CHAPTER XII—LOVE—OR LAW?

CHAPTER XII—LOVE—OR LAW?“They say there is wealth in the doing,That royal and rich are the gains,But ’tisn’t the wealth I am wooing,So much as the life of the plains;For here in the latter day morning,Where Time to Eternity clings,Midwife to a breed in the borning,I behold the Beginning of things!”The Empire Builders.Thirty hours later, in a forward seat of a colonist car, sat a young man with his face in bandages. A strong odour of disinfectants pervaded that section of the car, and other passengers avoided it as much as possible, but a doctor’s certificate that the trouble was not of a dangerous nature satisfied conductors and trainmen. For thirty hours the young man had fasted, and the interminable journey across the broad vest of the prairie country wore on in dull monotony. Villages, towns and cities had flashed by, and now they were in the great unsettled ranching country, where one may travel many townships without seeing sign of human life. Here and there, at great intervals, the eye caught a glimpse of numberless herds grazing on the rolling uplands; and at intervals greater still a horseman loomed high against the distant horizon. The two slender threads of steel seemed the only connecting link with modern civilization, and as they strung far into the endless West the very minds of the passengers underwent an evolution, a broadening, a disassociation with Established Things, and assumed an attitude of receptiveness toward That Which Shall Be. Here, at last, was the new West, the manless land, its bosom bared for a thousand miles to the hungry embrace of landless man.Through his little window Burton watched it, and with the eye of faith and optimism saw all this boundless country checkered into farms; towns and cities rising where now were flag-stations and water-tanks, telephones and telegraphs where now were fences and buffalo runs; electric railways groaning with wheat across the now trailless prairie. Here was a chance to be in at the beginning; to lay new foundations of business, government, and society, unchecked by tradition, unhampered by convention, undaunted by the arrogance of precedent. How well those foundations must be laid; a variation of a thousandth of a principle, projected through a thousand years, might swing the centre of gravity of society beyond its base! And who were the men to lay this foundation? To whom had Fate entrusted such responsibility? He glanced about the car, foul from its long journey, saturated in tobacco smoke, reeking with alcoholic fumes and the nameless odours of unwashed humanity. Across the aisle sat a mother from Central Europe, crowded in the seat with her three children, clad in shawls and blankets, sweltering in the July heat. Once he caught their eye; they looked at him through the eye of the hunted thing, the croucher, the oppressed; the eye where hate serves for passion, where strength means tyranny, where love has only an animal significance. Was it from this that the ideal State should rise; from this sad flotsam of the seas of oppression and vice? And yet as he looked he saw in that same eye another element, deeper, perhaps, and less pronounced, as though only rising into being. It was the element of wonder; and whoso wonders is not without hope. And there was ambition! This little frightened family had dared to cross an ocean and half of two continents—for what? Surely only to share in a possibility impossible at home. Likely enough the husband was already a homesteader in the new land; he would meet them at one of these little flag-stations with his ox-team and wagon, and they would trek away, fifty, sixty, a hundred miles into the wilderness to rear their home, to lay the foundations of their future, to bring up a family of free-born Canadians. The whole car was filled with such foreigners; rough and vicious-looking many of them; sad-eyed and wondering a few, with here and there a son of that jocund hilarity which knows no restraint and whose current runs fullest where is most to dry it up.And yet, who should set bounds to their future? What “mute, inglorious Miltons,” what “village Hampdens” might be here, waiting only the saving grace of environment to bring them surging into the fulness of a life unknown, undreamt, and yet the lure of whose prophetic vision had fired their dark eyes in the far fields of their unhappy ancestry! How far from the civilisation of the past, how far even from the civilisation of the present, had they thrown themselves in this wild projection into the unknown and the unlimited!The train stood, waiting, on a side-track. With his head out of the