We did as Spoof suggested. Early the next afternoon we hitched Buck and Bright to the wagon and wended our slow way south-westward, Jack and I taking turns in the exclamatory exercises by means of which the oxen were kept in motion. The prairie now was very brown and bare, and only the more hardy gophers remained about to whistle saucily at our carry-all lumbering by. The dazzling sunshine seemed to have lost its force, and there was a presage of coming winter in the air. We dropped into silence save for the noises of our locomotion.
"The world seems to have died," said Jean after a long period of thoughtfulness.
The expression was an appropriate one. The world was, actually, dead. Every blade of grass was a stark little corpse, swaying ghostily to the stir of the cold air. Soon the shroud of Winter would be woven about them, flake by flake, mantling them all in its cold, white tomb.
"But in the spring it will live again," Jean continued, after a pause. "That is the life eternal."
Jean was a strange girl. Her thoughts went on and on, reaching out, and out. She seemed to live always on the verge of the infinite. . . .
At length we were at Brown's. The rickety shack, smaller than either of ours, presented a sad and forlorn appearance. Three little faces were crowded in the single window that covered our approach. Brown himself was busy building a stable of sods, and succeeding very badly in his work. He could scarcely be distinguished from his building material, but when he saw us he shook himself, as a dog shakes off water, and came up, touching his cap.
"We are your neighbours from Fourteen," we announced ourselves. "May we go in?"
"You may, and welcome," he said. "The wife will be a bit fuddled. I'm not the most presentable, myself."
Then Jean did a great thing; one of those wonderful things that no one but Jean seemed to think of. She clambered to the side of the wagon and held out her arms.
"I'm all dirt, Miss," Brown protested. "I'm all earth and sand." But he came slowly forward to her outstretched arms, and when his hands reached hers he took her and gently helped her down.
"Thank you, Mr. Brown," she said.
But Brown was looking at her and at us with eyes that had suddenly gone misty with a mist not of the sods or of the sand. Two little pools of water gathered and streaked a slow, dusty course across his grimy face. . . .
Inside we found Mrs. Brown 'a bit fuddled,' as her husband had predicted. At first she merely stood wringing her hands, but when Jean and Marjorie kissed her, and then kissed the little Browns, the veil suddenly lifted and she was all kindness and hospitality. What a day it was, after we began to get acquainted! Marjorie and Jean had brought some home-made candy, and in a few minutes the little Browns were smeared and happy and slipping gently about looking into the faces of our girls as though they verily believed them angels.
After awhile Marjorie and Jean managed to explain that it was quite the thing in Canada, when visiting a neighbour, to carry your eatables with you, and produced a well packed basket out of our wagon. We had to saw up a board which Mr. Brown was using in his building operations in order to make an extension of the table so that all might sit down together. And when we had done that Mrs. Brown surprised us all by covering it with a cloth of the finest Irish linen, and producing from somewhere a setting of hand-painted china, aided and abetted by a tea service of real silver. And after supper Brown showed us his fire-arms. He had a perfect arsenal of them, when he was in much greater need of a cow. And Mrs. Brown, I know, was showing the girls wonderful things out of boxes. And when it was all dark and starry we hitched the oxen to the wagon, and shook hands all round, and kissed the children all round, and the girls kissed Mrs. Brown, and Mr. Brown forgot himself and kissed the girls, and Jack and I almost kissed Mrs. Brown, and we drew slowly away, waving our hands and watching the five figures framed in the doorway against the yellow light of the oil lamp on the opposite wall. And we knew that in some way we had brought the hedges and lanes and rose-gardens of England down to that crude shanty on section Four and had woven them about another little sentry-box on the most skyward trenches of civilization. . . . And the next day Jack and I drove over again and showed Brown how to build a sod stable.
Our experience with the Browns encouraged us to cultivate the acquaintance of our other neighbours, and as the short, bright days of November wore by the low-hanging sun often saw our ox-wagon wending slowly across the prairies, and the North Star and the Great Dipper were the silent witnesses of its return to Fourteen. Sometimes, too, the great magician of the North would light his mimic candles, and we would creak homeward in the weird light of their flickering battalions minueting on the stage of the universe. Smith, the Scotsman, and Burke, the American, received us with undivided hospitality and that strange sense of common interest which is the most priceless thing about pioneer life; one of the rich qualities of human nature which seems inevitably to dry up in the more complex civilisations. Ole Hansen entertained us for a full hour in the stable before his buxom Olga consented to admit us into the house. When at last we were granted that privilege there were evidence of hurried scrubbing of floors and faces.
"My wife bane all the time yust on the yump," Ole explained apologetically. "Some time Ay tank by damn we have too many kids, eh?" It appeared that Ole was beginning to harbor some modern ideas about the size of families. His opinion that six was "yust a nice commence" was being shaken. The housing problem was coming home to him and bearing its inevitable fruit.
No such radicalism had yet filtered into the mind of the Russian, who, for the sake of convenience, we continued to call Sneezit. He met us stolidly where the trail wound down the bank of the gully near to his dug-out. He wore a long sheepskin coat, with the wool still on it, high boots drawn well up on the thigh, and a brushy black beard. He regarded us in silence, and at length Jack spoke.
"We are your neighbours. We have come to call on you. We hope you are well."
The lips under the black mustache parted slowly, showing a set of strong, regular, teeth.
"No much Angleesh," he remarked.
We clambered down and shook hands. This seemed to assure him of our friendly intentions, and when we managed to make it clear that we wanted to visit his house he led us to it without hesitation.
It was merely a cave dug out of the side of the gully. The front was roughly built up with stones and sods, and a crude door, made of pieces of packing boxes, afforded admittance. The only light was from an opening in the door, which could be closed when the weather was too severe.
