Jack and I were early about in the morning, intent upon making our prospecting arrangements. We asked a casual question of an early morning lounger at a livery stable—some of these fellows seemed to get up at daylight for the express purpose of lounging—and he flung his voice over his shoulder into the recesses of the barn. "Jake!" he called; "two guys here to see yuh."
Jake was evidently feeding his horses, for we heard the rustle of hay and caught a whiff of its fragrance, but presently he came stumping down the main thoroughfare between the stalls. He was a short man with an over-developed waist line—quite the opposite of the lean and lanky Westerner our imaginations had been picturing. Although it was still early and there was a nip to the air of the first morning in May, he wore neither coat nor waistcoat nor collar nor tie, and the neckband of his shirt was unbuttoned and revealed a generous expanse of throat and chest. He had recently been clean shaven, and he chewed tobacco with great gusto; tiny streamlets of the seductive fluid wound their way through little creases in his flesh which seemed to have been cut for the purpose from the corners of his mouth to the bottom of his chin.
"Well," he said, bringing his weight to a poise on his pudgy feet, and scrutinizing us closely through shrewd, half-closed eyes. "You fellows lookin' fer land?"
"That's what," said Jack, who was already beginning to pick up some of the direct vernacular of the West. "We want a man who knows the country to show us about."
"I'm your gazabo," said Jake, stuffing a fist in a trouser pocket and bringing forth a half-eaten plug of tobacco, from which he helped himself liberally. Then, evidently in sudden embarrassment over his bad manners, he exclaimed, "Pardon me; my mistake!" and extended the plug to Jack and me. We declined.
"As I was sayin', I'm the original Kid McCoy when it comes to locatin' land," he continued, when satisfied that we really did not chew tobacco, and that there was no offence in our refusal. "I know every badger-hole from Estevan to Prince Albert. I know every patch of stink-weed from Arcola to Swift Current. I've druv this country till there ain't a coyote between Montana an' the Saskatch'wan river but knows the rattle o' my bone-shaker. You boys hit luck with your first throw—runnin' into me like this." Then, with a sharp squint through his half-closed eyes, and dropping his voice to a confidential note, "How much money you got?"
"Enough," said Jack, "but none to waste. What are your rates?"
Jake seemed to be turning a problem heavily in his mind. "I like you fellows," he said at length, "and I make you a special price. Usual I get seven dollars a day an' found fer drivin', an' fifty dollars for locatin'. That's fer each gent. Now I calls you two boys one gent an' makes you the same price—seven bones an' a grub-stake whether we hit oil or not, an' fifty plunks extra if we do. An' we will. No question about that. I know two claims that's jus' sittin' up an' yelpin' fer you lads to come along."
We withdrew and talked the matter over for a few minutes. In spite of Jake's unprepossessing appearance and boastful language there was something appealing about him. He threw out a bluff, frank, independent suggestion of friendliness which reacted readily upon us, and he looked like a man who knew the country. We returned presently with our minds made up.
"We'll take your offer, Mr. ——" Jack commenced.
"Jake," he interrupted. "No mister."
"All right, Jake, we'll take your offer. When do we start, what do we take, and where do we go?"
Jake looked interrogatively at the morning sun. Then, "Had breakfast?" he demanded.
"No."
"Well, fill up. You must be feelin' pretty well bored out after your trip. I'll start get the outfit together. I got a team of buckskins that's tougher than Little Eva in an Uncle Tom's Cabin show, an' a democrat bone-shaker that scuds across the prairie like the shadow of a cloud." (He had his poetic turns, had Jake). "I got a tent, but you'll need your own blankets. After breakfast we'll go over to a store an' buy a lay-out o' grub."
"How long will we be away?"
"Well, nat'rally we have to figger on driving out a good spell. Ain't no free land nowhere close to a city, a C-I-T-Y"—he spelled it out, with a whimisical mixture of pride and ridicule—"like this. Now I've a spot in my mind I think'll suit you boys right down the calf of the leg. It'll take us about three days to go, an' a day to look it over, an' three days to come back, which knocks the hell out o' a week, don't it? An' it might be longer."
"You see, we have our sisters here. We have to give them some idea——"
"Sisters!" Jake exclaimed, evidently in some panic. "They ain't goin' along?"
"No. They'll stay here until we get settled."
"That's all right, then," said Jake, visibly relieved. "Well, you tell 'em a week or ten days."
We related the morning's transactions to the girls, who accepted the situation with resignation, as it had been agreed that they would stay in Regina while we did our prospecting. They would at once set about to find cheaper lodgings, or a couple of rooms where they could keep house; they insisted that they were quite able to shift for themselves. They would leave word of their new location at the hotel.
The forenoon was well gone by the time we had finished our arrangements and bought our "grub", which consisted mainly of canned goods and other preparations that would not spoil in the heat. The democrat was a two-seated affair, and the tent and supplies were bundled on behind, or laid in the bottom. We noted that Jake added a rifle to the equipment. Then we started off, Jack in the front seat with the driver, and I alone behind.
For most of that day we drove through a country of almost absolutely level prairie, save for occasional rough spots which Jake described as "buffalo wallows", which threatened to throw us out of the "bone-shaker", as the buckskins never changed their pace, evidently still supposing that the democrat was following them like the shadow of a cloud. Jake told us that the buffalo wallows were once wet spots on the prairie where the buffalo came to roll in the mud, which had afterwards been baked hard by the sun. We did not know whether to accept this at face value, as it was not easy to tell when Jake was to be taken at par, but we agreed that that was a satisfactory explanation, and did not enter into a discussion. Through this country there were many evidences of prosperity and of the fertility of the soil, but Jake assured us that there was nothing to be had here, and in any case it was not to be compared with what we would find further on. The Westerner has a faith, which amounts almost to a religion, that there is always something better farther on.
During the day we discovered, also, that our guide was something of a philosopher. He had many shrewd remarks to make about immigrants, and homesteaders, and the business of settling up a country. It appeared that he had no very regular scale for his services. This came out in his account of the location of a young Englishman whom he described as Mr. Spoof.
