A Prairie Courtship

This last confession, which he seemed to make in a moment of forgetfulness, stirred Alison to a sense of irritation that astonished her a little.

"Were you compelled to help a defaulting debtor escape?" she demanded. "I understand that is what Winthrop is."

"If you knew the whole story you would hardly call him that," Thorne retorted with an indignant sparkle in his eyes.

"But he borrowed money on his cattle, among other things, didn't he, and then sold them, and ran away when the man who lent it to him wanted it back?"

"He did," Thorne assented with some dryness. "I'm sorry I must confess it, because a baldly correct statement of the kind you have just made which leaves out all extenuating details is often a most misleading thing."

"How can a statement of fact be misleading?"

Farquhar smiled and Thorne made a grimace.

"The aspect of any fact varies with one's point of view. You evidently can't get away from the conventional one."

Alison was growing angry, though subsequent reflection convinced her that this was not due to his last observation. She had sympathized with his attitude when he had in the first instance mentioned his dislike of Nevis; and his willingness to side with the injured against the oppressor had certainly pleased her. In the abstract, it appeared wholly commendable; but, in particular, that it should have led him to take up the cause of a girl against whom for no very clear reason she felt prejudiced was a different thing.

"Well," she responded, "it has by degrees become evident to society in general that it can only look at certain matters in a certain way; and if you insist on doing the opposite, you must expect to get into trouble. I'm not sure you don't deserve it, too."

"That," returned Thorne, grimly, "is their idea in England, and I must do them the justice to own that they act up to it. I had, however, expected a little more liberality – from you. Anyway, I'm not in the least sorry for what I've done."

He rose and turned toward his host.

"Hadn't we better get that mower, Farquhar?"

They strolled away, Thorne leading his team, and Mrs. Farquhar laughed.

"Mavy's very young in some respects. I'm almost afraid you have succeeded in setting him off again."

"Is the last remark warranted?"

Mrs. Farquhar nodded.

"He has been sticking to what he probably finds a very uninteresting task with a patience I hardly thought was in him. Just now he's no doubt ready for an outbreak."

"An outbreak?"

"I'll say a frolic. It won't be anything very shocking, though I should expect it to be distinctly original."

Alison made a sign of impatience.

"Isn't it absurd that he should fly off in this unbalanced fashion because of a few words?"

"One mustn't expect perfection; and it wasn't altogether what you said – that merely fired the train. Mavy has been going steady for an unusual time, and as a rule it doesn't take a great deal to drive him into some piece of rashness. For instance, he was quite willing to involve himself in trouble with the police at a word from Lucy Calvert."

She fancied from Alison's expression that this was where the grievance lay, but the girl made no comment, and they sat silent for a while until Farquhar came back alone.

"Mavy's gone off with the mower – he wouldn't come back," he explained. "In fact he seemed a little out of temper."

Farquhar was correct in this surmise. Thorne was somewhat erratic by nature, and any insistence on the strictly conventional point of view, even when it was backed by sound sense, usually acted upon him as a red rag. After all, he could not help his nature, and he had been reared in an atmosphere of straight-laced respectability which had imposed on him an intolerable restraint. What was, perhaps, more to the purpose, he had been demanding too much of his bodily strength during the last two months, and had been living in a Spartan fashion on badly cooked and very irregular meals, until at length his nervous system began to feel the strain. That being so, he felt himself justified in resenting Alison's censorious attitude; though it was not the mere fact that she had disagreed with what he had done that he found most irritating. It was, he knew, because she had disappointed him. He had regarded her as a broad-minded, clear-sighted girl, emancipated from the petty prejudices and traditions which were the bane of most young Englishwomen, and now he had discovered that she was as exasperatingly narrow as the rest of them.

It was late when he reached his homestead, and after sleeping a few hours he rose with the dawn, and lighting a fire, left the kettle to boil while he clambered to the roof to nail on cedar shingles. He could not, however, get them to lie as he wanted them, and, being very dry, they split every now and then as he drove in the nails. Besides this, it was difficult to work upon the narrow rafters, and when at length he descended for breakfast he found that the fire had gone out in the meanwhile. He surveyed it and the kettle disgustedly, with brows drawn down; and then, restraining a strong desire to fling the vessel into the birches, he sat down and fished out of the congealed fat in the frying-pan a piece of cold pork left over from the previous day. This, with a piece of bread that had acquired a rocky texture from being left uncovered, formed his breakfast, and when he had eaten it he went back moodily to the roof. He had for some time in a most determined manner concentrated his energies on a task generally regarded as a commendable one in that country, but there was no doubt whatever that it was beginning to pall on him.

