Several hundred tents, most of which resembled their own, were scattered about the plain in haphazard profusion. A few new marquees reared themselves above humbler fellows, their size, and newness, and milk-white colour faintly suggesting ostentation.
Amateurish campfires filled the sparkling air with whiffs of pleasant-smelling wood smoke. A dozen or so of dogs, brought all the way from England, and wearing brass-mounted collars made of leather which would still be in its prime when the harness with which the colonists were decking their teams would be thrown away, barked and whined after the few lean but good-natured native canines.
Women, some enchantingly neat, others sloppily untidy, moved about and in and out of the tents over unfamiliar tasks. Some of the ladies resented the free and easy mixing of castes. These blue-blooded females tried to prevent their own sweet offspring from fraternizing with the far less charming kids of other people. But democratic childhood would have none of it, and went yelling and scampering about the camp, disturbing the everlasting siestas of phlegmatic oxen, and running frightful risks with the heels and even more treacherous fore feet of hypocritical bronchos.
Men, who were blissfully ignorant of the mysteries of Canadian harness, taught others, who were more so, how to do things. Every little while a knowing native would win for himself some sweet-tasting admiration by initiating a crowd of wondering colonists in the art of inserting an iron bit between the tight-clenched teeth of a stupid horse with its head about three miles up in the air.
Barr's G.H.Q. marquee was a seething whirl of disorganized organization. The troubles and complaints of dissatisfied and grumbling colonists came sliding and tumbling and breaking over the leader's harassed head in avalanches of inquiries, and cascades of protest.
Flamank could do no other than bob about on the storm-tossed sea of trouble like a light cork. At every twist and turn he was shot at with unanswerable queries. Both going and coming he was riddled with broadsides of acrimonious remarks. Though let down continually by his chief; constitutionally excitable; with all the clerical work connected with a small army of mutinous colonists passing through his hands, and head; a perpetual target for the darts of ignorance, and innocence; yet, in spite of all, he survived eventually to become the Colony's first postmaster.
The Rev. George Exton Lloyd, veteran of the Riel Rebellion, moved about with hands tied, inwardly boiling with suppressed indignation, but absolutely impotent without the mantle of authority. Why a man of his experience, and punch, and unbounded energy didn't throw up, or blow up, or attempt to wring Barr's neck, is incomprehensible.
The Rev. Isaac M. Barr himself, founder and head of the scheme, beginning early to lose his grip, copied many a worse, and better, man, before and since, by seeking solace in whiskey. Booze was procurable at Saskatoon. But the mellowest of whiskies, not even excepting those which are renowned for their subtle, inspirational qualities, will inevitably fail when relied upon to do a job like the one Barr had tackled. Barr should have known that whiskey—like fire, and some leaders of enterprises—makes a very fine servant, but a poor master.
The non-abstaining members of the party—and there were at the very least two or three—showered deserving praise on the Canadian system of dispensing drinks, a method which allowed them to help themselves from bottles—some with suspiciously dirty labels—of Scotch, whilst leaning on a bar psychologically contrived to be of exactly the correct height.
The price of the drinks was another matter, though. The Englishmen from Yorkshire and other northern counties gave themselves some horrible shocks by translating cents into pence—like some of them are doing twenty-five years afterwards. But, generally speaking, the quality and quantity of the liquid refreshment induced the most comment, and heartburning.
As Sam and Bert threaded their way through the litter of the camp and its environs, so suggestive of a busy horse-fair, they unconsciously gulped into their lungs large draughts of winy spring air. From a cloudless, turquoise sky, a glittering sun shed waves of summer-like warmth. Cooling breezes flowed gently through the heated camp.
As far as eye could see, small glistening snow-banks, relics of winter's blizzards, flecked the tawny plains in silvery clusters. From beneath snowy mounds, the sudden heat sent tiny streams of water trickling and biting their way over the thawed-out surface of the soil. Following the easiest channels, these transient brooks went gurgling on, joined with others, mixed, laughed, swelled, grew most important as they bubbled along, then all at once—like the colonists themselves did later on—rushed blindly into an ambushed slough.
Before crossing the railway line to enter the village, Sam and Bert lingered a while to hear the Rev. Isaac M. Barr addressing—and being addressed by—a large group of acrid-tempered colonists.
"... Just listen to me, men," he was saying earnestly; "the worst is now almost over. Have faith! Follow your leaders into the land of promise, where independence is waiting for those who will work. My transportation company is not dead, as some mischief-makers would have you believe..."
The reverend gentleman was standing on somebody's big black cabin-trunk. He looked worried. His clerical spruceness was fraying at the edges a bit. Pausing nervously to open a folded sheet of paper—a telegram from St. John appertaining to the trifling matter of five hundred tons of missing luggage—he took advantage of the break in his speech to moisten his lips with his tongue. They were dry, like ashes.
Beating up against the pleasant breeze, fragments of a song being sung uproariously, struck his tired ears in variable gusts of sound, now faint, now loud. With perfectly diabolical clearness, the ribald voices wafted verse after verse across to the crowd.
"Barr, Barr, wily old Barr,He'll do you as much as he can;"
"Men!" shouted the dispirited leader in a desperate attempt to smother the song's ugly significance. "Be British——"
With a crowd's usual cruelty, a few of the bravest cowards jeered and mocked. Meanwhile, relentlessly, like the toppling crest of a wave breaking on the beach, the verse went on—
"You bet he will collar,Your very last dollar,In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
The crowd burst into loud laughter. Barr, with a mechanical sort of effort, tried bravely to compel his own strained features to smile, but he failed miserably.
In a bell tent, about a hundred yards off, half a dozen throaty prodigies were seated comfortably on the ground with a nearly-emptied bottle of Saskatoon's choicest wassail nice and handy. In ironical tones, they ripped out the chorus of the song, totally unaware of the devastating effect it was having on Barr's meeting.
"Farm, farm, do let us farm,We're sure that the most of us can;We'll plough and we'll sow,And we'll reap and we'll mow,In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
"The Nautch Girl" was the particular musical comedy honoured with the supplying of the air in which this marvellously poetical masterpiece was rendered. The author of the "poem" had, between spasms of biliousness aboard theLake Manitoba, composed eighteen stanzas of it, before crawling away to die.
Like most early Barr Colony experiences, this particular incident at Saskatoon was pathetic, yet at the same time comic. With a dreary gesture of hopelessness, Barr stepped down from the trunk and hurried within his tent. Contemptuously, the crowd gradually dispersed.
Half pityingly, Sam murmured—"Gawd!" He bore Barr no special malice. Indeed, if anything, he was very grateful to the reverend leader for being the means of his separating himself from his sordid environment in London.
"I feel a bit sorry for the old boy," was Bert's only comment, as the pair headed towards the village.
Stepping into Saskatoon's main street, a wide, unkempt, dirt-metalled thoroughfare, irregularly bordered on one side with unpainted wooden structures, and running alongside the railway station, Bert and Sam set about purchasing their goods.
The few business men were doing a roaring trade. To most of the colonists, prices mattered little—even though these were occasionally inflated. Both English and Canadian money was abundant. A composite odour of cheese, boots, shirts, soap, men and mice permeated all the stores, branding them with a smell as characteristic as that possessed by the interior of an Indian's teepee.
Suddenly descending upon a hamlet containing only one hundred people, this horde of immigrant buyers, with the almost as numerous crowd of traders and hangers-on, all spending their proportion of wealth with true prairie prodigality, created a sort of premature heaven for Saskatoon's storekeepers.
