The morning was another gorgeous burst of sunshine. There had been an early dew, and as the sunlight swept along the prairies every blade of grass was hung with diamonds. When I was able to shed my blankets—I have always had a way of getting into intricate entanglements with the bed clothes—I filled my lungs with the fresh oxygen, thumped my chest with my fists, and, looking out over the sparkling prairie, breathed a sort of prayer of possession—"It's mine; it's mine!" Then I found my soap and towel and hustled down to the stream for my morning wash.
The girls, too, were early about. As I came up from the stream I met Jean going down, wearing a blanket, Indian fashion, for lack of a bathrobe. A week on a dusty trail had made the presence of snow water, as deep as one wanted it, a peculiar luxury.
"Gee, but it's good to be alive!" she exclaimed, swinging her arms, to the peril of her costume. "Does one always feel like this on the prairies?"
"Always mildly intoxicated, so Jake says, but those are not his words. That's why Westerners are more optimistic—and more reckless—than Easterners. Always an atmosphere jag under their belts."
"Here's to Jake," she cried. "Have one with me!" as she took a great chestful of fresh air. "See you at breakfast—if I'm sober enough!"
That day, and those that followed, were busy, busy days. The oxen were tired and footsore with their long journey, and we decided to let them rest, but Jack and I took no holiday. I was determined that on the very first day I would plant some crop on my farm, so I started at once to spade up land for a garden. Have you ever turned the first sod on a quarter section with a spade, and then stopped and looked over the vast expanse before you? It made me humble, but not discouraged. There is something almost sacramental in turning over the fresh sod of the prairies—sod which no plow, no human hand, has ever turned before. If you have a mind for serious thinking it brings you very close to your Creator. Perhaps that is why I preferred to dig that first little plot with a spade instead of making use of Buck and Bright on the plow. Buck and Bright were not conducive to piety.
After all, it is remarkable how much prairie sod one can turn over in a day with a spade—sod with no stones nor tough, brushy roots to interrupt progress, but only the gentle scraping of steel against loam and the ripping of little grassy tendons to mark your time as, foot by foot, you throw the trenches of civilization one furrow farther west. By mid-afternoon I had spaded quite a sizable garden plot. Then I broke the clods as best I could and planted a few rows of potatoes. The following day I continued my digging, and that evening, with assistance from Jean and Marjorie, planted onions, carrots, beets, lettuce and radish.
We agreed that by the third day the oxen should be ready for the road again, and Jack was away soon after sunrise of the bright spring morning. He took the trail for the railway station some thirty miles to the south, and the sound of his wagon rumbling along over the soft earth came floating back on the breeze as a sort of accompaniment to the bellicose voice which Jack affected when he was ox-driving. The forenoon was well gone before the slow-moving speck faded out of sight on the skyline.
My next effort was the digging of a cellar. The location of our shack had to be decided upon, and for this I called Marjorie and Jean into council. We agreed that it should be close to one brow of the ravine, and that Jack should build his close to the other, so that each would command an unbroken view of his neighbour. Perhaps even then we had some premonition of the spectre of Loneliness creeping down upon us through the night-mists of the summer or the snow-wraiths of the blizzard, and already we were planning our lines of defence.
"How many rooms will there be?" asked Jean. "Let me see—reception-room, living-room, parlor, dining-room—you must at least have that."
"We shall," I said, "and one door will lead into them all. A room is anything you call it. We can change the name as we change the purpose. One moment it is kitchen, the next, living-room, and so on."
"Draw a plan of it," said Marjorie, turning up the planed side of a hoard. So I sat down and drew a plan, while the girls watched over my shoulders with as much intentness as though I were an architect designing a palace.
"The house will be one storey," I explained, "and long, and narrow, because that is the simplest as well as the cheapest way to build it, and we are to be our own carpenters. The walls will be of shiplap, covered with matched siding, with tarpaper between. The roof will be of two thicknesses of boards, bent to a gentle oval over a stout ridge-pole, and again with tarpaper between. You have no idea how much the West owes to tarpaper. Wherever the new settler goes, goes tarpaper. I would almost say," I continued, warming up to my subject, "that if a flag is ever needed for these western prairies it should be a banner of tarpaper, nailed between two laths. 'O say, does the tarpaper banner still wave?'—you see, it has possibilities."
"But isn't it awfully smelly stuff?" said Jean, who had a strain of delicacy in her that at times conflicted with her surroundings.
"Ah, that is one of its chief virtues. You may not know yet, but you will learn—at least, so Jake assured me—that population is not nearly so scarce on the prairies as it seems. He says that the inmates of one of these little bachelor shacks in many cases number literally millions. Millions. Well—they don't like tarpaper. Blessed be tarpaper!
"The house is to be fourteen feet wide, so that sixteen-foot boards will bend just the right length for the roof. The main room—which is to be all the rooms you mentioned, Jean, and the kitchen as well—will be in the centre of the building. It will be fourteen feet square—like that. At the south end of the building, where the sun will shine in spring and flowers will grow up the wall, will be a room eight by fourteen—Marjorie's. At the north end, where the winter winds will hit us first, will be a room eight by fourteen—Frank's. That's all."
"And the windows?" said Marjorie.
"A window in the south for you, a window in the north for me, a window in the west for the living-room, and a door in the east for us all."
"How simple—and delightful!" Jean trilled. "And is Jack's house—our house—to be the same?"
"That is the intention. Of course, these plans are subject to approval or rejection by the feminine vote, but Jack and I talked it over with Jake, and we figured this was the best we could afford, and the most we could get for the money."
Marjorie seemed to be studying deeply. "Then your window will look across the valley into Jean's," she said suddenly.
Now this was something which I had planned with, it seemed to me, consummate cleverness. I had thought that on dark nights and stormy nights, when the wind was whining dolefully about the gables, my light in my window might be—well, Jean might like to see it there. Still, it was surely right that Jean should occupy a south room, the same as Marjorie. I was provoked at Marjorie for—for finding me out.
"Why, Marjorie, I am surprised," I began, as severely as I could, but Jean cut me short. "I move the adoption of the plan," she said.
So I scratched the outline of the shack in the sod with my shovel and began digging a cellar in the centre of the little plot. For a depth of nearly two feet I dug through a brownish-black loam that turned easily and threw clean from the shovel. Then I struck a sticky, yellow clay, and the going was much slower. But by the time we heard Jack's hoarse voice and his tired oxen clicking their hoofs up the trail on the evening of the second day I had succeeded in making a hole which we agreed to call a cellar.
