Harding of Allenwood Part 46

"Beatrice understands that I'm busy."

"That's fortunate. It's not nice to feel neglected. Can't you take your mind off your farming for a little while, Craig?"

"It's my job. What's more, sticking to it seems the best way of making things easier for Beatrice. I'm an outsider at Allenwood and have got to justify my unorthodox notions by success. I haven't much polish and I'm not a good talker, but I can grow wheat--and luckily that comes into the scheme."

"It may, perhaps. When are you to be married, Craig?"

"I don't know. Beatrice puts it off. I had hoped it might be after harvest, but nothing's settled yet."

"Then you ought to be firm and insist upon fixing the wedding soon."

"I wish I could. But why?"

"Because it might be better not to leave Beatrice among her friends too long."

Harding looked surprised.

"Since the Colonel's given in, and Gerald's gone, I don't think there is anybody who would try to turn her against me."

"No," agreed Hester. "Her parents would be angry if she broke her engagement. Now that they have accepted you, you can count on their support, even if they're not quite satisfied with the match. The trouble is that you and they belong to very different schools. They'll try to make the best of you, but Beatrice will see how hard they find it."

"Hurrying on the wedding won't help much."

"It might. Beatrice will try to accept her husband's views, and she'll probably find it easier than she thinks; but at present all she sees and hears will remind her of the changes she will have to make. Things you do will not seem right; some of your ideas will jar. Then the other women will let her see that they feel sorry for her and think she's throwing herself away. She'll deny it, but it will hurt."

"Perhaps that's true," said Harding. "But talking of the wedding raises another question. I want a better house, and when I build I may as well locate at Allenwood."

"Then you are still determined on getting control there?"

"I don't want control, but I may have to take it," Harding answered.

"The settlement will fall to bits if it's left alone, and I suspect that I'm the only man who can hold it up. I'm glad you have talked to me.

What you've said makes it clear that I've not time to lose. Now, however, this hay must be cut."

He led his team into the gra.s.s when Hester went away, but although he worked hard until dark fell, his mind was busy with many things beside the clattering machine.

A few days later he had occasion to visit Winnipeg, and after some talk with his agent there, he asked him:

"Do you know how Davies is fixed just now, Jackson?"

"I don't know much about him personally, but men in his line of business are feeling the set-back. They've bought options on land there's no demand for, and can't collect accounts; farmers with money seem to have stopped coming in; and the small homesteaders are going broke. Doesn't seem to be any money in the country, and credit's played out."

"Then it ought to be a good time to pick up land cheap, and I want you to find a broker who'll ask Davies what he'll take for two or three mortgages he holds on Allenwood. My name's not to be mentioned; you must get a man who can handle the matter cautiously."

"I know one; but, if you don't mind my asking, could you put a deal of that kind through?"

"I must," said Harding. "It will be a strain, but the crop's coming on well and I ought to have a surplus after harvest."

"Isn't the dry weather hurting you?"

"Not yet. We can stand for another week or two if the wind's not too bad. Anyhow, you can find out whether Davies is inclined to trade."

When Harding went out into the street, he was met by a cloud of swirling dust. He wiped the grit from his eyes and brushed it off his clothes with an annoyance that was not accounted for by the slight discomfort it caused him. The sun was fiercely hot, the glare trying, and the plank sidewalks and the fronts of the wooden stores had begun to crack. Sand and cement from half-finished buildings were blowing down the street; and when Harding stopped to watch a sprinkler at work on a lawn at the corner of an avenue where frame houses stood among small trees, the glistening shower vanished as it fell. There were fissures in the hard soil and the gra.s.s looked burnt. But it was the curious, hard brightness of the sky and the way the few white clouds swept across it that gave Harding food for thought.

The soil of the Western prairie freezes deep, and, thawing slowly, retains moisture for the wheat plant for some time; but the June rain had been unusually light. Moreover, the plains rise in three or four tablelands as they run toward the Rockies, and the strength of the northwest wind increases with their elevation. It was blowing fresh in the low Red River basin, but it would be blowing harder farther west, where there are broken, sandy belts. After a period of dry weather, the sand drives across the levels with disastrous consequences to any crops in the neighborhood. This, however, was a danger that could not be guarded against.

