By Right of Purchase

"Your time was well employed," she said. "You who live here with your horses and cattle presume to decide how people of our station should spend their lives."

"There is one thing, at least, expected of a woman who is married; it's the necessary foundation of civilised society. And the woman you want to bring here has openly disregarded it. You must have heard something of the trouble between her and her husband in London, but I can't quite think you know how she came to be in Chicago."

As a matter of fact, Carrie Leland did not know. Still, she would not ask the man, who had apparently laid firm hands upon his temper, and was looking at her appealingly. It was unfortunate that she only remembered he had presumed to cast a slur upon one of her relations, and was, in her opinion, very far beneath her. She refused to answer, and Leland's face grew grim.

"Well," he said, "you are in almost every way your own mistress, but there are points on which what I say stands. This house was built for my mother. I have brought my wife home to it now, and Mrs. Heaton does not enter its door."

Carrie rose and faced him, imperious, but at last dangerously cold in her anger.

"Your wife!" she said. "Could you have expected that I should ever be more than that in name to you?"

The veins showed swollen on the man's forehead as he looked at her, and a dark flush crept into his bronzed cheek.

"Madam," he said, "now you have gone that far, you have got to tell me exactly what you mean."

"It should be quite plain. You could buy me. It sounds absurd, of course, and a trifle theatrical, but it is just what took place, and there are no doubt many of us for sale. Isn't that alone sufficient to make me hate you? Can't you realise the sickening humiliation of it, and did you suppose you could buy my love as well?"

Leland made her a little inclination which, though it was the last thing she had expected just then, undoubtedly became him. "I had 'most ventured to hope that you might give it me by-and-bye," he said.

His restraint did not serve him. The girl realised that she was in the wrong, but she had failed in her desire to look down on him. This she naturally felt was another grievance against him. She had the old disdain of those who own the land for those who till it, and, although in this man's case, the contempt she strove to feel seemed out of place, it was horribly humiliating to recognise that she was wholly in his hands.

"To you?" she said, with a bitter laugh that brought the dark flush to his face again.

Leland laid his hand on her shoulder and gripped it hard.

"I have, perhaps, no great reason for setting too high a value on myself," he said. "What I am you know, but, if you must have plain talk, there were two men made the bargain that disposed of you. It cost me a big share of my possessions to satisfy your father, but he showed no unwillingness to take my cheque, and he would have taken Aylmer's could he have raised him high enough. Who was the lowest down, the Western farmer, who, at least, meant to be kind to you, or Branscombe Denham, who was willing to sell his daughter to the highest bidder? Still, you were right. It was, in one way, about the meanest thing I ever did. The blood was in my face when I made my offer – and your father smiled. By the Lord, if I'd made that proposition to any hard-up wheat-grower between here and Calgary, he'd have whipped me from his door."

The girl had plenty of courage, but she was almost afraid of him now, for there was a strength and grimness in his bronzed face which she had never seen in that of any Denham, and the tightening grip of his ploughman's fingers bruised her shoulder cruelly. Perhaps unconsciously, he shook her a little in a gust of passion, and she set her lips hard to check the cry she would not have uttered had he beaten her.

"Now," he said, "in any case, you belong to me. That has to be remembered always. How are we to go on? What is it to be?"

Carrie contrived to smile sardonically. "Oh," she said, "sit down, and try to be rational. All this is a trifle ridiculous."

Leland dropped his hand, and, when she sat down, leaned upon the back of the other chair facing her.

"Well?" he said.

"It seems to me that we must quietly try to come to an understanding once for all to-night. In the first place, why did you wish to marry me?"

Leland set his lips for a moment. It would have been a relief just then to tell her that it was to save her from Aylmer, but this appeared a brutality to which he could not force himself, for, in spite of what she had told him, he could not be sure that it had been his only reason. Her shrinking from him, painful to him as it was, nevertheless had its attraction.

"I believe I said that you were the most beautiful woman I had, at least, ever spoken to," he said. "I was a lonely man, and it seemed to me I might, perhaps, do big things some day, with a woman of your kind to teach me what I did not know. That was part of it, but I think there was more. It was a hard life and a bare one here, and I had a fancy that you could show me how much I might have that I was missing. A smile would have helped me through my difficulties; a word or two when one had to choose between the mean and right, and the knowledge that there was some one who believed in me, would have made another and gentler man of me. Well, it seems that you have none of them to give me."

