A Prairie Courtship

Florence gazed at him with a hardening face. He evidently meant it as a reminder that she owed him money. The man was becoming intolerable.

"Is it?" she asked indifferently. "In any case, I shall no doubt manage to meet my debts when they fall due."

Nevis had reasons for believing that it would be more difficult than she seemed to anticipate, but he talked about something else, and then, finding that his companion did not favor him with very much attention, he took his leave. When he was getting into his buggy Hunter came up and stopped him.

"I'm rather busy, but I can spare you a few minutes if it's necessary," he said.

Nevis looked at him with a provocative smile.

"It isn't," he answered. "It was your wife I came to see; she entrusted me with the arranging of a little matter."

He gathered up the reins, and added, as though to explain his departure:

"There are several things I want to get through with at the bluff this evening."

"Then I won't try to keep you."

Hunter walked up on the veranda and, leaning on the balustrade, looked at his wife.

"You have had a deal of some kind with that man?"

A flush of anger swept into Florence's cheek.

"He told you that?" she exclaimed; and then added, with a harsh laugh, "As it happens, he was quite correct."

Hunter stood still with an expressionless face for a moment or two, apparently waiting in case she had anything else to say; and then, with a gesture which might have meant anything, he moved away along the veranda. Florence's conscience accused her when he disappeared into the house; but she was most clearly sensible that she was now a little afraid of Nevis and disposed to hate him. However, she lay quietly in her basket-chair until word was brought her that supper was ready.

Two or three days later Nevis sat late one night in his office at the railroad settlement. It was situated at the back of his implement store, on the ground floor of a very ugly wooden building which had a false front that rose a little beyond the ridge of roof. One door opened directly on to the prairie; the other led into the store, from which there exuded a pungent smell of paint and varnish. A nickeled lamp hung over Nevis's head, and the little room was unpleasantly hot, so hot, indeed, that he sat in his shirt-sleeves before a table littered with papers. Not far away a small safe stood open. This contained further papers tied up in several bundles and neatly endorsed. There was nothing else in the room except a few shelves filled with account books; and there was no covering on the floor. Nevis, like most commercial men in the small western towns, wasted very little money on superfluous accessories. He found that he could employ it much more profitably.

He had, as it happened, a troublesome matter to decide on, and seeing no way out of the difficulties which complicated it, he rose at length, and, lighting a cigar, opened the outer door and stood leaning against it. It was cooler there, and he noticed that the night was unusually dark. The stream of light that flowed out past him, forcing up his figure in a sharp, black silhouette, only intensified the thick obscurity in which it was almost immediately lost. It was also very still, and he could hear his white shirt crackle at each slight movement of the hand that held the cigar. Everybody in the little wooden town was, he surmised, already asleep, though he knew that a west-bound train would stop there in half an hour or so.

He did not know how long he remained in the doorway, but by degrees the stillness became oppressive, and at last he started as a sound rose suddenly out of the darkness. It was a faint, metallic rattle, and he leaned forward a little, listening in strained attention. The noise was so unexpected that it jarred on him.

Then he recollected that some of his neighbors were addicted to dumping empty provision cans and similar refuse into a clump of willows which straggled close up to the back of the town not far away, and he decided that one of them had fallen down or rolled over. After that he went back to his table, leaving the door open for the sake of coolness, and he was once more occupied with his papers when he heard a sharp knocking at the front of the store. Pushing his chair back he took out his watch. Somebody who was going west by the train that was almost due apparently desired to see him, though it seemed a curious thing that the man had not called earlier. He rose and entered the store, where he fell against the projecting handle of a plow in the darkness. This ruffled his temper, and he spent some time impatiently fumbling for and undoing the fastenings of the outer door. Then he flung it open somewhat violently, and strode out into the darkness. There was, so far as he could see, nobody in the vicinity, and when, moving forward a few paces he called out, he got no answer.

Feeling slightly uneasy as well as astonished, he stood still for, perhaps, a minute, gazing about him. He could dimly see the houses across the street, with the tall false fronts of one or two cutting black against the sky, but there was not a light in any of them, and there was certainly no sound of footsteps. He was neither a nervous nor a fanciful man, and it scarcely seemed possible that his ears had deceived him. Swinging around suddenly, he went back into the store and fastened the outer door before he reentered his office. The door at the back of the office and the safe stood open just as he had left them. Crossing the room he looked into the safe.

