The Mistress of Bonaventure

"Strikes me that way, too; and Lane's too smart to be corraled," added Thorn.

"We'll get even somehow without Redmond, and to that end you two will have to run Gaspard's Trail," I said. "I'm going down to Montreal with Carolan's cattle."

A project had for some little time been shaping itself in my mind. I had a small reversionary interest in some English property, and though it would be long before a penny of it could accrue to me, it seemed just possible to raise a little money on it. Considering Western rates of interest, nobody in Winnipeg would trouble with such an investment, but I had a distant and prosperous kinsman in Montreal who might find some speculator willing. Montreal was, however, at least two thousand miles away, and traveling expensive; but the Carolan brothers had promptly accepted my offer to take charge of their cattle destined for Europe, which implied free passes both ways. It was not the mode of traveling one would have expected a prosperous rancher to adopt, but I needed every available dollar for the approaching struggle, and was well content when, after the untamed stock had nearly wrecked the railroad depot, we got them on board the cars.

The only time I ever saw Sergeant Mackay thoroughly disconcerted was that morning. We came up out of the empty prairie riding on the flanks of the herd. The beasts had suffered from the scarcity of water and were in an uncertain temper, while, as luck would have it, just as they surged close-packed between the bare frame houses, Mackay and a trooper came riding down the unpaved street of the little prairie town. There was no opening either to right or to left, and the more prudent storekeepers put up their shutters.

"Look as if they owned the universe, them police," said the man who cantered up beside me. "Sure, it would take the starch out of them if anything did start the cattle."

Mackay pulled up his horse and looked dubiously at the mass of tossing horns rolling towards him. "'Tis not in accordance with regulations to turn a big draft loose on a peaceful town. Why did ye not split them up?" he said. "Ye could be held responsible if there's damage done."

"I'm afraid these beasts don't understand regulations, and I had to bring them as best I could," I answered; and my assistant shouted, "Get out of the daylight, sergeant, dear, while your shoes are good."

Mackay seemed to resent this familiarity, and sat still, with one hand on his hip, an incarnation of official dignity, though he kept his eyes upon the fast advancing herd until the big freight locomotive which was awaiting us set up a discordant shrieking, and backed a row of clanging cars across the switches. That was sufficient for the untamed cattle. With a thunder of pounding hoofs they poured tumultuously down the rutted street, and I caught a brief glimpse of the sergeant hurriedly wheeling his horse before everything was blotted out by the stirred-up dust. The streets of a prairie town are inches deep in powdered loam all summer and in bottomless sloughs all spring.

A wild shout of "Faugh-a-ballagh!" rang out; and I found myself riding faster than was prudent along the crazy plank sidewalk to pass and, if possible, swing the stampeding herd into the railroad corral. How my horse gained the three-foot elevation and avoided falling over the dry-goods bales and flour bags which lay littered everywhere, I do not remember; but my chief assistant, Dennis, who, yelling his hardest, charged recklessly down the opposite one, afterwards declared that his beast climbed up the steps like a kitten. Then, as I drew a little ahead, Mackay became dimly visible, riding bareheaded, as though for his life, with the horns, that showed through the tossed-up grit, a few yards behind him. Fortunately the stockyard gates were open wide, and Dennis came up at a gallop in time to head the herd off from a charge across the prairie, while a second man and I turned their opposite wing. Mackay did his best to wheel his horse clear of the gates, but the beast was evidently bent on getting as far as possible from the oncoming mass, and resisted bit and spur. Then there was a great roar of laughter from loungers and stockyard hands as the dust swept up towards heaven and the drove thundered through the opening.

"Where's the sergeant?" I shouted; and Dennis, who chuckled so that his speech was thick, made answer: "Sure, he's in the corral. The beasts have run him in, but it's mighty tough beef they'd find him in the old country."

Dennis was right, for when the haze thinned the sergeant appeared, as white as a miller, flattened up against the rails, while a playful steer curveted in the vicinity, as though considering where to charge him. He was extricated by pulling down the rails, and accepted my apologies stiffly.

"This," he said, disregarding the offer of a lounger to wash him under the locomotive tank, "is not just what I would have expected of ye, Rancher Ormesby."

