Many Barr Colony legends originated here. Numerous foolish experiments for descending the slopes of a ravine as steep as a house-roof were attempted. The biggest wonder is that no one was killed. Not a few colonists strove to leave their bones there—unintentionally, of course, but none the less with considerable perseverance.
It has for years been widely broadcast, that, in an effort to defeat the gravitational urge of his thirty-hundredweight, top-heavy load, one chap hobbled his oxen. This is a gross distortion of fact. He hobbled only one of them.
Sam knew the fellow. He was a dark, sallow, melancholy-visaged man from Shropshire, which is a buffer county between England and Wales.
"Wot made you 'obble one of yer bloomin' hoxen when yer went dahn Eagle Creek?" Sam asked him several weeks later when they met at Headquarters camp (Britannia).
The Shropshire man pulled a wry face. He was very despondent—more so than usual. "I didn't care a hang what 'appened to me," he replied glumly.
Sam was very sympathetic. "Why?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Somehow, everything seemed to be going wrong." Smiling a twisted smile, the Shropshire man went on: "You see, my blessed bulls were green, and you couldn't hold 'em back with the ropes on their horns. My wife wanted to turn back all the time. I'd been wet to the skin for three days. Two of my youngsters had the whooping-cough. Barr had one hundred and seventy-five pounds of my capital, which I'd said good-bye to, of course. And, then, blow me if I hadn't found out at Saskatoon that Barr had given the other three 'omesteads on our section to two Welshmen and a Lancashire man. I tell you, prospects looked none too rosy."
"So yer thought yer'd try an' do away wiv yerself—eh?"
"Ha-ha!" cackled the Shropshire man sardonically; "I may have been unlucky, and a trifle down-'earted, but I wasn't as far gone as that." His voice was very husky with talking to his bulls, which hadn't died yet.
There were runaways galore at Eagle Creek; but the stream at the bottom, and the steep rise beyond, stopped most of them. Inertia decrees that a body in motion shall tend to continue so. Some colonists attempted to outwit this law. They zig-zagged down the declivity. This was all right till one of the wheels on the high side hit a stone or a knoll, then over went the wagon, shooting its conglomeration of packing-cases, harrows, stove, and everything else down the bank like coals being tipped into a cellar.
Only six weeks previously, these colonists had been seated in offices pushing pens over paper; selling shirts across mahogany counters under the watchful eyes of lordly shop-walkers; teaching sleepy children in Sunday school the tale about the Israelites trekking into Egypt; catching the nine-fifteen to business every morning, with a weekly half-day for a football match, or a fish in the river; enjoying the numberless advantages of a cultured land, from the daily halfpenny newspaper to listening to the thunder of an organ in a five-hundred-year-old cathedral—and now here they were, gazing over an abyss which had to be crossed before they could arrive at the land of promise—Barr's promise. No wonder some of them, when they looked into the yawning depths of Eagle Creek, suffered an attack of faint-heartedness, and straightway turned back.
But the stimulating fact remains, that easily three hundred teams, driven by the greenest aggregation of men who ever came to the West, contrived somehow or another to cross the creek safely.
Early the following morning, Sam piloted each wagon in turn down the precipitous slope. The rear wheels of both vehicles were locked with heavy logging chains. Professional freighters, who also had camped at the creek, instructed him in the art of tying the chains so that, besides being non-slipping, they contributed their greatest braking effect.
The chains were allowed to become taut at a point which brought the half-hitch sufficiently near to the ground to dig into it. With both hind wheels gripped by such knots, which themselves were gouging into the trail, the descent was rendered comparatively simple. Both teams were free from the mysteries of breeching tackle. Only Sam really knew how to harness the horses properly with the leather puzzles they already possessed, though Bert and Trailey were slowly learning.
"Thank God for that!"
William Trailey uttered these words as he gazed at the awful declivity down which the wagons had been guided by the indispensable Sam. The little party was resting on the bridge which spanned the tiny stream gurgling along the bottom of the creek.
Esther, who lived much nearer to the earth than her father usually did, and whose gratitude on that account was inclined to be more practical, came along to Sam and, with a pretty gesture, half-serious, half-jesting, shook hands with him.
"And thank you, Sam," the beautiful girl said; "what ever we should do without you, God alone knows." The little Cockney blushed, and his eyes shone.
The Trailey-Tressider-Potts convoy had scarcely climbed out of Eagle Creek and entered the rugged, wooded territory lying between the Eagle Hills and the North Saskatchewan River, when it ran into a violent snow-storm.
After flooding the prairie with dazzling splendour for so many days, the sun veiled itself in a dirty, yellowish murk. An all-pervading greyness masked the heavens. The wind veered to the north, and although blowing with no more strength than usual, it acquired a melancholy note as it sighed through the trees.
Only a few large snowflakes came down at first. Big, fluffy flakes they were, descending gracefully out of the lowering clouds and crashing on the grass, making easily as much noise as thistledown does when it lands. Then, gradually, the temperature dropped. The flakes lessened in size. Soon they began to whirl slantingly into the tree-tops. By evening, the storm had whipped itself into such a fury that it became a raging, howling gale of horizontally-flying ice particles.
The five Barr pilgrims put on extra clothing, yet they shivered beneath the canvas of the prairie schooners. Sheltered a little by the surrounding trees and hills, the top-heavy vehicles slithered down narrow but deep ravines, which every mile or so slashed the trail at right angles. They bumped over corduroyed muskegs, tottered across half-rotted log bridges, and skidded dangerously on sidehills—only the sharp snow-and-dirt tires which had been compressed on the wheels preventing them from slipping off the trail entirely, perhaps to overturn.
Above them the bare, slender branches of the aspens thrashed and rattled. Occasionally, a lone duck pierced the storm, tail to wind, speeding like a high-velocity shell. The horses' manes became matted with ice, and their coats steamed wet and glistening.
Hands grew numb till they were unable to feel the reins. English kid gloves were resorted to, but they quickly became sodden and useless. Sam drove one team, while Bert rode with the Traileys, to assist, so he said, with his knowledge and advice—on the well-known mathematical principle that twice nothing is something.
Chilled to the marrow, the travellers at last sighted through the storm the marquee for which they were making. They uttered little cries of thankfulness and returning good spirits. The rumour that one of these large tents was close at hand somewhere had encouraged them to try to reach such a welcome haven.
For the use of the trekking Barr Colonists, government marquees had been erected at intervals of twenty miles or thereabouts. This one presented a cheerful sight, standing in a small clearing, with a smoking stovepipe swaying from its roof, and surrounded by a dozen covered wagons, all rapidly becoming enveloped in a mantle of snow.
That a paternal government should have taken the trouble to erect a few tents for the sake of the brave people, who, leaving behind them a world of comfort and luxury, were about to colonize a great, new, fertile territory; and this without anyone making a noise like a ballot box, or receiving a commission on the sale of the tents and stoves, seems almost incredible. The Barr Colonists were too new to everything to appreciate this wonderful bit of altruism at the time, though in later years they often talked about it, and regretted that they had not been sufficiently thoughtful to express their gratitude in some way or other.
