There were only four colours in Nature the next morning—an azure sky, a few banks of fleecy white cloud, some unburned patches of fawn-coloured grass, and a dead, black earth.
"The world's in mourning; let's hope it isn't for us," observed Mrs. Trailey to her husband as she viewed the funereal landscape from her tent door.
The transformation had left Trailey a little bewildered. He hated such rapid changes. From the wagon-pole, where he sat combing his whiskers and trimming his finger-nails, he looked round him as calmly as any surprised man can look.
"My dear," he said, "it's wonderful."
Mrs. Trailey breathed disgust. "It gets on my nerves," she grumbled. "The other day the earth was white; yesterday it was yellow; and now it's black."
"It will be green next, mamma," interposed a voice from inside the tent, adding, with marvellous logic: "You remember what a heavenly green the country was on the way to Liverpool, don't you?"
"Remember! How can I ever forget it? Wasn't I born and reared there? How you can ask such silly questions, I don't know. Gypsies and Hottentots would be more suitable for this country, I'm thinking"—this with a contemptuous glance at the surrounding waste. "They wouldn't show the dirt—like Sam says his shirt doesn't; but I notice that's getting greasy-looking round the neck. Not that he doesn't do plenty to make it so. He's a good, honest worker, that little fellow is. Does everything before you can speak. William! William! Fetch me a bucket of water from the slough. And mind you don't fall in."
Sighing deeply, William obeyed.
"Don't you think Mr. Tressider is a nice young man, too, mamma?" cooed the voice from within the tent insinuatingly.
"Yes, I've nothing particular to say against him. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, of course; but he can't help that, poor fellow. This country isn't for that kind, I'm——"
"Hut, mamma; don't you think Bert will get on?"
"Mr. Tressider may get on, if that's who you mean—-especially if he is lucky enough not to marry a brazen hussy like most of the young women are nowadays." Mrs. Trailey paused, then continued: "And how long have you been Berting it, I'd like to know?"
Esther emerged from the tent and crept up quietly behind her mother, who was now stooping over a pailful of dirty dishes, and embraced her with rather an excessive display of emotion. As she stood up, the lines in Mrs. Trailey's face softened somewhat.
"There, that'll do. I know how you feel. He's all right; though I did think at first he was one of those educated know-nothings like your father says the Tories are always putting into Parliament. But I've changed my mind. The way he acted yesterday raised him in my estimation a lot. He'll be as good a man as Sam some day, perhaps—if he keeps off the drink."
"Mamma, he'll never drink again if I ask him not to."
"Ask him, then. And be sharp about it. But it's precious little you know about men's promises, young lady. Pie crusts, every one of them. Look at your father. Who'd ever have dreamt that he'd become a drunkard? A life-long abstainer, nearly. Why, he used to fly into awful tempers just after we were married, all because James Tipplin, the millionaire brewer, presented our chapel with a stained-glass window. There was a fearful to-do about it; and your father——"
"But, mamma, darling; Bertie cares for me sufficiently to keep all his promises. He says so."
"——And your father left our chapel and went over to the High Street Primitives; but, when he found that one of their trustees had a cousin who kept a grocer's shop with an outdoor beer license, he returned to the old place. Your father used to be dead against the drink traffic. He was the one they tried to persuade to warn the ministers not to preach temperance when Jimmy Tipplin was in his pew. But your father refused. They said they'd picked him because he was so full of tact. Tact! your father! H'm! What funny judges of men other men are. It takes a woman to read a man—a married woman, that is. Why, your father would have sold the Distillery shares his Uncle Toby left him if it hadn't been for me." Martha Trailey once more contemplated the scene around her. After ruminating for a little while, she went on: "But we've got them yet, thank goodness!—and when I look round at this great big wilderness, the colour of soot, and wonder what's going to become of us all, it's a blessing we have."
Mrs. Trailey's remarks here came to an end. Her spouse had toiled wearily into camp with a heavy bucket one-third filled with water containing some very interesting zoological specimens. Most of the Western fauna and flora, barring buffalo and pine trees, appeared to be represented therein. If there is any truth in the theory that man is distantly related to the lower forms of life, then the Barr Colonists must have swallowed a good many of their uncles and aunts whilst trekking from Saskatoon.
William Trailey set the pail down with such an enthusiastic thud of relief that some of the aquatic life slapped over on to his wife's hands, just as she was picking up a saucer out of the other pail to dry it.
Trailey wiped the accumulated sweat off his unwrinkled brow with his handkerchief and stammered a brief apology.
"Oh-h-h-h! Take it off! Take it off!" screamed Mrs. Trailey, as something resembling a miniature alligator fastened itself on the back of her hand. She was the sort of woman who found it very difficult not to become hysterical when she felt anything crawling on her flesh. If human beings are blood brothers to the worm, why does this abhorrence persist?
Esther, with marvellous presence of mind, pulled her skirts tightly round her legs and commenced to echo her mother's "Oh's." This display of filial affection and sympathy proved so soothing to Martha Trailey that she immediately stopped shrieking and merely continued to moan that she was being eaten alive. "Oh, take it away, somebody! I'm blood-poisoned! My arm's swelling as big as a tree already; I can feel it."
"My own darling mamma," sobbed Esther, throwing her arms round her mother's neck. "Oh, if Bertie were only here."
But Bertie wasn't there to slay the dragon. Romance missed fire for once. The redoubtable Bert, accompanied by Sam, was at that particular moment engaged in the much less spectacular task of washing his feet in an adjacent slough. William Trailey was there, though. Very fortunately, that modern knight had by now regained some of the strength he had lost through the exertion of carrying the heavy pail of water to the camp.
Although, as a boy, Trailey had been exceedingly ambitious to become either a mighty hunter of big game, or a butcher, he had never voluntarily killed anything in his life. Hating death with his whole soul in spite of the fact that a certain measure of business success in former days had been based on his rather harrowing suggestions of an early demise for the non-insured—he felt that something drastic must be done in the present instance, and that soon.
Martha Trailey was still shuddering and holding at arm's length that portion of her hand which she imagined was not yet eaten.
"Hold still, my dear," counselled her courageous husband, who, by means of a piece of thin stick, was vainly trying to dislodge the clinging slug. Then a brilliant idea flashed into his brain. With the palm of his hand he would crush flat the venomous creature.
"Keep perfectly still, Martha," he exhorted, and, before she could utter another wail, he smote his wife's hand with such vigour as pretty nearly to break the good lady's wrist.
Martha Trailey was just about to fall back swooning into her daughter's arms when she received this terrific smite; but the shock brought her very much to life again. Almost at once, she comprehended that it was her husband who was trying to do away with her hand, and not the slug. As quickly as light, she transferred her dislike from the miniature crocodile, now thoroughly squashed, to her heroic saviour.
"You cowardly beast! striking a poor, helpless woman like that! Aren't you satisfied with having ruined our home without being a low wife-beater as well? I'd be downright ashamed of myself if I were you. But, there"—abruptly changing her tone to one of commiseration—"perhaps it's not your fault. Your father was just the same. Mrs. Spreditt told me many a time that he used to treat your poor mother something shameful. She lived next door to them for years. She said it was through them quarrelling so much that her own husband spent so much time at the public-house. To think what your mother must have gone through! Poor woman! No wonder she died before her time"—William Trailey's mother had been carried off prematurely, aged seventy-seven—"But I shan't—not to please you; let me tell you that, William Trailey. And, heredity or no heredity, you're not going to bully me——"
"Mamma——" Esther commenced to remonstrate.