window Burton saw a black cloud of smoke far to the westward; steadily it grew until the muzzle of a locomotive could be distinguished, and in a few minutes the eastbound express roared past them in its down hill run to evening dress and music and conventions made for the fascination of disregarding them! But even as it swept by from the open windows of the dining car came the scent of fresh-cut roses and carnations, and a moment later the “newsy” hurried through the car with a bundle of morning papers. Burton stopped him and bought a copy, somewhat to the vendor’s surprise, and settled down to read, verbatim, the speech of the Prime Minister of England delivered in London the evening before!As the train approached the young man’s destination he quietly slipped into the washroom and removed his bandages. With soap which the doctor had supplied him he erased the salve and grease, and after a good wash, with his hair combed and his collar and tie adjusted, he felt more like a civilized being than at any time since he had left the consultation room of Dr. Millar. As the crowd swept out at the station he mingled, unnoticed, among them.He rushed first into a lunch-room, and after satisfying his long hunger he had scarce set foot on the station platform until a friendly hand grasped him by the arm and led him to one side.“Come this way, Jack,” said a young man, little older than himself, but with that alert, active manner which is as distinctive of the country as the chinook. “Let’s get out of this bunch before they get wised up. Lucky I saw you in time. Jimmy Reid, a chum of mine that came in here homesteadin’ last year, has just got word tuh go home tuh I-o-way, where his father’s most all in, an’ he says to me last night—no longer ago than last night—he says, ‘Frank, slip down tuh the station to-morrow an’ if yuh see a likely lookin’ fellow ’at ’ud appreciate a bit of a start in this country put him next tuh my homestead. I got tuh let her go,’ he says, ‘Dad’s all in an’ I’ll have tuh coop up under Old Glory for awhile, anyway. Put some decent fellow next it,’ says he. Talk about luck——”“But I am afraid I don’t understand,” said Burton. “A man can’t sell a homestead unless he has the patent, can he?”The new acquaintance looked Burton in the face for five seconds, and then burst into a sudden guffaw.“No, of course he can’t,” he declared, slapping his leg and laughing hilariously. “Not any more than he can travel on a train without a ticket. Oh, you wise one,” he exclaimed, giving Burton a friendly nudge in the ribs, and dropping his voice, “what are you travellin’ colonist fer? Oh, don’t tell me,” he went on, without waiting for an answer. “It’s easier ’an butter. My chum has the best homestead outa doors, an’ I can’t take it, ’count o’ havin’ exhausted my rights already, an’ that’s the only reason you get in easy. All you got tuh do is stick around until notice o’ cancellation is posted, an’ then get in your application. He’s sixty days to get back on the job, an’ unless he sees it’s goin’ your way back he’ll come, an’ spoil the game of any one that tries tuh butt in. It’s done ev’ry day in the week, an’ you’re as safe as a dollar.”“What’s this information going to cost me?” Burton interrupted.Jimmy Reid’s chum hesitated for a minute. “I wouldn’t hardly like to say just what Jimmy was settin’ on that place,” he said at last, slowly, as one who is deliberating every word. “It’s easy worth twenty dollars an acre, which is thirty-two hundred fer the quarter, an’ when a man is lookin’ fer a farm to achually go out an’ live on a homestead’s as good as railway land. The duties don’t cut no figure if your goin’ to live there anyway. Course, Jimmy was expectin’ whoever got it ’ud use him decent—say about two thousand.” The last word was uttered with an inflection as though the speaker asked a question.“I’m afraid it’s out of my class,” said Burton. “I’ve only a few dollars with me, and I intend to work out for a while to get enough to start me on a claim of my own.”“I’m awful sorry,” said the other, “I am, fer a fact. ’Taint ev’ry day such a chance goes strolling by. But—oh, by the way, I was forgettin’. Here’s somethin’ right in your line. Put that few dollars of yours into some A number one top-notch town property an’ it’ll earn more fer you before the snow flies than your muscles will. Here’s somethin’ extra good,” as he drew a map from his pocket. “See this block—high class industrial property. Prices from one hundred to three hundred dollars a lot, tenth down an’ ten dollars a month until paid fer; no taxes, interest, or charges of any kind. Here’s a fine corner here, facin’ south an’ west, overlookin’ the town, five hundred dollars fer two lots, that’s only fifty dollars you’d need to put up an’ we’ll sell those lots again for a cool thousand before December. Come along, you’re dry after your trip; let’s wet this thing a little an’ then we’ll take an auto out an’ show you the stuff.”