Harding of Allenwood

"Hurrying on the wedding won't help much."

"It might. Beatrice will try to accept her husband's views, and she'll probably find it easier than she thinks; but at present all she sees and hears will remind her of the changes she will have to make. Things you do will not seem right; some of your ideas will jar. Then the other women will let her see that they feel sorry for her and think she's throwing herself away. She'll deny it, but it will hurt."

"Perhaps that's true," said Harding. "But talking of the wedding raises another question. I want a better house, and when I build I may as well locate at Allenwood."

"Then you are still determined on getting control there?"

"I don't want control, but I may have to take it," Harding answered. "The settlement will fall to bits if it's left alone, and I suspect that I'm the only man who can hold it up. I'm glad you have talked to me. What you've said makes it clear that I've not time to lose. Now, however, this hay must be cut."

He led his team into the grass when Hester went away, but although he worked hard until dark fell, his mind was busy with many things beside the clattering machine.

A few days later he had occasion to visit Winnipeg, and after some talk with his agent there, he asked him:

"Do you know how Davies is fixed just now, Jackson?"

"I don't know much about him personally, but men in his line of business are feeling the set-back. They've bought options on land there's no demand for, and can't collect accounts; farmers with money seem to have stopped coming in; and the small homesteaders are going broke. Doesn't seem to be any money in the country, and credit's played out."

"Then it ought to be a good time to pick up land cheap, and I want you to find a broker who'll ask Davies what he'll take for two or three mortgages he holds on Allenwood. My name's not to be mentioned; you must get a man who can handle the matter cautiously."

"I know one; but, if you don't mind my asking, could you put a deal of that kind through?"

"I must," said Harding. "It will be a strain, but the crop's coming on well and I ought to have a surplus after harvest."

"Isn't the dry weather hurting you?"

"Not yet. We can stand for another week or two if the wind's not too bad. Anyhow, you can find out whether Davies is inclined to trade."

When Harding went out into the street, he was met by a cloud of swirling dust. He wiped the grit from his eyes and brushed it off his clothes with an annoyance that was not accounted for by the slight discomfort it caused him. The sun was fiercely hot, the glare trying, and the plank sidewalks and the fronts of the wooden stores had begun to crack. Sand and cement from half-finished buildings were blowing down the street; and when Harding stopped to watch a sprinkler at work on a lawn at the corner of an avenue where frame houses stood among small trees, the glistening shower vanished as it fell. There were fissures in the hard soil and the grass looked burnt. But it was the curious, hard brightness of the sky and the way the few white clouds swept across it that gave Harding food for thought.

The soil of the Western prairie freezes deep, and, thawing slowly, retains moisture for the wheat plant for some time; but the June rain had been unusually light. Moreover, the plains rise in three or four tablelands as they run toward the Rockies, and the strength of the northwest wind increases with their elevation. It was blowing fresh in the low Red River basin, but it would be blowing harder farther west, where there are broken, sandy belts. After a period of dry weather, the sand drives across the levels with disastrous consequences to any crops in the neighborhood. This, however, was a danger that could not be guarded against.

The next day Jackson reported about the mortgages.

"Davies was keen on business and offered my man improved preemptions in a dozen different townships," he said. "Pressed him to go out and take a look at them; but when he heard the buyer wanted an Allenwood location he wouldn't trade."

"What do you gather from that?"

"The thing seems pretty plain, and what I've found out since yesterday agrees with my conclusions. Davies is pressed for money, but he means to hold on to Allenwood as long as he can. A good harvest would help him because he'd then be able to get in some money from his customers."

"A good harvest would help us all; but there's not much hope of it unless the weather changes. In the meanwhile, we'll let the matter drop, because I don't want to give the fellow a hint about my plans."

Nearing home on the following evening, Harding pulled up his horse on the edge of the wheat as he saw Devine coming to meet him.

"What's the weather been like?" he asked, getting down from the rig.

"Bad," said Devine gloomily. "Hot and blowing hard."

Harding looked about as they crossed a stretch of grass that had turned white and dry. The sunset was red and angry, but above the horizon the sky was a hard, dark blue that threatened wind. Everything was very still now, but the men knew the breeze would rise again soon after daybreak. They said nothing for a time after they stopped beside the wheat.

The soil was thinly covered with sand, and the tall blades had a yellow, shriveled look, while the stems were bent and limp. Harding gathered a few and examined them. They were scored with fine lines as if they had been cut by a sharp file.

"Not serious yet, but the grain won't stand for much more of this."

"That's so," Devine agreed. "The sand hasn't got far in, but I guess it will work right through unless we have a change. If not, there'll be trouble for both of us this fall."

"Sure," said Harding curtly. "Bring the horse, Fred, and we'll drive on to the rise."

