"Yes—a drop. Why?"
"Mother will never forgive you. She has such a horror of the drink."
"So has your father, I assure you. He took quite a lot of persuading at first; but after he'd drowned his conscience in the preliminary gulp, he became quite partial to it. What is your own standpoint on the drink question?"
"I'm not rabidly prejudiced. In fact, I think a good spree would do some temperance fanatics good."
"For a Band of Hope lecturer's daughter you are a trifle advanced, aren't you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Even the daughters of temperance lecturers can have opinions, I suppose—not to say tolerant ones. Some people are so occupied with their neighbours' failings that they entirely overlook their own. I don't for the life of me see what right anyone who is full of envy, and spite, and cant, and who eats as much as a pig, has to talk about a man who occasionally drinks a drop too much."
"By Jove! you're something of a philosopher. That's rather unusual for a woman, isn't it?—a young, good-looking one, at any rate."
"Am I good-looking then?" laughed Esther carelessly.
"No, you're not. You are the most beautiful——"
"Just look at the sky. Did you ever see it so far away in England?"
Bert looked at his companion's upturned face, which was rosy with blushes.
"No, I didn't. It's too dashed far away. This country would be a lot cosier if it weren't so big. But coming back to——"
"——And this air," interposed Esther; "surely it is blowing from off a frozen sea of wine," and she opened her pretty mouth slightly, inhaling deeply.
"You evidently hate compliments," said Bert.
"I detest them. Talk about something else. What are you intending to do when you get to your land?"
Bert paused a little while before replying. The change of subject was too sudden, too much of a flop from the heights of playful badinage with a lovely young woman, to the sordid depths of reality.
"Jolly well get married—that is if I can persuade some charming girl to have me," and as Esther turned and looked at him, probably to see how earnest he was, his eyes twinkled, half humorously, half seriously.
"Some nice girl you know in England, I suppose?"
"Quite likely," returned Bert seriously—then all at once thinking of something, he abruptly extracted a photograph from his inside jacket-pocket, and passed it to his companion.
"What d'you think of that young lady—for a rancher's wife?" he asked.
Esther examined the picture with careful interest.
"I think she is a very strong-minded girl," she said coolly, as she returned the portrait.
"You are absolutely right—she is. She's my cousin."
Esther requested another glimpse of the photograph.
"Hasn't she lovely features?" she said. "And her eyes are simply wonderful. Married, I suppose?—but I think you said so, or——"
"Yes, married, thank God! the day before we left Liverpool."
Esther returned the picture to its owner. All at once she felt generously inclined towards the original.
"She's the loveliest girl I've ever seen—in a photograph, of course. How lucky her husband must think himself!"
Bert, who was only twenty-one, whereas Esther was at least getting on for twenty, was a shade baffled by this sudden display of enthusiasm.
"Thanks!" he said, returning the photograph to his pocket. "He must. But haven't we gone far enough? Let's wander back; or, better still, let's stroll down by the river and watch the logs and trees go floating by; we can circle into camp that way."
"I should love to, but we must go straight home. Mamma will be awfully vexed if I'm not there to pretend to help her with dinner."
"Very well. Have you enjoyed the walk?"
"It's been lovely."
They strolled back. Esther was radiant. She was full of piquant remarks regarding the curious sights surrounding them. With an adorable mixture of ingenuousness and shrewdness she asked Bert innumerable questions, which he, in his tremendously superior wisdom, took great joy in answering.
When they had almost reached their tents again, Bert commented on Esther's high spirits. "You are evidently looking forward to our trip to the Colony, Miss Trailey?"
"Yes, I am. It will be so amusing to watch dad driving the horses, and mamma sitting on top of the packing-cases giving a thousand orders."
"And you—what shall you be doing?"
"Oh, I shall walk most of the time. I love walking."
"So do I. Perhaps we can arrange to——" but just then, annoyingly, Esther excused herself, and ran off into the tent.
Bert joined Sam, who was busily engaged with William Trailey, teaching him how to steer a team by pulling an imaginary left rein to go to the left, and an imaginary right one to go to the right.
"We s'll make a rarncher of yer yet, guv'ner," said Sam, as the intricate problem slowly percolated into his pupil's intelligence.
Trailey didn't seem at all sure about it. At the close of the lesson, he said: "Thank you very much, Sam. I think I shall be able to manage it after a few years."
Excitement and bustle prevailed throughout the camp. Every day ten, fifteen or twenty teams, nearly all hitched to garish covered wagons, started out along the Battleford trail. Plentifully sandwiched among them were Indian, half-breed and white freighters, their worn and dingy equipment contrasting vividly with the resplendent convoys of the Barr Colonists.
The Rev. Isaac M. Barr engaged scores of teams to transport surplus luggage, stores, hospital and general supplies to the far-distant Colony. This was his great Transportation Company going into action for the first time. Blithely it charged the sticky trail. By the time May Day arrived, every slough, and creek, and gumbo flat from Saskatoon westwards for two hundred miles, was decorated with one or more mired wagons. The piercing squeaks of ungreased wagon-wheels heralded through the prairie solitudes the passage of the pioneers.
Perhaps it was because Barr's Transportation Company only just escaped being stillborn that it was so weakly. Its wagons, though driven by professionals, were quite as expert in getting stuck as were those of the colonists.
Some families brought out pianos, and even whole suites of furniture with them, but the greater number had been content to pack their belongings into a few large-sized, hoop-ironed, wooden cases, heavy as lead. It was the more cumbersome of these pieces of luggage which broke the backs nearly, and the hearts, of the Transportation Company's drivers, when they were forced to unload and lug the massive boxes through waist-deep water.
Camp-beds, ploughs, stoves, tents, the inevitable portmanteaus—all found tottering repose somewhere or other about the piled-up loads. Infernal multi-toothed drag harrows hobnobbed with tender stove-pipes. Dismantled disks nestled familiarly against beautiful English blankets. Bags of flour and sugar committed hari-kari on projecting nails, or on jagged hooping iron, stoically disembowelling themselves like disgraced Japanese officials.
The Trailey party met many colonists trickling back to the base at Saskatoon, en route for England. Woe-begone faces—mostly unwashed and unshaved; disillusioned eyes; grubby hands, and clothes showing signs of having repeatedly been slept in, were the distinguishing marks of these panic-struck Sunday-afternoon colonizers.
There is something sad about pioneering. So many broken hearts and shattered hopes go into it. The rewards are so slim, and the drudgery is so sure. Westminster Abbey treasures the bodies of none of the Empire's scouts. They are out on the veldt and the prairie, at the bottom of the oceans and the inland seas, and buried deep in the heart of virgin forests. The applause of the gallery was never theirs; neither were their names honoured by being written in big newspaper headlines beneath those of murderers, prize fighters, and divorced movie stars. Apparently there is much more notoriety to be got out of robbing a bank than there is out of taming a patch of prairie; which is as it should be, perhaps, considering the difference in the risk.
When meeting parties of advancing colonists, the faint-hearts naturally offered voluble excuses for running away. They complained bitterly of the awful loneliness, and of the terrible obstacles with which Barr's Point to Point was so plentifully studded; they objected to the obvious scarcity of theatres and music halls, and to the untrodden wildness of the prairie. The very immensity, and its emptiness, frightened them.