While the stock were being transferred to the cars amid an almost indescribable tumult, I met Miss Redmond on the little sod platform.

"I am glad I have met you, because I am going to Winnipeg, and may never see you again," she said. "There is much I do not understand, but I feel you have been wronged, and want to thank you for your consideration."

Redmond's daughter had received some training in an Eastern convent, it was said, and I found it hard to believe that the very pale, quietly-spoken girl was the one who had called down the curses upon Foster Lane. Still, I knew there was a strain of something akin to insanity in that family, and that, in addition, she was of the changeful nature which accompanies pure Celtic blood.

"You should not indulge in morbid fancies, and you have very little cause for gratitude. We were sincerely sorry for you, and tried to do what we could," I said.

Ailin Redmond fixed her black eyes intently upon me, and I grew uneasy, seeing what suggested a smoldering fire in them. "You are not clever enough to deceive a woman," she said, with a disconcerting composure. "I do not know all, but perhaps I shall some day, and then, whatever it costs me, you and another person shall see justice done. It may not be for a long time, but I can wait; and I am going away from the prairie. Still, I should like to ask you one question – how did your cattle get inside the fence?"

"The fire drove them; but instead of fretting over such things, you must try to forget the last two months as soon as possible," I answered as stoutly as I could, seeking meanwhile an excuse for flight, which was not lacking. "Those beasts will kill somebody if I neglect them any longer."

Ailin Redmond held out her hand to me, saying very quietly: "I shall never forget, and – it is no use protesting – a time will come when I shall understand it all clearly. Until then may the good saints protect you from all further evil, Rancher Ormesby."

As I hurried away a tented wagon lurched into the station, and when I last saw Redmond's daughter she stood near the lonely end of the platform talking earnestly with the traveling photographer.

Dennis had not recovered from his merriment when, much to the satisfaction of those we left behind, the long cars rolled out of the station, while many agents remembered our visit to the stations which succeeded. Blinding dust and fragments of ballast whirled about the cars as the huge locomotive hauled them rocking over the limitless levels. From sunrise to sunset the gaunt telegraph poles reeled up from the receding horizon, growing from the size of matches to towering spars as they came, and then slowly diminishing far down the straight-ruled line again. For hours we lay on side-tracks waiting until one of the great inter-ocean expresses, running their portion of the race round half the globe, thundered past, white with the dust of a fifteen-hundred-mile journey, and then, with cars and cattle complaining, we lurched on our way again.

At times we led the beasts out in detachments to water at wayside stations, and there was usually much profanity and destruction of property before we got them back again, and left the agent to assess the damage to his feelings, besides splintered gangways and broken rails. It was at Portage or Brandon, I think, that one showed me a warning received by wire. "Through freight full of wild beasts coming along. There'll be nothing left of your station if you let the lunatics in charge of them turn their menagerie out."

The beasts had, however, grown more subdued before the cars rolled slowly into Winnipeg, and gave us little trouble when, leaving the prairie behind, we sped, eastwards ever, past broad lake and foaming river, into the muskegs of Ontario; so that I had time for reflection when the great locomotive, panting on the grades, hauled us, poised giddily between crag face and deep blue water, along the Superior shore. The Haldanes were in Montreal, and I wondered, in case chance threw me in their way, how they would greet me, and what I should say. I was apparently a prosperous rancher when they last spoke with me, and a tender of other men's cattle now, while it might well happen that in their eyes a further cloud rested upon me.

The long and weary journey came to an end at last, and when the big engines ceased their panting beside the broad St. Lawrence I left Dennis and his companions to divert themselves in Montreal after the fashion of their kind, and, arraying myself in civilized fashion, proceeded to my relative's offices.

A clerk said that Mr. Leyland, who was absent, desired me to follow him to his autumn retreat, but I first set about the business which had brought me, unassisted. Nobody, however, would entertain the species of investment I had to propose, and it was with a heavy heart I boarded the cars again some days later.

Leyland and his wife appeared unaffectedly glad to see me at their pretty summer-house, which stood above the smooth white shingle fringing a wide lake, and at sunset that evening I lay smoking among the boulders of a point, while his son and heir sat close by interrogating me. Part of the lake still reflected the afterglow, and after the monotonous levels of the prairie it rested my eyes to see the climbing pines tower above it in shadowy majesty. Their drowsy scent was soothing, and through the dusk that crept towards me from their feet, blinking lights cast trembling reflections across the glassy water. Several prosperous citizens retired at times to spend their leisure in what they termed camping on the islets of that lake.