"He had a carload of baggage," said Jake, with Western extravagance of language, "and when I suggested that he start up a second-hand clothing store he said, 'Ah, I'm afraid you're spoofin' me.' So I named him Mr. Spoof, an' he gets mail now addressed that way."
It seemed that Mr. Spoof had been inquiring in one of the hotels where he could cash a draft for sixty pounds when Jake took him in tow. "I knew that was no place for him—an' sixty pounds," said Jake, "so I hustled him out an' planted him on as slick a piece of farm land as ever grew a gopher. 'How much is your fee?' said he, very courtly, when it was all fixed up.
"'Sixty pounds,' says I, knowin' in advance the size of his wad.
"'My word!' says he. 'Isn't that a bit thick?'
"'Thick nothin'!' says I. 'Here I gets you a hundred an' sixty acres of land, as good as lies out doors, an' a chance to be a farmer, an' have your own stock an' herds an' house an' barn an' a wife an' a half-a-dozen kids—whad'ye expect for sixty pounds?'
"'It's a bit thick,' he kep' on sayin'.
"'See here,' says I. 'If you think this is a bit thick, as you call it, pay me the sixty pounds now, an' in three years bring me the title to your farm, an' I'll give you back your sixty pounds, an' not charge you a cent for the use of the land for those three years.' That seemed to shush 'im, an' he coughed up."
We laughed over the story. "I suppose you get them here as green as grass," I ventured.
"Oh, terrible, terrible," Jake agreed gravely. "An' in most unexpected places. But jus' you watch out!" he continued with a strange sharpness. "I took his sixty pounds because there was a dozen sharks on his trail, and he might as well give it to me fer somethin' as to them fer nothin'. But jus' you watch out that in ten or twenty years he don't haveyoubeat to a custard. Dang me! I can't explain it, but there's somethin' in those fellows that won't go down—an' stay down. That is, most of 'em. Course there's failures everywhere," he added, generously. "They don' count."
"But do you think it quite fair," said Jack, and I knew that he was bantering our guide, or wanting to draw out his conclusions,—"do you think it quite fair to charge different fees for the same service?"
"Fair as fightin'," Jake declared. "It's like this. You go into the butcher's an' you order a cut of steak, an' he sets you back six bits, an' it doesn't matter whether it's you or me or the king—six bits is the price. That's business. But you go into a lawyer's or a doctor's an' what does he do? Looks you up an' down an' figgers out in his mind what you can damn-well pay, an' that's what he soaks you. That's a perfession. Locatin' homesteads is a perfession."
With this explanation of the ethics of his "perfession" we had to be satisfied. As the day wore on, the sun, pouring through a cloudless sky as clear as space, and the fresh wind which blew steadily in our faces, began to have effect, and we felt a smarting, tingling sensation over our cheeks and across our noses and chins. Jake had provided against this contingency with a box of axle grease; not the daintiest cosmetic, but a cheap and effective one. He now produced the box with the instructions, "Plaster it on. Don't be afraid of it."
We did so, somewhat gingerly, and laughed whenever we looked in each other's faces.
Jake turned in to a farm place in mid-afternoon for water. We could see the farmer seeding in his field; he made no stop on our account, and if he had a wife she remained indoors. We pumped as much water as the horses would drink, and filled our water keg, and then sat for a while in the shade of one of his buildings, chewing at straws and gazing into the blank distance. There was a supreme satisfaction, a fine relaxation and relief, in idling in such an hour. I was impressed with the off-hand way in which we seemed to have taken possession of the man's farm, and his complete indifference to our presence.
"Some people say," said Jake at length, yawning and digging his heels in the ground preparatory to getting up, "some people say that the Indian is a fool, an' the Indian says the white man is a fool. On a day like this I al'us reckon the Indian has a little the best o' the argyment."
He pulled his team out from the side of a haystack, where they had been feeding with as little concern as if the hay were their own, and presently we rattled off down the trail again. On the way we passed the field in which the farmer was seeding. We waved our hats at him, and from the distance he waved his hat back at us, and we drove on into the prairies.
On account of our afternoon rest Jake drove until almost sundown. We were now in a slightly rolling country, and suddenly he swung from the trail and pulled up on the top of a little knoll. From this little vantage point we could see the unbroken sweep of the prairies, miles and miles in every direction.
"Is this the bald-headed?" I asked in a low voice, as though touching on something almost sacred.
"This is the bald-headed," he answered, solemnly. "See, everywhere, sky an' grass—sky an' grass. Ah, there, there's an exception." I followed the line of his extended arm. Far across the plains I saw a flashing light, as of a heliograph.
"The window of a settler's shanty, twenty miles from here, if it's a foot," he explained. "Look how green the grass is. The evenin' light makes it that way, somehow."
It was true. The grass had taken a deeper shade of green with the light falling aslant across it. The sun hung like a yellow ball in a sky of champagne, and the long shadows of our horses and wagon stretched down the slope of the little hill. But most impressive of all was the silence, a silence as of heaven and earth brooding, brooding, brooding over this scene as they had done from the dawn of time; aye, and before that, far into the vague aeons of eternity. . . . I wished that Jean might have been there.
We made our camp on the hill, if we can be said to have made camp at all. Jake found a little slough (pronouncedslew) of snow water not far away, and he unharnessed his horses and hobbled them nearby. I was fussing with the tent when he returned.
"We won't need that, son," and I thought there was a note almost of affection in his voice that made me warm to the man. "It couldn't rain to-night on a bet. Clean out the wagon an' you two boys sleep on the floor of it. You get the benefit o' the springs that way, an' it's dryer'n the ground."
"But where will you sleep?"
"Oh, I'll roll up somewhere. I'm an old-timer."
Jake gathered some dry grass and buffalo chips and out of an astonishingly little fire he soon had the tea boiling. Then he fried bacon and laid the strips of hot bacon on slabs of bread. And we ate bacon and bread, and then jam and bread, and drank hot black tea, while the slow twilight settled down about us.
Once, only, Jake startled us by springing to his feet and running to the wagon. He slung his rifle over his arm as we heard a sort of rushing whistle in the darkness overhead.
"No use," he said, laying the weapon down reluctantly. "Wouldn't get one with a carload o' cartridges."
"What was it?" we asked. "We didn't see anything."
