By Right of Purchase

"That is really a little unnecessary," she said coldly. "I didn't presume to trouble you with any inquiries."

Leland looked at her, as though puzzled, with half-closed eyes. "They wouldn't have been unnatural in the case of a man who was flung headlong out of his waggon."

"One excuse will no doubt serve as well as another. The difficulty is that I happen to have some idea as to how you got your injuries."

The man rose wearily. "I have the pleasure of telling you that I was thrown out coming down the ravine."

"And I," said Carrie coldly, "was at the settlement at the time you furnished everybody with that interesting spectacle on the hotel verandah. I don't wish to be unduly fastidious, but hitherto, so far as I know, at least you have not taken the trouble to deceive me wilfully."

Leland turned towards her with his cut lips pressed together, and his scarred face grim and hard, making a little gesture of weariness.

"Well," he said, "I guess it doesn't matter. I don't suppose I could make you think anything but hard of me."

He stopped a minute, and then laughed. "I have faced the world alone so far, and held my own with it. I suppose there is no reason why I shouldn't go on doing it."

"I believe that is, after all, what most men have to do," said Carrie. "I shall endeavour to be as small a burden on you as I can manage."

Then she turned and left him; but, as had happened on other occasions, her heart smote her in spite of her anger, for he looked shaken and very weary and lonely in the big, desolate room.

CHAPTER XIII

CARRIE ABASES HERSELF

The warm spring day was over. In that land of contrasts, where there is no slow melting of season into season, it is often hot while the last snow-drifts linger in the shadows of the bluffs. Carrie and Mrs. Annersly were sitting by an open window of Carrie's sitting-room. The sun had gone, but, as usual at that season, a filmy curtain of green overhung the vast sweep of prairie that had shaken off its hues of white and grey for the first faint colour of spring. Above hung a pale, sickle moon, and down the long slope, over which the harrow-torn furrows ran, lines of men and weary teams were plodding home. Round the rest of that half of the horizon, the prairie melted into the distance imperceptibly – vast, mysterious, shadowy, under a great tense silence – while the little chilled breeze that came up had in it the properties of an elixir.

The thin-faced woman who lay in Carrie's big chair was not looking at the prairie. She had watched the pageant of the seasons too often before, and to her and her husband they had usually meant only a variation in the ceaseless struggle which had left its mark on both of them. In that country, man has to contend with drought, and harvest frost, and devastating hail, for it is only by mighty effort and long endurance that the Western farmer wrests his bare living from the soil. When seasons are adverse, and they frequently are, a heavy share of the burden falls upon the woman, too.

Mrs. Custer had borne hers patiently, but her face, which still showed traces of refinement, was worn, and her hands and wrists were rough and red. While Thomas Custer toiled out in the frost and sunshine from early dawn to dusk to profit by the odd fat year, or more often, if it might by feverish work be done, to make his losses good, she cooked and washed and baked for him and the boys, a term that locally signifies every male attached to the homestead. She had also made her own dresses, as well as some of her husband's clothes, and darned and patched the latter with cotton flour-bags. Yet the ceaseless struggle had not embittered her, though it had left her weary. Perhaps it is the sunshine, or something in the clean cold airs from the vast spaces of the wilderness, for man holds fast to his faith and courage in that land of cloudless skies.

It was the rich, dark curtains, the soft carpet one's feet sank into, the dainty furniture, the odds and ends of silver, and the few good etchings at which the faded woman glanced with wistful appreciation. She had been accustomed to such things once, but that was long ago, and she had never seen on the prairie anything like Carrie Leland's room. With a wee, contented smile she turned to the girl.

"It was so good of you to have me here, although if Tom's sister from Traverse hadn't promised to look after him I couldn't have come," she said. "It is three years since I have been away, and to know that one has nothing to do for a whole week is almost too delightful now."

Eveline Annersly's eyes twinkled. "I'm rather afraid that some of us have that consolation, if it is one, all our lives," she said. "They keep you busy at the Range?"

"From morning to night; and now we must work harder than ever, with one of the boys in Montreal and wheat going down. One feels inclined to wonder sometimes if the folks who buy our cheap flour would think so much of the quarter-dollar on the sack if they knew what it costs us."

She stopped a moment with a little wistful smile. "I'm afraid this is going to be a particularly lean year for a good many of us. Last year I was busy, though I had a Scandinavian maid, but I shall be single-handed now, and the grocery bill must come down, too. It's quite hard to pare it any closer when everything you take off means extra work, and, with it all, the boys must be fed."

Mrs. Annersly glanced at Carrie, who, for some reason, did not meet her gaze.

"I think you mentioned that you came from Montreal," she said. "You must have found it very different on the prairie."

"I certainly did. I had never done anything useful or been without all the money I wanted when I married Tom Custer, who had gone out a year earlier. My friends were against it, and they would probably have been more so had they seen the Range as it was then. The house had three rooms to it, and one was built of sod, while all the first summer the rain ran in. Still we made out together, and got on little by little, struggling for everything. A new stove or set of indurated ware meant weeks of self-denial. Now I seem to have been pinching a lifetime, though I am only forty; but Tom was always kind, and I do not think I have ever been sorry."

