The Impostor
Courthorne did not parry the unexpressed question. “Oh, yes,” he said, with a little sardonic smile. “I know. The backbone of the nation – solemn, virtuous, and slow. You’re like them, but my folks were different, as you surmise. I don’t think they had many estimable qualities from your point of view, but if they all didn’t go quite straight they never went slow, and they had a few prejudices, which is why I found it advisable to leave the old country. Still, I’ve had my fill of all that life can offer most folks out here, while you scarcely seem to have found virtue pay you. They told me at the settlement things were bad with you.”
Witham, who was usually correct in his deductions, surmised that his companion had an object, and expected something in return for this confidence. There was also no need for reticence when every farmer in the district knew all about his affairs, while something urged him to follow Courthorne’s lead.
“Yes,” he said quietly. “They are. You see, when I lost my cattle in the blizzard, I had to sell out or mortgage the place to the hilt, and during the last two years I haven’t made the interest. The loan falls due in August, and they’re going to foreclose on me.”
“Then,” said Courthorne, “what is keeping you here when the result of every hour’s work you put in will go straight into another’s man’s pocket?”
Witham smiled a little. “In the first place, I’ve nowhere else to go, and there’s something in the feeling that one has held on to the end. Besides, until a few days ago I had a vague hope that by working double tides, I might get another crop in. Somebody might have advanced me a little on it because the mortgage only claims the house and land.”
Courthorne looked at him curiously. “No. We are not alike,” he said. “There’s a slow stubborn devil in you, Witham, and I think I’d be afraid of you if I ever did you an injury. But go on.”
“There’s very little more. My team ran away down the ravine, and I had to put one beast out of its misery. I can’t do my ploughing with one horse, and that leaves me stranded for the want of the dollars to buy another with. It’s usually a very little thing that turns the scale, but now the end has come, I don’t know that I’m sorry. I’ve never had a good time, you see, and the struggle was slowly crushing the life out of me.”
Witham spoke quietly, without bitterness, but Courthorne, who had never striven at all but stretched out his hand and taken what was offered, the more willingly when it was banned alike by judicial and moral law, dimly understood him. He was a fearless man, but he knew his courage would not have been equal to the strain of that six years’ struggle against loneliness, physical fatigue, and adverse seasons, during which disaster followed disaster. He looked at the bronzed farmer as he said, “Still, you would do a little in return for a hundred dollars that would help you to go on with the fight?”
A faint sparkle crept into Witham’s eyes. It was not hope, but rather the grim anticipation of the man offered a better weapon when standing with his back to the wall.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I would do almost anything.”
“Even if it was against the law?”
Witham sat silent for almost a minute, but there was no indecision in his face, which slightly perplexed Courthorne. “Yes,” he said. “Though I kept it while I could, the law was made for the safe-guarding of prosperous men, but with such as I am it is every man for his own hand and the devil to care for the vanquished. Still, there is a reservation.”
Courthorne nodded. “It’s unlawful, but not against the unwritten code.”
“Well,” said Witham quietly, “when you tell me what you want I should have a better opinion.”
Courthorne laughed a little, though there was something unpleasant in his eyes. “When I first came out to this country I should have resented that,” he said. “Now, it seems to me that I’m putting too much in your hands if I make the whole thing clear before you commit yourself in any way.”
Witham nodded. “In fact, you have got to trust me. You can do so safely.”
“The assurance of the guileless is astonishing and occasionally hard to bear,” said Courthorne. “Why not reverse the position?”
Witham’s gaze was steady, and free from embarrassment. “I am,” he said, “waiting for your offer.”
“Then,” said Courthorne dryly, “here it is. We are running a big load through to the northern settlements and the reserves to-morrow, and while there’s a good deal of profit attached to the venture, I have a notion that Sergeant Stimson has had word of it. Now, the Sergeant knows just how I stand with the rustlers, though he can fasten no charge on me, and he will have several of his troopers looking out for me. Well, I want one of them to see and follow me south along the Montana trail. There’s no horse in the Government service can keep pace with that black of mine, but it would not be difficult to pull him and just keep the trooper out of carbine shot behind. When he finds he can’t overtake the black he’ll go off for his comrades, and the boys will run our goods across the river while they’re picking up the trail.”