Groups of idlers lounged about everywhere—in the stores, near the livery-barn, and round the hotel. A few tired creatures leaned listlessly against the strongest of the buildings. Skirting these, Sam and Bert came to a place where farm implements were exposed for sale.
"We's'll want somethink ter plagh the garding wiv," said Sam, stopping to admire the gaudily-painted machines which were spread about on some waste ground, and on the board sidewalk, overflowing into the sandy roadway.
"Of course," observed Bert. "This is a plough, I presume," and he flicked a speck of dirt off the iron seat of a rather flashy disk harrow.
Sam said nothing. He had never been on a farm, nor had he even seen one at close quarters. The prattle of agriculture was as Sanskrit to him; so, like a sensible man, he left the subject entirely to Bert, who knew almost as much.
"That ain't a plough," laughed a great, ponderous man who wheezed over towards them; "that there's a disk. What d'you boys want?"
The speaker was a very large, swarthy-faced man with baggy eyes, cheeks and trousers. He wore one gold-coloured ring, two lodge symbols, three chins, four tobacco-stained gold teeth, and a big, smooth smile. Glancing at him with mild curiosity, Bert said:
"We want something to cultivate our land with—a plough is the best instrument, I suppose,"—concluding apologetically—"we aren't going in for corn-growing, though; are we, Sam?" Bert looked towards his little companion for affirmation, but Sam was busily occupying himself with salvaging about an inch and a half of badly-mutilated cigarette from his right-hand waistcoat-pocket, and pretended not to hear.
The fleshy Goliath slipped a cigar across to the opposite corner of his mouth, which then tightened conveniently in a smile.
"What are you going in for, then?" he asked, amusedly.
"Ranching."
"Ranching what?"
"Horses—polo ponies."
Sam edged away and lighted his cigarette. He tried to borrow a match from a passer-by, who must have been of Scottish descent, for, although being in a desperate hurry to be gone, he preferred wasting five minutes over giving the little cockney a light from the bowl of his pipe.
The big man was smiling broadly at Bert. It would have been rude to laugh outright; besides, that would have necessitated the removal from his mouth of the freshly-lighted cigar. This enormous man had sold machinery for almost twenty years; then had collected for it, finally becoming an inspector. But he wasn't cold-hearted. He had too much fat round his heart for that. After recovering from a fit of asthmatic coughing, which he presently indulged in, he said, kindly enough:
"What you boys want is a walking plough, a set of drag harrows, and a disk. Even if you go in for ranching"—and his smile broke out afresh, spreading along a couple of deep grooves to the back of his neck—"you'll want them things."
"Here's the plough you want," interjected a thin, wiry, though round-shouldered man, evidently the agent in person, who had just that minute sold a blue-and-red disk to a party of pink-cheeked colonists driving a team of black oxen hitched to a vividly green wagon with a white schooner-top.
The agent grasped the long, conveniently-placed handles of a combination walking plough, bore down on them, which seemed much easier than raising them, besides being more graceful, and went on:
"Best plough in the world. Fourteen-inch; fin coulter—better not try a rolling coulter where you boys is going; two shares; two moldboards; two spanners; thirty-five dollars," and he continued tilting the plough up and down, causing the draw-link to tinkle musically.
"Dandy plough," said the ponderous inspector. "Use nothing else on my farms for breaking an' backsetting."
Had he explained that he used one as an anchor for his private yacht, the information would have enlightened Bert quite as much.
"Don't need a man to hold it," echoed the agent, still clinging fondly to the long handles. "Light draft; two fourteen-hundred-pound horses can draw it easy."
"Just right for light land," added the inspector, as he carefully tested and then lowered himself on to the pole of an adjacent seeder, causing it to bend like a cane. "What sort of land is it where this Colony is headin' for, anyway?"
"Heavy stuff," returned the agent, miss-cuing; "grass up to your knees. I was down in that country last fall—hunting a bunch of my stray cayuses."
"Couldn't be beat for that clay land," volunteered the inspector, wiping the inside of his whitish collar with a whitish pocket-handkerchief.
The agent threw an affectionate look at the plough in endorsation of his chief's revised statement.
"I once turned three acres over with one of them ploughs in nine hours," he said; "with a pair of broncs you could carry under your arms."
"And you know old man Cleviss, Fred, down on the coulee?" said the inspector, who still had some breath left. Fred nodded. "He says he wouldn't sell his plough for a million dollars if he couldn't buy another like it."
"Don't blame him none, either," said Fred, opening wide his eyes, so plainly astonished was he at the mere mention of such an idiotic possibility. "A man with a farm like he's got would be crazy to part with that plough of his. Them short-handled Spiggott ploughs all go here"—he stooped down and indicated the point of the share belonging to the implement he was rocking up and down—"split clean across, every one of 'em, like a rotten twig."
"Say, Fred!—you remember when I was on the road for Spiggott's?" Fred nodded. "Why, them ploughs of theirs pretty near drove me crazy. What with that share breaking; and old Sandy Quinlan queering my expense account; and the company squeezing the poor dam' farmers, I quit 'em. Yes, sir, quit 'em stone cold. But our company can't make ploughs fast enough. Sold over two hundred this last three days. That's some talking point for a plough, boys, eh? I'll say. Good company, too. Repairs always on hand—ain't that right, Fred?"—Fred nodded—"Elegant company to travel for. Never go after the poor dam' farmers. Dandy company; you bet."
It is impossible to estimate how long this remarkably edifying dialogue might have continued; probably it would have gone on for a week or two, had not Sam, becoming restless, pulled at his companion's sleeve, and, with a backward jerk of the head, beckoned Bert away a little.
"Don't know wot that big bloke's gassin' abaht," he whispered cautiously, so as not to be overheard, "but 'e's a very 'appy man. Jus' look at 'is weskit, an' 'is neck, an' 'is trahsers! 'E's like one of them joints of meat tied rahnd an' rahnd wiv string. 'E mus' be tellin' the trufe, though. No man wot tells lies can be 'appy, like 'e is. That plagh's bound ter be a good 'un. Let's buy it."
So they did—being guided in the purchase of a disk and harrows by the same wonderful process of reasoning.
So sanguine is youth, and so undismayed by the future, that Sam and Bert were not the slightest bit disturbed either by the profound muddle Barr's leadership had sunk into, or by the contemplation of their long, rugged trek into the unknown. But to the calmly thoughtful, middle-aged colonists, especially those having nearly as many young children as dollars, the prospect looked dark indeed. In the whole badly-managed scheme, the only certainty these men could reckon on was the grim uncertainty of everything.
Barr added nothing to his fading reputation by appointing another clergyman to his staff—the Rev. Dr. Robbins. As far as physical beauty went, this latest addition to Headquarters' establishment was hardly an Adonis. In ability, he ranked nowhere. He wasn't even interesting. He called himself a doctor, but what of, nobody knows, for sure—certainly he never cured a colonist of any ailment, either mental, spiritual or physical. Why he joined the colonists at Saskatoon at all is a mystery. He left no mark on their affairs, unless a memory of his bulbous figure so much like that of a comic brewer's drayman can be counted one. Two thousand men, women and children waiting to be led deep into the wilderness by a triumvirate of parsons surely makes the Barr Colony unique, even if nothing else does.