Whenever he could, Sam made a point of asking the stragglers why they were going back. It amused him. People always interested him more than objects did. One flat-faced man, with wide-spread ears, looked back along the trail lugubriously, when Sam stopped to speak to him, and said "there warn't enough —— 'ouses up there for 'im."
"Wot!" exclaimed Sam, feigning ignorance—"not enough blinkin' 'ouses!"
"No," replied the flat-faced man; "there's nowt up there but sludge, an' watter, an' steep 'ills like 'ouse-roofs to break yer —— neck goin' down."
"Yes, mister," added a voice, which belonged to a big, fat woman, who popped her face out of the back end of the schooner-top; "an' there ain't no schools up there, neither. That man Barr's a proper scoundril—inticing decent people away from their 'omes. Our Horice here"—Horice was hiding his genius somewhere inside the covered wagon—"wants to be a archytect; he's got a stificate from his schoolmaster intitling him to try for a scholarship. How's he goin' to get to be a archytect up there? That's what I'd like to know, mister."
Sam tried to assume a worried expression, in sympathy with such profound concern, but he found it difficult. The woman's appearance was too comical. She had three large curling-pins in her hair, one just above each ear, and the other in the centre above her forehead. As her cheekbones were very wide, and her brow somewhat narrow, her face looked for all the world like a cross between a problem in geometry, and a boy's kite turned upside down.
The party's transport animals were both of them red-and-white oxen. While the woman had been addressing Sam, the tired brutes had flopped down exhausted in the trail. Their mouths were open and flecked with foam, and their flanks palpitated rapidly like a dog's.
Sam turned his gaze away from the gaunt and played-out beasts. "Where are yer goin' to nah, then?" he said to the man.
Two voices replied so exactly in unison that they seemed like one: "Wolver'ampton."
"'Eaps of 'ouses there, I suppose?" remarked Sam mildly.
"Miles an' miles of 'em," said the three-cornered-faced woman, as she adjusted one of her curling-pins with a whitish hand, which was embellished with one thin wedding ornament and three or four ruby and sapphire rings.
"All the 'ouses there is joined tergevver, eh?" said Sam—"like strings of sossidges."
"They are an' all," replied the flat-faced man, with a touch of ecstasy in his voice.
"'Cept where the pubs, an' popshops, an' streets makes openings in 'em," added the woman.
At this juncture, Trailey's team caught up behind, so Sam clicked to Tempest and Kruger to move along.
With a lusty whack across the ribs with a stout poplar pole, administered to the panting nigh-side ox with marvellous dexterity, the flat-faced man warned his animals that it was time to get up. The sudden jerk, when they lunged to their tired feet, nearly threw the woman out of the wagon.
Within forty days, two or three hundred Barr Colonists were back in England. The English newspapers appropriately christened them "Barr Colonist refugees."
Hour after hour, and day after day, the procession of wagons creaked slowly along. Tin pails drummed and chattered. Corners of cook stoves chewed away industriously at paint-veneered, near-oak wagon boxes. Stable lamps swung like pendulums from the hoops of the schooner-tops. Plough handles, and fork shafts, and silver-mounted walking-sticks provided temporary accommodation for anything that would consent to be hung, from a lady's bonnet to the back of a kitchen chair.
Women—and ladies—who never in their lives had ridden in anything slower or more prehistoric than a tram, sat perched high up on top-heavy loads built by grave-eyed men with a blissful disregard of such a thing as centre of gravity.
Children fidgeted and cried and slept in crevices between packing-cases. Older children alternately rode and chased about alongside the teams. Miles of heavenly puddles supplied them with unlimited paddling. Untoughened skins frayed and peeled and tanned. Boots became sodden, curled up round evening campfires, then in the morning refused to be worn.
Pure light-heartedness was the prevailing characteristic. It must be confessed, though, that quite often such an admirable spirit was simply the effect of ignorance. The pitiful greenness of everyone was so acutely evident to experienced spectators as to be provocative of the keenest mirth. In subsequent years, some laughed—and still laugh—over reminiscences of multitudes of tragi-comic incidents more heartily than the colonists themselves.
Very few of the men had ever handled a pair of lines. Nothing in the whole range of ignorance was more obvious than that—especially to the poor, dumb brutes with the bits in their mouths. It was a ghastly experience for them. Only a very small proportion of the drivers had the faintest conception of what constituted the proper handling and care of horses. The oxen had the advantage in that respect.
But there is a final way out of every insupportable difficulty—for dumb beasts, at any rate. They could always die. Scores of horses did eventually. If they survived the hardships of the trail and the abysmal ignorance of their masters, it was only at the expense of their constitutions, which shortly afterwards could stand no more, and at last succumbed. Even the prairie-hardened spirits of acclimatized bronchos drooped, finally, in many cases, departing for an equine heaven where perhaps green Englishmen are refused admission.
Many oxen perished. Those that did not grew terribly emaciated, and looked about them with despairing eyes, probably wondering what they had done to offend the grim reaper that he should refuse to waft their own tortured spirits into the land of everlasting cuds, where everything was green except wagons and men.
Imitation pioneers with faint hearts, wobbly wills and rubber spines, sat back in Saskatoon, listening by day to the hair-raising stories of retreating colonists; and at night dreaming of miles of asphalted, lamp-lighted thoroughfares lined with semi-detached villas of a deadening sameness, where one could always find one's own rented house by counting either from the top or the bottom of the street.
The weaker spirits, sprouting white-feathered wings streaked with yellow, promptly flew back to England ignominiously. Others spun their feeble pluck into nets of vacillation and timidity, in the toils of which they became inextricably tangled. Yet others, shortening their horizon, and taking a reef in their vision, cast shrewd eyes at what lay nearer their feet. These developed into citizens of Saskatoon and other places farther south.
The weather still kept magnificently fine. The frost came out of the ground with a rush, leaving in its wake a carpet of purple anemones. The sun shone forth with undiminished splendour, wringing indefinable suggestions of fertility and growth from the pleasant-smelling earth.
Disappearing snowbanks fed willow-fringed sloughs to the brim. These tiny fictitious lakes sparkled in the sun like crystals. Brilliant-hued mallards preened themselves in their mirror-like surfaces. Lowly mud-hens sailed in and out among the grass and reeds, cheerfully challenging the broadsides from the colonists' guns long after their aristocratic relations had kicked the shimmering water into ripples and flown away.
Frogs, the only infallible harbingers of spring, rehearsed incessant and monotonous choruses. Deep-toned bassos kept them in time with rasping croaks. A shot from a gun, or a sudden shout, would turn off the music like a tap—one partly-trained voice occasionally lagging a little behind in a sort of self-conscious note.
It was through such scenes as these that the wagons of Trailey, and Sam and Bert, had been travelling for two whole days. Everything was progressing swimmingly, both literally and metaphorically speaking. In spite of detouring round sloughs, and making quick rushes at deep, boggy creeks, Trailey had succeeded in getting stuck a number of times. But always either Sam, or someone of experience, had come along and hauled his wagon on to dry land.
Then, towards the evening of the second day out from Saskatoon, Trailey, whose team was somewhat slower than Bert's, had again dropped behind. Suddenly the trail brought him up against a series of sloughs which appeared to run into each other and stretch to right and left as far as eye could see. Except for a few experimental wagon-tracks branching off here and there, the main trail led directly into the water.