The wagon was well loaded with boards and other building material, including the inevitable tarpaper, and the next morning we were about to start construction work when Jack dropped an armful of two-by-fours with a sudden exclamation.
"I clean forgot," he said. "They told me in town yesterday that it was Saturday. This must be Sunday."
As you know, Jack and I had been brought up with good old Ontario ideas of the sanctity of the Sabbath. It was not surprising that he should drop his burden where he stood, and that his face, when he turned to me, had written on it something almost akin to dismay.
"Must be," I said, laying down my shovel.
For some moments we stood trying to drink in the significance of the fact, and realizing for the first time what an artificial thing the calendar is. This morning was exactly like the other mornings of the week; a burst of golden dawn, a sea of diamond dew-drops, a rollicking breeze out of the West, a wisp of feathery cloudland far above. There was nothing about it to suggest that it was more holy than its neighbors.
"Fact is," said I at last, "I begin to think we must have missed one Sunday altogether."
"I'm afraid we did," Jack admitted, contritely. "Let's tell the girls."
Accordingly we bore to them the great information. All work was discontinued, and we lounged about, trying to feel good. It was one of the longest days I can remember.
Next day we set about our building in earnest. I wish I dared weary you with the detail of the operations; the twanging of the saw in the new boards, the thwack of the hammer on the bright nails, the smell of cedar sawdust and of tarpaper, the sheer joy of creation as we saw our home rise tier by tier from the bare bosom of the plain. There were no Union hours with us. We worked from early morning until after sunset, and laid down our tools at last with affectionate reluctance. We were stiff and sore in every joint and muscle; our hands were caloused and our finger nails were battered with misdirected energy, but our hearts were with the gods. I relate only absolute truth in saying that when our shack was finished we moved into it with a sense of accomplishment such as perhaps no king ever knew amid the luxury of his palaces.
As soon as our first building was finished we started a similar one for Jack and Jean. Then we built a little stable down in the gully for the oxen, the cow, the pig, and the hens; we improved the crossing of the stream; we dug a well; we plowed a small area on each farm and planted it to oats, and then we went on plowing for next season's crop; we bought a mowing-machine and rake—on credit—and cut an ample supply of wild prairie hay for our winter needs. We had decided that, as fall came on, Jack and I, with the yoke of oxen, should make a pilgrimage into the more settled districts with a view to getting work with some farmer, and so replenishing our resources.
It was a hot day in the middle of July when, up the trail from the south, a speck grew out of the distance. Traffic did not often come our way, and Jack and I both stopped work in the field to study its approach and to conjecture as to who or what it might be. The light on the prairies on a hot day has a way of shimmering that sometimes renders the outline of an object, or even its color, vague, although its location may be discerned for many miles. Even as we watched a curious optical illusion occurred; the strange object left the ground and seemed to hang motionless, suspended slightly over the horizon.
We glanced over to the shacks and saw both Marjorie and Jean standing with shaded eyes studying the phenomenon. Then, as we watched, the figure took the form of a horse and rider of heroic size charging down upon us literally out of the heavens. As it approached the mirage lost its illusion and horse and rider came back to earth. By this time we were sure that the glint of color which had seemed to dance vaguely about the figure had a basis in fact; there was no longer a doubt that an atom of scarlet was approaching along the trail.
Leaving the oxen to their midday meditations we walked over to my shack, where Jean had already joined Marjorie. It could now be seen that the figure was approaching at a rapid gait, and its outline, no longer blurred by the shimmering of the mirage, stood out sharp and clean against the distance. It was a Mounted Policeman.
As he drew up beside us I had a sense of being in the presence of physical perfection. His horse, although wet over the flanks, showed little sign of fatigue; the dust of travel clung to the rider's sunburned face, but the smartness of his bearing and uniform was unimpaired. He saluted as he brought his horse to a standstill; then sprang lightly to the ground.
"I see I am right," he said, addressing Marjorie and Jean. "Won't you introduce me?"
Marjorie was the first to act, although I suspected, even then, that he had spoken more particularly to Jean. "My brother, Frank," she said, "and Jean's brother, Jack. This is Mr. Brook."
We shook hands cordially, and Jean asked our visitor if he had had dinner. "I have not," he confessed, "but please don't go to any trouble." But the girls were already in the house, making preparations.
"There's a stream around here, if my maps are right," the policeman continued, speaking to us, "and both Dick and I could do with water."
We led him down to the stream, and to the well, and although I was disposed to be prejudiced against this strapping young fellow who seemed to take more than a casual interest in Jean, I lost much of that prejudice through a little incident that happened when we reached the water. Although Brook was undoubtedly suffering from thirst he removed his horse's bit, so that he could drink in comfort, before he accepted the proffered cup of water which Jack brought him from the well. Jack and I spoke of it afterward and agreed that a chap who did that sort of thing was a good bit of a man.
After a hearty drink Brook took off his hat and tunic, produced towel, soap, comb and brush, and cleaned up even more thoroughly than seemed necessary. As I watched him parting his hair by the reflection in the water I realized that Brook had not forgotten what so many of we pioneers often did forget—the value of personal appearance. While we walked up the bank together I admitted to myself that although I was as good a man as he was, I didn't look it.
The meal which the girls had prepared loosened all our tongues, and before it was over we were chatting merrily. Brook had the latest gossip from Regina, and interesting news about himself. At last he had escaped from barracks, temporarily, at any rate. He was detailed to two months' relief duty at a point farther west; he promised himself another meal at our board on his way back, a prospect which Jean and Marjorie and Jack received with much satisfaction, and I trust I showed no smallness about it.
The policeman rested with us in the shade of the house for an hour or two, chatting breezily, and smoking numerous cigarettes. Neither Jack nor I smoked at that time, but I think it must be recorded that Brook introduced us, somewhat hesitatingly, to the alleged charms of Lady Nicotine. In short, we smoked rather less than half a cigarette each. It is one of the complexities of woman's nature which I did not understand then, and do not understand yet, that Jean, who openly admired this cigarette-smoking policeman, scaled me down many feet in her estimation because I surrendered to a single inch of temptation.
At length Brook insisted that he must be on his way, but before going he laid a dollar bill on the table in payment for his meal. We objected most strenuously to accepting money for our hospitality, but as he pointed out that it was the Government that footed the bill, we allowed ourselves to be persuaded. Governments, like railways, are legitimate prey. Also, from somewhere, the policeman produced a small box of candy, which he presented impartially to Marjorie and Jean. But most important, in-so-far as this story is concerned, was a bundle of letters. They were tied together with a stout string, with only the backs of the envelopes exposed, and on them was written in a bold hand the single word "Spoof".
