"Since you recovered your horse I am not altogether sorry the hunted man got away," she said. "There are, however, two things about the affair which puzzle me – how the candlestick my sister carried when she made the rounds reached the table in the hall where it is never left; and why I should find the candle it contained under the sideboard in the room the intruder entered! Can you suggest any solution, Mr. Ormesby?"
I felt uncomfortable, knowing that Beatrice Haldane was not only clever herself, but the daughter of a very shrewd man, while her eyes were fixed steadily on me. Lucille's head bent lower over her sewing, and, though I would have given much to answer frankly, I felt that she trusted me. So I said, as indifferently as I could: "There might be several, and the correct one very simple. Somebody must have knocked the candlestick over in his hurry and forgotten about it. Have you been studying detective literature latterly?"
Beatrice Haldane said nothing further; but I realized that I had incurred her displeasure, and was not greatly comforted by the grateful glance her sister flashed at me.
CHAPTER IV
THE TIGHTENING OF THE NET
It was a hot morning of early summer when I rode up the low rise to my house at Gaspard's Trail. A few willows straggled behind one side of it, but otherwise it rose unsheltered from the wind-swept plain, which, after a transitory flush of greenness, had grown dusty white again. I had been in the saddle since sunrise, when the dewy freshness had infused cheerfulness and vigor into my blood, but now it was with a feeling of dejection I reined in my horse and sat still, looking about me.
The air was as clear as crystal, so that the birches far off on the western horizon cut sharply against the blue. All around the rest of the circle ran an almost unbroken sweep of white and gray, streaked in one place by the dust of alkali rolling up from a strip of bitter water, which flashed like polished steel. Long plow-furrows stretched across the foreground, but even these had been baked by pitiless sunshine to the same monotony of color, and it was well I had not sown the whole of them, for sparse, sickly blades rose in the wake of the harrows where tall wheat should have been. Behind these stood the square log dwelling and straggling outbuildings of logs and sod, all of a depressing ugliness, while two shapeless yellow mounds, blazing under the sunshine, represented the strawpile granaries. There was no touch of verdure in all the picture, for it had been a dry season, which boded ill for me.
Presently a horse and a rider, whose uniform was whitened by the fibrous dust, swung out of a shallow ravine – or coulée, as we called them – and Trooper Cotton cantered towards me. "Hotter than ever, and I suppose that accounts for your downcast appearance," he said. "I've never seen weather like it. Even the gophers are dead."
"It grows sickening; but you are wrong in one respect," I answered ruefully. "All the gophers in the country have collected around my grain and wells. As they fall in after every hearty meal of wheat, we have been drinking them. You are just in time for breakfast, and I'll be glad of your company. One overlooks a good deal when things are going well, but the sordid monotony of these surroundings palls on one now and then."
"You are not the only man who feels it," said the trooper, while a temporary shadow crossed his face. "You have been to Bonaventure too often, Ormesby. Of course, it's delightful to get into touch with things one has almost forgotten, but I don't know that it's wise for a poor man, which is, perhaps, why I allowed Haldane to take me in last night. You, however, hardly come into the same category."
"I shall soon, unless there's a change in the weather," I answered with a frown. "But come in, and tell me what Haldane – or his daughters – said to you."
"I didn't see much of Miss Haldane," said Cotton, as we rode on together. "Of course, she's the embodiment of all a woman of that kind should be; but I can't help feeling it's a hospitable duty when she talks to me. You see I've forgotten most of the little I used to know, and she is, with all respect, uncomfortably superior to an average individual."
I was not pleased with Trooper Cotton, but did not tell him so. "Presumably you find Miss Lucille understands you better?" I answered, with a trace of ill-humor.
The lad looked straight at me. "I'm not responsible for the weather, Ormesby," he said, a trifle stiffly. "Still, since you have put it so, it's my opinion that Miss Lucille Haldane would understand anybody. She has the gift of making you feel it also. To change the subject, however, I was over warning Bryan about his fireguard furrows, and yours hardly seem in accordance with the order."
I laughed, and said nothing further until a man in a big straw hat appeared in the doorway. "Who's that?" asked Cotton, drawing his bridle.
"Foster Lane," I answered. "He came over yesterday."
"Ah!" said the trooper, pulling out his watch. "On reflection, perhaps I had better not come in. I am due at the Cree reserve by ten, and, as my horse is a little lame, I don't want to press him. This time you will excuse me."
His excuse was certainly lame, as I could see little the matter with the horse; and, being short of temper that morning, I answered sharply: "I won't press you; but is it a coincidence that you remember this only when you recognize Lane?"
Trooper Cotton, who was frank by nature and a poor diplomatist, looked uneasy. "I don't want to offend you, Ormesby, but one must draw the line somewhere, and I will not sit down with that man," he said. "I know he's your guest, but you would not let me back out gracefully, and, if it's not impertinent, I'll add that I'm sorry he is."
"I congratulate you on being able to draw lines, but just now I myself cannot afford to be particular," I answered dryly; and when, with a feeble apology, Cotton rode away, it cost me an effort to greet the other man civilly.
As breakfast was ready, he took his place at the table, and glanced at me whimsically. Foster Lane was neither very prepossessing nor distinctly the reverse in appearance. He was stout, and somewhat flabby in face, with straw-colored hair and a thick-lipped mouth; but while his little eyes had a humorous twinkle, there was a suggestion of force as well as cunning about him. He was of middle age, and besides representing a so-styled "development company" was, by profession, land agent, farmers' financier, and mortgage jobber, and, as naturally follows, a usurer.
"Say, I'm not deaf yet, Ormesby," he commenced, with coarse good-humor. "Particular kind of trooper that one, isn't he? Is he another broken-up British baronet's youngest son, or – because they only raise his kind in the old country – what has the fellow done?"
"He's a friend of mine," I answered. "I never inquired of him. Still, I'm sorry you overheard him."
"That's all right," was the answer. "My hide is a pretty thick one; and one needs such a protection in my business. Give a dog a bad name and you may as well hang him, Rancher Ormesby, although I flatter myself I'm a necessity in a new country. How many struggling ranchers would go under in a dry season but for my assistance; and how many fertile acres now growing the finest wheat would lie waste but for me? Yet, when I ask enough to live on, in return, every loafer without energy or foresight abuses me. It's a very ungrateful world, Ormesby."
Lane chuckled as he wiped his greasy forehead, and paused before he continued: "I've been thinking all night about carrying over the loan you mentioned, and though money's scarce just now, this is my suggestion. I'll let you have three-fourths of its present appraised value on Crane Valley, and you can then clear Gaspard's Trail, and handle a working balance. I'd sooner do that than carry over – see?"
I set down my coffee cup because I did not see. I had expected he would have exacted increased interest on the loan due for repayment, and interest in Western Canada is always very high; but it seemed curious that he should wish to change one mortgage for another. It also struck me that if, in case I failed to make repayment, Crane Valley would be valuable to him, it should be worth at least as much to me.
"That would not suit me," I said.
"No?" and Lane spoke slowly, rather as one asking a question than with a hint of menace. "Feel more like letting me foreclose on you?"
"You could not do that, because