So into it Trailey bravely steered his team, which, now being accustomed to the luxury of having its load pulled out for it, lunged along through the water for a matter of twenty or thirty yards with a very deceptive simulation of enthusiasm, and then abruptly stopped. After plunging about a bit in a highly hypocritical effort to move the wagon, the horses unanimously quit, and then calmly pretended to drink the stirred-up water which reached to their breasts.
"Gracious me!" cried, a well-known voice from the top of the loaded wagon. "But there, it's just what I expected. Didn't I tell you, William, when I saw that crow fly over the tent this morning, that either somebody was going to die or else we should all be drowned in a bog? But you're so stupid. You never heed me, who's been your faithful wife these twenty years and more. If I was like some women I know—and you know, too"—Martha Trailey grew hintingly mysterious—"no need to mention names. You know well enough. You needn't look like that—as if you didn't know what I meant. I can read you like a book. That Mrs. What's-her-name, for instance, who you used to——"
"Martha, my dear," expostulated Trailey from the front of the wagon, where he was supposed to be driving, "please keep quiet a minute. This is rather an awkward place."
"Keep quiet!" retorted Mrs. Trailey. "Keep quiet, did you say? Well, of all things! I wonder what next. Keep quiet—yes, I should think so. William Trailey; allow me to tell you that ever since you kissed that cat Priscilla Pilkins at the Bible Class Social Evening, thirteen years ago come Esther's birthday, I've been a quiet wife to a deceitful husband. Yes, and a faithful mother, too; but what thanks did I ever get for it? Tell me that, William Trailey. You can't, you know very well you can't. And now you are doing your level best to drown us all. Oh, dear me! never any sympathy from anybody. No comfort; no home to go to—no anything," and had not Martha Trailey been so busy assisting her husband to solve his present difficulty, she would certainly have shed a few tears.
The wagon was stuck to its hubs. Viewed esthetically, the slough was really a pretty, miniature lake, and precisely the kind of duck-pond every Barr Colonist was longing to find on his private estate. Queerly, though, the glamour of lakes was already beginning to wear a bit thin.
The other wagon, with Sam as pilot, was out of sight behind a clump of naked poplars on the farther shore. The little Londoner, as usual, had muddled safely through.
During a large part of the afternoon, Esther and Bert had been walking ahead of the teams, presumably to scout for the bad spots in the trail, but they had lately fallen a considerable distance behind. With thoughts and emotions deliciously intertwined, they sauntered idly along. Through some mysterious magnetism, they occasionally touched one another—a shoulder, perhaps, or an elbow, or merely a finger-tip. Probably it was because the prairie was such a tiny place, that always when they examined anything, a flower, a pussy-willow, a cloud effect, they kept so close together. Great masses of smoky-white cumulus cloud rode immobile as continents in an ocean of blue. The day had been windless and warm, threatening thunder. For the prairie it had been languorous, the sort of day on which souls go looking for their affinities, and the sort of day they generally find them, too. Esther's eyes were swimming with delight, if not actually with rapture, perhaps with something even deeper still. Bert also reacted to the beauty of his surroundings. It was springtime, and he was quite a normal young man.
Esther had stopped to gather a bunch of fluffy-petalled anemones, which she had noticed dotting a sunny knoll in purple profusion. Then they had lingered to listen to a handsome meadow-lark proclaiming to himself and all the world, but particularly to his mate on a stump about a hundred yards away, what a noble fellow he was. His clear, liquid notes, pitched in a slightly melancholy key, just seemed to harmonize with the mood of the listeners.
The summer-like heat was playing havoc with the trails. Those colonists who had struck camp early and commenced their difficult trek, though they knew it not at the time, were far the luckiest. The frost-bound under-surface of the treacherous ground was a certain safeguard against the misfortune of becoming deeply bogged. Especially was this so where water abounded.
But the heat was doing its work well. Wagon-wheels cut into the sodden soil like sharp spades. Moreover, scores of wagons had churned the wet spots into mushy quagmires. The colonists had learned and practised their first lesson in freighting, of cutting and spreading willow bush and young poplars across the trail, but frequently in vain. Then they had been compelled to double-up their teams, occasionally to treble them, and, as a last resort, to lighten the wagons, or completely unload.
"Give 'em their 'eads," shouted Sam to Trailey from the other side of the slough. He had returned to see what had happened to the laggards. "Foller where I'm pointin'," he called, at the same time indicating with a short, black pipe to where, in his unfathomable wisdom, the bog was if anything a little deeper and stickier.
Trailey gathered himself together and spoke to his team.
"Gee up, Arthur! Now then, Freddie! Get us out of this pond like good little horses. Gee up! G-e-e u-p, I say; don't you hear me?"
Whilst uttering these and many other similar polite importunities, he followed Sam's advice to give the horses their heads, slackening his reins to such a generous extent as to drop one of them entirely.
"Oh, da—er—confound it! There goes one of the reins. Now what?"
"Now what! Yes, it is now what! How many times have I told you that you're no more fit to be a rancher than you are to be a member of parliament? But don't pay any attention to what I say? No, don't. I know nothing. I never did—else I shouldn't have married you, and let you drag me out here. And where's Esther? Run off with that Tressider fellow, I'll be bound."
"I shall have to try to recover that rein, I suppose," said Trailey, deaf to his wife's harangue. With a sudden inspiration, he turned round to his good lady. "Pass me an umbrella, my dear—one with a curved handle."
Most of the colonists had brought umbrellas out with them; some had even refused to part with top-hats and frock-coats. Trailey's unusual request smote his wife completely speechless for a moment or two, but she soon gave tongue.
"An umbrella! What ever for? We'll have the sheet spread out on this wagon to-morrow, I know. This sun's been too much for you." However, she was not dull-witted. Her husband's clever idea quickly penetrated to Martha Trailey's agile brain.
Cautiously she clambered to where the umbrella was stuck down in one of the hindmost corners of the wagon-box. The white sheet of the schooner-top was neatly folded and fastened to the rear hoop. As she scrambled along the load and stooped from her precarious position to grab the "gamp," Mrs. Trailey's face, never very pallid, partook of a hue resembling that of one of her flannel petticoats—vivid scarlet. Clutching the umbrella tightly, she reached across with it to her husband.
The nearest that William Trailey had ever come to being an athletic prodigy was when he used to climb to the top of a 'bus back home in Leeds. His figure was comfortably stout, and designed to show to great advantage in a deeply-upholstered divan; and his soft, fleshy hands were never meant for performing feats more strenuous than the manipulation of a knife, fork and spoon.
Gingerly planting himself on the near front wheel of the wagon, he reached over to hook the lost line with the umbrella handle. Arthur, the horse nearest to him, caught a glimpse over the top of his blinker of the moving mass behind him. Undoubtedly he regarded Trailey as something enormously threatening, for he gave two or three frantic leaps forward.
The sudden jerk threw the other horse, Freddie, violently backwards, and also, remarkable though it seems, propelled the wagon forward about a yard. Trailey, never much of a balancer, fell back against a packing-case, lost his nerve, and his equilibrium, and then, with a plaintive "Ah-h" of resignation, plopped head-first into the icy waters of the slough.
His displacement was not very great, but he made a huge splash. Besides indicating his whereabouts, several large bubbles proved that he was trying to breathe under water, a most difficult task.
