A Prairie Courtship

They set to work after this, Lucy guiding the team along the edge of the grain and Thorne stooping among the sheaves in the wake of the machine. They were thus engaged, oblivious to everything but their task, when Mrs. Farquhar reined in her team close beside them, and Alison gazed with somewhat confused sensations at the pair.

Lucy had obviously made her dress herself, of the cheapest kind of print, but it was light in hue, as was her big hat, and in addition to falling in with the flood of vivid color through which she moved it flowed about her in becoming lines, and when she pulled up her horses and turned partly toward the wagon her pose was expressive of a curious virile grace. Behind her, straight-cut along its paler upper edge, where the feathery tassels of the oats shone with a silvery luster against the cold blue of the sky, the yellow grain glowed in the warm evening light. The glaring vermilion paint on the binder added to the general effect, and it occurred to Alison that the girl, with her brown face and hands and the signs of a splendid vitality plain upon her, was very much in harmony with her surroundings. The lean figure of the man stooping among the sheaves, lightly clad in blue that had lost its harshness by long exposure to the weather, formed a fit and necessary complement of the picture.

They were, Alison recognized, engaged upon humanity's most natural and beneficent task, and as she remembered how she had seen that soil lying waste, covered only with the harsh wild grasses, in the early spring, it was borne in upon her that there could be no greater reward than the bounteous harvest for man's arduous toil. Then she became troubled by a vague perception of the fact that this breaking of the wilderness and rendering the good soil fruitful was one of the sternest and most real tests of man's efficiency. Meretricious graces, paltry accomplishments, and the pretenses of civilization availed one nothing here. The only things that counted were the elemental qualities: slow endurance, faith that held fast through all the vagaries of the weather, and the power of toughened muscle that might ache but must in spite of that yield due obedience to the will. Alison regarded Lucy, who could play her part in the reaping, with a troubled feeling that was not far from envy.

Then Thorne looked up, partly dazzled with the level sunrays in his eyes, and walked toward the wagon. When he stopped beside it Mrs. Farquhar greeted him.

"We have been across to Shafter's place," she explained. "Harry asked me to drive round and see how you were getting on. He'll try to send you over his hired man in a day or two."

Thorne pointed to the rows of stooked sheaves.

"Thanks; I haven't done as much as I should have liked. Hall has gone back for my other team, and if it hadn't been for Lucy I'd have been a good deal farther behind."

"How much has she cut?" Mrs. Farquhar asked.

Thorne was quite aware that an answer would fix the time the girl had spent with him. Before he could speak, however, Lucy had approached the wagon and she broke in.

"I guess Mrs. Shafter would give you supper?"

Mrs. Farquhar said that she had done so, and Lucy smiled.

"That's going to save some trouble. Mavy and I had ours together most an hour ago and the stove's out by now."

Thorne imagined that this intimation, which struck him as a trifle superfluous, was made with a deliberate purpose; but one of the binder horses, tormented by the flies, began to kick just then, and he turned away to quiet it, while Lucy, who stood beside the wagon, smiled provocatively at Alison.

"You'll have to excuse Mavy – he's been hustling round since sunup, and he's played out," she said. "Still, you needn't get anxious. I'll look after him."

Mrs. Farquhar laughed, while Alison's attitude grew distinctly prim. She considered that in taking her anxiety for granted and alluding to it openly Lucy had gone too far. She also felt inclined to resent the girl's last consolatory assurance.

"Can I drive you home?" Mrs. Farquhar inquired. "I suppose you will be going soon, and it won't make a very big round."

"No," replied Lucy decisively, "you needn't trouble. I've a horse here, and I guess Mavy's not going to make love to me. For one thing, he's too busy. Besides, I want to cut round that other side before I go."

"Then I suppose we had better not keep you," said Mrs. Farquhar.

She waved her hand to Thorne and drove away, and when they had left the oats behind she turned to Alison.

"Lucy," she observed, "is now and then a little outspoken, but I'm curious as to what she meant when she said that Thorne was not likely to make love to her. Of course, the thing's improbable, anyway, but she spoke as if he had been offered an opportunity."

Alison's face flushed with anger.

"Leaving the fact that she's to marry Winthrop out of the question, the girl must have some self-respect. She would surely never go so far as you suggest."

"Well," smiled her companion, "she might go far enough to place Thorne in an embarrassing position, purely for the sake of the amusement she might derive from it. In fact, when I remember how she laughed, I'm far from sure that she didn't do something of the kind."

Alison sat silent for a minute or two. There was no doubt that she was very angry with Lucy, but she was also troubled by other sensations, among which was a certain envy of the girl's capacity for work that was held of high account in that country. Thorne's attitude and his weary face as he toiled among the sheaves had been very suggestive. He was, she knew, hard-pressed, engaged in a desperate grapple with a task that was generally admitted to be beyond his strength, and she could only stand aside and watch his efforts with wholly ineffective sympathy.