The next day Jackson reported about the mortgages.

"Davies was keen on business and offered my man improved preemptions in a dozen different townships," he said. "Pressed him to go out and take a look at them; but when he heard the buyer wanted an Allenwood location he wouldn't trade."

"What do you gather from that?"

"The thing seems pretty plain, and what I've found out since yesterday agrees with my conclusions. Davies is pressed for money, but he means to hold on to Allenwood as long as he can. A good harvest would help him because he'd then be able to get in some money from his customers."

"A good harvest would help us all; but there's not much hope of it unless the weather changes. In the meanwhile, we'll let the matter drop, because I don't want to give the fellow a hint about my plans."

Nearing home on the following evening, Harding pulled up his horse on the edge of the wheat as he saw Devine coming to meet him.

"What's the weather been like?" he asked, getting down from the rig.

"Bad," said Devine gloomily. "Hot and blowing hard."

Harding looked about as they crossed a stretch of gra.s.s that had turned white and dry. The sunset was red and angry, but above the horizon the sky was a hard, dark blue that threatened wind. Everything was very still now, but the men knew the breeze would rise again soon after daybreak. They said nothing for a time after they stopped beside the wheat.

The soil was thinly covered with sand, and the tall blades had a yellow, shriveled look, while the stems were bent and limp. Harding gathered a few and examined them. They were scored with fine lines as if they had been cut by a sharp file.

"Not serious yet, but the grain won't stand for much more of this."

"That's so," Devine agreed. "The sand hasn't got far in, but I guess it will work right through unless we have a change. If not, there'll be trouble for both of us this fall."

"Sure," said Harding curtly. "Bring the horse, Fred, and we'll drive on to the rise."

They presently alighted where the plain merged into a belt of broken country, dotted with clumps of scrub birch and poplar. It rolled in ridges and hollows, but the harsh gra.s.s which thinly covered its surface had shriveled and left bare banks of sand, which lay about the slopes in fantastic shapes as they had drifted. Harding stooped and took up a handful. It was hot and felt gritty. The broken ground ran on as far as he could see, and the short, stunted trees looked as if they had been scorched. Glowing red in the dying sunset, the desolate landscape had a strangely sinister effect.

"The stuff's as hard and sharp as steel," he said, throwing down the sand. "There's enough of it to wipe out all the crops between Allenwood and the frontier if the drought lasts."

"What we want is a good big thunderstorm. This blamed sand-belt's a trouble we never reckoned on."

"No," said Harding. "I took a look at it when I was picking my location, but there was plenty of gra.s.s, and the brush was strong and green. Guess they'd had more rain the last two or three years. I figured out things pretty carefully--and now the only set-back I didn't allow for is going to pull me up! Well, we must hope for a change of weather; there's nothing else to be done."

He turned away with a gloomy face, and they walked back to the rig.

Harding had early seen that Beatrice would not be an easy prize. It was not enough, entrancing as it was, to dream over her beauty, her fastidious daintiness in manners and thought, her patrician calm, and the shy tenderness she now and then showed for him. The pa.s.sionate thrill her voice and glance brought him--spurred him rather--to action.

First of all, he must work and fight for her, and he had found a keen pleasure in the struggle. One by one he had pulled down the barriers between them; but now, when victory seemed secure, an obstacle he could not overcome had suddenly risen. All his strength of mind and body counted for nothing against the weather. Beatrice could not marry a ruined man; it was unthinkable that he should drag her down to the grinding care and drudgery that formed the lot of a broken farmer's wife. He was helpless, and could only wait and hope for rain.

When he had finished his work the next evening he drove over to the Grange, feeling depressed and tired, for he had begun at four o'clock that morning. It was very hot: a fiery wind still blew across the plain, although the sun had set, and Beatrice was sitting on the veranda with her mother and Mowbray. They had a languid air, and the prairie, which had turned a lifeless gray, looked strangely dreary as it ran back into the gathering dark.

"Not much hope of a change!" Mowbray remarked.

Beatrice gave Harding a sympathetic glance, and unconsciously he set his lips tight. She looked cool and somehow ethereal in her thin white dress and her eyes were gentle. It was horrible to think that he might have to give her up; but he knew it might come to this.