"The question is, how we should meet a further drop," he said.

"That's not very difficult, unless the drop is too big. We have for fixed charges the upkeep of this homestead, besides wages, and the feeding of the boys we can't do without, and the working horses. That's not going to alter more than a little, anyway. Well, we have the seed, and there are broken horses on the run, so it's going to cost us just a few teamsters' wages, and the threshing to put oats in on as many extra acres as we can break. You see, we get a bigger crop on much the same cost."

"And the fall breaking?"

"Wheat," said Leland. "Every acre."

Gallwey drew in his breath. He knew his comrade's boldness, but this was almost incredible. Cautious men were already holding their hand, but Leland purposed to sow more freely than ever.

"It will be a huge crop," he said. "About the biggest that was ever raised in this country. Now, of course, within a margin, there's a good deal in your notion in increasing the ratio of production to dead charges, but, after all, you can't sow a third as much again without its costing you something. Well, if the price drops far enough to make that a loss?"

Leland laughed again. "Then," he said, "it will be one of the biggest smashes ever known in this country; but n.o.body's going to lose very much when they've taken the land and stock from me. It's tolerably steep chances, but they're all on me."

Gallwey's uneasiness showed itself in his face. The magnitude of the risk almost dismayed him, but while he sat silent Leland made a little gesture.

"Tell Jake to bring that coffee in, and see the waggon's ready," he said. "I'll be off, and let the team go easy. They'll put me on to the wire at the depot at five o'clock when the stopping freight comes through. I should be back by noon. You'll start every man as usual."

He drank the bitter coffee to keep himself awake, and climbed into his waggon, while Gallwey shook his head as he watched him jolt away into the shadowy prairie.

"It's a big thing, almost too big for any other man," he said. "It was the confounded bank balance against him that drove him into it. I wonder how he spent all that money, or if Mrs. Leland knows."

CHAPTER XII

LELAND'S PROTEST

There were two breakfasts served in the Occidental Hotel, which, dilapidated and weather-scarred, stands at the foot of the unpaved street of a desolate little town beside the railroad track. Most men commence their work early in the prairie country, so the first meal was laid at six; but there was another from eight to nine when a train came in. This was a somewhat unusual concession to the needs of the few pa.s.sengers who alighted there, because throughout most of the Northwest no self-respecting hotel cook would prepare a meal out of the fixed hours, not even for a cabinet minister or a railroad director. Nor would the proprietor vary a dish, for in his estimation what suffices the plainsman is quite good enough for anybody else.

The table had just been cleared when a small and select company of men who had nothing in particular to do pulled their chairs up to the stove, on which as many of them as could find room put their feet. It had not been lighted that morning, or black-leaded for many days, but habit was strong in them. There are, even in countries where most men are hard workers, a few who spend their lives lounging on hotel verandahs and sitting round the stove. n.o.body unused to it would, in all probability, have cared to linger there, for there are few places of entertainment so wholly desolate and uninviting as the general room of the average prairie hotel.

Its walls were obviously made of dressed boards, and had even borne a coat of paint at one time; but they were bare and dirty now. Two lonely German oleographs of more than usually barbaric type hung on rusty nails. Cigar-ends and burnt matches littered the uncarpeted floor.

Benches without backs to them ran along either side of the uncovered table. The rest of the furniture consisted of the rusty stove and a few chairs, which the loungers monopolised. Two of the group wore store-clothing, with trousers so tight that one wondered how they ever got them on, and two wore blue jean in sad need of patching. They had rough, dark faces, relieved by no sign of amiability or unusual intelligence; but they could talk. Loafers and tramps usually can.

Outside the open window, bright sunshine flooded the verandah, and fell upon the bare frame-houses across the way. A couple of light waggons, with the mire of the spring thawing not yet washed off them, pa.s.sed clattering and jolting among the ruts. The streets of a prairie town usually resemble a mora.s.s when the frost breaks up. When they had gone, a police trooper swung by on a spume-flecked horse, with the dust of several leagues' journey thick on his trim uniform. Then there was silence again until one of the loungers looked up from the greasy paper he was reading.

"Wheat still going down," he said. "There's no bottom to the market, or, if it had one, it's dropped out. Our boss farmers are going to feel it if things go on like this; but n.o.body's going to be sorry for them. They figure they own the country already."

"I hear Leland of Prospect is ploughing the same as if wheat was going up," said another man.

The third of the party shook his pipe out, and pursed up his face, which was not an attractive one, into an expression of pitying contempt.

"Leland's a blame fool, and always was," he said. "I once worked for him. It's the way the market went with him made him what he is. That, and nothing else."

"Why'd you quit Prospect, Jasper?" asked the remaining comrade, and the others grinned.

A vindictive gleam crept into the man's eyes. "Well," he said, "I've no use for being bossed by that kind of man, and one day I up and told him what I thought of him. There was considerable trouble before I walked out. Anyway, between the market and the English girl he's married, he's fixed just now."