“You mentioned the horse, but not yourself,” said Witham quietly.
Courthorne laughed. “Yes,” he said; “I will not be there. I’m offering you one hundred dollars to ride the black for me. You can put my furs on, and anybody who saw you and knew the horse would certify it was me.”
“And where will you be?”
“Here,” said Courthorne dryly. “The boys will have no use for me until they want a guide, but they’ll leave an unloaded packhorse handy, and, as it wouldn’t suit any of us to make my connexion with them too plain, it will be a night or two later when I join them. In the meanwhile your part’s quite easy. No trooper could ride you down unless you wanted him to, and you’ll ride straight on to Montana – I’ve a route marked out for you. You’ll stop at the places I tell you, and the testimony of anybody who saw you on the black would be quite enough to clear me if Stimson’s men are too clever for the boys.”
Witham sat still a moment, and it was not avarice which prompted him when he said, “Considering the risk, one hundred dollars is very little.”
“Of course,” said Courthorne. “Still, it isn’t worth any more to me, and there will be your expenses. If it doesn’t suit you, I will do the thing myself and find the boys another guide.”
He spoke indifferently, but Witham was not a fool, and knew that he was lying.
“Turn your face to the light,” he said sharply.
A little ominous glint became visible in Courthorne’s eyes, and there was just a trace of darker colour in his forehead, but Witham saw it and was not astonished. Still Courthorne did not move.
“What made you ask me that?” he said.
Witham watched him closely, but his voice betrayed no special interest as he said, “I fancied I saw a mark across your cheek. It seemed to me that it had been made by a whip.”
The deeper tint was more visible on Courthorne’s forehead, where the swollen veins showed a trifle, and he appeared to swallow something before he spoke. “Aren’t you asking too many questions? What has a mark on my face to do with you?”
“Nothing,” said Witham quietly. “Will you go through the conditions again?”
Courthorne nodded. “I pay you one hundred dollars – now,” he said. “You ride south to-morrow along the Montana trail and take the risk of the troopers overtaking you. You will remain away a fortnight at my expense, and pass in the meanwhile for me. Then you will return at night as rancher Witham, and keep the whole thing a secret from everybody.”
Witham sat silent and very still again for more than a minute. He surmised that the man who made the offer had not told him all and there was more behind, but that was, after all, of no great importance. He was prepared to do a good deal for one hundred dollars, and his bare life of effort and self-denial had grown almost unendurable. He had now nothing to lose, and while some impulse urged him to the venture, he felt that it was possible fate had in store for him something better than he had known in the past. In the meanwhile the cigar he held went out, and the striking of a match as Courthorne lighted another roused him suddenly from the retrospect he was sinking into. The bitter wind still moaned about the ranch, emphasizing its loneliness, and the cedar shingles rattled dolefully overhead, while it chanced that as Witham glanced towards the roof his eyes rested on the suspended piece of rancid pork which with a little flour and a few potatoes had during the last few months provided him with a sustenance. It was of course a trifle, but it tipped the beam, as trifles often do, and the man who was tired of all it symbolized straightened himself with a little mirthless laugh.
“On your word of honour there is nothing beyond the risk of a few days’ detention which can affect me?” he said.
“No,” said Courthorne solemnly, knowing that he lied. “On my honour. The troopers could only question you. Is it a deal?”
“Yes,” said Witham simply, stretching out his hand for the roll of bills the other flung down on the table, and, while one of the contracting parties knew that the other would regret it bitterly, the bargain was made.
Then Courthorne laughed in his usual indolent fashion as he said, “Well, it’s all decided, and I don’t even ask your word. To-morrow will see the husk sloughed off and for a fortnight you’ll be Lance Courthorne. I hope you feel equal to playing the rôle with credit, because I wouldn’t entrust my good fame to everybody.”
Witham smiled dryly. “I fancy I shall,” he said, and long afterwards recalled the words. “You see, I had ambitions in my callow days, and it’s not my fault that hitherto I’ve never had a part to play.”
Rancher Witham was, however, wrong in this. He had played the part of an honest man with a courage which had brought him to ruin, but there was now to be a difference.
