Harold Bindloss

“ The moon was dimmed by thin, driving clouds, and the deep silence grew depressing; the loneliness weighed on her, and she began to listen eagerly for the beat of hoofs. For a time she heard nothing and she had grown angry with Prescott for delaying when a measured drumming stole out of the distance and her feeling of cheerfulness and security returned. Its significance was not lost on her: she was learning to depend on the man, to long for his society. Then, for no obvious reason, she urged the team and kept ahead for a while. ”

“ The slope grew sharper, there seemed to be an unbroken wall of rock ahead; but, climbing higher, Prescott saw a small smooth track running up the barrier. It was obviously a gully filled with snow and its steepness suggested that the ascent of it might prove beyond his powers; but the footprints led on to where it began. After following them to the spot, Prescott sat down on a stone to gather breath. He looked upward with a sinking heart. The hollow was deep and narrow—a cleft in the vast ridge of rock, which was glazed with ice. ”

“ On the next afternoon, Prescott was at work in the summer fallow, sitting in the iron saddle of a gangplow, which four powerful horses hauled through the crackling stubble. It was fiercely hot and he was lightly clad in thin yellow shirt and overalls. A cloud of dust rose about him from the parched soil, and the broad expanse of wheat which the fallow divided glowed with varied colors as it rippled before the rush of breeze, the strong greens changing to a silvery luster as the lush blades bent and caught the light. ”

“ All that he had said about Muriel applied with equal force to her. She had yielded to a mad infatuation, and returning sanity had brought her a crushing sense of shame. She might have made a costly sacrifice for the rancher’s sake, flinging away all she had hitherto valued; she had sought him, humbled herself to charm him, and he had never spared a tender thought for her. Despising herself, her jealous rage and wounded pride could only be appeased by his punishment.
“Prescott,” she said coldly, “is a dangerous man; I have never met anybody so insinuating and plausible. ”

“ For a while Gertrude was occupied, to the exclusion of everything else, in trying to keep her place, but when Prescott turned the team on to a stretch of smooth short grass she began to look about. It was a clear, cool morning, the sky was a wonderful blue, and bluffs miles away showed up with sharp distinctness. In the foreground the gray grass was bathed in a soft light which was restful to the eyes. Then Gertrude examined the rig, as the man had called it, which struck her as remarkably light and fragile; and the same thing was noticeable about the harness. ”

“ The country was open and empty; a wide plain, with one slight rise some miles away that cut with a white gleam against the deep blue of the sky. They headed toward it wearily, following the track, and drew bridle when they gained the summit. A half-moon floated rather low in the western sky, glittering keen with frost, and they could see that the prairie ahead of 307 them was more rolling and broken. Dusky smears of bluffs checkered its white surface here and there, and a low irregular dark line ran across it. Prescott supposed this to be a small timber growing along the edge of a ravine. ”

“ He was a man who could be trusted; one felt safe with him. Now and then she could hardly see the buggy and she was glad of his cheery laugh and the somewhat inconsequent remarks he flung back to her when the haze of driving flakes grew thicker. So far as she could see, the trail now differed in nothing from the rest of the wilderness, but he held on without hesitation, and she felt no surprise when once or twice a belt of trees she remembered loomed up. They made better progress when the snow ceased, and at length Prescott stopped his horse and she saw a faint blink of light some distance off. ”

“ Prescott rejoined, conscious that he had nearly betrayed himself again. He felt angry with Jernyngham for giving him such a difficult part to play.
After this, he carefully avoided any personal topic and talked about Canadian farming, sitting silent when he could, while Muriel gazed about with pleasurable curiosity. It is never quite dark on those wide levels in summertime, and, for there was no moon, the prairie stretched away before them shadowy, silent, and mysterious. ”

“ He had not intended to seek shelter at the homestead—the idea was repugnant—and he hardly thought he meant to do so now, but, overwhelmed by the blizzard, he could not stand still and freeze. Struggling heavily forward, he found himself in the open; all trace of the wood had vanished; he could not tell where he was heading, but he must continue moving to keep life in him. He could no longer reason collectedly. He had not been trained to physical endurance, and he was getting old; in the grip of the storm he was helpless. By and by his steps grew feebler and his breath harder to get. ”