"Air you poor and wicked?" asked the urchin, inspecting me critically.

"Very poor, and about up to the average for iniquity," I said; and the diminutive questioner rubbed his curly locks as though puzzled.

"Well, you don't quite look neither," he commented. "Poor men don't wear new store clothes. The last one I saw had big holes in his pants, and hadn't eaten nothing for three weeks, he said. Pop, he spanked me good 'cos I gave him four dollars off'n the bureau to buy some dinner with. Say, how long was it since you had a square meal, anyway? You did mighty well at supper. I was watching you."

"It is about two months since I had a meal like that and then it was because a friend of mine gave it to me," I answered truthfully; and Leyland junior rubbed his head again.

"No – you don't look very low down, but you must be," he repeated. "Pop was talking 'bout you, and he said: 'You'll do your best to see the poor devil has a good time, 'Twoinette. From what I gather he needs it pretty bad.'"

I laughed, perhaps somewhat hollowly, for the child commented: "Won't you do that again? It's just like a loon. There's one lives over yonder, and he might answer. Ma, she says people should never make a noise when they laugh; but when I sent Ted on the roof to get my ball, and he fell into the rain-butt, she just laughed worse than you, and her teeth came out."

"Your mother would probably spank you for telling that to strangers. But who is Ted?" I said, remembering that a loon is a water-bird that sets up an unearthly shrieking in the stillness of the night; and the urchin rebuked me with the cheerful disrespect for his seniors which characterizes the Colonial born.

"Say, was you forgotten when brains were given out? He's just Ted Caryl, and I think he's bad. Pop says his firm's meaner than road agents. He comes round evenings and swops business lies with Pop, 'specially when Bee is here, but he can't be clever. Ma says he don't even know enough to be sure which girl he wants. They is two of them, and I like Lou best."

"Why?" I asked, because the urchin seemed to expect some comment; and he proceeded to convince me. "They is both pretty, but Lou is nicest. I found it out one day I'd been eating corduroy candy, and Bee she just dropped me when I got up on her knee. She didn't say anything, but she looked considerable. Then I went to Lou, and she picked me up and gave me nicer candies out of a gilt-edge box. Ma says she must have been an angel, because her dress was all sticky, and I think she is. There was one just like her with silver wings in the church at Sault Chaudiere. One night Ma and them was talking 'bout you, and Bee sits quite still as if she didn't care, but she was listening. Lou, she says: 'Poor – ' I don't think it was poor devil."

"Do you know where little boys who tell all they hear go to?" I asked; and Leyland junior pointed to a dusky sail that showed up behind the island before he answered wearily: "You make me tired. I've been asked that one before. Here's Ted and the others coming. I'm off to see what they have brought for me."

He vanished among the boulders, and, filling my pipe again, I kept still, feeling no great inclination to take part in the casual chatter of people with whose customs I had almost lost touch. I was struck by the resemblance of the names the child mentioned to those of Haldane's daughters, but both were tolerably common, and it did not please me that Mrs. Leyland should make a story of my struggles for the amusement of strangers. So some time had passed before I entered the veranda of the little wooden house, and, as it was only partially lighted by a shaded lamp, managed to find a place almost unobserved in a corner. Thus I had time to recover from my surprise at the sight of Beatrice and Lucille Haldane seated at a little table beneath the lamp. Two men I did not know leaned against the balustrade close at hand, and several more were partly distinguishable in the shadows. From where I sat some of the figures were projected blackly against a field of azure and silver, for the moon now hung above the lake. Beatrice Haldane was examining what appeared to be a bound collection of photographic reproductions.

"Yes. As Mrs. Leyland mentions, I have met the original of this picture, and it is a good one, though it owes something to the retoucher," she said; and I saw my hostess smile wickedly at her husband when somebody said: "Tell us about him. How interesting!"

