Harding of Allenwood

Devine, scrambling to his feet, ran madly after it and vanished; and the men who had held the tackle picked themselves up and looked down in dismay. There was nothing they could do. The disaster must happen before they could possibly reach the scene. It seemed impossible that Harding could get round the next turn.

Beatrice cast a quick glance at Hester, and felt braced by her attitude. They were not emotional at Allenwood; but the prairie girl bore herself with a stoic calm which Beatrice had never seen equaled there. Her fiancé had narrowly escaped with his life, her brother was in imminent peril, yet her eyes were steady and her pose was firm. His danger could not be made light of, but the girl evidently had confidence in him. Beatrice imagined that Hester had her brother's swiftness of action, nevertheless she could wait and suffer calmly when there was nothing else to be done. After all, stern courage was part of the girl's birthright, for she was a daughter of the pioneers.

Beatrice did not know that her own face was tense and white. The accident had been unexpected and unnerving. She was shaken by its suddenness and by a dread she could not explain: it was no time for analysis of feelings. She was watching the trail with desperate concentration, wondering whether the wagon and its reckless driver would break out from the trees. In a moment they did appear – the team going downhill at a mad gallop, Harding lashing them with a loop of the reins. There is not often a brake on a prairie wagon, and as the chain that locked the wheels had obviously broken, Harding's intention was plain. He meant to keep the horses ahead of the iron load that would overturn the wagon and mangle the animals if it overtook them. This warranted his furious speed. But the trail was narrow and tortuous, and with the heavy weight spread over a long wheel-base, the wagon was hard to steer. Beatrice realized this, but in spite of her horror she felt a thrill of fierce approval.

The man was standing upright now; he looked strangely unmoved. Beatrice supposed this was a delusion; but she could see the nerve and judgment with which he guided the team. They were passing the spot where the bank fell away. The wheels on one side were on its edge. Beatrice turned dizzy. She felt that they must go over, and man and horses and wagon be crushed to pulp beneath the heavy load. They passed; but there was a turn not far off, and room was needed to take the curve. As they rushed on, half hidden by the trees, she felt her breath come hard and a contraction in her throat as she wondered whether he could get round. If not, the load of iron would rush headlong over the fallen horses, leaving in its path a mass of mangled flesh and pools of blood. To her excited imagination, the boiler was no longer a senseless thing. It seemed filled with malevolent, destructive power; she felt she hated it.

There was a tense moment; then the leading horses plunged from the trees with the pole-team behind them, all still on their feet. Harding had somehow steered them round. But the danger was not yet over, for the trail shelved to one side and there was an awkward curve near the bridge. The wagon seemed to Beatrice to be going like the toboggans she had seen on the long slide at Montreal. It was more difficult to see as it got farther off and the trees were thicker. Her eyes filled with water from the intensity of her gaze, and she feared to waste a moment in wiping them. Something terrible might happen before she could see again. She wanted to shriek; and she might have done so only that, even in such a moment, she remembered what was expected of the Mowbray strain. Horses and wagon were still rushing on. Then there was a thud and a harsh rattle: Harding was on the bridge. Another moment and the mad beat of hoofs slackened and stopped.

Lance, waving his fur cap, broke into a harsh, triumphant yell, and the rest of the Allenwood men set up a cheer. In the midst of it Devine appeared, scrambling up the hill through the brush.

"He's done it! He's done it!" he cried excitedly, running up to Hester. "It's great! She was going like an express freight on a downgrade when he jumped up."

Hester smiled at him proudly, and he turned and started off at top speed down the trail. They all followed, and, crossing the bridge, found Harding standing by his blowing team. The horses' coats were foul with sweat, and Harding's face was badly scratched, but he did not seem to know it, and except that he was breathless he looked much as usual.

"This is quite ridiculous!" Mrs. Broadwood panted, with a keen glance at Beatrice. "There's some excuse for Hester, but I can't see why you and I should go running after a man who doesn't belong to either of us and seems to feel a good deal cooler than we do!"

Beatrice flushed, but she did not answer.

"You were lucky in getting down," Kenwyne said to Harding. "We thought you were going over the bank."

"So did I, at first," Harding answered.

Broadwood and Lance made some remarks about the accident, and Hester watched them with a smile. There was a hint of strain in their voices, but their manner was very matter-of-fact. She surmised that they wished to forget their relapse into emotional excitement. She contented herself with giving her brother a quick, expressive look.

Harding unhooked the broken wire from the back of the wagon.

"Well," he said, "we must set about getting up."

