Chapter 3

She was not without the wiles and tact of her sex. "You go now, and come back, Abe," she said, in a soft voice. "Come back in an hour. Come back then, and I'll tell you which way I'm going from here."

He was all right again. "It's with you, Nance," he said, eagerly. "I bin waiting four years."

As he closed the door behind him the "college pup" entered the room again. "Oh, Abe's gone!" he said, excitedly. "I hoped you'd get rid of the old rip-roarer. I wanted to be alone with you for a while. I don't really need to start yet. With the full moon I can do it before daylight." Then, with quick warmth, "Ah, Nancy, Nancy, you're a flower--the flower of all the prairies," he added, catching her hand and laughing into her eyes.

She flushed, and for a moment seemed almost bewildered. His boldness, joined to an air of insinuation and understanding, had influenced her greatly from the first moment they had met, two months ago, as he was going South on his smuggling enterprise. The easy way in which he had talked to her, the extraordinary sense he seemed to have of what was going on in her mind, the confidential meaning in voice and tone and words had, somehow, opened up a side of her nature hitherto unexplored. She had talked with him freely then, for it was only when he left her that he said what he instinctively knew she would remember till they met again. His quick comments, his indirect but acute questions, his exciting and alluring reminiscences of the East, his subtle yet seemingly frank compliments, had only stimulated a new capacity in her, evoked comparisons of this delicate-looking, fine-faced gentleman with the men of the West by whom she was surrounded. But later he appeared to stumble into expressions of admiration for her, as though he was carried off his feet and had been stunned by her charm. He had done it all like a master. He had not said that she was beautiful--she knew she was not--but that she was wonderful and fascinating, and with "something about her" he had never seen in all his life: like her own prairies, thrilling, inspiring, and adorable. His first look at her had seemed full of amazement. She had noticed that, and thought it meant only that he was surprised to find a white girl out here among smugglers, hunters, squaw-men, and Indians. But he said that the first look at her had made him feel things, feel life and women different from ever before; and he had never seen any one like her, nor a face with so much in it. It was all very brilliantly done.

"You make me want to live," he had said, and she, with no knowledge of the nuances of language, had taken it literally, and had asked him if it had been his wish to die; and he had responded to her mistaken interpretation of his meaning, saying that he had had such sorrow he had not wanted to live. As he said it his face looked, in truth, overcome by some deep, inward care; so that there came a sort of feeling she had never had so far for any man--that he ought to have some one to look after him. This was the first real stirring of the maternal and protective spirit in her toward men, though it had shown itself amply enough regarding animals and birds. He had said he had not wanted to live, and yet he had come out West in order to try and live, to cure the trouble that had started in his lungs. The Eastern doctors had told him that the rough, out-door life would cure him, or nothing would, and he had vanished from the college walls and the pleasant purlieus of learning and fashion into the wilds. He had not lied directly to her when he said that he had had deep trouble; but he had given the impression that he was suffering from wrongs which had broken his spirit and ruined his health. Wrongs there certainly had been in his life, by whomever committed.

Two months ago he had left this girl with her mind full of memories of what he had said to her, and there was something in the sound of the slight cough following his farewell words which had haunted her ever since. Her tremendous health and energy, the fire of life burning so brightly in her, reached out toward this man living on so narrow a margin of force, with no reserve for any extra strain, with just enough for each day's use and no more. Four hours before he had come again with his team of four mules and an Indian youth, having covered forty miles since his last stage. She was at the door, and saw him coming while he was yet a long distance off. Some instinct had told her to watch that afternoon, for she knew of his intended return and of his dangerous enterprise. The Indians had trailed south and east, the traders had disappeared with them, her brother Bantry had gone up and over to Dingan's Drive, and, save for a few loiterers and last hangers-on, she was alone with what must soon be a deserted post; its walls, its great enclosed yard, and its gun-platforms (for it had been fortified) left for law and order to enter upon, in the persons of the red-coated watchmen of the law.