Fortunately, the serious-minded immigrants, those with grit, and perseverance, to say nothing of self-respect and ambition, were no more affected by the behaviour of the incompetent freaks at the head of things than the weather is influenced by the planet Jupiter (always excepting, herein, the conduct of the Rev. G. E. Lloyd, whose exemplary management, when later it got its chance, set him miles apart from, and above, the others).
Having laid in a plentiful supply of cigarettes and such like things so essential to successful pioneering, Sam and Bert were quite ready for a very early departure from Saskatoon the following morning—about half-past ten o'clock, Bert suggested.
Two candles, inserted in the clefts of a couple of split willow-sticks driven in the loose soil, shed a spluttering glimmer which fought bravely with the tent's obscurity. A little oblong camp-stove, the smoke-pipe of which issued from a tin-bound hole in the sloping canvas wall, radiated a drowsy but slowly dying heat.
Everything except such articles as were likely to be needed for bed and breakfast was packed away in the wagon's bulging load outside. Bert reclined on a folding camp-bed. He was swapping portions of perfectly good eyesight for slabs of a horribly lurid novel. Brilliantly robed for sleeping purposes in a stunning suit of violet-and-white-striped pyjamas, with huge pearl buttons on it made from oyster shell, he presented a gorgeous appearance as he flipped the ash off his cigarette with the careless air of a rajah. In the adventuring line, he aped the splendour of the Count of Monte Cristo rather than the simplicity of style set by Robinson Crusoe.
Sam was scrawling a message on a picture-postcard—depicting a busy street scene in Regina—to send to his people in quiet and deserted London. Sitting cross-legged on three grey army blankets, which were spread out on the trampled grassy floor, he was alternately sucking at a stubby pencil in quest of ideas, and swearing softly to himself to aid him in putting them into words after he had trapped the elusive things.
Boots, belts, a dagger in a yellow leather sheath, outer clothing, and other odds and ends, were all strewed about with that delightful abandon so characteristic of young bachelors when separated from their sisters' habits of tidiness. Lending a sporting touch to the tent's somewhat bare interior, a double-barreled shotgun, loaded, leaned totteringly against the canvas, close to Bert's blonde head.
Being only the twenty-fourth of April, the night was cold. A frosted crescent, slender, chill, remote, floated majestically in the velvety sky, suffusing the world with a luminous paleness. A scarcely perceptible night-wind breathed softly through the camp. One by one the lights in the tents snapped out, the momentary after-blackness quickly dissolving in the pale wan light of the sickle moon. Here and there venturesome stars peeped out from the fathomless recesses of space.
Horses munched contentedly in the shadows of the schooner-tops—those with anything to eat did, at any rate. A cough, a ringing laugh, the fragment of a song, broke the silence at varying intervals. Now and again voices raised in sudden argument proclaimed to wakeful ears the universal clash of human opinions.
A dog barked; another answered the challenge; soon a regular chorus burst forth; then, after that died down, two or three competed for the last spasmodic yelp with a persistence worthy of something considerably more entertaining. Then silence again.
A horse whinnied; another squealed and fought its mate viciously, for even animals fall out with one another. Near Bert's tent, someone with a gift for dairying had acquired a blue-roan cow with numbers of wrinkles on its black-tipped horns. Nature's law of reproduction, working overtime, had decreed that this rather antique "bossy" should astonish herself by again becoming a mother. Begotten of old age, the calf was slightly anæmic, so when it discovered that it had been born among a horde of very green Englishmen, it quietly looked round, thought to itself "Hang this lot," then calmly threw back its head and wisely died—a sample of excellent judgment which by no means deterred the mother from uttering her lamentations in spasms of ear-bludgeoning roars whenever she remembered her loss.
Occasionally the camp was enveloped in a mantle of pure silence.
Ducks swished low overhead like flights of unseen arrows. Once, high up, wild geese flying northwards sunk their hoarse notes deep into the night's chilly vastness. An ox would inflate his body, stop breathing for a few seconds, then would exhale a long, contented sigh, followed by several blissful grunts as he resumed his placid chewing of a brand-new cud.
Distances wove themselves into a veil and hung mysteriously about the tented camp. A meteor streaked down the sky like a blazing spear. Frost with icy fingers slowly gripped the surface of the earth. Drooping tents tightened and stiffened, then stood glistening phantasmally in the ghostly light, their pale, thin shadows draping the ground in angular caricatures.
From far away, there came floating through the night, a faint, melancholy wail.
"Sam!"
"Wot!"
"I think I shall go and drown myself."
"Drownd yerself! Wot for?"
"I'm in love."
"In love! Garn! 'oo are yer tryin' ter kid? Why, yer knows no more abaht the 'uman 'eart than yer does abaht 'orses."
"Don't be facetious, Sam. This chap in this book feels just like I do. He was on his way to a high cliff to jump into the sea when his girl ran after him and stopped him, just in time. By Jove! something like that might happen to me, y'know."
"She'd 'ave run arfter 'im jus' the same if 'e'd bin goin' to a music 'all."
"You unromantic little devil! How's the water in the river over here—very muddy?"
"Not 'arf—an' ruddy cold."
Just then, from close to the tent, as it seemed, a frightful wail of anguish rose and fell agonizingly, then died shudderingly away.
"Good Heavens!" cried Bert, half rising in bed, and flinging his book down. "What's that?"
Sam was much more startled by the novel falling than he was by the cry outside.
"P'raps it's one of them blinkin' ghos'es wot comes ter people wots abaht ter die," he said. "Ain't it creepy?"
Bert shivered slightly. It was a cool night. The stove was almost out; he hadn't much on—and there was no more wood.
"Creepy! Ghastly, you mean. Somebody's being murdered. I know I oughtn't to say it, but I hope it's—no, I don't—he's done me no harm. I say, Sam, was there anything left in the flask? I'm simply frozen."
Again the cry of horror split the night, this time a little farther off. Sam hastily rummaged in the "tuck-box" and produced the flask, which he threw across to Bert, who was about to tip it up to his lips, when a series of rapid and violent blows shook the wall of the tent, and a man's voice called:
"Halloo! Halloo! in there. May I come in?"
Sam scrambled to his feet and hurriedly untied the tent-flap, letting in a thick-set, man of medium height. He was a little past middle age, of rotund and comfortable appearance, with a well-trimmed, reddish-brown beard, and he wore a good tweed suit and cap. His eyes were big and blue, very trustful, and slightly wide open—obviously with absent-mindedness, not at all with lying. Bert recognized him immediately as a man called Trailey, who, with his wife and daughter, occupied a tent next but one to his own.
"Good evening, Mr. Trailey," Bert said affably when he saw who the visitor was. "What on earth was that dreadful noise? You didn't see anyone being strangled outside, did you?"
Trailey was blinking his eyes in the two-candle-power radiance. With podgy fingers, fat like a baby's, he gently pressed his eyelids before looking round the tent. Then, noticing the bed, with Bert on it, he replied:
"No, I didn't see anybody being killed. I heard some man say it was one of those coyote things that belong to the prairies. Shocking cry, wasn't it? Nearly frightened my wife and daughter out of their wits."
"Positively ghastly," Bert rejoined. "Got on my own nerves a bit. Have a drink," and he proffered the flask at arm's length.
With not the least show of enthusiasm, Trailey regarded the flask and shook his head negatively.
"No, thank you very much," he said, "I'm a total abstainer."
"Jolly good idea—wish I was," commented Bert, helping himself to a little swig. Trailey sighed a plainly audible "Ah-h-h"—very deprecatory, and very prolonged.
