Partners of the Out-Trail Part 34

Mordaunt smiled rather curiously and drained his gla.s.s.

"We are late for dinner and my clothes are wet," he remarked.

They went out; and both were quiet as they drove to Whitelees.

CHAPTER VII

THE FENCING WIRE

Next morning Carrie, getting up early because she had not slept much, heard Jim's step in the pa.s.sage outside her room. He went rather unsteadily downstairs and a few minutes afterwards she found him sitting on the terrace wall. He was pale and his face was cut; but he had taken off the bandage.

"You oughtn't to be out," she said.

"Why not?" he asked.

"You were badly shaken. The doctor said we must keep you quiet."

"He probably didn't state how long, and I've been quiet all night. I certainly got a knock; imagine my head went through the gla.s.s, but I feel my proper self again, and don't see any reason for staying in bed."

Carrie gave it up. She knew Jim pretty well and asked where he was going.

"I want to look at the car," he said. "I don't know why she left the road. But how did you find me and bring me home?"

Carrie told him, and he looked thoughtful.

"I was in the ditch with the wheel on me? This accounts for my side's feeling sore. How did you lift the car?"

"The others got into the ditch. A wheel began to slip and I thought the weight would overpower them; but Lance Mordaunt made a tremendous effort and held up the axle until we pulled you out."

Jim knitted his brows and looked across the lawn while he mechanically felt for his pipe. The morning was clear with scattered clouds and the gra.s.s was silvered by dew. The hills were sharp and belts of light and shadow checkered the marsh. In the distance, the sea sparkled.

"If Jake or d.i.c.k had held her up, I could have understood," he said.

"It was Lance," Carrie insisted. "Why are you puzzled?"

"For one thing, I imagine he doesn't like me," Jim replied and indicated by a gesture the old house, and the sweep of smooth pasture and yellow stubble that rolled down the hill. "Perhaps it's not strange. I have taken all this from him!"

"But you took it as much from d.i.c.k."

"That is so," Jim agreed. "d.i.c.k's different. He's careless; I don't think he feels things. However, I must thank Lance." He paused and resumed: "The boys were in the ditch and I was under the car. Who pulled me out?"

"I did," said Carrie, blushing. "There was n.o.body else."

Jim took her hand. "My dear! When I needed help before, you were about. But that ditch is four feet deep and I'm heavy."

Carrie pulled her hand from his and smiled. "You are heavy, Jim, and it was something of a strain. However, I'll come with you, if you are going down the hill."

"To take care of me?" said Jim, with a twinkle. "If you don't mind, I'd sooner go alone."

He got up, and seeing that his step was firm, she let him go. It was not a caprice that he would not take her, but when she returned to the house she sent Jake after him.

As he went down the hill Jim thought about Mordaunt. The man was something of a puzzle, and Jim admitted that he had, perhaps, not been just when he accounted for his antagonism. Lance, no doubt, felt that he ought to have got Langrigg, but he was not altogether moved by disappointed greed. Their antagonism went deeper than that. Lance was a conventionalist; he clung instinctively to traditions that were getting out of date. In fact, Jim thought he would have been a very fine country gentleman had he inherited Langrigg sixty years since.

Lance was what horse-ranchers called a throw-back; in a sense, he belonged to an older generation.

There was another thing. Jim imagined Lance felt Evelyn's charm, and although they were cousins, he understood cousins sometimes married, with their relatives' approval, when the marriage would advance the interests of the family. It was possible that he might hurt Lance worse than by robbing him of Langrigg.

Yet Lance had held up the car for him and run some risk of being killed. After all, this did not clash with Jim's notion of his character. Lance might dislike the man he rescued, but he had the instincts of an English gentleman. Then Jim stopped and looked about, for he had reached the thorn hedge.

A belt of peat, checkered by white tufts of wild cotton, ran back from the road, and a wire fence joined the hedge at a right angle. Some of the posts had fallen and lengths of wire lay about. Jim looked at the wire thoughtfully, and then went on to the spot where broken gla.s.s and torn up soil marked the scene of the accident. Then he stopped again and lighted his pipe. In the Canadian woods he had now and then trusted to his rifle to supply his food, and tracking large game trains one's observation. One must guess an animal's movements by very small signs. A broken twig or a disturbed stone tells one much. Jim looked for some such clew that might help him, so to speak, to reconstruct the accident.

He remembered a sudden jolt and the front wheels skidding. They had obviously struck something, and when he got the car straight had skidded again the other way. The marks the tires had made indicated this, and he examined the neighboring ground. The silverweed that covered the peaty soil between the road and ditch was not much crushed.

He had, as he remembered, not gone far on that side before he, for a moment, recovered control of the car. The real trouble began when it swerved again and ran across the road. Something had caught the wheels and interfered with the steering.

Jim looked for a big stone, but could find none; besides, it was improbable that he had hit the stone twice, and sitting down by the overturned car he thoughtfully finished his pipe. The car must be got out of the ditch, but this was not important, and he dwelt upon the fencing wire; he had a hazy notion that the obstacle he had struck was flexible. By and by he heard a step, and Jake came up.

"I don't know if you ought to be about," the latter said. "It will be an awkward job to get the car into the road."

"I'm not bothering about the car," Jim replied. "I want to find out why she ran into the ditch."

"You don't know, then?"

Jim indicated the wheel-marks and told Jake about the skidding. "She went off at an angle and I couldn't pull her round," he concluded.

"Do you expect to find the steering-gear broken?"

"Not unless it broke after she skidded."

Jake gave him a keen glance. "I begin to see! Well, people sometimes find trouble coming to them when they won't leave things alone. But what kind of a clew do you expect to get?"

"A mark on a thorn trunk; we'll look for one," said Jim. "Suppose you take the other side!"

He walked a few yards along the ditch, examining the bottom of the trunks, and presently stopped and put his foot on the other bank. Then he beckoned Jake and indicated a few scratches on the bark of a thorn.

The rough stem was tufted with dry moss and for an inch or two this was crushed.

"I reckon something has been fastened to this tree," he said. "If we can find another mark on the opposite row, I'll be satisfied."

They went across and after a few moments Jake said, "Here it is!"

Jim studied the mark and nodded. "Very well! I think we'll get into the field and look at the old fence wire. I want a piece seven or eight yards long."

After pulling about the wire that lay in the gra.s.s, they found a piece.

One end was bent into a rough hook, and although the other was nearly straight Jim noted a spot where the galvanizing was cracked.

"It has been bent here twice," he said. "Pulled over into a hook and then pulled back. You can see how the zinc has flaked."