Sneezit went first and addressed some words in Russian into the gloom. We followed, encountering in the door the fumes of the place's bad ventilation. It was some time before our eyes became accustomed to the darkness, but presently we discerned a woman stooping, indicating a long bench which had been set for us. Across the cave was a drove of children, their eyes peering and shining like those of wild animals. Indeed, it seemed that eyes were the most noticeable thing in that very humble little home. Presumably there were mouths as well; no doubt Sneezit and his wife had reason to know that there were mouths as well as eyes.
The Russian talked "no much Angleesh," and his wife none, so our conversation was somewhat restrained. Presently, however, we became aware that the woman was performing some operation on a little rusty stove which sat near the front of the cave, so that its crooked stove-pipe might find exit through the roof. After a little she brought out some tin cups and served tea. Sneezit, wiser than our friend Brown, had provided himself with a cow, and the strong tea, well diluted with milk, made a very good drink indeed. She served also a kind of dark, flat bread which bore more witness to her hospitality than to her skill in domestic science. There were no other dainties.
When we had eaten and drunk we prepared to go, but not until Jean and Marjorie had distributed some of their home-made candy among the children. We had hoped during this process to take a census but the sudden commotion which it created made our statistics unreliable. Marjorie said there were eight; Jean, ten; Jack made no estimate. I was disposed to agree with Jean's figures.
After we came out of the cave our host, apparently wishing to give evidence of his friendship, led us to a shed which he had built close to the edge of the little stream that meandered along the bottom of the gully. He had covered it with a stack of prairie hay, so that it was quite warm. Inside were a yoke of oxen, a cow, two pigs, and a number of hens and ducks. The pride of the Russian's face as he showed them was something to behold and afterwards go away, humbled and thinking. Sneezit was on the road to independence! The drab curtain of oppression which had hung about the Sneezits since the beginning of their race he had torn in two, and through the rent his grizzled face beheld a world of hope and promise, a world in which he was as good as his neighbour!
As soon after our return from harvesting as our duties permitted it we paid another visit to Mrs. Alton. Sandy saw us afar off and swept down upon us like a tornado. Apparently he had known us at the first glimpse, or the first sniff, whichever was his source of information, for there was no question this time about our welcome. His barking and tail-wagging accompanied us all the remainder of the way to the little box that Mrs. Alton called home.
The widow had had time to dress since we hove in view—that is one of the advantages of prairie life not set out in the immigration booklets—and it was a dainty and spick-and-span Mrs. Alton that greeted us when our wagon lumbered up to her door.
"I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two'—you see how I am picking up your prairie way of numbering your farms instead of naming them—I said, 'It's our friends from Fourteen and Twenty-two' as soon as I heard Sandy's first bark. That was before you were in sight, so far as my poor eyes could see. But Jerry, who was up in the wagon playing teamster cried, 'I see dem, Mudder; oxes and Mith Lane.' He's crazy about Miss Lane."
"Jerry is a young man of discrimination," I said, scoring for once. But my wit was lost in the wild and panting hug which Jean was bestowing upon my rival.
"So he's Jerry now," said Jean, releasing her embrace enough for speech. "That sounds like getting down to earth. Ever so much more chummy than Gerald."
"Do you think so?" Mrs. Alton queried. "And I had vowed that,whatevercame, I never would call him Jerry. Too reminiscent of Jeremiah, and lamentations, and all that sort of thing that I wanted to get away from." Mrs. Alton stopped short, as though she had said more than she intended, then brightly took up the thread again. "I vowed I would leave my lamentations behind," she continued. "I take it that this is a country where there is room for everything but regrets."
It was evident that Mrs. Alton's bereavement was filling a good part of her mind, so Jean deftly switched the conversation back to the boy, and presently was conducting a foot-race to the chicken shed with herself, Jerry, and Sandy as the competitors. Sandy won.
We had tea, of course, and after Jerry had gone to bed and Sandy had lain down with his chops on the floor between his paws and his tail thumping the boards occasionally in approbation Jack got out our much worn deck of cards and we initiated Mrs. Alton into the mysteries of pedro. With a beginner's luck she and Jack were much too successful for Jean and me, and when it was time for us to go we insisted that she must visit Fourteen some night soon and give us a chance to return the drubbing.
"I shouldsolike to, but I can't leave Jerry," Mrs. Alton explained.
"But Jerry must come, too," we countered. "Jerry and Sandy, and, if necessary, the cow and the chickens. Now you simply must, or some night we will come over and kidnap you by force." But Mrs. Alton would give us no definite answer.
There was no such hesitation at Jake's. Jake met us in the yard, hatless, coatless, vestless, although the temperature was flirting with the freezing point.
"Welcome, Sittin' Crow!" he exclaimed. "And all the other little crows. I suppose you've come to condole with me in my affliction?"
"What affliction?" we inquired, half misled by Jake's manner, for he was an expert in simulation.
"She's inside—an' in possession. It's fort'nate fer me this country runs so much to outside, fer that's all I've any claim on."
But by this time Jake's wife appeared in the door. "Come on in, girls," she cried, "and never mind that blatherskite. He goes around half dressed, keeping himself warm thinking up nonsense. I tell him some day he'll freeze his hair, and that's his finish, for I won't stay married to a bald man, whatever happens."
"Tut, tut," returned her spouse. "Where Bella Donna is put, she stays. That's her strong point."
It was an afternoon of much badinage we spent at Jake's, but under the surface there were evidences that our former land guide regarded his wife with a sort of awe which he tried to obscure from public view by a smoke screen of raillery. Bella, it was apparent, was a woman of character, and although Jake could scarcely be described as plastic in her hands, his recasting was only the harder on him on that account. He was in the mills of the gods, and they proposed to make a job of it.
"I don' know whether she'll make me a good wife or not," he confided in me, "but I reckon she's set on makin' me a good husband."
