soil would refuse its due return. Still, his taking such a risk was only partly due to the prompting of his sanguine temperament. While he had hope of winning Beatrice he must stake his all on the chance of gaining influence and wealth. He had lost her; but after a few black days during which he had thought of abandoning the struggle and letting things drift, he quietly resumed his work. What he had begun must be finished, even if it brought no advantage to himself. The disaster that seemed unavoidable braced him to sterner effort; but when dusk settled down he stood in the dim light and brooded over his withering wheat. Being what he was, a man of constructive genius, it cut deep that he must watch the grain that had cost so much thought and toil go to waste; but the red band on the prairie's edge and the luminous green above it held only a menace.
One day Harding drove with Devine to a distant farm, and they set out on the return journey late in the afternoon. It was very hot, for the wind had died away, and deep stillness brooded over the lifeless plain. The gophers that made their burrows in the trail had lost their usual briskness, and sat up on their haunches until the wheels were almost upon them. The prairie-chickens the horses disturbed would not rise, but ran a few yards and sank down in the parched grass. The sky was leaden, and the prairie glimmered a curious, livid white. Harding's skin prickled, and he was conscious of a black depression and a headache.
"If this only meant rain!" he exclaimed dejectedly. "But I've given up hope."
"Something's surely coming," Devine replied, glancing at a great bank of cloud that had changed its color to an oily black. "If this weather holds for another week, the crop will be wiped out, but somehow I can't believe we'll all go broke."