The stalwart farmer's face darkened. "I feel 'most as bad, and have been waiting all evening to get the trouble out," he said. "Fact is, I'm borrowing money, and if you could let me have a few hundred dollars it would mean salvation."
I laughed harshly to hide my dismay. The prairie settlers stand by one another in time of adversity, and in earlier days Steel had been a good friend to me; but the request was singularly inopportune. Two bad seasons had followed each other, when the whole Dominion labored under a commercial depression; and though my estate was worth at ordinary values a considerable sum, it was only by sacrificing my best stock I could raise money enough to carry it on.
"If I get anything worth mentioning for the beasts I'll do my utmost, and by emptying the treasury perhaps I can scrape up two or three hundred now. What do you want with it?" I said.
"I thought you would help me," answered Steel, with a gasp of relief. "I've been played for the fool I am. I got a nice little book from the ---- Company, and it showed how any man with enterprise could get ahead by the aid of borrowed capital. Then its representative—very affable man—came along and talked considerable. I was a bit hard pressed, and the end was that he lent me money. There were a blame lot of charges, and the money seemed to melt away, while now, if I don't pay up, he'll foreclose on me."
I clenched my right hand viciously, for the man who had trapped poor Steel had also a hold on me, and I began to cherish a growing fear of the genial Lane.
"It's getting a common story around here," I said. "That man seems bent on absorbing all this country, but if only for that very reason we're bound to help each other to beat him. It will be a hard pull, but, though it all depends on what the stock fetch, I'll do the best I can."
Steel was profuse in his thanks, and I lapsed into a by no means overpleasant reverie. So some time passed until a glare of red and yellow showed up against the sky where none had been before.
"Looks like a mighty big fire. There's long grass feeding it, and it has just rolled over a ridge," said Steel. "Seems to me somewhere near the Indian Spring Bottom, but Redmond and the other fellow would drive the stock well clear."
Flinging my chair back I snatched a small compass from a shelf, laid it on the window-ledge, and, kneeling behind it, with a knife blade held across the card I took the bearings of the flame. "It's coming right down on the bottom, and though by this time the stock is probably well clear, I'm a little uneasy about it. We'll ride over and make quite sure," I said.
"Of course!" Steel answered, and seemed about to add something, but thought better of it and followed me towards the stable. Thorn, who was prompt of action, had also seen the fire, for he was already busy with the horses; and inside of five minutes we were sweeping at a gallop across the prairie. Save for the intermittent play of lightning the darkness was Egyptian; and the grass was seamed by hollows and deadly badger-holes; but the broad blaze streamed higher for a beacon, and, risking a broken neck, I urged on the mettled beast beneath me. Grass fires are common, and generally are harmless enough in our country; but that one seemed unusually fierce, and an indefinite dread gained on me as the miles rolled behind us.