The jaded horses were unhitched and fed half a thimbleful of oats each. Then they were tethered to trees with ropes—so that they might tangle themselves into immovable positions with the knotted, greasy, shrunken things. Not being intelligent, like their owners, the poor dumb beasts were soon hopelessly fettered. There was almost no pasturage hereabouts. Only a few tufts of dead herbage, mostly weeds, showed above the snow among the trees. The stack of hay, which in the early days of the trek had flanked each marquee, was in this particular instance entirely absent, having long since been used by those who had gone on before. Not only was this hay fed to the teams stopping at the marquees, but it was tied in great bundles and carried on the wagons for use at future halts. Feed or no feed, no Barr Colonist really felt safe unless his team was tied securely to his wagon. The prairie looked such a vast and empty place to be hunting lost horses in—and it was, too.
The snow-storm raged during two whole days. About a dozen families were staying at the marquee. The men took turns to cut wood for the stove, each one claiming the last turn. No farmhouse, east or west, ever had a cleaner woodyard than this marquee boasted, which is saying a good deal.
The cookstove was a bit of an enigma to the English women at first, but they eventually discovered which was the firebox end of it. Occasionally, when one of their number slipped out into the storm to gather a few sticks of wet drywood, while the men lay about discussing the future, and thinking, and occupying themselves with similar feats of endurance, the stove would grow quite warm.
"I think I shall quite get to like these ranges in time," observed a little, acid-faced woman, as she slyly moved a saucepan to the rear of the crowded stove, substituting therefore her own full frying-pan. "They hold so many things at a time, don't they, Mrs. Jaundiss?"
Mrs. Jaundiss, a big, unhealthy-looking woman with a spotted face and blouse, said she thought the same, only with this difference—she squeezed a kettle over the flickering heat instead of a frying pan.
"'Ow would yer like ter be the Sultan of Turkey, Bert, an' 'ave abaht a million wives gettin' yer meals ready?" questioned Sam, nodding at the little group of women who stood round the stove.
Bert laughed and replied that one would suffice for him. Almost involuntarily he glanced at Esther, who was seated on a spread-out blanket with a pad on her knee, writing a letter. Although she was deeply immersed in the throes of composition, and therefore could not possibly have heard Bert's remark, a faint blush stole over her lowered face.
The phlegmatic Trailey had never enjoyed himself so much since he had dozed through two consecutive three-day county cricket matches the previous summer. He slept continually.
Having thus fortified himself, and stored up a large reserve of energy, he ventured, late in the afternoon of the second day's stay at the camp, to go out into the storm to cut a small sapling for the purpose of manufacturing two or three short pegs with which to fasten down the wall of the marquee. A draught was seriously interfering with his somnolence.
With great care he chose a nice, quiet-looking little tree about two inches thick, and decided, with admirable judgment, to sever its massive trunk at a point about two feet from the ground.
"Ah-h," he exhaled to himself, "this is the very tree."
Really it was, but, allowing his eyes to roam about, he caught a glimpse of another slender sapling, not quite so thick, which he bravely approached.
"This is better," he thought; "it is straighter."
He gripped the handle of the axe with which he had armed himself, and then turned his broad back to the wind so that the snow shouldn't blow into his eyes and spoil his aim. Next he lifted the weapon over his head, as though it weighed a couple of hundredweight, not swinging it too far back, because he found that his waistcoat began to tighten rather uncomfortably. His left foot was thrust forward in the most approved manner of woodsmen, and his teeth were set.
Down came the axe, but, catching a twig in its course, the blade was diverted somewhat. Instead of striking the tree and smashing the handle, as in the natural order of events should have been the case, he hit his foot.
Luckily, the axe was a new one, and, therefore, not over sharp. Also, a good deal of power had been taken out of the stroke by the twig, so Trailey only managed to cut through his boot, and half-sever his little toe.
Subsequently, Trailey was properly grateful for the axe's newness, but, at the moment, overlooking it, he launched a few descriptive words of a nature which he had never previously used, though, strangely enough, they seemed to come as natural to him as to the most fluent wood-cutter.
He promptly deserted the sapling, and the axe, and made his way limping and groaning to the marquee. Spots of crimson marked the snow behind him. All the occupants of the big tent who were awake, crowded round as soon as they learned what had happened. Much excellent advice was freely offered.
One tall chap, about fifty, with a pasty face and dark, smouldering eyes, said he had passed a St. John Ambulance examination when he was a lad at night school, and that the best thing to do was to get Trailey's boot off.
Another person, a red-haired woman with her black skirt all frayed at the bottom, and her whitish blouse a little out of her waist-band at the back, said that Dr. Burney of Manchester was the best doctor she had ever known for cases like that.
Mrs. Jaundiss demurred slightly. She said that Dr. Jones, who had attended her at her last confinement, was acknowledged by "all the women who'd ever 'ad 'im to be far the best doctor in hall England, say nothing of Manchester."
The red-haired woman thought not. She stoutly championed Dr. Burney. Equally loyal, Mrs. Jaundiss was very eloquent on behalf of the absent Dr. Jones. The argument rapidly reached the stage where they began to call each other "dear." With suppressed but quivering voices, eyes glittering, they were preparing verbally to lacerate each other, when two more women joined them.
In about five minutes, one subject of conversation blended with another until the discussion lapsed to a confidential murmur. In a designedly-careless tone, Mrs. Jaundiss stated rather nonchalantly that her "larst boy 'ad weighed nine an' three-quarter pound." The ladies seemed highly elated at this modest statement. Then commenced an enthusiastic comparison of the weights of several very remarkable babies. Fortunately for Mrs. Jaundiss, the red-haired woman happened to be childless—a fact which, of course, spurred the former lady to continue the topic. Only a very clever eavesdropper could have detected how earnestly concerned all the women were about William Trailey.
The unlucky victim of the accident was sitting on his camp-bed. Mrs. Trailey was bathing the injured foot. A big, oldish, broadly-built man, with flowing moustaches and an authoritative manner, most likely a superannuated policeman, had pushed everyone away, remarking officiously: "Give 'im hair, there! Give 'im hair!"
Meanwhile, Trailey was obviously thinking seriously of fainting, so Sam fetched a mug half-filled with whiskey from their wagon outside, and practically forced the reviver down the injured man's throat.
When Martha Trailey heard that it was a twig growing in a Canadian forest which had been the cause of the accident, she quite naturally conceived a violent dislike to the country.
"Now perhaps you'll admit what I've said all along is right," she went on, as she continued bathing her husband's foot. "Haven't I told you a thousand times that this wretched country is fit only for Red Indians?"
What with the shock, and the whiskey, which stole through his veins like essence of flames, William Trailey was feeling too light-headed to contradict his wife. His spirit was now in its natural element. Hand in hand with that of the renowned Johnnie Walker, it soared and soared aloft, skimming chimney-pots and mountain tops as it floated upwards.
Before taking final leave of the camp for a few hours, Trailey, with a slight return to consciousness, whispered to his wife: "You're nearly always right, m'dear," and then fell back on the bed.