The ascending trail had a gentler slope, and there was not much risk in climbing it; though it cost them heavy labor. With the help of a yoke of oxen, they got the wagon up, and when the top was reached Kenwyne came up to Harding.

"You and Devine have done enough," he said. "There should be no trouble now. We'll lead the teams home while you take it easy."

Harding was glad to comply. He followed with Hester and Mrs. Broadwood, because Beatrice seemed so evidently trying to avoid him.

The girl felt disturbed. When she thought that Harding could not escape, a curious sense of personal loss had intensified her alarm. Terror, of course, was natural; the other feeling was not to be explained so readily. Although she disliked some of his opinions, she knew that he attracted her. His was a magnetic nature: he exerted a strong influence over every one; but she would not admit that she was in love with him. That would be absurd. And yet she had been deeply stirred by his danger.

Lance and Devine had lingered in the rear, and the little group stopped in the middle of the trail and waited for them. Then, when they moved forward again, Beatrice and Harding were somehow thrown together, and she checked the impulse to overtake the others when she saw that she and the prairie man were falling behind. To avoid being alone with him would exaggerate his importance.

"You must have known you were doing a dangerous thing when you got up on the wagon," she said.

"I suppose I did," he replied. "But I saw that I might lose the boiler if it went down the bank. The thing cost a good deal of money."

"You were able to remember that?"

"Certainly! Then there were the teams. It would have been a pity to let them be killed."

Beatrice thought he might have offered a better explanation. He had implied that anxiety about the boiler had influenced him more than regard for his horses. She felt that she must give him an opportunity for defending himself.

"I wonder which consideration counted most?"

He looked at her with amusement; and she flushed as she suddenly recalled that he was sometimes very shrewd.

"Well," he said, "the main thing was to get hold of the reins – and I don't know that it matters now."

"I suppose not," Beatrice agreed, vexed that he did not seem anxious to make the best impression. "After all, breaking land on a large scale must be expensive, and I understand that your plans are ambitious."

Harding glanced across the prairie: it ran back to the blue smear of trees on the horizon, covered with thin snow, and struck a note of utter desolation.

"Yes," he said with a gleam in his eyes. "All this looks lifeless and useless now, but I can see it belted with wheat and oats and flax in the fall. There will be a difference when the binders move through the grain in rows."

"In rows!"

"We'll want a number, if all goes well. Devine's land follows my boundary, and we must drive our plows in one straight line. We begin at the rise yonder and run east to the creek."

The boldness of the undertaking appealed to the girl as she glanced across the wide stretch of snow.

"It's a big thing," she said.

"A beginning. Two men can't do much, but more are coming. In a year or two the wheat will run as far as you can see, and there'll be homesteads all along the skyline."

They walked on in silence for a moment; then he gave her an amused glance.

"I guess Colonel Mowbray doesn't like what I'm doing?"

"He doesn't go so far. It's to what you are persuading our friends to do that he objects."

"That's a pity. They'll have to follow – not because I lead, but because necessity drives."

"You're taking it for granted that it does drive; and you must see my father's point of view."

"That I'm encouraging your people to rebel? That's not my wish, but he can't hold them much longer – the drift of things is against him."

Beatrice's eyes sparkled. He thought she looked very charming with her proud air and the color in her face; but he must keep his head. He was readjusting his opinions about sudden, mutual love, and he saw that precipitation might cost him too much. If he could not have the girl on his own terms, he must take her on hers.

"Colonel Mowbray founded the settlement," Beatrice said, "and it has prospered. Can't you understand his feelings when he sees his control threatened?"

"The time when one man could hold full command has gone. He can be a moral influence and keep the right spirit in his people, but he must leave them freedom of action."

"That is just the trouble! It's the modern spirit which you are bringing into the settlement that disturbs us. We managed to get along very well before we ever heard of Mr. Harding and his steam-plow and his wheat-binders and his creameries."

She could not keep the slight scorn out of her voice; indeed, she did not wish to do so. But he took it good-naturedly.

"Do you know what I see?" he questioned with a smile. "A time when Colonel Mowbray – and Colonel Mowbray's daughter," he added teasingly – "will look with pride upon the vast acres of Allenwood turned from waste grassland into productive fields of wheat and oats and flax; when the obsolete horse-plow will be scrapped as old iron and the now despised steam-plow will be a highly treasured possession of every settler; when – "

"Never!" Beatrice interrupted emphatically. "You must understand that my father's views and yours are as widely different as the poles – and my father is the head of Allenwood!"

Harding looked down at the haughty face turned up to him; and a great longing suddenly surged through him. He had never desired her more than at that instant. His admiration showed so strongly in his eyes that the blood swept into Beatrice's face.