"Charley, you will not go back again?" she said once more.

The man drew his arm away. Though she could scarcely see his face, he appeared to be looking down upon her gravely.

"It is a little hard not to do what you ask me straight away, but I think you can understand," he said. "Whatever I went into the thing for, I am in it now. Practically, I'm leader. It is not the Sergeant the boys look to, but me, and I'm not quite sure they would have kept the thing up if I hadn't worried them into doing it. Still, they'll go on now, and they would only think of two reasons if I backed down. Would you like them to fancy the rustlers had bought me over, or made me afraid of them?"

"Could any one think that?" and Carrie laughed scornfully, though her voice grew suddenly soft again. "It wouldn't matter in the least to me what anybody said."

"Well," said Leland gravely, "I 'most think it would, and I should like it to. Anyway, if I backed down, it would be because I was afraid. In fact, I'm afraid now, though I never used to be. It's a little difficult to tell you this, though you know it, but, when I stirred the boys up, I could not be sure you would ever be what you are to me. It didn't seem likely then, but I made no conditions when the rest stood in with me.

Now I think you see I can't go back on them."

Carrie made a little nod of agreement, and, with an effort, repressed a sigh, for she knew that she had failed. Her husband's code was simple, and, perhaps, crude, but it was, at least, inflexible. After all, honour and duty are things well within the comprehension of very simple men.

Indeed, it is often the case that, where principles are concerned, the simplest men have the clearest vision.

"Ah," she said, with something like a sob, "then you must go. But stand still a minute, Charley. I want to see if the clip I bought you in the Winnipeg gun-shop is working properly."

Leland smiled as she pressed a little clasp and then, dropping one hand smartly, caught the rifle as the sling fell apart. Carrie had changed suddenly and curiously. The pride that was in her had awakened, and she was at one with her husband and wholly practical.

"It is ever so much quicker than pa.s.sing it over your shoulder; and, after all, you must go," she said.

She stretched up her arms and kissed him. When the man had swung himself into the saddle, she looked long after him, with eyes that were hazy.

When he became a blur in the distance, she went slowly to the house, head proudly erect. There Eveline Annersly greeted her.

"My dear," she said, "you need not tell me. You have been trying to hold your husband back, and you have failed. The thing was out of the question. You might have known."

Carrie made a little half-wistful gesture, though there was a faint glow in her eyes. "Yes, I did what I could, and now I shall not rest until he comes back again. Still, I think I deserve it, and I'm not sure that I would have him different. I think nothing would change Charley. I used to wonder more than I do now how he, who was born on the prairie, came to have all the real essential things which were not in any of us at Barrock-holme."

Eveline Annersly's eyes sparkled, and her manner was sardonic. "It's not very explicit, but I think I know what you mean. Haven't you lost your faith in the old fetish yet? Men are men--good, bad, and indifferent--the world over, and, though it would be rather nice to believe it, we haven't, and never had, a monopoly in our own cla.s.s of what you call the essentials. Indeed, I'm not quite sure one couldn't go a little further."

She was standing near the open window, with the light, which was low, some distance away from her. Turning, she drew Carrie within the heavy curtains. "The very old and the very new are apt to meet," she said.

"There is an example yonder."

Carrie looked out into the soft moonlight, and saw a mounted figure cut against the sky on the crest of a low rise. It was indistinct and shadowy, but, as she gazed, she twice caught the gleam of the pale cold light on steel, and knew it for the flash of a rifle-barrel.

"Oh," she said, "since I came to this country I have felt it too. That was how the border spears rode out six hundred years ago. . . . Of course, you were right a little while ago. I think the things that are essential must always have been the same--primitive and unchangeable.

Faith and courage have always been needed, as they are needed still.

After all, we cannot get away from death and toil and pain."

The lonely figure vanished into the night, and, as her companion moved away, Carrie let the curtain fall behind her with a little sigh. "It is getting late, and I can only wait and try to think there is no danger, until he comes back to me. No doubt others have done it, back through all the centuries."