"Didn't you? You ain't got prairie eyes yet. Them was wild ducks, goin' north a-hootin'. Wouldn't hit one with a rifle in a million years."
"Why don't you carry a shot gun?" asked Jack.
"Sometimes a rifle is better," he answered, quietly.
As we were getting ready for bed we noticed him take up the rifle again, make sure that the magazine was charged, and even throw a cartridge into the barrel. Then he sat with it over his arm, a few yards from the wagon.
At last our curiosity became too much for us, so Jack said, "What's the idea, Jake?"
Jake was smoking now, having changed off from chewing tobacco after supper. For a moment or two he sat, puffing silently. Then he got up and walked over beside us.
"I didn' mean to say nothin' about it to you lads," he said, in a low voice. "What you don' know you don' worry over. But since you ask me, old Sittin' Crow's been givin' trouble. He's off his reserve again, with a few rash bucks followin' him, an' if he should catch us unawares he'd likely dangle three new scalps at his belt. The buckskins, the democrat, an' the grub would look mighty good to Sittin' Crow."
I felt a strange tremor run up my spine. My scalp was still in place all right; I could feel the hair rising on it.
"Why didn't you tell us sooner," Jack remonstrated. "We should have had a rifle each. What is one rifle against a band like that?"
"One rifle, if it's pointed right, will puncture old Sittin' Crow, an' that's the last thing he's hopin' fer," said Jake. "With one rifle on guard we're safe as Sunday. Now you boys go to sleep, an' I'll jus' watch the camp."
"But you can't do that!" Jack insisted. "You can't sit up on guard all night and drive all day. We'll take our turn. Won't we, Frank?"
"Of course," said I, assuming a confidence I could not feel. It was quite dark now, and a rising breeze came with an eerie note across the plains.
"Well, that's decent," said Jake, "but I couldn't let you take no such chances."
"Chances nothing!" Jack exploded. "We're in the same boat, and we're going to row together. Divide the night up, and Frank and I will take shift about."
"Well, if you insist," said Jake, reluctantly. "I'll hold it down till midnight, which is the most dang'rous time; then you can take it till three o'clock, an' Frank till six. I'll call you at midnight."
He was as good as his word. I heard them whispering in the gloom, while the stars blinked at me from a depthless heaven overhead.
"I thought I heard a noise once, down by the horses, but it must ha' been a coyote or a badger," Jake was saying. "It's jet black now, and if they haven't seen us they won't 'till daylight. I think you'll be safe enough. If you get up against it don't lose your head. Take your time; aim safe—not too high—an' let 'im have it."
Jack climbed out bravely, but I thought I felt his frame tremble as he went. I was none too happy myself. I lay awake, I don't know how long, counting the stars. Jake had made a bed of the tent on the prairie and was snoring with provoking regularity. It seemed to me that snore of his must be heard for miles through the silent night.
Suddenly Jack came rushing in upon us, falling over Jake and tumbling himself, headlong, on the ground. The rifle flew from his hands, and he was hunting about for it, frantically, in the darkness.
"It won't go off!" he shouted, in a hoarse whisper. "The damned thing won't go off!"
"Did you see him?" whispered Jake, while I, wide awake, jumped from the wagon.
"As plain as day, coming up the hill. I pulled on him, steady and low like you said, but it wouldn't go off."
Even as he spoke a dim form slowly hove in sight. I stood back with my heart thumping. It did not come fast, but its approach out of the darkness was the more terrifying for its deliberation. He was almost upon us before, evidently scenting Jake, the buckskin whinnied.
Jack was almost in collapse from excitement and mortification, but Jake rolled and doubled on his blanket with loud guffaws of merriment.
"But tell me, jokes aside," said Jack, at length, "why wouldn't the rifle go off? Suppose it had been Sitting Crow? Why wouldn't it go off?"
"Well, fer one reason," Jake explained when he could speak calmly, "I've no notion fer walkin' back to Regina, nor fer drivin' with one nag, neither. So when I took the hobbles off one o' the buckskins, figgerin' he'd likely work up here durin' the night, I also took the cartridges out o' the rifle. Can't afford to have no horse like that plunked low down, careful, in the middle."
"But suppose it really had been Sitting Crow," Jack persisted. "A nice mess we'd have been in."
"Can't suppose that," said Jake; "simply can't suppose it. Because, you see, there ain't no Sittin' Crow. Yep, some of 'em is awful green," he added.
When daylight came we had breakfast and started on our journey again in rather sheepish silence. The strain lasted for perhaps half an hour; then Jake gave a great guffaw, smothering his face in his hands.
"Yep, some of 'em is awful green," he quoted again, proving for himself a good memory as well as a sense of satire. "Jupiter!" and there was another outburst of hilarity. "Sittin' Crow!" and more guffaws. "To-night we'll be in the haunts of Roostin' Turkey! Giddap! You danged old buckskin, it's good fer you I emptied the magazine!"
Under my seat I found a tent peg. Stealthily I raised it in the air, and joyously I walloped Jake on something solid beneath his slouch felt hat. He rubbed his head ruefully, but without taking offence.
"Well, that's over," he said at length, heaving a great sigh, as though he had just been relieved of some big responsibility. "It's all in a life-time. Giddap, you piebald flyin' ants!" and Jake made a strange clucking noise in his throat which encouraged the buckskins into a temporary lope.
The day was much the same as the one before, except that we were now well out on "the bald-headed." Once in a while, at great distances, we could see a homesteader's shack, a little isolated sentinel-box of the vanguard of settlement. Once we were intercepted by another team and democrat, much like our own, which cut across our trail. The driver asked if we could spare any water. We gave him half of what was in our keg, and he extended his plug of chewing tobacco all round. We chatted a few minutes, and then with mutual friendly shouts and waving of our arms we were off again.