CHAPTER III – TROOPER SHANNON’S QUARREL
There was bitter frost in the darkness outside when two young men stood talking in the stables of a little outpost lying a long ride back from the settlement in the lonely prairie. One leaned against a manger with a pipe in his hand, while the spotless, softly-gleaming harness hung up behind him showed what his occupation had been. The other stood bolt upright with lips set, and a faint greyness which betokened strong emotion showing through his tan. The lantern above them flickered in the icy draughts, and from out of the shadows beyond its light came the stamping of restless horses and the smell of prairie hay, which is pungent with the odours of wild peppermint.
The two lads, and they were very little more, were friends, in spite of the difference in their upbringing, for there are few distinctions between caste and caste in that country where manhood is still esteemed the greatest thing, and the primitive virtues count for more than wealth or intellect. Courage and endurance still command respect in the new North-West, and that both the lads possessed them was made evident by the fact that they were troopers of the North-West police, a force of splendid cavalry whose duty it is to patrol the wilderness at all seasons and in all weathers, under scorching sun and in blinding snow.
The men who keep the peace of the prairie are taught what heat and thirst are, when they ride in couples through a desolate waste wherein there is only bitter water, parched by pitiless sunrays and whitened by the intolerable dust of alkali. They also discover just how much cold the human frame can endure, when they lie down with only the stars above them, long leagues from the nearest outpost, in a trench, scooped in the snow, and they know how near one may come to suffocation and yet live through the grassfire’s blinding smoke. It happens now and then that two who have answered to the last roster in the icy darkness do not awaken when the lingering dawn breaks across the great white waste, and only the coyote knows their resting-place, but the watch and ward is kept, and the lonely settler dwells as safe in the wilderness as he would in an English town.
Trooper Shannon was an Irishman from the bush of Ontario, Trooper Payne, English, and a scion of a somewhat distinguished family in the old country, but while he told nobody why he left it suddenly, nobody thought of asking him. He was known to be a bold rider and careful of his beast, and that was sufficient for his comrades and the keen-eyed Sergeant Stimson. He glanced at his companion thoughtfully as he said, “She was a pretty girl. You knew her in Ontario?”
Shannon’s hands trembled a little. “Sure,” he said, “Larry’s place was just a mile beyont our clearing, an’ there was never a bonnier thing than Ailly Blake came out from the old country – but is it need there is for talking when ye’ve seen her? There was once I watched her smile at ye with the black eyes that would have melted the heart out of any man. Waking and sleeping they’re with me still.”
Three generations of the Shannons had hewn the lonely clearing further into the bush of Ontario and married the daughters of the soil, but the Celtic strain, it was evident, had not run out yet. Payne, however, came of English stock, and expressed himself differently.
“It was a – shame,” he said. “Of course he flung her over. I think you saw him, Pat?”
Shannon’s face grew greyer, and he quivered visibly as his passion shook him, while Payne felt his own blood pulse faster as he remembered the graceful dark-eyed girl who had given him and his comrade many a welcome meal when their duty took them near her brother’s homestead. That was, however, before one black day for Ailly and Larry Blake when Lance Courthorne also rode that way.
“Yes,” said the lad from Ontario, “I was driving in for the stores when I met him in the willow bluff, an’ Courthorne pulls his divil of a black horse up with a little ugly smile on the lips of him when I swung the wagon right across the trail.
“‘That’s not civil, trooper,’ says he.
“‘I’m wanting a word,’ says I, with the black hate choking me at the sight of him. ‘What have ye done with Ailly?’
“‘Is it anything to you?’ says he.
“‘It’s everything,’ says I. ‘And if ye will not tell me I’ll tear it out of ye.’
“Courthorne laughs a little, but I saw the divil in his eyes. ‘I don’t think you’re quite man enough,’ says he, sitting very quiet on the big black horse. ‘Anyway, I can’t tell you where she is just now, because she left the dancing saloon she was in down in Montana when I last saw her.’
“I had the big whip that day, and I forgot everything as I heard the hiss of it round my shoulder. It came home across the ugly face of him, and then I flung it down and grabbed the carbine as he swung the black round with one hand fumbling in his jacket. It came out empty, an’ we sat there a moment, the two of us, Courthorne white as death, his eyes like burning coals, and the fingers of me trembling on the carbine. Sorrow on the man that he hadn’t a pistol, or I’d have sent the black soul of him to the divil it came from.”