Out of the South, from over the border, bringing the last great smuggled load of whiskey which was to be handed over at Dingan's Drive, and then floated on Red Man's River to settlements up North, came the "college pup," Kelly Lambton, worn out, dazed with fatigue, but smiling too, for a woman's face was ever a tonic to his blood since he was big enough to move in life for himself. It needed courage--or recklessness--to run the border now; for, as Abe Hawley had said, the American marshals were on the pounce, the red-coated mounted police were coming west from Ottawa, and word had winged its way along the prairie that these redcoats were only a few score miles away, and might be at Fort Stay-Awhile at any moment. The trail to Dingan's Drive lay past it. Through Barfleur Coulee, athwart a great, open stretch of country, along a wooded belt, and then, suddenly, over a ridge, Dingan's Drive and Red Man's River would be reached.

The Government had a mind to make an example, if necessary, by killing some smugglers in conflict, and the United States marshals had been goaded by vanity and anger at one or two escapes "to have something for their money," as they said. That, in their language, meant, "to let the red run," and Kelly Lambton had none too much blood to lose.

He looked very pale and beaten as he held Nance Machell's hands now, and called her a prairie-flower, as he had done when he left her two months before. On his arrival, but now he had said little, for he saw that she was glad to see him, and he was dead for sleep, after thirty-six hours of ceaseless travel and watching and danger. Now, with the most perilous part of his journey still before him, and worn physically as he was, his blood was running faster as he looked into the girl's face, and something in her abundant force and bounding life drew him to her. Such vitality in a man like Abe Hawley would have angered him almost, as it did a little time ago, when Abe was there; but possessed by the girl, it roused in him a hunger to draw from the well of her perfect health, from the unused vigor of her being, something for himself. The touch of her hands warmed him. In the fulness of her life, in the strong eloquence of face and form, he forgot she was not beautiful. The lightness passed from his words, and his face became eager.

"Flower, yes, the flower of the life of the West--that's what I mean," he said. "You are like an army marching. When I look at you, my blood runs faster. I want to march too. When I hold your hand I feel that life's worth living--I want to do things."

She drew her hand away rather awkwardly. She had not now that command of herself which had ever been easy with the men of the West, except, perhaps, with Abe Hawley when--

But with an attempt, only half-meant, to turn the topic, she said: "You must be starting if you want to get through to-night. If the redcoats catch you this side of Barfleur Coulee, or in the Coulee itself, you'll stand no chance. I heard they was only thirty miles north this afternoon. Maybe they'll come straight on here to-night, instead of camping. If they have news of your coming, they might. You can't tell."

"You're right." He caught her hand again. "I've got to be going now. But Nance--Nance--Nancy, I want to stay here, here with you; or to take you with me."

She drew back. "What do you mean?" she asked. "Take me with you--me--where?"

"East--away down East."

Her brain throbbed, her pulses beat so hard. She scarcely knew what to say, did not know what she said. "Why do you do this kind of thing? Why do you smuggle?" she asked. "You wasn't brought up to this."

"To get this load of stuff through is life and death to me," he answered. "I've made six thousand dollars out here. That's enough to start me again in the East, where I lost everything. But I've got to have six hundred dollars clear for the travel--railways and things; and I'm having this last run to get it. Then I've finished with the West, I guess. My health's better; the lung is closed up, I've only got a little cough now and again, and I'm off East. I don't want to go alone." He suddenly caught her in his arms. "I want you--you, to go with me, Nancy--Nance!"

Her brain swam. To leave the West behind, to go East to a new life full of pleasant things, as this man's wife! Her great heart rose, and suddenly the mother in her as well as the woman in her was captured by his wooing. She had never known what it was to be wooed like this.

She was about to answer when there came a sharp knock at the door leading from the back yard, and Lambton's Indian lad entered. "The soldier--he come--many. I go over the ridge, I see. They come quick here," he said.