"Oh-h-h!" screamed Mrs. Trailey when she saw her husband submerge. "Save him! Save my husband!" she shouted to Sam, who was watching the performance from the opposite bank; then she lapsed into an extended series of, "Oh, mercy me's!" and such like useful invocations.
Sam had a notion that Trailey's weight might be the means of his head becoming stuck tight in the mud at the bottom of the slough, so, without a second's delay, he came bounding and splashing towards the wagon.
But Trailey's head was not intended for a slough bottom. In due course, he rose for the first time, gulping and swallowing and coughing like a stricken walrus in the effort to regain his breath—a very necessary thing for a man of his age and habit to recover.
"So there you are, are you?" cried Mrs. Trailey in a tone in which accusation and thankfulness were about equally blended. "I thought you'd gone down for good. But a lot you care whether I'm made a widow or not. And just look at that collar I was at the trouble to iron for you yesterday!"
"Never mind 'is coller, missis," ventured Sam soothingly; "give 'im a charnce ter get 'is wind. Yore 'usband is sentimentally hunfit ter be a blinkin' diver."
"What's the matter, mamma?" called a charming voice from the bank behind them. "Father hasn't fallen in, has he?"
Esther, with her hands full of flowers, looked exceedingly beautiful as she stood anxiously regarding the scene of the catastrophe.
"You gallivanting little hussy, you!" returned her mother, slightly hysterically. "Can't you see he's fallen in, or have you eyes for nothing but pretty flowers and wild young drunkards?"
She favoured Bert with a searing look.
"Mamma!"
"I'll have you to know, big as you are, and soft as you are, that you can't go carrying on with all the fast-living scamps in this God-forsaken wilderness."
"Really, mamma!——"
"Has anyb-body got a drop of b-brandy?" wailed Trailey, who was shivering with cold and misery. "This will b-be the d-death of me," and his teeth chattered like stones in a bucket. He was a picture of wretchedness. Water and mud streamed down his face and whiskers, and his clothes dripped and clung to him in clammy folds. The sun, too, had dipped behind a clump of poplars on the far side of the slough, which at that time of the year meant a quick drop in temperature.
"Now what d'you think of this fool ranching business?" queried Mrs. Trailey acridly of her half-drowned husband, as she surveyed him from her pinnacle of dryness.
"N-not much, at p-present, my d-dear," moaned Trailey as he wiped his wet face with a wetter handkerchief, and then tried pathetically to hold his waistcoat away from his stomach, first in one place, then in another. His clothes were sticking to him like the skin on a snake, and revealed the curvature of his well-nourished body to perfection.
"I should think not, indeed! No one but an idiot would dream of such a thing, situated like you are. The very idea! What ever things are coming to, I don't know."
"You come on, guv'ner," interrupted Sam; "yore missis'll read the riot act till yer go an' catch a floatin' kidney or somethink. Come wiv me," and as he commenced solicitously to guide the unhappy Trailey towards the farther bank, he said: "Wot you want, sir, is a roarin' fire, a drop of 'ot Scotch, an' then slip inter the blinkin' blankits."
"Help! Help!" yelled a female voice behind them. "Help, somebody! I'm being abandoned on the prairie by a set of cowardly drunkards, I'm——"
"Gawd love us!" muttered Sam; then, turning round, he shouted back at Mrs. Trailey angrily: "Shut up, missis! You'll go an' wake the bloomin' baby if you ain't careful. I'll come back in 'arf a minit an' carry you acrawss—if yer'll only stop that 'orrible squealin'."
The two men waded slowly along. When they reached the middle of the slough, at which depth the water began to dribble into his watch-pocket, Trailey moaned: "C-can't we g-go round, Sam?"
"You go on yerself nah, guv'ner," returned Sam encouragingly. "Yore all right. I'll go back an' fetch the missis afore she gets the 'igh-stericks. Our waggin's rahnd that clump of trees there. That gel of yourn 'as got to be fetched yet, but I know oo'll be bringin' 'er along."
With these remarks, and having indicated to his dripping companion the whereabouts of the other wagon, the indefatigable Sam splashed back to where Martha Trailey was trying to decide whether to weep, or fly into a temper, or both.
"Climb dahn, ma'am," ordered Sam, "an' then put yer arms rahnd me neck; an' mind yer don't cling too 'ard, because I ain't used to wimming hembracin' me. Come on, nah!" he cajoled, as Mrs. Trailey showed no signs of compliance. "Don't sit up there lookin' like a statute of misery."
Martha Trailey still refused to descend from the load. Her attitude soon caused Sam, who was standing up to his waist in ice-cold water, to become exasperated.
"Are yer comin', or aren't yer?" he repeated with considerable irritation.
"Oh, Sam! what ever will people say?" objected Mrs. Trailey, "and me a respectable married woman, too."
"They won't say anythink, missis. Bein' married makes no difference aht 'ere," mocked Sam. "But come on," he coaxed, "I'll shut me eyes if yer like," whereupon Martha Trailey, redder than ever, carefully gathered her petticoats about her still shapely legs, and then lowered herself bit by bit into her redoubtable little rescuer's outstretched arms.
Whilst Sam struggled through the water with his unwilling burden (Mrs. Trailey clung to him like an excessively modest limpet), another amusing little comedy was being staged on the bank. Obviously Esther must be transported to the other side by someone. The wagons were of no further use as ferryboats; and a single glance to right and left convinced the laggards that an attempt to circumvent the slough would only prove futile.
"Well," laughed Bert after a minute or two, "there's nothing else for it, I suppose. How d'you prefer being carried?—pickaback, or in—er—my arms?"
Esther was secretly delighted with the way things were turning out, so, of course, she said she strongly objected to both methods.
"Oh, look at mamma and Sam!" she exclaimed, doubtless wishing to prolong the joy of anticipation. "Aren't they a scream? Oh, do look, Mr. Tressider!"
Bert looked and grinned. Sam was five feet tall, and the water was nearly three feet deep. Mrs. Trailey weighed probably one hundred pounds. Her right arm tightly hugged the little man's neck, whilst with her left she held herself rigidly away from him. Her eyes were closed, but whether with fear or shame is uncertain. Her almost horizontal position across his chest compelled Sam to step as circumspectly as a tight-rope-walker blindfolded.
Declining to hesitate till bashfulness absolutely unnerved him, Bert seized his courage and his charming companion in both arms and entered the water. Though it was probably the first time Esther had ever put her arms round a man's neck, her half-shy, half-rapturous expression seemed to denote that the experience proved not much worse than she had frequently imagined it to be. Anyway, the slough appeared to be a very narrow one, though her knight was puffing plenty by the time he had crossed it, for his load was not light.
In only a few minutes, without mishap, soaked, streaming water, breathing hard, his heart pounding with all sorts of queer and pleasurable sensations, Bert set his attractive burden safely down on the opposite bank.
"There you are," he said.
Esther expressed her thanks in a few common-place gurglings suitable to her age and the excitement of the occasion. But her eyes divulged much more. She had very uncommon eyes. They were somewhat heavily lidded, and might have given her face a cruel or sensuous look, had not the soft, lustrous blue beneath completely offset the suggestion.
"Was I very heavy?" she asked.
Bert was wringing some of the moisture from his trousers' legs. He stood up straight and looked at his questioner.
"Just right," he replied enthusiastically. "What are you—nine stone about?" His eyes wandered rapidly over her figure, looking clear through her clothes and following the outline of her body, like the eyes of most male men can. Esther flushed deeply and looked away.