"Forgive my impertinence," he continued, when Bert had withdrawn the flask from his lips and tossed it to Sam with a muttered suggestion that it might as well be refilled; "but I heard you were starting for the Colony in the morning, Mr. Tressider. I wonder if you'd care to wait till we're ready—two or three days, perhaps?"
"Ye—s, certainly—that is, of course, if Sam——"
"My wife and daughter are a bit nervous," interposed Trailey, "though I don't see why they should be—having me with them. They say that Sam, here"—and he gave the little cockney a warm look of admiration—"is such an adaptable chap, that they'd really feel much more comfortable in their minds if they were travelling along with your wagon."
Sam, who was filling the flask from a not-quite-full reserve quart bottle, grinned sheepishly at the outspoken compliment, which had been expressed utterly without guile. He had carried water from the river for the Trailey camp at odd times, besides cajoling their fire to burn, and doing bits of things for the horses. Like everyone else in camp, they had called him "Sam" from the very first.
Bert looked at his diminutive partner less casually than usual. He was becoming convinced more and more that Sam really was a handy kind of fellow, and, in spite of not being a gentleman, extremely likeable.
"That'll be all right, Sam, won't it?"—and, without waiting for a reply, turned and spoke to Trailey again.
"We shall be delighted. We'll wait as long as you like. We're in no particular rush. How have Mrs. Trailey"—here Bert purposely assumed a slightly less solicitous air, which certainly deceived Trailey, though not Sam, nor himself—"and—er—your daughter stood the trip so far?"
"Pretty well. A little tired, and uneasy, perhaps, wondering what's before them. You know what women are, Mr. Tressider?" and, as Bert indicated with a solemn nod that he knew all about women, and their emotions, Trailey sighed deeply and at some length, adding:
"But we're in the Lord's hands, are we not?"
This remark was one of those which always left Bert uncomfortably speechless. Ever since he was able to reason things out for himself he had had a sort of vague idea that all human beings were in the Lord's hands, some, apparently, much more so than others.
"Yes, I suppose we are," he replied diffidently, and he felt greatly ill at ease while saying it. His respect for sacred things was deep, but, like the majority of average men, he disliked exhibiting it. Trailey, however, seemed highly gratified by the reply.
"It's very kind of you to wait for us, Mr. Tressider," he said—"Sam, too, of course. Drop in at our tent some time, and have a chat. Mrs. Trailey will be glad to thank you personally, I know. Good-night," and he made to depart, but his bump of locality being rather imperfectly developed, he forgot where the entrance to the tent was. He groped round the wall for the triangular flap like a man blindfolded. First he barked his shin on the stove, almost upsetting it; then he tripped over Sam's blankets; finally he succeeded in knocking the gun over. This was loaded in both barrels, but a merciful Providence saw to it that it didn't go off. Though it fell with its muzzle pointing directly at Bert's silk-covered stomach, that gentleman was innocently oblivious of the risk. He had suddenly become interested in his own thoughts.
Sam picked the gun up gingerly and set it against the canvas. Seeing that it was his first experience with a firearm, he was sufficiently wise to treat this one with great caution. Then he went to Trailey's assistance.
"'Ere y'are, sir," he volunteered, at the same time throwing the tent-flap wide open; "'ere's the 'ole. Mind the bloomin' step."
"Ah-h," breathed Trailey, gratefully. "Much obliged, Sam. Good-night," and he vanished through the opening into the moonlit camp, walking aimlessly off in the opposite direction to that which led towards his own tent.
"That man's 'elpless," observed Sam, in a pitying tone.
"Indeed," remarked Bert absently, his mind elsewhere.
"Not 'arf, 'e ain't. 'E's a hinfant in arms. 'E's lawst nah, fer a bob 'e is. 'E's goin' rarnchin'—like us. D'yer want anuvver drink, Yore 'Ighness, before I tell James ter sling the cat aht an' farsten the kitching door?" and Sam held the flask towards Bert, whose recumbent and luxurious figure he regarded with mock respect.
"No—go to the deuce! What is Miss Trailey like, Sam? You've spoken to her a good deal, I suppose?"
Sam began to refasten the tent-door. He smiled mischievously to himself as he tied some weird knots in the string, fumbling awkwardly among the shadows.
"'Eaps of times. 'An'somer 'n a paintin', she is. Calls me Sam. Arsks arfter my people. Inquired wot we was goin' ter do when we get to our land. She 'inted that 'er ole man's a insurance soupringtendent or somethink, an' is goin' in fer rarnchin'. She larfed abaht it."
"Oh, and then what?" Bert had snuggled down into bed again.
"Nothink much. But you ought ter see 'er 'air when she 'as 'er 'at orf. It's like an 'alo. Gawd!"
"Yes, and what else? What's her Christian name?"
"Esther."
"H'm. Pretty name—Old Testament."
"Wot's that?"
"Nothing—that is, nothing to interest you. It's the finest book in the world. People quarrel about it, which proves how important it is, I suppose. But what about Miss Trailey? Did she say anything to you about them wishing to travel along with us?"
"No, only she said sort of jokin'ly 'ow nice it 'ud be if I was goin' along wiv their waggin. You 'aven't seen 'er eyes when she puts affecshun in 'em, 'ave yer? 'Strewth! jus' like a hactress's."
"Humph! anything else?"
"The old woman ain't so bad, neither—religiouser 'n a preacher, she is, though."
Noticing that Bert had lapsed permanently into a thoughtful silence, Sam quietly crept into his simple bed, quenched the candles by flinging his jacket at them, then coiled himself up warmly for the night.
When William Trailey issued from Bert's tent, he had but the haziest notion where his own lay. He was completely turned round. Also he was very sleepy, so much so that all the tents in the neighbourhood looked alike to him.
Even in the daytime he found it necessary to rely on the colour of his horses, more than anything else, to guide him home. He had purchased a pair of flea-bitten greys specially for that purpose; but soon the camp became filled with horses of a similar colour, tied to Bain wagons of a design exactly like his own.
Nor did the weird ghostliness of the night contribute much help to his extremely unreliable sense of direction. At last, however, after wandering about like a somnambulist for nearly half an hour, he saw at a distance a light-coloured team, so he promptly made towards it.
"Ah-h," he sighed contentedly, "here we are at last," and he commenced to hum one of his favourite tunes—"Throw Out the Life-Line."
Everything invariably came out all right in the end for William Trailey. Other people might try to drift along on the stream of life, but sooner or later they found themselves plunging over falls, or grounding on sand bars, or striking submerged snags. Not so he. Just when the stream began to race, preparatory to rushing over a weir, something always steered him into a peaceful backwater, where overhanging branches of trees sheltered him from the sun, and where he could—if it weren't mealtime—climb out on the grassy bank and enjoy a quiet snooze.
Nevertheless, when he stood beside his tent, a vague fancy seemed to warn him that one of his horses looked a bit different. But then horses were such puzzling creatures. How did he know that they mightn't change their colour and become cream-, or buckskin-, or even sorrel-tinted. Didn't politicians, and billboards, and dining-room walls, change their coats mysteriously sometimes? Certainly they did. Then why not horses?
Such subtle reasoning as this was one of Trailey's strong points. Had he been a soldier by profession, doubtless he would have argued that because the walls of Jericho fell down flat to the crash of Joshua's trumpets, such a feat could easily be repeated in a modern siege. It is conceivable he might have become a general in the subsequent Great War of attrition, had he been sufficiently lucky to be of military age about that time.