“ Colston with his cheerful, well-bred air and fastidiousness in dress, talked interestingly; Mrs. Colston with her gracious dignity, and Muriel, who was wholly alluring, seemed to fill the room with charm. It was perhaps all the more enjoyable because Prescott had been accustomed to pleasant society in Montreal, before he abandoned it with other amenities and went out to a life of stern toil and frugality in the grim Northwest. ”

“ Besides, I’m a wanderer; the long trail beckons.”
“It runs through swamps and many rough places into the lonely wilds. Aren’t you afraid of weariness?”
Kermode smiled, falling into her mood.
“You may remember that there are compensations,” he said; “glimpses of glory on the untrodden heights. It’s true that one never gets there, but they lead one on.”
“But you can see them from the valley.”
“No; the farmer’s eyes are fixed on the furrow; he must follow the plow. His crop and his stock are nearer him; he cannot see past them. The wanderer’s mind is free.” ”

“ A valley lay beneath him with a frozen river winding through its depths, and he felt convinced that it was one the track would follow. The trouble, however, was to get down, for the hillside fell away in a vast scarp, broken here and there by dark crags that showed through the snow. There was a belt of timber a long way down, but the slope was too steep for him to reach it, and he walked along the summit in search of a spot from which the descent could be made, until he came to a long declivity that looked a little less sharp. ”

“ Muriel could not deny this. She had retained her faith in Prescott, but his silence about the motive for an absence that must tell against him troubled her. It was strange that he had given her no hint, and she felt hurt.
“He may have gone because he could not bear to be distrusted,” she said. “You are both sorry for Jernyngham, but don’t you think the man he unjustly suspects deserves some pity?”
“Well,” said Colston, “I’ve tried to keep an open mind. Prejudice, of course, should not be pandered to; but one is as likely to be led astray by too strong a partiality for the suspected person.” ”

“ The crest of the slope they followed commanded a vast circle of grass that was changing in the foreground from green to ocher and silvery white. Farther back, it ran on toward the sunset, a sweep of blue and neutral gray, flecked with dusky lines of bluffs, interspersed with gleaming strips of water, but nowhere in the wide landscape was there a sign of human habitation. Small birches and poplars, with an undergrowth of nut bushes, clothed the sides of the ravine, but some distance ahead it broadened out and the stream that flowed through it turned the hollow into a muskeg. ”

“ A week after Jernyngham’s arrival at the homestead he sat among the sheaves in the harvest field late one afternoon studying a letter which the mail-carrier had just brought him. His daughter, sheltered from the strong sunlight by the tall stocked sheaves, was reading an elegantly bound book of philosophy. Gertrude Jernyngham had strict rules of life and spent an hour or two of every day in improving her mind, without, so far as her friends had discovered, any enlargement of her outlook. ”

“ They were men who lived, for the most part, in the open, and made long journeys through the wilds, sleeping where they could find shelter in ravine or bluff. Such things as a broken twig, a bruised tuft of grass, or a mark in loose soil had a meaning to them, 55 and here they had plentiful material to work upon. Counting footprints and hoofmarks, measuring distances, they constructed bit by bit the drama that had taken place, but half an hour had passed before they sat down to talk it over and took out their pipes. ”

“ Prescott realized the truth of this. Traveling on foot in search of a working comrade, he had been received by the railroad hands as one of themselves; but he knew that men with checkered careers which would not bear investigation found refuge among the toilers on the new lines, and that even those who had nothing to fear would consider reticence becoming when questioned by the police. The only excuse for loquacity would be the sending of an inquisitive constable on a fruitless expedition. ”

“ Curtis had few of the qualities needed for the making of a great detective; he was merely a painstaking, determined man, with a capacity for earnest work, which is perhaps more useful than genius in the ranks of the Northwest Police. He could tirelessly follow the dog-sleds, sometimes on the scantiest rations, for hundreds of miles over the snow, sleeping in the open in the arctic frost. He had made long forced marches to succor improvident settlers starving far out in the wilds ”