Beatrice Haldane answered lightly: "There is not much to tell. The allegorical title explains itself, if it refers to the edict that it is by the sweat of his brow man shall earn his bread, which most of our acquaintances seem to have evaded. The West is a hard, bare country, and its inhabitants, though not wholly uncivilized, hard men. I should like to send some of our amateur athletes to march or work with them. This one is merely a characteristic specimen."

I wondered what the subject of the picture was, but waited an opportunity to approach the speaker, while, as I did so, a young man said: "I should rather like to take up your sister's challenge. Pulling the big catboat across here inside an hour without an air of wind was not exactly play; but can you tell us anything more about these tireless Westerners, Miss Lucille?"

The younger girl, who sat quietly, with her hands in her lap, looked up. "It is the fashion never to grow enthusiastic; but I am going to tell you, Ted. Those men were always in real earnest, and that is why they interested me; but I shouldn't take up the challenge if I were you. We call this camping. They lie down to sleep on many a journey in a snow trench under the arctic frost, ride as carelessly through blinding blizzard as summer heat, and, I concluded, generally work all day and half the night. They are not hard in any other sense, but very generous, though they sometimes speak, as they live, very plainly."

Some of the listeners appeared amused, others half-inclined to applaud the girl, and there was a little laughter when Miss Haldane interposed: "This is my sister's hobby. Some of them, you may remember, seem to live upon gophers, Lucille."

Lucille Haldane did not appear pleased at this interruption; but the flush of animation and luster in her eyes wonderfully became her. "I do not know that even gophers would be worse than the canned goose livers and other disgusting things we import for their weight in silver," she said. "All I saw in the West pleased me, and, because I am a Canadian first and last, I don't mind being smiled at for admitting that I am very glad I have seen the men who live there at their work. They are doing a great deal for our country."

"They could not have a stancher or prettier champion, my dear," said a gray-haired man who sat near me. "It would be hard to grow equally enthusiastic about your profession, Ted."

"It is Miss Haldane's genius which makes the most of everybody's good points," answered a young man with a frank face and stalwart appearance, turning towards me. "I am afraid the rest of us would see only a tired and dusty farmer who looked as though twelve hours' sleep would be good for him. What's your idea of the West? If I remember Mrs. Leyland correctly, you come from the land of promise, don't you?"

"We certainly work tolerably hard out there, but it is no great credit to us when we have to choose between that and starvation; and the West is the land of disappointment as well as promise," I answered dryly.

The rest glanced around in our direction, and Mrs. Leyland laughed mischievously. "If any of you are really interested, my friend here, who came in so quietly, would, I dare say, answer your questions. Let me present you, Rancher Ormesby."

I bowed as, endeavoring to remember the names that followed, I moved towards the chair beside her when she beckoned. It lay full in the light, and I noticed blank surprise in the faces turned towards me. Beatrice Haldane dropped the album, and for some reason the clear rose color surged upwards from her sister's neck. I stooped to recover the book, which lay open, and then stared at it with astonishment and indignation, for the face of the man standing beside a weary team, waist-deep in the tall grass of a slough, was unmistakably my own. I had forgotten the click of the camera shutter that hot morning.

"It was hardly fair of my hostess not to warn me, and this print was published without my knowledge or consent," I said. "Still, it shows how we earn a living in my country, and I can really tell you little more. We resemble most other people in that we chiefly exert ourselves under pressure of necessity – and one would prefer to forget that fact during a brief holiday."

The listeners either smiled or nodded good-humoredly and it was Lucille Haldane who held out her hand to me, while her elder sister returned my salutation with a civility which was distinct from cordiality. How Mrs. Leyland changed the situation I do not remember, nor how, when some of the party were inspecting fire-flies in the grasses by the lake, I found myself beside Beatrice Haldane at the end of the veranda. I had schooled myself in preparation for a possible meeting, but she looked so beautiful with the moonlight on her that I spoke rashly.

"We parted good friends – but no one could have hoped you felt the slightest pleasure at the present meeting."

"Frankness is sometimes irksome to both speaker and listener," said the girl, turning her dark eyes upon me steadily. "Can you not be satisfied with the possibility of your being mistaken?"

"No," I answered doggedly, and she smiled. "Then suppose one admitted you had surmised correctly?"

