By Right of Purchase

Outside the open window, bright sunshine flooded the verandah, and fell upon the bare frame-houses across the way. A couple of light waggons, with the mire of the spring thawing not yet washed off them, passed clattering and jolting among the ruts. The streets of a prairie town usually resemble a morass when the frost breaks up. When they had gone, a police trooper swung by on a spume-flecked horse, with the dust of several leagues' journey thick on his trim uniform. Then there was silence again until one of the loungers looked up from the greasy paper he was reading.

"Wheat still going down," he said. "There's no bottom to the market, or, if it had one, it's dropped out. Our boss farmers are going to feel it if things go on like this; but nobody's going to be sorry for them. They figure they own the country already."

"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going up," said another man.

The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt.

"Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That, and nothing else."

"Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remaining comrade, and the others grinned.

A vindictive gleam crept into the man's eyes. "Well," he said, "I've no use for being bossed by that kind of man, and one day I up and told him what I thought of him. There was considerable trouble before I walked out. Anyway, between the market and the English girl he's married, he's fixed just now."

"She's flinging his money away?" asked somebody.

"With both hands, and too stuck on herself to be civil to him. They're made like that in the Old Country. Leland's no more to her than the hired man, one of the boys told me."

"Well, why'd she marry him?"

"For his money. That's a good enough reason, and it's quite likely there was another one. Girls like her have got to marry somebody over there, and the men with money are kind of particular. I guess it's not astonishing. If you got hold of an English paper, it's full of their goings-on."

"That's all right," said one of the others in tight store-clothes. "Still, until they're married, they've got to be careful. Afterwards, it don't so much matter. Unless all's quite straight, buyers hold off, and the figure comes down."

"It's quite easy guessing that's what was wrong with Mrs. Leland. What else would a girl with her looks make sure of him for? Charley Leland comes along with his money, and they plant her right on to him. It's even betting she goes off with another man if the market breaks him."

He stopped abruptly as his neighbour drove an elbow into his ribs, and his mouth gaped open as he dropped his feet from the stove. Then the others moved uneasily in their chairs, for a man stood in the doorway regarding them with a singularly unpleasant smile.

"Stand right up, Jasper, you – hog!" he said.

Jasper sat still, glancing at the others, as though he felt that, while none of them appeared in any haste to do so, it was their duty to support him, until one evidently remembered that there were, after all, four of them.

"He's sitting where he is, Charley Leland," he said. "Nobody asked you to hang round listening, and if you don't like our talk you can go outside again."

Leland showed no sign of having heard him. "Get up," he said, "and tell them you're a liar."

Jasper sat still. He was tolerably active and muscular, or he would never have worked at Prospect. But there was a dangerous look in Leland's eyes. His quiet incisiveness was portentous. Realising that his comrades expected something of him, Jasper managed to retort.

"Oh, go home!" he said. "I guess you've plenty of trouble there without making any here."

In another moment Leland had crossed the room and swung him to his feet. Nobody was very clear about what happened during the next few seconds. There is, however, a certain animal courage in every man who has lived by bodily toil, and Jasper, who had also a vindictive temper, did all he could. When he had once felt Leland's hand, he clinched with him, and, reeling locked together, they fell with a crash against the table and overturned one of the benches. Then, gasping, panting, floundering, and striking when they could, they went swaying towards the door, while Jasper's friends howled encouragingly, and men, attracted by the uproar, ran out of the opposite store. Foot by foot they neared the verandah, and when Leland, gasping with passion, made a supreme effort, they staggered out into it.

There was a crowd below it now, and they set up a shout as Leland's grasp sank lower down the other man's hollowing back. Jasper, it seemed, was not altogether a favourite of theirs. After that there was silence for another moment or two, while the two men swayed and strained with scuffling feet, until one of them suddenly relaxed his hold, and, reeling backwards, plunged down the verandah stairway. He struck a rail as he did it, and, overturning, came down headlong in the unpaved street. Somebody dragged him to his feet, and he stood still a moment, hatless, with the dust upon his flushed face, and his jacket rent, gasping with futile rage. Then he slunk away through the gap that was opened up for him.

Leland leant somewhat heavily on the rails above. The veins were swollen on his forehead, blood trickled down his chin from one of his bleeding lips, and his face was dark with rage. Altogether, he was not exactly an attractive spectacle. Raising himself stiffly, he disappeared into the hotel, from which three other men made their way with as much haste as was compatible with any show of dignity. A light waggon had stopped unnoticed just outside the crowd.

A few minutes earlier Carrie Leland and Mrs. Annersly had driven across the railroad track on their way to the dry-goods store, and, as the waggon jolted in the ruts, the girl pointed to the town with a little gesture of repugnance.

"Could one well imagine anything less attractive than this?" she said. "Still, I believe the desolate place is looked upon as a rising city, and they are actually proud of it."

Eveline Annersly glanced up the single street with a twinkle in her eyes. It somewhat resembled a ploughed field, though the ruts and ridges the wheels had made were crumbling into dust. Above it ran a rickety sidewalk of planks, by means of which foot passengers could escape the mire in spring; and crude frame-houses, destitute of paint or any attempt at adornment, rose from that in turn. The fronts of most of them were carried sufficiently high to hide the pitch of sloped roof, so that they resembled squares of timber pierced by little windows. Above the topmost of the latter there usually ran a blatant but half-obliterated commendation of the wares sold within, for in the rising prairie town every house is, as a rule, either a store or a hotel.

"Well," she said, "one could scarcely call it picturesque, but we have colliery and other industrial villages at home that are not very far behind it."

Carrie laughed. "Still, we have the grace to attempt to justify them on the score of necessity, while they hold this place up as a model and a sign of progress. It is a barbarous country."