Nance gave a startled cry, and Lambton turned to the other room for his pistols, overcoat, and cap, when there was the sound of horses' hoofs, the door suddenly opened, and an officer stepped inside.

"You're wanted for smuggling, Lambton," he said, brusquely. "Don't stir!" In his hand was a revolver.

"Oh, bosh! Prove it," answered the young man, pale and startled, but cool in speech and action.

"We'll prove it all right. The stuff is hereabouts."

The girl said something to the officer in the Chinook language. She saw he did not understand. Then she spoke quickly to Lambton in the same tongue.

"Keep him here a bit," she said. "His men haven't come yet. Your outfit is well hid. I'll see if I can get away with it before they find it. They'll follow, and bring you with them, that's sure. So if I have luck and get through, we'll meet at Dingan's Drive."

Lambton's face brightened. He quickly gave her a few directions in Chinook, and told her what to do at Dingan's if she got there first. Then she was gone.

The officer did not understand what Nance had said, but he realized that, whatever she intended to do, she had an advantage over him. With an unnecessary courage he had ridden on alone to make his capture, and, as it proved, without prudence. He had got his man, but he had not got the smuggled whiskey and alcohol he had come to seize. There was no time to be lost. The girl had gone before he realized it. What had she said to the prisoner? He was foolish enough to ask Lambton, and Lambton replied coolly: "She said she'd get you some supper, but she guessed it would have to be cold--What's your name? Are you a colonel, or a captain, or only a principal private?"

"I am Captain MacFee, Lambton. And you'll now bring me where your outfit is. March!"

The pistol was still in his hand, and he had a determined look in his eye. Lambton saw it. He was aware of how much power lay in the threatening face before him, and how eager that power was to make itself felt, and provide "Examples"; but he took his chances.

"I'll march all right," he answered; "but I'll march to where you tell me. You can't have it both ways. You can take me, because you've found me, and you can take my outfit, too, when you've found it; but I'm not doing your work, not if I know it."

There was a blaze of anger in the eyes of the officer, and it looked for an instant as though something of the lawlessness of the border was going to mark the first step of the Law in the Wilderness, but he bethought himself in time, and said, quietly, yet in a voice which Lambton knew he must heed:

"Put on your things--quick."

When this was accomplished, and MacFee had secured the smuggler's pistols, he said again, "March, Lambton!"

Lambton marched through the moonlit night toward the troop of men who had come to set up the flag of order in the plains and hills, and as he went his keen ear heard his own mules galloping away down toward the Barfleur Coulee. His heart thumped in his breast. This girl, this prairie-flower, was doing this for him, was risking her life, was breaking the law for him. If she got through, and handed over the whiskey to those who were waiting for it, and it got bundled into the boats going North before the redcoats reached Dingan's Drive, it would be as fine a performance as the West had ever seen; and he would be six hundred dollars to the good. He listened to the mules galloping, till the sounds had died into the distance, but he saw now that his captor had heard too, and that the pursuit would be desperate.

A half-hour later it began, with MacFee at the head and a dozen troopers pounding behind, weary, hungry, bad-tempered, ready to exact payment for their hardships and discouragement.

They had not gone a dozen miles when a shouting horseman rode furiously on them from behind. They turned with carbines cocked, but it was Abe Hawley who cursed them, flung his fingers in their faces, and rode on harder and harder. Abe had got the news from one of Nancy's half-breeds, and, with the devil raging in his heart, had entered on the chase. His spirit was up against them all: against the Law represented by the troopers camped at Fort Stay-Awhile, against the troopers and their captain speeding after Nancy Machell--his Nance, who was risking her life and freedom for the hated, pale-faced smuggler riding between the troopers; and his spirit was up against Nance herself.

Nance had said to him, "Come back in an hour," and he had come back to find her gone. She had broken her word. She had deceived him. She had thrown the four years of his waiting to the winds, and a savage lust was in his heart, which would not be appeased till he had done some evil thing to some one.