“Sorry,” confessed Burton, rather ashamed to have to refuse, “but I really couldn’t handle any of it. I’ve just four dollars and forty cents in my pocket at this minute, and no more coming until I earn it.”“Sorry too,” said the land man, with no abatement of his good humour. “Sorry both fer you and me. But that really is a great buy. Come an’ see me when yer in town. You don’t look like a fellow that ’ud stay sod-bustin’ long when you can make more money in town in six months than most of these moss-backs ever saw. Here’s my card—look me up when yuh get settled an’ perhaps I can turn something your way yet. Here’s a man I’ve got to see. So long. Good luck!” and the real estate dealer drilled away through the crowd.Down the platform a little way a group of men were gathered about an old farmer—a tall, thin, one-time Yankee, typical from top boots to chin whiskers. He was dickering with a bunch of new arrivals for labour for his farm. A few foreigners, curious-eyed, gazed at him for a minute or two, their packs on their backs and their chins drooping; then swung away to gravitate to railway construction offices or the town labour department. Half a dozen Anglo-Saxons remained; two Englishmen, in riding breeches, and three or four Eastern Canadians and Americans. Burton joined the group.“I came out to learn to fawm, sir,” one of the Englishmen was saying. “I should jolly well like to have a gow at it. Is there any gime—er—any—er antelope or—gophahs?”The farmer chewed a generous ration of tobacco reflectively for some seconds, then expectorated with much accuracy at a fish-plate on the railway. “Ah,” he said at length, “there be some game, all right, young man, and there also be some gun experts. Ah got a neighbour out there who’s been stuffin’ birds an’ beasts fer twenty year, an’ he’s so durn handy with a gun he can wing a grass-hopper without breakin’ a bone. I reckon he’s got most every crittur indig’ous to this country in that collection o’ his’n. Ah,” repeated the farmer, meditatively, “I reckon he has.”“Ah, bah jove, I should like to meet him. A jolly good sort, I should say.”“Yep, not so bad. An’ awful accerate with a gun. He’d be glad tuh see yuh, too. But if he caught you walkin’ round in them seeder-drills yer wearin’ he’d sure enough bag another zoological specimen. An’ yu’d loose yerself in a pair o’ jeans.”There was a laugh in which all but the Englishmen joined, and they, with a remark about a “lot of bally rough-necks” withdrew themselves from the group.“I tell you what, Mr. Whiskers,” said a young fellow wearing a Stetson and cigarette, “I think I’m just the man you need. Was born on a farm and know the whole deck. Can drive anything from a dog-team to a traction engine. Nothin’ in the State had anythin’ on me when it came to drivin’.”The farmer focused his eyes on the cigarette with supreme contempt. “If Ah had ye ah’d use ye fer driving all right,” he said, speaking with great deliberateness. “Yep. Ah’d use ye fer drivin’ posts—if I could fit a handle!”There was another laugh, but the crowd was thinning down.“Well, Ah suppose you was brung up on a farm, too?” continued the farmer, addressing a husky looking chap in a cottanade suit and flannel shirt. “Can ye shock?”“Well I guess I can,” said the man addressed. “I was the long-distance shocker of our settlement.”“Use tuh take in shockin’, Ah suppose,” answered the farmer. “Waal, how many sheaves did they put in the shock, your way about?”The candidate for the position hesitated a moment. “Well,” he ventured at length, “I don’t know that I ever counted, but I should say about fifty.”“That’ll do fer you,” said the farmer. “You’re not a shocker. You’re a stacker.” Then turning to Burton, “Ah suppose you was raised on a farm too?”“Yes, sir.”“Ever drive a binder?”“Yes, sir.”“How’s binders built—right or left-hand cut?”“Most of them are left-hand, except McCormicks.”“By hang,” said the farmer, addressing an invisible audience, “here’s a fellow that knows somethin’, anyhow. Say! Now, supposin’ you was drivin’ a binder, an’ she was kickin’ out loose sheaves right along, with the knot all on one end o’ the string, what’ud yuh do fer it?”