"If it wouldn't be a liberty, miss, the boys would take it as an honor if you would sing that, or something else, over again. They've never heard nothing like it, even down to Winnipeg," he said.
The girl blushed a little, and looked at me. "They were kind to me. Do you really think it would please them?" she asked.
"If it doesn't they will be abominably ungrateful; but although we are not conventional, the request strikes me as a liberty," I said, noticing that her sister did not seem wholly pleased.
"Tell them I will do my best," was the answer, and, after a conference with Cotton, Lucille Haldane walked towards the open door. There was no trace of vanity or self-consciousness in her bearing. It was pure kindliness which prompted her, and when she stood outside the building, with the star-strewn vault above her, and the prairie silver-gray at her feet, bareheaded, slight, and willowy in her thin white dress, it seemed small wonder that the dusty men who clustered about the wire fence swung down their broad hats to do her homage.
Perfect stillness succeeded, save for sounds made by the restless cattle; then the banjo tinkled, and a clear voice rang out through the soft transparency of the summer night: "All day long the reapers!"
There was a deep murmur when the last tinkle of the banjo sank into silence, a confused hum of thanks, and teamster and stock-rider melted away, and Lucille Haldane, returning, glanced almost apologetically at me.
"I just felt I had to please them," she said. "Even if you older people smile, I am proud of this great country, and it seems to me that these are the men who are making it what it will some day be. Don't you think that we who live idly in the cities owe a good deal to them?"
Haldane laid his hand caressingly on his daughter's arm. "Impulsive as ever – but perhaps you are right," he said. "In any case, it will be after midnight before we get home, and you might ask for our team, Ormesby."
Every man about Gaspard's Trail helped to haul up the wagon and harness the spirited team, while, in spite of Cotton's efforts, Thorn insisted on handing my youngest guest into the vehicle; and it was with some difficulty I exchanged parting civilities with the rest as the vehicle rolled away amid the stockmen's cheers.
CHAPTER VI
A HOLOCAUST
It was late one sultry night when I sat moodily beside an open window in my house at Gaspard's Trail. I had risen before the sun that morning, but, though tired with a long day's ride, I felt restless and ill-disposed to sleep. Thomas Steel, whose homestead stood some leagues away, lounged close by with his unlighted pipe on his knee and his coarse sun-faded shirt flung open showing his bronzed neck and the paler color of his ample chest. He was about my own age and possessed the frame of a gladiator, but there was limp dejection in his attitude.
"It's just awful weather, but there's a change at hand," he said. "It will be too late for some of us when it comes."
I merely nodded, and glanced out through the window. Thick darkness brooded over the prairie, though at intervals a flicker of sheet lightning blazed along the horizon and called up clumps of straggling birches out of the obscurity. A fitful breeze which eddied about the building set the grasses sighing, but it was without coolness, and laden with the smell of burning. Far-off streaks of crimson shone against the sky in token that grass-fires were moving down-wind across the prairie. They would, however, so far as we could see, hurt nobody. Steel fidgeted nervously until I began to wonder what was the matter with him, and when he thrust his chair backwards I said irritably: "For heaven's sake sit still. You look as ill at ease as if you had been told off to murder somebody."
The stalwart farmer's face darkened. "I feel 'most as bad, and have been waiting all evening to get the trouble out," he said. "Fact is, I'm borrowing money, and if you could let me have a few hundred dollars it would mean salvation."
I laughed harshly to hide my dismay. The prairie settlers stand by one another in time of adversity, and in earlier days Steel had been a good friend to me; but the request was singularly inopportune. Two bad seasons had followed each other, when the whole Dominion labored under a commercial depression; and though my estate was worth at ordinary values a considerable sum, it was only by sacrificing my best stock I could raise money enough to carry it on.
"If I get anything worth mentioning for the beasts I'll do my utmost, and by emptying the treasury perhaps I can scrape up two or three hundred now. What do you want with it?" I said.
"I thought you would help me," answered Steel, with a gasp of relief. "I've been played for the fool I am. I got a nice little book from the – Company, and it showed how any man with enterprise could get ahead by the aid of borrowed capital. Then its representative – very affable man – came along and talked considerable. I was a bit hard pressed, and the end was that he lent me money. There were a blame lot of charges, and the money seemed to melt away, while now, if I don't pay up, he'll foreclose on me."
I clenched my right hand viciously, for the man who had trapped poor Steel had also a hold on me, and I began to cherish a growing fear of the genial Lane.
"It's getting a common story around here," I said. "That man seems bent on absorbing all this country, but if only for that very reason we're bound to help each other to beat him. It will be a hard pull, but, though it all depends on what the stock fetch, I'll do the best I can."
Steel was profuse in his thanks, and I lapsed into a by no means overpleasant reverie. So some time passed until a glare of red and yellow showed up against the sky where none had been before.
"Looks like a mighty big fire. There's long grass feeding it, and it has just rolled over a ridge," said Steel. "Seems to me somewhere near the Indian Spring Bottom, but Redmond and the other fellow would drive the stock well clear."
Flinging my chair back I snatched a small compass from a shelf, laid it on the window-ledge, and, kneeling behind it, with a knife blade held across the card I took the bearings of the flame. "It's coming right down on the bottom, and though by this time the stock is probably well clear, I'm a little uneasy about it. We'll ride over and make quite sure," I said.
"Of course!" Steel answered, and seemed about to add something, but thought better of it and followed me towards the stable. Thorn, who was prompt of action, had also seen the fire, for he was already busy with the horses; and inside of five minutes we were sweeping at a gallop across the prairie. Save for the intermittent play of lightning the darkness was Egyptian; and the grass was seamed by hollows and deadly badger-holes; but the broad blaze streamed higher for a beacon, and, risking a broken neck, I urged on the mettled beast beneath me. Grass fires are common, and generally are harmless enough in our country; but that one seemed unusually fierce, and an indefinite dread gained on me as the miles rolled behind us.
"It's the worst I've seen for several seasons. Whole ridge is blazing," panted Steel, as, with a great crackling, we swept neck and neck together through the tall grass of a slough in the midst of which Thorn's horse blundered horribly. Then we dipped into a ravine, reeling down the slope and splashing through caked mire where a little water had been. Every moment might be precious, and turning aside for nothing, we rode straight across the prairie, while at last I pressed the horse fiercely as a long rise shut out the blaze. Once we gained its crest the actual conflagration would be visible. The horse was white with lather, and I was almost blinded with sweat and dust when we gained the summit. Drawing bridle, I caught at my breath. The Sweetwater ran blood red beneath us, and the whole mile-wide hollow through which it flowed was filled with fire, while some distance down stream on the farther side a dusky mass was discernible through the rolling smoke which blew in long wisps in that direction. It seemed as though a cold hand had suddenly been laid on my heart, for the mass moved, and was evidently composed of close-packed and panic-stricken beasts.
"It's the Gaspard draft held up by the wing fence!" a voice behind me rose in a breathless yell.
I smote the horse, and we shot down the declivity. How the beast kept its footing I do not know, for there were thickets of wild berries and here and