"You ought to make it in a day and a half," the stranger said. "I'll ride in with you. My name's Gardner. I run a store and hotel at Sweetwater, but I feel that I want to get out on the prairie now and then, and as a horse was missing I went after him. A looker, isn't he?"
The man had a good-humored, sunburned face and an honest look, and he gladly acquiesced in Blake's suggestion that he join them instead of cooking a separate supper.
The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf; but the stillness was broken by a puff of icy wind which suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the woods, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. Then the thunder died away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent, where the men crouched inside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass from the huge sinking sun.
Harding, with Gardner's help, brought his pile of wood out of the tent, and soon made a fire; and it was getting dark, though a band of transcendental green still burned upon the prairie's western edge, when they finished supper and, sitting round the fire, took out their pipes. The hobbled horses were quietly grazing near them.
"That's undoubtedly a fine animal," Blake observed. "Is it yours?"
"No; it belongs to Clarke's Englishman."
"Who's he? It's a curious way to speak of a fellow."
"It fits him," laughed Gardner. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide and bones—and that's all there'll be when the doctor gets through with him. He's a sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."
"Then, who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.
"That's not so easy to answer; but he's a man you want to be friends with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start with—and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers is more than I know."