"They're for a young Englishman who is to be a neighbour of yours," Brook explained. "He left word at the Regina post-office, asking to have his mail sent out if there was any chance. It seems he had some local fame under the name of Spoof, and the clerk in the post-office readdressed his letters that way. That's discipline for you! My word, what they wouldn't do to a man in the Force——"
"I know him," I broke in; "at least I have heard of him. Jake, our land guide told us about him. Where does he settle?"
"North-west quarter of Two," said the policeman. "Two miles due south of you, as the crow flies, or would fly, if he had occasion to. Spoof isn't there yet—I came by the quarter this morning. I suppose he's travelling by ox-team and will arrive some time later in the season. You'll see his sign up on Two when he gets here, and perhaps one of you wouldn't mind dropping in on him with this mail, if he doesn't call on you within a few days. He's English, and he may wait for an introduction."
We shook hands with the policeman and parted with him, and the girls stood watching the scarlet figure as it faded to a speck in the distance.
"Isn't he wonderful, Frank?" said Jean, turning to me with an enthusiasm dancing in her eyes which, under any other circumstances, it would have been good to see. "Don't you think that he —that all of the Mounted Police—are very wonderful?"
"Allof the Mounted Police are wonderful," I agreed, catching at the impersonal noun. "They are a wonderful Force. They have a tradition which has made them what they are. It is 'Get your man!'"
"In Regina they say it is 'Get your woman'," interrupted Marjorie, who had a way of bursting in at inopportune moments. "I think, brother mine, you'd better keep an eye cocked."
"For the Englishman on Two? That will be Jack's look-out," Jean retorted. "Well, here's a welcome to a neighbour—any neighbour. I must pick an acquaintance with Spoof."
The opportunity was not long delayed. Two mornings later we saw the white gleam of a tent on section Two. We quit work early that afternoon, hitched the oxen to the wagon, and went downen masseto call on Spoof. He saw us when we were yet afar off, and, when it was evident we were headed for his tent, he came striding out to meet us. He was tall and slim and sunburned; he wore leggings and corduroy trousers and a belt, and he took off his hat when he saw the girls.
"My first callers," he said, in his clear, English voice. "This is jolly decent of you. Won't you get down, ladies, and visit my farm—this is it, all around here—while we unhitch the bullocks and turn them to grass? I suspect you are my neighbours from Fourteen?"
"Fourteen and Twenty-two," said I, acting as spokesman, and introducing our little party. "We have heard of you, but only as Spoof."
"Spoof is good enough. In fact, I think it is rather a ripping name, don't you? And I know enough already about the West to know that a catchy nick-name, once applied, sticks. So Spoof I am, to everybody, except the dear folks at home, who, of course, could never understand. When I wrote the Governor and said the people here called me Spoof he answered, 'Such insolence! I'd have the law on them! Remember you are still an Englishman!' Poor old Governor!"
"Here are some letters, Mr. Spoof," said Jean, extending the little bundle. "Mr. Brook, the policeman, left them as he rode by a few days ago."
"Good old post office!" Spoof exclaimed. "Wonderful how they chase a beggar down, isn't it? They even know me by my Canadian name. Good old P.O."
Spoof made us come into his tent. The furnishings were not elaborate, but they had a little air of something that seemed to be missing in ours. There was a tin trunk, which had been sat on until it had a great depression in the top, and a leather trunk, generously plastered with labels. There was a great box, which he used as a table, and dishes of inappropriately delicate china. There was a folding camp cot with steamer rugs. Quite a handsome shaving set was strapped to a wall of the tent, and a great cartridge belt with a prodigious revolver hung from a tent pole, while a rifle leaned against it. Spoof evidently meant to sell his life dearly, if there should be any demand for it. Three or four English magazines lay about, and a tobacco jar with pipes stood in the centre of the table. But what caught Jean's eyes were the pictures on the walls. Spoof's tent was up less than a day, and there were pictures on the walls!
"This is my diggings," our host was saying. "A little crowded inside, but plenty of room outside. The law of compensation, you know. Have to do for the present. Beastly expensive business farming. We'll have some tea presently, if there's any spirit left in the spirit lamp. Sorry I can't offer you anything better." So he rattled on and made us feel very much at home, even while I found rising in my heart some yearning of sympathy for him. I recalled the incident about Jake and Spoof's sixty pounds, and I supposed that was but one of many similar experiences in the life of this young seed of Empire. That was the price of being a "greenhorn". When I spoke a little while ago of railways and governments being fair prey, I should have added greenhorns.
"It's the only way to treat 'em," Jake defended the custom of the country when I took him to task about it afterwards. "They're jus' like bronchoes—not worth a dang until they're broke. Then they'll work."
Evidently Spoof had come to the point where he was willing to work, but certainly not to allow work to interfere with his social engagements. Fragments of harness about the door of the tent indicated the line of his effort just before we had come up, but now he was pouring tea and helping sugar and biscuits and cheese with a grace of manner which made Jack and me and even Marjorie a little ill at ease. We had an uncomfortable feeling of being out of our class, as one does when he listens to a conversation in which his limitations will allow him to take little part. Only Jean seemed to wholly enjoy it; she was talking with him about prairie cloudscapes, and seemed to have quite forgotten herself in her enthusiasm. As I listened I marvelled how wonderful Jean's voice was; it was not harsh or guttural or uneven, but seemed to flow in a liquid, limpid stream, tinkling and rippling and running in happy little rills. It must have sounded very sweet to English ears.
Spoof, too, seemed to enjoy the conversation, and to react to the music of Jean's voice. He was too fine mannered to monopolize the stage with any one of his guests; occasionally he threw conversational feelers at Marjorie, and Jack, and me, but we were slow in the up-take, and before we quite knew what he was talking about the dialogue had again passed back to Jean. She seemed to have a grasp of things, of delicate, thoughtful, artistic things, far beyond any gift of ours. I was astonished and a bit terrified by the gulf which I now found spreading between her plane and mine. I had not been conscious of that gulf before. I had not failed to appreciate Jean's charms, but never before had I realized how high her level was above mine; never before had I felt myself unworthy of her; never had I known the lurking fear that some one, of finer clay than I, might claim her in the end.
The sun was setting when our little caravan started homeward, casting its mammoth shadows across the soft, warm prairies, and bearing Spoof's promise to return our visit at the earliest opportunity.
