By Right of Purchase

"If I sell, we shall not cover expenses; if I hold, we may be ruined altogether or it might pour hundreds of dollars into Charley's bank?"

"Yes," said Gallwey. "That is it exactly."

Again there was silence, and then Carrie looked up with a little sparkle in her eyes. "Charley's not so well to-day, and this would certainly make him ill again. It seems I must not shrink from the responsibility. When he does not know exactly what to do, it is the boldest course that appeals to him. Write the man in Winnipeg that I will not sell a bushel."

Gallwey rose and made her a little inclination. "It shall be done," he said. "I wonder if one might venture to compliment you on your courage?"

Now the thing was decided, Carrie Leland sat still, somewhat limp, and pale in face again.

After that, some ten days passed uneventfully until the doctor came back. He did not appear particularly pleased with Leland's condition, and repeated his instructions about keeping him quiet and undisturbed. He left Carrie anxious, for she could not persuade herself that her husband was looking any better. He was, however, rapidly becoming short in temper, and, soon after the doctor had gone, she had another struggle with him. Entering the room quietly, she found he had raised himself on the pillows and was looking about him.

"If you would tell me where my clothes are, I'd be much obliged," he said. "That man's no good at his business. I'm going to get up."

He made an effort to rise then and there. With some difficulty, Carrie induced him to lie down again. He listened to what she had to say with evident impatience, and then shook his head.

"I'm to keep quiet, and not worry. There's no sense in the thing," he said. "How can I help chafing and fuming when I have to lie here, while everything goes wrong, and nobody will tell me what is being done? I felt a little dizzy just now, or you wouldn't have got me back again, but I'm going to make another attempt to-morrow. You have to remember that when I get up I get better. I've never been tied up like this before, and the only thing that's wrong with me is that I've had a doctor."

Carrie contrived to quiet him, though she did not find it easy. When at last he had gone to sleep she went out, meeting Gallwey in the hall. He glanced at her with a little sympathetic smile.

"I came upon the doctor riding away," he said. "It appears that Charley has been telling him frankly what he thought of him. I suppose he has been trying to get up again?"

Carrie said he had, and Gallwey appeared to consider.

"Well," he said, "it might, perhaps, help to keep him quiet if you let him know that the appeal to the police authorities has been considered favourably. I met Sergeant Grier, and he told me that they have sent him half a dozen more troopers. He seems tolerably confident that he can lay hands on the rustlers' leaders, though he was in too much haste to tell me how it was to be done. By the way, I'm afraid you will have to get Charley to write a cheque in a day or two. We'll have to pay the Ontario harvesters shortly."

He left her relieved, at least, to hear that Grier saw some prospect of putting the outlaws down, but another couple of weeks had passed before she heard anything more of him or them. In the meanwhile, the Sergeant, as he had indeed expected, met with a good many difficulties. He was supplied with plentiful information concerning the outlaws, but the trouble was that he could not always decide how much of it was meant to be misleading until he had acted upon it. After a week's hard riding, during which his men had very little sleep, he found himself one night with six of them rather more than sixty miles west of Prospect. He had that day surrounded what he had been told was one of the whisky boys' coverts in a big bluff, and "drawn a blank," a thing that had happened once or twice already. The horses were dead weary, the men worn-out, so he decided to camp where he was in a thick growth of willows. A cooking fire was lighted, and when the men had eaten, all but two, who were left to watch the horses, lay down, rolled in their blankets.

It was about an hour before the dawn when Trooper Standish paced up and down on the outskirts of the bluff. He had been in the saddle under a hot sun most of twelve hours the previous day, and now felt more than a little shivery as well as weary. A little breeze came sighing out of the great waste of plain, and the chill of it struck through his thin, damp clothing, in which he had ridden and slept. Trooper Standish was also more than a little drowsy, though he would not have admitted it. In fact, few men are capable of very much, either in the shape of effort or watchfulness, at three o'clock in the morning.