"Yes, about that," she said coldly.
"Just my ideal weight for a girl."
"Oh, really."
"Yes."
Two ducks, circling swiftly overhead, interested Esther. Down they swept close to the water, but, being unable to come to any decision about the stuck wagon, or the pair of silly humans on the bank, they rose again steeply, continuing to fly round and round. A couple of crows moped in a tall poplar which grew at the edge of the slough. They looked married. Apparently they were revelling in their first tiff. Two white-brown rabbits squatted still as stones not forty feet away. Safely camouflaged, they practised mental telepathy together. Frogs shrilled incessantly. Somewhere a robin was singing a vesper hymn delightfully. His mate, entranced, listened close by. Even the trees appeared to lean towards each other. If the whole of Nature had been one vast bootshop, it couldn't have been arranged in pairs more perfectly.
Bert hovered between two ideas. He was wondering whether Esther would be offended if he kissed her—or disappointed if he refrained. A most terrible predicament for a young man: and since the world became civilized, one causing a good deal of needless worry. Usually Bert did not hesitate in such matters. Bits of fluff were made for osculation. But Esther was so different. She wasn't a "blarney stone" to be kissed by every predatory male who came along. Those faintly cruel eyelids fenced her about better than any convent wall could.
She was still watching the ducks, her face tilted temptingly skywards. Bert wondered if she were waiting for him to make up his mind. All his ancestors on his mother's side were signalling to him from a celestial sphere somewhere—"Be a gentleman." His father's people, on the other hand, shot vigorous messages from some second-rate world or other—-"Don't be a fool; kiss the girl." His own subconscious mind whispered: "Be damned to inhibitions."
In the ecstasy of the moment, Bert neglected to observe whether Esther returned the kiss or not, and while he was endeavouring to remember, she ran off towards the others. Then he regarded the slough meditatively. "I wish it had been twice as wide," he mused regretfully.
Round the bend of a poplar bluff, where Sam had left his wagon, the others were making camping preparations. Sam had gathered a heap of dry wood and lighted a welcome fire. Mrs. Trailey rummaged food from the Tressider-Potts wagon. Trailey himself was shivering like an unripe jelly. He stood with his back close to the fire, steaming like a stew-pot.
"Run abaht a bit, guv'ner," Sam urged. "Try ter keep yer blood movin'." Trailey did so, but he was careful not to stray too far from the indications of supper. The smell of bacon frying rose in the twilight air appetizingly. Esther fetched slough water to make tea with. Bert went with her. They didn't say much. There wasn't any need. Mrs. Trailey watched them. "Humph," she thought, and then bustled about the fire. She was very silent, but her eyes blazed.
Esther and Bert erected his bell tent, whilst Sam salvaged the Trailey team from the slough, and then picketed all four horses safely. He was awfully afraid of them getting away. So were the others, therefore they generally left this duty to him.
By the time supper was completely ready, Sam had carried bedclothes across from the mired vehicle, for the use of the Traileys in the tent. The other two men had almost dried off. Their clammy underclothing followed their every movement rather closely and uncomfortably, but supper diverted their attention. The ladies tried to persuade Sam to divest himself of his saturated garments and wrap up in a blanket.
"Yes, do, Sam," pressed Mrs. Trailey. "You'll go and get rheumatics as sure as I'm a Christian woman. I remember when the Rev. Peter Mackenzie preached at our chapel about Jonah—or was it Moses, William? It was somebody in the Bible who got wet, I know that. However, Peter Mackenzie said——"
"Lor' love a duck!" ejaculated Sam disgustedly, thinking Mrs. Trailey was off on one of her extended reminiscent tours.
"No, young man, he didn't say any such thing. And don't blaspheme. If you were to go and catch your death of cold in those wet things, you'd as like as not go straight to hell. Go into the tent now, and take those wet trousers off, and let me dry them by the fire for you."
Mrs. Trailey really liked Sam. On several occasions she had evinced a queer kind of tart fondness for the little man. She stitched buttons on for him; and once she had bandaged a nasty cut on his hand.
"Now do as I tell you," she insisted. "I remember Esther's grandma once saying——"
"Lor' lumme, missis, try ter forget somethink fer a change," Sam interposed rather brutally. "An' as fer me gittin' a hillness, such a thing ain't likely to 'appen. If a bloke 'as no pain 'urting 'im, 'ow is 'e ter know wot's the matter wiv 'im? There ain't no doctors aht 'ere, missis, y'know."
It was Sam's mock serious manner rather than his weird logic which quelled the argument. The sun had long since slipped out of sight. Everyone was thoroughly fatigued. Nevertheless, Mrs. Trailey persisted in having the few supper things washed.
"'Ere, ma'am," offered Sam, "I'll tyke 'em dahn ter the slough an' do 'em for yer," and while Mrs. Trailey remonstrated with him, he commenced to gather the pots into a bucket energetically.
"Oh, no, Sam; I'll——"
"You go ter bed, missis. I remember 'earin' me great-gran'muvver, the one wiv the pink eyes an' a blue nose——"
Sam's little burlesque worked. Martha Trailey went into the tent. The others had retired earlier.
The Traileys in the tent, and Sam and Bert in the covered wagon, slept the sleep of pioneers. Already they were dovetailing themselves into their new environment; already they were shedding tomfool notions of polo ponies, and ranching. Slowly but surely they were acquiring fresh aspirations, and, in the case of two of them, fresh emotions.
Soon after daybreak, the corner of a packing-case sticking into his ribs pried Sam awake. Rays from a young but powerful sun soon filtered through the canvas of the schooner-top and burned his face with a congestion of heat. His feet, which had become uncovered during the night, were tangled up with the chilly anatomy of a combination walking plough, and were stone cold.
"Hey, Bert!" he called. "Wyke yerself up!" and he jerked the blankets off his still sleeping partner.
Bert blinked and yawned and came down to earth with a peevish flop. Fishing about among a drift of clothes and blankets for a cigarette, he said petulantly:
"Damn you, Sam! Why can't you let a fellow sleep?"
Sam merely grinned and lighted a cigarette. The best speeches are never made at dawn. Bert had again enjoyed a remarkable run of dreaming. First he had performed the hat trick twice running in a county cricket match; then, after running through the admiring crowds to the pavilion, he had hurriedly changed his clothes and carried a pretty girl clear across the Atlantic, and three-quarters of the way over the Pacific. Then a liner had come along and picked them both up. The Rev. Isaac M. Barr, strangely enough, happened to be the boat's chaplain. He persisted in wishing to marry them, because—as he was very careful to explain—besides being a parson, and a colonizer, he was a man of God, and that therefore he, as an unrivalled exponent of true morality, must insist on their marriage. Bert was just about to agree when Sam wakened him.
Except for boots and coats, and on Bert's part a white, soft collar and coloured tie, they were already dressed. After a little swearing, and cigarette smoking, and the exchanging of a few flashes of bilious humour, in the usual manner of camp life in the early morning, they threw open the sheet and trickled out into a perfect spring day.
The chilly dawn had condensed the last few shreds of a lambent ground mist into myriads of tiny dewdrops, which a thirsty sun was fast licking up. Sam contrasted his surroundings with those he had been used to. He filled his mouth with cigarette smoke and blew it in the air, arrogantly.
"Let's go shootin'," he suggested, suddenly.
