"He is not the first Englishman who has thought that," Jack interrupted.

"It's a somewhat common opinion."

Mrs. Alton accepted the criticism deftly. "So it is," she admitted, "but then, you see, we _like_ Indians, just as we like people of all strange colors, which is something you Americans"--she used the word in its continental sense--"have not learned to do. No, Gerald, these are not Red Indians, with feathers and paint and bows and arrows, but white people like Mumsy and you, only very much wiser. They are friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two--it _is_ Fourteen and Twenty-two, isn't it?--you see how I am picking up your way of knowing places by number rather than by name--and they have come for a little visit with Gerald and Mumsy and Sandy. Now say 'How do you do, Miss Lane.'"

But Gerald was not in exhibition mood. "Dem Injuns," he insisted, and with that we had to be satisfied.

At length, with a.s.surances that we would repeat our visit soon, and a promise from Mrs. Alton that she would return it when the men had her house under way, we clambered into our wagon and started the oxen on their slow, lumbering gait homeward. Sandy saw us properly off the place, and even stood at attention until we faded out of sight in the twilight. There is likely to be a nip to the night air on the prairies even in midsummer, and Jean, I noticed, snuggled comfortably beside me on the board across the wagon box which served as a seat. . . . Or perhaps it was that for the first time in months the latent motherhood in her nature had been stirred into consciousness.

It was Sunday before we heard or saw anything more of Spoof. A hot summer wind was chasing little scurries of dust and billowing our oat field like a lake of turquoise green when suddenly his tall form loomed up on the rough trail which already wriggled across the prairie from Fourteen to Two. He had discarded coat and waist-coat; in a khaki-colored shirt and corduroy breeches and leggings and an Indian helmet which he had dug up from somewhere he was a picturesque and striking figure as he strode into the grateful shade of the shanty.

Under his arm he carried a banjo case.

"I'm tired after a busy week," he explained, "so I didn't bring the bullocks. Moreover, their behavior last Sunday was not exemplary. But I say," he continued, "there must be something in that remedy of yours, after all. They haven't balked since."

"They have learned that you are a man of desperate measures," said Jack.

"They have that. And besides, I fell in with a cow puncher on my way to town; his horse had gone lame and he took a lift with me. He was a veritable mine of expletives."

Spoof took off his helmet and sat down in the shade. A ring of dust had formed on his fair temples and forehead and his brown hair was curly with perspiration. He was a young man good to look at; straight and lean, but not too spare; with white teeth that flashed behind lips always ready to spring to a smile beneath a sandy mustache that had more in it of promise than of realization. His hands were small and finely formed, with long, delicate fingers, and he gave his nails a degree of attention not often found among those so close to the realities of life as were we pioneers.

"Have you tried playing to them?" said Jack, harking back to the oxen.

"They are said to be very responsive to music."

"I shall try no more experiments on the bullocks," Spoof returned, pointedly; "not, at least, while I have neighbours at hand who will serve the purpose as well. But that reminds me----"

Opening the banjo case he produced, not only a banjo, but a box of candy, which he had managed to smuggle into it.

"The ladies, I hope, will accept," said he, tendering the candy to Jean.

"If accompanied by a serenade in our honour?" was her quick rejoinder.

"But not until after I have had a bath, and have somewhat recovered my wind," Spoof pleaded, and was excused.

It was evening before he took up his banjo, but almost with the first sweep of its clamoring strings he started vibrations which seemed to catch our little band of exiles somewhere about the heart and squeeze us suddenly hollow with loneliness. Then he sang, dipping into little fragments of repertoire, until at last he hit upon something that Jean had learned before we left the East, and there her clear soprano joined his tenor as naturally as one brook mingles with another and both flow on, singing a new song which is all of the old one, and something more.

I had never learned to sing, and while I felt the heart-tugs of their harmony there were other strings tugging at my heart as well.

"But we forgot the greatest news," Jean exclaimed, in a pause after one of their selections. "We have neighbours--two new neighbours--three counting Sandy. They are living on Eighteen, to the east; surely you saw the tent?"

"So I did," said Spoof, "but I thought it might be a wandering Indian family. Two, did you say? A married couple?"

"No, a widow, Mrs. Alton, and her baby Gerald, the dearest little chap.

He puts us down for Indians, and with some reason."

"Gerald?" said Spoof. "How old is he?"

"Just turned three, so Mrs. Alton told us. You should see her; not very big, but pluck to the marrow. She has taken a homestead so that she can raise the money to educate her boy. She is coming over as soon as she is settled, and we must have you meet her. She's English, and you'll love her."

Jean's frankness rather set me at ease again. Evidently I was magnifying the grip that Spoof was gaining upon her. She was content that he should love his new English neighbor.

"I shall be wonderfully interested in her," Spoof said, gaily, but it seemed to me that his mind had suddenly gone all a-ramble. There was a moment's silence, then he took up the thread again. "I once knew a little boy of that name--Gerald--was much attached to him. Strange how an incident--a name, for example--will recall a whole chain of memories."

What memories of Spoof's was aroused he did not say, but he sang no more, and presently decided it was time to go home.

CHAPTER X.