“I’d sharpen the knotter-knife first,” said Burton, “and if that didn’t fix it I’d——”“Thet’ll do,” interrupted the farmer. “This is my wagon here. Throw in yer bundle an’ stretch yerself around town fer an hour, an’ then we’ll hit the trail. But Ah forgot to tell you, it’s fifty miles tuh my farm, an’ the comp’ny out there ain’t much writ up in the sassiety papers.”“The farther the better,” said Burton. There was a touch of bitterness in his voice, and the old man looked at him keenly.“Love—or law?” he asked, at length.Burton flushed but did not reply, and the farmer continued, with a sudden kindness in his speech, “Never mind, lad. This country’s full of fellows who’re tryin’ to git away from one or t’other of them two irresistibles—love an’ law. But God help the fellow thet gits hit by both. When a chinook crosses the path of a nor’wester there’s trouble fer everybody.”Burton accompanied his new employer about the town for a couple of hours. The farmer was making purchases at the stores and implement houses, and as he did not expect to be in the town again until after the threshing it was some time before his business was completed. The young man stood beside him in the store, and his practical knowledge of quality and values astonished the old farmer. At length the purchasing was finished, and with the double wagon-box piled high with groceries, canned goods, dry-goods, hardware, harness, binder twine, machine oil and all the other sundries demanded by the activities of the harvest season, the two men started on their journey farmwards.The sun was well into the western sky before they left the town, and in the hot July afternoon the horses had to be allowed their pace. The roads were alive with traffic, farmers driving in as much as a hundred miles for their fall supplies. Scores of other wagons, loaded as was this one, were to be seen; great stacks of lumber were dragged slowly along by four- and six-horse teams; a veritable procession of mowers, rakes and binders, some loaded on wagons and some running on their own wheels, stretched along the country road, the procession here and there blocked into divisions by giant steam or gas tractor outfits with their long, slow-crawling caravan of paraphernalia.Sundown found our travellers approaching a diminutive farm house, where the team of their own accord turned in at the open gate.“This is whar Zeb Ensley lives,” said the farmer. “His shack is small, but his hospitality would fill a hemisphere, an’ Ah gen’rally allow to put up with him goin’ an’ comin’. Zeb’s English, but he’s past the moultin’ stage, an’ he’s awful white. After an Englishman moults—gits rid of his unnecessary feathers—they ain’t no better neighbour.”By this time the team had stopped in front of an enclosure made by standing mill slabs on end, which was all the shelter provided for Mr. Ensley’s horses. The host himself was beside the wheel, and placed a brown hand in the farmer’s as the latter clambered down from the high spring seat.“How are you, Mr. McKay? Back this far, safe, I see, with a big load and a likely looking farm hand. Won’t you introduce me?”“Waal, now, by hang, thet’s one thing Ah can’t do,” said Mr. McKay. “They ain’t been no formalities yet. When Ah find a man ’at knows gee frum haw Ah don’t worry much about what he was christened.”“Call me Ray,” said Burton, as he threw the inside tugs over the horses’ backs and slipped the tongue from the neck-yoke. “Go into the house and rest, Mr. McKay, and I will put the team away, if Mr. Ensley will show me where.”“Waal, what d’ye think of thet?” said Mr. McKay, slapping his thigh. “The young fellow’s givin’ orders already. An’ what’s more—what’s more,” he repeated, pointing a huge fore-finger at Burton—“what’s more, the old man’s goin’ tuh do as he’s told.”Burton unhitched the team and watered them; drew the harness off and rubbed them down with a wisp of hay as Ensley filled the mangers. Then the two men walked to the shack, where they found Mr. McKay with his great boots off and his stockinged feet resting comfortably on the ash-pan of the stove, in which a slab fire burned cheerily. The tea-kettle was singing lustily; a saucepan of dried apples simmered on the back of the stove, and presently the appetising smell of frying potatoes and eggs filled the little room. The light from Ensley’s single lamp fell on the walls, papered with pictures and cartoons from English publications, with a dry-goods box nailed up for a cupboard, and over the door the miniature arsenal which always marks the Britisher’s home. Outside the darkness was settling down; the long, persistent twilight of the Canadian summer lingered in the western sky, but the east loomed black and colourless, and a strange night wind sighed mournfully over the endless, sweeping fields of grass.

