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Title: Sunshine and snow

Author: Harold Bindloss

Release date: November 1, 2022 [eBook #69277]
                Most recently updated: November 18, 2022

Language: English

Original publication: Canada: Musson Book Company, 1900

Credits: Al Haines


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SUNSHINE AND SNOW ***







[Frontispiece: "'FOUND THEM HIDIN' DOWN THE FORE-HOLD, SIR.'" p. 26.]




  SUNSHINE AND SNOW.

  BY

  HAROLD BINDLOSS.

  Author of "In the Niger Country," "The Concession Hunters,"
  "Ainslie's Ju-ju" etc.



  _WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS._



  TORONTO:
  THE MUSSON BOOK COMPANY,
  LIMITED.




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER

I.--THE PAPER-CHASE

II.--IN COLLISION

III.--THE STOLEN CATTLE

IV.--THROUGH THE BLIZZARD

V.--ADVERSE FORTUNE

VI.--WHEN THE SNOWS CAME DOWN




SUNSHINE AND SNOW.



CHAPTER I.

THE PAPER-CHASE.

It was a December day, the great day of all the year to Charley
Gordon and the boys of Firdene School, which stands in a deep, green
valley of the North Country, for the last term's work was done.  That
very morning the prizes had been given away, and on the following one
they would depart homewards for their Christmas holiday.  Charley had
come out first in many subjects, besides winning a special
certificate for all-round excellence, and had read his prize essay to
a gathering of all his comrades and some of their parents in the
great stone hall which had once formed part of an ancient abbey.  The
prize distribution at Firdene was generally well attended.

Even now, as he ran first in the paper-chase, he could remember the
mass of faces turned towards him, and the clapping of hands, though
it hurt him to see his elder brother Arthur, who stood among the
guests, watching him, he thought, sadly.  Arthur was an officer of
artillery, as he too hoped to be, and since their father and mother
died had been his only guardian, while Charley was never tired of
singing his praises to less fortunate companions who had not an army
officer for a brother.  Still--when everybody called, 'Bravo!' and he
blushed and felt uncomfortable when one old lady said, "What a pretty
boy!"--Arthur only said very quietly, "You have done well, Charley."

In the afternoon there was always a paper-chase, with prizes for the
two hares if not caught, or the first two hounds that overtook them,
and all the athletes of Firdene practised for it.  Charley ran well,
and now with the empty bag which had held the torn paper fluttering
behind his shoulders he did his best, a comrade panting at his heels,
and several of the fastest hounds somewhere two or three fields
behind, while not far ahead a high ridge of furzy down shut off the
dip into Firdene valley.  Although it was winter, a gentle south-west
wind blew up channel soft to the breath, while, as the daylight faded
a white mist rolled up from the valley, and the rush through the damp
air brought the blood mantling under the runner's skin.  He was a
clean-limbed, vigorous English boy, with muscles suppled and
strengthened by many a swim from the pebble beach and exercise in the
open air; for they were taught at Firdene that a healthy body means a
healthy mind, and that laziness and uncleanliness, with the habits
they breed, formed a millstone which might hang about a boy's neck
during the rest of his life.  So, very few among them slunk off into
the fir-woods to smoke, as unfortunately some school-boys do, and,
when caught red-handed it was bad for those who did; while it was
currently reported that the head of the school once checked an
indignant parent who complained about her son getting kicked at
football and tearing his clothes in the paper-chase: "Madam, you
should be thankful you boy takes an innocent pleasure in these
desirable things," he said.  "If he doesn't lose his temper, a few
kicks may even be good for him."

Charley, however, had his failings, and one of them was a conviction
that only the best of everything was good enough for him.  In itself
this was not very wrong, but in trying to get it he sometimes forgot
what others were entitled to; and, because he was generally
successful, there began to grow up within him a dangerous vanity.
Many a vain boy finds when he has left the school he lorded over that
in the outside world busy men are sometimes uncivil to presumptuous
striplings, and then the discovery that he is a very insignificant
person pains him.  Still, he did all that lay before him thoroughly;
and now, dressed in the Firdene football jersey with a crimson band
round shoulders and breast, and the neatest of cricket shoes, he ran
his hardest, swinging light-footed across the long meadows, through
the dead leaves that rustled beside a copse, and then over
stiff-ploughed furrows that sadly soiled his shoes, towards the brook
which crossed a hollow.  He halted a moment on the short turf beside
it, for the stream ran fast and high, and while he did so the clumsy
red-haired boy behind him came lumbering up.

"We're caught; I can't jump it!" gasped the latter, looking ruefully
at the wide stretch of muddy water which eddied and gurgled among the
rotting flags.  "No scent left for them to follow, so they'll head us
off!"

"Don't be a muff, Baxter!" said Charley, moving backwards, as the
hounds behind, catching sight of them, set up a triumphant cry. "I
can; follow me;" and, with a rapid quickening of short steps, he set
himself at the leap, while Baxter looked on and envied him.  Then the
lithe form shot out into mid-air, landed lightly on the ball of the
feet; and, never looking behind him, Charley went springily up the
opposite slope of the hollow.

"Might have waited for me!" said Baxter, as, setting his teeth, he
also hurled himself at the leap; but he fell short, and, floundering
waist-deep, lost his footing in a swifter rush of current; then
clawing at the rushes and willow branches, was swept towards a deeper
pool--and Baxter could not swim.  But the hounds were close upon
their heels; and Pierce, the foremost, was prompt of action when he
saw what had happened.

[Illustration: "HE FELL SHORT, AND, FLOUNDERING WAIST DEEP, LOST HIS
FOOTING IN A SWIFTER RUSH OF CURRENT."]

"Go on, you behind there!  Come with me, Maxwell; we must get him
out!" he shouted, and throwing his chance of the prize away, leapt
boldly into the water.  There was another splash close by and, when
Pierce grabbed the floundering Baxter, his comrade helped him, so
that presently they dragged the unfortunate lad out upon the bank,
spluttering and very wet, but not much the worse for his ducking.
"It was mean of Gordon major; he ought to have seen you across,"
Maxwell said.  "But, of course, that wouldn't strike him.  The worst
of Gordon is that he thinks such a lot of himself."

Meantime Charley, remembering nothing but that he was first, ran on
alone, brushing with a sharp crackle through yellow tufts of withered
fern, or winding among the prickly furze on the edge of the down.  He
had trained hard for that race, and the boy, or man either, who will
deny himself superfluous food, rise on raw cold mornings for an icy
bath, and in other ways try to keep his body subject to his mind, for
the benefit of both, is entitled to rejoice in the strength that
comes from it.  Training can, of course, be over-done, but it teaches
self-restraint, and those who think too much of their food and
comforts can never grow brave and strong.  But Pierce and Maxwell had
done so, too, and they did not forget everything but the prize.  So,
with head flung proudly back, and the damp air whipping his clear red
cheeks, Charley swept down the side of the valley, while the grey
walls of Firdene rose higher ahead.  The last stretch was a long
meadow with a tall hedge at the end of it, beyond which he could see
a number of grown-up people as well as boys waiting to witness the
finish; and, glancing behind him, Charley slackened his stride and
let the hounds draw up a little.  He had an audience, and would show
them what he could do.  Then the others saw him, and a shouting began.

"Gordon's home first!  Well done, Charley!  No, he's pumped out; the
hounds are coming through the gate.  A last spurt, Charley, before
they catch you!"

Sixty yards behind came the pursuers, panting
heavily,--forty--thirty, and there was a roar of voices, for the
great hedge, with the steep fall behind it, lay close ahead; while
someone shouted above all the rest in warning, "Round by the gap,
Gordon--you'll never do it!"

But Charley only clenched his hands, and quickened his stride as the
hounds came on hot-foot to catch him.  Some of them spread out to bar
the way to a gap where the thorns were thinner, and Charley smiled a
little to himself, knowing that by doing so they were throwing their
chance away.  He had fixed his eyes upon a spot straight before him,
where hazel branches, which would bend easily under anyone who had
the courage to charge them, grew tall and slender.  So a few seconds
later a great shout went up as the slim figure went flying at, what
appeared to be, the stiffest part of the barrier.  The lad rose
gallantly, and some of the watchers held their breath, expecting to
see him come down head-foremost, but there was a crash of yielding
branches and rustle of withered leaves, and breaking through he
descended lightly through eight feet of air into the hollow below.
Then while several of the hounds tore their skins and jerseys as they
struggled amid the thorns, and the rest trotted beaten round by the
gap, he came on at an easy stride with a red gash on one leg.  There
were deafening cheers when he halted breathless at the goal, and a
burly country gentleman clapped his shoulder as he said, "Well done,
my lad; well done!  My word, sir, there's good pluck in him!  Where
did you leave my big, slow-moving son?"

But the head of the school only nodded stiffly, as if he were not
altogether pleased, and looked grim when, after he asked, "Where is
Baxter?" Charley, answered smiling, "I left him in the Willow Brook,
sir."

Then the tail of the hunt came up with Baxter; and there was more
cheering when the prizes were handed to the winners; while, after
Charley had changed his clothes, he was told that the head master
wanted to see him.  He found him in his study, a grey-haired man with
a keen, close-shaven face, which looked softer than usual under the
light of a shaded lamp.

"Sit down, Gordon," he commenced, gravely.  "Your brother has
important news for you, and you must try to meet it courageously.
You are leaving Firdene to-morrow, and I hope you will do your work
in the world as thoroughly as you have done it here.  But I want you
to remember that the best men do not work for the mere sake of the
prizes, that is, the money or fame it brings.  They call the
latter--you will learn why some day--playing to the gallery, and
strong, brave men despise it.  For instance, you ran and jumped well,
but would you have taken the last dangerous leap if there had been no
one to see you?  You won the prize, but I would sooner have handed it
to Pierce or Maxwell, who gave up their chance to help poor Baxter.
You will remember that neither the prize nor the applause are, after
all, very important, and the main thing is to do your work well,
won't you?  Now, go, bear your troubles bravely.  Do your best, as I
think you have always tried to do, and some day we hope Firdene will
be proud of you."

He shook the boy's hand, and Charley went out abashed to have tea
with his brother Arthur in a quaint old-English hostelry.  This was
all part of a long-expected treat, but Charley felt he would hardly
enjoy it now, while the master's words and his brother's looks in the
morning had left him with an uneasy feeling that there was trouble at
hand.  Arthur was like him in face, with fair hair and honest grey
eyes, and he stood on the hearth-rug, looking at him, the boy
fancied, half-pityingly.  "I was glad to see you do so well,
Charley," he said; "but I almost wish I had made a blacksmith or a
carpenter of you.  I am afraid you will be sorry to hear that you
can't be a soldier as you hoped to.  How would you like to turn
farmer instead?"

Then, as the boy stared at him with puzzled eyes he laid a hand on
his shoulder saying, "Charley, the bank has failed, and nearly all
our money has been lost.  I have left the army, and nothing remains
but for you and little Reggie to begin life working for a few
shillings weekly in some big English town, or go out with me to seek
our fortune in another country.  There are too many poor people in
this one already.  You remember what I told you about my visit to
Canada?  Well, now we have very little money left, I have decided to
try farming on the prairie.  You would like to live in the open air
and drive your own oxen and horses, wouldn't you?  At least, it would
be better than licking postage stamps or copying letters all day in a
dingy office."

The boy's first feeling was that somebody had cruelly injured him.
His one desire had been to become a soldier, and he had often
pictured himself leading his company of red-coated men.  Now,
however, all that was gone; he was perhaps poorer than Evans, whom he
had once laughed at for coming back each term with fresh patches on
his well-worn clothes.  He might even have to wear old clothes, too,
and it all seemed hard and unfair, but his master's words had left
their mark, and he remembered that Arthur, who only seemed sorry for
him, had also lost everything, and said, very slowly--

"I would like it far better than living in a big smoky town.  Little
Reggie is fond of cattle and horses, too--but I had set my heart on
being an army officer."

"That's right!" said his brother Arthur.  "We can't often get what we
like.  Perhaps it wouldn't be good for us if we did, and I am sorry
for you.  Still, you will learn to ride, and shoot, and plough, and
there are such things as coyotes and antelopes to hunt if there are
no more buffalo.  Oh, yes, you'll like it famously.  However, it's
the day before the holidays.  Sit down, forget everything unpleasant,
think of the saddles and guns and snow-shoes, and enjoy your tea."

Charley did his best to be cheerful, and finally grew keenly
interested in his brother's stories about the prairie; while, when he
walked back to the school afterwards, the future seemed brighter, and
he told an admiring audience what he was going to do.  Some of the
listeners, however, laughed when Maxwell said--

"You'll have to clean out stables and hen-houses, Charley, and black
your own boots--if you wear any--and you won't like that, you know.
Fancy Gordon major plucking a fowl or combing the tail of a mule.
That's the worst of setting one's self up to be particular."