"——I've put up with it long enough," rattled on Mrs. Trailey, her anger fanning itself into a flame. "Ask Esther here if I haven't. She'll tell you. Your own daughter, too!—having to tell you your faults. I'd be ashamed. Thank goodness she takes after my side. She's a model, if I do say it myself. She——"
"Mamma! Why not let dad explain?"
"I only did what I thought was the best, my dear," interposed Trailey meekly. "Somebody had to kill the beastly thing. And even now you might get blood-poisoning."
"And you wouldn't care if I did. I know very well you've been wanting to get rid of me for years. I'm not blind. The trouble is——"
"Rubbish, my dear."
"——I've been too fond of you. But I'll go away. You just give me the money and I'll show you. It would suit you to see me go without a penny, wouldn't it? But I'm your wife, remember. Nobody would think so, though, if they knew the way you treated me. But I've got my rights. I'm no simpleton, if I have spoilt you. You—just—give—me—the—money, that's all," and, with this admirable attempt at a marital reconciliation, Martha Trailey dropped three large tears into the dirty pots.
Bits of fire still smouldered in the bluffs. The prairie was carpeted with ashes of burnt grass, which crunched beneath boots, and rose in a black, powdery dust. Clothes became permeated with it. The tramping horses and the wagon-wheels raised clouds of the stuff, and in the complete absence of wind it enveloped everything like an irritating fog. As the little convoy slowly made its way over the blackened ground, the men and women soon began to resemble nigger minstrels.
Fortunately, the fire, because of its speed, had left long, narrow strips of grass unburnt. Sloughs had turned aside the devouring blaze, which, in its raging haste to overwhelm everything, had occasionally blown itself completely out rather than retrace its course against the wind to lick up the patches it had missed.
It was upon these tiny areas of feed, and the coarse, rank, thatch grass standing above the water in the sloughs, that the hundreds of horses and oxen belonging to the colonists (and the freighters) had to depend for subsistence. A couple of weeks of this diet, followed by the new, sappy, green grass over which they positively went mad, put the finishing touches on scores of emaciated animals. In more ways than one, the scattered fragments of miserably thin pasture left by the fire were "the last straws" for many a dying horse.
Later on dozens of transport animals perished. Lack of care; the hardships of the two-hundred-mile trek; ignorant mishandling; swamp fever, and a feed ration entirely devoid of oats, put out of commission for a very long time even those which survived.
It was in the region where the Trailey party almost met with disaster by fire that the Rev. Isaac M. Barr gave final and complete demonstration that, although by profession a parson, he was by nature really a highwayman. He tried to corner the oat market for the benefit of the heroic colonists and their suffering horses. He bought all the oats available in the district at forty cents a bushel, and, without handling them, or even seeing them, left instructions with the vendors that they were to be retailed to the members of his party at one dollar per bushel. Such a modest profit must nearly have broken his Shylock heart.
By this time many of the colonists' horses were nothing but staggering bags of skeletons. Galled, neglected, literally dying through exposure, lack of care and proper feed, their ghastly condition wrung the spirit of one, Peter Paynter, from whom Barr had purchased most of the oats, and through whose yard the trail the colonists were following led.
Ordinarily a taciturn man, Peter Paynter's temper could flare up like a rocket, and die away as quickly. He was a true Westerner, and an ex-Mounted Policeman. When he deigned not to ignore the victims of his wrath, he didn't speak to them, he absolutely seared them. No man did more for the trekking Barr Colonists. He stretched his generous nature to the limit.
Paynter knew very little about religion, less still about theology, and practically nothing at all about the preaching of either. But his innate goodness was there all the same. It was like his skin—with him all the time; not like his Sunday suit, packed away and quite likely badly creased. His one fetish was the drawing in his mind, with a very sharp indelible pencil, a clean, straight line dividing right from wrong. This line put Barr well on the latter side.
The Trailey party happened to be camped near Paynter's ranch when the Rev. Isaac M. Barr (travelling light, with one companion and a big bag of oats) passed through on his way to Colony Headquarters. Besides point-blank refusing to stain his soul with the despicable oat deal, Paynter emptied his mind of its accumulation of bitter scorn all over the reverend philanthropist, very nearly making a martyr of him.
Barr was already beginning to look a good deal like a fugitive. He was taking everybody's blame, of course. That is one of the advantages of being a leader. In vivid language, many colonists had castigated him pretty severely. But Peter Paynter handled him pitilessly. The cold, steely eyes of the experienced Westerner read all the signs of the long trek. Unerringly, he gauged the misfortunes and hardships awaiting the colonists. Every wagon belonging to the party passed his door. The story of the struggle of the men, and the heroism of the women, was writ large for him. Mrs. Paynter squandered her foodstuffs, and her Irish sympathy. This generous-hearted couple stamped their name ineffaceably on the memories of scores of grateful Barr Colonists.
Over the oat transaction, Paynter dissected Barr into little pieces with his flaying speech. When the latter gathered up the bits, he found that there was a small fragment of his anatomy left over. Being somewhat at a loss to know what to do with it, Peter must have suggested that he make a tail of it, for immediately afterwards Sam and Bert saw him speeding into the setting sun, with something tucked ingloriously between his legs.
The little party covered the last lap of their exhausting journey without encountering any special mishaps. Beyond being bogged a few more times, they enjoyed pretty decent luck.
The lustre of their equipment was now entirely worn off. Their bedraggled aspect contrasted vividly with the gorgeous appearance they had presented at the commencement of the pilgrimage. In spite of Martha Trailey's almost fanatical industry, outer garments rapidly deteriorated; shirts ripped; buttons disappeared, and neat spic-and-span-ness surrendered to the stains and rents and general frayed-out look consequent upon such a harsh trip.
Faces had peeled profusely. Hands once soft and white had now become hard and blistery. Scraggly whiskers competed with uncut hair to see which could make their wearers appear the most dishevelled. At first they all laughed at the changes; then ignored them; then, as everything is distinguishable only by contrast, they failed to take notice of them.
The earth was still black. Even crows and blackbirds contributed to the prevailing tint. As they drew near to the end of the trek, an occasional white tent could be seen far across the plain, looking for all the world like a small sailing boat on a vast blue sea. The colonists were going on to their land.
Seven weeks to the very day on which the Lake Manitoba had left Liverpool, they arrived at the point where an imaginary railway bisected an imaginary meridian of longitude, and chosen by a visionary leader as the site for the Colony's Headquarters. Having the sky above them, the Rocky Mountains not many hundred miles off, and a good big slough full of frogs close by to drink out of, everything was now all right.
Although weary, travel-worn, sick to death of baking-powder bread, surfeited with tent life, thoroughly disillusioned regarding "rarnching" and all the rest of the cock-and-bull theories born on theLake Manitoba, yet no one was faint-hearted. They pitched their tents among the dozens of others whilst the rain, to keep them cheerful, fell down in sheets.
At least one thousand indomitable souls survived the trek. On the land which they had travelled five thousand miles to see, they were now as completely isolated from the world as a caravan in the middle of the Sahara.
