The Price of the Prairie Part 21

"No, sir; I promised not to speak of it."

"Phil, did Le Claire suggest any property?"

"No, sir. Is there any?"

My father smiled. "You have a lawyer's nose," he said, "but fortunately you can keep a still tongue. I'm taking care of O'mie's case right now.

By the way," he went on after a short pause. "I sent you out on an errand Sat.u.r.day. That's another difficult case, a land claim I'm trying to prove for a party. There are two claimants. Tell Mapleson is the counsel for the other one. It's a really dangerous case in some ways.

You were to go and spy out the land. What did you see? Anything except a pretty girl?" My face was burning. "Oh, I understand. You found a place out there to stand, and now you think you can move the world."

"I found something I want to speak of besides. Oh, well--I'm not ashamed of caring for Marjie."

"No, no, my boy. You are right. You found the best thing in the world. I found it myself once, by a moonlit sea, not on the summer prairie; but it is the same eternal blessing. Now go on."

"Well, father, you said the place was uninhabited. But it isn't.

Somebody is about there now."

"Did you see any one, or is it just a wayside camp for movers going out on the trail?"

"I am not sure that I saw any one, and yet--"

"Tell me all you know, and all you suspect, and why you have conclusions," he said gravely.

"I caught just a glimpse, a mere flirt of a red blanket with a white centre, the kind Jean Pahusca used to wear. It was between the corner of the house and the hazel-brush thicket, as if some one were making for the timber."

"Did you follow it?"

"N--no, I could hardly say I saw anything; but thinking about it afterwards, I am sure somebody was getting out of sight."

"I see." My father looked straight at me. I knew his mind, and I blushed and pulled at the ta.s.sel of the window cord. "Be careful. The county has to pay for curtain fixtures. What else?"

"Well, inside the cabin there were fresh ashes and a half-burned stick on the hearth. By a chair under the table I picked this up." I handed him the bow of purple ribbon with the flashing pin.

"It must be movers, and as to that red flash of color, are you real sure it was not just a part of the rose-hued world out there?" He smiled as he spoke.

"Father, that bow was on Lettie Conlow's head not an hour before it was lost out there. She found out where we were going, and she put out northwest on Tell Mapleson's pony. She may have taken the river path. It is the shortest way. Why should she go out there?"

"Do some thinking for yourself. You are a man now, twenty-one, and one day over. You can unravel this part." He sat with impenetrable face, waiting for me to speak.

"I do not know. Lettie Conlow has always been silly about--about the boys. All the young folks say she likes me, has always liked me."

"How much cause have you given her? Be sure your memory is clear." My father spoke sternly.

"Father," I stood before him now, "I am a man, as you say, and I have come up through a boyhood no better nor worse than the other boys whom you know here. We were a pretty decent gang even before you went away to the War. After that we had to be men. But all these years, Father, there has been only one girl for me. I never gave Lettie Conlow a ghost of a reason for thinking I cared for her. But she is old Conlow's own child, and she has a bitter, jealous nature."

"Well, what took her to the--to the old cabin out there?"

"I do not know. She may have been hidden out there to spy what we--I was doing."

"Did she have on a red blanket too, Sat.u.r.day afternoon?"

"Well, now I wonder--." My mind was in a whirl. Could she be in league against me? What did it mean? I sat down to think.

"Father, there's something I've never yet understood about this town," I burst out impetuously. "If it is to have anything to do with my future I ought to know it. Father Le Claire would tell me only half his story.

You know more of O'mie than you will tell me. And here is a jealous girl whose father consented to give Marjie to a brutal Indian out of hatred for her father; and it is his daughter who trails me over the prairie because I am with Marjie. Why not tell me now what you know?"

My father sat looking thoughtfully at me. At last he spoke.

"I know nothing of girls' love affairs and jealousies," he said; "pa.s.s that now. I am O'mie's attorney and am trying to adjust his claims for him as I can discover them. I cannot get hold of the case myself as I should like. If Le Claire were here I might find out something."