The girl and the Indian lad were pounding through the night with ears strained to listen for hoof-beats coming after, with eyes searching forward into the trail for swollen creeks and direful obstructions. Through Barfleur Coulee it was a terrible march, for there was no road, and again and again they were nearly overturned, while wolves hovered in their path, ready to reap a midnight harvest. But once in the open again, with the full moonlight on their trail, the girl's spirits rose. If she could do this thing for the man who had looked into her eyes as no one had ever done, what a finish to her days in the West! For they were finished, finished forever, and she was going--she was going East; not West with Bantry, nor South with Nick Pringle, nor North with Abe Hawley--ah, Abe Hawley! He had been a good friend, he had a great heart, he was the best man of all the Western men she had known; but another man had come from the East, a man who had roused something in her never felt before, a man who had said she was wonderful; and he needed some one to take good care of him, to make him love life again. Abe would have been all right if Lambton had never come, and she had meant to marry Abe in the end; but it was different now, and Abe must get over it. Yet she had told Abe to come back in an hour. He was sure to do it; and, when he had done it, and found her gone on this errand, what would he do? She knew what he would do. He would hurt someone. He would follow, too. But at Dingan's Drive, if she reached it before the troopers and before Abe, and did the thing she had set out to do; and because no whiskey could be found, Lambton must go free; and they all stood there together, what would be the end? Abe would be terrible; but she was going East, not North, and, when the time came she would face it and put things right somehow.

The night seemed endless to her fixed and anxious eyes and mind, yet dawn came, and there had fallen no sound of hoof-beats on her ear. The ridge above Dingan's Drive was reached and covered, but yet there was no sign of her pursuers. At Red Man's River she delivered her load of contraband to the traders waiting for it, and saw it loaded into the boats and disappear beyond the wooded bend above Dingan's.

Then she collapsed into the arms of her brother Bantry, and was carried, fainting, into Dingan's Lodge.

A half-hour later MacFee and his troopers and Lambton came. MacFee grimly searched the post and the shore, but he saw by the looks of all that he had been foiled. He had no proof of anything, and Lambton must go free.

"You've fooled us," he said to Nance, sourly, yet with a kind of admiration, too. "Through you, they got away with it. But I wouldn't try it again, if I were you."

"Once is enough," answered the girl, laconically, as Lambton, set free, caught both her hands in his and whispered in her ear.

MacFee turned to the others. "You'd better drop this kind of thing," he said. "I mean business." They saw the troopers by the horses, and nodded.

"Well, we was about quit of it anyhow," said Bantry. "We've had all we want out here."

A loud laugh went up, and it was still ringing when there burst into the group, out of the trail, Abe Hawley, on foot.

He looked round the group savagely till his eyes rested on Nance and Lambton. "I'm last in," he said, in a hoarse voice. "My horse broke its leg cutting across to get here before her--" He waved a hand toward Nance. "It's best stickin' to old trails, not tryin' new ones." His eyes were full of hate as he looked at Lambton. "I'm keeping to old trails. I'm for goin' North, far up, where these two-dollar-a-day and hash-and-clothes people ain't come yet." He made a contemptuous gesture toward MacFee and his troopers. "I'm goin' North--" He took a step forward and fixed his bloodshot eyes on Nance. "I say I'm goin' North. You comin' with me, Nance?" He took off his cap to her.

He was haggard, his buckskins were torn, his hair was dishevelled, and he limped a little; but he was a massive and striking figure, and MacFee watched him closely, for there was that in his eyes which meant trouble. "You said, 'Come back in an hour,' Nance, and I come back, as I said I would," he went on. "You didn't stand to your word. I've come to git it. I'm goin' North, Nance, and I bin waitin' for four years for you to go with me. Are you comin'?"

His voice was quiet, but it had a choking kind of sound, and it struck strangely in the ears of all. MacFee came nearer.

"Are you comin' with me, Nance, dear?"

She reached a hand toward Lambton, and he took it, but she did not speak. Something in Abe's eyes overwhelmed her--something she had never seen before, and it seemed to stifle speech in her. Lambton spoke instead.