He made an emphatic gesture. "Still, we have to face the position as it is, and my part's plain. Everything you have been used to you shall have, so far as I can get it for you. You can have any of your friends here who will make the journey and be civil to your farmer-husband, and you can go to them when it pleases you. To save you ever asking me for money, I will open you an account in a Winnipeg bank, and you need never see me unless you wish to."

"Ah," said Carrie, "you are, at least, generous. To make the understanding complete, what do you expect from me?"

Leland moved and laid his hand upon her shoulder again.

"Only to remember that, however little you think of your husband, you are my wife, after all."

The girl's cheeks burned, but she looked up at him with a little hard laugh. "I think I could have struck you for that, but it must go with the rest. Still, even if I were all that your imagination could picture me, and went as far as Mrs. Heaton did, why should it trouble you?"

Leland stooped lower over her with the veins swollen on his forehead and a glint in his eyes.

"You and your father tricked me – taking all I had to offer for nothing," he said. "I suppose I ought to hate you, too – and still I can't."

Once more he gripped her cruelly. "By the Lord, dolt that I am, I think I almost love you for the grit that made you show your scorn. Still, that doesn't count. It is for me to go it alone."

He let his grasp relax and left her suddenly, turning at the door.

"You will want a companion. Will you write for Mrs. Annersly to-morrow?"

"I will," said Carrie coldly. "Under the circumstances it is advisable. She will be a protection."

He went out and she saw no more of him for a day or two, but that night she found a blue mark upon the whiteness of her shoulder.

CHAPTER VIII
LELAND SEEKS DISTRACTION

Dusk was creeping up from the eastwards across the great snow-sheeted plain when Leland pulled his horses up where a little by-track branched off from the beaten trail. Behind him the wilderness, losing its gleaming whiteness and fading into shades of soft blue-grey, ran level to the hard blueness on the northern horizon. In front of him there were rolling rises ridged with sinuous bands of birches, black in broken masses against the lingering light in the south and west. There was room for wheat enough to glut markets of the world on the leagues of rich black loam that undulated to the frozen waters of Lake Winnipeg. Already miles of it were banded together by belts of two-foot stubble; but as yet the plough had not invaded the land of bluff and ravine, creek and coulee, where the shaggy broncho and the wild steer ran.

Leland was wrapped to the eyes in an old fur coat, and his breath rose like steam into the dead still air. A cloud of thin vapour floated above the horses. It was exceptionally cold, and Gallwey, who sat half-frozen beneath the piled-up robes, wondered why his companion had pulled the team up there when they were within some twenty minutes' ride from shelter. Still he did not consider it advisable to inquire, for certain colts of a blooded sire had been missing, and Leland, who had shown signs of temper during the day, looked unusually grim. Flinging the reins to Gallwey, he stepped down stiffly from the sleigh.

"Drive on slowly, Tom. You don't want to keep a warm team standing in this frost," he said.

Gallwey contrived to clutch the reins, though his hands were numbed through the big mittens.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Look at these tracks," said Leland drily. "They kind of interest me."

Gallwey spoke to the team, and the sleigh, which consisted of a light waggon-box mounted on a runner frame, slid on. Sleighs such as are used about the Eastern cities are not common in the Northwest, where, indeed, the snow seldom lies so deep or long; and the prairie farmer either makes shift with his waggon or contents himself with the humble bob-sled. He now noticed what he had been too cold to notice before, that there was something peculiar about the print of hoofs breaking out here and there, a blur of scattered blue smudges in the trail he followed. Some seemed deeper than others, and there were long spaces where they disappeared altogether. This did not seriously concern him, so he drove on until he reached the first grove of stunted birches which clung beneath the shelter of a winding rise. Here he waited until Leland rejoined him. It was quite dark now, and he could not see his comrade's face at all, but, as he flung himself into the sleigh, he laughed in a fashion of his that Gallwey knew usually portended trouble.