Spoof was as good as his word. The following Sunday we saw his ox-team as a slowly-growing speck on section Eleven, and a mile away we heard remarks to the "bally bullocks" which, presumably, were intended to be confidential.
"I just brought the bullocks for exercise," he explained, when he drew up before our shack. "I could have walked much easier, and much quicker, but they keep my arms and voice in form."
Even while Spoof was speaking, his oxen, attracted by the smell of fresh hay at our stable, moved down over the bank of the gully and upset the wagonen route. We disentangled them with some difficulty.
"I begin to lose sympathy with them; I really do," said Spoof, when we found that the reach of his wagon was broken. "Now I shall have to bind this bally thing together. Yesterday they balked in the hay meadow; in the hay meadow, mind you, where, if at all, an ox should be in an amiable mood. I argued with them for an hour, without effect, and then I went home and read a magazine. It's an ill wind, you know. They followed me about supper time."
"I'll tell you how to fix them," Jack remarked. "Next time they balk——"
"But if I fix them they won't be able to move at all," Spoof protested. "'Fix' is to make fast, to render immovable, and they're too much that way already."
"No doubt that is what fix means in England," Jack admitted, "but in Canada, to 'fix' a balky ox means, when everything else fails, to put an armful of hay under him and set fire to it. It does the trick."
"By Jove, that's a ripping idea! Now why couldn't I think of that? I suppose because I'm a greenhorn. I shall try it at the first opportunity."
Spoof retrieved a bundle of papers which had fallen out of his wagon box, and together we went up to the house. The girls were waiting in the shade at the eastern side of the shack; in their Sunday dresses of flimsy stuff appropriate to the hot weather they looked very sweet and charming.
"Ah, here are the ladies," said Spoof, and in his manner there was a touch of gallantry that in some way seemed foreign to either Jack or me. "Real prairie roses, and no mistake," as he took their hands in his. "It's jolly decent to ask a stranger over. All this out-of-doors; dawns, sunsets, sky, distance—all very fine, but it isn't good to be too much alone with it. Rather overwhelms one, don't you think?"
"I have felt that," said Jean, while Marjorie was fumbling for words. "It's too grand; it oppresses one. It's—it's all soul; no body."
"That's it—that's it!" Spoof agreed. "All soul—no body. I shall write that to the Governor. The Governor, dear old chap, thinks this country is rather a bit off the map. I have promised to shoot him a polar bear for Christmas, and he's quite looking forward to it. He writes to know if I find the native labor satisfactory, and can my man mix a decent whisky and soda. I must set his mind at rest. I let him think I run quite an establishment, you understand; he sends a cheque now and again, which, of course, bears a relationship to the position I am supposed to occupy in local society."
"Doesn't your conscience trouble you?" Marjorie queried, the conversation having swung into her orbit.
"Not at all. I am doing the Governor a kindness. He spends rather too much money on whisky and soda—particularly the former—so I am merely getting him interested in another kind of extravagance. A Younger Son is a very successful form of extravagance, don't you think? What is it Kipling says—'By the bitter road the Younger Son must tread,' or something like that? So why shouldn't the Governor sweeten the bitter road a little, and drink less whisky to his soda?"
While we were busy thinking of some appropriate remark Spoof remembered his bundle of papers.
"I ventured to bring these over," he said, tendering them to Jean. "Just some old copies ofThe Illustrated London NewsandThe Graphic. There are some sketches by an artist showing his conception of homestead life. I rather suspect the Governor has let him read my letters."
Presently the conversation turned to agricultural topics, and we were more at ease.
"My plowing," Spoof explained, "has gone better since I discarded my compass. The bullocks never took kindly to the compass. No doubt it was a foolish notion of mine that a furrow should run either east and west or north and south, seeing that the whole farm has to be plowed anyway. I now let them veer and tack as they please, and we are making considerable headway."
"Any crop in?"
"Not this year. A chap in Regina advised me to plant a sack of rolled oats and raise my own porridge, but, thank Heaven, I'm not Scotch. No reflection on the Scotch," he added hurriedly, noting a warning flash in Marjorie's eyes. "They are a very wonderful people. They eat oatmeal, and thrive on it. A very wonderful people."
"No garden either?"
"Only a few sunflowers. They should be up presently."
"Sunflowers? Why sunflowers?"
"A chap in Regina—Jake, the land guide—you know Jake, don't you?—he told me to be sure and plant some sunflowers. They are invaluable in winter. They stand up through the snow, and the sunlight beating on their bright, yellow faces enables a settler to locate his shack when otherwise the country is all a white blanket of snow. Jake assured me that many a settler had been frozen to death through neglect of this simple precaution."
"It's simple, all right," Jack agreed. "Our friend Jake seems to be a good adviser. Did he give you any other hints?"
"Lots of them, but I'm afraid he's a bit of a spoofer. Told me to catch four gophers and tie them by the hind legs to the four corners of my farm, and their squealing would warn all the other gophers off. I tried it but it didn't make a bit of difference. In fact, gophers seem to be about all I'm raising this year—gophers and sunflowers. His wild duck trap was no success, either. Jake showed me how to make a trap for wild ducks, and told me to put some buffalo bones in it and I would catch all the ducks I could eat. Said the ducks had to have the bone material for shells for the eggs, and would go anywhere to get it. I set two traps, but so far I haven't caught a duck."
"But did you put any tiger lilies in with the bones?" Jack inquired, with a face that had its struggles to keep straight.
"Tiger lilies? No, he didn't mention that."
"Oh, that's a serious oversight," said Jack, who was rapidly taking on the ways of the West. "Tiger lilies are the main part of the trap. You see, the ducks cannot see the bones at night, and so they are guided by the scent of the tiger lilies, which always grow around deposits of buffalo bones. Just gather a few fresh lilies every evening and lay them on the bones and you'll be surprised at the result."
In following this discussion I had not been observing Jean, or I should have seen the gathering storm in time, perhaps, to have averted it. Now she sprang in front of us like a mother bird at bay. If Jean, passive, was beautiful, Jean, aroused, was magnificent. I sensedthateven while swept off my feet by the blast of her indignation.
"It's a lie!" she exclaimed. "It's all a pack of lies! They're—they're 'spoofing' you, as you call it." She turned her withering glance particularly upon her brother, but I did not quite escape it. "They take advantage of your strangeness to the country to make you appear foolish—they, who don't know Rembrandt from Mozart, or——or——"
Jean paused in her tirade, stuck for a figure that would express her contempt for us. It was the first time I had seen Jean in the grip of a righteous and belligerent indignation. She had revealed a new side of her nature that was wonderful, adorable; perhaps a bit dangerous. The poignancy of her beauty was not lessened by the knowledge that I had fallen a number of degrees in her estimation, and that Spoof had doubtless ascended a proportionate distance.