The nearest settlements were an Indian Reservation forty miles to the north; Edmonton, two hundred miles west; Battleford, one hundred miles east; and southwards, the main line of the Canadian Pacific, more than one hundred and fifty miles away. Not a fence, not a road, scarcely a wagon track marked this huge, unbroken monotony. All round the Barr Colonists' reservation was a huge tract of country thousands of square miles larger in extent than the area of England, with hardly anybody in it.
The Colony was named Britannia. Whether this title was given to it because some exasperated lady had threatened Barr with a three-tined pitchfork, or whether it was on account of Britishers being so fond of water, is not accurately known; anyhow, the name, seeing that the settlement was a purely British one, was very fitting.
Pretty soon, at Headquarters Camp, with the intention of introducing a little variety into things, a number of the more discontented and disillusioned colonists called a meeting to decide whether to tar and feather, or lynch, the Rev. Isaac M. Barr. It is one of the peculiarities of history-making, that leaders always have to run these slight risks. So it was with Barr. Things were in a dreadful muddle. Flour was almost non-existent and expensive. The plainest necessities were either scarce or unobtainable. But there was a superabundance of 3-inch nails, and door-latches, which naturally helped things considerably.
Barr's genius for organization and money-making had long since deserted him. His fingers, which previously had grasped the reins of leadership, now much too frequently caressed the hard, smooth neck of a whiskey bottle. His brief day was over. Pestered to death by desperate colonists who desired some sort of settlement; absolutely cornered by others; despised by all; he feinted and dissembled to the last—then one night disappeared.
But there are several things Barr must be given credit for. Undoubtedly his original intentions were honest. He was quite entitled to make money out of the scheme. People who work for nothing are not so plentiful. Then he chose a fine stretch of fertile country for his Colony. Finally, no Barr Colonist, who is worth taking any notice of at all, ever said he regretted joining the movement, with its unforgettable experiences of humour and pluck. As a corollary, it may be mentioned that no man living could have been a perfect success as the leader of such a crowd as the Barr Colonists were at the start—not unless he could have enforced a sort of army discipline, with King's Regulations and sergeant-majors, and all the rest of the charming enactments devised for making rational men do what they don't wish to do.
Luckily, neither Trailey nor Bert had subscribed much money to Barr's schemes for founding a new Jerusalem in the great North-West. A few stray guineas handed over towards the founding of a community hospital comprised their total speculation. Nearly everyone bought shares in this particular venture, for the thought of being stricken by illness out in that vast loneliness was a very disquieting one. But these were the days before halitosis, and pyorrhea, and appendicitis had begun to ravage humanity; so, except for a little dandruff and falling hair, caused by the mental strain of contriving to get something to eat, the colonists were almost free from disease. Trailey and Bert wrote off their trifling losses, leaving to the men whom Barr was less clear with, the task of bringing him to justice, and deciding what kind of lingering torture would be most acceptable to him.
The Rev. George Exton Lloyd—ultimately Bishop of Saskatchewan, and after whom Lloydminster, the Barr Colony town, is named—when coming through Battleford was, by a moderately representative meeting of colonists, invested with authority to lead that remnant of the party which craved to be led.
The mechanized world of business lost a good dynamo when Mr. Lloyd entered the church. Unfortunately for many of the run-down colonists, he was connected to their power scheme too late. Moreover, Britishers are not very keen on communistic ideals and faiths, even with masterful prophets as guides. Most of Barr's plans were too impracticable in any case; and, as a help to their total disintegration, the seeds of individualism planted in the temperaments of the colonists back in Britain now began to sprout and grow.
A few gregarious spirits for a long time fluttered round the altar candles, revelling in the rituals and ceremonies of the inner office shrine, and basking in the fierce white light shed by the new leader. The great majority of the colonists, though, were heartily sick of all guidance, except that provided by what they supposed was their own rugged common-sense. These took firm hold of their courage, scattered themselves over an expanse of prairie half as large as Wales, and without further fuss commenced tinkering with that delightful hobby known as the taming of homesteads.
The smash-up of Barr's schemes left his very personal followers high and dry. The worthier ones went farming. Some drifted into business. The sycophants, the satellites, the rump administrators, hung around Headquarters Camp for a few months, then vanished—some fairly slowly, like smoke on a calm evening; others swiftly, like jets of steam in a high wind.
At this period in Canada's political history, the government was lucky enough to possess the allegiance of large numbers of faithful followers. From among these loyal disciples, several men were nominated to administrative positions at Barr Colony Headquarters. One big, fat, short-necked man had been picked for the rather important post of agricultural adviser. Several men were deputed to teach the famous Barr Colonists the secrets of farming. This person was one of them. His grandfather, and father, together with many uncles and cousins, had all been staunch supporters of the only true political faith. With these unique qualifications to recommend him, he easily secured one of the coveted positions.
It is difficult to imagine what would have been the plight of the tenderfoot colonists had they been deprived of the services of this great man, who, in ordinary life, before the extremely efficient Canadian patronage system miraculously perceived in him the germs of a future farm genius, had been employed by various companies "down east" as an itinerant night watchman.
He resided in a tent which was situated next to that occupied by Sam and Bert. In order to accomplish something, so that he might be able to report the miracle in his official diary, this singularly-gifted farming expert suggested accompanying the Trailey party on a trip to find and inspect their land. Time was hanging very loosely on his hands.
After, with delightful tact, persuading a colonist who was located near Headquarters Camp that his plough handles weren't meant to be used as shafts, he had settled back to enjoy a well-merited interval of leisure, and had made himself thoroughly comfortable in his wedge-shaped tent. He hobbled his horses and turned them loose; built himself a permanent bedstead; gave a hard-up settler a dollar to dig a trench round his tent; made himself a mosquito veil—which also served to strain the bugs out of his drinking water—and altogether conducted himself like a very wise man. But even political heelers sometimes crave a change from doing nothing. Running into Bert one evening, he said:
"We'll hunt your land in the morning, if you like. Empty one of your wagons, and we'll go in that. Take the cover off, though." This political prodigy had no intention of allowing himself to be branded as a greenhorn, which travelling with a schooner-top might have done.
Bert agreed enthusiastically and said he would tell the others.
A careful examination of the map showed that the "bit of land" allotted to Sam and Bert by Barr aboard the S.S.Lake Manitobawas about ten miles due north of camp. The Barr Colony Headquarters Camp was located on a south-west quarter of the school section—one-half mile north from where the Lloydminster post-office now stands.
Trailey had often said he should "take up" one of the farms adjoining Sam's and Bert's. Upon learning of the proposed land-hunt, he reiterated his intention. There was already an improvised land office at the camp, doing a brisk trade.
"You 'old on a bit, guv'ner," advised Sam. "Don't be in such an 'urry. 'Ow d'we know all this land ain't at the bottom of a blinkin' lake?"
"Very true, Sam," observed Trailey, who had never before been accused of being in a hurry, and was so overcome by the novel sensation that he retired to his tent and fell fast asleep.
The Barr Colonists were traversing the empty country in all directions, searching for their homesteads. Some hired land guides; others went alone. In their wanderings, some found good farms, and stuck to them, afraid to do otherwise; in some instances, fearful of losing themselves, besides the land.
Excellent homesteads were quite plentiful, yet some men decided on the other kind. A glittering duckpond, fringed with unburned aspens, created a much more favourable impression with some of the Englishmen than did open, level prairie. Thus it was that settlers coming to the district years later picked up better farms than the original colonists themselves secured.