He went home with Arthur and his younger brother Reggie next day, and
it was a somewhat silent journey, while he remembered how he had long
looked forward to it.  Then for four months he lived on a farm in the
bleak hill country, where he got up long before daylight, even when
there was bitter frost, and learned to do many disagreeable but very
useful things, until at last the spring came and one afternoon he
stood, with Arthur and Reggie, on the deck of a great steamer hauling
out of dock at Liverpool.  Steam roared aloft from her escape pipe,
the winches clattered, and the deck was like a fair with swarming
passengers, while he heard his brother say to a tall, soldierly man
who shook his hand when the warning bell rang----

"Yes, I feel it.  I'm about the only friend these youngsters have in
the world, and it's a heavy responsibility.  However, it seems the
only thing we can do, and for their sake I must make the best of it.
I can't thank your wife too much for taking care of my sister.  We
shall have a hard time at the beginning, but as soon as possible I
will send for her."

The bell rang again, ropes were let go, and, with the screw throbbing
in time to the big engines which pounded below, the steamer forged
out slowly into the tide that raced seaward down the Mersey.  There
was a storm of voices, a great waving of hats, and an answering cheer
from the watchers ashore.  Then the faces grew blurred and hazy,
poorly-dressed women sat down and cried, and the men talked thickly,
while for some reason, Charley, who had neither father nor mother to
leave behind, felt his breath come faster and something dim his eyes.
It was only then, when he was leaving it for ever, he learned how
much he loved his native country.  Presently the dock wall faded
behind them too, rolling, red-painted lightships, each with a big
lantern at her mast-head, slid by, and the steamer commenced to lift
her bows leisurely out of boiling white froth as she met the long
heave of the open sea, and rolled westwards into a great half-circle
of clear, transparent blue.  But by-and-by the blue changed to
crimson low down on the horizon, and there were smears of red fire on
the sea as the sun dipped like a burning coal beneath it; after which
the twinkling stars came out one by one, and the night wind sang
songs in the rigging as the tall black masts lurched to and fro.
From one of them a reeling shaft of light zig-zagged across the sky.

Charley found it made him faint and dizzy to watch them, and, after
staring at a trembling streamer of brightness that flickered up from
a lighthouse near the Isle of Man, he suddenly lost all interest in
everything, and crawled away below, where he lay groaning with
sea-sickness.  His room smelt nastily, and presently grew
suffocating; he could scarcely keep himself within his berth, and
somebody was making unpleasant noises in the one below him.  But
though he did not think so at the time, that sickness did him no
harm, because Charley had rather too good an opinion of himself; and
if anyone, man or boy, wants to find out what a cowardly wretch he
is, he cannot do better than make himself sea-sick.  Still, though
their throbbing added to the torture of his aching head, the big
engines steadily pounded on, and swinging like a pendulum until the
cabin floor seemed to rise up on end beneath him, for there was a
fresh breeze now, the steamer, hurling the white seas apart before
her bows, rolled north and west towards the rock-bound coast of
Ireland.  Charley, however, would have felt thankful for his
comfortable room, had he seen the crowded steerage, where sea-sick
emigrants who could not get into their berths rolled up and down
together among their clattering pots and pans.  An ocean voyage on a
large steamer is not always nice at the beginning, and third-class
passengers had not much comfort then.

On the second afternoon, after calling in Lough Foyle for Irish
emigrants, the vessel steamed out into the Atlantic, past the great
cliffs of Donegal.  Charley leaned feebly against the bulwarks
watching the rainbows that flickered in the spray each time the bows
dipped into a great blue ridge of water.  Then he watched the tall
masts swing across the sky, and the bleak Irish hills grow dimmer
behind them, after which his eyes wandered curiously across the
swarming passengers.  They were men of all nations, though most of
them were evidently the struggling poor, while a few days earlier he
might have glanced indifferently, or even with disgust at their
toil-stained garments and careworn faces.  Now he could sympathise
with them, for he had learned what it costs to leave one's mother
country, and that it is not easy, even when there is only want and
hardship at home, to leave all one loves behind and go out with a
brave heart to seek better fortune in the new lands across the sea.

Presently there was a commotion about the forward hatch, and a seaman
appeared, dragging two unkempt urchins out from the black hole in the
deck.  One was still flecked with bits of the dirty newspapers he had
wrapped about him to keep out the cold when he and his companion
crawled down the slippery ladder, and hid themselves among the cargo,
before the steamer sailed.  He looked about ten years old, and was
dressed in very thin, ragged clothes, as he had been all the bitter
winter, during which he hawked papers up and down the seaport town;
while the other, who seemed older, grasped one of the boxes of
wax-lights he sold in Liverpool.  It was empty now, for he had struck
the matches to keep the rats away.  Huge rats swarm in many steamers'
holds.

"They can't drown'd us or send us to prison, can they, Tom?" asked
the younger lad, shivering, and the other flung back his head as he
answered--

"Not they!  There ain't no prisons in Canady.  My, ain't all this
wonnerful!  Never you mind for nothin', and look straight at the
Capt'in, Jim.  I've heard as all sailors is soft-'earted, an' p'r'aps
he'll be good to us."

"Found them hiding down the fore-hold, sir," said the seaman; and an
officer nodded, answering, "Take them to the skipper."  Then the pair
were led aft by two big seamen, while eight hundred passengers stared
at them.

Some of the women were pitiful, and a very poor one, fishing two
oranges out of the bundle she never lost sight of by night or day,
and now sat upon, thrust them into the younger lad's hand.  The pair
had pinched, blue faces, and shivered in the breeze, for it had been
very dark and cold in the hold, and they had had very little to eat
as they crouched there on the hard railway iron, which groaned as the
steamer rolled.

It struck Charley that he was not so very unfortunate, and had much
to be thankful for, as he watched them.




CHAPTER II.

IN COLLISION.

About the time when the seamen found the stowaways hiding in the
hold, Arthur Gordon sat in the Captain's room, and he afterwards told
Charley what happened.  He was chatting with the Purser when someone
rapped at the door, and a sailor entering explained how he came
across two boys, covered with damp newspapers, crouching in a corner
among the cargo of railway iron.

"What do you mean by hiding in my ship?" asked the Captain sternly as
they were led in.  "Tell me your names, where you live, and just what
brought you here.  Don't you know I could send you to prison for
trying to steal a passage without paying your fare?

"I'm Tom," said the eldest, trying to hide the thin blue knees that
peeped through his ragged clothes, with a wondering look at the
luxurious room, "and this is Jim.  Ain't got no other names.  We
lives with Jim's mother in a cellar.  She sewed sacks, an' was very
kind to us.  Gives us what she had, an' it wasn't very much.  Then
she dies, and the workhouse buries her--what was it, Jim?"

"'Flammation, the doctor said, but I think it was starvin'.  There
was a month when she had nothink hardly to eat," answered Jim,
gulping down something in his throat; and the Captain added more
gently, "Go on, my lad, what did you do then?"

"Then," said Tom boldly, "we lives where we could, under arches an'
sheds, dodgin' the police--Jim he sells papers, I sells
matches--until we saw them plackgards on the emigration offices.
'Free homes in Canady.  Free land.  Work and plenty for everyone,'
all printed in big red letters, an' we says, 'There's room for us two
somewhere in that good country.'  So we clubs our tradin' money--four
shillin' it was--spends sixpence on purvisions, an' hides among the
cargo, where the rats nearly eat us.  We'll give you the rest for our
passage, sir, an' when we gets rich some day we'll pay you some more.
We're not cheats, but honest traders, sir."

The Purser solemnly stretched out his hand for the bundle of coppers
in a dirty rag.  Arthur Gordon, who was too kindly a gentleman to
hurt anybody's feelings, tried not to smile when the ragged urchin
called himself a trader, and the Captain, who asked a few more
questions, pressed a bell button as he said, "H'm; it was very wrong
of you.  Still, we're not going to hang you.  Steward, take these
young rascals forward, and feed them in the steerage--they look as if
they wanted it.  Hunt out some of my old things, and ask the
stewardess to double them until they fit.  Those clothes are a
disgrace to humanity.  Now, my lads, you'll have to work for your
passage, and I've got my eye on you.  By the way, steward, don't
forget to wash them, whatever you do!"

Tom touched his grimy forehead, Jim stared blankly, and the Captain,
who had boys of his own, said as they went out, "Poor little
beggars!--it's a hard world for such as them.  I like that eldest
lad; there's spirit in him.  What are you going to do with that
money, Purser?"

The Purser laughed as he answered, "Make the saloon passengers add to
it, and give it to the lads when they land.  I'll tell them the story
at dinner to-day"; while Arthur Gordon said, "I'm only a poor man,
but will you put this in for me?"  When he told his brother he also
said, "So you see, Charley, there are folks very much worse off than
you," and Charley agreed with him.

For six days the steamer sped westwards across a great circle of
blue, and Charley thought he would never grow tired of the measured
dip of the long deck, the wash of broken waves, and all the new
wonders of the sea; while little Reggie would sit wrapped up for
hours with an unread book upon his knee, and say at times, "I never
dreamt of anything like this.  It's just glorious."

Then she ran into the bank fog which lies heavy and thick on the
waters where, near Newfoundland, the ocean grows shallow and the
great cod feed on the sands below.  The sun went out, and there was
grey dimness all day, while the oily sea heaved in slow green levels,
and a ringing of bells came out of the vapour as the ship crept at
half speed through the fishing fleet.  The anxious Captain never left
his bridge, two men kept lookout above the bows, and now and then,
with a roar of her whistle, a steamer they could not see went by,
while sometimes the frightened emigrants shouted, as a great iron
hull rushed past half visible through the thick white curtain.  A fog
is perhaps the worst of all dangers at sea, and there is generally
fog off Newfoundland, where too many poor fishermen lose their lives
through collision annually.  One dismal afternoon was fading into
night, when Charley, leaning over the rails, watched the mist slide
past.  Arthur stood near talking to Miss Armadale, a young lady who
lived in the part of Canada they were going to, and the two stowaways
sat under a lifeboat close by.

"I'm so glad you brought me, Tom," he heard one of them say.  "We're
partners in everythin', an' we're goin' to make our fortune in
Canady.  It's lots better than starvin' an' dodgin' the p'licemen
where we come from.  Hullo, there's another steamer comin'."

A great screech came ringing out of the fog, their steamer's whistle
answered it with a hoarse bellow like an angry cow, and then a deep
boom deafened them.  "A mailboat bound for England, an' a cargo
steamer somewhere.  This fog's just thick with vessels," said a
passing seaman.

Then the tinkle of a bell rose up through the engine-room skylights,
the machinery beat more slowly, and between the roar of the whistles
Charley heard one of the urchins say, "That's our ship a-callin' to
tell them which way she's going.  They talk to each other with the
whistles.  Wouldn't it be awful, Tom, if one came smashin' into us
when we're almost at Canady?  I've been countin' the hours till we
get there."

Tom did not answer, for just then a seaman on the look-out cried,
"Steamer's green light broad on our port bow, sir!" and after an
answering shout from the bridge, called again as if alarmed, "She's
openin' up her red."  Then the deck trembled beneath them as the big
engines were turned backwards to stop the ship.  But it was too late,
and Charley felt his heart beat wildly, as a clamour of frightened
voices commenced, and after a shrill screech of a whistle the great
bow of another steamer swept out of the fog.  It looked huge and
awful, forging resistless through the black water, which boiled with
a drowsy roar about the rusty iron.  He could see the tall funnel
behind it, and a blink of coloured lights, then his ears were
deafened by a thundering rush of steam, and eight hundred passengers
were floundering and shouting all over the deck.  Next he staggered
backwards, for there was a heavy shock, and amid a horrible grinding
the other vessel drove along their rail, crunching in the iron like
cardboard, and tearing the boats away, while Arthur, shouting, "Stand
clear of the wreckage, Charley!" thrust the lady beside him as far
back as he could.

The ship rolled sideways and back again, as vessels in collision
generally do, throwing the passengers down in heaps, and the screams
of terrified women were louder than the roar of escaping steam.  Men
leapt from vessel to vessel, which in cases of panic even trained
seamen will, some fell into the sea, and others fought and trampled
on each other to be the first to reach the uninjured boats, where two
bare-headed mates and a few sailors swinging heavy ashwood bars,
struck down the boldest of them.  A collision at sea is terrifying,
and sometimes strong men, brought suddenly, without warning, face to
face with death, act like frightened children, while there is an end
of all sense and order when once blind fear takes hold of a crowd.

The shouting, rending of iron, and smashing of wood grew louder;
somebody switched on an electric light for working cargo by, and as
the sudden glare beat down upon the pale faces and struggling figures
about the crowded deck, Charley saw the big lifeboat close by him
hurled up on one end.  His brother sprang in front of the lady who
stood near him, and shouted to the urchins,

"Jump clear, Tom!  Crawl this way, Jim, before it falls and crushes
both of you!"

The stern of the steamer which struck them was level with Charley
now, and it was one of her iron davits which had caught the boat.  He
saw Tom the stowaway drag the younger lad to his feet, and calling,
"Jump for the other ship!  We're sinkin'!" thrust him from the broken
rail.  The younger lad jumped and clutched the davit, and then, just
as the boat fell crushed in, Tom sprang across the widening gulf,
caught something and held on by one hand; after which, as the two
vessels drove clear at last, there was a heavy splash in the sea, and
Charley saw only one small clinging figure where two had been before.
Then this one loosed its hold and dropped into the dark water, too,
while Charley, who, in his excitement, only remembered he could swim,
was running towards the rail, when Arthur hurled him aside.  "You
would only drown yourself.  Stay here; I'm going to get him!" he
cried.