Spoof was the first to get his balance. "Why, why—that's all right," he exclaimed. "Quite all right. A ripping good joke, I call it. I must work that on the Governor when he comes to visit me. I shall have him pulling tiger lilies for my duck traps,—see if I don't!"
"That will be when he comes for the polar bear you have promised him," said Jack, slyly. "You see, Jean, Spoof is a bit of a spoofer himself."
"I don't care if he is!" Jean flared back. "It isn't fair to— to——" Jean was very close to tears. "You too, Frank!" she exclaimed, suddenly turning her wrath upon me, "You sat there like a mummy never saying a word——"
"Well, that should let me out, I had nothing to do with——"
"Yes, you did! I saw you snicker! You're as bad as Jack, and you would have said the same things, if you had been bright enough."
That was a body blow, but Spoof came to my rescue.
"Oh, I say!" he exclaimed, "can't we have some tea? Beastly dry business, homesteading; no afternoon tea. I must speak to my man about that. He's the same man as mixes my whisky and sodas, according to the Governor's idea of it," Spoof explained.
The suggestion of tea confronted the girls with work, which, in proper doses, is the universal restorer of good humor. They went inside, and when in a short while they brought out tea and sandwiches the storm had swept by, with only a dash of color in Jean's cheeks, like a rainbow in an afternoon sky, to mark its passing.
"Do you know," said Spoof, when the girls had cleared up the tea things and were out of hearing, "the thing of which I stand most in need at the present moment—that thing which is so essentially English, and from which I have been divorced for more days than I care to number—that thing for which I would gladly give half of my kingdom, meaning the north-west quarter of section Two? No? Observe the blushes beneath my sunburned cuticle as I admit that for weeks I have not had a bath. For weeks, literally. If my poor Governor could know that, not even the hide of a polar bear would reconcile him to leaving me to live the life of a savage."
"We can soon fix that—I mean, we can furnish the wherewithal," said I, "and I will expect the deed of eighty acres in return." So we led Spoof down to the pond, which the sun, now well over to the west, was burnishing with hues of burnt-orange and amber. Along its grassy shore on the northern side a score or more wild ducks were feeding, some of them tail-tilted in the air as they grubbed the roots in the shallow water. Their only notice of us was to move a little closer to the bank, while two or three worried mothers gathered their broods in little fluffy phalanxes behind them.
"My word, my word!" said Spoof. "Why didn't Jake tell me about this? I will have that land guide's gizzard for this omission! . . . And how tame they are!"
"No shooting yet," I explained. "It isn't fair to the youngsters; but there's a great day coming. But the water is fine, and deep enough toward the middle."
"My word, if only I had a bathing suit! I say, do you think there would be any great danger—any danger at all, that is—of an interruption?"
"Not a bit. We have that all organized," and I showed him a red handkerchief tied to a stick. "When the pond is in use we fly this banner on the bank of the gully, and we're as safe as Sunday. The girls usually have their plunge in the middle of the afternoon, for that matter, and leave us undivided possession in the evening."
Spoof was already half undressed. "My word, and do the young ladies swim?"
"Jean is the best swimmer I ever knew," I confessed, modestly. "We lived beside a river at home, and she had a way of bagging all the prizes at our swimming races."
"She bagged bigger game than that," Jack put in. "She stored up a lot of trouble for herself and the rest of us by pulling our worthy Frank out of the mill-pond one day, after the bubbles had begun to come." So then I had to tell Spoof about that incident. But I avoided reference to the pledge that had followed it.
"I'm afraid I shall be over here more often than you'll welcome me," said Spoof, as he revelled in the water. "You know, of course, the difference between a bawth and a bath?"
"Don't know that I do," Jack admitted, spouting water after a plunge.
"A bawth," Spoof explained, "is what an Englishman has every morning, and a bath is what a Canadian has Saturday nights."
After that we held Spoof under the water while I counted ten, counting very slowly.
When we had had our swim and dried ourselves on the sand we went back up to the house. The shadows were now falling, long and narrow, to the eastward, and the prairie lay hushed and silent in that deep and peaceful calm which marks the summer evening an hour or two before sundown. The grass had taken on its peculiar evening shade of green; the sunlight was yellow and amber, the stillness so universal and complete that all nature seemed to await in reverence the vesper hour. All but an irrepressible meadow-lark which, from a fence post nearby, thrust its limpid challenge at us as we came up to the house.
After supper Spoof sat and chatted until it was time to light the lamp. Jean set it on the table, and as its yellow glow fell across his face I realized for the first time that Spoof was not a boy, as were Jack and I. There were lines in the cheeks and about the eyes which, magnified by the shadows under the lamplight, bore evidence that Spoof had known more of this world's cares than was hinted by his usual light-hearted conversation.
Presently he was talking of England; easing, perhaps the homesickness in his heart by calling up scenes of leafy lanes and misty sun-shot landscapes linking deeply into his life. He had tales of London as well; tales of art treasures and music and theatres all alight with life and beauty; tales of grave-stones marking the great of a nation with a history reaching back into the early obscurity of Western civilization. Something about the pride he showed in the great deeds of the past seemed to strike us strangely—we of a country whose history was still so much in the future and whose greatest deeds were still to be done.
"I tell you," said Spoof, "it is a wonderful thing to have a share in the foundation work of a nation that is going on to-day on these prairies. It's a wonderful thing to lay corner-stones of empire. But it's a dangerous thing to have no past to steady you, to humble you, to inspire. It's just as dangerous to live too much in the future, as we do here, as to live too much in the past, as perhaps we do in England."
"That's why we need some of you people from the Old Land to mix with ours," said Jean. "We need something to link our future with our past—to give us balance, poise."
"Poise is the word, I think," Spoof commented. "New countries have energy, ambition, enthusiasm, courage, optimism—all wonderful qualities—but they are likely to need poise. That is something we are perhaps overstocked with at home. My blessed countrymen are so well poised that I lose patience with them now and again because they don't lose patience with other people."
"Still," said Jack, "it's a great thing to be adaptable. What other people would be so ready to adjust themselves to the ways of the country, to set out their duck traps——"
"Oh, don't let us have any more of that!" Marjorie exclaimed. "I've been all afternoon nursing Jean back into good humor, and I'm not too sure of her yet. Let's change the subject. Do you sing, Mr. Spoof?"
