"The Lance Courthorne now at Silverdale is as free from reproach as any man may be," she said. "I can't tell you why I am sure of it--but I know I am not mistaken."
CHAPTER XXI
THE FACE AT THE WINDOW
It was a hot morning when Sergeant Stimson and Corporal Payne rode towards the railroad across the prairie. The grassy levels rolled away before them, white and parched, into the blue distance, where willow grove and straggling bluff floated on the dazzling horizon, and the fibrous dust rose in little puffs beneath the horses' feet, until Stimson pulled his beast up in the shadow of the birches by the bridge, and looked back towards Silverdale. There, wooden homesteads girt about with barns and granaries rose from the whitened waste, and behind some of them stretched great belts of wheat. Then the Sergeant, understanding the faith of the men who had sown that splendid grain, nodded, for he was old and wise, and had seen many adverse seasons, and the slackness that comes, when hope has gone, to beaten men.
"They will reap this year--a handful of cents on every bushel," he said. "A fine gentleman is Colonel Barrington, but some of them will be thankful there's a better head than the one he has, at Silverdale."
"Yes, sir," said Corporal Payne, who wore the double chevrons for the first time, and surmised that his companion's observations were not without their purpose.
Stimson glanced at the bridge. "Good work," he said. "It will save them dollars on every load they haul in. A gambler built it! Do they teach men to use the ax in Montana saloons?"
The corporal smiled, and waited for what he felt would come. He was no longer the hot-blooded lad who had come out from the old country, for he had felt the bonds of discipline, and been taught restraint and silence on the lonely marches of the prairie.
"I have," he said tentatively, "fancied there was something a little unusual about the thing."