A hundred yards or so behind him, a comrade was standing near the tethered horses, though he might have been very much further away for all Standish could see of him. A thin fringe of willows lay between Standish and the prairie. When he turned a little, he could see the faint glow of the fire, which had not quite gone out, where the bushes were thicker. Though there was a breeze, it had no great strength, and the willows rustled beneath it fitfully with a faint and eery sighing. As it happened, this was a little louder than usual, when Trooper Standish stopped to listen and consider. His duty in such cases was, of course, quite clear, but now that the willows had stopped rustling, there was no sound, and he was aware that the young trooper who rouses his worn-out comrades without due cause, after a hard day's ride, has usually reason to regret it. Besides this, he remembered that he had not played a very brilliant part in another affair, and he still tingled under the recollection of the others' jibes. Accordingly, he prowled cautiously through the bluff, and then sauntered back towards his comrade.

"I guess you have heard nothing suspicious?" he said.

"No," said the man. "I didn't expect to, anyway."

"You didn't hear me call out, either?"

"I didn't. If you'd made any noise, I would have heard you. Have any of the whisky boys been crawling in on you?"

Trooper Standish gazed hard at the man, who had evidently asked the question ironically. He certainly seemed wide awake, and it occurred to Standish that he might have been half asleep himself, and had only fancied that he called out. He accordingly decided that it might be just as well if he said nothing further about the matter, and he strode away on his round again.

The sun was creeping up above the prairie when one of his comrades, rising to waken the Sergeant, saw a strip of folded paper, of the kind used by the storekeepers for packing, fixed between the branches of a willow close by. Grier took it down, and his face grew intent when he saw that there was a message scribbled across one part of it.

"If you want to do Leland a good turn, get up and ride," it said. "The boys are holding Prospect up to-night."

Then Grier turned to the astonished troopers. "It may be a bluff to put us off the trail," he said. "Leland keeps good watch at Prospect, and has it full of harvesters."

"Well," said one of the others, "I don't quite know. Last time I met one of his teamsters he told me they'd have no use for most of the harvesters in a day or two. He said something, too, about the boys going out to the railroad to haul the new thresher in. I guess that would keep them away three or four days altogether."

Grier looked thoughtful. "Oh, yes," he said. "I've heard that mill's an extra big one, and they were most of a day getting the old one across the ravine. It's quite certain, too, that Leland has a good many friends up and down the country who now and then break prairie or cut hay for him, and, as some of them stand in with the rustlers, too, it's easy to figure why the man who sent us this warning didn't want to show himself. Well, I guess we'll take our chances of being wanted, though the horses are dead played out, and I don't know where to get another within thirty miles. Nobody who can help it is going to let us have a horse at harvest time."

Then he turned sharply. "Who was on horse-guard with Ainger?"

"Standish," said one of the men.

Grier smiled unpleasantly. "Send him along. Then get your fire lighted and look after your horses. We'll start for Prospect when you've had breakfast, but I guess some of you are going to walk a few leagues to-day."

CHAPTER XXIX

LELAND STRIKES BACK

It was about ten o'clock at night, and Carrie was sitting with Eveline Annersly in the big general room at Prospect. Leland, who had been brought downstairs to be further away from the hot roof, lay asleep in another room that opened off the corridor leading to the kitchen. Almost every man attached to the homestead was away. The threshers were expected on the morrow, for throughout that country the wheat is threshed where it stands in the sheaves, and it had always been a difficult matter to convey the mill and engine across the ravine. The thresher now expected was an unusually large one, and Gallwey had set out with most of the teams to assist the men in charge of it. He had, however, promised to come back with some of the boys that night.

Carrie was a little sleepy, for she had borne her part in the stress of work usual in a Western homestead at harvest time; but she had no thought of retiring until Gallwey arrived. Nothing had been heard of the outlaws since the fire, but since most of the harvesters would require to be paid and sent home in a day or two, there was a good deal of money for the purpose in the house. It seemed that Eveline Annersly was also thinking of it, for presently she looked at her companion with a little smile.