"Right you are, Sam, me lad," agreed Bert, who as soon as he came in contact with Mother Earth immediately regained his good-humour.
They procured two guns (one of which was Trailey's, loaned to Sam a day or two back)—from a niche between a couple of cases on the wagon, and then, with many pocketfuls of shells, set off to hunt.
First they tried the slough for duck. Trailey's wagon was still there. It hadn't moved, unless it were nearer the centre of the earth a trifle. It presented a queerly forlorn aspect, so blatantly new, so realistically tragic, so suggestive of the seamy side of colonization.
Bert stopped a moment to regard it, meanwhile stuffing a couple of shells into the breech of his gun. After snapping it to, and duly cocking the triggers, he slowly swung the muzzle past Sam's head and pointed it at the wagon.
Sam ducked. Instinct warned him that bags of trouble lay lurking within those twin barrels. Still pointing, Bert said:
"What about that wretched wagon of Trailey's? That's the first job to-day, I suppose?"—then, noticing two large ducks cutting the air high up above him and beginning to dart slantingly with rigid, down-curved wings towards the water, he hastily aimed his gun, shut his eyes, fired both barrels so that their detonations overlapped, and then collapsed backwards on the grass, rubbing his right shoulder and muttering to himself.
As the ducks were only two or three hundred yards away when he fired, they were a good deal scared, and forthwith left the locality. Doubtless, they reasoned that nice, quiet sloughs were sufficiently plentiful. And besides, flying cost them nothing.
"Lumme!" exclaimed Sam. "That must 'ave bin close; they've flew away quackin' like 'ell."
Bert was still rubbing his shoulder.
"Blast 'em!" was all he said.
"You've missed yore blinkin' potation," observed Sam; "you ought to 'ave bin a sodger."
"Vocation, I presume you mean?" growled Bert, crossly.
"Never mind wot I mean. I notice a lot of people can say things they can't do. Talkin's easy—easier 'n shootin'. 'Ow would it be ter walk rahnd a bit? We might get a pot at some of them grouses wot this country's lousy wiv?"
Bert, being a thorough sportsman, acquiesced; so, after quietly cursing his gun a little more, and then reloading it, they made off.
When they reached the edge of the slough, they turned to their left, keeping the water in sight, partly so as not to lose themselves, but chiefly because they spied a cloud of ducks blackening its surface in the distance.
Presently, without warning, up popped a prairie chicken right from under their feet—then another, and another. Bert at once let fly with both barrels—one at a time—more or less in the direction of the birds, but without effect. The chicken lighted not far off, so the gunners were again soon within range. This time, not being taken by surprise, the birds merely strutted about, chuckling and clucking to each other, apparently enjoying the fun immensely.
Bert's morale was still excellent. Taking careful aim, he distributed to the covey another broadside. Whether it was taken sick, or whether it was shamming, only a real hunter could tell; anyhow, one of the birds keeled over, giving every indication of being a casualty.
"Strike me pink, if you ain't 'it it," whispered Sam admiringly.
Bert was trembling with pride, joy and surprise, but he said nothing. Vastly bucked, he threw his gun down. Having thus lightened himself, he scampered madly towards the wounded chicken. Much more soberly, like a reserve force generally does, Sam plodded along behind.
Bert stooped to gather his first kill, but the bird hopped briskly away. Placing itself slightly beyond reach, it stared wonderingly with wide-open eyes, then trotted off with amazing speed and gusto in the direction of a large coppice, which was placidly sunning itself on the edge of the battlefield.
In and out among the bushes the chicken ran, with the two youthful colonists hotly in pursuit. Being the only one armed, Sam seized a favourable opportunity to fire, but except for jarring his shoulder, the shots appeared to have no other effect than to stimulate the bird to weave its charming little self in and out of the trees with greater zest than ever.
The gallant Nimrods conducted the chase for nearly half an hour. At length, lying down like a Bisley wizard, with his gun resting in the fork of a willow, Sam blew the chicken almost to bits at approximately six paces—with both eyes shut.
Seeing nothing else in the neighbourhood to shoot at, the hunters decided to retrace their steps. Sam carried what remained of the pulverized bird. Bert smoked a cigarette jauntily, and kept a sharp look-out for his gun. But the stupid piece of ordnance refused to reveal itself. And soon it began to dawn on them that besides being unable to find the gun, they were quite uncertain where they were themselves.
"Here's a nice go," said Bert, when the knowledge that they were properly lost was assimilated.
Sam stood still for a minute or two, dropped the chicken, then scratched his head to assist reflection.
"Ole Barr never said anythink in 'is parmflets abaht us gettin' lawst, did 'e?"
Bert was having another good look round at the landscape. "No, he did not," he replied. Except heavenwards, he was unable to see much. The view horizontally was blocked by thickets of small brush. Openings here and there led into pretty little glades similar to the one they were now in. A quarter of a mile or so above them two hawks wheeled majestically.
"What are you supposed to do, Sam, when you get lost on the prairie?" Bert presently asked in some bewilderment.
Sam said he "'adn't any idea; but 'ow would it be ter fire orf some cartringes?"
Bert was pessimistic. "Dunno," he said; "but try it, and see;"—so Sam commenced a regular succession of double shots, which echoed through the wilderness, disturbing its lovely peace horridly. When he had used up his ammunition, he said—"That's wot them blokes in books calls a distress single."
Bert was exceedingly interested. "Oh, is it?" he said.
"It is an' all, my son," said Sam; then happening to find a stray shell in one of his trousers' pockets, he shoved it into his gun and fired it at an isolated poplar, which rather foolishly was trying to grow up alone. "Tyke that, you——!" Sam muttered below his breath. A vindictive gleam quickly fading from his eyes, he turned to Bert and said laughingly: "Jus' fancy if that blinkin' tree 'ad bin the Reverend Docter Robbings—eh?"
"Yes, just fancy," grinned Bert, not at all reluctant to dally with the charitable thought. "But I fail to see what good your bally antics are doing us," he continued, adopting a more serious manner. "There's no one but Trailey about, and he could never find us. The old boy ought to halloo, though."
"Trailey 'alloo!" ejaculated Sam. "Wot d'yer tyke 'im for?—a bloomin' slavey shahtin' fer a cab? 'E'll be too busy eatin'"—then witheringly—"or else gettin' 'is waggin aht of the slough."
"Shut up trying to be funny, Sam! You seem to think this is a laughing matter. It isn't, though. That's the trouble with you unimaginative people. You never realize the gravity of anything. Has it struck you that we might be lost for days?"
"We've bin lawst ever since we left Liverpool, if you arsk me anythink," Sam retorted. "Canada's an 'ome fer lawst Barr-lambs. This 'ere trail ter the bloomin' Colony mus' be strewed wiv 'em, like—like——"
"Like Napoleon's bally army retreating from Moscow—eh, Sam?"
"Blimey, yus."
At length, Bert's superior education asserted itself. His highly-trained intelligence sorted out from a maze of crowding ideas one which for sheer brilliancy was worthy of a better reception.
"How would it be," he suggested, "if you were to go that way"—pointing in the general direction of Lake Winnipegosis—"and me this?"—indicating with a comprehensive sweep of his arm a patch of territory which included a large portion of the Rocky Mountains and most of British Columbia.
Sam sniffed scornfully. "An' lose our blarsted selves separately instead of tergevver!" he replied. "Wot funny ideas you've got."