But Bella's house was clean, and Bella's table was well set, as pioneer tables go, and Bella was a living concentration of energy such as Jake needed to spur him into purposeful activity. It was Jake's weakness that he would drop a job any day to perpetrate a joke.
"He thinks he's a joker," said Bella, acidly, anent this characteristic of her husband, "whereas he's only a joke. There's a big difference."
"I admit the joke's on me," Jake returned meekly. "I should never ha' showed that telegram."
This, of course, brought up the version of Jake's matrimonial adventure with which he had entertained us that August noonday on the prairie, and the totally contrary version which his wife now took occasion to present. Block by block she knocked the underpinning from under Jake's carefully prepared explanation of how he had fallen from the ranks of the unwed.
"Admitted that the telegram was a forgery," said I, at length. "What about the advertisement?"
"That was the only genuine thing about it," Bella returned. "And I've been thinking seriously that Jake missed his calling; he should have been an advertisement writer. When I read that notice I said to myself, 'Here's something out of the ordinary.' . . . I was right."
We left that night with assurances from Jake and Bella that they would visit us twice a week all winter—a promise which they almost kept.
But not all our visiting was with our new neighbours. Most of it, as you may suppose, was back and forth between Fourteen and Twenty-two. Spoof we counted on to make a fifth spoke in our circle every Sunday, and the banjo lessons, neglected during our absence, were now taken up in earnest. It gave me a little orthodox shiver to think what my strict Presbyterian parents would have said to Jean picking so perverted an instrument as a banjo on a Sunday afternoon, and blending her voice with Spoof's in "The Road to Mandalay". But I was little happier when they abandoned the secular for such old airs as "Abide With Me" and "Blest be the Tie that Binds".
Toward the end of the month we had our first snowfall. Old Sol that morning had a mimic sun on either side, and there was a frosty glitter in the air in which our neighbours' shanties gradually faded out of sight as though hidden behind a veil of crystal tapestry. By noon a grey pall shrouded the sky and the snow began to shake down as gently as feathers fluttering from the bosom of some mammoth bird which had taken the world to be her nest, and in spring would hatch again the ancient miracle of life. Marjorie and I stood in our door and watched the big flakes descending, slowly, silently, resistlessly, settling on wagon and hay rack and every blade of grass. Across the gully, as through a slowly falling curtain of ivory lace, we saw the vague forms of Jack and Jean watching them, too. By mid-afternoon the ground was white.
Next morning we looked upon a new world. The snow had ceased falling, the sky was clear and bright, and the stars were still visible at our rising hour. Then up came the sun, splashing the heavens amber and orange and blood red, and suddenly setting a million tons of diamonds ablaze with his own brilliance.
After the snow came we seemed to cling to each other's company even more than before. It's a solemn thing to lie alone in a world of snow. Perhaps its coldness, its stark whiteness, its vast silence suggest that which makes the heart reach out for some warm pulse of friendship. Perhaps its peace and beauty stir something in our nature that insists on being shared.
Days wore by; sometimes days of unbroken sunshine; sometimes days of gently sifted whiteness fluttering out of a grey sky. In a week all the prairie was blanketed deep with snow.
Then came the great night.
At this time of the year, in this latitude, it is dark by five in the afternoon, particularly if the sky happen to be overcast. On the day in question Jack and I had done up our few chores about the stable, carried in a supply of water and firewood, and returned to our shacks for supper. Marjorie, brisk, efficient housewife that she was, had the table set when I came in. Our meals were perforce simple, and when we had finished and the few dishes were cleared away I looked at my watch. It was barely six o'clock.
"This is going to be another of our long, long evenings," Marjorie remarked, with what seemed like a suggestion of complaining. "Suppose you ask Jack and Jean to come over; I don't feel like going out in the snow."
"Jean may not feel like going out either," I retorted. "I guess she's as much like sugar as you are," I added, having in my mind some reference to an adage about sugar melting.
"I fancy you think she's a good deal more like sugar than I am, brother o' mine," Marjorie returned. "Well, run along and find out."
Later, when I recalled that remark, I was struck with its significance, but at the moment I had no suspicion that Jack and Marjorie were working a scheme on me. I have always held that Jean was innocent of any part in it.
So urged, I pulled on my pea-jacket and overshoes and fur cap and started out on the hundred-yard jaunt from our shack to the one across the gully. As I came out of the door the snow was falling thickly but in smaller flakes than usual; the air seemed filled with a mist of snow, and there was a rising wind, but the temperature was not uncomfortable. I could see the dull yellow glow of the light in Jean's window across the gully and a thing that struck me at the moment was that nothing about that glow offered any clue to the distance at which it was located. Had I not known I might have believed it a mile away, or within a dozen yards.
I made the trip without difficulty and entered without knocking as was our custom in our numerous visits back and forth. Jean looked up from the table where she sat reading.
"Alone, Frank?" she said, when I had closed the door behind me.
"Yes; where's Jack? I came to see——"
"Jack left for Fourteen some time ago. He was going to ask you and Marjorie to come over. You must have passed him."
"That's rather funny. That's whatIcame for, if you reverse it. Strange I didn't see him on the way."
"He may have looked in at the stable again, to make sure that the stock are all right," Jean suggested. "He said it looked like rough weather."
I stood for a moment, undecided whether I should go back for Jack and Marjorie, or ask Jean to go with me. It was she who settled the question.
"Take off your things, Frank," she invited. "Jack will be there by this time, and will keep Marjorie company. It is not a good night for a girl to go walking."
So I stayed, although a little self-consciously. Jean and I had known each other's company since childhood, but, at least since coming to the West, we had hardly seen each other alone. Always Jack or Marjorie, or both, were somewhere about. There had been, of course, that sudden, impetuous, unspoken revelation when we returned from our harvest absence in the settlements, but there had been no talk of love between Jean and me. I had treasured that moment as a bit of wonderful memory, as a glimpse of wonderful promise, but I had not presumed upon it; I had concluded that two months' loneliness had been too much for Jean's reserve, and that she had done something it hardly would be fair to talk about. . . . Doubtless Jack, when he found I had missed him, would be back shortly.