"Only at great distances from civilization,—my bullocks could say a word or two about my musical voice if they were so disposed. But surely you or Miss Hall——"
"Jean sings and plays, if we have anything to play on," Marjorie declared, "But we haven't added a piano yet to our equipment. I suppose we shall have to buy a binder and horses and perhaps a threshing mill before we have any money for musical instruments."
"And a house," I added. "I'd like to see you keep a piano in tune in a cage like this."
"You should have a banjo," said Spoof. "By Jove, just the thing! I've a banjo tucked away somewhere in my belongings. Something I forgot to pawn at Regina. I'll bring it over and give you lessons, if you'll let me."
"I should be delighted," said Jean, and her voice was quite unnecessarily low and sweet.
There was a late twilight glow in the northern sky and the smell of dew on the prairie grass filled the air when Spoof decided it was time to go home. We helped him bind up his broken reach and hitch the "bally bullocks" to the wagon and watched him disappear into the darkness. Long after he was lost to sight the rumble of his wagon and the voice of his exhortation could be heard welling up out of the distance.
"A fine chap," said Jack, as we parted for the night. "I am glad we are to have him for a neighbour."
"Yes," said I. But my voice had no ring of enthusiasm.
The day after Spoof's visit I was plowing with the oxen, followed by an Indian file of expectant blackbirds trailing along in my fresh-turned furrow, when I suddenly became aware of Jack running toward me. He pointed in the direction of Spoof's homestead, and I turned my face to the south. A pillar of creamish-blue smoke rose like a sacrificial column from section Two; rose until it thinned and flattened out against the still, warm, summer heaven.
"What do you make of it?" said Jack, wiping the perspiration from his forehead with the sleeve of his shirt.
I was seized with a sudden and far-fetched sense of humor. "Spoof has taken your advice about the tiger lilies, and is roasting a wild duck," I suggested.
"At any rate," Jack retorted, "he has a fire on his hands, and he's just as likely to scatter it as to put it out. Lucky for him the grass is still green, and there's hardly a puff of wind. Shall we hoof it, or ride the 'bullocks?'"
"Ride them, and save our breath for fire-fighting," I said, with unusual wisdom, as I began to pull the harness from the oxen.
Buck and Bright were by this time fairly accustomed to strange creatures like Jack and me perched on their broad backs, with our legs hooped about their big, flat ribs, and, if the truth must be told, even Jean and Marjorie had made use of them for locomotion in a similar way. At first the oxen had rewarded their riders with a wholly unprecedented burst of speed, but the novelty had soon worn off, and as we now swung ourselves upon them they responded to our urgings with the most unconcerned deliberation. We headed them across the prairie in the direction of section Two, inducing such speed as we could by means of language and the vigorous application of our boot heels.
Soon the fire could be discerned on that part of Spoof's farm where he was engaged in putting up hay. The column of smoke was thinning out; fading into the blue blurr of infinitude; it looked as though the excitement would be quite over before we could arrive. However, we were now bent upon paying Spoof a neighbourly call in any case, and when at last our oxen lumbered up we found him gazing somewhat ruefully upon a heap of smouldering embers. The tires of his wagon, grey-red with heat, peered like coiled serpents from under a blanket of ashes.
"What's the matter, Spoof?" we hailed him. "A cigarette butt?"
"No. I wasfixingthe bullocks, and I'vefixedthe wagon . . . I forgot the tiger lilies."
There was no anger in Spoof's voice, but a sort of sadness that made us a little ashamed of our sport with him the day before.
"Tell us how it happened," we said, dismounting and turning our oxen to feed along with his at a nearby heap of hay. "We're sorry."
Spoof was himself again. "Of course you are," he rejoined, laughing. "All my fault. How shall I report this to the Governor? I know; I shall say I drove over a Canadian double-orbed firefly—one must throw in a touch of detail, for its realistic effect—and the spark ignited the hay. By the way, how much does a bally wagon cost? A hundred pounds?"
"Oh, no. You can get a good one for a hundred dollars or less, and perhaps a second-hand——"
"But I mean for the purposes of a communication to the Governor?"
We agreed that for such a purpose the value of a wagon was one hundred pounds.
"It happened like this," Spoof explained. "The bullocks decided to have their afternoon siesta as usual, and were unresponsive to all my blandishments. Then I remembered your simple remedy—the remedy which you said would be sure to fix them. So I brought an armful of hay, spread it impartially under both of them, set fire to it, and stood back for results.
"The process was a very interesting one. At first they seemed to think it was flies, but when their kicking and switching proved ineffectual they gently moved forward just far enough to bring the wagon, half full of hay, over the fire. Then they resumed their slumbers.
"Well, I paused a moment, wondering whether I should let nature take its course and have grilled steak for supper, but I decided that I was in more need of steak on the hoof than in the platter. So I crowded in and unhitched them, and got my eye-brows singed for my pains."
"Good boy, Spoof!" said I. "You couldn't have done more than that." Whereupon Spoof turned on me a look of gratitude out of all proportion to my remark.
"It's good of you to say that. I felt that I had been rather an ass, don't you know? I was quite sure you would see the smoke. . . . Well,—I say, let's go in and have some tea."
So we had tea, with bread and jam, and afterwards Spoof insisted upon reading paragraphs fromPunch.
"It's a different kind of humor, don't you know?" he would say, when we failed to laugh at the right moment; "nothing to do with buffalo bones or tiger lilies, or gophers tied by their hind legs to the corner stakes of one's farm. But then, we English are a peculiar people; we can have a joke without making a bonfire over it."
"That is just what you, personally, didn't do," Jack reminded him. "It was your bonfire, not ours."
It was almost sundown when Spoof for the seventh time absolved us from all blame in the matter, and we started on our trek homeward across the green prairie. Jack offered to go to town the next day and negotiate a deal for a new wagon, but Spoof would not hear of it. He himself would go, and no other.
"I have to pick up some new language, anyway," he insisted. "The bullocks are growing very tired of the monotony of my remarks."
Spoof evidently left the next morning, for when Jack and I went over to Two about the middle of the forenoon the place was deserted. We set to work in his hay field, and by Wednesday night we had harvested more hay than Spoof would have put up in a week. That was our atonement.
Affairs now began to move with some rapidity in our little settlement. Until now we had had the world, as far as the eye could carry, to ourselves, but Spoof proved only the advance guard of a stream of neighbours which, from its source in a dozen different springs of humanity, was to pour in upon us during the next few months. Wednesday night we came back from Spoof's, as we had a little shyness about being overtaken in our good works, and the next morning, while I was gulping great draughts of ozone in front of the shack before breakfast, Marjorie called over my shoulder,
"What's that, away to the east, Frank?"
