CHAPTER XII
WANDERERS
Agatha had spent a month with Mrs. Hastings. When they were driving over to Wyllard’s homestead one afternoon, the older woman pulled up her team while they were still some little distance away from their destination, and looked about her with evident interest. On the one hand, a vast breadth of torn-up loam ran back across the prairie, which was now faintly flecked with green. On the other, plowing teams were scattered here and there across the tussocky sod, and long lines of clods that flashed where the sunlight struck their facets trailed out behind them. The great sweep of grasses that rustled joyously before a glorious warm wind, gleamed luminously, and overhead hung a vault of blue without a cloud in it. Trailing out across it, flocks of birds moved up from the south.
“Harry is sowing a very big crop this year, and most of it on fall back-set,” she observed. “He has, however, horses enough to do that kind of thing, and, of course, he does it thoroughly.” She glanced toward the place where the teams were hauling unusually heavy plows through the grassy sod. “This is virgin prairie that he’s breaking, and he’ll probably put oats on it. They ripen quicker. He ought to be a rich man after harvest unless the frost comes, or the market goes against him. Some of his neighbors, including my husband, would have sown a little less and held a reserve in hand.”
Agatha remembered what Wyllard had told her one night on board the Scarrowmania, and smiled, for she fancied that she understood the man. He was not one to hedge, as she had heard it called, or cautiously hold his hand. He staked boldly, but she felt that this was not only for the sake of the money that he might hope to gain. It was part of his nature—the result of an optimistic faith or courage that appealed to her, and sheer love of effort. She also guessed that his was not a spasmodic, impulsive activity. She could imagine him holding on as steadfastly with everything against him, exacting all that men and teams and machines could do. It struck her as curious that she should feel so sure of this; but she admitted that it was the case.
Sitting in the driving-seat of a big machine that ripped broad furrows through the crackling sod, he was approaching them. Four horses plodded wearily in front of the giant plow until he thrust one hand over, and there was a rattle and clanking as he swung them and the machine around beside the wagon. Then he got down, and stood smiling up at Agatha with his soft hat in his hand and the sunlight falling full upon his weather-darkened face. It was not a particularly striking face, but there was something in it, a hint of restrained force and steadfastness, she thought, which Gregory’s did not possess, and for a moment or two she watched him covertly.
He wore an old blue shirt, open at the throat and belted into trousers of blue duck, and she noticed the fine symmetry of his spare figure. The absence of any superfluous flesh struck her as in keeping with her view of his character. The man was well-endowed physically; but apart from the strong vitality that was expressed in every line of his pose he looked clean, as she vaguely described it to herself. There was an indefinable something about him that was apparently born of a simple, healthful life spent in determined labor in the open air. It became plainer, as she remembered other men upon whom the mark of the beast was unmistakably set. Mrs. Hastings broke the silence.
“Well,” she said, “we have driven over as we promised. I’ve no doubt you will give us supper, but we’ll go on and sit with Mrs. Nansen in the meanwhile. I expect you’re too busy to talk to us.”
Wyllard laughed, and it occurred to Agatha that his laugh was wholesome as well as pleasant.