The lad panted, and Payne, who had guessed at his hopeless devotion to the girl who had listened to Courthorne, made a gesture of disapproval that was tempered by sympathy. It was for her sake, he fancied, Shannon had left the Ontario clearing and followed Larry Blake to the West.
“I’m glad he hadn’t, Pat,” said Payne. “What was the end of it?”
“I remembered,” said the other with a groan, “remembered I was Trooper Shannon, an’ dropped the carbine into the wagon. Courthorne wheels the black horse round, an’ I saw the red line across the face of him.
“‘You’ll be sorry for this, my lad,’ says he.”
“He’s a dangerous man,” Payne said thoughtfully. “Pat, you came near being a – ass that day. Anyway, it’s time we went in, and as Larry’s here I shouldn’t wonder if we saw Courthorne again before the morning.”
The icy cold went through them to the bone as they left the stables, and it was a relief to enter the loghouse, which was heated to fustiness by the glowing stove. A lamp hung from a rough birch beam, and its uncertain radiance showed motionless figures wrapped in blankets in the bunks round the walls. Two men were, however, dressing, and one already in uniform sat at a table talking to another swathed in furs, who was from his appearance a prairie farmer. The man at the table was lean and weather-bronzed, with grizzled hair and observant eyes. They were fixed steadily upon the farmer, who knew that very little which happened upon the prairie escaped the vigilance of Sergeant Stimson.
“It’s straight talk you’re giving me, Larry? What do you figure on making by it?” he said.
The farmer laughed mirthlessly. “Not much, anyway, beyond the chance of getting a bullet in me back or me best steer lifted one dark night. ’Tis not forgiving the rustlers are, and Courthorne’s the divil,” he said. “But listen now, Sergeant; I’ve told ye where he is, and if ye’re not fit to corral him I’ll ride him down meself.”
Sergeant Stimson wrinkled his forehead. “If anybody knows what they’re after, it should be you,” he said, watching the man out of the corner of his eyes. “Still, I’m a little worried as to why, when you’ll get nothing for it, you’re anxious to serve the State.”
The farmer clenched a big hand. “Sergeant, you that knows everything, will ye drive me mad, an’ to – with the State!” he said. “Sure, it’s gospel I’m telling ye, an’ as you’re knowing well, it’s me could tell where the boys who ride at midnight drop many a keg. Well, if ye will have your reason, it was Courthorne who put the black shame on me an’ mine.”
Sergeant Stimson nodded, for he had already suspected this.
“Then,” he said dryly, “we’ll give you a chance of helping us to put the handcuffs on him. Now, because they wouldn’t risk the bridge, and the ice is not thick yet everywhere, there are just two ways they could bring the stuff across, and I figure we’d be near the thing if we fixed on Graham’s Pool. Still, Courthorne’s no kind of fool, and just because that crossing seems the likeliest he might try the other one. You’re ready for duty, Trooper Payne?”
The lad stood straight. “I can turn out in ten minutes, sir,” he said.
“Then,” and Sergeant Stimson raised his voice a trifle, “you will ride at once to the rise a league outside the settlement, and watch the Montana trail. Courthorne will probably be coming over from Witham’s soon after you get there, riding the big black, and you’ll keep out of sight and follow him. If he heads for Carson’s Crossing ride for Graham’s at a gallop, where you’ll find me with the rest. If he makes for the bridge, you will overtake him if you can and find out what he’s after. It’s quite likely he’ll tell you nothing, and you will not arrest him, but bearing in mind that every minute he spends there will be a loss to the rustlers you’ll keep him so long as you can. Trooper Shannon, you’ll ride at once to the bluff above Graham’s Pool, and watch the trail. Stop any man who rides that way, and if it’s Courthorne keep him until the rest of the boys come up with me. You’ve got your duty quite straight, both of you?”
The lads saluted, and went out, while the Sergeant smiled a little as he glanced at the farmer, and the men who were dressing.
“It’s steep chances we’ll have Mr. Courthorne’s company to-morrow, boys,” he said. “Fill up the kettle, Tom, and serve out a pint of coffee. There are reasons why we shouldn’t turn out too soon. We’ll saddle in an hour or so.”