After this Arthur leapt out into the darkness, and Charley grew faint
and sick, remembering the thrashing screw, whose iron blades might
cut any swimmer to pieces, while presently a cry came down from the
bridge, "The steamer only struck us a glancing blow.  If you'll stand
fast and keep quiet you'll all be safe enough.  Lower away the two
starboard lifeboats, Mr. Davies."

There was a clatter of blocks as two boats on the uninjured side sank
down into the sea, men dropped into them, and the other vessel was
lost in the fog, while faint shouts rose from the water, and a heavy
silence followed when the pounding engines stopped.

Charley felt his throat dry up, and his fingers would tremble as he
pictured his brother swimming somewhere in that icy water under the
fog, and he felt glad when Miss Armadale placed a hand on his
shoulder.  She looked at him compassionately, though he could see she
was trembling, too, as she said, "Your brother is a very brave man,
and I feel sure he will save them.  There!  Isn't that a splash of
oars Coming?  You must not be over anxious, the boats will find him."

Charley took comfort.  He felt proud of Arthur, and drawing himself
up stood beside the lady, as he thought, protectingly, for what
seemed an endless time, until a cheery shout came out of the clammy
mist, "I think we have got them all, sir."

Then, with a ghastly blue light burning in her bows a boat approached
the ship, and hurrying his companion to the rail Charley shouted with
delight as he saw his brother in the stern.  The second boat also
came surging towards them, and while wet objects were helped up the
steamer's side a man scrambled to the bridge, and again the Captain's
voice came down, "The other ship has her bows badly crushed, but she
can get back to Halifax.  Our vessel seems only damaged above water
level, and we're going on again soon."

[Illustration: "WITH A GHASTLY BLUE LIGHT BURNING IN HER BOWS A BOAT
APPROACHED THE SHIP."]

A hoarse cheer went up from the passengers, who were comforted by the
news, and Charley laughed excitedly, though his voice was thick as,
hurling hurried questions at him, he grasped Arthur's arm.  Still he
remembered hearing Miss Armadale say, "I am thankful to see you back
safe again.  It was very gallantly done, and I hope you will allow me
to congratulate you on more than your escape."

"I have often swum much farther for amusement; there were several
boats about, and the only thing that troubled me was the cold," said
Arthur gently; and the lady smiled at him curiously as, seeing her
own friends at last, she turned away.

The stowaways were helped up next, and the ship's doctor bent over
Jim, who lay limply in a seaman's arm with a red gash across his
forehead.

"Take this little fellow to the surgery; he's badly hurt," he said;
"see the rest get into warm blankets, steward, and they won't be much
the worse.  When I've time I'll physic you according to your deserts,
but it's a pity the worst dose I've got won't teach you sense.  When
you had a comfortable ship under you whatever must you jump into that
cold water for?  This Company's vessels are not built to sink."

For an hour the steamer's boats rowed through the fog, burning blue
lights; and then, as she went on again, Arthur explained that the
other vessel had only struck them slantwise in passing, though
several passengers were missing.  He also said that he found the two
urchins clinging to a piece of the boat, for Tom, who could swim, had
somehow got his comrade there.  He helped one lad on to the wreck,
and then held the other up against it until a boat came and took them
off--"just in time," he added simply.  Arthur, as his brother knew,
never said much about his own doings, and there was no need for him
to do so, because a meritorious action speaks for itself, while by
and by he went away to talk to Miss Armadale, who seemed very pleased
to see him.

Next morning Arthur went into the surgery and found Jim lying, with
his white face half-hidden by bandages, on a cot in it.  The purser
and doctor sat there, looking very grave, and the former said, "When
Tom fell from the rail what made you jump in?  You couldn't do any
good--you said you couldn't swim, you know."  Jim stared at the
speaker, as though puzzled, before answering, "We was partners in
everythin,' Tom an' me, an' when he lets go, of course, I let go too."

"I see," said the purser.  "There is more in that answer than I
daresay you guess.  I wonder if, among all my friends, anyone would
do as much for me.  You want to see your partner?  Well"--he glanced
at the surgeon, who nodded--"I'll bring him to you."

He had not far to go, for Tom was crouching against the bulkhead just
outside the door, as he had done most of the night, while when he
came in, the doctor whispered, "I am afraid he is very ill, and you
must not excite him.  Sit still, and don't talk much; he is not
always quite sensible."

The lad clenched one thin hand, his lips quivered, but he walked in
very quietly, and there was only a dimness in his eyes as he touched
the clammy fingers the other stretched out towards him, while a low
voice said, "We was true partners an' I wanted you.  I know I'm very
bad, though they won't say so, an' perhaps you'll go on to Canady
without me.  It's a very good land, Tom; plenty for everyone--them
plackgards said so.  No more cold, an' no more starvin'.  We was cold
an' hungry often yonder, but there's good times coming for you an'
me.  We're goin' to a better country."

"Hush!" said the doctor.  "He's getting light headed again"; and Tom,
who tried not to choke, said, "I'll be quiet as a mouse, sir, if
you'll only let me stay with him.  I know he'd like to feel me near
him."

Then the purser coughed a little, and Tom sat very still, holding his
comrade's hand, until the other sank into a restless doze, while,
when the doctor went out with Arthur, he said, "He hasn't any chance,
poor little fellow.  Got badly crushed somehow, and he's sinking
fast.  There is nothing I can do."

The doctor was right, for Jim died a few hours later, still holding
his partner's hand, and lay in state in the wheelhouse, a little
hunger-pinched figure out of which an heroic soul had gone, wrapped
round in the broad red folds of his country's flag.  "He's better
off," said the purser, who came out bare-headed.  "As he said,
there's neither hunger nor cold now for him, and, sail-maker, we'll
let him keep the flag.  He won the right to wear it by his fidelity."

Charley long remembered the solemn scene which followed at the
changing of the watch, when eight hundred passengers, most of them
bare-headed, stood very silent about the deck, and a little roll of
canvas with the red flag wrapped about it lay on a grating at the
rail.  Clear sunlight shone down on the white and crimson crosses
that covered the dead waif's breast, for the clammy fog had gone, and
the brass clasps of the book a clergyman read from flashed
dazzlingly.  Then someone on the watch raised a beckoning hand, and,
as the throbbing engines stopped, the solemn words came clearly
through the sudden hush.  The grating tilted, there was a splash in
the dark blue water, and the steamer went on again, leaving Jim the
newspaper seller, who had given his life for his comrade, to rest
with many another sprung from the same fearless race, far down in the
icy depths, until the sea gives up her dead.

Afterwards the bright rays seemed to grow warmer, and that evening
there was a shout from the passengers as the long-expected shore rose
before them, a faint blurr of greyness broad across the blood-red
sunset.  Some laughed excitedly, some looked serious, and Charley
felt a thrill of hope and eagerness, while he saw that Tom's eyes
were red, as, looking forward over the dipping bows, he caught
through a mist of tears his first glimpse of the promised land.  But
he did not reach it either destitute or friendless, for the purser
had told his story well, and the rag that had been full of pennies
was heavy with golden coin now, while a kind Canadian promised to
find work for him, and in due time he and Charley met again.

During the next five days Charley and Reggie had much to interest
them, as the long train went clattering through old Quebec, then out
across the meadows and orchards of fertile Ontario, past many a
prosperous wooden town, until it rolled into a region of rock and
forest.  Then there were frothing rivers, lonely lakes, black
pinewoods, and a few Indian teppees to stare at, until, with a beat
of wheels ringing back from the granite rock, it thundered along the
shores of Lake Superior.  Afterwards there were more rivers and
forests before these were left behind in turn, and clanking through
Winnipeg city they ran past groves of willows out into the great open
prairie, and Charley knew they were getting near their future home.

On taking up a map of Canada, anyone may see that north of the United
States boundary a wide stretch of level country runs west from
Winnipeg towards the Rocky Mountains, and this is the great prairie.
You will notice it is divided into Manitoba, Assiniboia, and Alberta,
but there is not very much difference between them, except that men
rear cattle and horses at its western end, which is higher and
undulating, and grow wheat in the more level east.  It is more than
twice as large as Great Britain and part of it was once the bottom of
an inland sea.  Now, it is one great stretch of grass that grows in
most places just above one's ankles, and in others to the waist,
while this grass, growing and rotting for many centuries, has left a
thick black mould which is perhaps the richest wheat-soil in the
world.  You will remember that Nature does nothing in a hurry, and
except in parts of the unhealthy tropics where they die of fever,
seldom allows men to eat in idleness; so here, though there is nearly
always sunshine, there are also such things as droughts which starve
the cattle, and frosts that shrivel the grain, so that the farmers
have never a very easy time.  It is very hot and bright in summer,
and bitterly cold during the winter, when part of the prairie lies
sheeted for months together under frozen snow.

There are few rich men in it, but there are still fewer very poor;
while health, independence, and content are very much better than
riches, and the settlers grow strong and fearless because they own
their own land, and work hard under clear sunshine in the open air.
Therefore, though they sometimes lose their crops and cattle, they
face their troubles cheerfully, perhaps because the laborious life
they lead strengthens the best that is in them.  But you will say you
want a story, and not a lesson in geography, of which you get enough
at school.




CHAPTER III.

THE STOLEN CATTLE.

Arthur Gordon built his homestead on the Assiniboian prairie, mostly
of slender birch-logs and sods, because he was too wise to waste what
money he had left on sawn timber.  He also built a sod stable and
barn; and being clever enough to realise how little he knew, which
some men as well as boys are not, hired a grim old Scotchman, Peter
Mackenzie, to advise and help him.  Meantime he bought two big
working oxen, a few cattle, a team of horses, a heavy breaker-plough
to rip up the matted sod, harrows, a light waggon, and a seeder to
sow the grain, besides a binder which would both cut and tie the
sheaves.  Then finding he had very little money left, he at once
proceeded to plough for his first crop, while Charley always
remembered the day they drove the first furrow.

There was a straggling wood of slender birches behind them, a clear
blue sky above, and on every other side a great white waste of grass
dotted by sloos, or lakes of melted snow, which would dry up in
summer.  Still, a breadth of yellow stubble ran across it where
another man had raised a crop.  They slept in the barn because the
house was not finished yet, and Charley, whose clothes now showed
more than signs of wear, was lighting fires with a bundle of old
newspapers among the stubble.  The warm wind caught them, and with a
loud crackling a red blaze raced across one part of it, while he ran
to and fro lighting those which had gone out again, until he was
sooty all over.  Next he led his brother's oxen, tapping them with a
stick, while Arthur laughed when the heavy breaker-plough which tore
a long furrow through the snow-bleached sod zig-zagged awkwardly, or
the oxen stopped dead as its share struck some soil still frozen
beneath the surface.  Afterwards, old Peter let him have the lines,
and clutching the handles of the lighter plough he turned up the
mould where the stubble had been; and so with an hour's rest at
noonday, when he had to wade deep into a sloo after the oxen, the
work went on until the stars were blinking down upon the prairie.  At
first Charley lost his patience with the slow moving beasts,
especially when they ran into water too deep for him and would not
come out, while he wet himself all over trying to make them.

It was the same every day.  They rose at five in the morning, worked
hard, lived plainly, until at last both ploughing and sowing were
done, and, leaving the grain to the care of the kindly earth, they
resumed the house-building.  Meantime a tender flush of green crept
across the prairie, the silver birches in the bluff put out their
whispering leaves, and it grew hotter day by day.  The mosquitoes
came down in millions, and bit them until sometimes their faces were
so swollen that they could hardly see; little gophers like squirrels
scurried among the tender grain; while the coyotes, which are the
wolves of the grassland, howled on moonlit nights along the edge of
the prairie.  Then there was hay to cut for winter, and Charley drove
the tinkling mower through the long grass of the sloos, and rode home
under the moon on a waggon piled high with dry white trusses which
smelt of peppermint.  Also he grew strong of limb and cheerful, and
learned it was not beneath him to clean out either the stable or
chicken-house, and that it was better to have sometimes very dirty
hands than keep them clean by idleness, though the sharp-tongued
Peter saw he had little chance of this.  Sometimes he grew angry with
Peter.

Then it happened that one day, when the tall wheat grew yellow
towards the harvest, Arthur sent him to count their half-wild cattle
which wandered at will across the prairie.  He rode out in the early
morning with a Marlin rifle slung across his shoulders, feeling proud
of himself, but though he swept the prairie until noon there was no
sign of the beasts.  It grew blazing hot, he was tired and thirsty,
but he still rode on until he discovered by the trampled grasses and
dints of hoofs that not only had a drove of cattle passed that way,
but that several horsemen accompanied them.  Then he patted the
bronco's neck and turned back for home, swinging through a dust cloud
across the long levels which had grown white again, and towards dusk
dropped stiffly from the lathered horse, while, when grimed with dust
and perspiration he told his story, old Peter said, "Ay; I was partly
expectin' this.  The Rustlers have lifted our beasts for us."

Now a little time earlier a very bad state of things existed across
the American border, where the rich owners of many head of stock--the
Cattle Barons they were called--tried to drive the poor men off their
small plots of land.  In return, the poor men burnt the others'
homesteads, and shot some of the greediest, while afterwards very
cruel deeds were done by either side, until when there was peace at
last, bands of desperate men who had lost everything wandered about
the country, robbing where they could, and it was some of these Peter
meant when he said the Rustlers.