“ Harry Colston made a model husband in some respects, but he had his limitations. His virtues were commonplace and sometimes tedious; his intelligence was less than his wife’s. Muriel was fond of him, but his unwavering good-nature and placidity irritated her. She was inclined to be sorry for her sister in some ways.
“Muriel,” Mrs. Colston resumed gently, “your happiness means a good deal to me. A mistake might cost you dear, and, after all, one cannot have everything.” ”

“ The high plain was strewn with rocky fragments, the peaks above were lost in vapor, but he saw by a glance at the watery sun that it ran roughly west; and footprints led across it with an inclination toward the south. This was comforting, because the line of track ran to the south, and if he could strike that, it would serve as a guide; moreover it confirmed Prescott’s conclusion that Kermode, who had evidently found the mineral vein worthless, would hold on toward the sea. He was not the man to haunt familiar ground when a wide, newly opened country lay before him. ”

“ For several moments Jernyngham fixed his eyes on him, and his suspicions began to melt away. Truth had rung in Prescott’s voice and it was stamped on his face; no man, he thought, could lie and look as this rancher did. Even the discovery of the brown clothes appeared less damaging. ”

“ He told her the story of his wanderings and what he had learned about Kermode’s adventures. She listened with eager attention, and laughed now and then.
“It’s convincing on the face of it,” she declared. “One feels that everything is exactly what Cyril Jernyngham must have done. Will you tell his father?”
“No,” Prescott answered gravely. “He wouldn’t believe the tale.”
“But I feel it can’t be doubted, after what I have heard of Cyril’s character and his conduct in England.”
“You have an open mind. I think you hate injustice; you try to be fair. ”

“ It was situated on the edge of a belt of a muskeg sprinkled with birches and small pines, where the new railroad, leaving the open country to the south, ran up toward the great coniferous forest that fringes the northern portion of the prairie. Prescott had sold his horse at a lonely farm and he was now tired and hungry, but he felt satisfied that he was on the right track and had succeeded in eluding the police. Curtis and Private Stanton were men of fixed ideas; believing Jernyngham to be dead, they had, no doubt, merely made a few perfunctory inquiries at the nearest railroad camps. ”

“ You know how we live here; I can guess what you have enjoyed at home. Life’s strenuous on the prairie, and though I think it’s good, it makes demands on one you can’t have felt in England. There’s so much that you must give up, many things that you will miss. I am anxious when I think of it.”
Muriel looked far across the plain which ran back; glistening in the sunlight, until it faded into cold blues and purples toward the skyline. The gray bluffs, standing one behind the other, and the long straggling line of timber by a ravine marked its vast extent. ”

“ Girls of the kind we’re considering are brought up in luxury, taught every accomplishment that’s economically useless, led to believe that every comfort they need will somehow be supplied. They’re charming in their proper environment, but it’s a cruelty to take them out of it. They’d be helpless in this grim country, where you must work for all you want and do without many things even then. Can you imagine Miss Hurst standing over a hot stove all day and spending her evenings mending your worn-out shirts?”
Prescott looked up, his face set hard. ”

“ Gertrude’s tone was sad. “He has been brooding over the dreadful news ever since it reached us. It has possessed him absolutely; he can think of nothing else, and there will be no relief for him until he finds the guilty person, or it is proved beyond all doubt that the police are mistaken.” She paused before she went on. “If they’re right, I think I should feel as merciless as he does. Cyril was my only brother; I was very fond of him.”
Her voice trembled a little, though her eyes were hard, and Prescott felt sorry for her. ”

“ Glad to meet a man who’s a friend of his; but if you expect a job here, you don’t want to mention it. If another fellow of that kind comes along, the boss will get after him with a gun.”
“Kermode,” the Englishman explained, “is a man of happy and original thoughts. I believe I might say he is unique.”
The conversation was interrupted by a steadily increasing rattle, and a great light that moved swiftly blazed on the camp. It faded as a ballast-train rolled out upon the bank which traversed the swamp, with a swarm of indistinct figures clinging to the low cars. ”