“Go on,” I said gently, and she clenched her hands with a gesture that expressed fierce resentment as well as sorrow as she added:
“The poor little innocent thing had no chance for its life – we were short of even bare necessities, for Tom could pick up only a few dollars now and then – and I think that all that was good in me died with it. So when he found work watching the heater of a store a few hours each night, and the wages would not keep two, I had to go out and earn my bread here – and I sometimes wish I had never been born.”
I made no answer for a space. There was nothing I could say that might soften such trouble as was stamped on her face; although I remembered having heard Jasper say that a weight clerk was wanted at the new elevator further down the line. Then, blundering as usual, I said:
“Do you know, Minnie, they blame me at home for bringing you out here, and I heard that your father had sworn to be revenged upon me?”
There was sullen fury in the girl’s eyes – she was very young after all – but she kept herself in hand, and answered bitterly:
“It was like their lying tongues. Envy and malice, and always some one’s character to be taken away. No; it was Tom – and Tom, God help us both, has lost his head and drinks too much when he can. But I must not keep you, Ralph Lorimer, and henceforward you have nothing to do with me.”
A voice called “Minnie,” and I had only time to say, “Perhaps I can find some better work for him; and you will write home and tell them the truth for your own and my sake, won’t you?” before she hurried away.
Then Harry and I walked down to the freight-siding, where the big box cars hauled out ready from under the elevators were waiting. Two huge locomotives were presently coupled on, there followed a clanging of bells, and we watched the twinkling tail-lights grow dimmer across the prairie. Part of our harvest, we knew, was on board that train, starting on the first stage of its long journey to fill with finest flour the many hungry mouths that were waiting for it in the old land we had left behind. The lights died out in a hollow far away on the prairie’s rim, and Harry slipped his arm through mine, perhaps because his heart was full. With much anxiety, ceaseless toil, and the denying ourselves of every petty luxury, we had called that good grain forth from the prairie, and the sale of it meant at least one year free from care.
Before we turned away, straight as the crow flies a cavalcade came clattering up out of the silent prairie, while, after a jingle of harness, merry clear-pitched voices filled the station, and something within me stirred at the sound. There was no trace of Western accent here, though the prairie accent is rarely unpleasant, for these were riders from Carrington who spoke pure English, and were proud of it. Two, with a certain courtliness which also was foreign to that district, helped an elderly lady down from a light carriage luxuriously hung on springs, which must have been built specially at the cost of many dollars, and the rest led their well-groomed horses toward the store stables, or strolled beside the track jesting with one another. None of them wore the skin coats of the settlers. Some were robed in furs, and others in soft-lined deerskin, gaily fringed by Blackfoot squaws, which became them; but except for this they were of the British type most often met with gripping the hot double-barrel when the pheasants sweep clattering athwart the wood, or sitting intent and eager with tight hand on the rein outside the fox cover.
Still, no one could say they had suffered by their translation to a new country, which was chiefly due to Colonel Carrington. He had been successful hitherto at wheat-growing on an extensive scale, and though few of the settlers liked him they could not help admiring the bold far-seeing way in which he speculated on the chances of the weather, or hedged against a risky wheat crop by purchasing western horses. Still, not content with building up the finest property thereabout, he aspired to rule over a British settlement, and each time that he visited the old country at regular intervals several young Englishmen of good family and apparently ample means returning with him commenced breaking virgin prairie. They were not all a success as farmers, the settlers said, and there were occasional rumors of revolt; but if they had their differences with the grim autocrat they kept them loyally to themselves, and never spoke in public of their leader save with respect. Now it was evident that his daughter was expected; they had come to escort her home in state, and no princess could have desired a finer bodyguard. They were the pick of the old country’s well-born youth when they came out, and now they had grown to a splendid manhood in the wide spaces of the prairie.
Though they answered our greetings with good fellowship, I am afraid we regarded them a little enviously, for the value of some of their horses would have sown us a crop, and even Harry seemed unkempt beside them. We lived and dressed very plainly at Fairmead that year. Then amid a grinding of brakes, with lights flashing, a long train rolled in, and the group stood, fur cap in hand, about the platform of a car from which a dainty figure looked down at them. It was Grace Carrington, and as I stood a little apart from the rest my heart leaped at the sight of her. Yet, either from bashfulness or foolish pride, I would not move a step nearer.
“What a picture!” said Harry softly. “A princess of the prairie and her subjects doing homage to her! Ralph, I say, you must not stare at the girl like that. But, by Jove, she’s smiling this way – yes, she is really beckoning you!”
It was true, for a stripling who wore his deerskin jacket as though it were the dolman of a cavalry officer strode forward, and inclining his head said:
“If you are Mr. Lorimer, Miss Carrington desires to speak with you.”
For some reason I drew Harry with me. It may have been that I felt the company of a comrade of my own kind would be comforting in that assembly; and then I forgot everything as, fixing her bright eyes on me, Grace held out her hand.
“It was kind of you to meet me, and this is an unexpected pleasure,” she said. “You must come over to Carrington and tell me where you have settled. Oh stay, Raymond, this is Mr. Lorimer – he was kind to me in England, and I want you to invite him to your approaching festivities. You will come, won’t you, and bring your friend – very pleased to see you Mr. Lorraine, too; then I shall have an opportunity for talking with you.”
“Delighted, of course, to please you,” said a tall bronzed man of maturer years, bowing. “Met Mr. Lorimer already; pulled my wagon up most kindly when the team was stalled in a ravine. If I’d known you were from the old country would have ridden over already to ask you.”
Further introductions followed, all effected in a queenly way, and with a last pleasant glance toward us Grace moved toward the carriage, while I fancied that some of the younger among her bodyguard regarded us jealously. Harry and I stood silent until the cavalcade vanished into the dimness, and then, while the last beat of hoofs died away, the blood surged through every artery as he said:
“Wasn’t she splendid! When she held out her hand to me I felt that I ought to go down on one knee and kiss it, and all that kind of thing, you know. Ralph, you stalked up like a bear; must have been dazed by too much brightness, because you never even raised your hat. Well, one can understand it; but I think some of the others would have liked to cut your big solid throat for you.”
Harry was both enthusiastic and impressionable, though I did not think so then, and the whole scene could scarcely have lasted five minutes, but it filled my mind for days afterward, and I can recall it clearly still.
CHAPTER VII
HARVEST HOME
It was a bitter night when Harry and I rode into the red glow of light that beat out through the windows of Lone Hollow, the furthest outlying farm of the Carrington group, where, now that the last bushel of his wheat had been sold in Winnipeg, Raymond Lyle was celebrating a bounteous harvest. Round about it, drawn up in ranks, stood vehicles – or rigs, as we call them – of every kind, for it seemed as if the whole country-side had driven in. Most of them were of better make than those we and the majority of the