He lay up on the rafters for several hours with a hot sun blazing down on his neck and shoulders while he nailed on shingles; but in spite of every effort, things would go wrong. Nails slipped through his fingers; he dropped his hammer and had to climb down for it; while every now and then a shingle he had just secured rent from top to bottom. Finally, in a state of exasperation, he struck a vicious blow at a nail which had evaded his previous attacks, and hit his thumb instead. This was the climax, and he savagely hurled the hammer as far as he could throw it out upon the prairie. Then he swung himself down, and, walking resolutely to his tent, dragged out a box containing about a dozen small cheap mirrors. There were a few gramophone records in another box; and after putting both cases, a blanket or two and a bag of flour into his wagon, he drove away across the sweep of grass at a gallop. The horses, which had done nothing worth mentioning for the last few weeks, seemed as pleased with the change as he did.

The next morning a man who was passing Farquhar's homestead pulled up his team to deliver its owner a note.

"Mavy sent you this," he said with a grin. "Guess he's out on the trail again. He had the boys sitting up half last night at the Bluff Hotel."

Farquhar read the note, which was curt.

"Thanks for the mower. Better go for it if you want the thing," it ran. "I'm off for a change of air, and haven't the least notion when I'm coming back. I've discovered that one has to get seasoned to a quiet life."

Going back into the house, he handed the note to his wife, who was sitting with Alison at breakfast, and she gave it to the girl in turn when she had read it.

"It's too bad, though I must say I expected it," she remarked, regarding her with reproachful eyes.

"If he has a singularly unbalanced nature, can I help it?" Alison asked.

Her companion appeared to consider.

"I don't know which to be most vexed with; you or Lucy. He would be quietly cutting prairie hay now if you had both left him alone."

Farquhar watched them with a smile.

"Mavy," he observed, "will in all probability require a good deal of breaking in; but that's no reason why one should despair of him. I've known a young horse turn out an excellent hauler and go steady as a rock in double harness, after in the first place kicking in the whole front of the wagon."

"Why double harness?" his wife inquired with a twinkle in her eyes.

"Well," replied Farquhar, "perhaps I was anticipating things."

He lounged out, and Alison went on with her breakfast with an expressionless face, though Mrs. Farquhar noticed that she seemed preoccupied after that.

Three or four days later Thorne sat on the veranda of a little wooden hotel after supper. A couple of men lounged near him smoking, and in front of them a double row of unpicturesque frame-houses straggled beside the trail that led straight as the crow flies into a waste of prairie.

"I've had a notion that Jake Winthrop would look in here," Thorne remarked presently.

One of his companions glanced round toward the house, but there did not seem to be anybody within hearing just then.

"He did," he confided. "Baxter once worked with him on the railroad, and Jake crawled up to the back of his shack at night. Baxter gave him a different hat and a jacket."

"That's quite right," said the other man. "I figured the troopers would know what he was wearing. I drove him quite a piece toward the railroad early in the morning, and I've a notion he got off with a freight-train that was taking a crowd of boys from down East to do something farther on up the track. If he did, he must have jumped off quietly when they stopped to let the Pacific express by. Next thing, two or three troopers turned up, and I guess they heard about the train and wired up the line; but they haven't got Winthrop yet. Corporal Slaney, who sent two of them south, is in the settlement now. He's plumb sure that Jake's hanging round here waiting to make a break for the U. S. boundary."

"What had he on when he first struck you?" Thorne inquired.

Baxter told him, and he laughed.

"Then," he declared, "Slaney's trailing a man with an old black plug hat and a brown duck jacket; the latter would certainly fix him, as blue's much more common. Now if he saw that man riding south at night he'd probably call off the troopers, and they'd work the trail right down to the frontier. As they wouldn't get their man, they'd no doubt give the thing up, deciding he'd already slipped across."