She went out, but Eveline Annersly sat a while thoughtfully by the open window. What she had expected had at last come to pa.s.s, and she had the satisfaction which does not always attend the efforts of the matrimonial schemer; for there was no longer any doubt that Carrie Leland loved her husband. Once more, as Nature will often have it, like had drawn to unlike, with a fusion of discordant qualities in indissoluble and harmonious union, that what the one lacked the other might supply. The pair she had brought together were no longer two but one, which, while she was quite aware that it did not always happen, was, when it did, like the springing up of the wheat--a mystery and a miracle.

Eveline Annersly was old enough to know that there are many mysteries, but that by love alone man may come nearest to their comprehension.

Then she remembered that it was getting late, and, leaving the window open, for the night was hot and still, sought her room, and in another half-hour was sound asleep. She had slept several hours, when she was awakened by a queer sound that seemed to come from outside through the open door. It was a dull noise, which, accustomed as she had grown to the beat of hoofs, suggested a company of mounted men riding up out of the prairie. The sound kept increasing, until she could have fancied that it was made by a regiment, and then suddenly swelled into the roar of a brigade of cavalry going by on the gallop. The house seemed to reel as under a blow, the doors swung to with a crash, and there was a clatter of things hurled down in the adjoining room. Then she rose and flung on a dressing-gown, and, crossing the room, stopped when she had clutched the door handle, almost afraid to open it, bewildered by the indescribable tumult. At last a gleam of light appeared between the c.h.i.n.ks. Mustering courage to open the door, she saw Carrie standing in the room, half dressed, with a candle in her hand. That was just for a moment, for the feeble gleam went out, and she groped her way through black darkness towards the girl.

"What is it?" she gasped.

"The hail!" said Carrie, hoa.r.s.ely. "Come with me. We must shut the window quick."

It cost them both an effort, and Carrie was some little time lighting the lamp when they had accomplished it. Then Eveline Annersly sank into the nearest chair, with her arm about the shoulders of the girl who knelt beside her. Even with the windows shut, the lamplight flickered, and, when it fell upon her, Carrie's face showed set and white.

"Ah," she said, "the wheat! It will all be cut down by morning, and Charley ruined."

It was a minute or two before Eveline Annersly quite understood her, for there was just then a deafening crash of thunder, and, after it, the stout wooden building appeared to rock at the onslaught of an icy wind that struck through every crevice with a stinging chill. The hail roared on walls and shingled roof with a bewildering din. Then the uproar slackened a little, and, as she glanced towards the melting ice which had beaten into the room, it seemed to her scarcely possible that Leland's crop could have escaped disaster. She had never seen hail like that in England; in fact, it scarcely seemed hail at all, but big lumps of ice, and the crash of it upon the roof was like the roar upon a beach of surf-rolled stones.

The sound of it, and the wild wailing of the gale, sapped her courage; so she understood the strained look in Carrie's eyes. There are times when men, as well as women, stand appalled by the elemental fury, and, shaking off all restraint that a complex civilisation may have laid upon them, become wholly human and primitive again. Carrie was half crouching at her aunt's feet, gazing up at her with wild, fierce eyes. Eveline Annersly shuddered a little as she glanced at her.

"Will the house stand?" she gasped.

The girl's laugh rang harshly through the roar of the hail. "I don't know. What does that matter, anyway? Can't you understand? The wheat will all be cut down. I have ruined Charley."

Then there was a lull for a minute or two, and Carrie, reaching up a hand, gripped her companion's arm.

"Did you ever hear how much I cost my husband?" she said.

Terrified as she was, Eveline Annersly started at the question. It was not expressed delicately, but, after all, there was no doubt that the girl's marriage had been more or less a matter of bargaining. "Of course not," she said.

