Winston of the Prairie | Page 9

it a deal?"
"Yes," said Winston simply, stretching out his hand for the roll of bills
the other flung down on the table, and, while one of the contracting
parties knew that the other would regret it bitterly, the bargain was
made. Then Courthorne laughed in his usual indolent fashion as he said,
"Well, it's all decided, and I don't even ask your word. To-morrow will
see the husk sloughed off and for a fortnight you'll be Lance
Courthorne. I hope you feel equal to playing the role with credit,
because I wouldn't entrust my good fame to everybody."
Winston smiled dryly. "I fancy I shall," he said, and long afterwards
recalled the words. "You see, I had ambitions in my callow days, and
it's not my fault that hitherto I've never had a part to play."
Rancher Winston was, however, wrong in this. He had played the part
of an honest man with the courage which had brought him to ruin, but
there was now to be a difference.
CHAPTER III
TROOPER SHANNON'S QUARREL
There was bitter frost in the darkness outside when two young men
stood talking in the stables of a little outpost lying a long ride back
from the settlement in the lonely prairie. One leaned against a manger
with a pipe in his hand, while the spotless, softly-gleaming harness
hung up behind him showed what his occupation had been. The other
stood bolt upright with lips set, and a faint grayness which betokened
strong emotion showing through his tan. The lantern above them
flickered in the icy draughts, and from out of the shadows beyond its

light came the stamping of restless, horses and the smell of prairie hay
which is pungent with the odors of wild peppermint.
The two lads, and they were very little more, were friends, in spite of
the difference in their upbringing, for there are few distinctions
between caste and caste in that country where manhood is still
esteemed the greatest thing, and the primitive virtues count for more
than wealth or intellect. Courage and endurance still command respect
in the new Northwest, and that both the lads possessed them was made
evident by the fact that they were troopers of the Northwest police, a
force of splendid cavalry whose duty it is to patrol the wilderness at all
seasons and in all weathers, under scorching sun and in blinding snow.
The men who keep the peace of the prairie are taught what heat and
thirst are, when they ride in couples through a desolate waste wherein
there is only bitter water, parched by pitiless sunrays and whitened by
the intolerable dust of alkali. They also discover just how much cold
the human frame can endure, when they lie down with only the stars
above them, long leagues from the nearest outpost, in a trench scooped
in the snow, and they know how near one may come to suffocation and
yet live through the grass fires' blinding smoke. It happens now and
then that two who have answered to the last roster in the icy darkness
do not awaken when the lingering dawn breaks across the great white
waste, and only the coyote knows their resting-place, but the watch and
ward is kept, and the lonely settler dwells as safe in the wilderness as
he would in an English town.
Trooper Shannon was an Irishman from the bush of Ontario; Trooper
Payne, English, and a scion of a somewhat distinguished family in the
old country, but while he told nobody why he left it suddenly, nobody
thought of asking him. He was known to be a bold rider and careful of
his beast, and that was sufficient for his comrades and the keen-eyed
Sergeant Stimson. He glanced at his companion thoughtfully as he said,
"She was a pretty girl. You knew her in Ontario?"
Shannon's hands trembled a little. "Sure," he said. "Larry's place was
just a mile beyont our clearing, an' there was never a bonnier thing than
Ailly Blake came out from the old country--but is it need there is for

talking when ye've seen her? There was once I watched her smile at ye
with the black eyes that would have melted the heart out of any man.
Waking and sleeping they're with me still."
Three generations of the Shannons had hewn the lonely clearing further
into the bush of Ontario and married the daughters of the soil, but the
Celtic strain, it was evident, had not run out yet. Payne, however, came
of English stock, and expressed himself differently.
"It was a--shame," he said. "Of course he flung her over. I think you
saw him, Pat?"
Shannon's face grew grayer, and he quivered visibly as his passion
shook him, while Payne felt his own blood pulse faster as