He now knew positively that it was his own tent he stood against, because there was the wash-bowl, and there was the chimney-pipe jutting out in the same place. How absurd of him to harbour silly doubts! He held his breath for a moment to listen to the far-off wail of a coyote. Indescribably sad, the dismal cry drifted across to him from out of the spectral night.
"Thank goodness I'm not out there alone," he mused.
No light shone from his tent, for the simple reason that his wife and daughter must have retired for the night. They always did. They never worried about him. Why should they? He was only a husband, and a father, of course, but he was a man. They were sensible enough to appreciate that much, at any rate. Moreover, he was now to all intents and purposes a rancher. At this encouraging thought he felt himself puff out with pride, like a suit of underwear on a clothes-line, bellying in the wind.
Another thing—had not Martha, his wife, known for twenty years and more, that, if he ever set off to go anywhere, he would ultimately reach some destination or other, even though it might not be the particular one for which he started? He might, for instance, intend to visit the library, or the museum, or a lecture somewhere, and in the end land up outside the chapel where he was accustomed to worship, but it was always all right. If the chapel presented a dark and deserted appearance, which it generally did, that made no difference. The meeting, or whatever it was he was supposed to attend, must have been postponed, and he hadn't known about it. On the other hand, if the place showed signs of life, which occasionally it did, he went in and made himself at home, possibly assisted in passing an important resolution or two.
No one ever dreamed of turning William Trailey out of anywhere. He was too trustful, too guileless, too delightfully detached for that. Besides, he was always wrapped in such an air of quiet dignity. He was one of those men whom, in spite of their vacuity, people cannot help respecting. Then he would go home from the meeting, or lecture, or whatever it was, and, after dispatching a quarter of a pound of ripe Stilton cheese, a plateful of pickles, and three or four cupfuls of cocoa, would climb upstairs, dreamily say his prayers, fall into bed and drop soundly asleep.
William Trailey was an expert drifter simply because he tackled effortlessness in a thoroughly effortless way. It was a gift with him, and one which adorned him as naturally as digging sewers, or "heeling" in politics marks other people out for distinction.
He was reaching over the tent to untie the flap, when, seemingly from quite close behind him, that frightful cry of despair was again repeated. Wail after wail followed each other in nerve-paralyzing succession, finally trailing away into a ghastly sob. His blood froze in his veins, and he distinctly felt his hair rising straight up on his head—particularly in the bald places.
Then horrible panic seized him. Ripping the canvas open, he plunged into the tent, caught his foot in the loose folds of the low wall, partly recovered himself, stumbled about blindly in the dimness, and then, with his full thirteen stone, trod plump on sleeping Sam's face.
The startled Cockney let out a fierce yell of pain and surprise, which must have wakened practically every sober man in the vicinity, and all the women. Trailey's boot was not of the mountaineering variety, fortunately, so it slipped off Sam's unlovely profile rather smoothly, if somewhat heavily, without doing much damage.
"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Trailey with his usual aptness. "Where am I?"
Sam sat up and nursed his slightly-abrased face with one hand, then struck a match and lighted a candle with the other.
"—— yore sole, guv'nor," he muttered venomously.
Trailey knew almost at once, even before he heard Sam's familiar voice, that he was not in his own tent. His wife and daughter slept on folding camp-cots. Moreover, Martha would unquestionably have shrieked at the sudden disturbance caused by a man bursting into her tent and standing on her face.
After the startled Trailey had mildly expressed his regrets, he became gently remonstrative as Sam's remarks continued being painfully corrosive in tone and purport."
"Please don't use such language, Sam," he pleaded; "there is One above listening, don't forget."
Sam glared at the penitent "rancher," now turning uplifter.
"I 'ope there is. An' I 'ope—but wot's the good of 'opin'? Yer can't 'elp it. A hinfant in arms knows more 'n you. Wot d'yer want in 'ere?"
Deep concern chased the absent-mindedness from Trailey's face for a minute or two. Sam's pointed remarks pricked him ever so slightly despite his armour of calm detachment.
"I went for a stroll in the moonlight," he hedged stoutly to his questioner, and to his own immaculate conscience.
"An' got lawst," sneered Sam.
"It's such a peaceful night," Trailey murmured, ignoring the other's harshness; "and I thought when I saw your tent and horses that they were mine. Then that terrible cry..." and he shuddered at the recollection.
"It's a norrible row all right, guv'ner," said Sam, beginning to drop the ire from his voice and manner. "My opinion is this 'ere blinkin' camp at Sarskatoon's 'aunted. You get ready as quick as yer can, an' let's slope orf ter the Colony ter see our land."
"Give Mr. Trailey a drink, Sam—to steady his nerves," volunteered Bert, genially, as he sat upright and dragged a green-and-gold dressing-gown from the bed, draping it round his shoulders. "Have a little touch, Trailey; it'll do you good. It's rather a chilly night for visiting."
Precisely at the moment when Trailey's sudden entrance had awakened him, Bert was joyously riding a magnificent pinto stallion across the plains at full gallop. In fact, he was just going to bend over and pick Esther up off the ground, where she was lying directly in the path of two million buffaloes. The vivid novel, the ethereal night, Trailey's earlier visit, half a flapjack Sam had given him for supper, and the little man's glowing remarks concerning Miss Trailey, which somehow conveyed infinitely more than they described, all stimulated his romantic dreams. It was a bit of a come-down to have to talk about whiskey after soaring to such heights of heroism, but he tried to make the best of it. This absent-minded-looking wanderer was Esther's father, at any rate, and that was something.
After many weakly-expressed protestations, Trailey fell before Sam's repeated coaxing, and at last consented to try the flask. In extenuation, he said that in certain circumstances, of which undoubtedly this was one, such an act was not sinful.
Sam, with much gravity, duly absolved him. "Put it dahn yer, guv'ner," he urged, whereupon Trailey emptied the tiny flask like a shot, as though it were nothing but a bottle of stone-ginger. "Ah-h," he exhaled, pulling a wry face and gasping a little. In the meantime, Sam was delving into an imitation crocodile-leather portmanteau, in which he stored all his belongings, and from which he produced another half-bottleful of Scotch. He poured a reasonable quantity into an enamelled cup and held it to his lips.
"Good fer a crushed face," he said, winking impishly at Trailey, and then popped it down with that sublime faith which everyone now knows is more than half the battle of recovery.
Bert said that that beastly wailing had seriously affected his own nerves, and wondered if their visitor would object to him tasting a little drop on his own account, purely as a soporific, y'know.
"Yes, do, Mr. Tressider," rejoined Trailey, expansively. "The necessity is obvious."
"I believe I'll take Mr. Trailey's advice, Sam, if you'll—— Ah, thanks!" Sam was passing Bert a smallish dose in the cup.
Within five minutes, Trailey said he was feeling a lot better, and that he really ought to be going back to his tent, as his wife might be lying awake wondering where he was; so he sat down on Sam's blankets.
"You'd better 'ave anuvver, sir," said Sam, in a wheedling voice, "to 'elp keep the uvver one dahn, an' assist yer ter find yer way 'ome."
Beginning to glow with a wonderful content, William Trailey seemed only the tiniest bit reluctant, so Sam, with the manner of a fatherly retainer, partly filled the cup again and passed it to him.