"I don't know, either, but I'm sure it was ever so much," and Carrie's fingers trembled on her arm, though her eyes were fierce. "In one way, I am glad it was. I like to feel that he was willing to offer everything that was his for me. It isn't in the least degrading to belong to Charley Leland, however I came into his possession. Not in the least.

How could it be? Still, once it seemed horrible even to think of it."

She stopped a minute with a little indrawing of her breath. "Besides, I am glad in another way, because, if he is really ruined, I am going to get all I cost him back again. Jimmy and my father would call it a loan."

Eveline Annersly was distinctly startled, though she understood that all restraint had been flung aside, and Carrie Leland had responded to the influence of this storm that had brought her face to face with a crisis in her husband's affairs, the raw human nature in her had come uppermost, and she was for the time being merely a woman with primitive pa.s.sions raised, ready to fight for her mate. It was, her companion recognised, a thing that not infrequently happened--a part, indeed, of Nature's scheme that had a higher warrant; but, for all that, she was sensible again that there was in the girl's set face something from which people of fastidious temperament, who had never felt the strain, might feel inclined to shrink.

"Carrie," she said, "the thing is out of the question. They are your father and brother. You cannot force them into an open rupture. You must put it out of your mind."

The girl gripped her arm cruelly. "One must choose sometimes, and I am my husband's flesh and blood. Once that seemed a curious fancy, repugnant too, but it is real now--one of the great real things to Charley and me."

Eveline Annersly said nothing, and the wind beat upon the house as the girl went on. "Aunt," she said, "before Charley is ruined, I will make them repay the loan. They would have to if I insisted, for they would never dare let me tell that tale."

Once more her laugh rang harshly through the uproar of the hail. "Oh,"

she said, "Charley would pour out his blood for me, and what do I owe my father and Jimmy but a badge of shame?"

She was shaking with pa.s.sion and very white in face. Eveline Annersly at last realised how deeply the shame had bitten before love had come to lessen the smart of it. The girl's temperament had been, as she knew, distinctly virginal, and it was, perhaps, not astonishing, under the circ.u.mstances, that she had at first shrunk from her husband almost with hatred, and certainly with instinctive repulsion. Indeed, it was clear to Eveline Annersly that had not Leland been what he was, a man accustomed to restraint, she would in all probability have continued to hate him until one of them died. Yet the contrast between the girl who had always borne herself with a chilling serenity at Barrock-holme and the pa.s.sionate woman who crouched at her side was a very wonderful thing.

Then suddenly the wind fell, and the sound of the hail commenced to die away. It no longer roared upon the shingles, but sank in a long diminuendo, drawing further and further away across the prairie. There was a deep impressive stillness as it ceased altogether.

Carrie rose abruptly. "I'm going out," she said in a strained voice.

"Are you coming too?"

Eveline Annersly had little wish to go. The storm had left her shaken and unwilling to move, but she forced herself to get up, for it seemed that Carrie might have need of her. So they went out together. There was now a little light in the sky, and the bluff showed up black and sharp against it. The air was fresh and chill. Carrie, however, noticed nothing as she moved swiftly through the wheat, through the melting ice that lay thickly upon the sod. Other shadowy figures were also moving in the same direction, and there was a murmur of voices when at last she stopped.

"It's Mrs. Leland," said somebody, and the group of men drew back a little.

Then Carrie caught her breath with a sob, for the tall wheat had gone, and, so far as she could see, ruin was spread across the belt of ploughing. The green blades lay smashed and torn upon the beaten soil.

The crop had vanished under the dread reaping of the hail. The light was growing clearer, and it seemed to Eveline Annersly, who remembered how the roar had suggested the beat of horses' hoofs, that instead of a brigade of cavalry, an army division, with guns and transport, had pa.s.sed that way through the grain. Then something in the fancy struck her as especially apposite, and she turned to Carrie, who stood rigid, as though turned to stone.

"Look!" she said; "it isn't everywhere the same."