"Including Prospect, too?"

"Of course! Still, Prospect makes no pretence of civilisation. It is part of the prairie, and nobody could expect much from it."

"Or of those who dwell in it?"

A little tinge of colour showed in the girl's cheek. "Well," she said with faint scorn, "I don't mind admitting that, too. They are a distinctly primitive people."

Mrs. Annersly said nothing further. She had her fancies respecting the reason for the girl's bitterness, and did not think that her marriage accounted for all of it. This was, in a way, as she would have it. She sat silent until Carrie pulled the team up close to the dry-goods store. A crowd was collecting in front of it, and they could get no further. While they sat there, a clamour broke out, and amidst a sound of scuffling, two men reeled across the verandah of the hotel opposite them. Their faces were not at first visible, and Carrie smiled contemptuously when the crowd encouraged them as they grappled with each other.

"That," she said, "is evidently considered the correct thing when Western gentlemen have a difference of opinion. You will notice that nobody makes any attempt to put an end to it. After all, since they cannot keep their brutality under restraint, there is something to be said for the use of pistols."

In another moment one of the men brought his fist down with a dull thud upon the other's half-concealed face, and a little spark of scornful anger crept into the girl's eyes.

"It is a little disgusting, but we cannot get on without driving over somebody, and it would be a trifle absurd to have to go away again," she said. "What brutes men of their kind are!"

"Still, there is something to admire in their brutality," said her companion. "That man has both lips cut open. One would have fancied the blow would have stunned him, but he seems to be disregarding it, and is holding on."

She stopped a moment, with a little catching of her breath. "Ah," she said, "there will be no more of it."

One of the men loosed his hold and reeled down the stairway. Then for the first time they saw the face of the other clearly as he leant upon the rails. It was not wholly pleasant to look at, for there was passion in it, and blood trickled from the swollen lips. Carrie's hands tightened convulsively on the reins as she urged the team forward. Her cheeks were almost colourless, but she met Eveline Annersly's eyes steadily, and her voice had a bitter ring in it.

"Yes," she said, "it is my husband. No doubt his comrades would expect me to be pleased with him."

She stopped a moment and pulled the team up again. "I wonder if you can guess what it will cost me to go into that store, but I am going. After all, it would be a little absurd for Charley Leland's wife to be particular."

Mrs. Annersly's face was compassionate. "My dear," she said, "he had probably a reason for it."

"Of course!" said Carrie, languidly. "No doubt they differed over the points of a steer, or one of them was too attentive to the waiting-maid. I believe they have two at the Occidental."

She swung herself down, ignoring the hand of a man who had seized the reins, and, when Mrs. Annersly had descended, went into the big store. She was perfectly conscious that everybody was watching her, but she made her purchases with a cold serenity, and then drove away. She did not inquire for Leland, and was unaware that the object on the verge of the prairie was his waggon. Had she known it, she would have held her team in a little, for she had not the least desire to overtake him. This, however, was scarcely likely, for it was a long way to Prospect, and she intended to break the journey for an hour or so at an outlying farm to which the trail turned off in a league or two.

In the meanwhile, Leland drove on as fast as his weary team could go, until he reached the crossing of the ravine where Sergeant Grier had waylaid the outlaws. The trail dipped in sharp twists between the birches into the hollow, and he had raised himself a trifle on the driving-seat to swing the team round a bend when one side of the waggon dropped suddenly beneath him. In another moment he went out headlong, and, coming down heavily on his shoulder, lay as he fell, half dazed for a time. When he pulled his scattered senses together, he saw that the team had stopped and that one of the waggon wheels lay not far away from him. He rose with difficulty, feeling very sore and very dizzy, but, finding that he could walk, picked the wheel up. The brass cap of the hub had gone, and so had the nut which locked the bush on the axle. He had put a new one on not long before, and felt sure it had not come off of itself, as he remembered how tightly it had fitted. Still, it was evident that, if anybody had loosened it, the sudden strain upon the wheels as the waggon swung round the bend might have jarred it off, even after it had held that far.

That question could wait. Rolling the wheel downhill, he attempted to put it on the hub. An unloaded prairie waggon is usually so light that a strong man can lift one side of it, but Leland was badly shaken by his fall. Indeed, he sat down more than once, gasping and dripping with perspiration, before he accomplished it. It was a mighty task for any man to attempt after a long day's ploughing, a night spent upon the trail, and a sixty-mile drive.

Although he was bothered with a distressing headache, and found that a branch had scored his cheek, nevertheless, when he had fitted on another nut from the tool-box in the waggon, he drove ahead, reaching Prospect almost as worn out as the team. Still, after a bite of food, he climbed up into the driving-seat of the big gang-plough. Summer is short in the Northwest, and the wheat that goes in late runs a risk of freezing, so he needed in his struggle the efforts of every man he could get. He drove the threefold furrow through the ripping sod until at last the copper sun dipped below the prairie's verge. Then, leaving his team to the men, he went back to the house, too weary to carry himself erect. The birches swayed in a cold green transparency, the crisp air had vim in it, but the weary man noticed nothing as he plodded, heavy-eyed, through the crackling stubble.

He had just finished his lonely supper, and was sitting, dressed as when he came in, with the dust of the journey on him, and smears of the soil upon his heavy boots and leggings, when his wife, who apparently did not know he was there, entered the room. She started a little as she saw him, and Leland drowsily raised his hand to the raw red scar on his face. He had not remembered that his lips were twice their natural size and very unpleasant to look at, though they pained him.

"It doesn't amount to much," he said deprecatingly. "I've been too busy to fix it. I got thrown out of my waggon."

Carrie became rigidly erect, a sparkle of indignation in her eyes.