The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West

by Robert J. C. Stead

Tenderly he turned the body to a more comfortable position, laying his folded coat beneath the head for a pillow. He loosened the shirt about the neck, and far down the heaving chest saw the sodden red that marked his wound. Rain fell in scattered drops, and he brought another blanket from the cabin, caring little now for the silent form in the doorway in the sudden shadow of his greater tragedy. He spread the blanket over the wounded boy, and sat down by his side, caressing his temples with his big fingers, and wondering what to do next.

As he sat the helplessness of his position grew upon him. He was deep in the foothills, many miles, as far as he knew, from the home of any settler. In daylight he could, no doubt, find his way back to town, but daylight might be too late. He did not know whether Allan was dying on his hands at that moment. Certainly to attempt to move him in the buggy would be dangerous in the extreme.

And as he sat he thought of the missing money, the fruit of his life's labour, snatched from him in a moment in the darkness. The loss did not hurt him as deeply as he might have thought; he was numbed by the greater blow that hung over him. If Allan would only live!…The boy had been his constant companion since babyhood. All his hopes, all his ambitions, which had found their expression in his years of feverish toil, had been wrapped about Allan. He had no one else…His better self revolted at that thought. "You have a wife and daughter," it said, "ready to share your life as soon as you are ready to share theirs." He forced his mind from that phase of his position, but it reverted to it again and again. He could not wander in memory up the path of his boy's life without meeting his boy's mother. And all the pain and unhappiness of the later years—how it cut like an evil bank of fog across the once bright course of their career! But he had suffered for their sakes, holding fast to his own course because he knew it to be best…Best? And it had brought him to this?…The question would not down. Rather than relax an iota from his own purposes he had broken up his family; he had crushed them under the wheels of his inflexible will, and now that same will had driven his son to destruction and himself to ruin.

It is not easy for a man who has laid out a career and followed it with all the energy of a virile nature, recasting his gods from time to time to conform with the evolution of his ideals, but recasting always in the mould of his own will rather than any vessel of creed or persuasion—it is not easy for such a man to stop at fifty and say, "I was wrong." It requires a break in his process of evolution, a shock sufficiently powerful to pulverize his gods before his face, to drive home the truth that they were not gods at all but merely idols of his own creation. In Harris's later life two idols had grown up to the exclusion of all others; they were the wealth which he had builded with his hands and the boy Allan about whom he wrapped all the affection of his nature; and they had crumbled to dust even while he worshipped.

He found a flask thrown from some camper's pack, and filled it with water at the mountain stream that rushed by a few rods below the cabin. He placed the liquid to the boy's lips and fancied that some drops found entrance. He had staunched the wound as best he could with fragments torn from the lining of his coat, and he sat down again to watch. Until morning he could do nothing more. Then some camper, lumberman, or surveyor might happen along the road. If not, he would have to move Allan at all risks.

It took time for him to realize the utterness with which his plans had collapsed. As the night wore on he was able to weigh his disaster in a more balanced mind, but its magnitude grew in the weighing. From prosperous ambition he had been swept in an hour to penniless ruin. His destruction was almost complete. The old farm, the scene of his labours—his and Mary's—was gone. If Allan should die there remained nothing more.

Suddenly he fancied he heard the sound of horses' hoofs in the clay road along the hillside, now softened with the light rain. The sound ceased as suddenly as it began, and it occurred to him that it might be one of the robbers returning. The lantern was burning low, but as a precaution he now turned it quite out. There were some cartridges in Allan's pocket; he felt for them and decided to bring the gun out of the cabin. But before he could put this decision into effect he observed the form of a man moving silently but briskly toward the cabin. He held his breath and remained obscured in the bushes. Dimly he discerned the form stop at the door and peer into the darkness.

There was no doubt in the mind of Harris as to the evil intent of the visitor. He had come on horseback near the building, and had then dismounted and stole up to it on foot. That, in itself was sufficiently incriminating. One who was riding through the mountains on a legitimate errand, and who knew nothing of the night's affray, would take no such precautions. Unarmed as he was, Harris resolved that the robber, probably the murderer of his son, should not on any account escape him. With the blanket which he had brought to cover Allan was a bag in which they had carried oats for their horses; this he found in the darkness, and stole after his victim. He overtook him standing at the door, in apparent hesitancy whether to enter the building. Without an instant's warning Harris threw the bag about his head, and with a quick twist of his powerful wrist had his prisoner securely gagged. Throwing him violently to the ground, he tied the sack in a hard knot, and, despite all struggles, dragged him back to where Allan lay. Here he relighted the lantern, and, cutting part of the blanket into strips with his pocket-knife, securely tied his captive hand and foot. At first the prisoner tried to talk, but he could not speak intelligibly through the closely-drawn sack, and presently he gave up and lay in silence in the wet grass. And again the leaden night wore on, broken only by occasional gurglings in the throat of Allan, or futile struggles by the prisoner. Harris felt little curiosity concerning the identity of the man in gags before him, or the victim of Allan's gun in the doorway. They were absolute strangers to him, and he even feared that if he should look into the face of the one that still lived his anger over the assault upon Allan would burst all bounds and he would kill his victim on the spot. He was slowly forced to the conclusion that Riles and Gardiner had also met with foul play, and that no help was now to be expected from that quarter. The light rain had drifted past, and bright stars gleamed through great rents in the shattered clouds. The gibbous moon, too, looked down, and its cold light intensified the shadows. The night grew colder, and Harris spread his own outer garments upon his son, and at last lay down with Allan in his arms that he might communicate heat from his body to the struggling frame so sorely robbed of blood. And even in his distress and his terrific fear for Allan there came some reminiscence of old delight at the feel of the boy's limbs against his, and fleet-footed memory ran back again to the childhood of Allan. But on its way it met the childhood of Beulah, and conjured up the mother-face leaning in tenderness over the sick-beds of infancy. And John Harris buried his face in the heaving chest of his child and wept in his grief and loneliness.

Just as the first bars of grey in the eastern sky proclaimed approaching dawn, the sound of horse's hoofs came distinctly up the valley. Harris drew himself into a sitting posture, and listened. Allan was still breathing, and apparently with less effort than earlier in the night. The sound of the horse came nearer and nearer. At last it was in the road just below, and a moment later would have passed by had not Harris called out. His voice sounded strange and distant in his own ears, and cost him an unwonted effort.

Sergeant Grey instantly swung his horse from the road and, dismounting, proceeded in the direction of the voice.