This bit of generous praise from her husband, instead of being productive of affection, appeared rather to annoy Mrs. Trailey. Greatly ruffled, she retorted acrimoniously:
"Yes, and your very own mother told me not ten minutes after we got home from being married that you needed someone to look after you. 'Yes, Martha,' your mother said. I remember it as well as if it were only this afternoon. 'Yes,' she said, 'I know you'll look after my Willie much better than I've ever done.' Your mother didn't know very much, but she knew that. And you may thank your lucky stars I'm here, else you'd as like as not go and cut your head off. H'm! you can't chop trees down. Why, you can't even hang a picture. It's judgment on you. I'm convinced of it—for dragging us out here. And you never say your prayers now—or if you do you say 'em in bed. And we all know what that leads to, because I often do it myself. You're a wicked, drunken sinner. But you can't blame me for it, thank goodness. I've done my level best. Nobody can ever reproach me, and don't you ever say they can. I defy anyone——"
"'E's all right nah, missis, if yer'll only stop preachin'. Oo's reproachin' yer? Not 'im. 'E's too kind an 'usband fer that. 'E couldn't 'elp cuttin' 'isself. None of us blokes can use an 'atchit yet, so 'ow d'yer think 'e can?" Sam was uttering these soothing remarks whilst assisting to make the patient more snug.
With nerves badly frayed, and wearing a truculent gleam in her eye, Mrs. Trailey faced Sam.
"Don't you criticize my husband. How dare you! I'll have you to know he's nothing to you, you—you——"
"There, ma'am," interposed the little man smoothly; "I wouldn't use no bad langwidge if I was you. It's sinful, dam' me if it ain't, so yer mus'n't give w'y ter yer feelin's."
"Oh-h! you—you——" burst out the over-wrought Mrs. Trailey.
"Here you are, mamma; here's some more bandage material for dad's foot. Mr. Tressider and I have just torn it out of one of my old aprons," and Esther passed to her mother a roll of clean linen. Bert stood by, quietly looking on.
"Mr. Tressider, eh?" Mrs. Trailey's tone was very corrosive, but she accepted the bandage. "Of course, I forgot! It's always Mr. Tressider, isn't it? Mr. Tressider this, and Mr. Tressider that; it's never your mother who does anything, is it?"
"Mamma, dear, don't be silly. I think you are simply wonderful, the way you put up with things, and do everything for us, especially as you've never been used to this sort of life." Esther turned to Bert, partly to have another look at him, and partly to gain his support. "Don't you think so, Mr. Tressider?"
The look in her eyes would have made Bert say anything. Martha Trailey was applying the finishing touches to her sleeping husband's extempore bed, patting here, and gently pulling there, in a wifely effort to achieve the uttermost of comfort for him. When she heard Bert say: "Indeed she is, Es—Miss Trailey; she's really splendid," she kept her face averted. After assuring herself that her husband was resting comfortably, and when she had thrown an eiderdown across his feet, for the great, cheerless tent was damp and cold, she left him.
As her mother whirled industriously towards the stove to begin preparations for supper, Esther noticed that her eyes were sparkling with something that might have been tears.
The Traileys, with Sam and Bert, stayed at the marquee camp a week. At the end of that time, the snow had disappeared; also Trailey's foot was doing nicely. Nevertheless, that gentleman arranged for Bert to do his driving for him. To this no one objected, not even Esther.
Trails were now made doubly treacherous by the water from the melted snow. Every few miles one or other of the wagons sunk to its axles. Sometimes they wriggled from the grasping clutch of the sticky morass by doubling-up; but much oftener by unloading. And because of the strangeness of the tasks they were constantly faced with, and the weirdness of the methods they employed for their accomplishment, at least one-half their truly prodigious efforts was so much time and labour wasted.
About one day's travel, roughly speaking, from Battleford, they ran into a screamingly comic incident, one of the kind which anyone except an old-timer, familiar with the peculiarities of the Barr Colonists, may possibly pooh-pooh at, or quite likely regard as pure myth. It is no trick to wrench credulity in these sceptical times. Indeed, it seems the more people know, the less they believe.
However, an alkali flat of immense length, and probably two or three hundred yards wide, was the pastoral setting chosen by an inscrutable Fate for the production of a pathetic little scene. To the right were the rounded hills marking the giant Saskatchewan's mile-wide meanderings towards Lake Winnipeg. On the left, the perfectly-level alkali plain strung itself out to the limit of vision. In front, more rounded and wooded hills; and, behind, a gently-rolling country disappearing into black perspective, with a ridge in the foreground upon which grew a long, straggling curtain of leafless poplars.
Only their axles, and boxes, had prevented the greyish, viscid, oozy alkali (in consistency a sort of cross between wet concrete and quicksand) from almost engulfing not only half a dozen colonists' wagons, but the oxen and horses as well.
The animals had plunged and struggled till they could do so no longer. As fast as one leg was withdrawn from the sticky stuff—with a plop like a huge cork shooting out of a bottle, deeper and yet deeper sank the other quivering limbs. Enervated as they were by hardships and neglect, yet the horses were sufficiently alive to throw themselves about in terror as they felt themselves being inexorably drawn downwards. Fortunately, their bellies, empty as most of these were, prevented them from being completely swallowed up.
Thinking to find firmer ground, each driver had steered his wagon into the great, wide flat (which, by the way, it was impossible to avoid)—striking out a course of his own, only to meet the same sort of disaster which had overtaken the others.
Before rushing into the prairie's shallow, saucer-like, gluey plain, where it waited patiently like a huge trap beneath a covering of waving, reedy grass, Sam and Bert first did some scouting. With infinite care, as they thought, they chose a beautifully-camouflaged, innocent-looking place to cross.
So firm did the ground appear, that in the heat of the sun it had begun to turn snow-white with the absolute purity of its behaviour. In a very few minutes, they discovered that it was trouble of the most acute kind, and lots of it, which was causing the alkali flat to turn white, like salt.
They both steered their teams from afoot, a method green Englishmen invariably choose. The Trailey family were also walking.
As soon as the wagons sunk down, which they quickly did, and before the horses were able to do much struggling, Sam and Bert promptly unhooked all the traces. Finding themselves at some liberty, the half-starved creatures at once began biting greedily at the heaven-sent pasturage, all the while cunningly lifting their feet—like a cat does on a wet floor—as these were sucked in by the insatiable ooze.
Fifty yards or so to their right, another wagon was sitting peacefully on its axles. A man and a woman and a young girl seemed to be conducting themselves rather queerly—even for Barr Colonists.
"There's somethink up wiv that party over there," remarked Sam the sympathetic, as he gazed curiously at the little group. "Lissen ter the kid sobbin'! She's fair broken-'earted."
Bert, too, was human enough to forget his own troubles for a short time when brought face to face with the minor tragedies of fellow-colonists. "Let's go and investigate, Sam," he said, at once commencing to walk across.
A thinnish, weedy man, wearing tweeds of shabby aspect, was standing alongside a hole in the alkali which he had evidently only recently dug. Plainly he was not by profession a navvy, nor a sexton, nor of any other occupation whose chief tool is the lowly spade.
The hole in the ground looked as if it had been excavated by a very incompetent fox terrier. Most of the gummy soil was sticking to the man's boots, with here and there a little adhering lovingly to his face and clothes. The rest clung fondly to the spade—mostly about the handle. Another thinnish person, a woman, enveloped in a waterproof coat of a light fawn colour, was seated close by in the long grass, which hereabouts was profuse—a godsend the party's rack-like, black-and-white-spotted oxen lunged strenuously forward from their bogged position to investigate.
"Wot's up?" asked Sam of the little girl, who was convulsed with grief. The woman on the ground wiped a tear from her left eye, snuffled slightly, squeezed her handkerchief into a damp ball, put it in the pocket of her coat, then turned her face away, apparently to hide its misery.
"Fa—Fa—Fanny's d-dead," gulped the little maiden, who was perhaps about ten.