The politico-watchman-agriculturist, now turned incipient land guide, travelled by compass; but, neglecting to take into account its variation, and excessive cheapness, he promptly lost himself. No one can know everything, of course. The ladies had come along to see the sights.
"You're not going to leave me, William," Mrs. Trailey had said when her husband suggested that she stay at the camp and rest. "I want to see where I'm going to spend the balance of my days," and she glanced comprehensively about her, smiling sardonically.
About four or five hours of meandering in a more or less northerly direction, the guide, who was driving the team, in endeavouring to discover his whereabouts, accidentally ran across a survey mound with an iron stake in it. He jumped down to inspect it.
"Fine hay!" he exclaimed, as he read the identification marks on the little tin plate and compared them with his map; "we're only eleven miles from your land," and he was so overjoyed, presumably to find himself still in Canada, that he suggested they should stay where they were for dinner.
Trailey always anticipated his meals rather longingly. He said he thought the suggestion was a very clever one, but upon Martha Trailey informing them that no provisions had been brought along, the guide was so disappointed that he spat out his chew of tobacco in mistake for the juice.
"Wot abaht it nah?" questioned Sam, who wanted to be moving.
The ex-watchman ignored the remark. "Don't Englishmen never eat?" he asked, helping himself to a fresh chew.
Looking very pathetic, Trailey was apparently too broken-hearted to say anything. The loss of a meal was the very worst catastrophe that could happen to him. Martha flashed a withering glance at her husband and said in what she probably thought was a whisper:
"So he thinks this is a picnic, does he? Why don't you speak up like a man and tell him we aren't trapesing all over this wilderness for the joy of it? We've come to see our land, not to get lost. You could have lost us, without bringing him along. We're a pack of fools to come out with a man who can't find his way in his own country. Why, even the rats are laughing at us"—Mrs. Trailey indicated a gopher which sat up cheekily and squeaked at them; then, with an indescribably contemptuous gesture, she regarded the lost guide, who stood at the corner post, a few yards away, and said: "God help Canada if there are many men like him working for it." With this heart-felt invocation on behalf of a heeler-ridden country, she picked one of her husband's loose hairs from off the sleeve of her black coat and threw it to the bottom of the wagon box with great force.
"Hush, Martha!" whispered Trailey, who stood beside his wife in the wagon; "he will hear you."
"Yes, that's always your cry," retorted Mrs. Trailey, raising her voice. "Anything for peace and quietness. If you had a family of squalling children, and a wife that gabbled like two monkeys in a cage turned upside down, I could understand it. All you think about is to be quiet, and sigh, and sleep. You mark my words, you'll die in your sleep one of these afternoons. Men with short, thick necks like you've got always do; at any rate, they generally go off sudden instead of——"
"Hemay die of shortness of breath, lydy," Sam broke in facetiously, "but you never will"—then, addressing the guide, who was still standing at the corner post very much perplexed, he said: "Come on, driver; tyke us 'ome aht of this."
Everyone was hungry and tired, and sickened with the jolting of the wagon. The guide clambered aboard. Just as he set the horses in motion, Mrs. Trailey opened her mouth to utter some new profundity or other, when the wagon rather opportunely bumped over a couple or so of very large badger holes, the consequent shaking causing her words of wisdom to be reserved for a future occasion.
"We'll come an' find our land ourselves, termorrer," said Sam to Bert, who was blissfully unconscious of everything except the nearness of Esther, with whom he had been exchanging some exquisite silences.
Although they knew their exact whereabouts on the map, finding their way about proved anything but easy. Sam was for travelling back along their own wheel marks, but the guide, who on his step-mother's side must have been one of jolly old Euclid's direct descendants, said he could hit camp in a straight line, and thus save several miles.
Presently they stopped again to check up their position.
"Anyway, there's the sun," said the vocational contortionist, squinting upwards. He became frightfully meditative, first consulting his watch, then the synthetic compass.
"Yus, that's the sun," agreed Sam, cocking an eye at the dazzling orb.
"And it's three-thirty, ain't it?" added the guide, pulling his watch out again and surveying it abstractedly.
"No, it ain't; it's six o'clock," Sam contradicted, and he showed the other a large, handsome chronometer enclosed in a dust-proof celluloid case which any near-sighted person might excusably have taken to be an old-fashioned warming-pan. To settle the dispute, they appealed to Trailey, who withdrew a beautiful gold timepiece from his waistcoat-pocket.
"Ten o'clock," said he; then, holding the watch to his ear, with a sceptical look on his face, and a distrustful feeling in his stomach, he added: "Ah! wait a minute. I forgot. My watch has never gone since I fell into the slough."
"Wot's yourn say?" asked Sam, this time appealing to Bert, who was engrossed with Esther at the rear of the wagon. Breaking off in the middle of a sweet nothing, that young gentleman replied:
"Mine's no use. It only boasts one hand—the big one."
"Anyway," observed the farming instructor, pointing with a fingernail, which was in deep mourning, to a place on the map, "here's where we are now—fifteen miles north-west of camp. And the sun sets in the west, don't it?" He looked at Sam, who nodded with mock attention. "And rises in the east?"—Sam again nodded. "So at noon, it's due south, ain't it?" Sam ran his eyes up and down the guide's massive figure.
"Wot's due south?"
Slightly exhausted by the effort of making so extremely abstruse a deduction, the guide replied weariedly: "The sun."
"I thought it was the camp you was findin'," said Sam innocently.
"My God!" muttered the government astronomer; "don't you see what I'm a-tryin' to get at?"
"Tryin' ter get us 'ome, aren't yer?"
"Yes."
"Well, do it then; an' don't 'ammergag abaht so damn much."
The guide was shocked. He glanced furtively at the ladies, then back at Sam, and seemed so upset about something that he permitted a trickle of dark-coloured saliva to escape from the corner of his mouth and mingle with his stubbly black whiskers.
"Do you Englishmen swear in front of your women?" he asked in an awed whisper.
Sam laughed flippantly at the terrible accusation. How was he to know that his remark would offend the delicate susceptibility of the guide, who in his youth had received a very strict religious training? It wasn't Sam's fault that Bermondsey happened to be a hundred years ahead of Eastern Canada in the drift to Naturalism.
"Only when we come 'ome arfter midnight," Sam replied, "an' find dinner ain't ready"—then, noticing a look settling on the other face expressive of blank amazement at the awful degradation of Englishmen, he said: "But don't bovver abaht that, my son. Wipe yer mouf, an' don't ferget we want ter get back ter camp."
"Sure," remarked the perfectly disgusted heeler, unconsciously scratching that part of himself where thought is supposed to be generated; "I ain't forgot. I'm kind of figuring things up in my head." He concentrated desperately for a minute or two.
"Yeah!" he exclaimed suddenly, as an inspiration struck him. "I see, now. If that there hill over there is south at twelve o'clock, it must be over there at three-thirty. That's right, ain't it? And if south is there"—pointing a pulpy finger more or less in that direction—"that willow there must be south-east, eh?" and he indicated a clump of willow which looked very much like thousands more round about. "Keep your eye on them willows, young fellow, while I handle the team."
Sam did as he was told, till a gnat or something flew into one of his eyes, distracting his attention.
"We can't go wrong, now," the guide continued confidently. "By gosh! it's a good thing I remembered that trick with a watch—Giddap there!—ain't it?"