"It's against my conscience," murmured Trailey; "but I'm quite sure the case warrants it. I feel that I'm already forgiven," and he passed to Sam the empty flask which he had forgotten he was still clasping lovingly. "Ah-h," he breathed, as the second portion of the flaming fluid crept along his veins and coiled pleasantly round his heart. "Just think," he said, "that this cursed drink is the ruin of thousands, yea, millions of men. Think of the starving children, and the drunkards' homes. Think of the degradation, and the prostitution, and the everlasting damnation which can be traced—like footprints in the sands of time—to the curse of strong drink. Think——"
"It's a bloomin' shyme, guv'ner," said Sam, closing his left optic at his partner on the bed.
"It really ought to be stopped," echoed Bert, smiling at Sam and at Trailey's rhetorical flight. That gentleman was fast regaining, in fact had regained, his customary placidity. The awful cry of distress was happily forgotten. He was no longer lost in a wilderness of tents. The world was a glorious place after all, with the millennium only half a mile or so round the corner, and beautifully downhill all the way.
Occupied with these delicious sentiments, Trailey absently refused another little touch, but, upon noticing the rather hurt look on Sam's face, he said he would try to change his mind for the sake of friendship, which he did. Almost immediately he became by turns conversational, and ranting.
Enlarging on one of his themes, he said that a cousin of his, who was a steeplejack, had one bright morning fallen from the top of a very tall church spire in Derby, whilst under the influence of a small bottle of Allsopp's beer, which he'd consumed for his supper the night before. He said that this cousin, being a very fat man for a steeplejack, had bounced off the roof of the church and landed in the back-yard of "The Pig and Whistle" public house next door; and that when the landlord rushed out to him with a glass of neat brandy, he refused it.
"Great Scott! what ever for?" ejaculated Bert ironically.
"Because he was dead, Mr. Tressider," replied Trailey with deep earnestness. "The drink had killed him, poor man."
Sam appeared to be deeply moved by the story. He said that "'e thought it all sounded very true an' feeziable, an' jus' like one of them rotten stories wot yer read abaht in the newspypers. All the syme, 'e should very much like to 'ear wot the landlord did wiv the glarss of brandy arfterwards."
Trailey replied that the landlord turned teetotaler right on the spot, and threw the brandy away; which Sam, as an ex-barman, observed "was a wilful prevershun of the trufe, besides bein' a dam' silly thing ter do."
The lecturer now became still more discursive. He explained that the money spent in England in one year on intoxicating liquors would pay off half the national debt, build twenty-seven modern battleships carrying 12-in. guns, equip and maintain a home for fallen women at Okhotsk, and even then leave sufficient money over with which to erect and endow a tin-roofed temperance tabernacle at Timbuktu.
"By Jove!" cried Bert, to whom the news was a complete revelation. "Just imagine what could be done if we spent twice as much!"
"Not 'arf," said Sam, who was temporarily paralyzed by the astounding information.
"Or three times as much," added Bert, as his keen legal brain instantly grasped the significance of the statement.
As for Trailey himself, he had never paid for a drink in his life, so naturally he registered considerably less awe for his own statistics than did the others. Quite soon, being congenitally drowsy, he fell back on Sam's bed and lapsed into peaceful slumber.
Upon being prodded awake again, he asked Sam as a very special favour to take him home, a request the little Cockney, with his usual good-nature, readily granted.
Hastily jumping into a few clothes, Sam dexterously steered Trailey through the torn tent opening. They stood outside for a little while, ostensibly to admire the effulgent beauty of the matchless prairie night, but actually to permit Trailey to instruct the man in charge of the roundabout to stop the giddy thing at once. This the stupid fellow refused to do; so, tacking along in weird, zig-zaggy spurts, stumbling over pegs and ropes, the pair made their tortuous way to Trailey's own tent, which was a matter of only thirty or forty yards distant.
Sam noiselessly opened the flap and then began gently to push his lurching companion into the opening.
"Ah-h," sighed Trailey wearily, "so here we are at last, eh?"
Responding to a sudden mood, he turned and faced Sam. Swaying gently back and forth in the light wind which still went whispering among the tents, he surveyed his little guide in quite a fatherly and tender manner.
"Sham, me bhoy," he said, "'tever you do, keep away from—hic—the curs-ed drink. It's Satan 'imself. Goo'-night," then, turning round, he toppled through the tent-door, which Sam, with his habitual good sense, was at great pains to refasten.
The non-arrival of a thousand-pound draft from England was firmly anchoring William Trailey in Saskatoon. He was a moderately well-to-do man. He had piled up a little wealth in the insurance line, when securing new business was ridiculously easy—in the 'eighties and 'nineties of last century. His lawyers at Leeds, where he used to reside, were slowly but surely converting into cash and costs for him, some workmen's cottages in which he had invested a part of his savings. And he was sufficiently acute to be afraid that, unless he left Saskatoon as quickly as possible, he would be compelled to cable instruction to his solicitors to dispose of another row of houses.
Because of their promise to wait for the Traileys, the departure of Sam and Bert was postponed for more than a week.
Meanwhile, like the snowdrifts surrounding it, the camp slowly began to melt away. In small convoys—never alone—the colonists started off on their two-hundred-mile journey away from civilization. Blissfully unconscious of what lay before them, they bravely set out to discover a new North-west Passage into Utopia.
In the romantic Crusades, beneath the banner of the Cross, the mediæval conquerors used generally to ride at the head of their followers—both in advancing and retreating. Barr did not. In this respect he was a modern. His theory seemed to be, that, if anything went wrong, and he was first over the top, he might never come back; on the other hand, if he stuck to his dug-out, and switchboard, and dispatch-box, he might save himself a lot of messy travelling. A fraction of Peter the Hermit's naked courage and stark self-denial would have made the Rev. Dr. Robbins a much more useful leader, too.
In any case, there was a huge amount of work for the Rev. Isaac M. Barr to do at Saskatoon. There was a nondescript crew of freighters to recruit and instruct, and there was a small mountain of stores and supplies to be bought, for although later on the colonists almost learned to do without food, they were inclined to treat themselves rather well at the start. Also baggage had to be found, returning colonists to be heartened, subordinates to be watched, and a multitude of minor details to be attended to besides.
The party was brimming with queer characters. These made things very interesting for themselves, and Barr, and everybody. Puritans and free-thinkers; university and remittance men; ignoramuses and intellectuals; socialists and men of vision; ex-soldiers and ex-stay-at-homes; men who believed every word in the Bible was inspired by God, and men who believed everything inThe Daily Mailwas the same; Methodists, Anglicans, Calvinists, Catholics, Unitarians, Agnostics, and men belonging to twenty other sects; niggards and spendthrifts; men with brothers who were officers in the Yeomanry, and men with not a single drop of blue blood in their veins at all; men with money and very little sense; men with sense and very little money; men with both and men with not much of either; all began to dribble westwards along the Battleford trail, their eyes turned wistfully towards the only, for them, ideal life—HOMESTEADING.
Four hundred wagons at the very least commenced the trip. A few speedy colonists, travelling light, reached their destination, hunted their land, scraped the top off a couple of acres, sowed them with wild oats—and wilder mustard—and were busy hacking some innocent trees down with which to build shacks, before some of the more helpless ones even thought of quitting Saskatoon.
Quite early—a week or more perhaps—the trek began to sort out the invertebrates. These came straggling back to Saskatoon with mossy chins and bedraggled looks, reciting fearful yarns about how they had been forced to leave pieces of their backbones in sloughs; the sheen of their lovely equipment in bottomless muskegs; shreds of nerve hanging on the almost perpendicular walls of yawning ravines; and, inferentially, their rapidly dwindling courage in the rapacious ooze of sticky alkali flats.