So when Charley added, "I think they must have taken Caryll's beasts
as well!"  Arthur, whose face grew stern, said sharply, "If they once
get them across the border it means ruin, for the money I hope to get
for those cattle must keep us through the winter.  Get into the
saddle; we'll ride over to Caryll's.  I'll borrow another horse, and
meet you, Peter."

Slinging his rifle he mounted the bronco barebacked, and while little
Reggie watched them enviously they rode out at full gallop under the
starlight with the dust whirling up behind them, Charley's horse
stumbling now and then.  It was five miles to Caryll's homestead, and
they found him sitting on the doorstep, a big, good-humoured Ontario
man, who said gravely, "If they've lit out with my cattle they might
have taken the farm as well.  Well, it's a long way to the American
border, and we might come up with them; cattle travel slow.  I should
say somebody will get hurt if we do."

"Mayn't I come?" asked Charley, and while Arthur hesitated, Caryll,
who noticed the longing in the boy's eyes, laughed, as he said,
"Bring him along.  If you're raising him to the prairie he may as
well see the rough side of it; and if you want to teach a dog to hold
fast, you must begin when he's a pup.  I'm a peaceful man myself if
other folks will let me--but I don't lie down while they put on big
boots to tramp on me."

Caryll found fresh horses, and brought a young Blackfoot Indian
called Coyote too, while after meeting Peter they pressed on fast
until Charley showed them the trail of the cattle.  After that he
rode like one in a dream, almost falling asleep in the saddle; while
at last, when the red sun leapt up, and Caryll said they must rest,
dropping, aching all over, from the horse, he fell asleep in earnest.
It was in the heat of afternoon he awoke, and Arthur said that Coyote
reported the stolen cattle were not very far ahead, and when night
came they hoped to recover them.  "You see, if they once crossed the
border while we went collecting help, the beasts would be corned beef
in Chicago before we took up the trail again," said Caryll.  "So
we're going quietly to steal them back again.  There are six thieving
Rustlers with them, big, bad, hard men, but I figure somehow we'll
come out ahead of them."

Starting once more they rode circuitously, following the hollows
between each higher roll of grass, while Coyote the Indian went
scouting before them until long after the stars were out.  Then
leaving the horses tethered behind them, they crept on hands and
knees towards the edge of a ravine which wound steeply through the
edge of a plateau, and Charley never forgot what he saw, when, at a
whisper from Caryll they lay still among the grass.  A few willows
clothed the sides of the declivity, and a herd of long-horned cattle
moved restlessly below, while a fire blazed redly among a clump of
dew-damped bushes.  Tethered horses stood beside it, and lower down
white mist filled a deeper hollow.  Beyond this, where the steep
sides fell away, a dim stretch of grass faded into the distance, and
the stars were pale overhead.

"Can't do nothin' by force," said Caryll.  "They're armed, every man,
an' watchin' too.  So we'll wait 'til they get sleepy, and then
stampede the herd on them.  Guess I'm a peaceful person and don't
want a rifle bullet in me if I can help it.  It's not nice when it
goes in, and it hurts worse to get it out."

After that, there was silence, and Charley, lying flat on his chest,
could feel his heart beating as he breathed the scent of wild
peppermint and the smell of hot earth drinking in the dew.  The
cattle were uneasy, and at times surged to and fro, bellowing, a
dusky mass of tossing horns, with white vapour rising from it, while
now and then a black shape rose up from the shadows and growled at
them.  Once, too, Charley nearly cried out when with the red light on
him he saw a big bearded man, who balanced a rifle, staring up at the
head of the ravine; then remembering that, if only because of the
firelight, the man could not see those who watched him.  Meantime
Coyote was very busy tying together bunches of dry grass, or crawling
snake-like into the ravine; after which there was a fresh disturbance
among the cattle, and Caryll said they were mad with thirst and it
would not take much to stampede or start them racing across the
prairie in mad panic.

Slowly the glimmer of firelight died, and at last Caryll whispered it
was time to commence, for the beasts were moving towards them.  So
Coyote was sent for the horses, and Arthur said, "Keep in the rear,
Charley, and take care of yourself.  You are growing a big lad now,
and it's only fitting you should learn the rough work as well as the
smooth, but I would sooner lose the farm and everything on it than
that any injury should happen to you."

"I will be careful," said Charley, for his brother's voice trembled;
then Coyote came up with the horses, while hardly had he mounted than
a hoarse voice cried out below,

"Who's there?  Stand fast before we plug a bullet into you."

But it was too late, for a dark figure rose up among the cattle with
a bunch of blazing grasses in its hand, Caryll charged into the
ravine waving another, and Arthur fired his repeating rifle into the
air.  This was sufficient, for the cattle were untamed creatures
which ran wild about the prairie three parts of every year, and
lowering its head one burnt and frightened steer bolted furiously
down the ravine.  The others followed it, and next moment the narrow
hollow was filled with a thunder of hoofs, while, scarcely hearing
the rifle bullet that hummed above his head, Charley swayed in his
saddle as his half-broken bronco swept down the slope at a flying
gallop.  Coyote was yelling like a whole pack of wolves on the other
flank of the herd, scattering blazing grass among them; Caryll roared
himself hoarse close beside; and riding just clear of the beasts
ahead, Arthur Gordon's soldierly figure rushed through the darkness.
The ground sloped steeply, the beasts were madly afraid, and in that
condition there is nothing that can turn a stampeding herd.

Dwarf willows rose up before the excited lad, and there was a great
crackle of branches as the horse broke through, while some of them
lashed him like a whip.  Tangled tussocks of tall grass ripped apart
and were whirled up by the battering hoofs, and Charley knew that he
would probably break his neck or leg if the beast blundered into a
badger hole.  Still, he drove his heels against the horse's lathered
flanks, for the sight below and the touch of the cool night wind that
screamed past him set his blood bounding.  He had once longed to be a
soldier, but this was as exhilarating as galloping the guns into
action or a charge of cavalry.

Where all the Rustlers went to he never knew, though staring ahead
through the whirled-up dust, he fancied he saw one human figure
running for life before the sea of tossing heads and horns; then with
a smashing of bushes the herd charged through the camp, and he could
dimly see riderless horses that had broken their tethers galloping
among them.  Caryll and Coyote had laid their plans well, for the
thieves had no time to mount before the cattle were upon them.  Next
Charley felt a sudden cold sickness as the running figure
disappeared, and he wondered if the herd had charged straight over
the fallen man.  But he forgot it in the exultation that followed the
mad, headlong rush, until an object which might have been a man, came
blundering as though to cut him off, down one side of the ravine.
Instinctively he bent low over his horse's mane, and it was well he
did so, for there was a red flash before him and the ringing of a
rifle.  Then, remembering he had no time to unsling his own weapon,
and that the other man's was probably a repeater, he struck the horse
with his heels and drove him straight at his enemy.  There was no
choice left him but to defend himself or be shot, and all these
thieves could shoot well, so, though Charley set his teeth together
and determined to do the former, he was conscious of a painful cold
sinking under his belt.  There was a heavy thud, and a shock; and he
lurched backwards in the saddle.  Something, or somebody rolled over
among the grasses; and he was flying on again, while Caryll's shout
rang in his ears, "A good beginning for the pup!"

They left the ravine behind at last; the herd ran straight out across
the dim prairie, and Caryll let them run, for he said, "The more
grass they put between themselves an' the Rustlers the better.
They're tough, bad men, an' they'll follow us presently when they
find their horses, though I guess it may take them all night to do
it.  When you once start them broncos they don't know how to stop."

It was afternoon next day, and the herd could travel no further, when
dusty and aching they lay hidden among the willows which fringed
another ravine.  Below, the cattle waded in the cool water of a creek
which wandered through the hollow, or lay contentedly among the lush
grasses, while on the farther side the prairie stretched towards the
horizon in a succession of swelling ridges.  All the party were very
silent, for they knew the thieves were following their trail, while
Arthur's eyes grew anxious as he watched the shadows lengthen,
creeping, black and cool, across the dusty grass.  They were safe
while daylight lasted, but the rifles would be useless in the dark,
and they had desperate men to deal with who were not afraid of
murder.  Presently a tall man in a blue shirt, holding a heavy rifle,
rode out from behind a rise across the hollow, and looking about him
from under his broad ragged hat, drew near the ravine.  He shouted
when he saw the cattle, and several more similar ruffians, also
mounted, appeared behind.  Then, standing up in his stirrups with
reckless bravado, he called, "Come out from where you're skulking
like Jack rabbits in your lairs, an' we'll made a deal with you.
Give us up them cattle, an' we'll let you go.  Try to hold them, an'
we'll most certainly make an end of every one of you.  We're genuine
ontamed Rustlers, and don't you forget it!  Crawlin' up like
sneak-thieves in the dark--I'm ashamed of you!"

[Illustration: "PRESENTLY A TALL MAN, HOLDING A HEAVY RIFLE, RODE
OUT."]

Arthur was rising from the bushes, when Caryll pulled him down.
"Guess he's been drinking somethin' stronger than creek water," he
said.  "You don't know their little ways like I do, an' if you show
yourself, the rest might shoot you.  I'm a peaceful man, if I can,
but losin' a horse may scare them.  That's an easy mark, Peter."

"Go back," roared Arthur, "before we fire on you!  If you want the
cattle come and take them," and quick as thought an answering bullet
hummed through the bushes, close above the speaker's head.

Meantime, old Peter stretched himself out full-length, with his left
elbow buried in the mould, and his legs crossed behind him, while his
eye ran down the blue rifle-barrel.  "I'm no sayin' it's difficult,"
he answered.  "One hunner yards, an' a clear light!  Where will I
take him--the puir beast, I mean?  I'm thinkin' it's a painful
necessity."

"Where you can," said Arthur, "only do it mercifully.  As you say,
it's a painful necessity," and for a few moments Charley held his
breath, as, snapping down the rear-sight, Peter cuddled his cheek
against the stock of his rifle.  Then the muzzle tilted, there was a
spitting of red flame, a ringing report, and man and horse went down
together.  The man got up again, shaking his fist in the air, and ran
back after his comrades, while the beast lay still, and Peter said
grimly, "I'm sorry for the horse, but it will be a lesson to them."

After that, there was a very anxious waiting, for each of the
watchers knew their enemies would steal on them through the dark, and
Charley felt that anything would be better than this cruel suspense,
until suddenly, with a great beat of hoofs, the Rustlers swept out
straight as a crow flies across the prairie.  "I might get one at
long range if I wasn't a peaceful man," said Caryll, longingly; but
Arthur Gordon broke in, "No; we had a right to defend our lives and
property, but they're in full flight now.  Why, I don't know."

"I'm thinkin' it's time," said Peter, with a dry laugh.  "The
North-West Police are after them.  Where did ye put they glasses?
Oh, ay, ye can see the troopers' horses just topping the rise.  I ken
the big sergeant on the black charger; it's my second cousin.  Ride
ye, Donald--ride!"

The cattle thieves were evidently off in a very great hurry, for
Charley could see them driving home their spurred heels into their
horses' sides, or lashing them with the long hide bridles savagely.
They had good reason to be, for when they grew smaller far down on
the white levels, Gordon's party stood up and cheered, as a
detachment of mounted police raced by.  They were very bold horsemen,
each one as well drilled as any cavalry soldier, and when, with a
great pounding of hoofs and jingle of steel, they dashed at headlong
gallop past the ravine, the leader on the big black charger waved a
hand to Peter.  As Charley learned subsequently, the sergeant,
hearing of the Rustlers, had called at their homestead, and after
listening to Reggie's story, rode his hardest on their trail.  Then
the police also vanished over the rim of the prairie and there was
silence again, for, leaving Coyote to watch, the rest sank into
well-earned slumber, and it was midnight before they started on their
homeward journey.  It ended safely, and they learned presently that
two of the desperadoes who had lost their horses were caught, while
the rest got away.

A few weeks later the binders were driven through the crop, and
Arthur was glad when the harvest was over to find that, though frosts
had spoiled a little, his first year's yield of wheat and oats would
pay expenses.  Charley rode with him beside the loaded waggons, piled
high with sacks of corn, one bitter day when the snow-dust was
already whirling across the prairie, thirty miles to the railway, and
both felt grateful when that evening they watched the long
freight-train lurch out across the white-sprinkled wilderness bearing
their, and others' grain to the markets in Winnipeg.  The fruitful
earth now sinking into its winter sleep had repaid them for their
labour, and they could rest, too, while, because no man can work for
himself alone, they had helped to send the poor in England the cheap
food they badly needed.  Next day, Arthur also made a journey by
passenger train, while, when Charley rode home alone he wondered if
his brother had gone to see their friend of the steamer, Miss
Armadale, who lived not very far away, and then wisely decided it was
no business of his if he had done so.




CHAPTER IV.

THROUGH THE BLIZZARD.

Winter came, and Charley learned to use the heavy axe, which added to
the breadth of his shoulders, as he whirled it round his head hewing
birch-logs for fuel in the bluff.  The stove glowed red hot by night
and day, and they slept under rugs of skin in an upper room through
which its iron chimney ran, for all the way across that great lonely
land, from Hudson's Bay to the River Missouri, winter is nearly
Arctic on the prairie.  Then there were long sleigh rides over the
snow to the little railway town for provisions--for the men who work
like giants acquire gigantic appetites--and cosy evenings spent
beside the stove, when their sister Alice, who had come out from
England to keep house, read to them.