“They say there is wealth in the doing,That royal and rich are the gains,But ’tisn’t the wealth I am wooing,So much as the life of the plains;For here in the latter day morning,Where Time to Eternity clings,Midwife to a breed in the borning,I behold the Beginning of things!”

“They say there is wealth in the doing,

That royal and rich are the gains,

But ’tisn’t the wealth I am wooing,

So much as the life of the plains;

For here in the latter day morning,

Where Time to Eternity clings,

Midwife to a breed in the borning,

I behold the Beginning of things!”

The Empire Builders.

Thirty hours later, in a forward seat of a colonist car, sat a young man with his face in bandages. A strong odour of disinfectants pervaded that section of the car, and other passengers avoided it as much as possible, but a doctor’s certificate that the trouble was not of a dangerous nature satisfied conductors and trainmen. For thirty hours the young man had fasted, and the interminable journey across the broad vest of the prairie country wore on in dull monotony. Villages, towns and cities had flashed by, and now they were in the great unsettled ranching country, where one may travel many townships without seeing sign of human life. Here and there, at great intervals, the eye caught a glimpse of numberless herds grazing on the rolling uplands; and at intervals greater still a horseman loomed high against the distant horizon. The two slender threads of steel seemed the only connecting link with modern civilization, and as they strung far into the endless West the very minds of the passengers underwent an evolution, a broadening, a disassociation with Established Things, and assumed an attitude of receptiveness toward That Which Shall Be. Here, at last, was the new West, the manless land, its bosom bared for a thousand miles to the hungry embrace of landless man.

Through his little window Burton watched it, and with the eye of faith and optimism saw all this boundless country checkered into farms; towns and cities rising where now were flag-stations and water-tanks, telephones and telegraphs where now were fences and buffalo runs; electric railways groaning with wheat across the now trailless prairie. Here was a chance to be in at the beginning; to lay new foundations of business, government, and society, unchecked by tradition, unhampered by convention, undaunted by the arrogance of precedent. How well those foundations must be laid; a variation of a thousandth of a principle, projected through a thousand years, might swing the centre of gravity of society beyond its base! And who were the men to lay this foundation? To whom had Fate entrusted such responsibility? He glanced about the car, foul from its long journey, saturated in tobacco smoke, reeking with alcoholic fumes and the nameless odours of unwashed humanity. Across the aisle sat a mother from Central Europe, crowded in the seat with her three children, clad in shawls and blankets, sweltering in the July heat. Once he caught their eye; they looked at him through the eye of the hunted thing, the croucher, the oppressed; the eye where hate serves for passion, where strength means tyranny, where love has only an animal significance. Was it from this that the ideal State should rise; from this sad flotsam of the seas of oppression and vice? And yet as he looked he saw in that same eye another element, deeper, perhaps, and less pronounced, as though only rising into being. It was the element of wonder; and whoso wonders is not without hope. And there was ambition! This little frightened family had dared to cross an ocean and half of two continents—for what? Surely only to share in a possibility impossible at home. Likely enough the husband was already a homesteader in the new land; he would meet them at one of these little flag-stations with his ox-team and wagon, and they would trek away, fifty, sixty, a hundred miles into the wilderness to rear their home, to lay the foundations of their future, to bring up a family of free-born Canadians. The whole car was filled with such foreigners; rough and vicious-looking many of them; sad-eyed and wondering a few, with here and there a son of that jocund hilarity which knows no restraint and whose current runs fullest where is most to dry it up.

And yet, who should set bounds to their future? What “mute, inglorious Miltons,” what “village Hampdens” might be here, waiting only the saving grace of environment to bring them surging into the fulness of a life unknown, undreamt, and yet the lure of whose prophetic vision had fired their dark eyes in the far fields of their unhappy ancestry! How far from the civilisation of the past, how far even from the civilisation of the present, had they thrown themselves in this wild projection into the unknown and the unlimited!

The train stood, waiting, on a side-track. With his head out of the window Burton saw a black cloud of smoke far to the westward; steadily it grew until the muzzle of a locomotive could be distinguished, and in a few minutes the eastbound express roared past them in its down hill run to evening dress and music and conventions made for the fascination of disregarding them! But even as it swept by from the open windows of the dining car came the scent of fresh-cut roses and carnations, and a moment later the “newsy” hurried through the car with a bundle of morning papers. Burton stopped him and bought a copy, somewhat to the vendor’s surprise, and settled down to read, verbatim, the speech of the Prime Minister of England delivered in London the evening before!