But the difficulty was solved for them in a highly-unexpected way. A horseman came riding towards them. Hidden by numerous clumps of trees, his horse's tread muffled by the thick carpet of dead grass, the stranger was almost upon them before they knew it. Quite leisurely he walked his horse to within a few yards of them and then stopped. It was a mild disappointment to Bert that he did not gallop up and throw his foam-flecked steed abruptly back on its haunches. His presence was an immense relief, though; and his scarlet tunic was a very welcome splash of colour on an exceedingly sombre outlook.
Sam picked the chicken up. The thought flitted through his mind that although he never had liked soldiers, "'e thanked Gawd fer this one"—the usual prayer in desperate times.
"What's all the shooting, boys?" questioned the horseman cheerily, bending over and caressing the neck of his big bay. "Is there another rebellion breaking out?" He was a slimly-built, dark, good-looking constable of the North-West Mounted Police, wearing a long, slender moustache and distinguished by an agreeable voice.
Bert was for the moment too absorbed in admiring the rider's picturesque turnout to reply, so quick-witted Sam said: "We don't know where the 'ell we are. We've bin shootin', an' got lawst."
Although careful not to show it, the policeman had noticed the wreck of the chicken.
"You boys got plenty of meat in camp?" he asked. His manner was faintly official, though quite courteous.
"Yes," replied both hunters.
"Well, don't you know you aren't supposed to shoot chicken at this time of the year, except in case of emergency?"
"No," said Sam innocently, "we don't know anythink. We belong ter Barr's party."
The horseman laughed and allowed his eyes to dwell for a second or two on Bert's velvet cords. These were fast losing their original glory.
"Englishmen, I guess?" ventured the policeman, just a wee bit accusingly. (Englishmen were considerably less popular than their money in those days.)
"Yes, we're Englishmen," remarked Bert, apologetically, as befitted a member of a race which has done almost nothing for the world and humanity.
"H'm-m, thought so. And lost, are you?"
"Yes."
"You boys follow me, then," and, wheeling his horse with a gentle pressure of knee and rein, the policeman started off at a slow walk.
"'Ere, Capting! 'old on a bit," called Sam. "Wot abaht our uvver gun?"
The rider pulled his horse up and looked round, smiling broadly at being so rapidly promoted.
"What gun?" he demanded.
"We've lawst anuvver gun somewhere," explained Sam. "My mate 'ere laid it dahn a minit while we ran arfter this blarsted chicking," and he held up the poor, mangled bird, quickly permitting his hand to fall again.
"In which direction?—and how far?—and how long since?" asked the policeman, still smiling.
"Arsk me pal, 'ere," replied Sam with a touch of malice in his tone. "'E knows," and, turning to his companion, he added—"don't yer, Bert?"
"Go to blazes!" snapped Bert under his breath, as the horseman surveyed him with twinkling eyes. Aloud, he said: "This country looks everywhere the same to us, officer. How on earth do you manage to find your way about, when all these bally woods and things resemble each other so much?"
"You boys oughta keep track of the sun," answered the policeman; "and get wise to the direction of the wind; and learn all about the points of the compass—north, south, east and west, y'know. You're liable to get into all kinds of jackpots if you don't. But you'll catch on in time, I guess."
"Splendid idea, that, Sam—noticing where the sun is," said Bert.
"Even if you are Englishmen," continued the policeman, "you boys'll likely know that it rises in the east?" and he waved with a gauntleted hand to where the sun was pouring streams of dazzling brightness from a greenish-blue sky.
"Yes, we know that much, I think," observed Bert quietly.
Sam, who liked his streets named, said: "But 'ow d'yer know which is east, Capting?"
"Why, where the sun rises, of course."
"An' if it 'appens ter be foggy, or rainin', or the sun is obskewered by a lot of blinkin' clahds—wot then?"
"In that case, it's best to watch the wind."
"An' suppose there ain't no wind—then wot?"
"Then you use your head," returned the policeman slightly impatiently. "But come on," he said, "let's poke around some and see if we can find your gun," and he pushed on again, Sam and Bert following closely behind.
"Do they pay you blokes any think extra fer givin' lessons ter Barr Colonists in fizzy-ology?" Sam questioned of the policeman after a short silence.
The horseman, not being quite certain to which "ometry" or "ology" the subject lately discussed belonged, remained silent. He pretended not to hear the remark. Probably he sensed his leg being gently pulled. Sam chuckled to himself.
A good many open spaces were searched, somewhat superficially, but no gun turned up. At last they decided to abandon it. An excellent firearm, it had been presented to Bert by his father. It had cost thirty guineas. Perhaps it is still lying out there in the grass, rusted, and burned by prairie fires. It is conceivable that it may accidentally be discovered in about a hundred years' time. It may provoke discussions about an extinct fauna. The maker's name on the barrel may serve as a reminder of the days when English was the leading language of the prairies.
Bert was considerably envious of the policeman's graceful and romantic mien. He actually went so far as to wish that he himself belonged to such a force. "What a fine-looking chap," he thought as he walked at the horse's heels. There was a suggestion of security, and self-reliance, and broad-minded justice about this rider which was distinctly attractive. He had been deputed by the Commandant of C Division of the North-West Mounted Police at Battleford to patrol the trail along which the Barr Colonists were trekking.
After relinquishing the search for the gun, fifteen minutes brought the little party into camp. Trailey had been driven by repeated henpecks to start a fire, and the ladies already had breakfast prepared.
"We really thought you were lost," Esther said to Bert, her anxiety giving way to relief when the wanderers strolled into camp. "But when we heard you shooting we knew you were all right. Since the firing stopped we have been a bit worried, though."
Sam winked at the policeman. "Don't you ever worry abaht us, miss; we know our way abaht, don't we, Capting?"
"Sure," laughed the horseman, removing his eyes from Esther for a fraction of a second. He still sat his horse. Bert perceived how he and Miss Trailey were momentarily smitten with each other. Mounties used to see girls like this one only in dreams; and handsome, red-coated horsemen, more like cavalry than policemen, will cause any romantic female's heart to flutter.
Pressed to stay for breakfast, the rider politely declined food, but accepted a cup of coffee. He said he had bivouacked and breakfasted with some Devonshire people a mile or two farther along the trail. Dismounting, he slipped an arm through his bridle rein, and stood sipping the drink, whilst his horse tugged to be free to nibble away at the tawny grass. He was a tall man with strong features and clear, blue eyes. The great, wide spaces had painted a vivid picture of health on his pleasant face.
He proved to be a highly-interesting fellow, too. His prairie experience reached back to the Riel Rebellion. Between glances at Esther, he contrived to let drop much useful information, without seeming to be preaching, or tendering advice.
As he remounted to depart, Sam, with many recollections of London bobbies, tipped him a wink and went through the motion of drinking something from a phantom cup, an invitation which all over creation means but one thing.
"No, thanks," said the mountie; "I never touch it." In explanation of his refusal, he said the constables of the N.W.M.P. were all of them rigid teetotalers—a statement which to Trailey was conducive of the keenest gratification, but which surprised Sam almost to the point of shock.
"Keep your eyes skinned for that Eagle Creek," shouted the horseman warningly as he rode away.
