"If you want these logs, you must ask for them. Shall I tell the Colonel you are coming to do so?"
"Well, sonny," drawled Devine, "you just run along home and send somebody grown-up. We might talk to him."
"As it happens," the boy said with great dignity, "Kenwyne is in the bluff. I must warn you not to touch a tree until you see him."
Without another word he turned and rode off.
During the conversation Harding had been studying him closely. The well-bred reserve in his manner, which, while peremptory, was somehow free from arrogance, compelled the man's admiration.
"From the Old Country," he said with a laugh, "and a bit high-handed, but there's sand in him. Do you know anything about Allenwood?"
"Not much, but I heard the boys talking about it at the railroad store. It's a settlement of high-toned Britishers with more money than sense. They play at farming and ride round the country on pedigree horses."
"The horse the boy rode was certainly a looker!" Harding commented, swinging his ax once more.
As it sliced out a chip with a ringing thud, and another, and yet another, the boy returned, accompanied by a well-mounted older man with a sallow face and very dark eyes and a languidly graceful air. The man was plainly dressed but he wore the stamp Harding had noticed on the youngster; and again there flashed through Harding's mind the half-indistinct thought that these people were familiar to him.
"I understand that you insist upon cutting this timber," Kenwyne began.
"Yes," Harding replied. "And I was surprised when your friend here said it belonged to Colonel Mowbray."
"He went too far, but it does belong to him in a sense. The Colonel founded the settlement when very few other people thought of leaving Manitoba, and he had the usual option of cutting all the wood he wanted on unoccupied land. We have always got it here, and as we have done all the road-making and general improvements in the neighborhood, we have come to look upon it as our own."
"Is that your bridge across the creek?"
"Yes; and it's not a bad job, I think. We had a good deal of trouble digging out the grade in the ravine."
"Well, interfering with bridges is not a habit of mine; so we'll let your trail stand. But I could make you divert it to the proper road reserve."
"Ah!" exclaimed Kenwyne. "That sounds significant."
"Precisely. This bluff and the section it stands on belong to me; the transfer was registered at the land office a week ago."
"Then I think there's nothing more to be said."
"Oh," Harding responded with a smile, "you might tell your Colonel that when he wants any lumber he may cut it if he'll let me know!"
Kenwyne laughed.
"Thanks!" he said. "It's a generous offer, but I can't promise that Colonel Mowbray will avail himself of your permission. I wish you good afternoon."
He rode away with his companion, and an hour later Harding and Devine threw their axes on their shoulders and struck out across the prairie. The sun had dipped, the air was getting cool, and on the clean-cut western horizon a soft red flush faded beneath a band of vivid green.
At the foot of a low rise the men stopped.
"I'll be around the first thing in the morning," Devine said.
"Then you're not coming to supper?"
"No," Devine answered reluctantly; "I guess not. I've been over twice this week, and Hester has enough to do without extra cooking for me."
"As you wish," said Harding, and they separated in a friendly manner.
When he was alone Harding went on briskly, walking with an elastic step and looking far ahead across the shadowy plain. It was a rich land that stretched away before him, and a compact block of it belonged to him. It was virgin soil, his to do with as he liked. He thought that he could make good use of it; but he had no illusions; he knew all about prairie farming, and was prepared for a hard struggle.
Crossing the rise, he headed for a glow of light that flickered in the gloom of a small birch bluff, and presently stopped at a tent pitched among the trees. Two big red oxen were grazing by the edge of the bluff, a row of birch logs lay among the grass beside a pile of ship-lap boards, and some more of the boards had been roughly built into a pointed shack. In front of this a young girl bent over a fire that burned between two logs. All round, except where the wood broke the view, the wilderness rolled away, dim and silent.
Hester Harding looked up with a smile when her brother stopped. She resembled him, for she had his direct, thoughtful glance and fine proportions. Her face and hands were browned by sun and wind, but, although she had worked hard from childhood, she wore no coarsening stamp of toil. Her features were good, and the plain print dress she had made in her scanty spare time became her.
"Tired, Craig?" she asked in a pleasant voice.
"Not quite as fresh as I was at sun-up," Harding smiled. "We got through a good deal of work to-day and I'll soon be able to make a start with the house. We'll have to rush the framing to get finished before the frost."
While they ate their simple supper they talked about his building plans, and he answered her questions carefully; for Hester had keen intelligence, and had shared his work and ambitions for the past few years. For the most part, their life had been hard and frugal. Until Craig reached the age of eighteen, he had helped his father to cultivate his patch of wheat-soil in an arid belt of North Dakota. Then the father had died, leaving about a thousand dollars besides his land and teams, and the lad had courageously taken up the task of supporting his mother and sister. Two years afterward, Mrs. Harding died, and Craig, at the age of twenty, set himself to consider the future.
During his management of the farm he had made more money than his father had ever made, but the land was poor and incapable of much improvement. On the other hand, Dakota was getting settled and homesteads were becoming valuable, and Craig determined to sell out and invest the money in a larger holding in a thinly populated part of Manitoba. Hester went with him to Canada; and when the advancing tide of settlement reached their new home, Craig sold out again, getting much more than he had paid for his land, and moved west ahead of the army of prairie-breakers which he knew would presently follow him. It was a simple plan, but it needed courage and resourcefulness. He spoke of it to Hester when he lighted his pipe after the meal.
"It was a notion of Father's that one should try to anticipate a big general movement," he remarked. "'Keep a little in front; the pioneers get the pickings,' he once told me. 'If you follow the main body, you'll find the land swept bare.' He had a way of saying things like that; I learned a good deal from him."
"He knew a good deal," said Hester thoughtfully. "He was more clever than you are, Craig, but he hadn't your habit of putting his ideas into practise. I've sometimes thought he must have lost heart after some big trouble long ago, and only made an effort now and then for Mother's sake. It's strange that we know nothing about him except that he came from the Old Country."
Craig had often wondered about his father, for the man had been somewhat of an enigma to him. Basil Harding had lived like his neighbors, who were plain tillers of the soil, and he never spoke of his English origin, but now and then he showed a breadth of thought and refinement of manner that were not in keeping with his environment. Mrs. Harding was the daughter of a Michigan farmer, a shrewd but gentle woman of practical turn of mind.
"I wonder," Craig said, "how much Mother knew?"
"She must have known something. Once or twice, near the end, I think she meant to tell us, for there was something troubling her, but the last stroke came so suddenly, and she never spoke." Hester paused, as if lost in painful memories, and then went on: "It was very strange about that money you got."
Craig nodded. When he was twenty-one a Winnipeg lawyer had turned over to him five thousand dollars on condition that he remain in Canada, and make no attempt to communicate with his father's relatives.
"Yes," he said. "And something happened this afternoon that puzzled me."
He