As a rule, a man's possessions are as secure in a small prairie town as they would be in, for example, London or Montreal, but Nevis seldom kept much money in his safe. He usually made his collections after harvest, and remitted the proceeds to a bank in Winnipeg. A small iron cash-box, however, occupied one shelf, and it was at once evident that this had not been touched, which seemed to prove that nobody with dishonest intentions had entered the place in his absence. This was satisfactory, but a few moments later it struck him that one of the bundles of docketed papers was not lying exactly where he had last placed it. He could not be quite sure of this, though he was methodical in his habits, and he took the bundle up and examined it. The tape around it was securely tied and the papers did not seem to have been disturbed. Besides this, they were in no sense marketable securities.

He laid them down again and closed the safe. Then, locking the outer door behind him, he proceeded through the silent town toward the track. As he did so the clanging of a locomotive bell broke through a slackening clatter of wheels, and when after a smart run he reached the station, hot and somewhat breathless, the lights of the long train were just sliding out of it. He strode up to the agent, who stood in the doorway of his office shack with a lantern in his hand.

"Did anybody get on board?" he asked.

"No," replied the agent. "Nobody got off, either. Did you expect to catch up any one?"

"I fancied somebody called at the store a few minutes ago. It occurred to me that the man might want to leave some message and had forgotten it until he was going to catch the train."

"I guess it must have been a delusion," remarked the agent.

Nevis had almost arrived at the same conclusion. He waited a few minutes, and then they walked back together through the settlement. The agent left him outside the store, above which he had a room, and dismissing the matter from his mind he went tranquilly to sleep half an hour later.

CHAPTER XIX

THE MORTGAGE DEED

Alison was sitting alone in the general living-room of the Farquhar homestead about an hour after breakfast when she laid down her sewing with a start as a man whom she had not heard approaching suddenly appeared in the doorway. He stood there, looking at her with what she felt was a very suspicious curiosity, and there was no doubt that his appearance was decidedly against him. His clothing, which had been rudely patched with cotton flour-bags, was old and stained with soil; his face was hard and grim; and she grew apprehensive under his fixed scrutiny.

"Where's the rest of you?" he asked after an unpleasant silence of a few moments.

Alison felt that it would be singularly injudicious to inform him, and while she hesitated, wondering what to answer, he strode into the room and fell heavily into the nearest chair.

"You'll excuse me," he apologized. "I'm played out."

The signs of weariness were plain on him, and Alison became a little reassured. After all, she remembered, there was nothing of very much value in the homestead; and she had never as yet had any reason to fear the men she had come across upon the prairie. In fact, though one had wanted to marry her offhand, their general conduct compared very favorably with that of one or two whom she had met in English cities.

"Have you come far?" she asked.

"From the railroad – on my feet," answered the man. "I left it about midnight two nights ago, and since then I've only had a morsel of food." Then he smiled at her. "You haven't told me yet where Harry Farquhar and his wife have gone."

It was clear that he had already satisfied himself that they were out, and Alison reluctantly admitted it.

"Mrs. Farquhar has driven over to the bluff," she said. "She took her husband with her, but she was to drop him at the ravine where the birches are. He wanted to cut some poles."

The look of annoyance in the man's face further reassured her, as it implied that he regretted Farquhar's absence almost as much as she had done a few moments earlier.

"It's a sure thing I can't wait till they come back, and the trouble is I can't make Mrs. Calvert's place without a rest, either."

He paused and gazed searchingly at Alison.

"You're Miss Leigh, aren't you? I guess you could be trusted; I've heard of you."

Alison's astonishment was evident, and he smiled.

"It's quite likely," he added dryly, "that you've heard of me. My name's Jake Winthrop."

Alison sat very still, and it was a moment or two before she spoke.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"Breakfast, if it wouldn't be too much trouble. Then, as Farquhar's out, there's a piece of paper I'd like to give you. Guess it would be safer out of my hands; the police troopers are after me."

Alison set the kettle and frying-pan on the stove. She was compassionate by nature, and the man looked very jaded and weary. When she sat down again he handed her a rather bulky folded paper which appeared to be some kind of legal document.

"What am I to do with this?" she asked.

"You can give it to Farquhar, or keep it and hide it," said the man. "I guess the last would be wisest. Nobody would figure you had the thing, and I can't give it to Lucy, because Nevis would sure get after her."

"Is it very important?"