Frost flowers crusted the windows, and outside the coyotes howled as
they sought shelter in the birch-bluff from the bitter cold, but it
was very snug and warm within.

Winter passed, as even the longest winters do, and the bleached
grasses peeped out through the melting snow, turned green for a few
weeks and grew white again early in the hot summer; but Arthur Gordon
lost his crop that year.

A few nights of autumn frost shrivelled up the grain.  Still he and
Charley only worked the harder, hoping for better fortune, and
breaking more land to make up for the loss next season, though
sometimes Alice sighed as she noticed the troubled look in her
brother's eyes when he turned over his accounts.  If a crop fails on
the prairie the settler and his family must live very sparingly
during the following year, and two bad harvests may ruin him
altogether.

Winter came round once more, and one afternoon Charley and his
brother stood dressed in long skin coats in the unpaved streets of a
railway town.  Frost and sun had tanned their faces almost to the
colour of oak, and their frames were nearly as strong, for it is not
in soft warm climates where life is easy that white men thrive best.
Biting cold and sturdy labour harden instead of weaken them.  The
shingled roofs were white above them, and beyond the tall elevators
where the wheat is stored, a lonely wilderness, which had a curious
blue-white glimmer, stretched back towards the grey horizon with
little huffs of snow dust racing across it.  Presently Arthur raised
his fur cap when they passed a store, in which one could purchase
everything, from tinned provisions or a necktie, to a plough.  A lady
muffled in splendid furs sat inside a sleigh at its door, and Charley
blushed with pleasure when she smiled at him graciously.  This was
Miss Armadale, their friend of the steamer, who lived with her father
at Barholm Grange, one of the largest farms in that part of Canada.
Arthur lingered a moment beside the sleigh, and then bowed, as
another sleigh passed him slowly, when he walked away.

There were two people in it, and one, a grim-faced old man whom
Charley knew was Colonel Armadale, stared straight at his brother
without noticing him, after which Charley heard him say to his
younger companion, who tried to hide a smile, "Settler Gordon has
shown considerable presumption, and I have warned Lilian not to
encourage him.  The last time he came I tried to make it plain that
it was blind foolishness for a man like, him with three hundred poor
acres, and a few half-starved cattle, to grow interested in my
daughter."  Then he called out, "Send your bill along, storekeeper,
and if you charge as much for your rubbish as you did last time, I'll
start a store of my own.  My hogs won't eat some of the decayed tin
goods you palm off on me.  Lilian, come on when you're ready and
overtake us at the crossing.  Our sleigh is loaded, and I don't like
the signs of the weather."

Charley felt hot and angry, and he noticed the store-keeper frowned,
though he answered nothing, for Colonel Armadale was the richest and
worst-tempered man in all that district, while Arthur, who had set
his lips tight, sighed as the loaded sleigh moved out and grew
smaller across the prairie.  Presently Lilian Armadale followed, and
the store-keeper said, "A nice, quiet man to talk to, he is; guess
one would never think that sweet-tempered girl was the daughter of
yonder surly old bear.  Wants to marry her to the man with him--some
British relative.  But she doesn't like him, the boys were saying.
He's not much to look at any way, even if he is rich.  Well, you just
hold on; Miss Armadale is worth it, and those over-fed horses of his
will break old Cast-iron's neck for him some day, and except Miss
Lily nobody will be sorry.  Say, has it struck you a blizzard's
coming along?"

"If I ever hear you talk in that way again there will be trouble
between you and me," was Arthur's sharp answer.  "Charley, you had
better ride on--there are signs of a snowstorm--and if I don't catch
you before you reach the crossing, make straight for home.  When will
those things be ready, store-keeper?"

Charley was glad to obey, for he was chilled all through, and so by
and by there were four moving specks upon the prairie, hidden from
one another by the low rises which looked at a distance like the
waves of a frozen sea.  It was bitterly cold, and puffs of icy wind
hurled stinging white crystals into his half-frozen face, until he
drew down the flaps of his fur cap to meet his big collar.  The horse
did its best, for there are times when dumb beasts are wiser than
men, and it knew a snowstorm was coming, so the hoofs hurled up the
dusty snow, while the clumps of dwarf willows which rushed past
showed how fast they were travelling.  Then there was only a great
level desolation which looked as if no one had lived in it since the
beginning of the world, until at last he reached the straggling woods
which marked the crossing.

Here again the prairie rolled in broken rises; it was a little warmer
in the shelter of the trees, and Charley checked his horse when he
found Miss Armadale holding her impatient team under the edge of a
big ravine.  Prairie streams generally run in a hollow like a deep
railway cutting, and this one was larger than usual, while the little
river which flowed through the bottom was not hard frozen yet, for
winter had just begun and the trees sheltered it.  Still, looking
down between the scattered silver-barked birches which clothed the
slope on either side, he could see the glimmer of black ice below,
and, because the narrow trail bent to make the descent less steep, a
rough log bridge without a parapet, some distance to the right.

"Did you see my father on the way?" asked the lady; and when Charley
answered, "No," she added, "Perhaps he passed me behind the long
ridge, though I don't think so.  You know, the one with the sledge
trail on both sides of it.  I'm afraid there's a big storm coming.
Where is your brother, Charley?"

She stood up in the sleigh looking back across the prairie, and
Charley thought she was even prettier than his sister Alice, while
there was something he liked in her voice and kindly eyes, and he
felt it would be a pleasure to do anything for her.  But nothing
moved on the prairie except the whirling drifts, for the wind, which
grew even colder, was fast rising now, while already daylight was
fading, and the birches moaned eerily.  Then he grew suddenly afraid,
because there are times when even strong men realise their feebleness
before the great powers of nature, and he knew that it often means
death to be caught in the rush of a blizzard on the open prairie.
The horses knew it, too, for the sleigh team snorted, while Miss
Armadale shivered as she said, "I dare not wait any longer.  Tell
your brother to make for the Grange; you will never get home in time.
No--I am forgetting--he must not come."  Then, with a heightened
colour in her cheeks, and a curious ring in her voice, she added,
"Yes--you will bring him.  It might cost his life to cross the
prairie to-night."

There was a patter of hoofs behind them, but even as Charley turned
round, the sleigh-team bolted, and leaving the narrow trail, charged
headlong down the slope.  Then Charley, remembering that the
half-frozen river would not bear the weight of that load, urged his
own horse after them.  Miss Armadale stood upright, clenching the
reins, her slight figure swaying before him among the scattered
trees, which fortunately grew well apart, but the team were going
their own way, the straightest to the bottom, and he shuddered when
the sleigh drove crashing against a trunk.  Even if the vehicle was
not wrecked before it reached it, the muddy creek, like most prairie
streams, was deep.  But though the fur-robed figure sank down
suddenly the sleigh went on as though uninjured, while Charley
shouted, "Try to turn them towards the bridge.  I am coming to help
you."

He drove his horse at a willow bush, and the beast went through it
with a bound; birch-twigs lashed his face like whips, and once a
branch struck his forehead so that it bled, while jumbled all
together the trunks rushed past.  But he was overtaking the sleigh,
and old Peter had taught him to ride half-broken broncos without
either stirrups or saddle, holding on by his knees.  This was
painful, and sometimes dangerous work, but few things worth having
can be got easily, and the skill he had acquired so hardly was very
useful now, for without it he would never have come safely down that
steep, tree-cumbered descent.

The wind screamed past him, there was a haze of falling snow, and as
he dashed by he saw for a moment the drawn, white face of the lady in
the sleigh.  Then bending down he clutched at, and gripped the reins
close in to the bit beside one horse's head, and afterwards saw
nothing clearly.  There was only an uncertain vision of flying trees,
a mad thunder of hoofs, and the sleigh lurching behind him like a
ship at sea.  It bounced clear of the earth in places, while the
black ice streaked with snow seemed rushing towards them from below.
White powder rose in clouds from about the hissing steel runners and,
mingling with the steam of the horses, filled his staring eyes.  Then
a mounted figure shot out from among the trees, swayed sideways in
the saddle by the other horse's head, and his brother's voice rang
out----

"Hold fast for your life, Lilly; you cannot turn them now!  It won't
bear us all.  Charley--let go!"

[Illustration: "HE CLUTCHED AT AND GRIPPED ONE HORSE'S HEAD, AND
AFTERWARDS SAW NOTHING CLEARLY"]

Charley, who had learned the useful lesson of swift obedience, loosed
his hold, and struggled for a few moments to rein in his horse; then,
trembling with excitement, watched the sleigh charge on down the
slope towards the river.  He knew Arthur was trusting that the pace
they travelled at would carry them across before the ice broke
through.  He watched the sleigh shoot out from the bank, then there
was a sharp crackle, and he caught his breath as Arthur's floundering
horse disappeared from view.  It had struck a weaker place, or
stumbled, and the treacherous slippery covering had yielded beneath
it.  But his brother, flinging himself from the saddle, had already
clutched the sleigh, and Charley shouted with relief when he saw him
stand up in it grasping the reins, while a few seconds later the team
crashed through the willows by the water's edge on the farther side,
and drew clear of the dangerous ice.  Charley felt almost dizzy now
the crisis had passed, for he knew the horses could not run away up
the opposite slope.

Then the snow thickened, there was a roaring among the branches, and
the daylight went out, while when he reached the river he could
hardly see the hole in the ice under which the current had doubtless
sucked the unfortunate horse.  He crossed by the bridge, but the
whole air was filled with driving snow, while broken twigs were
hurled about him by the sudden gale, and when he reached the level
there was only thick whirling whiteness ahead.  It filled his eyes
and nostrils, deadened his hearing, and almost took his breath away;
he could not even see the trees, and let the horse go its own way
until it nearly walked into what looked like a white bear and was a
man on foot.  By the voice he recognised Colonel Armadale's
companion, who shouted----

"Where is the team that ran away?  We could see you from a distance."

"I don't know," said Charley.  "Haven't seen them for ten minutes.
More to the right, I think;" and the other, grasping his horse's
bridle, said, "Come back, and tell him," while by-and-by they reached
a sleigh in which an upright figure sat sheeted with snow.  He
guessed it must be Colonel Armadale.

Then the old man said, in a tone that seemed less sharp than usual,
though the roar of the gale prevented the lad from hearing plainly,
"You are young Gordon, are you not?  My daughter would have been
drowned long before we could have reached the ravine--we crossed
before her somehow--but for your brother's good sense and gallantry.
Not seen them since?  It's hardly surprising.  Let your horse go, and
get into the sleigh.  No, Lawrence--come back, d'you hear?"

The other man appeared to demur, saying something which sounded like,
"I must try to find them, sir," but Colonel Armadale turned upon him
angrily.

"Come back, you idiot!" he repeated.  "Nobody could find them, and
even if you could your extra weight would hamper them unnecessarily.
Your brother should know the prairie well, eh, Gordon?"

"Yes, sir," said Charley, who felt bitter against the speaker for his
rudeness to Arthur, "but I'm going straight home and won't get in."

"Get in at once!" said Colonel Armadale.  "You would be frozen stiff
long before you reached your home.  Lily's team can find their own
way to the stables; these western horses are like pigeons--that is,
if your brother has the sense to let them.  We can do nothing but
trust our own to do the same, and it's considerably safer under the
sleigh robes than it is in the saddle.  Let them go, Lawrence.  We
have not a minute to lose."

Charley loosed his horse, which followed the sleigh; and then for
what seemed ages the beasts blundered through a whirling cloud of
snow that grew thicker and thicker, while the awful cold chilled the
lad to the backbone.  Still, he knew Colonel Armadale was right, and
protected by the thick robes, he could just keep alive, though he
would certainly have frozen in the saddle.  But, at last, when he
could hardly either speak or see, a dim brightness flickered ahead,
voices hailed them, and he fell half-fainting over the threshold into
the glare of a great fire that burned in the log-built hall of
Barholm Grange.  Someone who took his skin coat away brought him hot
coffee and food, and when he had eaten and grown accustomed to the
temperature, the grim, white-haired colonel made him sit beside the
stove in a big hide-covered chair.  Still, there was an unusually
gentle look in his stern eyes now, and presently Charley, whose head
was swimming, found him talking to him confidentially, until the
colonel said abruptly, "So your brother was an officer--what made him
start farming without capital on the prairie?"

Charley explained at some length as well as he could, and when he had
finished the old man said, "H'm, I see.  Well, he has been a good
brother and done his duty to you.  Never suspected he had so much in
him, and that he held Her Majesty's Commission is news to me.  At
least, he is a courageous gentleman, and I am indebted to both of
you."

After this he paced fiercely to and fro, while the icy wind howled
about the building, shaking it until the logs it was made of
trembled, and its wooden roofing shingles strained and clattered
overhead.  Thicker and thicker, with a heavy thudding the snow drove
against the double windows, until it seemed that nothing living could
escape destruction upon the open prairie.  So presently Charley, who
felt his strength returning, said----

"I can sit still no longer.  You must please lend me a horse, sir,
and I will go to look for them."