"Go on," Leland said. "I want my supper, and a little talk with Jeff Kimball, too. One would have figured that man had a little more sense in him. It's 'most two weeks, I think, since you had any snow?"

"A week last Monday. Just enough to dust the trail. Is there anything particular to be deduced from that?"

"Only that we had the rustlers round next day, and I've a kind of notion my colts went then."

Gallwey sat silent while the sleigh glided on. He did not know, of course, that Leland had quarrelled with his wife, but he had noticed the man's grimness during the day, and now he was struck with the ring of his voice as he spoke of the rustlers.

The cattle war in Montana across the neighbouring border, in which the great ranchers and small homesteaders contended for the land, was over; and, when the United States cavalry restored order, little bands of broken men, ruined in the struggle, and cattle-riders who found their occupation gone, had undertaken a smuggling business along the frontier. The Prohibition Act was enforced in neighbouring parts of Canada, and there was accordingly an excellent profit to be made on any whisky they could run. There was, too, among the Chinamen in the United States a good demand for opium, which it was supposed came in via Vancouver. For the most part, the smugglers were tolerated, perhaps from the same motives that prompt otherwise honest people to pardon outlaws who rob the rich and the government. At any rate, a farmer seldom grumbled when a horse was requisitioned, though he knew that the animal might not be returned. As a reward for his silence, he was likely to find mysterious cases of whisky near his trail. His opposite conduct could carry with it many results. For instance, grass-fires, so dangerous to homesteads and ripening crops, had a suspicious way of starting in the harvest season. The small farmer, accordingly, was loth to trouble the mounted police about anything he might have heard or seen, and the rustlers as a rule knew when to stop, and only seized a horse or killed a steer for meat when they urgently needed it.

"Do you think it's worth while making trouble?" said Gallwey, suggestively.

"I want my colts back," said Leland. "I guess I'm going to get them. Shake that team up. It's getting cold."

Gallwey, who was half frozen already, called to the horses, and in another ten minutes they came into sight of a blaze of cheerful radiance in the gloom of a big bluff. Leland held the big cattle run in the vicinity, though it lay a long ride from his homestead.

Gradually a little log house grew into shape, and Leland, who drove the sleigh round to the back of it before he got out, turned to the man who had slouched from the doorway.

"I guess we'll leave the sleigh here," he said. "We have come for the night, and we'll put the team in while you get supper."

Though he could not see the man's face for the dark, Gallwey fancied he was a little disconcerted at this announcement. In another half-hour, however, they were sitting down to a meal. Leland said very little until it was over, when, taking his pipe out, he pulled a hide chair up to the stove and looked at the man. "Whom have you had round the place the last week or so, Jeff?" he said.

"Thompson," said the other. "He brought four or five horses along."

"He did. I saw his tracks where he headed off the trail for the back range. Quite sure he hadn't any more? That reminds me; I'll want to see him in a day or two about those steers."

Gallwey fancied this last was meant as an intimation that accuracy was advisable, and he watched the big, loose-limbed man who was filling his pipe just then. He appeared uneasy under all this scrutiny, for Leland was also quietly regarding him.

"Now I come to recollect, it was four."

"Anybody else?" said Leland.

"Custer; he came along with a bob-sled yesterday."

"You can't think of any more?"

"No," said the other man, who flashed a suspicious glance at him. "I can't quite figure how I could when they weren't there."

Leland smoked on tranquilly, apparently considering for a moment or two, and then, straightening himself a little, looked hard at the man.

"Jeff," he said quietly, "it's a kind of pity you don't know enough to make a decent liar."

The man started, but seemed to recover himself again, and it was with quickening interest Gallwey watched the pair. A smoky kerosene lamp gave out an indifferent light, and a red glare beat out from the open door of the stove, streaming uncertainly upon the faces of the men.

It showed Leland sitting motionless, a hard glint in his eyes, and the other man making little uneasy movements as he shrank from the steady gaze. As Leland spoke again, the man winced.

"If any man had said as much to me, one of us would have been out in the snow by now," he said. "Have you no grit in you? Then why in the name of thunder did you take hold of a contract that was 'way too big for you? Did you think I could be bluffed by a thing like you?"