The man turned dreary eyes on Sam, who noticed, stretched out beside the freshly-scooped-out hole, stark and stiff in death, a young pig. The man wiped his perspiring brow with the sleeve of his coat and sighed.
"Yes, Fanny's gone," he echoed dismally; then, pulling his watch out and looking at it, he said: "Five o'clock when she left us—to the very minute," and his voice, a high-pitched, clear falsetto, went fluttering out into the void like a choir-boy soloist's tones dying away among the rafters of a lofty cathedral.
Catching the extreme solemnity of the occasion, Sam murmured:
"Pore Fanny."
Bert coughed sympathetically. Esther, who had also come across to see what was the matter, emitted a soft little sigh at Sam's words. She was a very tender-hearted girl, with the Englishwoman's love of animals.
"Wot killed it?" asked Sam, as he surveyed the fortunate pig, in the same glance instantly comprehending that "Fanny" was in reality a little boy porker.
"We do—on't kn—o—ow; o—h o-o-h," wailed the little girl.
"Stomach pains, I fancy," said the man in his sing-song voice.
A smothered blubber came from the woman on the grass, with whom, woman-like, Esther had been commiserating tenderly.
"Belly-ache," she vouched confidently between the emission of a couple of small-sized tear-drops, which just then trickled from her reddened eyes, grazed her chin, and fell splashing on her rain-coat. "I fed 'er reg'lar, an' all. In fact, she lived just like one of us."
A second, and closer, inspection revealed to Bert that the dead porker's ears were in a shocking state. They were mangled, and almost non-existent. Indicating them with the toe of his boot, he said: "What did that?"
"She used to play with Daisy a lot—in the box there," the man observed, and he nodded towards a little cage arrangement which was suspended to the back of the wagon by means of a length of rope. "Got a bit rough with one another at times," he added.
"Daisy's ears's the same," snuffled the woman on the ground.
Bert and Sam walked round to the cage to inspect Daisy, whilst Esther comforted the grieving females. Sure enough, the ears of the surviving piggy were chewed almost completely off.
"Started to eat one anuvver, my Gawd if they didn't!" Sam exclaimed. "Pore little bleeders!"—then, turning to the man, he said: "Buy 'em at Sarskatoon?"
"Yes—at a farm just this side. Five dollars each. And them three fowls there, a dollar apiece."
Slung from the rearmost hoop of the schooner-top, the sheet of which was removed, presumably to give free play to the relatively cooling breeze, for the day had been blisteringly hot, was a second cage. This held in close captivity three speckled farmyard birds.
"Plymouth Rocks," the man explained proudly as Sam and Bert stared up at them. What little could be seen of the birds seemed to indicate that they weren't very ancient—not above seven or eight, perhaps.
"Gettin' any eggs?" queried Sam, materialistic as usual.
"Not yet. My wife says they swing about too much. She says it makes 'em seasick. What d'you think yourself?"
"Shouldn't wonder," said Bert, thoughtfully.
"But when we get to our land," went on the man, "I think they'll give us a few."
As though in protest, a couple of the fowls cocked their heads up, and, with bursting throats and wide-open beaks, proclaimed to their ingenuous owner their unimpeachable masculinity in a pair of the lustiest and most competitive cock-a-doodle-doos that ever resounded across an astonished prairie.
"Does that uvver one do that?" Sam questioned suspiciously.
"No."
"You ain't alf lucky."
"Oh, why?"
"Them fowls wot just crowed is cocks—but the uvver's an 'en."
This piece of highly-informative news gradually seeped into the man's rather one-sided intelligence. He had been a draper's assistant back home in England—in Manchester, to be exact, where he had excelled in the manly art of selling calico, and corsets, and cotton stockings.
In those days—at any rate, it was so among the Barr Colonists—the very first thing a man did to his stock (even before feeding them) was to endow them with names. People with classical educations christened their animals Plato, Virgil, Psyche, and such like appellations. Those with biblical proclivities and training resorted to Pharaoh, Esau, Mordecai, and similar titles; whereas the common people fell back on Bill, and Sally, and Prince, and other every-day names.
Quite early in the game, Sam had remarked this trait. Was not their own team bearing up bravely under the burden of "Tempest" and "Kruger"? And weren't Trailey's nags nicknamed "Arthur" and "Freddie"? All round him—on the trail, in camp, at Saskatoon, had he not listened to vapid oxen being frantically inveigled with "Sissy," and "Carl," and "Seneca," and terribly frequently, also, with long-drawn-out strings of curses, which were fast dooming otherwise good-living young Englishmen to everlasting perdition? One colonist, an ex-schoolmaster and classical scholar, actually named his oxen "Aristophanes" and "Euripides." His explanation was that the former ox, possessing very long horns, was always hooking his mate, which, because of having no horns at all, was very docile.
"Wot's their nymes?" Sam asked of the man, nodding at the fowls.
The proud owner instantly waxed enthusiastic. "That one with only one toe on its right foot—you can't see it from here; well, that's called Phyllis, after my wife's sister. The other one, the one that doesn't crow, I've named Susie—to remind me of my first wife, the mother of my little girl there. That other beggar, the one with its eye pecked out, we call Amos, on account of my once having an uncle named Amos, who came home from the Indian Mutiny with only one eye. He was a canteen sergeant."
"Yes, it's very 'andy to 'ave only one eye in the harmy," observed Sam with the innocent manner of a conjurer about to produce three or four hundred yards of linoleum out of a silk hat.
"Oh, why?" demanded the ex-draper, biting hugely.
"Why, because," replied Sam, winking wickedly at Bert, "when a sodger wiv only one eye charges the henemy, it cuts the barsteds in 'alf."
Bert crumpled up in a sort of fit, as though he'd been smitten with sudden colic. "I never thought of that," laughed the other man.
"Very smart nymes you've gev them fowls," said Sam, whose face was as straight and as hypocritically solemn as an undertaker's at a dead rival's funeral.
"Yes, an' they all answer to 'em, too. You ought to see Amos there, when the wife calls to him an' says, 'Amos, you rascal, when are you going to lay us some eggs?' He just sticks his head on one side an' makes a noise in his throat like as if he was quietly chucklin' to himself. He's a knowing bird, that."
"Jus' like an 'uman bein'—eh?"
"Yes."
Sam was anxious to learn how an obvious town-dweller could be so well up in farmyard lore, so he said: "Where d'yer come from?"
"Manchester—but my wife's from Birmingham."
Sam adopted a slightly supercilious manner not at all uncommon with individuals of his class, who either openly or secretly, or both, despise all provincials.
Bermondsey, from its superior heights of cunningness, looked down scornfully upon poor little simple Manchester. "That there Amos cock'll be layin' eggs fer yore missis when Burning'am's a holiday resource," mocked Sam.
Bert grinned and strolled off to join Esther, who had apparently succeeded in diverting the woman's thoughts from the grief of an unexpected bereavement to more pleasant matters connected with their future life on the prairie, two hundred miles from anywhere.
"Yes, miss," the woman was saying, "my 'usband's goin' in for markit gard'ning. 'E loves stewed prunes, so 'e'll know all about clippin' branches off of roses, an' rodydendrums, an' things."
Esther smiled. She knew a little about pruning, herself. The Trailey's back garden wall in England had been draped with ivy, off which she often used to shave pieces in a worthy endeavour to persuade it to trail itself across an old-fashioned doorway.