During the afternoon, Jake's mind having apparently cleared of all other matters, he began to sing. It was some little time before we detected the origin of the strange sound; different times I looked down at our wheels, or glanced about to see if someone were approaching. But the volume of sound grew as Jake developed his theme, and presently there was no doubt that he was singing. We soon discovered that Jake had two songs, "Sweet Marie" and "Clementine", and he used both words and music interchangeably. As we were able to analyze it more closely we found his rendering ran something like this:
"As I clasp your hand in mine, Sweet Marie-e-e,"A feelin' so divine comes to me, comes to me-e. Giddap, you danged buckskin, fallin' over your feet. Goin' to sleep? Cluck, cluck!"Lived a miner, a forty-nin-er,"An' his daughter, Clementine."
"As I clasp your hand in mine, Sweet Marie-e-e,
"A feelin' so divine comes to me, comes to me-e. Giddap, you danged buckskin, fallin' over your feet. Goin' to sleep? Cluck, cluck!
"Lived a miner, a forty-nin-er,
"An' his daughter, Clementine."
But we were to discover that singing was not Jake's only forte. He had the most amazing eyes. They were always half asleep, and in the heat of the day they seemed more than half asleep, but he saw things long before they hove into our vision, and, I have no doubt, he saw many things that we did not see at all. In the middle of the afternoon he suddenly broke off with "Lived a min-er," and brought his horses to a stop.
"Like to try a shot at that coyote?" he said to Jack.
"What coyote?" asked Jack, looking hurriedly in all directions.
"Over there," indicating a section of the horizon with a sweep of his arm.
"Can't place him," Jack confessed.
"Beside that little mound of dirt—badger-hole, I reckon; there's a tuft of grass in front of him; he's lookin' straight at us, wonderin' who the hell——"
"Oh, I got him, I got him!" Jack shouted in a loud whisper, and began to get out of the wagon, but Jake's arm restrained him.
"Don't do that. He'll run the moment you get out. Take him from here."
He slipped the rifle over Jack's arm. "She's loaded," he said, with a grin. "Set 'er fer two hundred yards."
Jack aimed long and carefully, and even as he aimed the coyote turned his broadside deliberately, as though to give him a better target. Then he fired, and a whiff of dust puffed up three hundred yards away. The coyote, however, had taken notice; perhaps the bullet didn't pass so far above him, at that. He stretched himself like a tawny ribbon and bolted with amazing speed into the wilderness. Jack sent two more wild shots into space.
"Toler'ble safe," was Jake's comment as he laid the rifle away. "Toler'ble safe."
Half an hour later he pulled up again. "How about you?" he said, turning to me.
I could see nothing until, following the line of his arm and finger, I at length detected an object behind a little whitish willow bush, appropriately called the wolf willow. Even then I could see only a pair of sharp ears and the triangular outline of a head; there was nothing else visible.
"You better take him, Jake," I said. "You're a real shot." I felt I owed him that much for that wallop with the tent peg.
He was nothing loath to take up the rifle, and I began to realize how big a courtesy it was to offer us the first shot. He drew the gun to his shoulder, craned his neck down along the stock, steadied the barrel an instant, and fired. The coyote leaped in the air, fell on his back, kicking and pawing in the wolf willow. We drove over to him, but already his lips had curled back in a death-snarl from his gleaming teeth.
Jake drove on in silence while we meditated upon his amazing marksmanship. Any comment on our part would have been superfluous, a fact which no doubt our driver understood. But his thought was evidently running along some course similar to ours, although skirting into wider fields.
"If ever there's a big war," he remarked at length, "an' I reckon there will be some day, the chaps from these prairies will sure give 'em hell."
It was a strange speech for Jake. Jake, short and fat-waisted, guiltless of coat or waist-coat, his coarse blue shirt flying open at the neck, little streams of tobacco juice meandering down his stubby chin, his slouch hat pulled low on his head and his brown, tangled hair tufted out about the ears; most of all, his pudgy feet, which would not reach the floor of the wagon box—surely here was as unmilitary looking an individual as one could picture. And yet, his amazing keenness of eyesight, his quick, accurate, uncanny marksmanship, and his calm assurance in which there was no word of boasting, but a mere statement of fact, that if ever there were a big war the boys from the prairies would "give 'em hell!"
We camped that night by a stream of which Jake knew, because there was little water on the prairies, even at the first of May. Next day we drove all day, and later into the evening than usual; it was quite dark when we stopped.
"This is the place," Jake said, "but you can't see it to-night. Have a good sleep and we'll size 'er up in the mornin'."
We tried to eat breakfast without concern, but we were hurried and nervous, and eager to see how our judgment would tally with Jake's. On the road he had tried to explain to us the system of survey, and we had a general idea of it in our heads. Now he took a township map from his pocket and showed us in detail where we were.
"This is us," he said, pointing with a thick, stubby finger, "right on the north-west quarter o' Fourteen. Immedjut west of us is a road allowance, runnin' north an' south. Immedjut west of that again is section Fifteen, which is railroad land, an' can't be took up free. But immedjut north-west, cornerin' right against this quarter, 'cept fer the road allowance, is the south-east quarter of Twenty-two, which is open. Now these two quarters, north-west Fourteen an' south-east Twenty-two, is as good as any land that lays out o' doors, an' better than most. There's a bit of a gully here—you'll see it in a minute—runs down from the north-east an' cuts off to the south-west, an' runs right between these two quarters. There's springs in that gully somewhere, an' runnin' water practical the year round, an' shelter fer stock an' all that kind o' thing, an' you get the benefit of it all, an' it don't take two acres off'n your land. It's a plumb Paradise an' you can't beat it nowhere."
"How far is it to a railroad?" Jack asked.
"Plumb down that road allowance, thirty-two miles, straight as the crow flies, when it ain't Sittin'," he threw in with a little snicker.
"Thirty-two miles!" Jack exclaimed. "Pretty well in the wilderness, isn't it?"
"Wilderness nothin'! This is suburban prop'rty. This is close in. I take some of 'em back sixty an' seventy an' eighty miles. Thirty-two miles is jus' right, an' I'll tell you why. When a new railroad comes its likely to come about thirty miles from the other; that's about a sensible distance apart. An' here you are, in the middle of the right-of-way, an' may be cuttin' your homestead into town lots; ten lots to an acre an' two hundred dollars a lot. Can you beat it? The Lord sure has been good to you, fer no special reason that I can notice. 'Tain't your good looks"—we were badly sun-blistered, in spite of the axle-grease—"an' 'tain't your good sense, excep' in selectin' me as your financial advisor, so to speak. I reckon it's all account o' those girls—sisters, you said."