She lay still, nestling luxuriously in the softly padded chair, and through her worn face and hard hands the blurred stamp of refinement once more shone. It was twenty years since she had turned away from the brighter side of life, and, though she did not expect compassion, Eveline Annersly felt sorry for her. There was also a certain thoughtfulness in Carrie Leland's expression, which seemed to suggest that a comparison was forced upon her. Both of them realised that the wilderness is not subdued without a cost. Woman, it seemed, had her part in the tense struggle, too, and Mrs. Custer was one of the many of whom it can be said: "They also serve."

"Have you ever been home since you were married?" asked Carrie.

"Once," said Mrs. Custer, with a faint shadow in her face. "I never went again. The others were not the same, or perhaps I had changed, for they did not seem to understand me. My younger sisters were growing up, and they thought only of dances, sleigh-rides and nights on the toboggan-slides, as I suppose I did once. My dresses looked dowdy beside theirs, too, and they told me I was getting too serious. I felt myself a stranger in the house where I was born. One, it seems, loses touch so soon."

Again she stopped and laughed. "One night something was said that hurt me, and I think I lay awake and cried for hours as I realised that I could never quite bridge the gulf that had opened up between the rest and me. Then I remembered that Tom, who had worked harder than ever to raise the wheat that sent me there, wanted me always – and I went back to him."

Her voice fell a little, and Carrie was touched by the faint thrill in it. She had seen Thomas Custer, a plain, somewhat hard-featured and silent man, and yet this woman, who she fancied had once been almost beautiful, had willingly worn out her freshness in coarse labour for him. Then a tiny flush crept into her face as she remembered that she, too, had a husband, one who gave her everything, and for whom she seldom had even a smile. She was not innately selfish. Indeed, she had shown herself capable of sacrifice. As she sat unobserved in the growing shadow, she sighed. She wondered whether they still remembered her at Barrock-holme, for, if they did, they had seldom written, and she reflected sadly that she had not Mrs. Custer's consolation, since there was nobody else who wanted her.

"You really believe this is going to be a lean year?" she said.

"I am afraid so. Still, it is scarcely likely to trouble you, except that your husband will have a good deal to face. Tom isn't sure he was wise in sowing so much, with wheat going down, and it seems he considered it necessary to quarrel with the rustlers, too. They are rather vindictive people, and it's a little astonishing they have left him alone, though Tom thinks they or their friends had something to do with what happened to his waggon. He met him driving home the day he was thrown out, and told me that Charley, who had evidently had a bad fall, looked very shaky."

Carrie started. "He was thrown out of his waggon?"

"Of course! Didn't he tell you? Well, perhaps he would be afraid of its worrying you. It would be like Charley Leland, and here I have been giving him away."

Carrie was troubled by an unpleasant sense of confusion as she remembered that her husband had really told her, and what her attitude had been; but Mrs. Custer had more to say.

"Charley Leland is going to have his hands full this year. The fall in wheat is bad enough, and it is quite likely the rustlers will make trouble for him. Then he must fall out with a man at the settlement, who Tom says is in league with them. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that, though I almost think it was the only thing he could do."

Carrie, seeing Mrs. Annersly look up sharply, controlled herself by force of will.

"Would you mind telling me why you think that?" she asked calmly.

Mrs. Custer appeared to be looking at her in astonishment. "You don't know? He hasn't told you that, either?"

"No," said Carrie quietly, "he certainly hasn't."

The woman in the big chair sat silent for several moments, and then made a little deprecatory gesture. "Even if your husband doesn't thank me for telling you, I think you ought to know. It appears from what Tom heard, two or three of the loungers at the hotel were talking about you. Charley came into the verandah and heard them."

"Ah," said Carrie, with a sharpness in her voice that suggested pain, "so that was how it came about. No doubt half the people in the settlement know what they were saying?"

Once more Mrs. Custer appeared to consider. Like most of his friends, she believed in Charley Leland, and it was, of course, not astonishing that she was aware that his relations with his wife were not exactly all they should be. This to some extent roused her resentment, and, though she was inclined to like Carrie, she had half-consciously taken up her husband's cause against her.

"My dear," she said, "I scarcely think I could tell you, and I really don't believe many people know. Still, neither your husband nor the others appear to have noticed that the inner door of the room was open, and the man who keeps the hotel heard them. He told Tom that he wouldn't have expected anything else from Charley Leland."

Carrie leant forward a little in her chair. "I want you to tell me exactly what they said. It is right to my husband and myself that I should know."

"Then you will forgive me if it hurts you. They said you had only married him for his money, and he was no more to you than one of the teamsters. There was a little more I couldn't mention."

There was an uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, and Carrie knew, dark as it now was, that Mrs. Annersly was furtively watching her.

"Ah," she said, "then my husband came in?"

Mrs. Custer laughed softly. "I believe the loquacious gentleman was very sorry for himself before Charley had done with him."

"Thank you," said Carrie, thoughtfully. "Now I think we will change the subject. Could you manage to light the lamp, Aunt Eveline? I can't very well get past you."

Mrs. Annersly, lighting the lamp, craftily led their visitor to talk of Montreal; for she thought Carrie had suffered enough for the present.

In the meanwhile, Leland, who had been driving the harrows all day, and had just come in, sat with Gallwey in the big room below. He had a blackened pipe in his hand, and his face was thoughtful. His torn jacket and coarse blue shirt fell away to the elbow from one almost blackened and splendidly corded arm. The man, like most of his neighbours at that season, was usually too weary with more than twelve hours' labour to change his clothes when he came in, for which there was, indeed, no great reason, since he seldom saw his wife or Mrs. Annersly in the brief hour between his work and sleep.