Two of the men went out, and the stinging blast that swept in through the open door smote a smoky smear across the blinking lamp and roused a sharper crackling from the stove. Then one returned with the kettle and there was silence, when the fusty heat resumed its sway. Now and then a tired trooper murmured in his sleep, or there was a snapping in the stove, while the icy wind moaned about the building and the kettle commenced a soft sibilation, but nobody moved or spoke. Three shadowy figures in uniform sat just outside the light soaking in the grateful warmth while they could, for they knew that they might spend the next night unsheltered from the Arctic cold of the wilderness. The Sergeant sat with thoughtful eyes and wrinkled forehead where the flickering radiance forced up his lean face and silhouetted his spare outline on the rough boarding behind him, and close by the farmer sucked silently at his pipe, waiting, with a stony calm that sprang from fierce impatience, the reckoning with the man who had brought back shame upon him.
It was about this time when Witham stood shivering a little with the bridle of a big black horse in his hand just outside the door of his homestead. A valise and two thick blankets were strapped to the saddle, and he had donned the fur cap and coat Courthorne usually wore. Courthorne himself stood close by, smiling at him sardonically.
“If you keep the cap down and ride with your stirrups long, as I’ve fixed them, anybody would take you for me,” said he. “Go straight through the settlement, and let any man you come across see you. His testimony would come in useful if Stimson tries to fix a charge on me. You know your part of the bargain. You’re to be Lance Courthorne for a fortnight from to-day.”
“Yes,” said Witham dryly. “I wish I was equally sure of yours.”
Courthorne laughed. “I’m to be Rancher Witham until to-morrow night, anyway. Don’t worry about me. I’ll borrow those books of yours and improve my mind. Possible starvation is the only thing that threatens me, and it’s unfortunate you’ve left nothing fit to eat behind you.”
Witham swung himself into the saddle, a trifle awkwardly, for Courthorne rode with longer stirrup leathers than he was accustomed to, then he raised one hand, and the other man laughed a little as he watched him sink into the darkness of the shadowy prairie. When the drumming of hoofs was lost in the moaning of the wind he strode towards the stable, and taking up the lantern surveyed Witham’s horse thoughtfully.
“The thing cuts with both edges, and the farmer only sees one of them,” he said. “That beast’s about as difficult to mistake as my black is.”
Then he returned to the loghouse, and presently put on Witham’s old fur coat and tattered fur cap. Had Witham seen his unpleasant smile as he did it, he would probably have wheeled the black horse and returned at a gallop, but the farmer was sweeping across the waste of whitened grass at least a league away by this time. Now and then a half-moon blinked down between wisps of smoky cloud, but for the most part grey dimness hung over the prairie, and the drumming of hoofs rang stridently through the silence. Witham knew a good horse, and had bred several of them – before a blizzard which swept the prairie killed off his finest yearlings as well as their pedigree sire – and his spirits rose as the splendid beast swung into faster stride beneath him.
For two weeks at least he would be free from anxiety, and the monotony of his life at the lonely homestead had grown horribly irksome. Witham was young, and, now when for a brief space he had left his cares behind, the old love of adventure which had driven him out from England once more awakened and set his blood stirring. For the first time in six years of struggle he did not know what lay before him, and he had a curious, half-instinctive feeling that the trail he was travelling would lead him farther than Montana. It was borne in upon him that he had left the old hopeless life behind, and, stirred by some impulse, he broke into a little song he had sung in England, long and forgotten. He had a clear voice, and the words, which were filled with the hope of youth, rang bravely through the stillness of the frozen wilderness until the horse blundered, and Witham stopped with a little smile.
“It’s four long years since I felt as I do to-night,” he said.
Then he drew bridle and checked the horse as the lights of the settlement commenced to blink ahead, for the trail was rutted deep and frozen into the likeness of adamant, but when the first frame houses flung tracks of yellow radiance across the whitened grass he dropped his left arm a trifle and rode in at a canter as he had seen Courthorne do. Witham did not like Courthorne, but he meant to keep his bargain.
As he passed the hotel more slowly a man who came out called to him. “Hello, Lance! Taking the trail?” he said. “Well, it kind of strikes me it’s time you did. One of Stimson’s boys was down here, and he seemed quite anxious about you.”