Jake threw a querying stress on the wordsisters, but it was against all nature to be offended at him. Had we resented his remark he would have laughed our seriousness out of court. But we decided to see some of the adjoining sections.
Sixteen appealed to Jack. We could have taken the west half, and so, working together, we would have had a mile furrow. The gully also touched sixteen, and would have given us the same advantages as Jake claimed for the sections he had recommended. However, we found him very fixed in his preference for Fourteen and Twenty-two, and finally we accepted his arguments, and set out to make a more detailed survey of the land. The gully angled between the two quarters, taking scarce an acre off either of them. A jolly stream, brown with the grass of its banks, gurgled along its bed.
I knelt down to try the water; there was the taste of snow, but there was also the harder, sharper note of spring water mingled with it.
"Runnin' water like that is worth a thousand dollars on any man's farm," Jake declared. "An' come up this way. Wait till I show you somethin'."
The "something" proved to be a widening in the valley, where was a considerable growth of small willows and poplars. "Fence posts and fire wood," said Jake, "an' on railroad land too, that won't be sold fer years. You'll have 'em all cut down before then. That timber's worth another thousand, or half that, anyway."
I thought of the great pine back on the old farm in Ontario, and the "timber" looked to me like gads and switches. None of it was tall enough to reach out of the little valley and show a green tip to the bald surface of the prairies. But we were not in Ontario now; we were in a land where even a three-inch tree was not to be despised.
"An' here's somethin' more," he said, setting an example for us by walking stealthily on his pudgy legs through the clumps of willows. At the other end of the wooded space we found a little pond opening out, and a score of wild ducks drowsing placidly on its smooth surface. The bright colorings of the drakes, the beautiful archings of their necks, and their graceful movements on the water held us for a moment in silent admiration.
"An Englishman," Jake remarked, when we had turned back, "would take this farm fer the duck pond alone. They're the dangdest people ever was fer wantin' to kill somethin'. He don' care if his farm is all sand or wallows, 's long as there's somethin' to shoot, the Englishman don't. But fer a Yankee it mus' be every acre wheat land. He don' care fer nothin' but the long green." Jake paused as though to think over these national characteristics.
"I dunno which is the worst," he said at length. "I reckon us Canadjuns is about right, with a little o' both."
"It has been said that a Canadian is half Englishman and half Yankee," I remarked. "What do you make of it?"
"Nothin' to it," was Jake's emphatic answer. "When a Canadjun is enjoyin' an argyment with a Yankee he's all English, an' when he's pullin' off a deal with an Englishman he's all Yankee, an'——"
"He gets the sixty pounds," said Jack.
Jake braced himself on his short, stout legs, and made a gesture that might have been interpreted as a belligerent attitude. He ended it by flapping his arms in imitation of flying, and emitting a series of caws.
Jack was duly suppressed. "Let's get to business," he said. "Explain this soil. Will it grow anything, and if so, what?"
"Let's find a badger-hole," said Jake, and we had little trouble in locating one. "Now look at this. This hole goes down five, six, seven feet, maybe more, in the ground. Look what his nibs has kicked out. Fine, loamy, sandy soil, not too light an' not too sticky, all the way down. That goes plumb to Kingdom Come. Course, the top is a little darker, on account o' the grass roots, but it's all soil. None o' yer down-east three inches-o'-muck-an'-a-rock-bottom to that."
Jake took a fresh chew of tobacco and looked out over the greenish-brown prairie. It certainly was a picture to kindle the imagination. Almost as level as a floor, one could have seen a jack-rabbit jump anywhere within a mile. The little gully was quite lost in the vista; you would not dream of its existence until you came right upon it. In no direction was there a sign of life, but far on the horizon a whiff of smoke hung like a fading pennant in the still sky.
"I have it figgered out like this," Jake continued, "an' my figgers is right; this land is worth more than any gold mine between hell an' Whoop-up. When you take the gold out o' a mine you ain't got nothin' left, but you can take gold out o' this mine next year, an' the year after, an' the year after, fer ever an' ever, an' there's still as much there as when you started—if you farm it right."
Our inspection satisfied us in every particular. Jake explained, as we already knew, that we would have to build separate shacks on the two quarters, to comply with the law about sleeping on the land claimed. "But you can build one stable in the gully fer the live stock," he added; "the Gov'ment don' care wheretheysleep, jus' so's the homesteader himself is sufficiently oncomfort'ble."
We smiled over his interpretation of regulations which, as we knew, were necessary to prevent the wholesale blanketing of the free lands by people who had no intention of living on them.
"Now we better pick a second an' a third choice, jus' in case some one slips in ahead o' us on this," said Jake, and we spent the afternoon driving about and making fresh locations. Much of the land was already taken up, Jake told us, and although there were as yet no signs of settlement we would see a great change by fall.
Jack spoke of the disadvantage of the alternate sections of railroad land, which were not given away free, but which had to be bought. "They are an obstacle to close settlement," he said, "and I guess loneliness is about the worst thing there is to contend with on these prairies."
"Perhaps," said Jake, "but they're an advantage, too. They give the homesteader a lot of free pasture an' hay land, fer instance. An' in a few years, when you have had some good crops an' caught the bug fer big farmin', you'll be mighty glad o' the chance to buy Fifteen or Twenty-three."
We camped on Fourteen that night, and Jack and I were filled with plans for our shacks and our stable. The shacks would be up on the prairie level, on opposite sides of the gully, in full view of each other, and about a hundred yards apart. The stable would be in the gully, close to the road allowance, sheltered from the winds, and convenient to water. The crossing of the stream was passable, but would stand improvement.
Early in the morning we started back, and after three full days in the democrat we found ourselves one evening swinging up the now strangely familiar streets of Regina. The raw prairie city of 1904 already almost seemed like home. We were like travelers returning from strange lands to scenes of old recollections. We had been away just seven days, but in that time we had swung far out into the universe; we had drunk of the air of God's new creation; we had been strangely conscious of the company of our souls. We arranged with Jake to meet him in the morning, when he would go with us to the land office while we registered our claims, and at the hotel we found a note from the girls giving us their new address. We located them without trouble; I fancy they had not known that seven days could be so long. They had no room for us, so we had to go back to the hotel, but first we sat with them late into the night, recounting our adventures and picturing to them the place that was to be our home; kindling in them, if we could, some fire of the joy of ownership which was already leaping in our breasts.