As the train approached the young man’s destination he quietly slipped into the washroom and removed his bandages. With soap which the doctor had supplied him he erased the salve and grease, and after a good wash, with his hair combed and his collar and tie adjusted, he felt more like a civilized being than at any time since he had left the consultation room of Dr. Millar. As the crowd swept out at the station he mingled, unnoticed, among them.

He rushed first into a lunch-room, and after satisfying his long hunger he had scarce set foot on the station platform until a friendly hand grasped him by the arm and led him to one side.

“Come this way, Jack,” said a young man, little older than himself, but with that alert, active manner which is as distinctive of the country as the chinook. “Let’s get out of this bunch before they get wised up. Lucky I saw you in time. Jimmy Reid, a chum of mine that came in here homesteadin’ last year, has just got word tuh go home tuh I-o-way, where his father’s most all in, an’ he says to me last night—no longer ago than last night—he says, ‘Frank, slip down tuh the station to-morrow an’ if yuh see a likely lookin’ fellow ’at ’ud appreciate a bit of a start in this country put him next tuh my homestead. I got tuh let her go,’ he says, ‘Dad’s all in an’ I’ll have tuh coop up under Old Glory for awhile, anyway. Put some decent fellow next it,’ says he. Talk about luck——”

“But I am afraid I don’t understand,” said Burton. “A man can’t sell a homestead unless he has the patent, can he?”

The new acquaintance looked Burton in the face for five seconds, and then burst into a sudden guffaw.

“No, of course he can’t,” he declared, slapping his leg and laughing hilariously. “Not any more than he can travel on a train without a ticket. Oh, you wise one,” he exclaimed, giving Burton a friendly nudge in the ribs, and dropping his voice, “what are you travellin’ colonist fer? Oh, don’t tell me,” he went on, without waiting for an answer. “It’s easier ’an butter. My chum has the best homestead outa doors, an’ I can’t take it, ’count o’ havin’ exhausted my rights already, an’ that’s the only reason you get in easy. All you got tuh do is stick around until notice o’ cancellation is posted, an’ then get in your application. He’s sixty days to get back on the job, an’ unless he sees it’s goin’ your way back he’ll come, an’ spoil the game of any one that tries tuh butt in. It’s done ev’ry day in the week, an’ you’re as safe as a dollar.”

“What’s this information going to cost me?” Burton interrupted.

Jimmy Reid’s chum hesitated for a minute. “I wouldn’t hardly like to say just what Jimmy was settin’ on that place,” he said at last, slowly, as one who is deliberating every word. “It’s easy worth twenty dollars an acre, which is thirty-two hundred fer the quarter, an’ when a man is lookin’ fer a farm to achually go out an’ live on a homestead’s as good as railway land. The duties don’t cut no figure if your goin’ to live there anyway. Course, Jimmy was expectin’ whoever got it ’ud use him decent—say about two thousand.” The last word was uttered with an inflection as though the speaker asked a question.

“I’m afraid it’s out of my class,” said Burton. “I’ve only a few dollars with me, and I intend to work out for a while to get enough to start me on a claim of my own.”

“I’m awful sorry,” said the other, “I am, fer a fact. ’Taint ev’ry day such a chance goes strolling by. But—oh, by the way, I was forgettin’. Here’s somethin’ right in your line. Put that few dollars of yours into some A number one top-notch town property an’ it’ll earn more fer you before the snow flies than your muscles will. Here’s somethin’ extra good,” as he drew a map from his pocket. “See this block—high class industrial property. Prices from one hundred to three hundred dollars a lot, tenth down an’ ten dollars a month until paid fer; no taxes, interest, or charges of any kind. Here’s a fine corner here, facin’ south an’ west, overlookin’ the town, five hundred dollars fer two lots, that’s only fifty dollars you’d need to put up an’ we’ll sell those lots again for a cool thousand before December. Come along, you’re dry after your trip; let’s wet this thing a little an’ then we’ll take an auto out an’ show you the stuff.”