"——And yer want ter feed that pig," Sam was advising the husband, who playfully commenced addressing a series of quaint, grunting noises to Daisy as she reclined disconsolate in the hindmost cage of the menagerie. "Nah it ain't got Fanny's ears ter chew at, it'll snuff it, as true as yore nyme's ... Wot is yer nyme, if it ain't arskin' too much?"
"Cox."
"Wot!"
"Cox. C-o-x, Cox."
For easily a whole minute Sam was struck completely dumb. That a man bearing such a name should be transporting two cocks and a hen to the distant Colony was too much even for sophisticated Sam.
"No wonder yer knows all abaht poultry," he said when he had recovered from the shock. Still wearing a look of astonishment, he added: "My nyme's Potts."
"Oh," said the ex-draper, "I have some cousins named Potts. Relations, perhaps," but observing that Sam's stature was at least a couple of inches less than his own, and that his features were far from classic, he said in a changed tone, from which all warmth had been carefully extracted, "it's likely to be very distant, though, if you are."
"I'm from the Big Smoke," returned Sam guilelessly. "Ain't got no relashuns up in the north, not as I knows of—leastw'ys, if I 'ave, they ain't farmers."
This rather subtle compliment pleased the Manchester man so much, that he called to his wife to ask where he might find a small crust of bannock with which to banquet the surviving pig, Daisy. "And you fetch that white stone from over there, Annie," he ordered his little girl, "an' we'll put it on Fanny's grave."
Annie broke out in fresh paroxysms of woe, but she obeyed. Then the future market gardener, spitting into the palm of one of his hands in the most approved fashion of English navvies working by the hour, started industriously to inter the porcine corpse. With fitting respect, Sam, Bert and Esther quietly left the stricken family to its obsequies.
Though the sun was rather more than half-way down from the zenith, the heat was almost overpowering. All round them colonists toiled and sweated; some digging in front of the buried wagon-wheels; some hooking two and three teams together in a long string, trying to overcome the immobility of a half-emptied load, only to see-saw their horses or oxen into impossible; knots; others laboriously transporting their stuff bit by bit on to hard ground, till their wagons were entirely unloaded.
The last-mentioned scheme was the one Sam and Bert decided to adopt. Systematically, they set about it, the ladies carrying the lighter articles, and the men the heavy goods. When the great gulf of the prairie night swallowed them up, with their heart-testing toil only partly done, they erected their tents and prepared a hasty supper over a cheery campfire; then, as the smouldering shadows wrestled more and more successfully with the fitful gleams from the dying embers, they retired to their roughly-improvised beds and almost instantly fell asleep.
Three-quarters of the following day was spent in extricating the wagons from the voracious alkali. Even after they had finished their own wearisome toil, and were all loaded up once more ready to proceed, they found it impossible not to go to the assistance of other colonists who were less fortunately situated than themselves. How could a lone man, no matter how willing, and possibly with no help but that which a nerve-exhausted and travel-satiated wife could give, struggle with a ton or so of heavy baggage across a bottomless ooze? A still more unanswerable question presented itself. How could such helplessness be ignored? Weren't they all penetrating deeper and deeper into the wilderness, where every vestige of help and encouragement must come from each other?
Unskilled, perhaps; innocent, maybe; foolish, possibly; but heroic without a shadow of a doubt, were these hundreds of men and women who plodded resolutely on to achieve a set purpose, with, in the territory where they were going, not even so much as a footprint in the grass as a suggestion of hope.
Almost continuously the stream of colonists and freighters dribbled along and into the morass. There was no other way round. The highly-deceptive surface of the long, narrow plain refused even to support an empty wagon. Not until weeks later, when the hot sun had baked the ground to the hardness of stone, were any colonists able to pass that spot without leaving some mark or other, either on the whitening soil with a spade, or on their own spirits with the experience.
Compelled at last to disregard their fellow-unfortunates' claims for succour, the Trailey party continued their journey. Another day's ups and downs brought them to a substantial steel bridge, spanning the Battle River. Crossing this, they climbed into historic Battleford.
Old capital of the North-West Territories; Headquarters of C Division of the North-West Mounted Police; Hudson's Bay Company post; Indian and half-breed centre, Battleford occupied a magnificent site high up on a plateau at the extreme tip of the acute angle formed by the confluence of the mighty North Saskatchewan and the much smaller, though swift-flowing, Battle River.
Such a position for a town should bring warmth to the heart of a military commander. Whether it has ever done so or not is questionable; anyhow, it most surely did to the hearts of the travel-stained Barr Colonists in the spring of nineteen hundred and three.
Here was their final contact with civilization, and their last opportunity for purchasing stores and other supplies. Here, for them, was the last outpost of the omnipotent and revered god Mammon, who is accustomed to hang out his sign in gold mines, oil wells, ammunition factories, occasionally in pawn-shops, but for preference in places called banks. Here was their ultimate chance to post a letter, send a telegram, buy a drink (legally, of course), or call a policeman.
On a much smaller scale, a tented camp similar to the one which was fast melting away at Saskatoon dotted the sandy plain contiguous to the little town. Considerable business of buying and selling was done. Banking accounts were opened with a surprising minimum of fuss. The Bank of British North America at this point made no inquiries about anyone's antecedents, though had they done so, such questions would have been easily answered satisfactorily, for plenty of the Barrites boasted pedigrees as long as your arm, some of them vanishing dubiously into mists of aristocratic illegitimacy.
A great deal of wealth melted away rapidly. Newly-acquired cheque books accelerated the spending orgy. Whatever else the Barr Colonists may be accused of, they can never be charged with parsimony. Many Western fortunes grew suddenly vigorous, their tap-roots absorbing sustenance from the open-handed spending of the colonists.
Sam and Bert borrowed an old buckboard from a Battleford resident in which to transport the limping Trailey to the bank. Sam himself disdained to patronize the institution.
"Wot's the good?" he remarked to Bert. "'Ere's my few quid," and he patted, somewhat affectionately—for he valued money, though a Londoner—a leather pocket on a broad, red-and-white-striped belt which encircled his waist.
The other two men were differently placed. Although possessing but a tithe of Sam's adaptability and energy, they were men of wealth compared with him. But the little Cockney was not the slightest bit envious. A sort of unwritten understanding existed between him and Bert, whereby the latter paid for the equipment, and the incidentals of the trek, in return for which Sam gave freely of his advice, labour and company—an arrangement so simple, that it not only overcame the disparity of riches, but proved advantageous in numerous other ways.
They rested at Battleford three days, during which time they were agreeably impressed with the little town's picturesqueness. The genuineness of the inhabitants was very noticeable. The come-into-my-web, God-bless-you-brother look of the hang-you-I'm-all-right, scheming salesman was here practically not to be found. The change was very welcome.
That indefinable something which makes the real old-time Western spirit such an admirable trait of character, was in the Battleford country seen at its very best. The total indifference to pretence; the unbounded, unabated hospitality; the almost complete absence of the sinking of individuality in the pursuit of wealth; the unrehearsed naturalness of the people's generosity—(not offers of it)—were all qualities which delighted the more observant of the colonists, who had but recently sailed away from an environment where the Golden Rule is admired—like a king's coronation—for the rareness of its performance.
Trailey and Bert spent money lavishly. They stocked up with every imaginable thing, regardless of transportation problems. With an astonishing display of diplomacy in one so young, Bert presented Mrs. Trailey with a pair of weighty, handsome, vividly-scarlet Hudson's Bay blankets.
