JANE and Blue Pete were doing their best. Their massive bodies were a sumptuous feeding-ground for the swarming mosquitoes, which transformed their cheerful roan coats into something drab and dismal. The air was hot and heavy in the depths of the slough, but the grass was luxuriant, and the hay cut was heavy.
Perched on the iron saddle of the mower, Lightning had no complaint to make against the conditions of his work, or the result of his labours. The heat, and the flies, and the mosquitoes, left the man unheeding. The toughened pores of his skin refused to exude a perspiration that could cause him discomfort. As for the flies, they made no more impression on him than if he had been a brass image. Even the blood-lust of the mosquitoes was little enough likely to obtain satisfaction from his hardening veins. But his temper was more than usually uncertain, and it found expression in a wealth of invective which he hurled at the heads of his devoted team. He sat there like some ragged, bewhiskered vulture, lean, aggressive, alternately cursing and coaxing. Lightning was worried. He was irritated. He was desperately unhappy.
Lightning’s ill mood had been steadily growing for three weeks, ever since the night of Molly’s party. It seemed like an eternity to the old man since that night which was only three weeks ago. He seemed to have lived through an age of disquiet and anxiety. And the depression of it had long since passed the stage when explosive blasphemy could afford him any relief.
With Molly’s unremitting assistance he had been cutting, and hauling, and stacking hay for days. But he had found in the work none of his customary satisfaction. In happier times each accomplished item in the round of his seasonal labours signified something achieved in the interests of the girl. Every detail of improvement in the progress of the Marton homestead had been a source of complete satisfaction to him. But that was when he knew it was all for Molly. That was before the thought of Andy McFardell had become the disturbing element of his intolerant mind.
But now that disturbing element had given place to something a hundredfold worse. It was Molly who had become his gravest anxiety. Again he knew that it was the man who was the source of the trouble. But it was in a different fashion. Hitherto Lightning had deplored and hated the man’s presence anywhere near the farm. Now he was desperately concerned at his absence from it. Andy McFardell had not been near the farm since the night of the party.
The change in the girl immediately following the dance had been bad enough. Whatever his regard for Andy, Lightning had felt that the girl’s distress, her obvious unhappiness, was altogether wrong and unaccountable. She was going to be married. It was her own choice. She was crazy about the wretched man. Well?
The first day had passed without relief. But with the second day it seemed that the work of time and youth would surely tell. Molly’s silence was less unbroken; her work was carried on less feverishly; even a shadow of her smile returned. Then came the moment when he discovered her returning from the trail by the creek, and he knew she had been there watching for the coming of her lover. His relief developed into something like joy, and he was amazed to find the contemplated coming of Andy McFardell could so affect him.
But the man did not come. Neither the next day, nor the next, nor the next. And now three weeks had passed without his having put in an appearance. Each day the old man had seen the girl move out down the trail looking for his coming. And each day the time she remained seemed to lengthen.
The change in Molly had become almost calamitous. She rarely left the house except at Lightning’s express call for her assistance. She laboured silently in the hay corral when the old man brought in a load of newly-cut hay. But she always returned to the house the moment the work was finished. Her eyes had the look of sleepless nights. Her cheeks had lost their happy roundness, and a pathetic down-drooping of the corners of her mouth told the troubled old man their own tale of dreary unhappiness.
Then came that memorable night when Lightning had recklessly ventured. Molly had eaten little at midday. She was eating less at the supper she was sharing with him. He had been observing her closely while he noisily consumed his hash with an appetite wholly unimpaired. Molly was gazing out of the window, her food scarcely touched, watching the play of the evening sunlight upon the foliage of a distant bluff. It was realisation of unshed tears in the girl’s eyes that robbed the old man of his caution, and flung him headlong.