The Impostor

She went out, and Miss Barrington sat very still gazing, with eyes that were curiously thoughtful, into the fire. “Princess of the Prairie – and it fits her well,” she said, and then sighed a little. “And if there is a trace of hardness in the girl it may be fortunate. We all have our troubles – and wheat is going down.”

In the meanwhile, late as it was, Colonel Barrington and his chief lieutenant, Gordon Dane, sat in his log-walled smoking-room talking with a man he sold his wheat through in Winnipeg. The room was big and bare. There were a few fine heads of antelope upon the walls, and beneath them an armoury of English-made shot guns and rifles, while a row of riding crops, silver-mounted, and some handled with ivory, stood in a corner. All these represented amusement, while two or three treatises on veterinary surgery and agriculture lying amidst English stud-books and racing records, presumably stood for industry. The comparison was significant, and Graham, the Winnipeg wheat-broker, noticed it as he listened patiently to the views of Colonel Barrington, who nevertheless worked hard enough in his own fashion. Unfortunately, it was rather the fashion of the English gentleman than that common on the prairie.

“And now,” he said, with a trace of the anxiety he had concealed in his eyes, “I am open to hear what you can do for me.”

Graham smiled a little. “It isn’t very much, Colonel. I’ll take all your wheat off you at three cents down.”

Now Barrington did not like the broker’s smile. It savoured too much of equality; and, though he had already unbent as far as he was capable of doing, he had no great esteem for men of business. Nor did it please him to be addressed as “Colonel.”

“That,” he said coldly, “is out of the question, I would not sell at the last market price. Besides, you have hitherto acted as my broker.”

Graham nodded. “The market price will be less than what I offered you in a week, and I could scarcely sell your wheat at it to-day. I was going to hold it myself, because I can occasionally get a little more from one or two millers who like that special grade. Usual sorts I’m selling for a fall. Quite sure the deal wouldn’t suit you?”

Barrington lighted a fresh cigar, though Graham, noticed that he had smoked very little of the one he flung away. This was, of course, a trifle, but it is the trifles that count in the aggregate upon the prairie, as they not infrequently do elsewhere.

“I fancy I told you so,” he said.

The broker glanced at Dane, who was a big, bronzed man, and, since Barrington could not see him, shook his head deprecatingly.

“You can consider that decided, Graham,” he said. “Still, can you as a friendly deed give us any notion of what to do? As you know, farming, especially at Silverdale, costs money, and the banks are demanding an iniquitous interest just now, while we are carrying over a good deal of wheat.”

Graham nodded. He understood why farming was unusually expensive at Silverdale, and was, in recollection of past favours, inclined to be disinterestedly friendly.

“If I were you I would sell right along for forward delivery at a few cents under the market.”

“It is a trifle difficult to see how that would help us,” said Barrington, with a little gesture of irritation, for it almost seemed that the broker was deriding him.

“No!” said the man from Winnipeg, “on the contrary, it’s quite easy. Now I can predict that wheat will touch lower prices still before you have to make delivery, and it isn’t very difficult to figure out the profit on selling a thing for a dollar and then buying it, when you have to produce it at ninety cents. Of course, there is a risk of the market going against you, but you could buy at the first rise, and you’ve your stock to dole out in case anybody cornered you.”

“That,” said Dane thoughtfully, “appears quite sensible. Of course, it’s a speculation, but presumably we couldn’t be much worse off than we are. Have you any objections to the scheme, sir.”

Barrington laid down his cigar, and glanced with astonished severity at the speaker. “Unfortunately, I have. We are wheat growers, and not wheat stock jugglers. Our purpose is to farm, and not swindle and lie in the wheat pits for decimal differences. I have a distinct antipathy to anything of the kind.”

“But, sir,” said Dane, and Barrington stopped with a gesture.

“I would,” he said, “as soon turn gambler. Still, while it has always been a tradition at Silverdale that the head of the settlement’s lead is to be followed, that need not prevent you putting on the gloves with the wheat-ring blacklegs in Winnipeg.”

Dane blushed a little under his tan, and then smiled as he remembered the one speculative venture his leader had indulged in, for Colonel Barrington was a somewhat hot-tempered and vindictive man. He made a little gesture of deprecation as he glanced at Graham, who straightened himself suddenly in his chair.

“I should not think of doing so in face of your opinion, sir,” he said. “There is an end to the thing, Graham!”

The broker’s face was a trifle grim. “I gave you good advice out of friendship, Colonel, and there are men with dollars to spare who would value a hint from me,” he said. “Still, as it doesn’t seem to strike you the right way, I’ve no use for arguing. Keep your wheat – and pay bank interest if you want any help to carry over.”

“Thanks,” said Dane quietly. “They charge tolerably high, but I’ve seen what happens to the man who meddles with the mortgage-broker.”

Graham nodded. “Well, as I’m starting out at six o’clock, it’s time I was asleep,” he said. “Good-night to you, Colonel.”

Barrington shook hands with Graham, and then sighed a little when he went out. “I believe the man is honest, and he is a guest of mine, or I should have dressed him down,” he said. “I don’t like the way things are going, Dane; and the fact is we must find accommodation somewhere, because now I have to pay out so much on my ward’s account to that confounded Courthorne, it is necessary to raise more dollars than the banks will give me. Now, there was a broker fellow wrote me a very civil letter.”

Dane, who was a thoughtful man, ventured to lay his hand upon his leader’s arm. “Keep yourself and Miss Barrington out of those fellows’ clutches, at any cost,” he said.