"I wouldn't care if we 'ad some grub," said Sam—"would you? If I was in yore place an' 'ad ter find me way abaht this blinkin' country, I'd ullus tyke plenty of grub along—bacon, an' cawffee, an' tinned 'am, an' pickled warnuts, an' things like that——"
"Get up ter hell out of here, you dod-gasted, flea-bitten ——, where d'you reckon you are taking us to?" muttered the driving prodigy below his breath. These gentle words were intended for one of the antiques in harness in front of him, the remarkable refinement of sentiment being made doubly commendable through being accompanied by a smart flip of the lines, administered with great dexterity and feeling. To Sam he made no reply, but he looked spiteful.
"Look! There's a tent!" shouted Mrs. Trailey presently. Pitched by the side of a "duckpond" was a lone, bell-shaped tent. It came into view over the top of a gently-rolling hill. The guide at once steered the team towards it.
"They're sure to have a wagon-track leading to camp," he said; "we can follow that. My compass ain't no good."
Sam appreciated the sense of the statement, especially as he had long since lost sight of the bunch of willow, or rather had exchanged it for another one, which to him looked much prettier.
"Yes, this is my land," said the owner of the tent proudly, replying to a question from the government man. "What d'you think of it?" Judged by his accent, the colonist was evidently an educated man. He unfastened his eyes from the surrounding wilderness and fixed them upon the face of first one and then another of the wagon's occupants. His well-cut clothes were on their last legs, but he seemed as happy and as contented as though he were on the beach at Bournemouth. His wife stood in the entrance to the tent. She was very pretty, with big, brown, jolly eyes. No children were visible. They both appeared to be as unconscious of their isolation as a pair of gulls might be in the middle of the Atlantic.
"Nice place," said the guide tactfully—"especially when you get it broke. First-class soil round them willows," and he nodded towards several thousand clumps of this hardy shrub, each of them with a root-crown as big as a dining-table.
"We think it is an awfully pretty place," said the settler.
The astronomical genius in the wagon swept with appraising eyes the acres of brush and slough which garnished the dismal vicinity. Very discreetly he remained silent.
The sun was luxuriously warm; frogs shrilled in the sloughs, which were thickly scattered about the district; crows swore hoarsely; numerous gophers scampered back and forth between the little piles of soil marking the entrances to their burrows; a delicate tinge of green was everywhere hiding the brownish earth, now washed clean by recent rains.
Sam looked round him interestedly. "Where are yer thinkin' of buildin' the 'ouse?" He knew this question would be well received. It was. Nothing was of more interest to the Barr Colonists. Happy hours were spent in choosing sites for humble, log shacks.
"My wife says she should like to be on that ridge." The colonist cast enthusiastic eyes towards a distant hogback. "It certainly is a magnificent view from there. We can see camp quite plainly."
"Andsome plyce," commented Sam; "an' very easy ter find if you 'appen ter lose yerself." The man smiled, a little wanly.
"Fine hay!" ejaculated the driver. "I knew I was heading right." He was enormously tickled, and grew quite jocose. So, after finding the trail, they wished the settler "Good-day" and set off again.
Three hours later camp was reached. They were desperately hungry; dead tired; slightly peeved and disappointed at having seen all the land in the country except their very own piece; much disgusted with amateur land guides, but nevertheless incurably hopeful.
After a good meal, which he had to cook himself, followed by a cigar, the ex-night-watchman felt very expansive. "Damn green Englishmen, anyway!" he muttered, as he opened his official diary and spread the report of his trip over four days' space. Then, remembering that he was a very patriotic man, and working for the good of his country, he made a rough note of his expenses, not omitting to charge for a dinner of which he had not partaken. To compensate himself for the great damage the abstinence had inflicted on his constitution, he modestly doubled the amount.
Next morning Sam roused the Traileys early. After eating a substantial breakfast, they all set off to find their land. The top section of the wagon box was removed, and their own two spring-seats, plus another borrowed one, were taken along for the sake of the additional comfort they afforded.
The weather was perfect. The cool, clear brilliance of the atmosphere; the stimulating early morning breeze; the entire absence of conventional restraint; the prospect of viewing their very own piece of land, all caused their spirits to soar with joy and hope.
The appealing strangeness of everything entranced them; and the almost unlimited freedom to go anywhere, and do anything, they pleased, filled them with a sort of youthful wonder. Even Martha Trailey, although she was inclined to apply the acid test to everything, was agreeably impressed.
"It certainly makes a body feel like bustling about and accomplishing something, doesn't it, William? What a perfect wash-day!"
Trailey pulled down the string, on the end of which he for the time being was flying his thoughts, considered a moment, then said he hoped she hadn't forgotten to bring food supplies along in case of accident.
Esther and Bert were sitting together on the hindmost seat, alternately sipping at the heaven in each other's eyes, and making joyous mating noises. The Traileys occupied the middle seat, and Sam, who manipulated the ribbons, the front one.
A surveyor who was in the camp gave them a bee line due north with his transit. "Fix your eyes on that gap in those hills," he said, "and keep as straight for it as you can. Then, when you think you've done ten miles, look about for a mound. The grass being burned off will make it easier for you to find one." This conversation took place atop of a ridge slightly north of camp. It all sounded simple enough.
"But 'ow shall we know when we've gone that far?" asked Sam.
The surveyor glanced at the team, and then at the men, and, after pondering a couple of seconds, replied: "I guess you will have gone far enough when you've been travelling four hours. You'll be within a mile or so of your land, anyway—unless, of course, you run into trouble." He was a short, merry, affable man, clear-eyed and burnt as dark as an Indian. So off they set.
For nearly four hours they drove through a country whose topography was about half open prairie, and half brush and slough. Their hopes sank a little. The district wasn't even pretty—the very first test most Barr Colonists invariably applied to their surroundings. A few early mosquitoes tormented them; big yellow, and small grey, brutes of a malignancy only equalled by their pronounced fondness for thick, rich, English blood.
The quality of the soil, or the nature of the subsoil, bothered their innocence not at all. What they desired above everything else was for their "bit of land" to be like a park; not like the Dukeries, nor like Chatsworth; but something infinitely more alluring, if only because of its freedom from artificiality.
Once Sam said jestingly: "Look! there's a rippin' plyce ter live," and he pointed at a patch of delicately-tinted aspens which were growing right out of a little gleaming "lake" upon which a pair of mallards sailed as stately as swans.
"Oh, how sweet!" cried Esther. Bert was just then squeezing her hand beneath the folds of her coat—a light-blue, satiny affair.
"Yes, isn't it?" echoed Bert, as he admired Esther's splendid profile.
"Ah-h," sighed Trailey, lovingly regarding a speck of egg-yolk which nestled between the fourth and fifth buttons of his somewhat wrinkled waistcoat—"it's over four hours since we started—it must be. Perhaps we'd better have our lunch and find the land afterwards; we could do it much better then."
"Fancy living there!" exclaimed Esther, "in a nice little bungalow, with a rustic summer-house, and a tennis lawn, and a swimming pool, and a few perfectly darling——"
"Kids to feed, and mend for, and wash," snapped her mother.
"——Lambs, I was going to say, mamma," corrected Esther. She was blushing like a rose. "Oh, how can people exist in cities!"
