Then, while Sproatly grinned, she went out and drove away through the bitter frost.
CHAPTER III.
WYLLARD ASSENTS
Sally, who brought her mother with her, spent a couple of weeks at Hawtrey's homestead before Watson decided that his patient could be entrusted to Sproatly's care; but she came back afterwards twice a week or so with odd baskets of dainties to make sure that the latter, in whom she had no confidence, was discharging his duties satisfactorily. She had driven over again one afternoon, when Hawtrey, whose bones were knitting well, lay talking to another man in his little sleeping room.
There was no furniture in it whatever, beyond the wooden bunk he lay in, and a deerhide lounge chair he had made during the winter; but the stovepipe from the kitchen led across part of it, and then up again into the room beneath the roof above. It had been one of Sproatly's duties during the past two weeks to rise and renew the fire when the cold awakened his comrade soon after midnight. At present he was outside the house, whipsawing birch-logs and splitting them into billets, which was an occupation he cherished a profound dislike for.
Spring had, however, come suddenly, as it usually does on the prairie, a few days earlier, and the snow was melting fast under a brilliant sun. The bright rays that streamed in through the window struck athwart the glimmering dust motes in the little bare room, and fell, pleasantly warm, upon the man who lay in the deerhide chair. He was a year or two older than Hawtrey, though he had scarcely reached thirty, a man of tranquil manner, with a rather lean and deeply bronzed face, of average height, and somewhat spare of figure. He held a pipe in his hand, and was then looking at Hawtrey with quiet, contemplative eyes. They were, indeed, his most noticeable feature, though it was difficult to say whether their colour was grey or hazel-brown, for they were singularly clear, and there was something which suggested steadfastness in their unwavering gaze. He wore long boots, trousers of old blue duck, and a jacket of soft deerskin such as the Blackfeet dress; and there was nothing about him to suggest that he was a man of varied experience, and of some importance in that country.
Harry Wyllard was native-born, and had in his young days assisted his father in the working of a little Manitoban farm, when that great grain province was still, for the most part, a wilderness. Then a more prosperous relative on the Pacific slope had sent him to Toronto University, where after a session or two he had become involved in a difference of opinion with the authorities. Though the matter was never made quite clear, it was generally believed that Wyllard had quietly borne the blame of a comrade's action, for there was a vein of eccentric generosity in the lad. In any case, he left Toronto, and the relative, who was largely interested in the fur business, next sent him north to the Behring Sea, in one of his schooners. The business was then a remarkably hazardous one, for the skin buyers and pelagic sealers had trouble all round with the Alaskan representatives of American trading companies, whose preserves they poached upon, as well as with the commanders of the gunboats sent up there to protect the seals.
Men's lives were staked against the value of a fur, edicts were lightly contravened, and now and then a schooner barely escaped into the smothering fog with skins looted close aboard forbidden beaches. It was a perilous life, and a strenuous one, for they had every white man's hand against them, as well as fog and gale, and the reefs that lay in the tideways of almost uncharted waters; but Wyllard made the most of it. He kept the peace with jealous skippers who resented the presence of a man they might command as mate, but whose views they were forced to listen to when he spoke as supercargo; won the good-will of sea-bred Indians, and drove a good trade with them; and not infrequently brought his boat back first to the plunging schooner loaded with reeking skins.
Then he fell into trouble again when they were hanging off the Eastern Isles under double reefs, watching for the Russians' seals. A boat's crew from another schooner had been cast ashore, and, as they were in peril of falling into the Russians' hands, Wyllard led a reckless boat expedition to bring them off again. He succeeded, in so far that the wrecked men were taken off the roaring beach through a tumult of breaking surf, but as they pulled seaward the fog shut down on them, and one boat, manned by three men, never reached the schooners. They blew horns all night, standing off and on, and crept along the smoking beach next day, though the surf made landing impossible. Then a sudden gale drove them off the shore, and, as it was evident that their comrades must have perished, they reluctantly sailed for other fishing grounds. As one result of this, Wyllard broke with his prosperous relative when he came back to Vancouver.
After that he helped to strengthen railroad bridges among the mountains of British Columbia, worked in logging camps, and shovelled in the mines, and, as it happened, met Hawtrey, who, tempted by high wages, had spent a winter in the Mountain Province after a disastrous harvest. In the meanwhile, his father had sold out, and taken up virgin soil in Assiniboia. He died soon after Wyllard went back to him, and a few months later the relative in Vancouver also died. Somewhat to Wyllard's astonishment, he bequeathed him a considerable property, which the latter realised and sunk most of the proceeds in further acres of virgin prairie. Willow Range was already one of the largest farms between Winnipeg and the Rockies.
"The leg's getting along satisfactorily?" he said at length.
Hawtrey, who appeared unusually thoughtful, admitted that it was.
"Any way, it's singularly unfortunate that I'm broken up just now," he added. "There's the ploughing to commence in a week or two, and, besides that, I was thinking of getting married."
Wyllard was somewhat astonished at this announcement. For one thing, he was more or less acquainted with the state of his friend's finances. During the next moment or two he glanced meditatively through the open door into the adjoining room, where Sally Creighton was busy beside the stove. The sleeves of her light bodice were rolled up well above the elbow, and she had pretty, round arms, which were just then partly immersed in dough.
"I don't think there's a nicer or more capable girl in this part of Assiniboia," he said.
"Oh, yes," said Hawtrey. "Anybody would admit that. Still, since you seem so sure of it, why don't you marry her yourself?"
Wyllard looked at his comrade rather curiously. "Well," he said, "there are one or two reasons that don't affect Miss Sally and only concern myself. Besides, it's highly improbable that she'd have me."
He paused to light his pipe, which had gone out, before he looked up again. "Since it evidently isn't Sally, have I met the lady?"
"You haven't. She's in England."
"It's four years, isn't it, since you were over there?"
Hawtrey lay silent a minute, and then made a little confidential gesture. "I'd better tell you all about the thing," he said. "Our folks were people of some little standing in the county. In fact, as they were far from rich, they had just standing enough to embarrass them. In most respects they were ultra-conventional with old-fashioned ideas, and, though there was no open break, I'm afraid I didn't get on with them quite as well as I should have done, which is why I came out to Canada. They started me on the land decently, and twice when we'd harvest frost and horse-sickness, they sent the draft I asked them for along. That is one reason why I'm not going to worry them, though I'd very much like another now. You see, there are two girls, as well as Reggie, who's reading for the Bar."
"I don't think you have mentioned the lady yet."
"She's a connection of some friends of ours. Her mother, so far as I understand it, married beneath her – a man her folks didn't like. He died, and, when by and bye his wife died, Agatha, who was brought up by his relations, was often at the Grange. It's a little, old-fashioned, half-ruinous place, a mile or two from where we live in the North of England. It belongs to her mother's folks, but I think there was still a feud between them and her father's people, who brought her up to earn her living. We saw a good deal of each other, and fell in love as boy and girl. Well, when I went back, one winter, after I'd been here two years, Agatha was at the Grange again, and we decided then that I was to bring her out as soon as I had a home she could live in to offer her."
He broke off for a moment, and there was a trace of embarrassment in his manner when he went on again. "Perhaps I ought to have managed it sooner," he added. "Still, things never seem to go quite as