A Prairie Courtship by Harold Bindloss

It was two days later that Nevis led his worn-out horse up the side of one of the deep ravines which every here and there wind through the prairie. It was then about the middle of the afternoon and almost unpleasantly hot in the sheltered hollow. The crest of it shut out the wind that swept the open levels, and the sunshine struck down between the birches, which were just then unfolding lace-like streamers of tiny leaves. There were no other trees except the willows wrapped in a bright emerald flush along the banks of a little creek.

Nevis felt unpleasantly weary. Although a man of fine proportions, he did not care for physical exertion and avoided it as far as possible; but the commercial instinct was strong in him and he had driven a long way in pursuit of money during the last few days. It was supposed that he picked up a good deal of it in the most unlikely as well as the more obvious places, for he was troubled by few scruples and was endued with the faculty of getting money. He was a young man, evidently of excellent education, though nobody seemed to know where he had received it or where he came from. Beginning as an implement dealer and general mortgage broker on a humble scale two or three years earlier, he had extended his field of operations rapidly.