"How can they exist out here; that's what I want to know. Someone who is clever"—casting a sidelong, scornful look at her husband—"kindly tell me that. This isn't a page in a novelette, my girl, if you think it is. Day after day money going out, and nothing coming in; it's wicked."
Sam guided the horses round a clump of Saskatoon brush, and rose brush, which screened some freshly-excavated badger holes.
"You've 'it the blinkin' nyle on the 'ead, missis. People can't eat trees, an' sloughs, an' lawn tennis"—and observing the gladsome pair on the rear seat basking in each other's presence, Sam added mischievously—"nor love, neither."
Presently, after choosing a few more ideal building sites; and after murdering some of the more ravenous of the mosquitoes; and after Martha Trailey had lectured at considerable length to a very unsympathetic audience on the disagreeable topic of first getting hold of some money before they could spend it, they found themselves emerging into a different kind of country.
Swamps became less frequent; trees more scattered; wide stretches of undulating prairie spread out all round them; and, instead of the skyline being limited to a view over the top of smudges of budding red willow, it occasionally extended to enormous distances.
"I'm sure we've gone far enough," complained Trailey for the twentieth time. He was examining his watch again, and wondering, seemingly, what was preventing the hands from moving.
"All right, guv'ner," said Sam; "there ain't much daht abaht it nah. We've bin travellin' four 'ours and an' 'alf, ter myke up fer dodgin' rahnd them sloughs back there," and the little man pulled his own watch out and exposed it to the gaze of his admiring friends. "Hinglish lever," he explained, proudly, "made in Switzerland—bought it orff'n a Rushin' Jew fer thirty bob; runs like a blinkin' top, not 'alf, it don't. Lissen to it tickin'!"
Fortunately, the wagon was not in motion just then, so there was only the squawking of seventy or eighty crows in some trees overhead competing with the watch's rhythmic beating, which, besides being plainly audible, positively jarred the wagon.
"Splendid," laughed Bert; "but put it away, Sam, old boy, now it's served its purpose; it's a trifle too ostentatious for these surroundings."
With these playful remarks, and, realizing that further spooning was for the time being impossible, if not unwise, Bert gently disentangled himself from love's web of bliss and jumped to the ground.
Taking the risk of losing themselves on empty stomachs clean out of the hands of an extremely unreliable Fate, they first fortified themselves with food. It was a pleasant little picnic. Hard-boiled eggs, bannock and jam, and coffee without milk and sugar (the last-mentioned made on a campfire with water from a neighbouring "trout stream"), put them all in a very optimistic humour.
No wonder the minds of the Barr Colonists were filled with idealism. Only a few days before, not a speck of verdure had been visible anywhere. Now, almost magically, the trees not killed by the fire burst into leaf.
"Isn't everything lovely?" cried Esther, as she looked rapturously about her.
Beauty unfolded itself like the buds on the aspens, and as quickly. What in the morning, on the branches of the trees, were merely clusters of wax-like, tight-closed shells, were by evening myriads of fluttering leaves of the tenderest green. The long, warm days of a single week transformed the prairie from a blackened and ugly cinder to a delicate loveliness. Here was Nature in all its primeval beauty, its freshness and wildness still unsullied.
Robins called to each other from the swaying tops of trees. An occasional rabbit rushed across from one thicket to another in a wild burlesque of speed, as if it had somewhere urgent to go—then sat still for half a day. A pair of hawks, with motionless wings, circled in the agate sky. With a strange mixture of daring and innocence, gophers sat up like squirrels and squeaked defiance in thin, piercing notes. Egotistical wood-partridges strutted about, openly defying all laws of self-preservation—dainty bits of vanity; they must have known that feather ruffs were then all the rage.
After William Trailey had annihilated a very profound void within himself, he suggested, with his accustomed acumen, that he should stay and mind the camp while the others cast about for survey mounds.
"A good arrangement," agreed Bert. They failed to remember that it was quite safe to leave their stuff unguarded, seeing that for hundreds of miles around them there was scarcely a soul; but the habits of civilization, which numbers theft among its minor attributes, still persisted.
So Sam set off in one direction, and Mrs. Trailey, very gingerly, in another; whilst Trailey, as arranged, minded the horses and the other things with dreamful fidelity. Esther and Bert started out separately, but, finding solitude very inimical to the discovery of corner stakes, they quickly came together again, sat down, said what a lovely day it was, and then commenced a dialogue packed full with hidden meanings.
Very soon a shrill halloo from the direction in which Mrs. Trailey had gone brought Sam hurrying towards her.
"Here's one," she said, pointing to a burnt stick which jutted up from the ground among a number of large-sized badger holes.
"That ain't a corner post, missis. Them post-s they put rahnd these farms is made of iron, wiv a piece of tin on 'em."
"Ridiculous, Sam!" retorted Mrs. Trailey. "How can a post be made of iron?"
"Don't know, ma'am, but that bit of wood ain't wot we're lookin' for."
The task they had set themselves was not unlike the searching for a nest in a ten-acre field. The odds were against them. Nevertheless, it was the only method they could use, apart from securing the services of a competent surveyor, or land guide.
Before long, corner posts having steadfastly refused to show themselves, Sam wandered along to confer with Bert. Clearing his throat loudly to signal his approach, he came upon the love-smitten pair round the bend of a poplar bluff. They were apparently absorbed in watching the antics of a couple of crows building a nest of sticks in one of the trees of a wood opposite.
"We can't find no blinkin' corner post-s," said Sam—"can you?"
"No," replied Bert, with a very straight face, "we've had no luck at all. What d'you suppose we'd better do?—move on a little farther?"
Sam thought a moment. "Can't do nothink else, I suppose. We—— Hey! Wot's this!" He stood looking down at a big, square hole which had obviously at some time or another been excavated by a man with a spade.
"What's what?"
"Why, this 'ole," returned Sam, pointing to a square, grass-grown depression at his feet. There were three similar ones to match it, all geometrically placed and equidistant.
The lovers stood up. Looking at the knoll upon which he and Esther had been sitting, Bert burst out laughing.
"Why, it's a bally survey mound, dash my wig if it isn't; and we've actually been sitting on it all the time. There's the stake—see!"
Esther was so delighted that she had to lean against her lover for support. "How lucky!" she said sweetly. "It may be the corner of your land, Bertie—our land," and she gently squeezed her companion's arm as she added: "Wouldn't it be splendid to think of those dear little crows guiding us to it? It would be quite like Elisha—or Joshua, I forget which—being fed by the ravens, wouldn't it, Sam?" Esther turned to Sam, smiling happily.
Sam had a vague idea that she was referring to something in the Bible, about which he possessed but hazy notions. All he really knew about the good book was that he had once seen one of his acquaintances passionately kiss a copy in a police court, and then swear his name was Johnson when he knew for a fact his last name had been Smith.
The pair of crows, boasting even less Biblical knowledge than the little Cockney did, screamed and chattered with rage at being molested in their house-building activities. Bert stooped down and read the figures on the little tin plate, which was pierced by the iron survey stake, and then inspected a map he had pulled from his pocket.
"We are only a couple of miles from our land, Sam. That's a bit of good luck, eh? You must have driven the team almost due north this morning. Fancy that blighter yesterday taking us all over creation!"
"'Ow abaht goin' the uvver two miles?"