Then she became conscious that Mrs. Farquhar was glancing at her curiously.

"I feel humiliated to-night!" she broke out. "There's so little that seems of the least use to anybody here that I can do; and my abilities scarcely got me food and shelter in England. Isn't it almost a crime that they teach so many of us only fripperies? Were we only made to be taken care of and petted?"

Her companion smiled.

"If it's any consolation, I may point out that we haven't found you useless at the Farquhar homestead, and I can't see why you shouldn't be just as useful presiding over a place of your own. After all, since you raise the question what you were made for, that seems to be the usual destiny, and I haven't found it an unpleasant or ignoble one."

She broke off, and for a minute or two the jolting of the wagon rendered further conversation out of the question.

"There's another point," she added presently; "it's my opinion that an encouraging word from you would do more to brace Mavy for the work in front of him than the offer of half a dozen binders and teams."

Alison made no answer, and they drove on in silence across the waste, which was beginning to grow dim and shadowy.

CHAPTER XXV

THE ONLY MEANS

Alison sat one afternoon in the shadow of a pile of sheaves in Farquhar's harvest field. She had a little leisure, and it was unpleasantly hot in the wooden house. There was some sewing in her hand, but even in the shade the light was trying and she leaned back languidly among the warm straw with half-closed eyes. Two men were talking some distance behind her as they pitched up the rustling sheaves, and the tramp of horses' feet among the stubble and the rattle of a binder which she knew Farquhar was driving drew steadily nearer. Presently another beat of hoofs broke in, and a minute or two later Hall rode past, looking very hot, apparently without seeing her. Then the rattle of the binder ceased and she heard the newcomer greet Farquhar.

"If you've got one of those bent-end-spanners you could let me have I'd be glad," he said. "I've mislaid mine somehow, and there's a loose nut I can't get at making trouble on my binder."

Farquhar sent his hired man for one and Hall referred to the grain.

"So you have made a start. Looks quite a heavy crop. Good and ripe, too, isn't it?"

"We put the binder in yesterday," answered Farquhar. "I'd have done it earlier only that I sent Pete over to Thorne's place for a few days after you left him."

"I was kind of sorry I had to leave. He's surely going to be beaten. I looked in on him yesterday."

Alison became suddenly intent. She drew her light skirt closer about her, for she did not wish it to catch the men's eyes and betray her, as she thought it probable that they would speak to each other unreservedly and she would hear the actual truth about Thorne. When she had questioned Farquhar he had answered her in general terms, avoiding any very definite particulars, and she now strained her ears to catch his reply to Hall.

"I was afraid of it after what Pete told me," he said. "I would have helped him more if I could have managed it, but I can't let a big crop like this stand over when I've bills to meet."

"That," declared Hall, "is just how I'm fixed, though I stayed with him as long as I could. The trouble is that he hasn't been able to hire a man since I left him. There seem to be mighty few of the Ontario boys coming in this season, and so far they've been snapped up farther back along the line."

"Has he tried any of the men who had their crops hailed out west of the creek?"

"They cleared as soon as they saw they had no harvest left. Most of them are out track-grading on the branch line, and I heard the rest went East. Mavy's surely up against it; he was figuring last evening that even if the weather held he'd be most a month behind."

"Then I'm afraid he'll have to give the place up. Nevis will come down on him the day that payment's due."

"Couldn't he raise the money somehow, for a month?" Hall inquired.

"It's scarcely likely. I can't lend him any, with wheat at present figure, and Hunter, who has already guaranteed him a thousand dollars, is very tightly fixed. Besides Mavy couldn't expect anything more from him. It wouldn't be much use going to a bank, either. With the bottom dropping out of the market they're getting scared of wheat, and he has nothing to offer them but a crop that isn't reaped, with Grantly's note calling for most of it."

"Then I guess he has just got to quit. Hunter would no doubt have lent him a binder and a couple of hired men, but he has them busy trying to straighten up his hailed crop and cut patches of it."

"It's a pity," Farquhar assented in a regretful voice. "It will hurt Mavy to give the place up."

The man arrived with the spanner and Alison heard Hall ride away. When the clash and rattle of the binder began again she lay still for a long time beneath the sheaves. The men's conversation had made it clear that Thorne would shortly be involved in disaster, and that alone was painful news, though by comparison with another aspect of the matter it was of minor importance. The man loved her, and it was for that reason he had undertaken this most unfortunate farming venture. Everybody seemed to know it, though he had never told her what was in his mind, and she had been content to wait. Now, however, she had no doubt that she loved him, and he would, it seemed, shortly go away and vanish altogether beyond her reach – at least, unless something should very promptly be done. She knew he would not claim her while he was an outcast and a ruined man.