"Sit down again," answered the Colonel.  "Ay, you have learned
obedience.  Do you think that if there was any small chance of
finding them I would loiter here while my only daughter struggles in
peril of her life somewhere out there in this awful snow?  There are
times, my lad, when the boldest man is helpless, and your brother's
only hope is to trust the instinct given as a compensation to every
dumb beast.  No, we can only wait, and to wait with patience is
considerably harder than doing risky things, as you will find some
day."

After that the time passed very slowly, and the storm grew, if
possible, fiercer, until somebody shouted, and they stood holding the
great door open in the hall, and staring, with eyes that watered,
into the maze of whirling drift outside.  The snow blew along, fine
as powder, in blinding clouds like smoke.

"Thank heaven!" said Colonel Armadale, as dim shapes, which might
have been either beasts or men, loomed out through the whiteness.  He
ran forward holding up a lantern, Charley followed, and was
immediately blown headlong into a drift, while when he scrambled out
of it Arthur staggered past.  He was crusted with the wind-packed
powder into a formless object, and reeled blindly into the hall with
a burden, which afterwards transpired to be Lilian Armadale, who had
fainted in his arms.  Then Charley slipped out of the way, for
everyone was busy doing something for the two nearly frozen
travellers, while, when Arthur appeared later in borrowed garments,
Colonel Armadale met him with outstretched hands.

"You have done me a great service--a service I can never repay; and
you are very welcome to Barholme," he said.  "We must try to be
better friends than we have been--in the future."

Charley thought the last words hardly explained the position, for he
considered that nobody could have called Colonel Armadale's previous
conduct friendly at all, but he was glad when his brother took the
outstretched hand, for the older man's lips trembled under his long
moustache.  Then he was led into a snug matchboarded room, and sank
into a deep sleep which lasted ten hours on end.  They stayed at the
Grange all the next day, and Arthur afterwards told Charley that Miss
Armadale would have spoiled him altogether had he stayed any longer;
then, after a friendly parting with the colonel, they rode home
again, while as their horses picked their way through the drifts
Arthur said, "Charley, I am afraid I have given way to foolish pride.
Colonel Armadale wanted to pay me for the horse I lost, and I would
not let him.  It was worse than foolish, when we have Alice and
Reggie to think of, and have lost all the crop."

"I am glad you did it," said the lad, flinging back his head.  "It
would look too much like being paid for kindness, and even if we are
poor I couldn't have taken the money."  Then he sighed, for he
noticed his brother's face grew care-worn, and guessed that the
thought of the coming year troubled him.  But Arthur only said,
half-aloud, "It was foolish; I had no right to refuse.  Still, bad
luck can't last for ever, and it may all come right some day."

It was late when they reached their own homestead, which rose up, a
few snow-backed mounds out of the prairie, looking very mean and
small after the fine buildings of Barholm Grange.  Charley told Alice
what had happened, but she said nothing, though she glanced at her
elder brother sympathetically.  He also told Peter, adding, "I think
the Colonel is a much nicer man than he looks, when one gets to know
him."

"That's as may be," answered old Peter, with a twinkle in his eye.
"Nathless, he's seldom over civil, an' is just filled with
stiff-necked pride.  Ye'll mark that kind o' spirit prepares its own
humbling.  Do ye mind what happened when I first trained ye an' ye
would not sweep the stable?  Ay, ye were vain as ony peacock then.
Fine white hands like a young lady's ye had.  Noo, there's a faint
promise that some day we may make ye intil a man."

But Charley laughed good-humouredly, and flinging a broom at him by
way of playful compliment, ran out suddenly.  He had already realised
that Peter had taught him many things worth knowing, and he had
discovered in Canada that it is much better to be able to do useful
work than live daintily at somebody else's expense.  He had seen a
few rich men in the Dominion, who financed railroads and owned great
flour mills, but could nevertheless hew a building log, or carry a
grain bag, as well as any of their labourers.  Arthur said, "Men like
these are the backbone which stiffens the country."




CHAPTER V.

ADVERSE FORTUNE.

A year passed, and Charley, who grew into a tall young man, had grown
to love the prairie.  He had also learned to mend his own clothes
with pieces of cotton flour-bags, cook, and sweep out their rooms
when his sister Alice was busy, besides many other things he used
foolishly to think beneath him; and there was but one check to his
contentment--they had lost another crop.  Again autumn frost followed
a dry season, and all that was left of the wheat was not worth
thrashing.  But they sowed another, which promised well, and so one
summer day Arthur and he rode home from Barholm Grange with lighter
hearts than they had known for some time.  Lilian had gone to
England, but her father asked them to come and see him occasionally.

It was a clear bright day, though by-and-by a dimness spread across
the sky and the wind grew colder, while the bleached buffalo bones,
which are still sprinkled across the prairie, seemed to shine out
curiously white among the grasses.  Only a little while ago the huge
beasts traversed the great plains in countless thousands, but there
is not a single wild one left to-day.

"I'm afraid there's a hailstorm not far away," said Arthur.  "We'll
ride into yonder bluff for shelter."

They went on at a gallop, and it grew nearly dark before they reached
the little wood while the horses trembled when Charley tied them to a
tree.

Then for some minutes there was a deep and very solemn stillness,
during which Charley fancied that the air was filled with sulphur,
while the skin of his head prickled.  This lasted until a blaze of
blue fire seemed to fall from the heavens, and flood all the prairie.
It was followed by a deafening peal of thunder.  Next moment the
birches swayed suddenly sideways and some, tough as they were,
snapped short off.  Charley was forced to drive his heels into the
mould to hold his place while the wood was filling with falling
leaves, and the scream of the blast.  Hailstones the size of marbles,
and some of them even larger, came hurtling like grape-shot between
the trees, and rattled upon the waggon, into which they bounced in
bucketsful.  The horses reared upright as the bending branches lashed
them, and when, fearing that they would bolt and smash the waggon, he
tried to hold them, Charley's hands bled under the thrashing of the
ragged ice.  It is fortunate that we never see such hail in this
country.

Then the storm ceased as suddenly as it came, the wind grew still,
the sun shone out hot and bright again, and when they rode out from
the bluff the grasses were steaming.  Only a cloud arch travelling
south to spread ruin before it, and the wrecked branches in the wood
told what had happened.  The brothers were, however, very silent
during the rest of the journey, and when they reached their farm
towards the close of the afternoon they found Alice waiting for them
with tears upon her cheeks, and her eyelids reddened.  She had not
been crying needlessly, for Alice was a light-hearted girl, and
Arthur's face changed colour as he looked at the corn.  Nothing
remained of the tall wheat which was to feed them that winter but
shattered blades, beaten into ribands and half-buried in the muddy
ground.

"Is it quite ruined?" asked Charley huskily; and Arthur sighed as
making a strong effort he answered calmly--"Quite!  We must shut up
the house, give up the farm, and look for work with the horses and
oxen on the new railway.  Still, we won't despair while we have
health and strength left.  We are not beaten yet, and if we can earn
the money, must try again next year."

Then there was a world of sympathy in Charley's voice, though all he
could find to say was--"Poor old Arthur!"

No one spoke much that evening, for their hearts were heavy, and
Charley, who realised he might never live in it again, thought how
snug and homely the little log-building was, and with what hopes he
had helped to raise it.  But he forgot his troubles in sleep, and
though Arthur wandered about the prairie the whole night through,
they rode out early next morning to the new railway some forty miles
distant.  There a fresh disappointment awaited them, for the engineer
in charge said--

"We have got all the teams we want here, but I like the look of you,
and I could send you timber-hewing on another branch line we are
building in British Columbia.  Our silly men have all started in to
make their fortune gold mining there.  I'll give you a note to the
road surveyor, and free passes, and I dare say he'll let you a
contract you can make something out of."

Arthur thought hard for several minutes, for British Columbia was
several hundred miles away, before he answered--

"It's not what I hoped for, but as I have lost my crop, and can't sit
here and wait until we're ruined we will thankfully accept your
offer."

The engineer gave them a letter, and when they rode home again it was
arranged that Alice should stay with Colonel Armadale, while, after
dividing the cattle among their neighbours, the three brothers
started, with their working beasts on board a big freight train for
the mountains of British Columbia.  It was a sorrowful parting, but
Arthur said--"Poor people must expect unpleasant things, and can't
afford to be particular.  We must make an effort to help ourselves,
and look forward to meeting again."

So in due time they reached the new railway, which led from the main
line to a rich mining district among the mountains, and the surveyor
in charge of it looked at them with approval.  He thought he could
tell good men when he saw them.

"Yes, you can have a contract to cut timber and haul it in for
building snow-sheds," he said.  "But we don't pay until the work's
finished, and you take all risks.  We haven't any use for the men who
when they strike a run of bad luck just grumble and lie down, or
throw up their contract."

"What I start I'll finish," said Arthur grimly; and the surveyor
nodded as he answered--

"Glad to hear it; I hope you will.  You'll find us treat you fairly
if you do.  We keep our dollars for good men and a big club for
loafers."

So Arthur made a bargain with the railroad officials, and, pitching
tents on the hillside, the brothers commenced their work.  The line
ran through a deep valley among majestic snow-crested mountains, with
forests of stately pine trees rolling down their sides, and a river
thundering in a gorge below.  This was an awful chasm with sheer
walls of rock which shut off each ray of sunlight from the foaming
water in the dim abyss, and the railway was partly scooped out and
partly built against the side of the tremendous precipice in a way
which engineers call underpinning.  Several men had lost their lives
in doing it, for it was dangerous work.  Now in that country great
masses of sun-softened snow come rushing down the mountain sides
every now and then, smashing the forests before them, and in order to
prevent the railway from being swept away it was necessary to roof
that portion in with a heavy timber building called a snow-shed, so
that any avalanche might slide over the top of it.  And it was the
brothers' work to hew the great redwood logs into shape for this.

They were giant trees.  There are few in the world bigger, and it was
hard work felling them, and even harder to drag them along on rollers
with oxen until they rushed crashing down a slide paved with timber
to the railway.  This slide took the brothers nearly three weeks to
build.  But they worked from dawn until after sunset, swinging the
heavy axe, or pulling a seven-foot saw through the trunks, until they
could hardly straighten their backs, though as the weeks went by
Arthur grew more cheerful, for he hoped they would earn enough by the
time the work was finished to sow another crop next year.  Then one
day part of the hillside slipped away, as it sometimes did, and there
was only a great hollow where their log-side had been, while much of
the hewn timber was buried under hundreds of tons of earth.  Some men
would have abandoned the task in despair, but Arthur had taught his
brothers to believe that patient determination generally wins in the
end.  So when the surveyor came to inspect the ruin he met him calmly.

"I am sorry for you; you'll have to build a new slide, and hauling
your logs round to it will cost you double.  What are you going to
do?" asked the railway builder, and Arthur answered--

"Cut a new road through the forest.  Go on, and finish my contract,
whatever it costs me.  I'll hire more men and oxen if my own are not
enough.  You need not be afraid that I will fail you."

The surveyer said no more just then, though he wrote a letter to the
railway offices, in which, after telling the story, he said--"The
timber cutter for this section is a very honest man, and on
opportunity I'll give him a better contract.  He doesn't know when he
is beaten, though he has had the worst kind of luck."

So Arthur sold the last of his cattle, hired some of his neighbours
whose crops had also been destroyed by hail, and worked even harder
than before, while he bade Charley, who managed the cooking, cut down
their grocery bill.  Yet, though they had to drag the logs twice as
far, they had always the particular hewn timber they had contracted
to deliver ready for the snow-sheds and trestle bridges, and the
railway lengthened rapidly, while the inhabitants of the mining town
sometimes rode out to inspect the new road which would bring them
prosperity, and having heard the story, said that the brothers had
"real hard grit" in them.  Then it happened that one hot night when
Arthur and Charley had ridden up on a locomotive to the blacksmith's
shop near another construction camp some distance away, where they
slept in a tent, they were awakened by a low rumbling.  It sounded
like thunder rolling high up among the stars, and then was answered
by a deeper reverberation lower down along the shoulder of the hills
Charley sat up shivering in the cold wind which whistled past the
tent, and looking out across the deep dark valley could see the
moonlight glimmering on the white line of eternal snow far above, and
wreaths of silver mist slowly drifting across the pines.  There was
no sign of any danger, and yet that deep rumbling which ceased again
seemed awe-inspiring and made him anxious.  Then, as following
Arthur's example he scrambled into his clothes, a grizzled hunter
they sometimes bought venison from strode hurriedly out of the
shadows.

"I guess there's somethin' coming which will badly bust your railroad
up," he said.  "The big ice rib which holds back the snow-field has
been meltin' fast.  Now she's busted bad, an' before morning the
snow's comin' down.  You heard the beginning of it, but there's lots
more where that come from.  I was up on the peaks after cinnamon
bears when I seen the warnin,' an' just lit out just as quick as I
could.  It will be a snow-slide of the biggest, baddest kind, and I
didn't think it would be healthy to get in its way."

"Where will the worst come?" asked Arthur; and the man answered--

"Right down the hollow where you're buildin' the long snow-shed I
should figure.  Anyhow, it's goin' to be dangerous at that end of the
valley, an' I'm stoppin' right up here.  You can't run up against a
snow slide without getting hurt by it."