“Sorry,” confessed Burton, rather ashamed to have to refuse, “but I really couldn’t handle any of it. I’ve just four dollars and forty cents in my pocket at this minute, and no more coming until I earn it.”

“Sorry too,” said the land man, with no abatement of his good humour. “Sorry both fer you and me. But that really is a great buy. Come an’ see me when yer in town. You don’t look like a fellow that ’ud stay sod-bustin’ long when you can make more money in town in six months than most of these moss-backs ever saw. Here’s my card—look me up when yuh get settled an’ perhaps I can turn something your way yet. Here’s a man I’ve got to see. So long. Good luck!” and the real estate dealer drilled away through the crowd.

Down the platform a little way a group of men were gathered about an old farmer—a tall, thin, one-time Yankee, typical from top boots to chin whiskers. He was dickering with a bunch of new arrivals for labour for his farm. A few foreigners, curious-eyed, gazed at him for a minute or two, their packs on their backs and their chins drooping; then swung away to gravitate to railway construction offices or the town labour department. Half a dozen Anglo-Saxons remained; two Englishmen, in riding breeches, and three or four Eastern Canadians and Americans. Burton joined the group.

“I came out to learn to fawm, sir,” one of the Englishmen was saying. “I should jolly well like to have a gow at it. Is there any gime—er—any—er antelope or—gophahs?”

The farmer chewed a generous ration of tobacco reflectively for some seconds, then expectorated with much accuracy at a fish-plate on the railway. “Ah,” he said at length, “there be some game, all right, young man, and there also be some gun experts. Ah got a neighbour out there who’s been stuffin’ birds an’ beasts fer twenty year, an’ he’s so durn handy with a gun he can wing a grass-hopper without breakin’ a bone. I reckon he’s got most every crittur indig’ous to this country in that collection o’ his’n. Ah,” repeated the farmer, meditatively, “I reckon he has.”

“Ah, bah jove, I should like to meet him. A jolly good sort, I should say.”

“Yep, not so bad. An’ awful accerate with a gun. He’d be glad tuh see yuh, too. But if he caught you walkin’ round in them seeder-drills yer wearin’ he’d sure enough bag another zoological specimen. An’ yu’d loose yerself in a pair o’ jeans.”

There was a laugh in which all but the Englishmen joined, and they, with a remark about a “lot of bally rough-necks” withdrew themselves from the group.

“I tell you what, Mr. Whiskers,” said a young fellow wearing a Stetson and cigarette, “I think I’m just the man you need. Was born on a farm and know the whole deck. Can drive anything from a dog-team to a traction engine. Nothin’ in the State had anythin’ on me when it came to drivin’.”

The farmer focused his eyes on the cigarette with supreme contempt. “If Ah had ye ah’d use ye fer driving all right,” he said, speaking with great deliberateness. “Yep. Ah’d use ye fer drivin’ posts—if I could fit a handle!”

There was another laugh, but the crowd was thinning down.

“Well, Ah suppose you was brung up on a farm, too?” continued the farmer, addressing a husky looking chap in a cottanade suit and flannel shirt. “Can ye shock?”

“Well I guess I can,” said the man addressed. “I was the long-distance shocker of our settlement.”

“Use tuh take in shockin’, Ah suppose,” answered the farmer. “Waal, how many sheaves did they put in the shock, your way about?”

The candidate for the position hesitated a moment. “Well,” he ventured at length, “I don’t know that I ever counted, but I should say about fifty.”

“That’ll do fer you,” said the farmer. “You’re not a shocker. You’re a stacker.” Then turning to Burton, “Ah suppose you was raised on a farm too?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ever drive a binder?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How’s binders built—right or left-hand cut?”

“Most of them are left-hand, except McCormicks.”

“By hang,” said the farmer, addressing an invisible audience, “here’s a fellow that knows somethin’, anyhow. Say! Now, supposin’ you was drivin’ a binder, an’ she was kickin’ out loose sheaves right along, with the knot all on one end o’ the string, what’ud yuh do fer it?”