In the morning we went with Jake to the land office; Fourteen and Twenty-two in the township where we had decided to locate were still open, and we had no difficulty in filing our claims. We returned to the stable with Jake.
"What's the damage?" Jack demanded.
Jake expectorated profusely, spread his feet, and scratched his head. "Seven times seven is forty-nine; fifty dollars fer locatin' makes ninety-nine; I guess she's ninety-nine, boys; gosh darn it, we might have made it a hundred."
"My word!" said Jack. "Isn't that a bit thick?"
There was a merry twinkle in the guide's half-closed eyes. "An' two girls to go out there with you? Whad'ye expec' fer your money? But I was forgettin' about Sittin' Crow. I'll throw off four dollars fer Sittin' Crow. It was worth it."
But we paid him the ninety-nine and Jack threw in another. "We'll make it the even hundred," he said. "Come out and see us when you get a chance; we may have a bite of fried coyote for you."
"Oh, I'll be along, I'll be along," said Jake. "I'll blow out there often."
We shook hands with Jake and turned away with a strange feeling of cutting ourselves adrift. We had not known how quickly an attachment may grow—on the prairies.
If we thought we had finished with Jake it was evidence that we still had much to learn about our guide's business qualities. Jake had a follow-up peculiarly his own, and that afternoon he came steaming into our presence as we sat in the bare lounge-room of the hotel, making a list of necessities on the back on an envelope.
"I been chasin' you fellows all over hellan-gone," he announced, with a profuse expectoration to facilitate speech. "I got a fistful o' luck fer you. Chap down at the stables—trouble o' some kind or other—wants to sell his horses; as pretty a team o' bays as ever switched a tail in fly-time, an' I can put you next."
"That's good of you," said Jack, "but we've just figured that we can't afford horses. It's a case of horses and no cow, or oxen and a cow, and the vote at the moment stands unanimous for milk to our porridge, even at the risk of our characters. They tell us that even a good man swears when he drives oxen."
"That's wrong," Jake corrected. "A good man don' drive oxen. He may be goodbeforehe drives them, but notwhilehe drives them, nor immedjut afterwards. It's agin human nature. I've seen profanity on some o' the ox trails o' this country so thick it lay jus' like a fog on the prairie. You could jus' see the top tier o' the box," he added, with a touch of artistry. "Oxen has started more fellows on the wrong road than any other critturs—'cept women."
"Well, we're going to take a chance with both," was Jack's answer. "You don't happen to have a hard-up friend who would part with a yoke of oxen, for a consideration, do you?"
Jake scratched his tousled hair meditatively. "Come to think o' it, I believe I do," he said at length. "I jus' recommember a chap who was talkin' o' sellin' his oxen t'other day. As sleek a yoke as ever switched a tail in fly-time; gentle, an' strong, an' speedy as a scairt rabbit. I reckon I could get you a special price on 'em, pretendin' it was meself that was buyin'."
"And a cow," I ventured. "Have you a cow on your bargain list?"
"Jake has everything on his bargain list that we may happen to need," said Jack. "Everything from a cow to a cook-stove. It's all right, Jake; we don't mind your little graft so long as you play the game half fairly, and see that we get at least fifty cents' worth on the dollar. Buying on our own judgment we would probably get less than that."
So it was arranged that Jake was to be our purchasing agent, with a sort of gentleman's understanding that he might cheat us a little in consideration of his services in preventing other people from cheating us a great deal. The arrangement, I believe, worked out to our advantage. Jake undoubtedly bought our supplies for less than we could have bought them, even after providing his secret commissions. Moreover, he knew what was essential and what was not, and he saved us valuable time.
When at last our outfit was complete it presented a picturesque and somewhat pathetic turn-out. On our wagon we had built a temporary box of boards, and on this were piled our trunks and personal effects, a plow, a stove, food supplies, a tent, a crate with hens and another with a young pig, while over all roosted, if I may use the term, the two girls. The cow we tied behind, while Jack and I walked as a sort of flank guard on either side of the oxen. These two phlegmatic creatures rejoiced in the names of Buck and Bright, and stoically pursued their destiny at a pace of two-and-a-half miles an hour. Their resignation in adversity was sublime; in fact, we soon found it impossible to invent any adversity to which they were not resigned.
Jake saw us off, and we remonstrated with him over the speed, or rather the lack of speed, of which his highly recommended oxen gave evidence. "You said they had the speed of a scared rabbit," Jack reproached him.
"So they have," said Jake, barefacedly. "When a rabbit's plumb scairt he can't move at all; he jus' humps up an' prays. When Buck an' Bright come to that don' disturb 'em in their devotions; jus' wait fer the spirit to move 'em."
With such an outfit our progress was much slower than it had been with Jake and his "flyin' ants," but it was an experience of unbounded freedom and delight. The days held bright and warm, as it was still too early for the May rains; the nights were cold and starry, with a tang of frost toward morning; the dawns were a rush of color, and the sunsets indescribable. It was an unfolding experience, like the opening of some spring flowers; at times I caught a half wistful, wondering, yearning look in Jean's eyes quite different from anything I had known before. I saw no such glimpse in the eyes of Marjorie, or of Jack; but there it was in Jean's, and, I believe, in mine. Vaguely we two understood; vaguely we felt the stirrings of the soul which refuses to be silenced amid the glories of its Maker. And because we vaguely understood, some fine thread of eternal purpose seemed to wrap itself about our hearts and draw us closer and closer as the days went by.
At nights we pitched the tent and made down blankets for the girls, but Jack and I slept under the stars. We were roughing it, but every muscle in our young bodies was vibrating with the tense new life of the open. The smell of spring flowers was in our nostrils; the whip of spring winds about our cheeks; the myriad murmurings of the little lives of spring crept up through the silences. When the girls called us to breakfast of fried bacon and potatoes and steaming coffee and milk from our traveling dairy we were more happy and more hungry than anything we had ever known to be possible.