"Or nothing," I broke in. "It would depend on circ.u.mstances."

"You are right. He has never told me all he knows, but I know much without his telling."

"Do you know how Jean Pahusca came to carry a knife for years with the name, 'Jean Le Claire,' cut in the blade? Do you know why the half-breed and the priest came to look so much alike, same square-cut forehead, same build, same gait, same proud way of throwing back the head? You've only to look at them to see all this, except that with a little imagination the priest's face would fit a saint and Jean's is a very devil's countenance."

"I do not know the exact answer to any of these questions. They are points for us to work out together now you are a man. Jean is in some way bound to Le Claire. If by blood ties, why does the priest not own, or entirely disown him? If not, why does the priest protect him?

"In some way, too, both are concerned with O'mie. Le Claire is eager to protect the Irishman. I do not know where Jean is, but I believe sometimes he is here in concealment. He and Tell Mapleson are counselling together. I think he furnishes Tell with some booty, for Tell is inordinately prosperous. I look at this from a lawyer's place.

You have grown up with the crowd here, and you see as a young man from the social side, where personal motives count for much. Together we must get this thing unravelled; and it may be in doing it some love matters and some church matters may get mixed and need straightening. You must keep me informed of every thing you know." He paused a moment, then added: "I am glad you have let me know how it is with you, Phil. In your life I can live my own again. Children do so bless us. Be happy in your love, my boy. But be manly, too. There are some hard climbs before you yet. Learn to bear and wait. Yours is an open sunlit way to-day. If the shadows creep across it, be strong. They will lift again. Run home now and tell Aunt Candace I'll be home at one o'clock. Tell her what you have told me, too. She will be glad to know it."

"She does know it; she has known it ever since the night we came into Springvale in 1854."

My father turned to the door. Then he put his arms about me and kissed my forehead. "You have your mother's face, Phil." How full of tenderness his tones were!

In the office I saw Judson moving restlessly before the windows. He had been waiting there for some time, and he frowned on me as I pa.s.sed him.

He was a man of small calibre. His one gift was that of money-getting.

By the careful management of the Whately store in the owner's absence he began to add to his own bank account. With the death of Mr. Whately he had a.s.sumed control, refusing to allow any investigation of affairs until, to put it briefly, he was now in entire possession. Poor Mrs.

Whately hardly knew what was her own, while her husband's former clerk waxed pompous and well-to-do. Being a vain man, he thought the best should come to him in social affairs, and being a man of medium intellect, he lacked self-control and tact.

This was the nature of the creature who strode into Judge Baronet's private office, slamming the door behind him and presenting himself unannounced. The windows front the street leading down to where the trail crossed the river, and give a view of the glistening Neosho winding down the valley. My father was standing by one of these windows when Judson fired himself into the room. John Baronet's mind was not on Springvale, nor on the river. His thoughts were of his son and of her who had borne him, the sweet-browed woman whose image was in the sacredest shrine of his heart.

Judson's advent was ill-timed, and his excessive lack of tact made the matter worse.

"Mr. Baronet," he began pompously enough, "I must see you on a very grave matter, very grave indeed."

Judge Baronet gave him a chair and sat down across the table from him to listen. Judson had grated harshly on his mood, but he was a man of poise.

"I'll be brief and blunt. That's what you lawyers want, ain't it?" The little man giggled. "But I must advise this step at once as a necessary, a very necessary one."

My father waited. Judson hadn't the penetration to feel embarra.s.sed.

"You see it's like this. If you'll just keep still a minute I can show you, though I ain't no lawyer; I'm a man of affairs, a commercialist, as you would say. A producer maybe is a better term. In short, I'm a money-maker."

My father smiled. "I see," he remarked. "I'll keep still. Go on."

"Well, now, I'm a widower that has provided handsome for my first wife's remains. I've earned and paid for the right to forget her."