"Oh, we can guess at that near enough. The land is due north from here. It will be in that direction." Bert glanced quickly at the sun, then pointed to where the prairie spread out, beyond a few scattered bluffs, into a huge, open country. Through the openings between the trees, the vista seemed to extend over the edge of the world. They returned to their camp to consult with Trailey. After communing with the spirits, that gentleman would very likely be in excellent fettle for making some useful suggestions. Except in matters to do with the party's commissariat, his innocuous advice was never heeded by the others, although for courtesy's sake he was always consulted.
The mosquitoes were playing terrible havoc with him, yet he still slept. He was flat on his back. A handkerchief covered his face, and his thick, podgy hands were clasped across his waistcoat. Where the handkerchief rested on his nose was the spot chosen by three or four very intelligent mosquitoes as an ideal place to drill for blood. Others had taken a keen fancy to his white, smooth wrists; yet others, the obtuse ones, to his beefy ankles decked out in home-knit socks of rugged texture.
"Wake up, dad!" called Esther to her beloved parent. She gently drew the handkerchief off his face. "We've almost found the land!"
Trailey opened his eyes, stared at the vivid blue sky above him, sat up, blinked a few times, then slowly came to life.
"Where are we, my dear?" he yawned, as he unconsciously attacked his wrists with his fingernails, from which operation he appeared to derive exquisite pleasure. Then he felt of his nose.
"Can you see anything wrong with my nose, Esther? I've been dreaming I was tied down fast in a beehive."
"The mosquitoes have bitten you, dad, that's all," laughed Esther. "It'll be better when it's swelled, and it's doing that now. Pain always subsides after swelling. But, come along, Sam's getting the horses ready, and I'm going to pack up." Assisted by Bert, Esther began to clear away the remains of the banquet.
"By Jove! these bites are painful, Esther; and the itching is maddening," groaned Trailey, scratch his wrists and ankles vigorously.
"That shows they're getting better, dad," laughed Esther, with that perfect sympathy for which very young women are noted. Curiously, she herself was not the slightest bit bothered by the mosquitoes.
"I hope it does," said Trailey miserably. "Have we anything I could put on the bites, my—— Oh! here's your mother; she'll know what to do!"
Martha Trailey, red-faced and irritable, strode into camp.
"It serves you right, you lazy good-for-nothing, you." She had obviously overheard the few last remarks. "Here we've been walking our legs off while you've been fast asleep. Don't deny it!"—Trailey half-opened his mouth to yawn—"I can always tell when you are going to lie. Just fancy a man ever dreaming of lying to his own wife! I'd sooner have a man who comes home late at night than I'd have a liar. Oh, dear, I wonder why it should always be poor me who gets the trouble! Other women's husbands may drink on the sly, but they never lie to their wives, like you were just going to do to me. Mrs. Lightfoot-Mott, who lived next door to us on the Boulevard, said her husband had never once told her a lie. There was a nice man for you! Quiet, unassuming, took his children out for walks on Sundays, thought the world of his wife, and never drank. He simply worshipped money, though. And wasn't she a cat! Tattle! You couldn't believe a single word she said. And she'd no more idea of how to dress her children than——"
Neither had William Trailey any more intention of lying to his wife than he had of going into the diplomatic service. He was much too distressed by his bites to pay a great deal of attention to what she was saying. Having no settled abode was fast making Martha Trailey unbearably fretful. With no home to scrub, and wash, and cover up with old newspapers from the dirt, she was as unhappy as a cat with sticky fur.
Trailey did an unusual thing for him. He got up in the middle of his wife's speech and abruptly walked away to the imitation trout stream, where he began diligently to bathe his nose and wrists and ankles, an occupation from which he extracted some temporary relief.
Sam soon put the horses in the wagon, and, after everything was loaded up, drove over to the recently-discovered survey mound.
Here the problem of correctly striking the course of the final lap presented itself. A little deviation, a very slight overstepping of the mark, or an under-estimation of the distance, might cause them endless trouble. Bert's brow clouded. Esther was alarmed.
"What's the matter, darling?" she whispered. "You don't feel ill, do you?"
He had already given the present matter some hasty consideration. Since discovering the corner stake, he had compelled his brain to focus itself on the devising of a way of them travelling a farther two miles with as little error as possible. He would much rather have amused himself with his charming companion, and left the task to Sam, but driving the horses kept the latter sufficiently busy. Besides, there was a smattering of geometry needed now.
"Three thousand five hundred and twenty yards from here is our south-east corner, eh, Sam?" The south half of section thirty-six, township fifty-one, range one, west of the fourth meridian, was the "bit of land" Barr had generously allotted to them aboard the S.S.Lake Manitobain mid-Atlantic.
Sam nodded and looked tremendously erudite. Bert said: "How would it be to try that surveyor's dodge with the wagon-wheel—counting the revolutions, y'know?"
Sam remembered hearing about this experiment at Headquarters, but he was very foggy regarding it, so he continued looking wise. Bert pondered.
"I wonder what the exact circumference of this hind wheel is. Got a tape measure anywhere, Esther?"
Mrs. Trailey said her tape measure was half-way down one of the packing-cases, back at the camp. Esther said she was so sorry not to have one, but would a hairpin be of any use. Trailey sighed and sat down on a knoll to rest. Bert stood beside the wagon. He knew he was approximately six feet tall, so he said to Sam, pulling off his cap: "How far from the top of my head is the top of the wheel?"
"Abaht a couple of foot," replied Sam, looking up and down between the crown of Bert's blonde head, and the wheel's rim.
"Must be a four-foot wheel, then," said Bert. "Standard size, probably. Good." After a little mental arithmetic, which resolved into nothing but a fuzz in his head, he worked out an abstruse problem on the back of an envelope. "That's four yards round the wheel. Four into thirty-five hundred and twenty, goes—what? Eight hundred and eighty. That's it, Sam."
"Wot are yer reck'nin'?"
"Nothing," muttered Bert, checking his figures carefully.
"Thought so. 'Ello! Wot's the matter wiv the ole man!" Everybody turned to look at William Trailey, who was enormously agitated about something.
"Martha! Martha! Come and help me," he moaned. "Oh, be quick! Millions of insects are crawling up my legs. I'm alive with them."
Trailey had merely fallen asleep on an ant-hill. Swarms of big black ants with wicked-looking red heads crept all over him. Nothing like this had ever come their way before. The little brutes were evidently debauched. Trailey grasped bunches of his trousers, and his waistcoat, in his agony, only to release them for fresh grips elsewhere.
"I'm alive! I'm alive!" he groaned in horror. "What's the best thing to do, Martha? They're all inside my vest, under my arms, and crawling up—ugh-h-h-h—my back," he shuddered.
"Oh, what can I do?" cried Mrs. Trailey, as she tore his coat off, and then his waistcoat, and inserted her hand down inside the back of his shirt, in a noble—though exceedingly timorous—attempt to clutch the voracious ants out in handfuls. Meanwhile her husband was becoming frantic, chiefly as a result of the frightful, crawling sensation. The little beasts had dispatched scouts to explore this monumental acquisition of food. These it was which had about reached the victim's collar-bone, and were making preparations for entering his whiskers.
Esther brought her singular presence of mind to the rescue as usual. Approaching quite near to her tortured sire, she made several suggestions, some sensible, but most of them idiotic; then she saw an ant on her ankle. Abandoning her father to his fate, she dithered four times, screeched, pointed to her foot, called on Bert to save her, saw that her lover was extremely well-placed for her reception, then calmly closing her eyes fell back into his willing arms.