I took my wraps off and sat down beside the stove. The warmth was very pleasant after the buffeting of the snow, and Jean looked very lovely and tempting in the soft glow of the lamp on the table. I felt a strange embarrassment growing upon me as the moments were ticked off by the little alarm clock on the shelf. The embarrassment grew until I felt that I must break it by speech of some kind.
"What are you reading?" I ventured at last.
"Nothing."
"Nothing! You have a book——"
"I know, but I'm not reading it."
"Then whatareyou doing?"
"Just waiting."
"Waiting? For what?"
Then she looked up at me, and there was a light in her eyes that was strange and good to see, but it sent my brain reeling. For a moment she looked at me thus, and started my heart thump-thumping like a steam pump. Then her eyes drooped.
"Don't you know, Frank?" she murmured.
Her face was ruddy in the glow of the lamp, and the pink skin shone with a color that was not all reflected. Amazing as was her revelation I could no longer fail to understand it. I rose and walked to the table; I took her hands in mine and lifted her to her feet.
"You are waiting for me to—kiss you, Jean," I whispered.
She was trembling, but she spoke with outward composure. "There is something else, first."
"Something else—first? I don't understand."
"You should."
I could not follow her thought. "I kissed you once before," I ventured.
"Many times before."
"No, only once. The other times were when we were children. They don't count."
"Do things that happened when we were children not count—with you?"
"Do they—with you?"
"Ask me, and see."
It had come; the moment of which I had told myself in dreams and visions; the moment to which I had looked forward with a strange fear and a great hope. "Jean," I whispered. "I love you. Will you be my wife?"
As I write the words they seem very bare and matter-of-fact. But they were all that Jean required. She made no spoken answer, but she turned her face to mine, and I drew her up in my strong arms and kissed her in the breathless passion of our young love. . . . .
After a time, with one box serving us both, we talked of our future. I hinted that circumstances made our immediate marriage somewhat dependent upon the course that Jack and Marjorie might elect to follow. I took it for granted that Jack and Marjorie would marry, but I was very vague in my idea as to when this would happen.
"I don't think we shall have to wait on Jack and Marjorie," Jean remarked, knowingly. "I rather think they have been waiting on us."
"Then they need wait no longer," I said, boldly. "I am ready at once; now."
"We might make it by Christmas," Jean remarked, more thoughtfully. "We can't afford any special wedding clothes but we can at least afford a few weeks' anticipation."
"Then Christmas be it!" I exclaimed. "Oh, Merry Christmas!"
I was so stirred with a strange new joy that all the future looked rosy and inviting. But suddenly I felt Jean's arm tighten on my neck and I looked up in her face just in time to catch the splash of a warm tear on my cheek. I was immediately filled with wonder and misgiving. What could make Jean cry, in a moment of such happiness? I pressed the question.
"I'm not sorry," she said at length, "but I'm a little—frightened. Not for you; for myself. Oh, my dear Frank, my dear boy—will you always—will we always—love each other as we do to-night?"
Man-like, I assured her that of course we would. She rested her head against mine, and for awhile she seemed to nestle at peace in the soft luxury of our love. But presently a shiver ran through her frame, and, drawing back a little, she looked me fairly in the eyes.
"You know, Frank," she murmured, "it seems strange to say it, but I am so glad to get this settled."
"Not gladder than I, little one," said I, shaping my lips to endearments with the awkwardness of my racial reticence. "You couldn't be gladder than I am."
"I have wanted so long," she continued, almost disregarding my interruption, "to get it settled—to be sure of myself—to know just what is going to happen."
"To be sure of yourself? How sure of yourself?"
She dropped into a moment's silence, as though studying her words before attempting an answer. "You won't misunderstand, I think, Frank," she said at length, "if I tell you that I have been somewhat like a traveller on the prairie who comes upon two roads, and is not quite sure which he should take. Let us say a storm is sweeping down from the North, and his very life depends on the right decision. But the longer he stands there, looking at them, the harder it is to make the choice. It's a comfort to choose, and be on one's way."
"But suppose he chooses the wrong way?" I blundered out, only half following her meaning.
"Oh, Frank!" she cried seizing my shoulders in her strong, supple hands. "It mustn't, mustn't,mustn'tbe the wrong way! I won't have it the wrong way—I won't think ofthatas possible! See, here we are. And we have known, always, since we were little children, that we were for each other, haven't we, Frank? It has always been settled, in Heaven, don't you think, and we have just confirmed it? Oh, I know it has—I know it has!"
"I have never doubted it," I said. And even as I uttered the words the first little poisoned arrow of doubt in some way dodged through my armor and stung me in the heart. Perhaps it was the reaction to Jean's vehemence; perhaps it was that I saw her striving over-hard to convince herself. And from being over-sure I now craved to be assured.
"You are quite sure?" I ventured, after another silence in which I felt that subtle poison slowly chilling through my veins. "You are quite sure you should not have taken the road to section Two?"
"Oh, Frank!" For a moment she buried her face in my shoulder, then she lifted her head proudly, like one who goes forth resolutely to try his spirit in some great issue. "Yes, I'm sure! Spoof is to me only a neighbour, an acquaintance, always. I am quite sure."
"And there was no third trail, no little-beaten third path, that might have been the one to be chosen?" I persisted, anxious to stifle my demon of doubt at its birth.
"You are thinking of Brook," she caught me up instantly. "Let that give you no uneasiness. Brook was only an incident—a rather pleasant incident," she added, and for the first time I realized how exquisitely tantalizing Jean could be, "but an incident after all. Let's not talk about it, or think about it, any more, at all. Everything is settled."
