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No one could laugh more joyously than Grace, or cast about her flashes of brighter humor; but we had just completed an arduous task whose reward was greater almost than we dared hope, and our gladness was too great to find expression in merriment. On reaching the Elktail station I was handed a telegram from Calvert which had lain there some time awaiting an opportunity for delivery.
"Get in, and we'll take you straight to Willow Lake," he said, lifting the unfortunate man, who already had almost lost the use of his limbs, and who answered with his teeth chattering: "You two are very good; I couldn't drag myself further; walked there from Elktail to-day, and I felt main drowsy. What brought thee after me? From one of thy sort I never expected it."
Behind lay the roofs of Elktail, some of them tin-covered and flashing like a heliograph; in front a desolate wilderness where the gray-white of frost-bleached grasses was streaked by the incandescent brightness of sloppy snow. There was neither smoke nor sign of human presence in all its borders only a few dusky patches of willows to break the vast monotony of white and blue.
"If you want anything in these cars, just let me know," he said. "I will," I answered, thrusting back the wide-brimmed hat as I looked at him. "The last time we traveled together you were not so accommodating. We had a little dispute at Elktail one night in the snow." "General Jackson!" exclaimed the conductor. "But you didn't travel with that name on your ticket then.
Even now the Western railroad conductor is a personage, but he might have been an emperor then, and this particular specimen had lorded it over the Colonist passengers in a manner that for several days had made me long to rebuke him. It was foolish, of course, but I was as yet new to the ways of the country, and I fear we were always a somewhat combative family. "Any one for Elktail?
The boys were saying down to Elktail that Fletcher and his father-in-law don't get on, and there's going to be trouble there presently. I think the old man started in to reform him, and Fletcher don't like unlimited reform." "Just like Jasper," said Harry. "A woman's heart, and the strength of three ordinary men.
I met her for the first time in Canada at the Elktail hotel, where she was a waitress, and at her request helped to find her husband the situation. She promised to write home, but evidently did not do so." "It is perfectly true," said Harry. "I was present at that meeting. If our visitor has any doubts on the subject he has only to ride over there and see."
"I am very sorry, and yet it may have been a release," said Aline. "Hers was a very hard lot to bear, but she was always cheerful. Poor Uncle Martin! Of course you will go to meet him." I did so later when, as a special favor, a mounted man brought me a telegram from Elktail, and Martin Lorimer gripped my fingers hard when I boarded the east-bound train at that station.
"You will see it on my ticket if you look in your wallet;" but this, of course, the magnate refused to do, and when another hoot of the whistle announced the engineer's impatience he called a brakeman, saying: "You are bound for Elktail, and we've no time for fooling. Won't get off? Well, we'll soon put you," and, grasping my shoulder, he hustled me toward the platform of the car.
Now, though Martin Lorimer sometimes gave way to outbreaks of indignation, he was fond of impressing the fact on me that if forced into a quarrel one should take the first steps deliberately. Also, even then I remembered that Coombs' homestead lay almost as near Elktail, and a happy thought struck me.
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