Notwithstanding Mrs. Trailey's covert opinion to the contrary, Bertrand Paul Tressider was not entirely devoid of ideas. True, he had been educated at one of England's most ancient, and, therefore, most noted, preparatory schools, which, like all others of its kind, annually turned out droves of mediocrities. Sparring with the gods of Greek mythology, wrestling with the heroes of Roman history, and dabbling in other ancient and dead things, though ruining many good men's chances of excelling as first-rate stevedores, or potmen, hadn't spoiled Bert. The very fact of his cutting loose from the fustiness of English law in order to join in Barr's search for a prairie Elysium proves that. And his training among Yorkshire men, in a Sheffield solicitor's busy office, had taught him that indubitably five beans counted five. No one, no matter how finely educated, can mix for very long with Yorkshire men without learning that much. If the beans are represented by pounds, or even by halfpence, the knowledge is usually acquired very quickly.
All morning, on and off, Bert's mind had reverted to the unthankful task which lay before them of releasing the wagon from the slough. He quite realized that a good deal of wet, dirty, cold and laborious work would be involved in the job.
He soon broached a suggestion to Trailey. The ex-insurance superintendent had finished his breakfast, and was seated on the wagon-pole, absorbed in dislodging a refractory morsel of bacon from a hollow tooth by the aid of a stiff stalk of grass. Thoroughly imbued with gentlemanly instincts, he stopped toying with his teeth when Bert addressed him, and became dreamily attentive.
"How about paying some of these Indian chaps to pull your wagon out of the slough?" said Bert. "You don't feel like tackling the job yourself, I suppose?"
Trailey didn't exactly leap at the idea. He never leaped at anything. "Ah," he drawled, "that doesn't sound like a bad suggestion."
"Well," went on Bert, "it's your wagon, y'know; and getting it out may cost a trifle, and all that, but I'm sure it's the wisest thing to do." Bert's Yorkshire training cropped up here—making it perfectly clear that there must be no mistake about who would be liable for the cost of the work.
Esther overheard the proposal, and endorsed it very heartily. She said she thought the scheme was an exceptionally brilliant one, and conveyed to its originator, by means of a swift glance of admiration, her opinion of how absolutely unique she thought it was. This powerful stimulant sent the blood rollicking through Bert's body so fast that he remained silent for a little while so as better to enjoy the sensation.
Martha Trailey, full of memories of the previous evening's incidents, clinched the suggestion with a few appropriate remarks about "girls gadding off with wild young harum-scarums, while she was left to drown in a bog."
"You may as well decide to let the Red Indians do it," she said to her husband, after she had made several extraneous references to his past career, chiefly to do with his early married life. "At present," she continued, "you've more money than sense; but goodness knows what will happen to us when it's all gone. Oh, dear me! well might my Aunt Rebecca say the very day I was married, that, although she detested mentioning it, she had an idea I might possibly live to rue it."
Sam and Bert, noticing the finger of Mrs. Trailey's barometer moving rapidly round to "stormy," edged quietly away from the tent, outside of which the discussion was taking place.
"You shouldn't talk like that before strangers, mamma," Esther remonstrated gently; "it makes every one feel so uncomfortable."
"Strangers! Strangers, did you say? Well, what next, may I ask! Strangers!—and after we've been carried across the pond with our arms round their necks! Allow me to tell you that the very thought of it makes my blood boil; and so it would yours if you weren't so brazen. What young women are coming to these days, I don't know. And in broad daylight, too! Why, I remember when I was your age, no respectable young woman would dream of putting her arms round a man's neck till after it was dark. Please don't forget that, my girl."
Naturally, that settled the matter. Quite soon along came the usual tribe of Indian freighters—a whole string of them. Bert shouted across the slough to half a dozen of the men who were investigating the crossing. He motioned vigorously towards the mired wagon, and made pregnant signs indicative of dollars being counted out.
In a calmly stoical sort of way, the Indians seemed quite interested. Unhurriedly, they condensed a few thoughts into fewer words, which they communicated to each other, after which they made signs that—for Indians—they would be tickled to death to come to some arrangement. Seeing that the worship of money was one of the religions the natives had picked up from their white brethren, their consent was understandable enough. Two active young bucks jumped on a couple of spare ponies, numbers of which slunk about the convoy, and rode through the slough to negotiate terms.
Two or three dusky women of uncertain age and beauty gabbled away to each other, pointing at the bogged prairie schooner and laughing. The ladies seemed to take a much more humorous view of life than did their men-folk. They squatted atop of their loaded wagons like images of fat Buddhas togged out in green, purple and pink robes.
After much argument, during which the two dark-skinned ambassadors preserved a dignified reserve, contrasting strangely with the comical gesticulations of the civilized white men, the transaction was at last completed. The payment for extricating the wagon was to be ten dollars. The aboriginal votaries of materialism stuck out grimly for cash in advance. Possessing the whip hand, they got it.
"Give 'em the money," said Bert, addressing Trailey, who had wandered down to the water. Sam watched carefully whilst the transfer of the cash was made. "It's dirt cheap, guv'ner," he said, encouragingly. He was glad to be rid of a job which would have devolved mostly upon him.
Four teams of cayuses were hooked to the bogged wagon—two to the pole, and one on each side, to the box. Then, with a mixture of whoops and whips, chiefly the latter, about two-thirds of the ponies took it into their heads to pull the load—and the rest of the ponies—across the slough. The drivers splashed through the water alongside, apparently enjoying its coolness.
Some of the natives looked as solemn as though they had just drawn a hearse full of dead medicine-men through the water. Others cast sly grins at the white party. When they had all jumped on the bony backs of their ponies and returned to their own convoy, Sam and Bert, with a little assistance from Trailey, commenced to pack up.
That evening they reached the gash in the earth known as Eagle Creek.
Sam strolled to the edge of the ravine and stared into the shadowy depths. "It's too bloomin' late ter commit sewercide ter-night," he decided. "Gawd! 'ave we got ter go dahn there?" he mused, awed by the fearsome steepness of the trail.
So the little party camped for the night beside the coulee. Thanks to their outdoor exertions, the high, clear altitudes, the ever-changing scenes, and the freedom from the worries, both petty and large, of congested humanity, they all invariably slept like tops. Sam and Bert and Esther were enjoying to the full every second of their lives. They extracted pleasure from the fascinating novelty of everything, like bees do honey from flowers.
As for William Trailey, he was hardly on the earth at all, except for meals. "Ah," he would sigh whenever anything particularly startling or novel was pointed out to him, and then his big, dreamy, blue eyes, after taking in the object, would go soaring with his thoughts in long, wandering journeys through realms of abstraction. What really were his visions, and ideas, and ambitions, no man knew, even if he did himself.
Martha Trailey was perfectly contented to be discontented. She cooked, and washed, and rattled about in energetic storms of striving after a sort of super-cleanliness. Her pots and pans and utensils were all clean and polished as though they had been lined up in her kitchen back home in England. In return for this monumental efficiency, all she desired was to be able to make it impossible for her husband to forget that he was married.
Eagle Creek, whatever it is now, was in those days an awesome chasm on the Saskatoon-Battleford trail. Probably half a dozen lively recollections spring to the mind of each Barr Colonist as he searches the recesses of his memory for pictures of far-gone days. Dulled a little by distance, perhaps; made a trifle cobwebby by time; and, possibly, half-buried under a litter of subsequent experiences, but totally eclipsed by no other event, is the clear remembrance of the crossing of Eagle Creek.