"Oh, you shouldn't, Mr. Tressider," the good lady remonstrated. "A pretty penny they've cost, I'll be bound. They'll come in useful, though, if we get any more snowstorms," and she fingered their soft, fleecy surface admiringly. "Oh, my goodness!" she exclaimed, as she lifted the blankets up, "what a weight they are! My husband will never stop sleeping when he gets these over him."
William Trailey happened to be dozing in a folding camp-chair just outside the tent, in which position he was soaking up sunshine like an equatorial lizard on a rock. Every now and then he emitted a subdued grunt of perfect content.
Esther was learning how to darn a woollen sweater, with her mother as an acrimonious tutor.
"Dad doesn't need anything to induce him to sleep," she laughed.
"Sleep! H'm!" snorted her mother. "Your father doesn't sleep; he goes into trances. Look at him—he's in one now. It's my opinion this isn't a country for lazy people. We're rushing into trouble," she continued reflectively, as she pursued her train of thought. She was busy peeling some potatoes which that morning she had attempted to refuse at the hands of a generous matron of the town. "I can feel it in my bones. Poverty, and worse, is staring us in the face all the time. Besides, I dropped my mirror this morning, and broke it; and that's a sure sign of trouble. One of your grandma's pictures fell off the wall the night your Uncle Tom was born. You remember him, Esther, don't you? He was the one who turned out to be a journalist, y'know, and tried to write poetry. I've heard your grandma say many a time it was a wonder she herself wasn't taken. The midwife..."
"In which event," interposed Esther quickly, "you wouldn't have been here to tell us about it, mamma."
Esther's face became suffused with blushes at the turn her mother's remarks were taking. Bert was quite composed. He thought she had never looked so adorable. "She's mine, or my name's not Tressider," he vowed to himself as he watched the flush slowly fade from his companion's lovely, rose-petal skin. "What a magnificent girl!" he mused, his mind wandering back among the romantic incidents of the trek, dwelling with leisurely joy upon the charming intimacies with which such a life abounds. But, like a lot more bliss, he merely longed for what he already possessed. It was merely a matter of revelation.
A trifle reluctantly, they finally set off from Battleford. The trail was sandy and good, well-worn by the vehicles of wandering Indians, who went frequently into the little town from their reservations close by. Here and there long wagons had drawn faint lines in the pale, yellow grass, tracing the path of a more or less aimless endeavour in some dusky Indian's untroubled mind. Beautifully natural tufts of poplar grew everywhere. A gigantic arch of sky rested its pale-green rims on the rounded buttresses of the Battle and Saskatchewan River hills to right and left. Far away in front, the prairie, stained a deep blue-black with distance, and futurity, stretched illimitably, waiting with implacable patience for the arrival of the unsuspecting Barr Colonists.
Soon a smoke, like a thin haze, enveloped everything, seeping into the crystal atmosphere apparently from nowhere at all. As the party travelled on hour after hour, it grew thicker and thicker. It flowed in over the prairie as imperceptibly as did the sentiment of affection over Esther and Bert. This latter emotional phenomenon was fast becoming so dense that at times the victims of it were perfectly unable to detect anything but the light shining from each other's eyes. Without an inkling of the nearness of any special declaration; scarcely aware that the vague, pleasant fondness they had conceived for one another was but the enchanting prelude to something more serious, and therefore more risky, the pair of lovers penetrated deeper and deeper into the spiritual haze of a mutual attachment.
The second evening after leaving Battleford, the party camped inside a huge but distant arc of fire. All day the sun had been almost hidden by smoke, though the fire itself was not visible. A hot, dry wind from the south-west, which had licked up all moisture except sloughs and running creeks, rushed across their front like a gust from a furnace.
In the abstract they knew a little about prairie fires, as they did about horses, and organic chemistry, and Confucianism, and other popular topics. They knew, in a casual sort of way, that the long, dry grass was as inflammable as chips soaked in kerosene. Round their own campfires they had observed that tiny spots of burning grass had a queer getting-away quality. Somehow the knowledge had bitten into their unfamiliar intelligence that, on a perfectly calm day, a little patch of fire possessed the power of raising its own breeze.
"That's the surrounding air rushing in to fill the vacuum," Bert explained one day, as he watched Sam trying to beat out an embryonic prairie fire.
"That's wot you calls it, eh?" puffed Sam, who though entirely ignorant of physics, was energetically flapping at a widening ring of fire with the back of a shovel.
Bert picked up a bit of burning grass and calmly lighted a cigarette. "Yes," he said, "that's the theory of it."
Sam didn't seem to be particularly impressed. For a minute or two he leaned on his shovel like a professional road-mender, partly with the idea of catching his wind, but chiefly to permit him to utter something sarcastic. Meanwhile, the blaze was romping away like a train of gunpowder alight.
"An' wot's the proper way of explainin' a feller watchin' anuvver silly fool puttin' it aht?"
"Why, pure unadulterated ignorance, Sam, me lad," laughed Bert, who, taking the hint, at once commenced to singe a perfectly good pair of boots in an attempt to trample out some of the fire.
Trailey regarded the circumstance with his usual detached air of innocent unconcern. He apparently thought that some new-fangled, pyrotechnic display was being put on for his special amusement.
"Fancy it burning!" he ejaculated wonderingly. "I never knew grass would burn like that. It doesn't in England."
Trailey's constant journeyings through his own private wonderland were a source of much pleasure to him. His delightfully naive remarks amused everyone—except his wife, Martha, who flung showers of scorn at him, only to see it splash off his incorrigible dreaminess and drain away uselessly. He appeared to be everlastingly surprised that the country wasn't filled with buildings, and 'buses, and other products of a comfortable civilization.
Westwards from Battleford, the prairie resembled a vast virgin park. Judged as a whole, it was flat; but, upon closer examination, it turned out to be quite rolling. Ridges alternated with dips. Occasionally hogbacks grew into real hills, seamed with valleys and ravines. Nature's works were all well rounded and smooth. There were no jagged outcroppings, no splintered rocks, nor anything at all that suggested abruptness or impetuosity. Even the angles and corners of gullies had been planed off by Time and coated with grass. Obviously, much patience had gone into the making of this part of the earth; which is the reason, perhaps, why a good deal of the same attribute is needed in getting anything out of it. A few Barr Colonists comprehended this the first month—but not many did.
Patches of poplar and willow, bare of leaves, smudged the tawny landscape in every direction. Shallow swamps, filled with tangled yellow grass, which when alive had been three and four feet high, were in some areas almost as numerous as the bluffs. Pea vines, vetches, rose and wild fruit trees, native grasses of many kinds—all encircled the clumps of timber in masses of luxuriant vegetation, at this time of the year dead and dry as a cinder.
Within the bluffs, the trees were thickly interspersed with old undergrowth, some of it half-consumed relics of previous conflagrations. The whole land was one vast tinder box, with a wind, like an ever-ready bellows, waiting to fan into fury any little blaze started by some idiot with a match. There were no graded roads, nor railways; no ploughed land, no mowing machines, no grazing cattle, nor anything at all to contribute one jot of prevention to the spreading of black desolation when once a fire was whisked out of man's control. Two or three years' growth of grass covered the earth. It actually made walking difficult, so thick was the matted mass. Into this potential fire-trap went hundreds of innocent people, all of whom were utterly unused to a climate whose drying, parching wind was twin brother to the fire fiend itself.