"I can't quite figure what you mean," said the other man sullenly.

"Then I'll have some pleasure in telling you. Soon after the last snow fell, two rustlers came up this trail – there were more of them, but they stayed down by the big one. When they went away, three of my horses went with them. Now, who caught those horses and had them ready? It's kind of curious, too, that they were the pick of the bunch, with good blood in them. The only man round here who could tell them which were worth the lifting is you. Jeff, you don't know enough to run a peanut stand, and yet you figured you were fit to kick against the man who hired you."

Jeff appeared to rouse himself for an effort. "You're guessing a good deal of it."

"Guessing, when I've lived on this prairie all my life, and the whole thing is written there in the snow. Can't I tell the difference between the tracks of a steady ridden horse and a young one that's not used to the halter? However, I'm open to listen now."

"I've just this to say. It won't hurt you to lose a horse or two, and that's about all anybody has ever taken out of you, while it's quite likely you'll be worse off if you make trouble about it. In fact, taking it all around, you can't afford to get rid of me."

"Anyway, that is what I mean to do. I have no use for a man who sells my property to his friends. You'll get out of this place to-morrow."

"I guess I'll go right now. Thompson will take me in."

"No," said Leland sharply; "you'll stay just where you are until the morning, though you can take your blankets into the other room as soon as you like. It's quite hard to keep my hands off you, and if you come out before I call you to make breakfast, I'm not going to try."

Jeff said nothing further, but, taking two dirty blankets out of a hay-filled bunk, shuffled away into a second room behind a log partition. Leland went after him, and, laying his hands on the little window, shook it violently.

"If you try to get out that way, we're going to hear you, and then you'll be sorry for yourself," he said.

He came back and, flinging himself into the chair beside the stove, filled his pipe.

"I don't quite know how you worried the thing out, and perhaps it doesn't greatly matter, but I rather think it was good advice he gave you," said Gallwey reflectively. "You certainly can afford to lose a horse or two, and the rustlers are the kind of people it is just as well to keep on good terms with. Sergeant Grier has only three or four troopers, and the outpost is quite a long way off."

Leland smiled. "Well," he said, "horse-stealing is getting to be a good deal more profitable business than liquor-running. They get horses for nothing, and they have to buy the whisky. They haven't gone very far into it yet, but it's a sure thing that they will if they find out that none of us seem to mind it. Somebody has to make a protest, and it may as well be me."

"So far as my observation goes, most men would rather let their neighbour make it first," said Gallwey drily. "You, however, seem to be an exception."

Leland's face hardened. "The fact is, I feel like taking it out of somebody soon. I have had a good deal to worry me."

"One would not have expected you to feel like that just now."

"I guess we'll change the subject," said Leland grimly. "You are wondering what I sent Jeff in there for? Well, I didn't want him loose on the prairie. It seems to me he's expecting a visit from his friends, and I'd just as soon they came and let me have a word with them. You get into the bunk there, and go to sleep until I want you."

Wrapping one of the sleigh robes about him, Gallwey lay down for the night. He saw Leland put the light out and sit down again by the snapping, crackling stove. Through its open door a flickering radiance now and again touched his earnest face. Though they had been out since dawn in the stinging frost, he sat firmly erect, gripping his unlighted pipe and gazing straight in front of him with hard, unwavering eyes. Behind him the shadows played upon the walls of the gloomy shanty, quiet save for the moan of the bitter wind. Gallwey, who did not think it was the rustlers, wondered what was worrying his comrade, until his eyes grew heavy, and, though he had not intended it, he fell asleep wearily.

Leland, however, sat still while the crackle of the stove died away, and the stinging cold crept in. He had much to think of, and could see no way out of the difficulties that beset him and his wife. He had known that she had no love for him, but, since the night she had met him on the terrace steps at Barrock-holme, his admiration for her had grown steadily stronger, and he had been conscious of a curious tenderness whenever he thought of her. Her smile was worth the winning by any effort he could make, and the odd kind word she occasionally flung him would set his heart thumping.

