• Main
  • Catatlog
  • For Authors
  • Contacts




    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

    [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][Next]