So, by force of will, we turned our minds into happy, unquestioning channels, and talked of the future, our future—and built fairy dream-castles that were most wonderful things to dream about. From time to time Jean arose from my knee to throw fresh wood on the fire, but she needed no coaxing to return. Some strange phenomenon had already occurred between us, and Jean, with all her gentleness and beauty and delicacy, no longer walled herself about with quite the same barrier of shyness as had been her custom. But her soul, I knew, was as pure as the snow sifting across the white prairies outside.
At last we had to come back to earth. "It's growing colder," said Jean, as she again replenished the fire. Then, glancing at the little clock on the shelf, "Why, it's after midnight! Jack is late."
"Are you uneasy for him?"
"No—why should I? Jack is all right. And I have you. But I thought he would have been back before this. . . . Listen!"
We strained our ears, and presently became aware that what had seemed to be the silence of the night was really full of noises. The wind whined with an eerie note about the eaves of the little shack, and the tremor of its pressure ran through the board walls and wrung mournful creakings from the slender framework of the building. Above all came a sound of rushing, as though the night itself swept by, drumming on the tin chimney-piece as it went. The incessant lash of snow against the black panes of the windows gave further notice of the rising storm.
"Perhaps I had better go home," I said at length. "Jack is doubtless waiting there until I turn up."
"You have the same privilege to wait here until he turns up," Jean commented. "Still, I suppose it's the right thing to do."
So, reluctantly enough, I got into my pea-jacket, cap, and over-shoes, and with Jean's good-night kiss on my lips, and a promise to come again very soon, I opened the door. The moment I did so the suction of the storm put out the light, and the next instant a flail of icy snow particles lashed through the room. I pressed the door shut again while Jean found matches.
"Such a night!" she exclaimed. "Is it quite safe to try it?"
"Of course! It's not a hundred yards, and I could make it with my eyes shut."
So, with another farewell (for good measure) I started again, Jean shading the lamp while I rushed through the door and closed it behind me. My first sensation was of having been clutched by the neck; of being strangled in a grip which I could not throw off. In a few moments the worst of that sensation passed, and my lungs began pumping violently, working against the partial vacuum created by the storm. It was not very cold, but the snow stung the face where it struck; it clung in the eyebrows, melted, and ran into the eyes, blurring such poor vision as there was in the gaunt greyness that buffeted from every side.
I looked for the light of the shack on Fourteen, but it was nowhere to be seen; evidently its faint rays could not beat their way through the hundred yards of swirling tempest that intervened. So, taking careful note of my directions, I started out, my head bowed to save my face from the lashing of the storm; my legs wallowing uncertainly through the varying depths of drifts.
At length I knew I had come to the edge of the gully; although I could see nothing I was aware that I was going sharply down a steep slope. Here at points the snow was already piled in great drifts and I plunged through it waist deep, only to come suddenly upon a bare, icy spot where I lost my balance and fell. I was now at the bottom of the coulee, and the ascent proved even more difficult than coming down. I had to plow through deep drifts and scramble up icy ledges, and I could only suppose that I had reached the top by the greater violence of the storm. Nothing was to be seen but a grey mist; my eyes were almost completely closed with snow and ice. I was not cold; indeed, I was warm, but I began to realize that my exertions and the strangling sensation I felt in breathing were quickly exhausting me. However, there could not be much farther to go, and I pressed on.
It is wonderful how little sense of distance the average man has when deprived of the service of his eyes. He may walk a road every day in the year and yet have but a faint idea of the number of paces it represents. He probably could not tell you how many steps there are in the stairs of his house. As to direction he is even more hopelessly at sea, and when, in addition to these difficulties, he is plunging waist-deep through snow drifts and buffeted by a fifty-mile gale he is in imminent danger of becoming hopelessly lost. Just how near to that state I had come I began to realize, and it was with more relief than I would have cared to admit that I at length discerned a faint glow of yellow light battling against the storm and throwing fantastic spectres into the night. I was soon at the shack, and, groping my way along the wall, I reached the door and burst in.
Jean was sitting by the stove, her wonderful hair down about her back and neck, her face resting in her hands, her feet on the rail of the stove and her dainty ankles peeping out from under her woolen skirt. But for the moment my appreciation of her charms was buried in amazement.
"Jean! What are you doing here?"
"Frank! You've come back! What is the matter?"
I threw off my mitts and rubbed the snow from my eyes while Jean took my cap and shook it and then stood by, eagerness and apprehension in her face. Then, when I was quite sure I was not in a dream or a mirage, "I guess I'm back on Twenty-two, am I?" I said, as one who, suddenly awakened from sleep, finds it impossible to recall his surroundings.
"You're on Twenty-two all right, but why did you come back? Not that I'm not glad to see you—you know I am, Frank, dear, always—but, why did you come back?"
"I guess it's because my time hasn't come," I answered, soberly. "I've heard of getting turned around in a storm, but I didn't know it could happen so easily. I suppose it was when I fell at the bottom of the gully."
"Well, you're here, and we're not going to take any more chances," said Jean, slipping her arms about my neck when I had told her. "We're going to have a little supper, and if Jack doesn't come you will stay until he does."
Jean hustled about and my eyes followed every graceful movement as she prepared hot tea and made toast at the fire, and found a jar of preserves that she had cached away for some special occasion. And when we had finished our betrothal banquet she gave me a lamp and sent me into Jack's room. And after a little her limpid voice called to me a last good-night, and through the open doorway of my partition—we could not afford unnecessary doors in those days—I saw her slender hand tossing me a caress. And then her light went out, and I lay under Jack's warm blankets listening to the roar of the storm and hoping Jack was quite all right, and marvelling at the amount of happiness one human heart can hold. My doubts were gone; my faith was again the faith of a little child. And my mind wandered back into the past and picked up again those tender days of childhood when Jean and I played together beside the dam, and the sober mill-wheel across the stream flung its myriads of diamonds in the air. And Jean had saved me in those days, and I was to be hers—hers, and she mine, forever!