Prior to the air becoming smoke-logged, the Trailey party had observed, rolling up into the sky in the distance, great columns of smoke, which stretched out and spread to the horizon with startling rapidity. At night, the scene had been one of grandeur. With the wind in such a direction as to carry the smoke away from them, they saw, twenty and thirty miles off, the fringe of fire leaping and licking its way along. Devouring tongues of yellow flame shot up like miniature volcanic eruptions as the masses of fuel-laden brush timber were consumed.
By the first week in May, the whole tremendous, V-shaped territory, situated between the two rivers westwards, was ablaze for hundreds of miles. Even in the open spaces, where the growth was relatively thin and short, the flames, fanned by powerful air currents, were three to six feet high. But in the ravines, and bluffs, and hollows, the enormous amount of combustible material sent them shooting up to a height of thirty and forty feet.
Though awe-inspiring, the sight was grand. The members of the Trailey party, from a sightseeing standpoint at first, afterwards as possible sufferers—were extremely interested in the spectacle.
"My word," Trailey commented to his wife, "it beats the fireworks at the Crystal Palace. What a remarkable country this is!"
Mrs. Trailey's sensitized organs had long since become aware of something burning. She had repeatedly stuck her small, thin nose into the air and sniffed. "Something's certainly on fire, somewhere," she said. "It can't be anybody's chimney—not out here, can it?"
"Oh, no, my dear," replied Trailey; "the police would see to that. They wouldn't let people set fire to their chimneys without coming down on them severely. The Canadian police are very efficient. Don't you remember Egerton R. Young, the missionary, telling us so in his lectures at chapel?"
"What! that man who dressed up like a Red Indian, and told us all about Canada, and then sold us a book, or something? H'm!"
"Yes; we bought one from him. "By Snowtrain and Dogshoe" it was called, I think. Where is it, Martha? Find it, my dear. I should like to read it again. It was very interesting, and told you all about ice, and snow, and things like that. It might be useful to us with all this fire about."
"You never mind Everton R. Flung, or whatever his name is. I gave his book away; I'm sure I did. Let me see—— Oh, yes! I made Lucy Flatt a present of it. She wanted something for a prize for her Sunday-school class, and she wasn't quite sure whether to get a copy of 'Josephus,' I think she called it; or whether to get 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' with gilt edges; so I gave her this Kingston B. Strong's book about Indians that you keep worrying me about. She said it was just what she was looking for, only she couldn't remember the title—the cat, her. I know if I were a Sunday-school teacher I shouldn't tell such horrible fibs. She only mentioned it because she knew I should give it to her—and so save her a paltry half-crown. It's disgusting, and her with a young man like she's got. He's a lot too good for her. I nearly told her so; but thank goodness I didn't. She'd only have told him, and then they'd have talked us over if you like. She's two-faced enough. I hate people who are everlastingly picking others to pieces. If I were Lucy Flatt's young man—and thank goodness I'm not—I'd enlist for a soldier, and go off to India, or Ireland, or somewhere, and break her heart. What ever he can see in her, I don't know. She isn't even pretty, let alone being a Christian. And talk about a temper! And her tongue! If that poor young fellow can put up with her, well, he's an angel, that's all. And fancy you wanting me to find his book! If you want to read about fires, read your Bible, and see what happens to... H'm!"
William Trailey had made a noise in his throat. He had snored. Nearly every living creature possesses some sort of protective device. This was his. They sat, not uncomfortably, atop of the loaded wagon, towards the back, beneath the schooner-top. Forward, silhouetted in the semi-circular opening, two figures leaned against each other like the sides of a triangle. They were Esther and Bert, the latter driving. Only six feet separated them from Mr. and Mrs. Trailey, yet the two couples were worlds apart. The other wagon, with Sam in charge, was ahead slightly.
Although thinking of something entirely different, Esther and Bert were discussing fires. The low rumble of the wagon did not interfere with their conversation, which was very spasmodic. The pungent smell of smoke troubled them little.
"What a terrible thing fire is," Esther said, withdrawing her gaze from the sun, which, like a great bloodshot eye, peered through the thickening haze from straight before them. Bert, too, had been looking at the fiery orb. In his own mind he had compared it with a solicitor's red wafer seal, clinging to an old yellow parchment.
"Our friend up there is a big fire," he said, glancing at the sun. "He'd be something of a catastrophe if he were closer, I suppose. The people in Arabia think so, no doubt."
"What about the people in Alaska?" laughed Esther, but Bert did not reply. Martha Trailey was knitting. Her husband was asleep, and, from the look on his face, unquestionably he was as happy as only oblivion can make anyone.
None of them noticed that the wind had changed its direction. The air was laden with floating particles of ash. The smoke grew suddenly thicker, completely veiling the sun. All through the day the wind had been driving the distant fires obliquely across their line of travel. Now it was coming at them head on.
Cautious Sam brought his team to a halt. A much more experienced man than he was could not have judged how far away the fire was, nor of its extent. He jumped down from his wagon to consult with Bert.
"Wot abaht it?"
"It's looking pretty thick. Wind's rising, too. What d'you suggest, Sam?" A faint roar could distinctly be heard coming down the wind. Every minute the smoke grew more opaque.
"'Ow would it be ter do some of this 'ere backfirin' they told us abaht at Battleford?"
"All right," replied Bert. "You know how the dodge works, I suppose?"
"Why, set fire ter the blinkin' grarss—over there, s'y; an' then move on to it when it's burnt." Sam waved his arm towards a bit of open prairie.
Old-timers at Battleford had warned them to be particularly careful about the smoke from prairie fires—not to get asphyxiated into unconsciousness, and then probably burned to death.
Where they were halting was a fairly favourable position—yet it wasn't. They were in the slough and brush country thirty or so miles west of Battleford. There were any number of tree-fringed water holes to walk into for protection from the fire. But sloughs meant grass, and much of it; and a heavy growth of grass meant large volumes of smoke, against which water was of no avail.
Sam had been doing some thinking. So had Bert, as far as that goes. His thoughts, though, were flitting about like butterflies, and, apart from love matters, were of no particular consequence.
"It won't be necessary ter backfire," Sam said, a new note in his voice. "Look at that!"
Flying embers floated through the smoky pall, which was now almost choking in its denseness. Hot gusts blew in their faces. A fearful crackling sound, mingled with a sullen roaring, beat down the wind to them in terrifying waves. Sam pointed at a glowing fragment of stick which had settled in the long, twisted grass a few yards distant.
After hesitating a moment, the ember flared up into a blaze, which crept hungrily into the surrounding grass. Slowly it devoured its way along, then suddenly one of the powerful gusts of wind which are so characteristic of the Western plains caught the fire and whipped it away as fast as a man could walk.
"Gawd!" muttered Sam, open-eyed. Other specks of flame were falling all about. Some merely spluttered and died out. All at once the wind howled like a fury, as it always does near a prairie fire. The smoke was suffocating.
"Foller me!" yelled Sam, refusing to be fascinated any longer. "There's the fire!" He pointed through the choking air. A dull, red glow lit up the huge columns of smoke.
