It was nearly six o’clock in the evening when George and his companions, who had spent part of the day looking for the straying stock, rode up to the Grant homestead through a vast stretch of grain.  This grew on the rich black soil they call “gumbo” in the West; but here and there a belt of dark-colored summer fallow checkered the strong green of the wheat and oats.  Though he clung to the one-crop system, Alan Grant was careful of his land.  The fine brick house and range of smart wooden buildings, the costly implements, which included a gasoline tractor-plow, all indicated prosperity, and George recognized that the rugged-faced man beside him had made a marked success of his farming.

When the cattle had been secured, Flora Grant welcomed the new arrivals graciously, and after a while they sat down to supper with the hired men in a big room.  It was plainly furnished, but there was everything that comfort demanded, for the happy mean between bareness and superfluity had been cleverly hit, and George thought Miss Grant was responsible for this.  He sat beside her at the foot of the long table and noticed the hired hands’ attitude toward her.  It was respectful, but not diffident.  The girl had no need to assert herself; she was on excellent terms with the sturdy toilers, who nevertheless cheerfully submitted to her rule.

When the meal was over, Grant led his guests into a smaller room, and produced a bag of domestic tobacco.

“The stock have gone far enough,” he said.  “You’ll stay here to-night.”

Flett looked doubtful, though it was obvious that he wished to remain.  He was a young, brown-faced man, and his smart khaki uniform proclaimed him a trooper of the Northwest Mounted Police.

“The trouble is that I’m a bit late on my round already,” he protested.

“That’s soon fixed,” said Grant.

He opened a roll-top desk, and wrote a note which he read out: 

“’Constable Flett has been detained in the neighborhood of this homestead through having rendered, at my request, valuable assistance in rounding up a bunch of cattle, scattered in crossing the flooded river.’”

“Thanks,” said Flett.  “That kind of thing counts when they’re choosing a corporal.”

Grant turned to George with a smile.

“Keep in with the police, Lansing ­I’ve known a good supper now and then go a long way.  They may worry you about fireguards and fencing, but they’ll stand by you when you’re in trouble, if you treat them right.  If it’s a matter of straying stock, a sick horse, or you don’t know how to roof a new barn, you have only to send for the nearest trooper.”

“Aren’t these things a little outside their duties?” Edgar asked.

The constable grinned.

“Most anything that wants doing badly is right in our line.”

“Sure,” said Grant.  “It’s not long since Flett went two hundred miles over the snow with a dog-team to settle a little difference between an Indian and his wife.  Then he once brought a hurt trapper a fortnight’s journey on his sledge, sleeping in the snow, in the bitterest weather.  They were quite alone, and the hurt man was crazy most of the time.”

“Then you’re supposed to look after the settlers, as well as to keep order?” suggested Edgar, looking admiringly at the sturdy young constable.

“That’s so,” replied Flett.  “They certainly need it.  Last winter we struck one crowd in a lonely shack up north ­man, woman, and several children huddled on the floor, with nothing to eat, and the stove out ­at forty degrees below.  There was a bluff a few miles off, but they hadn’t a tool of any kind to cut cordwood with.  Took us quite a while to haul them up some stores, though we made twelve-hour marches between our camps in the snow.  We had to hustle that trip.”

He paused and resumed: 

“Better keep an eye on that bunch of young horses, Mr. Grant; bring them up nearer the house when the nights get darker.  Those Clydesdales are mighty fine beasts and prices are high.”

Grant looked astonished.

“I’ve been here a good many years, and I’ve never lost a horse,” he declared.

“It doesn’t follow you’ll always be as lucky,” the trooper said pointedly.

“I was told that property is as safe in the West as it is in England,” Edgar broke in.

“Just so,” remarked the trooper.  “They say that kind of thing.  I never was in the old country, but young mavericks aren’t the only stock to go missing in Alberta, which isn’t a long way off.  The boys there have their hands full now and then, and we have three or four of the worst toughs I’ve struck right in Sage Butte.”

Grant leaned forward on the table, looking steadily at him.

“Hadn’t you better tell me what you have in your mind?”