"I should ask the cause," and Beatrice Haldane, saying nothing, looked a warning, which, being filled with an insane bitterness, I would not take. "It would hurt me to conclude that those you honored with your friendship on the prairie would be less welcome here."

She raised her head a little with the Haldane's pride, which, though never paraded, was unmistakable. "You should have learned to know us better. Neither your prosperity nor the reverse would have made any difference."

"Then is there no explanation?" I asked, forgetting everything under the strain of the moment; and it was evident that Beatrice Haldane shared her sister's courage, for, though there was a darker spot in the center of her cheek she answered steadily: "There is. We are disappointed in you, Rancher Ormesby."

Then, without another word, she turned away, and presently the rattle of oars and a gleam of moonlit canvas told that the catboat was returning across the lake.

"I hope you have enjoyed the meeting with your friends," said Mrs. Leyland, presently. "Very much, I assure you," I answered, with an effort which I hope will be forgiven me.

CHAPTER X

A TEMPTATION

Leyland had a weakness for what he termed hardening himself by occasional feats of endurance, from which it resulted that I spent several days in his company wandering, with a wholly unnecessary load of camp gear upon my back, through a desolation of uncomfortably wooded hills. Now it is not easy for a business man of domesticated habits to emulate a pack mule and enjoy the proceeding, and when Mrs. Leyland, after burdening her husband with everything she could think of, desired to add a small tin bath, there was little difficulty in predicting that our journey would not be extensive. Having a load of fifty pounds already, I ignored the suggestion that I might carry the bath, and hurried Leyland off before his spouse could further hamper us. One thick blanket, a kettle, and a few pounds of provisions would have amply sufficed, so a large-sized tent seemed to be distinctly superfluous, to say nothing of the bag filled with hair-brushes, towels, and scented soap.

Leyland commenced the march with enthusiasm, and certainly presented a picturesque appearance as he plodded along in leather jacket and fringed leggings, with the folded tent upon his shoulders and a collection of tin utensils jingling about him. I was somewhat similarly caparisoned, and, because it would have hurt his feelings, I overcame the temptation to fling half my load into a creek we crossed, though this would have greatly pleased me. A fourth of the weight would have sufficed for a two-hundred-mile journey in the West.

"There is nothing like judicious exercise for bracing one's whole system," panted my companion, when we had covered the first league in two hours or so. "How a wide prospect like this rests the vision. Say, can't we sit down and enjoy it a little?"

I nodded agreement, and we spent most of that day in sitting down and smoking, while, as it happened, a sudden breeze blew the tent over upon us at midnight, and anybody who has crawled clear of the thrashing canvas in such circumstances can guess what followed. Leyland, as generally happens, wriggled headforemost into what might be termed the pocket of the net, and it cost me some trouble to extricate him. Next morning he awoke with a toothache and general shortness of temper, as a result of trying to sleep in the rain, and appeared much less certain about the benefits to be derived from such excursions.

"If you will let me pick out the few things we really want and throw the rest away, I'll engage that you will enjoy the remainder of the march," I said.

"I wish I could, but it can't be done," and Leyland, staring ruefully at his load, shook his head. "'Twoinette's so – so blamed systematic, and if one of those brushes was missing she'd have to start in from the beginning with a whole new toilet outfit. Of course, you don't understand these things yet, but you will some day. A wife with cultured tastes requires to be considered accordingly."

I was resting on one elbow gazing up between the pine branches at the blue of the sky, with the clean-scented needles crackling under me, and made no answer. Nevertheless, it struck me that I might find too much culture irksome, especially if it implied that I must carry half my household sundries upon my back whenever I started on an expedition. Hitherto I had not considered this side of the question when indulging in certain roseate visions, but as Leyland spoke there opened up unpleasant possibilities of having to stand by, a mere director, clear of the heat and dust of effort, and pay others to do the work I found pleasure in. Then as I reflected that there was small need to trouble about such eventualities, a face, that was not Beatrice Haldane's, rose up before my fancy. It was forceful as well as pretty, quick to express sympathy and enthusiasm; and I decided that the man who won Lucille Haldane would have a helpmate who would encourage instead of restrain his energies, and, if need be, take her place beside him in the struggle. Then I dismissed the subject as having nothing to do with me.