Iawakened with a consciousness that the shack was very, very cold. Under the blankets I was warm enough, but the breath with which I filled my lungs was the breath of the Arctic. The cabin was in inky darkness. Outside, the whine of the gale had risen to a roar, and the frail timbers of the little shanty creaked and trembled under its fury. I thought of Jack, and wondered. The telephone—best of all God's good gifts through the inventive mind of man to those who live in the isolation of vast distances—was as yet not in general use on the prairies. As I look to-night at the telephone on my desk by means of which I can speak instantly to Jack's house or any other house in the neighbourhood I am reminded that these miracles of to-day are accepted so much as a matter of course that we are in danger of forgetting what the world was before they came. But that night there was no telephone on my wall, or Jack's; no fire-shod messengers from house to house could bear through the storm the cheerful news that all was well.
So I thought of Jack and wondered. Jean had accepted his absence with composure; she afterwards said that Brook, the Mounted Policeman, had told her that the man who was prairie-wise, when caught away from home by a storm, stayed where he was safe, even if his doing so occasioned some uneasiness to his friends.
"It is better that your friends should be uneasy while the storm is on than that they should follow you with flowers when the weather clears," Brook had declared, and Jean, after accepting the philosophy, had passed it on to Jack. She had no doubt that he was as safe on Fourteen as was I on Twenty-two.
But I had none of this philosophy to steady me, and I was decidedly uneasy about Jack. My brief wrestle with the storm had shown me how easy it was to become hopelessly lost even among the most familiar surroundings and how soon exhaustion would overpower one. A little irresistible shiver of nervousness ran up my spine as I realized how fortunate I had been in coming back to my starting point. I might have missed it and gone on into the night. . . .
As the frost settled down about me I at length, by a great effort, sprang out of bed and went groping for my clothes. I was not yet pioneer enough to know that it is fine business in very cold weather to sleep with your clothing, or at least your underwear and socks, under your pillow; it lessens the ordeal of that first break from the warm blankets into the wintry atmosphere. At length I found my clothes and scrambled into them, chattering and blowing prodigiously in the operation. No man—still less woman—knows what haste he can develop in his dressing operations until he has had a below-zero temperature as a pace-maker.
Finding matches I lighted my lamp and sallied forth into the main room. The boards beneath me creaked dismally as my weight came upon them; a drift of snow several feet in length and the shape of a great fish had formed across the room as a result of a crack in the door; the stove was ice cold; the water pails were frozen over; the little clock on the shelf had stopped. My watch was of better mettle and revealed the fact that it was seven-thirty. We had slept well.
I made shavings from a poplar stick in the wood box and soon had a fine fire roaring. When once it was started the great draft of the storm drew it impetuously up the sheet-iron pipes, and I was obliged to apply the damper. No more unhappy irony can befall the homesteader than to burn down his shack in his attempts to warm it.
"Good morning, Frank!" said a voice which set the pumps of my heart going to jig music. I think Jean's voice was really her most wonderful quality; she was enough of the artist to appreciate and cultivate the fine manners of the voice. It had the lilt of singing birds, the limpidity of purling water, the softness of rose-leaves in the twilight, the tinkling of silver bells at dawn, and if I can think of any other figure it had that, too, for me in those old love-hallowed days of mine.
"Good morning, Frank. No word of Jack?"
"No word, Jean."
"He is all right. He is over at Fourteen, and not up yet, I'll wager. Now suppose you go into the men's apartments and face the wall—that fire looks most inviting!"
I did as I was bidden, in part at least, while Jean dressed by the fire. After a little she gave me the "All clear!" and I swept out and seized her in my arms. . . It was a very wonderful way to begin the day.
"There now," she expostulated at length, "let me get the porridge on. That's more to the purpose."
"Porridge is poor business when there's loving to be done," I argued.
"You won't always think so," she replied as though with some strange glimpse of prophecy, and set busily about preparing breakfast. In these operations she discovered that everything that could freeze had frozen; we had to thaw the bread in the oven, and then to toast it; we melted the butter until it ran over the stove and then we gathered it up and spread it on the toast. We could not afford to be fastidious.
But such a breakfast as it was! The porridge was bubbling hot, rising in little volcanoes which erupted their jets of steam and oat-meal lava into the general aroma of the room; the tea was piping hot; the bacon was sizzling hot; even the toast, so recently frozen, was now hot and filled to the saturation point with hot butter. We ate and drank, and laughed and were happy and cared not a tuppence for all the storms that ever blew!
About mid-forenoon came a sudden smash at the door, and Jack precipitated himself into our presence. He was masked in snow, but his first glance was at me, and I knew by the sudden drawing of his lips the relief it was to see me safe and well.
"I was afraid for you, Frank," he said; "afraid you'd try it."
"I did try it." And then I told him the story of my attempt.
"We have a great deal to be thankful for," Jack said, soberly, when I had finished. "A very great deal indeed."
"Yes, more than you know," I returned, joyously, eager to spread the good news. "Jean has consented to be my wife."
Jack refused to be excited. "Congratulations, old boy," he said, pressing my hand, "but, really, that is hardly a news item. Jean has been—well, on the point of consent for a long, long while."
"Oh, Jack, that isn't fair!"
"Sorry, Sister, perhaps it isn't quite. But you two have been so beastly slow over this business you've tied up the whole progress of events, and now you want me to be surprised about something that's long overdue."
"Well, it's settled now, anyway," said I, "and as soon as you and Marjorie can make up your minds we will fix a date."