“I can’t give you much information, but we got a hint from Regina to keep our eyes open, and from things I’ve heard it’s my idea that now that the boys have nearly stopped the running of Alberta cattle across the frontier, some of the toughs they couldn’t track mean to start the same game farther east.  Some of you ranchers run stock outside the fences, and I guess one could still find a lonely trail to the American border.”

“Well,” said Grant, “I’m glad you told me.”  He turned to George.  “Be careful, Lansing; you would be an easier mark.”

They strolled outside; and after a while George joined Flora, and sauntered away across the grass with her.  It was a clear, still evening, and the air was wonderfully fresh.

“Though he wouldn’t let me thank him, I feel I’m seriously indebted to your father, Miss Grant,” he said.  “Our horses were worn out, and the stock had all scattered when he turned up with the trooper.”

“I believe he enjoyed the ride, and the night in the rain,” replied Flora.  “You see, he had once to work very hard here, and now that things have changed, he finds it rather tame.  He likes to feel he’s still capable of a little exertion.”

“I shouldn’t consider him an idle man.”

Flora laughed.

“That would be very wrong; but the need for continual effort and the strain of making ends meet, with the chance of being ruined by a frozen crop, have passed.  I believe he misses the excitement of it.”

“Then I gather that he built up this great farm?”

“Yes; from a free quarter-section.  He and my mother started in a two-roomed shack.  They were both from Ontario, but she died several years ago.”  The girl paused.  “Sometimes I think she must have had remarkable courage, I can remember her as always ready in an emergency, always tranquil.”

George glanced at her as she stood, finely posed, looking out across the waste of grass with gravely steady eyes, and it occurred to him that she resembled her mother in the respects she had mentioned.  Nevertheless, he felt inclined to wonder how she had got her grace and refinement.  Alan Grant was forceful and rather primitive.

“Have you spent much of your time here?” he asked.

“No,” she answered.  “My mother was once a school-teacher, and she must have had ambitious views for me.  When the farm began to prosper, I was sent to Toronto.  After that I went to Montreal, and finally to England.”

“You must be fond of traveling.”

“Oh,” she said, with some reserve, “I had thought of taking up a profession.”

“And you have abandoned the idea?”

She looked at him quietly, wondering whether she should answer.

“I had no alternative,” she said.  “I began to realize it after my mother’s death.  Then my father was badly hurt in an accident with a team, and I came back.  He has nobody else to look after him, and he is getting on in life.”

Her words conveyed no hint of the stern struggle between duty and inclination, but George guessed it.  This girl, he thought, was one not to give up lightly the career she had chosen.

Then she changed the subject with a smile.

“I suspect that my father approves of you, perhaps because of what you are doing with the land.  I think I may say that if you have any little difficulty, or are short of any implements that would be useful, you need only come across to us.”

“Thank you,” George responded quietly.

“Mr. West mentioned that you were on a farm in this country once before.  Why did you give it up?”

“Somebody left me a little money.”

“Then what brought you back?”

She was rather direct, but that is not unusual in the West, and George was mildly flattered by the interest she displayed.

“It’s a little difficult to answer.  For one thing, I was beginning to feel that I was taking life too easily in England, It’s a habit that grows on one.”

He had no desire to conceal the fact that he had come out on Sylvia’s behalf ­it never occurred to him to mention it.  He was trying to analyze the feelings which had rendered the sacrifice he made in leaving home a little easier.

“I don’t think the dread of acquiring that habit is common among your people,” Flora said mischievously.  “It doesn’t sound like a very convincing reason.”

“No,” replied George, with a smile.  “Still, it had some weight.  You see, it isn’t difficult to get lazy and slack, and I’d done nothing except a little fishing and shooting for several years.  I didn’t want to sink into a mere lounger about country houses and clubs.  It’s pleasant, but too much of it is apt to unfit one for anything else.”

“You believe it’s safer, for example, to haul stovewood home through the Canadian frost or drive a plow under the scorching sun?”

“Yes; I think I feel something of the kind.”

Flora somewhat astonished him by her scornful laugh.