Barrington shook off his hand and looked at him sternly. “Are you not a trifle young to adopt that tone?” he asked.

Dane nodded. “No doubt I am, but I’ve seen a little of mortgage jobbing. You must try to overlook it. I did not mean to offend.”

He went out, and, while Colonel Barrington sat down before a sheaf of accounts, sprang into a waiting sleigh. “It’s no use; we’ve got to go through,” he said to the lad who shook the reins, “Graham made a very sensible suggestion, but our respected leader came down on him, as he did on me. You see, one simply can’t talk to the Colonel; and it’s unfortunate Miss Barrington didn’t marry that man in Montreal.”

“I don’t know,” said the lad. “Of course, there are not many girls like Maud Barrington, but is it necessary she should go outside Silverdale?”

Dane laughed. “None of us would be old enough for Miss Barrington when we were fifty. The trouble is, that we spend half our time in play, and I’ve a notion it’s a man, and not a gentleman dilettante, she’s looking for.”

“Isn’t that a curious way of putting it?” asked his companion.

Dane nodded. “It may be the right one. Woman is as she was made, and I’ve had more than a suspicion lately that a little less refinement would not come amiss at Silverdale. Anyway, I hope she’ll find him, for it’s a man with grit and energy, who could put a little desirable pressure on the Colonel occasionally, we’re all wanting. Of course, I’m backing my leader, though it’s going to cost me a good deal, but it’s time he had somebody to help him.”

“He would never accept assistance,” said the lad thoughtfully. “That is, unless the man who offered it was, or became by marriage, one of the dynasty.”

“Of course,” said Dane. “That’s why I’m inclined to take a fatherly interest in Miss Barrington’s affairs. It’s a misfortune we’ve heard nothing very reassuring about Courthorne.”

CHAPTER VII – WITHAM’S DECISION

Farmer Witham crossed the frontier without molestation and spent one night in a little wooden town, where several people he did not speak to apparently recognized him. Then he pushed on southwards, and passed a week in the especially desolate settlement he had been directed to. A few dilapidated frame houses rose out of the white wilderness beside the broad, beaten trail, and, for here the prairie rolled south in long rises like the wakes of a frozen sea, a low wooden building on the crest of one cut the skyline a league away. It served as outpost for a squadron of United States cavalry, and the troopers daily maligned the Government which had sent them into that desolation on police duty.

There was nothing else visible but a few dusky groves of willows and dazzling snow. The ramshackle wooden hotel was rather more than usually badly kept and comfortless, and Witham, who had managed to conciliate his host, felt relieved one afternoon when the latter flung down the cards disgustedly.

“I guess I’ve had enough,” he said. “Playing for stakes of this kind isn’t good enough for you!”

Witham laughed a little to hide his resentment, as he said, “I don’t quite understand.”

“Pshaw!” said the American with a contemptuous gesture. “Three times out of four I’ve spoiled your hand, and if I didn’t know that black horse I’d take you for some blamed Canadian rancher. You didn’t handle the pictures that way when you stripped the boys to the hide at Regent, Mr. Courthorne?”

“Regent?” said Witham.

The hotel-keeper laughed. “Oh yes,” he said. “I wouldn’t go back there too soon, anyway. The boys seem quite contented, and I don’t figure they would be very nice to you. Well, now, I’ve no use for fooling with a man who’s too proud to take my dollars, and I’ve a pair of horses just stuffed with wickedness in the stable. There’s not much you don’t know about a beast, anyway, and you can take them out a league or two if you feel like it.”

Witham, who had grown very tired of his host, was glad of any distraction, especially as he surmised that while the man had never seen Courthorne, he knew rather more than he did himself about his doings. Accordingly, he got into the sleigh that was brought out by and by, and enjoyed the struggle with the half-tamed team which stood with ears laid back, prepared for conflict. Oats had been very plentiful, and prices low that season. Witham, who knew at least as much about a horse as Lance Courthorne, however, bent them to his will and the team were trotting quietly through the shadow of a big birch bluff a league from town, when he heard a faint clip-clop coming down the trail behind him. It led straight beneath the leafless branches, and was beaten smooth and firm; while Witham, who had noticed already that whenever he strayed any distance from the hotel there was a mounted cavalryman somewhere, in the vicinity, shook the reins.

The team swung into faster stride, the cold wind whistled past him, and the snow whirled up from beneath the runners; but while he listened the rhythmic drumming behind him also quickened a little. Then a faintly musical jingle of steel accompanied the beat of hoofs, and Witham glanced about him with a little laugh of annoyance. The dusk was creeping across the prairie, and a pale star or two growing into brilliancy in the cloudless sweep of indigo.

“It’s getting a trifle tiresome. I’ll find out what the fellow wants,” he said.

Wheeling the team, he drove back the way he came, and, when a dusky object materialized out of the shadows beneath the birches, swung the horses right across the trail. The snow lay deep on either side of it just there, with a sharp crust upon its surface, which rendered it inadvisable to take a horse round the sleigh. The mounted man accordingly drew bridle, and the jingle and rattle betokened his profession, though it was already too dark to see him clearly.

“Hallo!” he said. “Been buying this trail up, stranger?”

“No,” said Witham quietly, though he still held his team across the way. “Still, I’ve got the same right as any other citizen to walk or drive along it without anybody prowling after me, and just now I want to know if there is a reason I should be favoured with your company.”

The trooper laughed a little. “I guess there is. It’s down in the orders that whoever’s on patrol near the settlement should keep his eye on you. You see, if you lit out of here we would want to know just where you were going to.”