"She's flinging his money away?" asked somebody.

"With both hands, and too stuck on herself to be civil to him. They're made like that in the Old Country. Leland's no more to her than the hired man, one of the boys told me."

"Well, why'd she marry him?"

"For his money. That's a good enough reason, and it's quite likely there was another one. Girls like her have got to marry somebody over there, and the men with money are kind of particular. I guess it's not astonishing. If you got hold of an English paper, it's full of their goings-on."

"That's all right," said one of the others in tight store-clothes.

"Still, until they're married, they've got to be careful. Afterwards, it don't so much matter. Unless all's quite straight, buyers hold off, and the figure comes down."

"It's quite easy guessing that's what was wrong with Mrs. Leland. What else would a girl with her looks make sure of him for? Charley Leland comes along with his money, and they plant her right on to him. It's even betting she goes off with another man if the market breaks him."

He stopped abruptly as his neighbour drove an elbow into his ribs, and his mouth gaped open as he dropped his feet from the stove. Then the others moved uneasily in their chairs, for a man stood in the doorway regarding them with a singularly unpleasant smile.

"Stand right up, Jasper, you--hog!" he said.

Jasper sat still, glancing at the others, as though he felt that, while none of them appeared in any haste to do so, it was their duty to support him, until one evidently remembered that there were, after all, four of them.

"He's sitting where he is, Charley Leland," he said. "n.o.body asked you to hang round listening, and if you don't like our talk you can go outside again."

Leland showed no sign of having heard him. "Get up," he said, "and tell them you're a liar."

Jasper sat still. He was tolerably active and muscular, or he would never have worked at Prospect. But there was a dangerous look in Leland's eyes. His quiet incisiveness was portentous. Realising that his comrades expected something of him, Jasper managed to retort.

"Oh, go home!" he said. "I guess you've plenty of trouble there without making any here."

In another moment Leland had crossed the room and swung him to his feet.

n.o.body was very clear about what happened during the next few seconds.

There is, however, a certain animal courage in every man who has lived by bodily toil, and Jasper, who had also a vindictive temper, did all he could. When he had once felt Leland's hand, he clinched with him, and, reeling locked together, they fell with a crash against the table and overturned one of the benches. Then, gasping, panting, floundering, and striking when they could, they went swaying towards the door, while Jasper's friends howled encouragingly, and men, attracted by the uproar, ran out of the opposite store. Foot by foot they neared the verandah, and when Leland, gasping with pa.s.sion, made a supreme effort, they staggered out into it.

There was a crowd below it now, and they set up a shout as Leland's grasp sank lower down the other man's hollowing back. Jasper, it seemed, was not altogether a favourite of theirs. After that there was silence for another moment or two, while the two men swayed and strained with scuffling feet, until one of them suddenly relaxed his hold, and, reeling backwards, plunged down the verandah stairway. He struck a rail as he did it, and, overturning, came down headlong in the unpaved street. Somebody dragged him to his feet, and he stood still a moment, hatless, with the dust upon his flushed face, and his jacket rent, gasping with futile rage. Then he slunk away through the gap that was opened up for him.

Leland leant somewhat heavily on the rails above. The veins were swollen on his forehead, blood trickled down his chin from one of his bleeding lips, and his face was dark with rage. Altogether, he was not exactly an attractive spectacle. Raising himself stiffly, he disappeared into the hotel, from which three other men made their way with as much haste as was compatible with any show of dignity. A light waggon had stopped unnoticed just outside the crowd.

A few minutes earlier Carrie Leland and Mrs. Annersly had driven across the railroad track on their way to the dry-goods store, and, as the waggon jolted in the ruts, the girl pointed to the town with a little gesture of repugnance.

"Could one well imagine anything less attractive than this?" she said.

"Still, I believe the desolate place is looked upon as a rising city, and they are actually proud of it."

Eveline Annersly glanced up the single street with a twinkle in her eyes. It somewhat resembled a ploughed field, though the ruts and ridges the wheels had made were crumbling into dust. Above it ran a rickety sidewalk of planks, by means of which foot pa.s.sengers could escape the mire in spring; and crude frame-houses, dest.i.tute of paint or any attempt at adornment, rose from that in turn. The fronts of most of them were carried sufficiently high to hide the pitch of sloped roof, so that they resembled squares of timber pierced by little windows. Above the topmost of the latter there usually ran a blatant but half-obliterated commendation of the wares sold within, for in the rising prairie town every house is, as a rule, either a store or a hotel.

"Well," she said, "one could scarcely call it picturesque, but we have colliery and other industrial villages at home that are not very far behind it."

Carrie laughed. "Still, we have the grace to attempt to justify them on the score of necessity, while they hold this place up as a model and a sign of progress. It is a barbarous country."

"Including Prospect, too?"

"Of course! Still, Prospect makes no pretence of civilisation. It is part of the prairie, and n.o.body could expect much from it."