The girl looked hard at me, and I saw she recognized that the excuse was very lame. "There is nobody living within reach of a short ride. Will you return to-night?" she asked.
It was most unfortunate, for I did not wish to anticipate the trooper's gift. "I hardly think so," I answered. "Now, I will make a bargain with you. If you will keep my departure a secret, you will discover what my errand is very shortly."
"Very well," said Lucille Haldane; though she still seemed curious. "A safe journey to you, but I don't envy you the exercise."
I afterwards had cause to abuse Trooper Cotton and his errand, but I swung myself into the saddle, and, when I reached the Bitter Lakes trail, I patrolled it for two long hours under the nipping frost. No lumbering ox-team, however, crawled up out of the white prairie, though as yet the moon was in the sky; and I decided that the freighter had, as he sometimes did, taken another trail. It then, fortunately, occurred to me that I had promised to inspect some horses with a small rancher living four or five leagues away, and so determined to do so in the morning. A deserted sod-house stood at no great distance, which the scattered settlers kept supplied with fuel. It served as a convenient half-way shelter for those who must break their long journey to the railroad settlement, and I set out for it at a canter. As I did so the moon dipped, and darkness settled on the prairie.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BURNING OF GASPARD'S TRAIL
The hole in the roof of the sod-house had been insufficiently stopped, the green birch billets stored in a corner burned sulkily in the rusty stove, so that the earth-floored room was bitterly cold. Still, after tying my horse at one end of it, and partly burying myself in a heap of prairie hay, I managed to sink into a light slumber. I awakened feeling numbed all through, with the pain at the joints which results from sleeping insufficiently protected in a low temperature, and looked about me shivering. There was not a spark in the stove, the horse was stamping impatiently, and, when a sputtering match had shown me that it was after two in the morning, I rose stiffly. Anything appeared better than slowly freezing there, and I strode out into the night, leading the horse by the bridle.
A cold wind swept the prairie, and it was very dark; but, when we had covered a league or so, and the exercise had warmed me, a dull red glare appeared on the horizon. A grass fire was out of the question at that season, and it was evident that somebody's homestead was burning. I was in the saddle the next moment and riding fast towards the distant blaze. The frozen sod was rough, the night very black, and haste distinctly imprudent; but I pressed on recklessly, haunted by a fear that the scene of the conflagration was Bonaventure. Reaching the edge of a rise, I pulled the horse up with a sense of vast relief, for a struggling birch bluff gave me my bearings and made it plain that neither Haldane's homestead nor his daughter could be in peril.
Then it dawned on me that the fire was at Gaspard's Trail and I sat still a minute, irresolute. I had no doubt that the recent purchaser was merely acting for Lane, and I felt tempted to resume my journey; but curiosity, or the instinct which calls out each prairie settler when his neighbor's possessions are in jeopardy, was too strong for me, and I rode towards the blaze, but much more slowly. It was one thing to risk a broken limb when danger appeared to threaten Bonaventure, but quite another to do so for the sake of an unscrupulous adversary. It would have been well for me had I obeyed the first impulse which prompted me—and turned my back upon the fire.
An hour had passed before I reached the house which had once been mine, and, after tethering the horse in shelter of an unthreatened granary, I proceeded to look about me. Gaspard's Trail was clearly doomed. One end of the dwelling had fallen in. The logs, dried by the fierce summer, were blazing like a furnace, and a column of fire roared aloft into the blackness of the night. Showers of sparks drove down-wind, barns and stables were wrapped in smoke; but, although the blaze lighted up the space about them, there was nobody visible. This was in one respect not surprising, because the nearest homestead stood a long distance away, but, as the new owner had an assistant living with him, I wondered what had become of them. From the position of the doors and windows they could have had no difficulty in escaping, so, deciding that if the ostensible proprietor had deserted his property I was not called on to burn myself, I proceeded to prowl about the buildings in case he should be sheltering inside one of them.