And the girls! We saw them growing browner every day, but with their sunburn they seemed to take on a strange new charm and competence. They treated the whole experience as a high adventure, and after cramped hours on the top of "the ark" they would race like wild things across the prairies, their hair flying in the breeze, and a vagrant wind tossing the skirts about their shapely limbs.
They had taken the precaution to provide themselves with sunbonnets and a better cosmetic than axle-grease, but the prairie sun is an impetuous lover, and their cheeks and lips showed the mark of his caresses. He was a rival who did not pique my jealousy, for in his embrace I saw the woman Jean bursting forth from the bud of girlhood in a beauty that kept my blood a-tingle.
The prairies were a never-ceasing source of delight and wonder. Almost over-night, it seemed, they had blossomed out in myriads of flowers, mauve and yellow, so thick that at places they almost hid the grass from sight. The girls plucked handfuls of them and arranged the downy stems in the bands of their sunbonnets. Saucy gophers mounted the little dumps of moist earth in front of their burrows and sent their shrill whistle defiantly forth, save when a well-aimed clod from Jack or me brought the note to an end in a sudden sharp crescendo, accompanied by a flicker of a jaunty tail as the owner took refuge underground. In a moment, if we watched, we would see his sharp eyes levelled on us through the grass at the mouth of his burrow, or perhaps he would appear from another exit and send forth his shrill challenge more saucily than ever. Coyotes we frequently saw; a badger once or twice, and one day figures at a great distance which we took to be antelope. Innumerable ducks flew overhead, and the nights were at times almost sleepless with the clanging of wild geese, wedging their way to the nesting grounds in the north.
There was just one note that bothered me. It was sounded a day or two after we left Regina in some covert remark which Marjorie made about Jean's Mounted Policeman. It seemed that while Jack and I had been away land hunting the girls, too, had been doing a little prospecting. Regina was the headquarters of the Mounted Police, and the fine figures of these young riders of the plains with their scarlet tunics and trim gold ribboned riding trousers and clanking spurs have turned more heads than Jean's before and since. It seems the girls were walking along a business street when they saw a young policeman coming at a short distance, and they happened to stop to admire something in a window while he approached. He also stopped to admire, and Marjorie said something—which Jean would not have done—and a conversation started up, and the policeman seemed to prefer Jean, perhaps because she had not spoken first. At any rate he saw them safely home, and dallied over his responsibility and the gate post until they said they must go in. He called the next night and wanted to take them to a "show", but they would not go; at any rate, Jean would not go.
"But you went walking with him," Marjorie challenged.
"He asked you, too," said Jean, her pretty face colouring. "You started with us, and then went back."
"I saw how the land lay, or the wind blew, or whatever it was. I had nothing to do at home, but I knew I would be busier there than out walking with you and your policeman."
"Marjorie! Howcanyou——"
"And he told her he would call on her after we were settled."
"He did no such thing! He asked me where we were going to settle, and I told him I didn't know, and he said he hoped he would be patrolling there. He's going to be sent out from barracks soon, and he said it would be safer for me—for us—if someone were patrolling our district."
"Not for you, dear," said Marjorie, meaningly, and there was a little sting in her words which brought me into action.
"I believe you're jealous, Marjorie," I said, in tones intended to be severe.
"And aren't you?" she retorted. "You ought to be."
The truth is, I was. Jean had always belonged to me so absolutely that I had never thought of the possibility of a rival. Even now I did not think of such a thing seriously. It was true that there was no engagement between us, unless the word of a man of six and a woman of four can be taken as binding, but I looked on Jean as mine, nevertheless, and I resented the action of the Mounted Policeman in seeking her acquaintance. I resented, too, the fact that she had gone walking with him, and I told her so at the first opportunity.
It came that afternoon. Jean said she was tired riding, and got down to walk, on my side of the wagon. We trudged along for some distance in silence, save for my occasional words of rebuke and exhortation to the oxen.
"You're cross at me," she said at length.
"I'm not." Why I said that I can't imagine, I was, and I wanted her to know it.
"I didn't mean to offend you," she went on. "Marjorie was just a little bit—spiteful."
"I know she was," I agreed. "But you shouldn't have gone walking with him."
"Why?"
"He was a stranger. You didn't even know his name."
"I do now. It's Harold Brook. Besides, in this country, you don't have to know people's names. You just speak anyway."
"Oh, do you?" I said, sarcastically. "So I see."
"Don't be cross," she coaxed. "See, I can beat you to that badger-hole. One—two—three—"
She was off like the wind. For a moment I hesitated, then joined in the race. But she had too much start, and besides, she was almost a match for me. She reached the little mound first, and as she turned she swerved a little from her course, and I happened to plunge into her. To save herself from falling she seized me about the neck, and her hair brushed against my face. . . . . . .
We walked back slowly, arm in arm, and I had a sense of being very much of a brute. . . Jean had wound me around her little finger.
So the days and nights went by. The sun was almost setting on the eighth day, and the prairie, now gorgeous in its spring fluffery of anemones, had taken on its evening richness of green when we at length drew up close to the bank of the gully on Fourteen. For an hour or more we had been straining our eyes for a glimpse of the promised land, but as it looked exactly the same as all the other land for miles around we could not be sure of Fourteen until the gully came into view. Then we threw up our hats and rushed ahead, leaving the oxen to come as they chose. They chose not to come at all, and Buck actually lay down in the road.
There are certain thrills of accomplishment, certain epochs of development, which come only once in a life-time. One of these is when a young man writes his first cheque, or first turns his key in his own door, or first sees his name on an office signboard. But the greatest is when he first looks upon land he can call his own. True, this land was not yet ours, but it was pledged to us if we carried out our part of a very simple agreement, and already we had a proprietary interest in it. We showed it to the girls with the pride of a mother displaying her first born. We were desperately anxious that our choice should be justified.
We waited for their verdict, but neither spoke. "Well, what do you think of it?" Jack asked at length.
"It looks all right," said Marjorie. "I suppose it is as good as any. But I don't see how you are going to tell it from other people's land. It's all alike."
