Hawtrey's Deputy

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Bindloss Harold. Hawtrey's Deputy

CHAPTER I. SALLY CREIGHTON

CHAPTER II. SALLY TAKES CHARGE

CHAPTER III. WYLLARD ASSENTS

CHAPTER IV. A CRISIS

CHAPTER V. THE OLD COUNTRY

CHAPTER VI. HER PICTURE

CHAPTER VII. AGATHA DOES NOT FLINCH

CHAPTER VIII. THE TRAVELLING COMPANION

CHAPTER IX. THE FOG

CHAPTER X. DISILLUSION

CHAPTER XI. AGATHA'S DECISION

CHAPTER XII. WANDERERS

CHAPTER XIII. THE SUMMONS

CHAPTER XIV. AGATHA PROVES OBDURATE

CHAPTER XV. THE BEACH

CHAPTER XVI. THE FIRST ICE

CHAPTER XVII. DEFEAT

CHAPTER XVIII. A DELICATE ERRAND

CHAPTER XIX. THE PRIOR CLAIM

CHAPTER XX. THE FIRST STAKE

CHAPTER XXI. GREGORY MAKES UP HIS MIND

CHAPTER XXII. A PAINFUL REVELATION

CHAPTER XXIII. THROUGH THE SNOW

CHAPTER XXIV. THE LANDING

CHAPTER XXV. NEWS OF DISASTER

CHAPTER XXVI. THE RESCUE

CHAPTER XXVII. IN THE WILDERNESS

CHAPTER XXVIII. THE UNEXPECTED

CHAPTER XXIX. CAST AWAY

CHAPTER XXX. THE LAST EFFORT

CHAPTER XXXI. WYLLARD COMES HOME

Отрывок из книги

The night was clear and bitterly cold when Hawtrey and Sally Creighton drove away from Stukely's barn. Winter had lingered unusually long that year, and the prairie gleamed dimly white, with the sledge trail cutting athwart it, a smear of blue-grey, in the foreground. It was – for Lander's lay behind them with the snow among the stubble belts that engirdled it – an empty wilderness the mettlesome team swung across, and during the first few minutes the cold struck through them with a sting like the thrust of steel. A half-moon hung low above it, coppery red with frost, and there was no sound but the crunch beneath the runners, and the beat of hoofs that rang dully through the silence like a roll of muffled drums.

Sleighs like the one that Hawtrey drove are not common on the prairie, where the farmer generally uses the humble bob-sled when the snow lies unusually long. The one in question had, however, been made for use in Montreal, and bought back East by a friend of Hawtrey's, who was, as it happened, possessed of some means, which is a somewhat unusual thing in the case of a Western wheat-grower. He had also bought the team – the fastest he could obtain – and when the warmth came back to them Hawtrey and the girl became conscious of the exhilaration of the swift and easy motion. The sleigh was light and narrow, and Hawtrey, who drew the thick driving robe higher about his companion, did not immediately draw the mittened hand he had used back again. The girl did not resent the fact that it still rested behind her shoulder, nor did Hawtrey attach any particular significance to the matter. He was a man who usually acted on impulse, with singularly easy manners. How far Sally understood him did not appear, but she came of folk who had waged a very stubborn battle with the wilderness, and there was a vein of somewhat grim tenacity in her.

.....

The team went far at the gallop, and the beat of hoofs rose up, dulled a little, in a wild staccato drumming. There was an insistent crunching beneath the runners, and a fine mist of snow beat against the sleigh, but the girl leaning forward, a tense figure, with nerveless hands clenched upon the reins, saw nothing but the blue-grey riband of trail that steadily unrolled itself before her. At length, however, a blurred mass, which she knew to be a birch bluff, grew out of the white waste, and presently a cluster of darker smudges shot up into the shape of a log-house, sod stables, and strawpile granary. A minute or two later, she pulled the team up with an effort, and a man, who flung the door of the house open, came out into the moonlight. He stopped, and apparently gazed at her in astonishment.

"Miss Creighton!" he said.

.....