Sure enough, there was a little white pyramid outlined against the horizon; another tent pitched against the front trenches of civilization.
"Neighbours, Marjorie; neighbours!" I said. "We're getting to be quite a community. Do you ever think of the day when all this wilderness of prairie will be plowed, every foot of it; all bearing something for the world's needs, with prosperous farm houses at every corner, schools, churches——"
"I smell the porridge!" Marjorie exclaimed, rushing into the shack. She had a way of cutting off my rhapsodies like that.
Jack had seen the tent, too, and he and Jean came over at noon to discuss it. We decided to knock off work early that evening and all drive over to make the acquaintance of the new-comers.
We found that the tent was pitched on Eighteen, in the next township to the east. As we came up we were greeted by a fine collie dog, who seemed to be suffering from the conflicting emotions of his natural good humor and a sense that we had no business on Eighteen. His rush upon us with great barking and show of ferocity ended in much amiable tail-wagging. Evidently we measured up to his requirements, which we took to be no mean compliment.
A team of ponies were tethered on the prairie not far away, and a democrat stood beside the tent, with some of its burden still to be unloaded. A woman of slender build and rather striking beauty stood at the door. There was surprise, and, as I thought, a suggestion of fear in her eyes. More remarkable was the sudden and unmistakable relief which sprang into her expression when she had seen us clearly.
I am not a detective, even of the amateur kind, but I found myself instantly gripped by a conclusion. "The woman is afraid," I said to myself, "and yet she is no coward, she has no fear of strangers, but she is afraid of someone—afraid of someone she knows. She was relieved when she saw we were strangers." The thought was one which was to recur to me from many angles during the next few months.
She seemed to hesitate about greeting us, and Jean, always the quick-witted one of our quartette, was the first to break a rather stupid silence. She sprang lightly from the wagon and went forward with arms outstretched.
"We are your neighbours, from Fourteen and Twenty-two," she explained. "We saw your tent, and thought we would welcome you to prairie-land."
"That is good of you," said a well modulated English voice, but some way the voice seemed to break just there, and the lips of the new-comer went all a-tremble. The next we knew she and Jean had their arms about each other. . . .
"Oh, how horribly stupid of me!" the stranger exclaimed, in a moment or two, disengaging herself and dabbing her eyes with a little lump of handkerchief. "One gets a bit—a bit lonely, in spite of everything. You will think I am rather a bad pioneer. My name is Mrs. Alton, and I'msoglad you came, Miss—Miss——"
Jean introduced herself and the others of our party, and then we clambered down out of the wagon.
"Gerald and I have been very much alone," Mrs. Alton explained. "Gerald doesn't seem to mind it a bit—rather glories in it, I think. Already he has made some great explorations, but always under Sandy's watchful eye. Sandy is a great comfort. Aren't you, sir?"
She turned to the dog, who sedately held up one paw in acknowledgment of her remark.
"Gerald, I should have told you, has just turned three. I am a widow," Mrs. Alton rattled on, as though not wishing to stress the point—"and Gerald and I have our way to make in the world. He is tired now, and asleep after a great day's roaming, but I shall wake him before you go."
"Oh, please don't!" Jean entreated. "Let us see him as he sleeps," and without waiting for an invitation she gently made her way into the little tent.
"Don't you think me clever?" Mrs. Alton asked, when we had at last discovered it.
It consisted of a trunk, with the lid turned back, and about half the contents removed. In this she had laid a little mattress, and on the mattress slept a beautiful boy, his face still ruddy from his wrestle with the prairie winds; his lips cherry red and slightly parted; his little arms thrown jauntily above his head. Jean leaned and touched the breathing lips with hers, and so did Marjorie, and a little later I saw tears on the cheeks of both. It was then I remembered that these girls had not seen a child since we left Regina in the spring, and the mothering instinct in them, pent up through all those lonely months, now burst forth in sweet silent tears. I began to realize that Gerald Alton was to be one of the important members of the community.
"Isn't he lovely—lovely?" Jean was murmuring as though unable to tear herself from his side. "Mrs. Alton, I am sure you have placed us all under a debt of gratitude. This community simply had to have a baby."
After that, conversation came easier, and we found ourselves talking about farm life, and the problems of the homesteader. Mrs. Alton drank in every word with avidity; she was eager for information on the most casual affairs.
"I am so frightfully stupid!" she exclaimed. "You see, I know nothing about farming, and I suppose it was a very wild notion that I should take a homestead. I did it on Gerald's account. I shall manage some way, and in three years—by the time he must start to school—the farm will be mine. Then I shall sell it or mortgage it to give him an education."
Here was pluck for you. It was apparent from her language that she was a woman of some refinement; possibly a woman who had never known hard work or privation. A turn in the wheel of fortune, and she was without the money for the education of her boy. A free farm in Canada offered the solution, and the wilds of the West could not deter her.
"By that time we may have a school next door," I suggested. "People will flow in here in crowds, once they make a start. Have you plans for carrying on the work of the farm?"
"I have two men following with boards to build a house; just a very tiny house, in keeping with my purse. Then I hope to hire a neighbor to do some plowing, and I will plant some corn next spring. I shall raise chickens, and have a great garden—I know all about gardening," she added, naively, with a sudden return of confidence. "You should have seen my English roses!"
We had not the heart to tell her that there lay a great gulf between English roses and a Canadian cabbage patch, and she rattled on, evidently glad of some one to watch with sympathy the mirage castles which she was building on her horizon.
"For myself, I am quite penniless," she confessed, thrusting her upturned palms towards us with a little impulsive gesture. "Gerald is my resource, as well as my responsibility. He has a hundred pounds a year. We shall invest it in this farm. I am sure we are going to prosper wonderfully.
"All the world seems to circle around Gerald," she added, as though it were an after-thought.
She made Jean and Marjorie sit down on a box on which she had spread a steamer rug. Jack and I stood at the door of the tent, where the setting sun blazoned our wind-tanned faces a ruddy red.
"How healthy you men are!" she exclaimed, clasping her fingers in a nervous grip. "If only Gerald will grow up like that!"
"We will come over when the men bring the lumber, and help them build your house," Jack volunteered.
"The lumber—what lumber? Oh, the boards! Oh, how good of you!"
The regard in which she held us appeared to rise another degree.
"And are you carpenters, as well as farmers?" she asked. "How wonderfully clever your men are, here. I had to go to a doctor in Regina—Gerald had a rash, or something—it was in the evening and I found him at his house, building a chicken-coop. Jolly wonderful, isn't it?"