"It is on the whole fortunate my nerves are reasonably good," she said. "It would be singularly inconvenient if Charley's whisky-smuggling friends should visit us to-night. Your bills could, one would fancy, be got rid of more easily than English notes, and I understand there are a good many of them in Charley's room."

Carrie laughed, for she was unwilling to admit she had any apprehensions. She felt that, if she did so, they might become oppressive.

"There are," she said. "A visit to the settlement means two days lost, and Gallwey and I decided to get enough to pay the threshers, too, so as to save another journey. I had expected him back by now."

She rose, and, going out, opened the homestead door. It was a quiet, star-lit night, with no moon in the sky, and the prairie rolled away before her dim and shadowy. Not a sound rose from it. Even the wind was still. As she gazed out across the dusky waste, something in its vastness and silence impressed her as never before. She had grown to love the prairie, but there were times when its desolation reacted almost unpleasantly on her. The homestead, with its barns and stables standing back beneath the stars, seemed so little, an insignificant speck on that great sweep of plain. She roused herself to listen, but no beat of hoofs crept out of the soft darkness, and it was evident that Gallwey was a long way off yet.

Then she turned with a little shiver, and went back into the house. Crossing the big room, she went down the corridor, and softly opened the door of the room where her husband slept. A lamp was burning dimly, and it showed his quiet face, now a trifle haggard and lined with care. Carrie's eyes grew gentle as she looked at him, for he had been very restless and apparently not so well that day, while it was evident to her that his vigour was coming back to him very slowly. Then, as she turned, her eyes rested on the safe, and again a thrill of apprehension ran through her. She was glad that Gallwey had the key.

She went back to the general room, and, though she had not noticed it so much before, found the stillness oppressive. There was not a sound, and, when her companion turned over a paper, the rustle of it startled her.

"I almost wish I had not let Tom Gallwey go," she said. "Still, it was necessary. The threshers couldn't have got their machine here without the boys."

Eveline Annersly looked up. "I certainly wish he had come back, though I suppose he can't be very long now. He told you ten o'clock, I think. In the meanwhile you might find this account of the wedding at Scaleby Garth interesting."

Carrie held out her hand for the paper, but her attention wandered from the description of the scene in the little English church. She had left the outer door open, and found herself listening for a reassuring beat of hoofs; but nothing disturbed the deep silence of the prairie. Half an hour had passed when she straightened herself suddenly in her chair, with her heart beating fast, and saw that Eveline Annersly's face was intent as she gazed towards the door.

"Oh!" she said. "You heard it, too?"

"Yes," said the elder lady, with a tremor in her voice. "It sounded like a step."

In another moment there was no doubt about it, and Carrie rose with a little catching of her breath as a shadowy figure appeared in the hall. For a moment she stood as though turned to stone, and then suddenly roused herself to action as a man came into the room.

He stopped just inside the threshold, a big, dusty man, with a damp, bronzed face; but, as it happened, it was Eveline Annersly his eyes first rested on. He glanced at her suspiciously, and then swung round as he heard a rattle, just in time to see Carrie snatch down her husband's rifle.

She stood very straight, breathless, and a trifle white in face, but there was something suggestive in the way the rifle lay in her left hand. The man could see that a swift jerk would bring the butt in to her shoulder and the barrel in line with him, while the girl's gaze was also disconcertingly fixed and steady. She had stood now and then just outside the woods at Barrock-holme, with a little 16-bore in her hands, getting her share of the pheasants as they came over. The intruder could shoot well enough himself to realise that when the barrel went up her finger would be clenched upon the trigger. His hand was at his belt, but he kept it there, and for a second or two the pair looked at one another. Then he quietly turned round, which argued courage, and called to somebody outside.

"Come in, boys," he said. "Here's a thing we hadn't quite figured on."

Carrie turned when he did, and in another moment she was standing with her back to the door that led to the corridor, while Eveline Annersly, who gasped, looked at her with horror in her eyes.

"What are you going to do?" she said.