At that time, the West possessed (except nearer to Winnipeg) only the main line of the Canadian Pacific, the Calgary-Strathcona, and the Regina-Prince Albert branches, in the way of railways. The Canadian Northern transcontinental had been surveyed the previous summer, and the spot in the wilderness for which the colonists were bound was where this survey bisected the 110th meridian of longitude—almost exactly midway between the Battle and North Saskatchewan rivers.
The North-West Territories had not yet given birth to the charming twins, Alberta and Saskatchewan; but the cradle was bought, any amount of clothes were ready, and numerous attendants, in the shape of future government officials, waited round to be first with their congratulations.
Whatever induced Barr to venture so far, when there was any quantity of available land nearer, is not quite clear. Probably he was the law of survival's right-hand man; or he may have fancied himself as a second Moses. There is nothing to prove that the majority of the colonists would have refused to follow him into the Arctic Circle. All they desired was "a bit of land "—the land, the piece officially apportioned to the Colony, and to them.
During the time Trailey's belated draft was delaying them at Saskatoon, Sam and Bert amused themselves in various ways. The former decked himself out in a black, satiny shirt, an article of male apparel then greatly in vogue. These soot-hued garments were not supposed to show the dirt. Some of them didn't. The idea was a brilliant one, and the inventor of such a grand, labour-saving device Was doubtless well rewarded. A store-clerk in Saskatoon tried to sell Sam half a dozen of them.
"Look at this one I'm wearing myself," he said enthusiastically, pointing to his own shirt-collar, and then turning his coat-sleeve back so that Sam might see the wrist-band. "How long d'you think I've had this on?"
Sam was curious at first, then interested. He surveyed the store-clerk's collar, and cuff, then looked up in his face. The fellow was tall, with cadaverous features, and rather an oily skin.
"Dunno," said Sam, "but I should say abaht six months, p'raps."
The clerk laughed. He evidently enjoyed a joke.
"No," he said, "not that long; but I've had it on seven weeks. Ain't it a corker?"
Sam was awestruck. "Strike me pink!" he blurted out.
"How many d'you want?" asked the clerk.
Sam made a laborious mental calculation. "Give us four on 'em," he said. "An' 'ave yer got any black undershirts?"
"No," replied the clerk regretfully.
Sam was really grieved. He paid for his shirts and departed. The thoughts of wash-day hovered over the Barr Colonists, particularly the bachelors, like concentrated nightmares. Pioneering meant more than merely doing without tablecloths, and morning newspapers, and music, apparently. Keeping clean was a problem, too—one little problem among many much bigger ones.
Bert revolved happily round Esther Trailey, with whom he was now on speaking terms. He had mixed rather successfully with numbers of attractive girls in England, had even loved a few of them with a sort of deathless, polygamous, puppy-like fervour, but there was something infinitively more fascinating about having one's favourite girl in camp with one, in a far-off land, to protect from unknown dangers.
It is doubtful whether at home in England Bert would have come within Esther's orbit. He, as a blossoming lawyer, and she, as merely an insurance-man's daughter, would almost certainly have been separated by two distinct divisions of caste, perhaps by more. But Bert was already succumbing to the democratic Canadian spirit which despises snobbishness. He was now in a country where Mrs. Tom, and Mrs. Dick, and Mrs. Harry are all equal; and where social distinctions are almost unknown; and where janitors' wives, and the wives and daughters of farmers, and policemen, and small shopkeepers are welcomed in the luxurious drawing-rooms of high government and municipal officials, bankers, brokers, and others of the highly-educated classes.
In any event, Esther's beauty would have bridged the social gulf pretty efficiently. She was a glorious blonde, and built as symmetrically as the Medici Venus, only not quite so robustly. She was easily the loveliest girl among the colonists. All the men under sixty were unanimous about it. Even some of the women had been heard to remark that "she certainly would be rather nice if she didn't spoil herself by being so forward."
Bert thought her anything but forward. She was as tantalizing as a mirage to him. Actually, Esther was almost as bold as a swan, and pretty nearly as brazen as a flower. An exceedingly dutiful daughter, she adored her mother, against whose somewhat nagging disposition she hardly ever openly rebelled.
"Really," she used to think when she was alone sometimes; "I don't wonder at mamma being so irritable, when she sees how fearfully helpless dad is. Fancy him sacrificing all the comfort of our dear little home in England to drag us out here to live on a ranch—or whatever it is they call it! Why, he... Poor old dad!" and she would smile to herself as she recollected how pitifully pathetic he had looked when one of the horses one morning had stood on his foot, the one with the corn on it. "Ranching!" she often mused contemptuously. "Dad should have rented one of the allotment-gardens on the Headingley Road and tried his hand at that first."
It was the third or fourth morning after her father's inspiring temperance lecture in Bert's tent that Esther laughed outright at her thoughts, which had been running along lines like those just mentioned.
"What are you laughing at?" her mother demanded peevishly. Mrs. Trailey was rinsing a couple of towels in the wash-hand-basin just outside the entrance to their tent. "I don't see anything to laugh at," she went on; "especially now your father has taken to drink."
"Drink! Father!" cried Esther in astonishment. "What on earth do you mean, mamma?"
"What I say—silly," snapped Martha Trailey. "He's gone and broken my poor heart," and she twisted and wrenched at a helpless towel in the extremity of her grief.
"I can't believe it, mamma. Why, father used to lecture at the Band of Hope meetings at chapel!"
"Don't I know it! And now he's brought us down to this! Mind you don't marry a man who lectures at Band of Hope meetings—they're all alike, you may depend. The Rev. Jeremiah Sittingbourne's words are coming true—every one of 'em. The very day you were christened, when he came for tea, and I hadn't any cake made, and I had to give him bread and butter and jam, and he asked a blessing just the same as if it had been one of my best plum cakes, 'Yes, my dear Mrs. Trailey,' he said, after he'd drunk four cups of tea, and then wiped his whiskers on his pocket-handkerchief—you remember his white whiskers all stained yellow round his mouth, don't you, Esther? 'Yes,' he said——"
"Of course, I don't remember, mamma. I was only a baby. But where did dad get the drink?"
"How do I know where he got it? He's saturated with it yet. He smells like that low public-house at the top of the High Street, where that cat, Mrs. What's-her-name, the one the chapel-folks said did away with her first husband; you know the one I mean—'The Woman in Black'—or is it Pink?—the public-house is called. Oh, dear me! what will become of us now? What with a drunken husband; and a daughter that should have been a son—-and would have been if my prayers had been answered—but it's like the Rev. Mr. Sittingbourne——"
"Sh-h, 'sh-h, mamma! here's dad coming now. One of the horses is bringing him on the end of its rope. Don't for goodness' sake let him hear you carrying on so. Perhaps he was worrying about our long journey, and——"
"Worrying! Your father worrying! Would to God—Oh! that ever I should say such a thing!—and me with two brothers missionaries—or would have been if they hadn't both been taken to heaven in their infancy when your grandmother Bickering was having children too fast. Mind you never have children too——"
"Mamma! Stop it! Do please remember that I'm grown up now, and may understand some of the things you are talking about."
"Ah, my girl, you'll understand well enough if you ever get a drunkard for a husband. And you'd better watch yourself with that young fellow next door but one. Those flighty young men who wear velvet corduroy breeches generally come to a bad end. I remember the Rev.——"
"Mamma! I won't listen. Here are Sam and Mr. Tressider coming this way now.... How do I look in this old blouse?"
