"Thank you," said Beatrice quietly; and without another word we walked back towards the house together through the velvet dusk. I noticed that Lucille glanced at us sharply as we entered.
"You will not forget our appointment in Winnipeg," said Haldane, as they drove away; and I stood still long after the vehicle had melted into the prairie. What I thought I do not remember; but it was with a dreamy calmness that, now the worst had passed, I returned to Crane Valley.
Reluctance mingled with my anticipation when I proceeded to Winnipeg at the appointed time. The harvest was almost ready, and a brief holiday possibly justifiable in anticipation of that time of effort; but the journey was long and expensive, while, after our severe economies, I had fallen into the habit of slow consideration each time I spent a dollar. Steel laughed when I said so, and pointed to the grain. "It's easier to get used to prosperity than the other thing," he said. "There is plenty money yonder to start you again. If necessary you can remember you have earned a good time."
The sight of the long waves of deepening ochre that rolled before the warm breeze was very reassuring, though belief came slowly, and for days I had feared some fresh disaster. Their rhythmical rustle, swelled by the murmur of the wheat heads and the patter of the oats, made sweet music, for their undertone was hope, while the flash and flicker of the bending blades presaged the glitter of hard-won gold—gold that would set me a free man again. Then I was ashamed, and my voice a trifle husky, as I said: "I am certainly going to Winnipeg, Steel. If it had not been for the others the harvest would have left me in the grip of Lane, and now that the time has come I mean to stand by them."
I boarded the cars the more contentedly that there was a note in my pocket from Lucille Haldane. "Father tells me the time is ripe for you and your friends to strike at last," it ran. "I want to ask you to assist him in every way you can; and I wait anxiously to hear of your success."
I did not understand the whole plan of campaign, but gathered that Haldane, with the support of our prairie committee, would make a "bear" attack on the company—which, while Lane held stock in it, had largely financed him—and I looked forward with keen interest to the struggle. We others had done our best with plow and bridle, not to mention birch staff and fork; but we had hitherto acted chiefly on the defensive, and now an attack was to be pushed home with the aid of money and a superior intellect.
Haldane was in excellent spirits when, accompanied by Boone, he greeted me in Winnipeg station. "I feel less rusty already, and you look several years younger than you did a few months ago," he said. "But we have breakfast ready, and can talk comfortably over it."
The meal was a luxurious one, and Haldane's explanations interesting. "Mr. Boone has taken a great deal of trouble to inquire into Lane's affairs, with the assistance of a man Dixon recommended. Considering the difficulties, I hardly think I should have succeeded better myself," he said.
Boone said this was an unmerited compliment; and Haldane laughed. "Well, the result, as anticipated, is this. Lane has most of his money locked up in mortgages which he does not wish to foreclose on immediately, while we conclude that the rest is represented by shares in the Territories Investment Company, which concern proposes to increase its capital, and, as somebody has been trying to sell that stock quietly in small lots, one may decide that he is short of money. We purpose to scare off buyers and depreciate his shares by selling them in handfuls as publicly as possible; or, in other words, to hammer the company."
"There are two points I am not clear about," I said. "We have not the stock to sell; and wouldn't it be a trifle hard on innocent shareholders?"