"She's going East with me," he said. "That's settled."

MacFee started. Then he caught Abe's arm. "Wait!" he said, peremptorily. "Wait one minute."

There was something in his voice which held Abe back for the instant.

"You say she is going East with you," MacFee said sharply to Lambton. "What for?" He fastened Lambton with his eyes, and Lambton quailed. "Have you told her you've got a wife--down East? I've got your history, Lambton. Have you told her that you've got a wife you married when you were at college--and as good a girl as ever lived?"

It had come with terrible suddenness even to Lambton, and he was too dazed to make any reply. With a cry of shame and anger, Nancy started back. Growling with rage and hate, Abe Hawley sprang toward Lambton, but the master of the troopers stepped between.

No one could tell who moved first, or who first made the suggestion, for the minds of all were the same, and the general purpose was instantaneous; but in the fraction of a minute Lambton, under menace, was on his hands and knees crawling to the riverside. Watchful, but not interfering, the master of the troopers saw him set adrift in a canoe without a paddle, while he was pelted with mud from the shore.

* * * * *

The next morning at sunrise Abe Hawley and the girl he had waited for so long started on the North trail together, MacFee, master of the troopers and justice of the peace, handing over the marriage lines.

THE STROKE OF THE HOUR

"They won't come to-night--sure."

The girl looked again toward the west, where, here and there, bare poles, or branches of trees, or slips of underbrush, marked a road made across the plains through the snow. The sun was going down golden red, folding up the sky a wide, soft curtain of pink and mauve and deep purple merging into the fathomless blue, where already the stars were beginning to quiver. The house stood on the edge of a little forest, which had boldly asserted itself in the wide flatness. At this point in the west the prairie merged into an undulating territory, where hill and wood rolled away from the banks of the Saskatchewan, making another England in beauty. The forest was a sort of advance-post of that land of beauty.

Yet there was beauty, too, on this prairie, though there was nothing to the east but snow and the forest so far as eye could see. Nobility and peace and power brooded over the white world.

As the girl looked, it seemed as though the bosom of the land rose and fell. She had felt this vibrating life beat beneath the frozen surface. Now, as she gazed, she smiled sadly to herself, with drooping eyelids looking out from beneath strong brows.

"I know you--I know you," she said, aloud. "You've got to take your toll. And when you're lying asleep like that, or pretending to, you reach up--and kill. And yet you can be kind--ah, but you can be kind and beautiful! But you must have your toll one way or t'other." She sighed and paused; then, after a moment, looking along the trail--"I don't expect they'll come to-night, and mebbe not to-morrow, if--if they stay for _that_."

Her eyes closed, she shivered a little. Her lips drew tight, and her face seemed suddenly to get thinner. "But dad wouldn't--no, he couldn't, not considerin'--" Again she shut her eyes in pain.

Her face was now turned from the western road by which she had expected her travellers, and toward the east, where already the snow was taking on a faint bluish tint, a reflection of the sky deepening toward night in that half-circle of the horizon. Distant and a little bleak and cheerless the half-circle was looking now.

"No one--not for two weeks," she said, in comment on the eastern trail, which was so little frequented in winter, and this year had been less travelled than ever. "It would be nice to have a neighbor," she added, as she faced the west and the sinking sun again. "I get so lonely--just minutes I get lonely. But it's them minutes that seem to count more than all the rest when they come. I expect that's it--we don't live in months and years, but just in minutes. It doesn't take long for an earthquake to do its work--it's seconds then.... P'r'aps dad won't even come to-morrow," she added, as she laid her hand on the latch. "It never seemed so long before, not even when he's been away a week." She laughed bitterly. "Even bad company's better than no company at all. Sure. And Mickey has been here always when dad's been away past times. Mickey was a fool, but he was company; and mebbe he'd have been better company if he'd been more of a scamp and less a fool. I dunno, but I really think he would. Bad company doesn't put you off so."