"As soon as Marjorie and I can make up our minds!" Jack exclaimed. "Son, our minds were made up months ago. We've been waiting, waiting. At last we concluded that we really must speed things up a little, so it was arranged that Marjorie would send you over here last night, and I would accidentally miss you in the gully and go over to Marjorie's. Of course, we didn't know there was a storm coming. It rather overdid things from a conventional point of view, but fortunately Mrs. Grundy hasn't moved out here yet."
"Why, I never thought of such a thing!" cried Jean, indignantly. "How can you——?"
"Of course you didn't, you old dear," said Jack, drawing her within his arm, "and, I'll bet a wedding present, neither did Frank. And listen, little woman, you're getting one of the best little chums and one of the whitest men between the Red River and the Rockies—and beyond. And as for you, you old son-of-a-gun," punching me in the ribs, "if there are two angels in the world to-day one of them is Jean Lane."
Although the storm still raged daylight now struggled through the wind-swept screen of snow, and there was no great danger in making the short trip from Twenty-two to Fourteen. Jack confessed that Marjorie was uneasy for me so I went home very soon after his arrival.
Marjorie flew into my arms as I opened the door. "I was so frightened, Frank, so frightened!" she whispered, in half sobs. "I didn't know it was going to be such a storm. I was almost sure you'd come back and when you didn't I couldn't help wondering, and every little while through the night I would waken and see you fighting in the snow; fighting, and stumbling, and falling." She wrapped her arms about me and pressed her cheek against my face. "Oh Frank, Frank, it's good to have you here!" she murmured.
I had never known Marjorie to be so demonstrative. She came of solid old Eastern stock that carries its heart a long, long way in. I was not psychologist enough to realize that if ever there was to be a time when Marjorie would be very human she was now entering it.
"There, there," I said, comforting her as best I could. "It's all over now. And listen—I have great news. Jean and I are to be——"
"At last!" she interrupted. "Well, that shows what a little planning will do. You dear old silly, did you suppose——"
"I know all about it—now. Jack confessed. But your little joke nearly cost me my life," and I went on to tell of my battle with the storm, taking care that it should lose nothing in the telling. In this I hope I measured up to the established standard of the typical Westerner.
Marjorie was penitent. "I am so sorry," she said. "I had no ideathatmight happen. Oh, Frank, wouldn't it have been dreadful?"
"It would, but it isn't. On the contrary, it is worth it."
I am tempted to dwell upon the days that followed, but you cannot be interested in our journeyings across the gully now piled deep with snow, nor how it fell about that Jack spent most of his evenings on Fourteen while I spent mine on Twenty-two. This became so much a habit that Jack laughingly remarked that he and I seemed to have traded residence duties, and he hoped it would not come to the ears of the Homestead Inspector!
Spoof drove over one Sunday early in December after an absence of three weeks. The fact was we were beginning to be concerned about Spoof, and had it not been that every fine day—and most of the days were bright and fine, now that the first blizzard of the winter had spent itself,—we could see a blue taper of smoke curling up from the shanty on section Two, Jack or I would before this have gone over to investigate. These little columns of neighbourly smoke were the semaphores by which the community kept itself advised that all was well, or nearly so.
We saw Spoof's oxen breaking trail for an hour or more before they came up to our door. Jack and Jean had also seen them coming, and rushed over to Fourteen to share in extending welcome. It is only among the pioneers that real welcomes occur. Jack swept Spoof into the house, and I turned our own oxen out and put his in the stable.
Spoof's attire in winter, I must tell you, was rather wonderful. He was busily engaged in wearing out a number of grotesque creations bought in London and especially recommended for the Canadian climate. Spoof, now wiser and poorer, mournfully admitted that he had gone to a tailoring firm which advertised as its specialty "Gentlemen's Outfits for the Colonies." There, at a cost of many guineas, he had laden himself with a mass of woolen and fur contraptions which might possibly have been of some value to an Arctic explorer, but which were quite unsuited to latitude fifty, which, by the way, is south of London. Spoof, however, was manfully making the best of it, and as he emerged with some difficulty from his complicated coverings he kept up a running comment of mock appreciation.
"There, you four-guinea leggings," he said at length, "skilfully designed to strangle the circulation and freeze my nether extremities, how joyously would I trade thee for a pair of Canadian felt boots!"
We were soon to learn the cause of Spoof's absence from our threshold for a full three weeks. It seemed that to protect his extensive supply of personal effects Spoof had bought a padlock for his shack, and one frosty morning this padlock fell to the ground. Spoof picked it up, and, wishing to use his hands for some other purpose, thrust the iron link of the lock in his mouth, thinking to hold it there a moment. He had no trouble holding it, but suddenly found to his dismay that he couldn't give it up! The frost in the iron had, with an effect very much like fire, seared his tongue and hung on so tenaciously that when at last he wrenched it out it carried some of the flesh of that tender organ with it.
"I couldn't speak," Spoof explained, in telling of his misfortune, "and there were so many things I needed to say just then."
His predicament had been bad enough. For several days he had been unable to eat. "So I've come over here to make up for it," he added.
After the first outburst over Spoof's arrival had subsided an embarrassing silence yawned across the path of our conversation. There were great things to be said and no one to say them. The girls glanced shyly at each other, and at us, and Jack, by pantomime behind Spoof's back, sought to convey the information that I was elected spokesman. So for lack of preparation I plunged in bodily as one may take a cold dip when he lacks the will power to do it slowly.
"Jack and I have also had a misfortune, of a sort," I said. "We, too, have lost the use of our organs of speech, permanently."
Spoof narrowed his eyebrows quizzically. "Then my ears make up for it," he said. "I hear you as usual."
"It isn't in effect yet," I explained. "We are to be married at Christmas. Behold the parties of the first part," and I waved a hand at Jean and Marjorie while I turned a phrase of Jake's to good account.
