DEPUTY
BY HAROLD BINDLOSS



HAWTREY'S DEPUTY


BY

HAROLD BINDLOSS



_Author of "The Impostor," "The Liberationist," etc._




Illustrated by

Cyrus Cuneo




WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED

LONDON, MELBOURNE AND TORONTO

1910




CONTENTS.


CHAPTER

I.--SALLY CREIGHTON
II.--SALLY TAKES CHARGE
III.--WYLLARD ASSENTS
IV.--A CRISIS
V.--THE OLD COUNTRY
VI.--HER PICTURE
VII.--AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH
VIII.--THE TRAVELLING COMPANION
IX.--THE FOG
X.--DISILLUSION
XI.--AGATHA'S DECISION
XII.--WANDERERS
XIII.--THE SUMMONS
XIV.--AGATHA PROVES OBDURATE
XV.--THE BEACH
XVI.--THE FIRST ICE
XVII.--DEFEAT
XVIII.--A DELICATE ERRAND
XIX.--THE PRIOR CLAIM
XX.--THE FIRST STAKE
XXI.--GREGORY MAKES UP HIS MIND
XXII.--A PAINFUL REVELATION
XXIII.--THROUGH THE SNOW
XXIV.--THE LANDING
XXV.--NEWS OF DISASTER
XXVI.--THE RESCUE
XXVII.--IN THE WILDERNESS
XXVIII.--THE UNEXPECTED
XXIX.--CAST AWAY
XXX.--THE LAST EFFORT
XXXI.--WYLLARD COMES HOME




ILLUSTRATIONS


"In another moment Wyllard's last doubt vanished, and he sprang forward
with a gasp." . . . . . . _Frontispiece_

"She could not raise him wholly, and he cried out once when his injured
leg trailed in the snow."

"Then she turned to Sproatly. 'You can wash up those dishes on the
table.'"

"At length the door opened, and Agatha Ismay, wrapped in a long cloak,
came in."

"'Now,' he said, 'I won't let you fall.'"

"'You!' was all she said."

"In another moment Hawtrey sprang up on the platform, and she felt his
arms about her."

"Then something seemed to crack, and she saw the off-side horse stumble
and plunge."

"'Do you think--that--would have mattered?'"

"'Well,' she said, 'we have driven over as we promised!'"

"Agatha held her hands up ... as the man leaned down, and the next
moment she was strongly lifted."

"'I guess I needn't tell you where that is,' he said, and pointed to
the parallel of latitude that ran across."

"It seemed that he did not immediately notice her."

"'Are these things very much too big for you, Sally?'"

"It shambled forward in a curious manner."

"'I thought you might save Gregory, if I told you.'"

"'I was waiting for you,' she said simply."




HAWTREY'S DEPUTY.


CHAPTER I.

SALLY CREIGHTON.

The frost outside was bitter, and the prairie, which rolled back from
Lander's in long undulations to the far horizon, gleamed white beneath
the moon, but there was warmth and brightness in Stukely's wooden barn.
It stood at one end of the little, desolate settlement, where the trail
that came up from the railroad thirty miles away forked off into two
wavy ribands that melted into a waste of snow. Lander's consisted then
of five or six frame houses and stores, a hotel of the same material,
several sod stables, and a few birch-log barns; and its inhabitants
considered it one of the most promising places in Western Canada.
That, however, is the land of promise, a promise that is in due time
usually fulfilled, and the men of Lander's were, for the most part,
shrewdly practical optimists. They made the most of a somewhat grim
and frugal present, and staked all they had to give--the few dollars
they had brought in with them, and their powers of enduring toil--upon
the roseate future.

Stukely had given them, and their scattered neighbours, who had driven
there across several leagues of prairie, a supper in his barn, and a
big rusty stove, which had been brought in for the occasion, stood in
the midst of it. Its pipe glowed in places a dull red, and Stukely now
and then wondered uneasily whether it was charring a larger hole
through the shingles of the roof. On one side of the stove the floor
had been cleared; on the other benches, empty barrels, and tables were
huddled together, and such of the guests as were not at the moment
dancing sat upon them indiscriminately. A keg of hard Ontario cider
had been provided for their refreshment, and it was open to anybody to
ladle up what he wanted with a tin dipper, while a haze of tobacco
smoke drifted in thin blue wisps beneath the big nickelled lamps. In
addition to the reek of it, the place was filled with the smell of hot
iron which an over-driven stove gives out, and the subtle odours of old
skin coats.