Esther hurriedly disappeared within the Trailey tent, where, among many other things, a mirror was conveniently kept.
The two young men were indeed approaching. Bert, ignoring formalities, commenced chatting with Mrs. Trailey. Sam, who had noticed the sparks falling from the good lady's eyes, went and assisted her husband to tie his horse to the wagon. Tying knots in halter-shanks was a problem in advanced mathematics for Trailey, and one which threatened everlastingly to remain as much of a mystery. He had tied hundreds of men to annual insurance premiums for the rest of their lives—making a neat job, too; but when it came to tying a horse to a wagon-wheel with a bit of rope, well, that was not so easy.
"I trust the howling didn't upset you the other night," Bert was saying. "It was rather an unearthly row, wasn't it?"
"Yes; and they say those animals are ferocious and will attack women and children when they are in packs and famished."
Mrs. Trailey was inclined to sacrifice everything to fluency. She turned towards Sam, who with Trailey had strolled up to the tent. She was just going off into another reminiscent flight, when the little man broke in:
"Them animals are skulkin' cowards, missis." He had evidently overheard Mrs. Trailey's last remark. "They ain't got no more nerve nor a sixpenny rabbit. That one the uvver night shut up when me an' yore good 'usband 'ere went ahtside an' made a noise like a dyin' sheep."
Mrs. Trailey went for Sam as though she had known him for years. Her face reddened, and her greenish eyes flashed fire.
"So you were with my husband, were you? And you're the serpent in his garden, are you?—tempting him, and leading him away from the narrow path. Then perhaps you can inform me where he got his drink from?"
Sam was not the slightest bit discomfited by Martha Trailey's anger. "I only brought 'im 'ome, ma'am," he said, with his customary good-humour. "My pal 'ere, Mr. Tressider, gev 'im a little snifter—ter keep aht the cold hair, as yer might say. 'E'd bin fer a walk dahn ter the river, ter communicate wiv 'is thoughts."
Mrs. Tressider now faced Bert, whom for some inexplicable reason she liked much less than she did Sam.
"You ought to be downright ashamed of yourself, Mr. Tressider. You've ruined my life—wheedling my poor, weak-minded husband away from the fold. Never since he signed the pledge the year we were married, and then started speaking at the Band of Hope, has he touched a drop of drink, and that's twenty-two years come June quarter-day. I remember it well, because the Rev. Duncan Mc—Mc—dear me, what was his name now, William?—McWhipple, was it? No—it must have been McNoddy, or McTavish, or some name like that. Never mind, though. I remember when he filled in the form for my husband to sign, I asked him if he knew of a public-house where we could sell the barrel of ale we had in the cellar. My husband wanted to empty it down the drain, but that seemed such a sinful waste. 'I really don't know of such a public-house, Mrs. Trailey,' the Rev. McWheesey said—-Ah! that was his name; I remember now! And then he told us to try The Flying Horse on the corner, because, he said, the proprietor was Church of England, and would most likely allow us half what we'd paid for the ale, and so—
"So the Rev. McWhat's-his-name was a bit of a lad, eh?" interposed Bert laughingly.
"He was sixty, if he was a day; and as good a preacher as ever came to our chapel. He was a saint, young man—if ever there was one. That's why we got him to marry us. My husband gave him four shillings for himself—two two-shilling pieces. I remember it all just as if it were yesterday. But he died soon after, poor creature."
"Ah-h," sighed Trailey, "so he did." That sleepy-eyed rancher was seated on a box of evaporated apples which stood conveniently just without the tent. "So he did," he repeated absently to himself, being careful to turn well away from his wife's challenging eyes.
Martha Trailey was a smallish woman with faded, yellow hair; and she was a scold. Also she carried the worship of cleanliness to the point where it becomes a nuisance. The husbands of such women never know the glory of dropping cigar-ash on their own carpets, neither do they experience the joy of paddling through the house in muddy boots. They slink about their own homes like lodgers three months in arrears with their board-bill, and unless they go into the furniture-removing business, so that they may with impunity upset other women's rooms, they are likely to look henpecked and soured, and soon begin secretly to wish they were either unmarried or dead, whichever strikes them as being the more preferable state.
Presently Esther emerged from the tent, looking as lovely as the sparkling, spring morning itself. Smiling a greeting at Bert and Sam, she stood listening to the conversation. She wore a white silk blouse, short grey tweed skirt and polished brown shoes. Her hair of burnished gold was drawn back loosely and tied low on her neck. The light from a glittering sun played hide-and-seek in its folds, while tiny currents of breeze wafted a few stray wisps of silken splendour about her face.
Bert was lost in admiration, and showed it, and, not being buried under six feet of earth, Esther rather enjoyed the sensation. Even Sam was constrained to mutter to himself—"Gawd! wot 'air!"
Esther had heard her mother's prolix reminiscences from within the tent. Thinking to make some sort of excuse for them, she said:
"Mamma is a bit harassed. She doesn't sleep very well in the tent."
"And how do you know, young lady?" Mrs. Trailey retorted, eyeing her daughter from golden crown to shining shoes in one swift glance of appraisal tinged with pride. "I notice you sleep well enough—and long enough, too; even if we are pigging it in a beastly tent—leaving your mother to wash and worry and battle with this everlasting dirt. Why, when I was younger than you are by three years and more, and long before I ever dreamt of marrying a drunkard"—and Martha Trailey cast a scorching glance at her husband, who was dreamily surveying a fluffy bit of cloud which hung in the crystal air like a tiny puff of white smoke—"I was scrubbing and washing and darning my finger-ends off from morn till night—H'm! there goes that dolly who was in our cabin on the boat, Mrs. What's-her-name—the one who was always pulling people to pieces—never did her hair in the morning; only half washed herself; shoes all undone; her bodice where it showed above her blouse as black as Sam's shirt there; just lolled about and talked and talked till I thought sometimes I should scream. I pity that husband of hers. Just look at the poor fellow perched on top of that load!"
"Anuvver rarncher," commented Sam, as they all turned to watch a city-bred colonist, in white collar and cuffs, driving an ox-team, which waddled past with a ludicrous, swaying gait.
"I suppose we shall look something like that in a day or two," said Esther—"mother and I balanced on top of the load, and dad driving the horses."
Mrs. Trailey snorted disgust and flung a towel across a tent-rope where she left it to dry.
Trailey withdrew his vacant stare from the speck of fleecy cloud and let it rest for a moment upon the passing oxen.
"Ah-h," he sighed, but whether with regret, resignation, sublime content, or indigestion, it is difficult to say. It was his favourite expression, and one equally applicable to all situations. It seemed to denote a sort of fatalism, a passive "amen" to everything.
"Would you care to come for a stroll through the camp, Miss Trailey?" said Bert, apparently anxious to ease the tension obviously existing in the Trailey family.
Esther smiled consent, whereupon the couple walked off in the direction of Saskatoon, which was about a quarter of a mile away. They were a splendid-looking pair. Both were bare-headed. Esther's hair glistened gloriously in the sun. Many an admiring glance was cast in their direction as they slowly threaded their way through the camp. Youth, that incomparable ally, was heavily in league with them both.
"Did you really give father some drink, Mr. Tressider?" Esther asked presently.
Bert smiled and looked down at his lovely companion. She didn't appear to be the least bit annoyed.