As the shadow of the democrat filled the tent door we spoke of leaving.
"Not until you have had tea," she insisted. "We shall have tea with biscuits and jam. I bought an oil stove in Regina—a most wonderful machine. We shall have it ready in a moment."
While she started her oil stove she asked, casually enough, "And am I the only new-comer in all this big prairie which you have been having to yourselves?"
"No; you are the second," I answered. "We already have one neighbour, a countryman of yours, down on section Two. Spoof, he calls himself, although that is not his real name."
She was working over the stove, with her back toward us, and perhaps she dallied longer than there was any need for, but I took no notice of the matter at the time.
"What a strange name," she said, after a while. . . . "Is he there now—I mean, have you seen him lately? A countryman of mine; you know, I must be interested in him," she added, brightly, turning her face to us again.
Then we told of Spoof's unfortunate attempt to apply a Western corrective to his balky oxen. But she seemed to lose interest in the theme, and changed the conversation to some other topic. Suddenly she remembered her promise that we should see Gerald awake, and, disregarding our protests, she stirred him out of his sleep. His big, blue eyes blinked for a moment at the lamp which she had lighted; then slowly took in his visitors. When he had subjected us to a careful scrutiny he turned to his mother.
"Dem Injuns," he remarked.
"Oh, no, dear, these are not Indians. I am afraid I have let him think that all the people in this country are Indians," Mrs. Alton explained.
"He is not the first Englishman who has thought that," Jack interrupted. "It's a somewhat common opinion."
Mrs. Alton accepted the criticism deftly. "So it is," she admitted, "but then, you see, welikeIndians, just as we like people of all strange colors, which is something you Americans"—she used the word in its continental sense—"have not learned to do. No, Gerald, these are not Red Indians, with feathers and paint and bows and arrows, but white people like Mumsy and you, only very much wiser. They are friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two—itisFourteen and Twenty-two, isn't it?—you see how I am picking up your way of knowing places by number rather than by name—and they have come for a little visit with Gerald and Mumsy and Sandy. Now say 'How do you do, Miss Lane.'"
But Gerald was not in exhibition mood. "Dem Injuns," he insisted, and with that we had to be satisfied.
At length, with assurances that we would repeat our visit soon, and a promise from Mrs. Alton that she would return it when the men had her house under way, we clambered into our wagon and started the oxen on their slow, lumbering gait homeward. Sandy saw us properly off the place, and even stood at attention until we faded out of sight in the twilight. There is likely to be a nip to the night air on the prairies even in midsummer, and Jean, I noticed, snuggled comfortably beside me on the board across the wagon box which served as a seat. . . . Or perhaps it was that for the first time in months the latent motherhood in her nature had been stirred into consciousness.
It was Sunday before we heard or saw anything more of Spoof. A hot summer wind was chasing little scurries of dust and billowing our oat field like a lake of turquoise green when suddenly his tall form loomed up on the rough trail which already wriggled across the prairie from Fourteen to Two. He had discarded coat and waist-coat; in a khaki-colored shirt and corduroy breeches and leggings and an Indian helmet which he had dug up from somewhere he was a picturesque and striking figure as he strode into the grateful shade of the shanty. Under his arm he carried a banjo case.
"I'm tired after a busy week," he explained, "so I didn't bring the bullocks. Moreover, their behavior last Sunday was not exemplary. But I say," he continued, "there must be something in that remedy of yours, after all. They haven't balked since."
"They have learned that you are a man of desperate measures," said Jack.
"They have that. And besides, I fell in with a cow puncher on my way to town; his horse had gone lame and he took a lift with me. He was a veritable mine of expletives."
Spoof took off his helmet and sat down in the shade. A ring of dust had formed on his fair temples and forehead and his brown hair was curly with perspiration. He was a young man good to look at; straight and lean, but not too spare; with white teeth that flashed behind lips always ready to spring to a smile beneath a sandy mustache that had more in it of promise than of realization. His hands were small and finely formed, with long, delicate fingers, and he gave his nails a degree of attention not often found among those so close to the realities of life as were we pioneers.
"Have you tried playing to them?" said Jack, harking back to the oxen. "They are said to be very responsive to music."
"I shall try no more experiments on the bullocks," Spoof returned, pointedly; "not, at least, while I have neighbours at hand who will serve the purpose as well. But that reminds me——"
Opening the banjo case he produced, not only a banjo, but a box of candy, which he had managed to smuggle into it.
"The ladies, I hope, will accept," said he, tendering the candy to Jean.
"If accompanied by a serenade in our honour?" was her quick rejoinder.
"But not until after I have had a bath, and have somewhat recovered my wind," Spoof pleaded, and was excused.
It was evening before he took up his banjo, but almost with the first sweep of its clamoring strings he started vibrations which seemed to catch our little band of exiles somewhere about the heart and squeeze us suddenly hollow with loneliness. Then he sang, dipping into little fragments of repertoire, until at last he hit upon something that Jean had learned before we left the East, and there her clear soprano joined his tenor as naturally as one brook mingles with another and both flow on, singing a new song which is all of the old one, and something more. I had never learned to sing, and while I felt the heart-tugs of their harmony there were other strings tugging at my heart as well.
"But we forgot the greatest news," Jean exclaimed, in a pause after one of their selections. "We have neighbours—two new neighbours—three counting Sandy. They are living on Eighteen, to the east; surely you saw the tent?"
"So I did," said Spoof, "but I thought it might be a wandering Indian family. Two, did you say? A married couple?"
"No, a widow, Mrs. Alton, and her baby Gerald, the dearest little chap. He puts us down for Indians, and with some reason."
"Gerald?" said Spoof. "How old is he?"
"Just turned three, so Mrs. Alton told us. You should see her; not very big, but pluck to the marrow. She has taken a homestead so that she can raise the money to educate her boy. She is coming over as soon as she is settled, and we must have you meet her. She's English, and you'll love her."
Jean's frankness rather set me at ease again. Evidently I was magnifying the grip that Spoof was gaining upon her. She was content that he should love his new English neighbor.
"I shall be wonderfully interested in her," Spoof said, gaily, but it seemed to me that his mind had suddenly gone all a-ramble. There was a moment's silence, then he took up the thread again. "I once knew a little boy of that name—Gerald—was much attached to him. Strange how an incident—a name, for example—will recall a whole chain of memories."
What memories of Spoof's was aroused he did not say, but he sang no more, and presently decided it was time to go home.