"What do you say, Jean?"
But Jean was looking at the sunset, where the Master Artist was splashing pastels of bronze and copper against a background of silver and champagne. "Wonderful, wonderful!" she murmured.
"Fourteen is Frank's and Twenty-two is mine," Jack explained. "We'll pitch the tent for the girls here, and Frank may do as he likes, but I'm going to cross the gully and sleep to-night under my own vine and fig-tree, so to speak. My six months' residence begins to-night!"
"Fig-tree!" Marjorie exclaimed. "The trees around here are just about high enough to tickle your ear—when you're lying down."
"You haven't seen the trees yet," said Jack, knowingly. "Now, let's pitch camp."
We went back to the wagon, but Buck positively refused to be disturbed. Neither coaxing, nor proddings, nor pullings, nor pushings, were of any avail; get up he would not.
"He's a squatter," said Jack. "A genuine squatter, and he refuses to be dispossessed. We must work around him." So we unhitched Bright, and by great effort unharnessed Buck, and left him until the spirit should move him. We dragged the tent close to the brow of the gully and pitched it on the spot where we had planned that my shack should be. We also unloaded part of our equipment so that we could make use of it in the housekeeping operations. It was with great zest that we carried our cookstove to the door of the tent and strung up two or three lengths of pipe. In a few minutes Jack appeared from somewhere with an armful of bits of wood, and as the darkness settled down we gathered about a fire on our own farms, for the first time in our lives.
The girls unpacked some of the supplies, and I was commissioned to milk our cow, and presently Marjorie was flip-flapping pancakes on the "spider" with the art of a mature housewife. "We should have sour milk for these," she protested, as she served the first helping.
"If that cow had been much longer on the road I think she would have been able to supply you," I ventured. "She has been looking sadder every day."
"She's a great institution. Henceforth I consider a cow as necessary a part of travel equipment as a suit-case."
And so we chattered on, saying nothing of moment, but feeling the great joy of possession welling in our hearts. It was a day and a night to be lived over many a time in memory. For the first time in our lives we were drinking of the wells of possession,—the enchanted streams which draw men and women into the wilderness to live and die on the outposts of civilization.
We had finished supper, and the grey gloom of twilight was crawling slowly up from the east when a sharp, whistling rustle almost above us brought the girls to their feet with a start.
"What was that!" Jean exclaimed. "It was almost like a bullet."
"Nay, nay," said Jack, indulging in a very sorry joke. "It is a ducklet."
"A ducklet? What ducklet?"
"That, my dear sister, was the whistle from the wing of a wild duck, darting into the darkness at a couple of hundred miles an hour. He had just got his eye on you."
"More likely on the gun," said Jean, for we had included a cheap shot-gun among the articles considered indispensable. "Wait until Frank gets after him."
I was greatly flattered by Jean's wholly unwarranted confidence in my marksmanship and eager to justify it at the earliest moment.
"No time like the present," said I, picking up the gun and filling my pocket with cartridges. "Besides, we have a surprise to show you."
So we started out in the gathering darkness, I going first, as became the bearer of the gun; Jean at my heels; Jack and Marjorie a little in the rear. Down the steep edge of the gully we worked, and then along by the marge of the brown snow-water which rippled happily over beds of bending grass. It was quite dark in the little valley, and I had to hold Jean's hand to guard against the possibility of her slipping into the stream.
At a short distance we came to the spot where the valley broadened out and the little grove of trees had found its place of shelter from Chinook winds in winter and prairie fires in spring and fall. The air was full of the sweet scent of bursting willow buds and balm-o'-Gilead, and as we picked our steps as noiselessly as we could the slightly stirring limbs above us wrought their dark tracery against the blue and starry heaven.
"Oh, Frank! You never told me of this! How wonderful!"
"Wait until you see the pond," I whispered, as one who keeps the best to the last. "We did not select Fourteen and Twenty-two without a reason."
There was no path between the slim, close-growing trunks of poplar and balm, and we had to make progress as best we could. . . . Jack and Marjorie had fallen considerably behind.
Then, suddenly, the still waters of the pond burst upon our view, and at the same moment, as though the very heavens conspired to set the stage to the best advantage, a blood-red moon sent its first pinion of light sweeping down from the north-east and splashing burnt-orange and ochre across the slightly ruffled surface of the pond. We stood for a time as mortals transfixed, watching the great red globe drawing swiftly into the blue above, until its light painted Jean's face and mine. In the moonlight her fine features were wonderful, irresistible . . . . .
We were brought to earth by a flutter and splashing in the water. Two ducks, sweeping swiftly down out of the darkness, alighted not a dozen yards in front of us, and directly in the line of light. I drew my gun to my shoulder, and even as I did so their murmured grumblings, sibilant almost as the lisp of water on a gravelly shore, came to our ears, and they began to swim slowly about in graceful little circles. There was even a motion about the head of the male, as he brought it close to that of his mate, that was surely nothing short of a caress.
"Don't, Frank, don't; you mustn't!" Jean exclaimed suddenly.
Her arm darted out in front of me, seized the barrel of the gun and drew it swiftly to one side. I had been taking a most deliberate aim, to justify the high opinion already referred to, but at Jean's sudden interference I pressed the trigger, or, as I always claimed, it pulled itself against my finger, and went off. There was a loud report, and the sound of shot harmlessly lashing the water.
"Did you get him—did you get him?" shouted Marjorie and Jack, rushing down upon us.
"No, I didn't get him," I explained. "I didn't even try to get him. I just wanted to see how far the gun would carry."
"I wouldn't let him," said Jean. "It would have been a—just a horrible thing to shoot one of those poor creatures, the very first night we were here! How beautiful they were, and how—how loving!" She said the last word with a bashful, falling inflection that was wonderful to hear.
"It's much more horrible to have no wild duck—ducklet I mean—for to-morrow's dinner," said Jack.
"And those cartridges cost ever so much; what is it?—three or four cents each," Marjorie remonstrated. "Well, let's go back."
We returned to our camp and started to make ready for the night. But Jack, true to his promise, gathered up his blankets, waded the cold stream, and slept under the stars of Twenty-two. We had begun our "period of residence."