It was the first day of August of that first year on the prairies that Jack and I hitched the oxen to the wagon, threw on board a kit consisting mainly of a change of clothes and a blanket for each of us, said a brave but undemonstrative good-bye to the girls, and turned our faces to the older settlements. We had seen Mrs. Alton's new house--twelve feet square, it was, and eight feet high to the plates--under way; we had Spoof's promise that twice a day he would study the shack at Fourteen with his field gla.s.s for the flag that Marjorie would nail to the roof in case of any emergency; we had laid up fuel and supplies against the immediate needs of the girls during our absence, and now we were setting forth to earn what money we could during the short season of high wages. Our own oat field could wait; we would cut it for feed, anyway, and a little frost wouldn't matter.

One thing--two things, to be exact--worried me more on that day of parting than I would have cared to confess. One of those things was Spoof, and the other was Harold Brook, of the Mounted Police. Brook might be expected to call any day on his return journey to headquarters;--I had hoped that that would be over before I left, and many a glance I shot at the sky-line to the north-west of Fourteen, but without catching a glimpse of the red tunic riding down upon us, as it had done once before, apparently out of the heavens.

The subject was a peculiarly difficult one. For days I questioned myself whether or not I should have a frank discussion of it with Jean, but I finally decided to say nothing, at least for the present. It was a thing which I could not even mention without seeming to cast a reflection on Jean's loyalty, and loyalty, as I have discovered, is one of those qualities which does not improve under questioning. Every question aimed at loyalty seems to knock a beam out of its structure, and I began to suspect that I could not spare any beams from my particular air-castle.

So I decided on the bold course of taking everything for granted, and when I said good-bye to Jean I gave no hint of the matter that was uppermost in my thoughts. But Jean, being a woman, probably knew all about it; perhaps the extra warmth and pressure of her hand was an answer to the question which I had not the courage to ask.

On the second day out, as we halted on the side of a little knoll to let the oxen graze and to eat our lunch, we were suddenly aware of the rumble of an approaching vehicle and the tones of a l.u.s.ty voice, lifted in something evidently intended for song. Even before we had identified the "flyin' ants" we caught the burden of the refrain----

"Lived a min-er, a forty-nine-er, An' his daugh-ter, Sweet Marie."

"It's Jake, of all the world!" shouted Jack, and together we rushed down upon him. His pudgy form, sheltered from the hot sun by a broad felt hat, lolled on one end of the seat of his democrat. He was alone, and the springs of the seat, from being often ridden on by one person only, had a way of listing to the right and allowing Jake to find his own centre of gravity. In such matters Jake followed the line of least resistance, and b.u.mped along contentedly on the low end of the seat while the other end projected itself abruptly into the atmosphere. His eyes were closed, or nearly so; a healthy freshet of tobacco juice meandered across his chin, and his red, sunburned face was so expressionless that at first we thought he had not seen us. Not until we were at his very wheel did he pull the horses up and show an interest in the surroundings.

"h.e.l.lo, Sittin' Crow!" was his greeting. "Dang it, stand still a minute, you piebald lump o' fox-bait"--this to one of the bronchoes, switching at a horse-fly--"don' you know your friends when you meet 'em? Well, how goes it on the gopher ranch?"

We shook hands and made him stop and eat with us. "Well, if you're sure there's no dang'rous Injuns 'roun' here," he demurred.

Jake was fresh charged with Regina gossip, and that of the country for two hundred miles around. The settlers were streaming in, he said, but the country was so big it was just like pouring water in the sea. "Only more profitable," he added, thumping his hip pocket.

"This locatin' game is like a pint flask--all right while it lasts, but it don' get anywhere," Jake continued. "I've made some lumps o' easy money, but while I was doin' it other fellers that I brung into the bald-headed were busy bustin' the sod, an' to-day, dang me, they're better off 'n I am. Fellows with no more brains than a grindstone! Got a farm an' stock an' a wife an' kids, an' let me tell you, Crow, them last two is genooine collaterals. So I figgers to myself, 'Jake, you've trod the primrose cow-path, or whatever it is, long enough. It's time to get down to business.'"

"Yep," said Jake, taking a fresh mouthful of tobacco to give his words time to sink in. "After I saw you fellows trailin' those two fine girls out into the bald-headed I says to myself, 'Jake, this one-horse business is out o' date. Better get into double harness.' So bein' a man of action I wrote out an ad. an' put it in a big paper in the States.

Here it is:"

Jake unfolded a sc.r.a.p of paper from a note-book in which he kept a list of vacant quarter sections and handed it to us to read.

"WANTED--Wife, about 18 hands high, chestnut preferred, sound in wind and limb and built for speed. Good looks not necessary; I'm pretty enough for two. Jake, 148 ---- St., Regina, Canada."

"Do you mean to say any fish rose to such a bait as that?" Jack demanded sceptically.

"Fish? Shoals of 'em. Say, in about four days I begun to get as much mail as a new millionaire. An' photographs! I wish I had some to show you, but she--Bella--burned 'em all up. They were what I call pictures o' real life. I got so much mail the postman says to me, 'Whatya doin', Jake; startin' a lottery?' an' I says 'Yep'. Guess I wasn't so far out, at that.

"Well, jus' as I was thinkin' o' goin' to a business college an' hirin'

a few dozen stenographers, along comes this telegram." He produced a yellow sheet.

Meet me at Regina station Thursday five p.m. youll know me I am the only one in the world. Bella Donna.

"Well, I reckons right off that Bella Donna is an alibi, or whatever you call a false name, an' that some o' the boys is pullin' a gag on me, but like a fool down I goes to the station, an' there I saw her comin' right up the platform like a sandhill crane out of a marsh. I knew her, jus'

like she said, so when she comes up I calls her hand.