They presently alighted where the plain merged into a belt of broken country, dotted with clumps of scrub birch and poplar. It rolled in ridges and hollows, but the harsh grass which thinly covered its surface had shriveled and left bare banks of sand, which lay about the slopes in fantastic shapes as they had drifted. Harding stooped and took up a handful. It was hot and felt gritty. The broken ground ran on as far as he could see, and the short, stunted trees looked as if they had been scorched. Glowing red in the dying sunset, the desolate landscape had a strangely sinister effect.

"The stuff's as hard and sharp as steel," he said, throwing down the sand. "There's enough of it to wipe out all the crops between Allenwood and the frontier if the drought lasts."

"What we want is a good big thunderstorm. This blamed sand-belt's a trouble we never reckoned on."

"No," said Harding. "I took a look at it when I was picking my location, but there was plenty of grass, and the brush was strong and green. Guess they'd had more rain the last two or three years. I figured out things pretty carefully – and now the only set-back I didn't allow for is going to pull me up! Well, we must hope for a change of weather; there's nothing else to be done."

He turned away with a gloomy face, and they walked back to the rig. Harding had early seen that Beatrice would not be an easy prize. It was not enough, entrancing as it was, to dream over her beauty, her fastidious daintiness in manners and thought, her patrician calm, and the shy tenderness she now and then showed for him. The passionate thrill her voice and glance brought him – spurred him rather – to action. First of all, he must work and fight for her, and he had found a keen pleasure in the struggle. One by one he had pulled down the barriers between them; but now, when victory seemed secure, an obstacle he could not overcome had suddenly risen. All his strength of mind and body counted for nothing against the weather. Beatrice could not marry a ruined man; it was unthinkable that he should drag her down to the grinding care and drudgery that formed the lot of a broken farmer's wife. He was helpless, and could only wait and hope for rain.

When he had finished his work the next evening he drove over to the Grange, feeling depressed and tired, for he had begun at four o'clock that morning. It was very hot: a fiery wind still blew across the plain, although the sun had set, and Beatrice was sitting on the veranda with her mother and Mowbray. They had a languid air, and the prairie, which had turned a lifeless gray, looked strangely dreary as it ran back into the gathering dark.

"Not much hope of a change!" Mowbray remarked.

Beatrice gave Harding a sympathetic glance, and unconsciously he set his lips tight. She looked cool and somehow ethereal in her thin white dress and her eyes were gentle. It was horrible to think that he might have to give her up; but he knew it might come to this.

"You're tired; I'm afraid you have been working too hard," Beatrice said gently.

"The weather accounts for it, not the work," he answered. "It's depressing to feel that all you've done may lead to nothing."

"Very true," Mowbray assented. "You're fortunate if this is the first time you have been troubled by the feeling. Many of us have got used to it; but one must go on."

"It's hard to fight a losing battle, sir."

"It is," said Mowbray grimly. "That it really does not matter in the end whether you lose or not, so long as you're on the right side, doesn't seem to give one much consolation. But your crop strikes me as looking better than ours."

"I plowed deep; the sub-soil holds the moisture. Of course, with horse-traction – "

Harding hesitated, but Mowbray smiled.

"I can't deny that your machines have their advantages," the Colonel said. "They'd be useful if you could keep them in their place as servants; the danger is that they'll become your masters. When you have bought them you must make them pay, and that puts you under the yoke of an iron thing that demands to be handled with the sternest economy. The balance sheet's the only standard it leaves you – and you have to make some sacrifices if you mean to come out on the credit side. Your finer feelings and self-respect often have to go."

"I'm not sure they need go; but, in a way, you're right. You must strike a balance, or the machines that cost so much will break you. For all that, it's useful as a test; the result of bad work shows when you come to the reckoning. I can't see that to avoid waste must be demoralizing."

"It isn't. The harm begins when you set too high a value on economical efficiency."

Harding did not answer, and there was silence for a time. Mrs. Mowbray had a headache from the heat, and Beatrice felt limp. She noticed the slackness of Harding's pose and felt sorry for him. He differed from her father, and she could not think he was always right, but he was honest; indeed, it was his strong sincerity that had first attracted her. She liked his strength and boldness; the athletic symmetry of his form had its effect; but what struck her most was his freedom from what the Canadians contemptuously called meanness. Beatrice was fastidiously refined in some respects, and she thought of him as clean. Unconsciously she forgave him much for this, because he jarred upon her now and then. Her father's old-fashioned ideals were touched with a grace that her lover could not even admire, but, watching him as he sat in the fading light, she felt that he was trustworthy.

Mosquitos began to invade the veranda, and Mrs. Mowbray was driven into the house. The Colonel presently followed her, and Beatrice, leaving her chair, cuddled down beside Harding on the steps.

"Craig," she said, "you're quiet to-night."