"Charley," said Arthur, with hoarse anxiety in his voice, "the lower
end of the snow shed is waiting ready framed for the roof, and the
logs we hewed for it are cut and loaded on the cars.  If the
snow-slide destroyed them we should have to cut others instead, which
would ruin us altogether, and, as it is, we shall hardly make
anything on the contract.  Besides that, this part of the railway on
which so many lives and so much money has been spent would be swept
down over the precipice into the river."

"We must try to save it," broke in Charley, and Arthur continued--

"We are going to, or at least do our very utmost.  Remember, it's our
farm and home we are fighting for.  Come on; we'll find some men to
help us in the construction camp, and perhaps before the snow reaches
it the shed will be finished.  You have got to work as you never
worked before, to-night."

They started, running their hardest, and sometimes stumbling over the
loose ballast among the sleepers.  It rolled and slipped away beneath
their feet.  Charley felt as though his lungs would burst, while the
perspiration which ran into his eyes nearly blinded him, for here the
line, curving, wound up a long ascent.  But, remembering what
depended upon their success, he clenched his hands, and held on
stubbornly, passing his brother on the way, until at last, panting
and breathless, they reached the tents beside a new bridge, to which
most of the workmen had been sent from the snow-sheds.  A great
American locomotive, built to climb steep mountain lines, was waiting
with banked fires before a row of ballast trucks, and when they had
wakened the sleepers, there was a murmur of excited questions as
Arthur told his story.  Some of the men held small contracts on the
railway, and if the line were destroyed would lose their work; the
rest had been unfortunate miners and cattle raisers, but all alike
were fearless, staunch, and sturdy, so when Arthur Gordon had
finished speaking, one of them said--

"The engineer has gone down to the settlement, and the surveyor's
busy at the other end of the track.  Guess we'll have to get there,
and see this through without him ourselves.  Hold on a few minutes;
we're all coming along to do what we can."

Arthur climbed on to the big locomotive--he had learned how to drive
one--and Charley, at his bidding, thrust pine logs into the furnace.
Then several men crowded into the glass-windowed shelter called the
cab, and there was a hail from the trucks--"We're all aboard, and
ready.  Let her go her hardest."

Arthur shoved down the lever, Charley crammed still more fuel into
the twinkling furnace, and with a blast from her funnel and a whirr
of wheels slipping on dew-wet metals, the great mountain locomotive,
which was, perhaps, twice the size of an English express engine,
started on a grim race to beat the avalanche.  The line led winding
down from the snow-barred pass into the valley most of the way, and
when Arthur, who felt the machinery warm up beneath him and knew he
had no time to lose, turned full steam on, the ballast cars commenced
to swing and bounce behind.

[Illustration: "THE GREAT MOUNTAIN LOCOMOTIVE STARTED ON A GRIM RACE
TO BEAT THE AVALANCHE."]

A few shouts rose up from them, through the eddying dust, as the men
who filled them were flung against each other before they could find
hold for feet or hands to steady themselves with.

"You'll be spilling those fellows all over the track," said one of
the men in the cab.

The footplates rocked under his feet, and Charley, who held on by a
guard-rail, could see through the rattling glasses, the great pines
come reeling towards them, an endless maze of flying trees, as the
glare from the head-lamp--which is a huge lantern these engines
carry--beat across them.  They ceased to be separate trunks, for at
that speed the eye could not grasp the spaces between them, and the
whole forest wavered when, because the line was not well ballasted
yet, the big locomotive swung to and fro.

Then bare rocks hung above their heads, and the roar of wheels, clash
and clang of couplings, and beat of the great connecting-rods came
back in one deafening din, while at times it seemed as if they were
jumping clear of the metals, for Arthur, whose face grew set and
grim, was racing the engine at a break-neck speed down the incline.
Faster still grew the pace.  There were more half-heard cries from
the men in the lurching trucks behind, while Charley could see
nothing at all now except the blaze of the head-lamp flickering
through black darkness like a comet.  But as they rushed with a crash
and a rattle, vapour whirling about them, out of a snowshed, Arthur
only said, "More steam!"--and a man helped Charley to throw fresh
pinewood through the firebox door, from which a long red flame licked
forth, so that before he could shut it his clothes were smouldering.
Then someone said,

"We'll be on the trestle bridge in a minute.  Say, did you forget?
It's not finished yet, and they're mighty careful of it.  Only run
the cars over it slowly one or two at a time."

"Yes," said Arthur hoarsely, though he did not look round.  "I forgot
it.  Hold tight; we would smash up everything if I tried to stop her
now.  We'll hope she carries speed enough to cross before the bridge
can yield.  There's nothing we can do but chance it.  Raise more
steam!"

Flying fragments of ballast whirled about the engine like driven
hail, thick dust mixed with steam rushed past, and staring out
beneath the massive branches that were blurred altogether in the
head-lamp's glare, Charley saw the hillside fall apart into a great
black hollow, and, clear in the moonlight that shone down here, the
slender shape of a wooden bridge stretching across it.  The structure
looked very frail, a gossamer fabric giddily spanning the gloomy
abyss.  Then a great trembling commenced under the wheels, there was
pitchy blackness with the roar of water below, and for a moment they
seemed flying through mid air, while the rails heaved beneath them,
and the men beside Charley held their breath.  A strange coldness
came upon him, and he wondered what it would feel like to plunge down
into the river.  Then someone shouted hoarsely, "We're over!"

Charley gasped with relief as he felt there was solid ground under
them once more, while Arthur wiped the cold sweat from his forehead.

"We're almost there," said the latter, a few minutes later, as he
shut off steam.  The roar of wheels grew slacker, and presently, with
a grinding of brakes, the engine drew up beside the cars loaded with
hewn timber, in the partly-finished shed.

The Gordons had felled and squared most of that timber, and had not
so far been paid for doing it; while Arthur knew that although the
avalanche might smash to pieces a roofless shed, it would slide
without causing much damage over the top of a completed one.  He was,
however, horribly afraid that the snow would come down on them before
the work was done.

The logs were all sawn and notched to pattern, and numbered ready to
be bolted to the frames, and as the men leapt down from the trucks,
the foreman builder said--

"We've got to break up the record for quick erection to-night, boys,
an' you'll show them folks in Crescent what you can do.  Start in as
if you meant it, an' we'll either break our backs or put this
contract through."

Somebody lighted a roaring lucigen, which is a big air-blast lamp,
and when a column of dazzling flame shot up, men swarmed like bees
about the partly-finished shed.  But there was little confusion, and
less wild language, while no one got in his fellow's way.  Each knew
exactly where his duty lay, and did it thoroughly, which is the
advantage of system and discipline, so while some raised the heavy
beams, others fitted them, and as each slipped into place a man was
ready to drive a bolt or holdfast through them.  Arthur and Reggie
drove the ox-teams which, by dragging a chain over a pulley, helped
to raise the heavy weights, while Charley ran to and fro with his
arms full of spikes or iron bolts, wherever the men called him.  It
was not a prominent part he took, but it was useful, and he had
learned now, what he did not realise at school, that it did not
matter whether people saw or heard of him, so long as he helped
forward any necessary work he was interested in.

Then, amid a rattle of wheels, the surveyor came flying up the line
on a hand trolley, and when Arthur had spoken with him, said--

"I saw your working light across the valley, and came in to see what
was happening.  I guess the Company is much indebted to you for your
prompt measures.  No, I don't think I can improve upon the programme.
You are doing well.  Let us hope the snow won't come, but if it does
we'll be right there ready for it, and with good luck will have got
on so far that it can't hurt us much."

That surveyor was a wise man, so he let well alone, instead of
confusing the men and ordering things differently, merely because he
had not arranged what they were doing all himself.

Charley had one narrow escape.  He was standing on a box of spikes,
which rested on a plank hung outside the shed, holding a long iron
bolt, while a man who sat on a beam above him drove it into a hole,
when there was a rattle beneath him and the box slipped away from his
feet.

The precipice dropped steeply from the edge of the shed, but instead
of feeling for the plank with his toes, he twined his knees round a
log and still held the bolt, even before the workman said, "Stick
tight to the iron, and don't let it go until I tell you."

It was not a comfortable perch, and the jar of the heavy hammer,
which swung faster and faster, nearly shook his fingers from the
bolt, but he held on stubbornly until the man, leaning down, grasped
his shoulder saying, "Swing yourself up here beside me, sonny."

Charley did so, and when he sat on the beam in safety, felt himself
turn cold and dizzy, for there was no sign of the plank, and he knew
only the grip of his knees had saved him from following it into the
awful chasm below.

"You're a level-headed youngster," said the workman, approvingly.  "I
said nothing for fear of scaring you, but if you'd thought more of
taking care of yourself than you did of your job, an' had tried to
drop on to that scaffold, you'd have been smashed flatter than a
flapjack, way down in the cañon now."




CHAPTER VI.

WHEN THE SNOWS CAME DOWN.

At last the work was finished, and Charley, who had been puzzled by
something strangely familiar in the face of a stripling who helped to
fit the beams, stopped opposite him under the bright glare of the
lucigen.  Then like a flash his thoughts turned back to the day when
their steamer crept slowly through the thick bank fog, and he
remembered the white-faced lad waiting outside his dying comrade's
room.  The picture was so vivid that he almost fancied he could hear
the throbbing of the steamer's crew.

"Tom," he said.  "I hardly knew you--have you forgotten me?"  And,
after staring hard at him, the other's eyes brightened as he
answered--

"Why, it's Mr. Gordon, whose brother jumped in after me.  I am more
than glad to see you."

Charley called out excitedly, and when Arthur came up the young man
smiled with pleasure as Charley explained who he was.  Afterwards,
answering the many questions they asked him, he said--

"Yes, I'm Tom, the stowaway.  The purser and Mr. Marvin--you will
remember him--left me safe in Quebec with friends of theirs.  They
bought me an outfit--some kind people on the steamer had sent the
money--sent me for a year to school, and afterwards set me learning
to be a carpenter.  Now I'm earning nearly two dollars a day, and
this country is good enough for a poor man like me.  Yes, you can
make quite certain of that--and I'm only sorry poor Jim never lived
to reach it.  It was he who read those placards, and I can't forget
him.  No, I still dream of that collision, and sometimes at nights I
can see him lying there so white and quiet in the steamer's hospital.
'There's plenty for us two yonder in that good country,' was the last
he said.  Then I hear the big engines humming.  Curious, isn't it?--I
can hear them now."

It was a strange meeting up there, after the stress and hurry, in the
mountain wilderness, and there was a few moments' silence, while
Charley wondered whether the half-starved urchin he met on board the
steamer would ever have grown into this sturdy, contented young
workman, if he had stayed at home.  He hardly though it likely.  Then
Arthur said--

"I believe he is right about the sound, but it is the snow coming,
not the steamer's screw."

A deep, trembling boom commenced and grew louder overhead, then with
a hurried tramp of feet the men flocked towards the entrance of the
shed, and the surveyor, overtaking Arthur, said--

"We'll have the snow-slide upon us presently, and I'm not quite
certain what is best to do.  Steam's down on the locomotive, we
couldn't raise it in time, and I'm not sure if we could get clear
before the wreckage swept the valley.  Of course, it will come right
down the hollow over the big glacier."

Charley, glancing upwards, saw a dark gap in the lofty line of
eternal snow, which glimmered coldly high up under the stars, while
the tall pines shivered as a great chorus of sound came vibrating
down through the darkness.  It drowned the hoarse fret of the river
in the gorge below, grew louder and deeper, until the boldest of the
workmen ceased their murmuring, and the forests in the valley were
wrapped in listening silence while the great peaks spoke.  It seemed
to Charley's excited fancy it was some majestic chant they raised,
for the hills on the further side flung back the sound, and it struck
him there was a meaning in the _Benedicite_ he had never understood
before.  Winter frost that split the hard rock, summer sun, grinding
ice, and melting snow, had each their work to do in enriching a good
land and wearing down the face of the hills.

Neither was it ruin they wrought, for the wreckage they brought down
would fertilize many a valley; and the rest, swept on by a mighty
river, help to spread new wheat-lands west into what was then the
sea.  So Charley, too, felt humbled and awe-stricken, while, in
obedience to everlasting laws which were older than the solid earth
that trembled as it heard, the great voices of Nature proclaimed
their message.  Sometimes they speak in thunders, sometimes very
softly, but they are never silent, and Charley, unheeding, had heard
them in the sigh of the grasses which grew and died for centuries to
add a few more inches of black soil to the prairie.

It was the surveyor who broke the silence--

"I guess, all things considered, we had better trust the shed," he
said.  "Timber-cutter Gordon, we'll test your work to-night, and if
you've done it badly there'll be pretty few of us left in the morning
to tell you so.  Are you willing to take the chances?"

Arthur only bent his head.

"I am content.  We tried to do our best," he said; and Charley, who
now realised the necessity there is for doing everything well, felt
thankful he had made each saw-cut, as Arthur ordered, on the exact
centre of the line, even when that necessitated beginning once or
twice over again.  He looked at the shed, and it seemed solid and
strong, a well-braced, dark tunnel, whose slanting roof was level
with the top of the hewn-down rock behind.  Meantime, through the
great booming he could recognise sharper notes, the scream of mighty
boulders scoring a pathway over slopes of rock, the roar of sliding
gravel and the crash of shattered pines; until it seemed as if the
whole mountain side were coming down upon them, and, as occasionally
happens in that country, softened by melting snow and rent by
alternate frost and thaw, a good deal of it really was.  The men
about him said nothing, until they murmured hoarsely when, staring up
at the climbing forest, they saw its higher edge sink suddenly.  Then
under the misty moonlight a great wedge of white streaked with darker
colour seemed to lick up the stately trees and roll downward
irresistibly, leaving an empty gap behind it, where dense forest had
been.