The guests, however, were accustomed to an atmosphere of that kind, and
it did not trouble them. For the most part, they were lean and spare,
bronzed by frost and snow-blink, and straight of limb, for, though
scarcely half of them were Canadian born, the prairie, as a rule,
swiftly sets its stamp upon the newcomer. There was also something in
the way they held themselves and put their feet down that suggested
health and vigour, and, in the case of most of them, a certain
alertness and decision of character. Some hailed from English cities,
a few from those of Canada, and some from the bush of Ontario; but
there was a similarity between them which the cut and tightness of
their store clothing did not altogether account for. They lived well
if plainly, and toiled out in the open unusually hard. Their eyes were
steady, their bronzed skin was clear, and their laughter had a
wholesome ring.

A fiery-haired Scot, a Highlander of the Isles, sat upon a barrel-head
sawing at a fiddle, and the shrill scream of it filled the barn. Tone
he did not aspire to, but he played with Caledonian verve and swing,
and kept the snapping time. It was mad, harsh music of the kind that
sets the blood tingling and the feet to move in rhythm, though the
exhilarating effect of it was rather spoiled by the efforts of the
little French Canadian who had another fiddle and threw in clanging
chords upon the lower strings.

They were dancing in the cleared space what was presumably a quadrille,
though it bore almost as great a resemblance to a Scottish country
dance, or indeed to one of the measures of Bretonne France, which was,
however, characteristic of the country. The Englishman has set no
distinguishable impress upon the prairie. It has absorbed him with his
reserve and sturdy industry, and the Canadian from the cities is
apparently lost in it, too, for theirs is the leaven that works through
the mass slowly and unobtrusively, and it is the Scot and the habitant
of French extraction who have given the life of it colour and
individuality. Extremes meet and fuse on the wide white levels of the
West.

It was, however, an Englishman who was the life of that dance, and he
was physically a bigger man than most of the rest, for as a rule, at
least, the Colonial born run to wiry hardness rather than solidity of
frame. Gregory Hawtrey was tall and thick of shoulder, though the rest
of him was in fine modelling, and he had a pleasant face of the English
blue-eyed type. Just then it was suffused with almost boyish
merriment, and indeed an irresponsible gaiety was a salient
characteristic of the man. One would have called him handsome, though
his mouth was a trifle slack, and there was a certain assurance in his
manner that just fell short of swagger. He was the kind of man one
likes at first sight, but for all that not the kind his hard-bitten
neighbours would have chosen to stand by them through the strain of
drought and frost in adverse seasons.

As it happened, the grim, hard-faced Sager, who had come there from
Michigan, was just then talking to Stukely about him.

"Kind of tone about that man--guess he once had the gold-leaf on him
quite thick, and it hasn't all worn off yet," he said. "Seen more
Englishmen like him, and some folks from Noo York, too, when I took
parties bass fishing way back yonder."

He waved his hand vaguely, as though to indicate the American Republic,
and Stukely agreed with him. They were also right as far as they went,
for Hawtrey undoubtedly possessed a grace of manner which, however,
somehow failed to reach distinction. It was, perhaps, just a little
too apparent, and lacked the strengthening feature of restraint.

"I wonder," said Stukely reflectively, "what those kind of fellows done
before they came out here."

He had expressed a curiosity which is now and then to be met with on
the prairie, but Sager, the charitable, grinned.

"Oh," he said, "I guess quite a few done no more than make their folks
on the other side tired of them, and that's why they sent them out to
you. Some of them get paid so much on condition that they don't come
back again. Say"--and he glanced towards the dancers--"Dick
Creighton's Sally seems quite stuck on Hawtrey by the way she's looking
at him."

Stukely assented. He was a somewhat primitive person, as was Sally
Creighton, for that matter, and he did not suppose she would have been
greatly offended had she overheard his observations.

"Well," he said, "I've thought that, too. If she wants him she'll get
him. She's a smart girl--Sally."

There were not many women present--perhaps one to every two of the men,
which was, however, rather a large proportion in that country, and none
of their garments were particularly elegant. The fabric was, for the
most part, the cheapest obtainable, and they had fashioned it with
their own fingers in the scanty interludes between washing, and baking,
and mending their husbands' or fathers' clothes. Their faces were a
trifle sallow and had lost their freshness in the dry heat of the
stove. Their hands were hard and reddened, and in figure most of them
were thin and spare. One could have fancied that in a land where
everybody toiled strenuously their burden was the heavier. One or two
of them had clearly been accustomed to a smoother life, but there was
nothing to suggest that they looked back to it with regret. As a
matter of fact, they looked forward, working for