“You’re wise,” she said.  “We have had sportsmen here from your country, and I’ve a vivid memory of one or two.  One could see by their coarse faces that they ate and drank too much; and they seemed determined to avoid discomfort at any cost.  I suppose they could shoot, but they could neither strip a gun nor carry it on a long day’s march.  The last party thought it needful to take a teamload of supplies when they went north after moose.  It would have been a catastrophe if they had missed their dinner.”

“Going without one’s dinner has its inconveniences,” said George.

“And thinking too much about it has its perils,” she retorted.

George nodded.  He thought he knew what she meant, and he agreed with it.  He could recall companions who, living for pleasure, had by degrees lost all zest for the more or less wholesome amusements to which they had confined their efforts.  Some had become mere club loungers and tattlers; one or two had sunk into gross indulgence.  This had had its effect on him:  he did not wish to grow red-faced, slothful, and fleshy, as they had done, nor to busy himself with trivialities until such capacities for useful work as he possessed had atrophied.

“Well,” he said, “nobody could call this a good country for the pampered loafer.”

Flora smiled, and pointed out across the prairie.  In the foreground it was flecked with crimson flowers; farther back willow and poplar bluffs stretched in bluish smears across the sweep of grass that ran on beyond them toward the vivid glow of color on the skyline.  It was almost beautiful in the soft evening light, but it conveyed most clearly a sense of vastness and solitude.  The effect was somehow daunting.  One thought of the Arctic winter and the savage storms that swept the wilds.

“I’ve heard it called hard,” she said.  “It undoubtedly needs hard men; there is nothing here that can be easily won.  That’s a fact that the people you’re sending over ought to recognize.”

“They soon discover it when they get out.  When they’ve had a crop hailed or frozen, the thing becomes obvious.”

“Did you lose one?”

“I did,” George rejoined rather gloomily.  “I’ve a suspicion that if we get much dry weather and the usual strong winds, I may lose another.  The wheat’s getting badly cut by driving sand; that’s a trouble we don’t have to put up with in the old country.”

“I’m sorry,” said Flora; and he knew she meant it.  “But you won’t be beaten by one bad season?”

“No,” George answered with quiet determination.  “I must make a success of this venture, whatever it costs.”

She was a little puzzled by his manner, for she did not think he was addicted to being needlessly emphatic; but she asked no questions, and soon afterward the others joined them and they went back to the house.  Early on the following morning, George started homeward with his cattle, and as they rode slowly through the barley-grass that fringed the trail, Edgar looked at him with a smile.

“You spent some time in Miss Grant’s company,” he remarked.  “How did she strike you?”

“I like her.  She’s interesting ­I think that’s the right word for it.  Seems to understand things; talks to you like a man.”

“Just so,” Edgar rejoined, with a laugh.  “She’s a lady I’ve a high opinion of; in fact, I’m a little afraid of her.  Though I’m nearly as old as she is, she makes me feel callow.  It’s a sensation that’s new to me.”

“And you’re a man of experience, aren’t you?”

“I suppose I was rather a favorite at home,” Edgar owned with humorous modesty.  “For all that, I don’t feel myself quite up to Miss Grant’s standard.”

“I didn’t notice any assumption of superiority on her part.”

“Oh, no,” said Edgar.  “She doesn’t require to assume it; the superiority’s obvious; that’s the trouble.  One hesitates about offering her the small change of compliments that generally went well at home.  If you try to say something smart, she looks at you as if she were amused, not at what you said, but at you.  There’s an embarrassing difference between the things.”

“The remedy’s simple.  Don’t try to be smart.”

“You would find that easy,” Edgar retorted.  “Now, in my opinion, Miss Grant is intellectual, which is more than anybody ever accused you of being, but I suspect you would make more progress with her than I could do.  Extremes have a way of meeting, and perhaps it isn’t really curious that your direct and simple views should now and then recommend you to a more complex person.”

“I notice a couple of beasts straying yonder,” George said dryly.

Edgar rode off to drive the animals up to the herd.  George, he thought, was painfully practical; only such a man could break off the discussion of a girl like Miss Grant to interest himself in the movements of a wandering steer.  For all that, the beasts must be turned, and they gave Edgar a hard gallop through willow scrub and tall grass before he could head them off and afterward overtake the drove.