Sam sprang aboard his wagon, grasped the lines, and then commenced frantically to inject some of his own excitement into his horses. Bert did likewise, feeling doubly heroic because of Esther's presence. The women were terrified, but far from panic-stricken. Sam had wheeled for a big, flat slough, which a little way back the trail had skirted. Headlong into it splashed the horses, dragging at the heavy load frenziedly, urged to their last gasp by their little driver. Bert followed. Crashing through a fringe of water-willows at a trot, Arthur and Freddie for once waived their right to get stuck, and actually strained and tugged till they were fairly in the centre of the slough, by the side of Tempest and Kruger.
"Jump into the water, Esther," cried Bert, repeating the order to the others inside. The jolting had wakened Trailey. He coughed a good deal, having been sleeping with his mouth wide open. Wonderment at the sudden and dramatic twist of events occupied his sluggish mind. Mrs. Trailey was moderately silent. A few "Mercy me's," soon taught her that it would be safer to keep her mouth shut tightly against the smoke.
"Thank God!" gasped Trailey fervently, as he clambered down from the wagon and dropped into the cool, thigh-deep water. His exertions had compelled him to inhale large draughts of furnace-like air and smoke. The ladies were already standing in the slough, trembling and terrified.
"Quick, Esther!—Mrs. Trailey!" Bert cried excitedly, as the advancing wall of fire bore down on them with frightful speed. "Duck into the water!" he yelled; then, climbing into the wagon, he dragged the tent—which was always kept handy for Trailey to recline on—into the slough, soaked it hastily, and flung it without ceremony completely over the cowering females.
A pair of luxurious scarlet blankets fell off the load with the tent, so Bert soaked these also, and threw them over Trailey.
"What about yourself?" called Esther anxiously—"and Sam?"
"Don't worry about us, Esther. Stoop right down into the water, all of you," commanded Bert. Sam had already pulled the other tent off his own load, and soaked it for him and Bert to crawl beneath.
The fire, propelled by a fierce wind, and fanned into a lurid furnace by its own draught, roared and crackled all around them. The slough split the blaze in two. The horses snorted and tugged to get free; then stood still, shivering with fear. Sam made one or two brave attempts to splash them with water, but in vain. He was forced to retreat. Almost suffocated, he cringed again beneath the tent.
The slough was oval-shaped, and was probably two or three acres in extent. Raging like ten thousand demons, the main fire devoured its edges, licking everything up in its path, living vegetation and dead alike. Tongues of crimson flame swept over the water, and columns of spark-laden smoke rose high into the air. Impatient of the slough's obstruction, glowing embers leaped the water and fell into the grass beyond, continuing their consuming paths ahead of the main fire.
Esther and her mother huddled together, struck speechless with the suddenness of the catastrophe. However, within twenty minutes, the danger had passed. Although patches of timber and thick undergrowth still burned and smoked furiously all around them, the prairie grass was swept clear.
"By Jove, Sam! sloughs are useful things, after all," remarked Bert when they poked their heads from under the tent's enveloping folds.
"Not 'alf, they ain't," replied Sam, inhaling a deep, smoky breath.
In a flat, toneless voice, Trailey stuck his head forth, and said: "God moves in a mysterious way, His wonders to perform," and then he, too, drew in a large mouthful of very welcome air. He seemed pleased to be alive, which, no doubt, accounted for the wonderful relevancy of his quotation.
Lifting the blankets off his shoulders, he calmly surveyed the smoking landscape. "Ah-h-h," he sighed, "wonderful!—wonderful!"
Bert withdrew the tent from the half-smothered ladies. "All's well!" he cried joyously. "The fire's passed over, and I don't think we've suffered any damage in the least—beyond a few holes burned in these blankets, perhaps; and one or two in the wagon-covers." He was examining the tents, and the blankets, and the schooner-tops, appraising the damage. Sam was at the horses' heads, comforting the faithful brutes with pats and caresses, and queer expressions of fondness and appreciation, like men do when no one is listening.
When Martha Trailey saw that the dripping blankets had been instrumental in saving her husband from the fire and smoke, she was greatly moved. "Oh, Mr. Tressider!" she exclaimed with (for her) deep emotion. "What a godsend! They've saved my husband's life," and she regarded first Bert, and then the saturated and somewhat soiled blankets gratefully.
William Trailey cast his eyes upwards into the smoke with a vacuously pious gesture. "His work, my dear," he murmured abstractedly. "You must never part with them."
"Part with them! Not for worlds! How dare you suggest such a thing?" Martha bent down to inspect the blankets more closely. With shining eyes and tender fingers she examined three or four tiny, brown holes which had been burned in them by drifting sparks.
Bert was secretly elated. He alone really knew why he had presented the blankets to Mrs. Trailey; although intuition might have whispered the reason to Esther.
Sam was unhooking a team preparatory to doubling-up on the other wagon. "When you've all done prayin' we may as well get aht of 'ere," he broke in irreverently; then, looking at the depressing scene about him, he added: "There's a lot of things ter be done yet. Wot a stinkin', smoky, black-lookin' ash-'eap! By gum, if it ain't!"
Bert saw that the ladies were experiencing some difficulty in releasing themselves from the slough's muddy bottom, so he told Sam to wait a minute while he rendered them some assistance.
"You hang on to Mrs. Trailey's arm," he said to the good lady's husband, who was still surveying with a sort of childish curiosity the smoking world around him——"and you take my arm——Esther."
Esther obeyed. She stole a shy glance at Bert's face upon hearing him call her by her Christian name. Something in her look made him grasp her hand, which he passionately squeezed thirty or forty times during their progress shorewards. Esther reciprocated, just sufficiently modestly to convey exactly the right message. Bert's heart pounded and jumped till he became quite dizzy with the intensity of his joy.
For a girl of Esther's calibre to return the pressure of his hand, especially when accompanied by such an eloquent avowal as that written in her lovely eyes, showed plainly enough where her affections lay. If actions speak louder than words, then Bert's silent proposal was answered by a joyous shout of consent. He was radiantly happy, almost to the extent that Esther herself was.
In the exuberance of his joy, he bubbled over to Sam as they extricated the wagons from the slough: "Congratulate me, you ugly little devil!"
"Wot for?"
"I'm engaged. It amounts to that, anyway. Esther loves me, Sam."
Sam slipped a trace off a whiffletree, then turned round to have a good look at his companion.
"Rushin' things, aren't yer?"
"We've cared for one another all along. I suppose the excitement helped things a hit. But isn't she a wonderful girl, Sam?"
"The blinkin' world's full of wonderful girls. Leastw'ys, London is."
"That's what I used to think. But I know different now. Esther's queen of 'em all. And thank God for prairie fires! that's all I've got to say."
"Gawd's bein' thanked fer a lot of things jus' nah, ain't 'e?—sloughs, an' blankits, an' nah prairie fires. Wot's 'e got ter do wiv it all? Ooo d'yer reckon ter thank when yer gets things like a broken neck, or a missis wot runs away wiv anuvver bloke, or——"
"Oh, shut up! you're nothing but a wet blanket yourself and a cold blooded heathen to boot. Haven't you ever had any religious training?"
"No."
"Or attended church, and listened to clever sermons, and all that sort of thing?"
"No, never. My guv'ner always told me ter be careful ter do to uvvers wot they did ter me——"
"What you'dlikethem to do to you, I suppose you mean?"
"All right; 'ave it yer own way. It all comes ter the same thing. But 'e was only a blinkin' cab driver, so 'e couldn't know anythink abaht religion. I'm glad you've got that gel of Trailey's, though; she's a good un."