“I’d sharpen the knotter-knife first,” said Burton, “and if that didn’t fix it I’d——”

“Thet’ll do,” interrupted the farmer. “This is my wagon here. Throw in yer bundle an’ stretch yerself around town fer an hour, an’ then we’ll hit the trail. But Ah forgot to tell you, it’s fifty miles tuh my farm, an’ the comp’ny out there ain’t much writ up in the sassiety papers.”

“The farther the better,” said Burton. There was a touch of bitterness in his voice, and the old man looked at him keenly.

“Love—or law?” he asked, at length.

Burton flushed but did not reply, and the farmer continued, with a sudden kindness in his speech, “Never mind, lad. This country’s full of fellows who’re tryin’ to git away from one or t’other of them two irresistibles—love an’ law. But God help the fellow thet gits hit by both. When a chinook crosses the path of a nor’wester there’s trouble fer everybody.”

Burton accompanied his new employer about the town for a couple of hours. The farmer was making purchases at the stores and implement houses, and as he did not expect to be in the town again until after the threshing it was some time before his business was completed. The young man stood beside him in the store, and his practical knowledge of quality and values astonished the old farmer. At length the purchasing was finished, and with the double wagon-box piled high with groceries, canned goods, dry-goods, hardware, harness, binder twine, machine oil and all the other sundries demanded by the activities of the harvest season, the two men started on their journey farmwards.

The sun was well into the western sky before they left the town, and in the hot July afternoon the horses had to be allowed their pace. The roads were alive with traffic, farmers driving in as much as a hundred miles for their fall supplies. Scores of other wagons, loaded as was this one, were to be seen; great stacks of lumber were dragged slowly along by four- and six-horse teams; a veritable procession of mowers, rakes and binders, some loaded on wagons and some running on their own wheels, stretched along the country road, the procession here and there blocked into divisions by giant steam or gas tractor outfits with their long, slow-crawling caravan of paraphernalia.

Sundown found our travellers approaching a diminutive farm house, where the team of their own accord turned in at the open gate.

“This is whar Zeb Ensley lives,” said the farmer. “His shack is small, but his hospitality would fill a hemisphere, an’ Ah gen’rally allow to put up with him goin’ an’ comin’. Zeb’s English, but he’s past the moultin’ stage, an’ he’s awful white. After an Englishman moults—gits rid of his unnecessary feathers—they ain’t no better neighbour.”

By this time the team had stopped in front of an enclosure made by standing mill slabs on end, which was all the shelter provided for Mr. Ensley’s horses. The host himself was beside the wheel, and placed a brown hand in the farmer’s as the latter clambered down from the high spring seat.

“How are you, Mr. McKay? Back this far, safe, I see, with a big load and a likely looking farm hand. Won’t you introduce me?”

“Waal, now, by hang, thet’s one thing Ah can’t do,” said Mr. McKay. “They ain’t been no formalities yet. When Ah find a man ’at knows gee frum haw Ah don’t worry much about what he was christened.”

“Call me Ray,” said Burton, as he threw the inside tugs over the horses’ backs and slipped the tongue from the neck-yoke. “Go into the house and rest, Mr. McKay, and I will put the team away, if Mr. Ensley will show me where.”

“Waal, what d’ye think of thet?” said Mr. McKay, slapping his thigh. “The young fellow’s givin’ orders already. An’ what’s more—what’s more,” he repeated, pointing a huge fore-finger at Burton—“what’s more, the old man’s goin’ tuh do as he’s told.”

Burton unhitched the team and watered them; drew the harness off and rubbed them down with a wisp of hay as Ensley filled the mangers. Then the two men walked to the shack, where they found Mr. McKay with his great boots off and his stockinged feet resting comfortably on the ash-pan of the stove, in which a slab fire burned cheerily. The tea-kettle was singing lustily; a saucepan of dried apples simmered on the back of the stove, and presently the appetising smell of frying potatoes and eggs filled the little room. The light from Ensley’s single lamp fell on the walls, papered with pictures and cartoons from English publications, with a dry-goods box nailed up for a cupboard, and over the door the miniature arsenal which always marks the Britisher’s home. Outside the darkness was settling down; the long, persistent twilight of the Canadian summer lingered in the western sky, but the east loomed black and colourless, and a strange night wind sighed mournfully over the endless, sweeping fields of grass.

Back to Index Next