Miss Barrington’s eyes twinkled but she shook her head. “That,” she said, “would be distinctly wrong of him, but I fancy it is time we were getting on.”
In another few minutes Colonel Barrington took up the reins, and as they drove slowly past the wheat his niece had another view of the toiling teams. They were moving on tirelessly with their leader in front of them, and the rasp of the knives, trample of hoofs, and clash of the binders’ wooden arms once more stirred her. She had heard those sounds often before, and attached no significance to them; but now she knew a little of the stress and effort that preceded them; she could hear through the turmoil the exultant note of victory.
Then the wagon rolled more slowly up the rise and had passed from view behind it when a mounted man rode up to Witham with an envelope in his hand.
“Mr. Macdonald was in at the settlement, and the telegraph clerk gave it him,” he said. “He told me to come along with it.”
Witham opened the message, and his face grew grim as he read, “Send me five hundred dollars. Urgent.”
Then he thrust it into his pocket and went on with his harvesting, when he had thanked the man. He also worked until dusk was creeping up across the prairie before he concerned himself further about the affair; and then the note he wrote was laconic.
“Enclosed you will find fifty dollars, sent only because you may be ill. In case of necessity, you can forward your doctor’s or hotel bills,” it ran.
It was with a wry smile he watched the man ride off towards the settlement with it. “I shall not be sorry when the climax comes,” he said. “The strain is telling.”
In the meanwhile, Sergeant Stimson had been quietly renewing his acquaintance with certain ranchers and herders of sheep scattered across the Albertan prairie some six hundred miles away. They found him more communicative and cordial than he used to be, and with one or two he unbent so far as, in the face of regulations, to refresh himself with whisky which had contributed nothing to the Canadian revenue. Now, the lonely ranchers have, as a rule, few opportunities of friendly talk with anybody, and as they responded to the sergeant’s geniality, he became acquainted with a good many facts, some of which confirmed certain vague suspicions of his, though others astonished him. In consequence of this, he rode out one night with two or three troopers of a Western squadron.
His apparent business was somewhat prosaic. Musquash, the Blackfoot, in place of remaining quietly on his reserve, had in a state of inebriation reverted to the primitive customs of his race, and taking the trail not only annexed some of his white neighbours’ ponies and badly frightened their wives, but drove off a steer with which he feasted his people. The owner, following, came upon the hide, and Musquash, seeing it was too late to remove the brand from it, expressed his contrition, and pleaded in extenuation that he was rather worthy of sympathy than blame, because he would never have laid hands on what was not his had not a white man sold him deleterious liquor. As no white man is allowed to supply an Indian with alcohol in any form, the wardens of the prairie took a somewhat similar view of the case; and Stimson was, from motives which he did not mention, especially anxious to get his grip upon the other offender.