"I wonder how many thousand tons of snow and earth and broken rock
there is in that," said the surveyor.  "A tremendous display of
power, and if one could only harness it we would need no more labour
for the next few years.  However, there's nobody smart enough to
drive a snow-slide yet, and a wise man gets out of the way of it.
It's time we crawled under cover, boys.  Back into the shed!"

The men could scarcely hear his voice as they obeyed, for the whole
air seemed throbbing with sound, and the earth shook, while Charley
found it comforting to stand holding Reggie's hand close beside his
elder brother under the strongest part of the snowshed.  Tom also
joined them, and when he said something in the latter's ear, Charley
remembered it was not the first time the young carpenter and Arthur
had watched together in the presence of death, before whom there is
no difference between officer of the army and starving stowaway.
Then their sense of hearing was completely paralysed, and it seemed
to Charley that thousands of loaded trains were rolling over his
head, while flakes of stone cracked off from the rock, and splinters
peeled from the stout timbers as they bent inward a little under the
pressure.  In a very terrible manner the avalanche was proving the
builders' work for them, and none of those who had toiled at it felt
quite comfortable.

It would not have stood the strain a moment had not the shed been
built on what is known as the line of least resistance.  Nothing that
man can make may withstand the primitive forces of the universe,
though, after patient study of Nature's laws, which have remained the
same since the framing of the earth, he may learn how to profit by
obeying them.  So, because the roof was sloped in such a way that the
wreck of forest and glacier might pass over it without meeting any
obstacle, it only shook and rattled beneath the burden.

Then, after a space of waiting, when the men's throats grew dry and
their eyes bloodshot, the uproar died gradually away, and at last the
surveyor said:

"You built it well, boys, and I'm mighty thankful you did.  Now I
think we can go out and look at the damage."

When Charley breathed the cool night air again, he could still hear
masses of earth and rock plunging down into the ravine, and on
looking up hardly believed his eyes, for as far as he could see a
great strip of forest had been utterly blotted out.  All that
remained of it was a few broken and splintered stumps of trees.  The
rest had been ground into splinters.

"I must thank you again, Contractor Gordon, in the name of the
Company," said the surveyor, "and I daresay somehow we will make it
up to you.  Hullo! wherever are you coming to?"

Tom sprang wildly forward, seized Arthur by the shoulder, and
shouting "Stand clear!" hurled him backwards, while as they staggered
and went down together, and the surveyor leaped aside for his life,
Charley almost choked.  With a crash against a broken pine, a great
boulder, weighing several tons at least, came whirring down the
slope, and passed so close that Charley felt the cold wind it made
upon his face, then, striking the rails, it leaped out and vanished
into the gorge below.

[Illustration: "TOM SPRANG WILDLY FORWARD AND SEIZED ARTHUR BY THE
SHOULDER."]

"Thanks!" said Arthur, helping up the panting lad.  "Tom, I think we
are even now, only that you might have hung on without my help to the
wreck of the lifeboat, while that boulder would certainly have
smashed me.  As it was, it almost grazed us."

Then the last tinkle of sliding gravel died away, and there followed
a deep silence, through which the fret of the river rose more angrily
than before, and, throwing themselves down inside the shed by dozens,
the men sank, one by one, into slumber.  When Charley wakened the sun
was high, and, taking Reggie with him, he went out to find Arthur
talking to the surveyor.

"We'll have to re-roof part of the shed, but it has saved the track,"
said the latter, "and I should say this slide has done a good turn to
you.  You needn't haul logs from the mountain when the snow has
brought them down with the bark and branches rubbed off nice and
ready for you.  Expect you'll find trees by the hundred lying round
handy to save you chopping.  You have only to pick them out and roll
them in.  We'll take all you can give us for the new bridges, after
the sheds are finished."

Charley beamed with delight when he saw that this was true, for
trunks of all sizes lay where the avalanche had passed, and in many
places they had only to roll them a short distance with cant-poles to
the rails.  It meant a great saving of money.

"Yes, it should help us to make up part of what we have lost on the
contract," said Arthur; "and I'm glad, because we badly need it."

Afterwards the work went on as before, except that they got their
logs much more easily, until at last, one day in early winter, all
the inhabitants of the mining town turned out to celebrate the coming
of the first train.

Arthur and his brothers stood beside the metals near the last big
bridge, the one they had crossed half-finished the eventful night the
snows came down.  Under the shadow of the scented cedars across the
line a procession with flags and banners, which had marched out from
the little wooden town, waited to meet the train.  One or two men
were reading over the speeches they hoped to make, and the rest
chatted and laughed boisterously with their eyes turned towards the
end of the valley, until an excited shout greeted a puff of white
steam as something that twinkled in the sunlight swung round a
distant curve.  It was a locomotive hauling a passenger train, and it
meant that there would no longer be any need to pay famine prices for
all foods or stores, which had hitherto been brought in over the
snow-choked passes and through thundering rivers by dangerous fords
on pack-horses' backs.  There were rich minerals in those mountains,
and now the locomotive would bring them heavy mining machinery,
everybody who lived there hoped the struggling town would grow into a
great city.

Arthur Gordon said nothing as he watched the train draw near.  He had
toiled hard and spent his money freely helping to build that road,
but he feared he would be very little richer for it, while how they
were to live during the next year he did not know.  He wore coarse
blue jean, which, like Charley's clothes, was patched with strips of
flour bags.  In fact, the latter bore the brand, "Champion Early
Riser," across his back.  None of the brothers were light-hearted
that bright morning, but, though they looked sober and serious, their
eyes were fearless and they were not beaten yet.  The years of work
and disappointment had fashioned them into strong, determined men,
who could be trusted to fight out even a losing battle bravely, which
is not an easy thing to do.  The train came on rapidly, then amid a
burst of cheering it stopped opposite the brothers, and when a number
of gentlemen came out upon the platform of the leading car, a citizen
holding a paper stepped forward.

"We welcome this locomotive into Crescent City," he commenced.
"Don't see no city? well, you haven't quite got there yet.  No; I
mean we welcome the honourable company, but we're glad to see both of
you.  This is going to be one of the greatest towns on earth,
and--have patience gentlemen, I've lost my place--I'm proud to be its
magistrate and own the smartest store.  H'm!--oh, yes; you're
introducing a new era of prosperity, and a railroad's the greatest
institution of civilisation.  The silly man has actually writ
it--civility."

The reader stopped, and fumbled desperately with the paper, coughed,
and grew red in the face, while a voice rose from the laughing crowd,
"Out of breath so early?  Forgotten all them pretty things.  What
about the Maple leaf an' the good old Beaver flag?"

"Gentlemen and fellow citizens--ladies and miners, I mean,"
recommenced the confused orator.  "The Firtree doctor made up this
here speech for me, and there was some nice idees in it, but he has
written it that scribbly I can't read the thing.  What I want to say
is, I'm very glad you've come, and we've a feast up yonder waiting;
you won't eat anything for a week after.  We've made this town out of
the barren wilderness, and now we've got a railroad we'll make it a
city of palaces.  There was some jealous people said we wanted a
prison, but they was lying; it's schools, good men, and machines we
want, and we mean to get them.  I was taught with an ash plant,
chiefly to single turnips, back in the old country, and that's why I
can't express just what I'm feeling this auspicious day, but my sons
won't be, and when we've more men with well crammed brains not
ashamed to use their muscles, as the Almighty meant them to, we'll
show the rest of the nations what we can do in this part of the
Dominion.  So, I've only to finish--drive on with your science an'
engines, an' bring in prosperity."

Then, while some laughed and many cheered, the surveyor, who stood up
among the rich men and railroad company's guests on the platform of
the car, to the surprise of Charley, beckoned Arthur.

"This is Contractor Gordon," he said to a famous engineer.  "You will
remember I told you about him, and how he helped us to save part of
the line."

"I am glad to meet you," said the engineer, holding out his hand to
Arthur.  "We are indebted to you, and should be pleased if you will
ride into the town with us.  I want to talk to you."

Charley also started when another grey-haired man touched his
brother's shoulder, for he recognised Colonel Armadale.  "I must
congratulate you, too," he said.  "We have heard several creditable
things about you, and perhaps you did not know I was a large
shareholder in this railway.  We'll have to talk so much at dinner
that you must answer the speeches for us now, Mr. Surveyor."

"I'm a railroad builder, and not a talker," said the surveyor as he
faced the expectant crowd.  "Talking's easy, railroad building's
hard, and you folks should be proud because you've got a good one.
Yes, we're going to bring you in prosperity, and, we hope, earn a few
dividends, while you build your city, but when you all get rich don't
forget the men who made this road.  Some lost their money, and some
their lives, you know.  All fought hard, and you'll give them their
due, so when you're raising statues to your mayors and presidents,
don't forget a little one to the man with the big, hard hands who
swings the shovel."

There was applause which swelled into a roar as a stalwart man in
dusty blue jean stood up.  "This country fed us well an' we done our
little best to pay it back," he said.  "It wasn't easy, but we
worried through, and I'd like to mention one man to whom partickler
thanks are due.  He's standing right there beside the surveyor.  He
struck the hardest bad luck, but he didn't lie down an' die.  No,
sir; says he, 'What I've begun I'll finish,' an' he done it too.
What's more, when any of the rest of us was nearly beat, he stood by
an' helped us, helped us with axe an' ox-team, however he was busy.
Gave us flour when the grub run out, an' good oats for the starvin'
beasts when we couldn't buy no hay.  Stand up, Arthur Gordon, we're
all looking to you."

The air was filled with lifted hats and excited cries when Arthur
Gordon leaned over the platform balustrade, laying a big hand that
trembled on the brass rail, and Charley's eyes grew bright with
pleasure when there was another roar from the assembly as the
surveyor patted his shoulder.  Arthur said little, and said it
quietly, but it pleased the listeners, for there was a deafening
cheer when he finished, and several of the principal guests shook
hands with him.  Then Charley's flushed face beamed as Tom who came
up said, "Just splendid, wasn't it?  I wish I had a brother like him.
I knew he was going to be a great man ever since the day he jumped
overboard to save me."

After this everybody scrambled for a place on the cars, and when,
with the whistle screaming, the train moved on, those who could not
find one ran behind it cheering towards the town, with Reggie waving
his hat among them.  When the latter turned back, he and Charley rode
quietly home on a trolley to their shanty of cedar bark, while when
Arthur returned at night he looked happy, and said he was very
thankful.

"They have paid me more than we bargained for," he said--"made it up
in a number of small extras; and there's another profitable contract
open to me.  I'm to go back to the other new railroad, near our
homestead, and begin as soon as the frost goes.  I'll want several
dozen teams, and we should make a good deal out of it.  Charley, you
and Reggie must sow the crop yourselves next year; there is now no
cause for anxiety, and if all goes as well as it promises to, I shall
be able to start you by and by on Government land of your own."

Then Arthur took out some old letters, and when he sat down to write
under the blinking lamp, Charley smiled at Reggie and they slipped
out to join the workmen in camp.

"I think he wants to tell Miss Armadale about it, and won't miss us
for once," said Charley.

They spent a happy winter in their own homestead, and when spring
came Arthur hired all the men and teams he could on that part of the
prairie, and went away to work on the new railroad, though he often
rode forty miles to see how his brothers got on with the farm, and
went back round by Barholm; while they reaped a very good crop that
year.  Bad fortune does not last for ever, and the men who succeed
are those who can work on and wait patiently, for greater than dash
and daring are the powers of slow endurance.  Then Arthur brought a
Government surveyor and laid out 160 acres of good land ready for
Charley, who, with his younger brother, had been hewing logs for
their house in the bluff.  But before it was ready Arthur married
Lilian Armadale, and they went to live in the old homestead, which
had been doubled in size.  It was Tom, the former stowaway, who took
the contract for the carpentry.

So, after many disappointments and an up-hill struggle, the brothers
found themselves on the way to prosperity, while when Charley, who is
now a stalwart and successful young farmer, rides after his cattle
across the prairie, or watches the fresh green wheat cover the
ploughing, he looks back to those early days of adversity, and
remembers he owes much to them.  They had taught him useful lessons
he might never have otherwise learned.  Once, too, when he reaped his
first splendid crop, his sister Alice, who kept house for him, said--

"You see, though sometimes I was afraid we should have to give it up,
all happened for the best, and we should never have valued the good
things if we got them too easily.  Do you know, as I watched the
binders pile up the sheaves, something recalled the last
harvest-festival I was at in England, and I remember the message so
well, 'They who sow in tears shall reap in joy.'"

"Alice is right," said Arthur, smiling at Lilian, who stood close
beside him.  "This is a good country, but even here one cannot win
success and fortune--or a wife worth more than either--without a
tough struggle.  Still--and we are happier than many, for everybody
does not get such prizes--it was well worth while."



THE END.



HEADLEY BROTHERS, PRINTERS, LONDON; AND ASHFORD, KENT.









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