Spoof sprang to his feet. "Oh, by Jove, how wonderful! What lucky dogs! Your pardon, ladies, that my first word was to them; I fear my envy out-weighed my good manners—if I have any left. A bachelor's shack is not exactly a school of polite behavior. It is my visits at Fourteen which have saved me from becoming quite a savage. I—I feel that I should make a speech."
He was as good as his word. Mounting a chair he gave us a bantering dissertation on the joys and perils of married life, to which we listened with much seriousness. But underneath, and running through his words, was something which all his banter did not hide. Spoof was playing the game, but I wondered how many little yellow devils were skewering his heart.
The practical part of it was Spoof's ready offer of his help in arranging details. The problems of securing the services of a minister and buying the marriage licenses demanded attention. Even so ethereal a thing as marriage cannot entirely escape the humdrum of the material, but it was a time when we felt strangely incapacitated for the common-place. We were flying too high for earth worms; larks or eagles were our prey.
Jack suggested that we had thought of driving to the nearest railway station, some thirty miles distant, for the ceremony. We understood that a minister was located there and that the young man who ran the pool room was intrusted with the duty of issuing marriage licenses. He carried a small stock of tobacco as an auxiliary to his pool business and a small stock of jewelry as an auxiliary to his tobacco business and a small stock of wedding licenses as an auxiliary to his jewelry business.
"It would take you two days to make that trip with old Buck and Bright," Spoof protested. "Perhaps more; they're soft with being stall-fed and may quit altogether on the road, and you may not find a convenient armful of hay with which tofixthem. Fancy having to send word, 'Wedding postponed on account of the indisposition of Buck and Bright!' No, you must leave all these things to me. You boys are too busy with—much more important business—to be worried about details."
Spoof made his plans joyously. If he was not happy at heart over the fact that Jean was to marry me no one could have read it in his face. He would have a minister, he would have licenses, he would have wedding rings—leave it all to him.
A week later he came puffing across the crusted prairie, not in leggings this time, but in broad-soled Canadian felts.
"Admire my scows," he commanded, as he hove them into view. "Twin schooners of the deep—"
"Travelling in ballast," Jack interrupted.
"Nay, laden with good tidings. Ah, there she breaks out a line of signals," and Spoof started to wig-wag a message which none of us could decipher.
"'I fear thee, Ancient Mariner,'" said Jean, "but what are you driving at?"
"Just this, that the contract is let to one John Locke, minister, the lowest, and, in fact, the only bidder. He will be aided and abetted by an individual called Reddy, for reasons which will be obvious when you see him. Reddy, like Jake, appears to harbor no surname, although no doubt for official purposes he signs something to the marriage license. They will be out by mid-afternoon Christmas Day, and the ceremony will take place in the main drawing room of my country residence on section Two. Carriages at four-thirty. You see, I lost no time in going to town——"
"You to town, with those 'bullocks' of yours!" Jack exclaimed. "And you libelled Buck and Bright by suggesting——"
"I went to town, but not behind my bullocks. There aresomethings I will not do, even for so great a friendship as I bear for thee. I had a driver and a spanking team of mules."
"Mules? Whose?"
"Our American friend, Burke, lent his team and himself for the occasion. The fact is he had misgivings about lending the team without himself, so he came along. He was afraid I would not treat the mules diplomatically. Nothing, I assure you, was, or is, further from my intention. But, my word, such language! Driving bullocks is only a beginner's course compared with the demands made upon a muleteer. . . Burke rose very greatly in my estimation."
So we left the details in Spoof's hands, glad enough to be rid of responsibility for them. There was much to do, and Jack and I found ourselves banished to Twenty-two while the girls made use of the shanty on Fourteen for operations concerning which we were permitted to have nothing but curiosity. Their wedding splendor must, we knew, be designed with such skill as Marjorie and Jean possessed from the best of the clothing they had brought with them from the East. Love may laugh at locksmiths, but it has to bow to dollars and cents—when the trousseau is under consideration. Money, as Marjorie once remarked, may be bad for the heart, but it's good for the appearance. But there was no money to be had for this occasion, and Marjorie and Jean cut their cloth accordingly, literally as well as figuratively.
Also, the news had to be broken to those at home. Each of us wrote a letter, although, to save postage, we enclosed them all in one envelope. There had been little correspondence since we came to the homesteads, mainly because we were as yet thirty miles from a post office, and letters might lie for a month without a chance of delivery. But this was something to be written about. We began with a circumstantial account of our first season on the prairies, and it was not until we had exhausted all other subjects, like a friend seeking a favor, that we got down to the business in hand. Such news as that would be in the old home down by the mill, with Christmas snowdrifts over the fences and the river running softly under its blanket of white!
I recall that there was moonlight just then, and night on the prairie was a base of ivory cupped with an intangible bowl of blue. Always there was the nip of frost in the air, but it was a nip that was not unpleasant, and by no means did it succeed in confining us within doors. During these bright nights Jean and I took long, never-to-be-forgotten walks across the snow-piled, moon-swept plains. I could feel her firm little figure swaying with mine in our strong stride across the wind-packed snow, while our shadows—our shadow, I should say—fell in grotesque caricature by our side. There were moments when we were very, very close to the Infinity which bounded us on every hand, and the wonder of that great, white, silent ocean would surge into our hearts and mingle with the wonder of our love. A quarter of a mile from the shanties and we were as isolated from all living things as if we had been let down in the midst of the Polar Sea, or drawn by some mighty spirit into the farthest void of space. Even the boisterous wind paid attention enough to blur our footprints out behind us and so complete that sense of infinity of isolation. We were so tremendously alone that it seemed the world was full of ourselves and God.
But a gaunt phantom of doubt and uncertainty stalked us even on those moon-lit walks.