Then the revelation had come, and left him dismayed. He had never counted on her hating him, as it now seemed she must do, or regarding him as one so far beneath her that the most she could feel for him was an impersonal toleration. He was a proud man, and her words had stung him deeply. It was galling to realise that he was bound to a woman who shrank from him and despised him, and that the bonds were unbreakable, no matter how irksome they might become to both his wife and himself.

Then that mood passed, for there was a silent, deep-seated optimism in him that had carried him through frozen harvests and adverse seasons, and he began to appreciate her point of view, and that it might not be an unalterable one. He did not blame her for her courage, or even for her scorn, though it had hurt him horribly. It was for him to prove it unwarranted, or with patience to live it down, but he did not know how either could be done, and now and then a little fit of anger set his blood tingling as he sat in the growing shadows beside the emptying stove. His resentment was not so much against the woman as the man who had, knowing what she must feel, forced her into marrying him; but they were in England, and he felt illogically that he must strike at some one nearer, which was why he waited for the rustlers. He had no pistol. It is not often that the plainsman carries arms in Western Canada, but there was a big axe at Jeff's wood-pile, which would, he fancied, serve in case of necessity. At last, when the stove had almost gone out, he roused himself to attention with a little start in the bitter cold and, rising, touched Gallwey.

"Get up!" he said. "Slip in behind the door, and shut it when I tell you. There are horses on the trail."

Gallwey did as he was bidden, half asleep, though he heard a beat of hoofs that grew louder. Then there was a stamping of feet outside, and Leland flung a few split billets through the open top of the stove. A sharp crackling followed, and a blaze sprang up, but the light only flickered here and there, leaving the room almost dark.

"Let them in!" he said.

The door swung open. Two shadowy figures, shapeless in fur coats and caps, appeared in the opening, and one of them turned sharply when Gallwey slammed the door behind him.

"Now," he said, "what is that for? I don't seem to recognise you, anyway."

Leland laughed. "Come right in, gentlemen. I've been waiting to see you, and there's no mistake. Jeff's in the second room yonder, and if he ventures to come out with any notion of making trouble he'll run a considerable risk of getting himself hurt."

He had raised his voice a trifle, and the rustle that had commenced died away in token that Jeff had heard. In the meanwhile one of the rustlers had slipped his hand inside his furs; but Leland, who noticed it, made a little gesture.

"I guess it's not worth while," he said. "If you'll sit down a minute, I have a word or two to say to you."

One of the men did so, but the other stood near the door watching Gallwey, who was, on the whole, thankful that he had taken down Jeff's rifle.

"Well?" said the first outlaw. "It was Jeff who gave us away?"

"Not exactly. At least, he didn't mean to. You should have got a smarter man before you ventured to put up a bluff on me. Still, that's not the question. When are you going to bring my horses back?"

"I'm afraid I can't quite promise," said the other with a chuckle. "With us, finding is sometimes keeping."

"You have two weeks. If they're not back in that time, you're going to be sorry."

The outlaw laughed openly. "Come down and look at it reasonably. We have got to live, and we have, after all, stuck you for very little. With four police troopers to watch this part of the country, there's nothing you can do. I guess we've got our grip on it just now."

"You have two weeks to bring back my horses in."

"Then you mean to insist on it?" said the other man.

"I do. Don't you get to thinking the honest men in this country are a bit afraid of you. They're only lazy. We have nothing to do with the whisky, but this horse-lifting has got to be stopped. Get out, and remember it, before I use my feet on you."

The outlaw was a big man. As he slipped his hand beneath his furs, Leland quietly reached for the axe.

"I could shear your arm off before you got it out," he said. "Will you lay it down, and see if you can stop in this shanty when I tell you to get out."

The rustler looked at him for a moment, and, though there was very little light, was apparently satisfied.

"No," he said. "I guess that's not business, anyway. You won't get your horses, but I'll give you good advice. Sit tight, and mind your farming, and it's quite likely you won't lose any more. We're not nice folks when we're roused, but we're not looking for trouble."

"You'll get it," said Leland drily, "unless my horses are back two weeks to-night. Open the door, Tom, and let the gentlemen out."

Nothing more was said by either, and in another minute or two there was a thud of hoofs as the outlaws rode away.