In spite of every effort to defeat the ants, Mrs. Trailey was beaten. She acknowledged it.
"I can't do any more for you, William," she sobbed—"unless we make a fire and throw you on it. But it's judgment on you, you may depend. It's an omen. You'll be this way all your life—on and off; you see if you're not. It's a plague on you for your wickedness," and Mrs. Trailey picked two ants from her tortured husband's neck courageously, threw them on the ground savagely, and then stamped on them. "There, you horrible little brutes," she uttered from behind clenched teeth, "that finishes you."
But Trailey's lucky star had only hidden itself behind a fleeting cloud. Sam jumped down from the wagon, and took charge of the situation.
"Watch the 'orsis," he commanded Bert, "an' you, ma'am, get aht of the way, please," then, grasping the distracted Trailey's arm, and assisting him to his feet, he said sympathetically: "Come on, guv'ner; come wiv me," and off they made for a hidden slough, of which there were plenty about, where he stripped his whimpering charge naked, swilled him down with double-handfuls of cold water; and, while the tormented man gasped and choked and coughed, he shook, squeezed, and finally drowned the ants out of his clothes.
When the excitement had subsided, Bert reluctantly let go of Esther's waist and went on with his mathematical calculations. He tied his handkerchief tightly round a spoke of one of the rear wheels of the wagon, near the rim, and then turned to Esther again.
"Will you ride in the wagon, Esther, and count the number of revolutions the wheel makes? When it has gone round eight hundred and eighty times, tell Sam to stop. Make a mark on the wagon for each hundred, so you won't lose count"—handing Esther a pencil—"then if we've travelled due north we shall be quite close to our land. It should be fairly easy. The country is open beyond those trees."
Esther smiled understanding, and held out her arms for her instructor to assist her into the wagon. She was only a very moderate tennis player, and swimmer; and had never walked above twenty-five miles in one day in her life, so, naturally, she found climbing into a wagon rather difficult.
Mr. and Mrs. Trailey both expressed a wish to ride, so they, too, scrambled aboard. Bert walked behind the wagon a little way, to help Sam to keep a straight course, or one as straight as the gently-swelling prairie would permit. They had previously determined that a blue knob on the distant sky-line was as nearly north as could be judged. The little Cockney fixed his eyes grimly upon it, and forthwith set the jolting geometrical apparatus in motion.
The brush land soon terminated. Suddenly they came out on a sort of shoulder, whence the prairie sloped away to the north and east for an immense distance. A huge region unfolded itself before them. They bumped along, winding round impassable places which every now and again persisted in getting in their way. Esther counted religiously, sometimes in a whisper, sometimes mentally, then, to give herself confidence, right out loud. She regretted missing the beauty of the scene, which from the corner of her eyes she was vividly aware of.
At length she exclaimed. "There—that's it." Sam stopped.
"Go a little farther, Sam," ordered Bert, "to allow for the curves and dips."
The Traileys were utterly silent. Once or twice his excruciating itching almost forced William Trailey to seek relief in outcry, but his wife, noting the symptoms, quickly snubbed him with a look. She was intensely occupied with the study of the neighbourhood. Not being particularly responsive to Nature's masterpieces, not big ones especially, she kept her lips shut tight. A look of derision was in her eyes.
Burned bare of all old vegetation, the ground was as smooth as a recently-mown meadow, and presented no great hindrance to the discovery of their identification mound. For a certainty their land was within a few hundred yards of them. At last they stopped.
Leaving the two older people to their thoughts, and bites, Sam and Bert and Esther gleefully began criss-crossing the prairie, which hereabouts was wide-open and perfectly bald. Within half an hour, the south-east corner post was found, very appropriately by the two lovers.
In one vast sweep the country rolled away in successive undulations until, twenty to thirty miles off, it rose again sharply in a long line of rounded hills. Beyond these the mighty Saskatchewan cut its mile-wide swath. Such was their elevation, and so marvellously clear was the air, that through the depressions in the distant ridge, they saw the long, flat, inky stain where the sky dipped into the dark, silent forests of the north.
In the foreground, below them, were several lakes—genuine ones, this time—set in the pale-green earth like jewels. Patches of fire-killed brush smudged the landscape here and there with sombre blacks and browns.
"Magnificent!" was the general exclamation. They beckoned to the occupants of the wagon, which Trailey, looking very awkward and miserable, then drove across.
"To think," Esther observed, "that with the exception of the few Barr Colonists looking for their farms, there isn't a soul in all that vast space." She was profoundly impressed by the bigness of the picture.
"Quite true," commented Bert shortly. He was adjusting his thoughts to the startling immensity of everything. After a long silence, he added: "It's all laid out on such a stupendous scale that it makes one feel exactly like an ant."
At the word "ant," Trailey felt a creepy sensation in the region of his shoulder-blades. He tried to reach the spot with his hand, but was unable, so he gently rubbed his back against the seat. So heavenly was the relief, that his spirit reacted to the wonderful picture before him. He sat in the wagon, and with absolutely expressionless eyes contemplated Nature's magnificent canvas.
"Not a building," he sighed; "not a street; not a tram; not a chapel; not even a restaurant where you can get a sixpenny plate of beef and potatoes to eat while you read theBritish Weekly"—then, lowering his voice, he gently whispered to himself with perfectly-delightful incongruity: "From Greenland's icy mountains, to India's——" but, as it was an exceedingly warm afternoon, and as he was enjoying a certain amount of freedom from the itching of his various stings, his head, which he had protected from the sun and the insects with a handkerchief pushed up round and under the back of his cap, fell forward on his ample breast, in which comfortable position he half dozed off.
Martha Trailey's musings ran in different grooves. She regarded her volcanic spouse with unutterable disdain, then echoed him mockingly: "No out-door relief; no asylums; no almshouses; no workhouses; no soup kitchens; no——"
Interrupting her satirically, Sam took up the refrain: "An' no pubs; no music 'alls; no kids sellin' matches; no cawffee stalls; no tarts ter wink at yer; in fact, absobloomin'lutely nothink."
Esther and Bert had wandered off, ostensibly to inspect their land; actually, to pick a place to build a nest.
"We must build it of logs, Bertie." Esther, like the crows, possessed a pronounced bump of rusticity.
Martha Trailey nudged her husband into complete wakefulness.
"Aren't you going to look at that other farm now we're here?" she said irritably.
Trailey yawned cavernously. It was oppressively warm.
"No, my dear," he returned, "I've made up my mind to go back to England," and with this sudden declaration, he quietly relapsed into his usual drowsy calm. Martha Trailey was totally deprived of speech for a minute, then she recovered.
"It's no more than I expected," she retorted scornfully; "didn't I say so in England? Didn't I tell you that time when you were sitting in the chair, planting a tree in the front garden, that you were making a mistake in coming to Canada? And do you think I'm going back to be laughed at by all the chapel-folks?—after them making us a present of an illuminated hymn book? And after the speech you made at the insurance superintendents' banquet, when you drank too much of that teetotal port wine, and then told them that you felt the pioneering blood surging through your veins? No! You aren't going to drag me back over all those thousands of miles of fire and flood; let me tell you that. You've had your own way far too long. I've given in to you too much. Your mother always said so. But I'll have my way for once; remember that. And, another thing, Esther will never go back. She's going to marry that Bert Tressider, or else I'm blind."