_Saskatoon--Buying Machinery_
Bert's parents had always been secretly proud of their son as a
correspondent. Faithfully he wrote to them from M---- Grammar School
once or twice each year. But, later on, whilst articled to an
immensely wealthy firm of lawyers at Sheffield, he had communicated
with his father much more frequently.
Always his requests were granted. Money requests they were
chiefly--for Sir Felix Hamingway, great nonconformist, lawyer,
magistrate, knight, Chairman of Directors of Tipsey's Pale Ales,
Limited, generous giver to both Home and Foreign Missions, and Bert's
employer, had made it a fixed rule never to pay his first-year
articled clerks more than fifteen shillings and sixpence weekly. His
mental excuse for being so profligate in the matter of salaries was
that his minister's ebony-skinned, woolly-headed protégés residing
along the banks of the Zambezi were such a drain on his limited purse.
Therefore, being so accustomed to letter writing, it was second
nature for Bert to send home a message from Saskatoon. In the
evening of the exciting day distinguished by the purchase of a team,
he scribbled a missive to his mother, by candle-light. Its contents
went something like this:
"I trust you and dad and the girls are in the pink. To-day I have
bought a pair of horses, a grey and a sort of blonde, and have named
them Tempest and Kruger. Rather jolly names, don't you think?
"From the address mentioned above, you will see that I am writing
this from Saskatoon. It is a bare spot, and was not of much
importance before we Barr Colonists came. It is merely a score or so
of glorified packing-cases sitting bleakly on the prairie beneath a
great blue arch of sky, and ringed about with a distant horizon
clear-cut as the edge of a silhouette. The South Saskatchewan River,
which just now is gorged with, and vomiting, great blocks of ice,
runs close by. The town (as they call it here) is threaded on the
railway line which connects Regina with Prince Albert, pretty much as
a small, dirty-coloured bead is strung on a bit of wire.
"The Canadians, mother, seem to have an odd way of disfiguring a
patch of their otherwise decent country. In Yorkshire, when the
inhabitants wish to ruin some lovely landscape, they sink a coal-pit,
and, if that fails, build a blast furnace. In London, as you well
know, they rely more on slums for miasmal effects. Out here,
apparently, they nail a few boards together, call it a town, and the
ghastly work is done.
"And this fiercely searching Canadian sunlight shows everything up
so. Why, there was actually a dead dog stretched out on a vacant
piece of ground beside one of the shops where I purchased some stuff
to-day. Probably a dead dog is an object of veneration in these
parts, but I hardly think so, because on this particular waste patch
there was a big signboard planted, bearing the words--THIS LOT FOR
SALE.
"If there is such a place as purgatory, mother--and I know you deny
it--Barr is galloping there fast. He has stepped rather heavily on
the crooked end of this scheme of his, and the other end has tipped
up and dealt him an awful whack in the face.
"His plans are boomeranging dangerously. The party is out here, and
that's about all one can say. Right at this moment, in the next tent
to my own, a matter of ten yards away perhaps, there are two men--and
two wives, presumably--screaming at one another with rage over what
they persist in calling, in their queer dialect, 'Barr's perfidery.'
It is excruciatingly funny.
"As for me, I'm tolerably well pleased with everything so far. I've
adopted a partner. Sam Potts is his name--an awfully decent little
chap, and smart as a whip. In his own vulgar way he is a gentleman,
though not the least bit educated. And yet he seems to know a great
deal. He is energetic, uglier than some sins, very irreligious, for
he swears terribly, but tremendously amusing. You'll hear more about
him from me, I dare say.
"The Barr Colony community hospital is slowly taking shape. It is a
bell tent. A big, handsome doctor with splendid eyes, but with a
Jewish cast of face, is in charge. I did wonder for a minute whether
it mightn't be worth my while to contract some sort of mild,
lingering illness, so that I might become a hospital patient, and
enjoy a bit of comfort, and a square meal or two; but, after noticing
a fearful-looking bucksaw, and an axe, leaning up against the tent,
and also happening to catch a side-view of a nurse's face, I have
changed my mind, and am now, I'm very pleased to say, really feeling
magnificently fit.
"We are starting out on our two-hundred-mile trek to-morrow morning,
perhaps--D.V., as you sometimes say.
"Mother, dear! What do you think! I HAVE GOT MY LAND; a charming
place--at least I think so. Please tell dad, tactfully, that I
expect to run short of money soon.
"And now for bed. More next time. Your affectionate son, Bertie."
* * * * * * * *
Next morning, over coffee and bacon, cooked by Sam on a small
rectangular tin stove, the two young men discussed their arrangements
for the immediate future.
Between a mouthful of solids, and a big gulp of steaming coffee, Sam
said:
"We've got to 'ave 'ay an' oats fer them 'orses on this trek of ourn."
"Not to mention tucker for ourselves," added Bert thoughtfully, as he
veneered a chunk of bread with about a quarter of a pound of butter;
"besides, something to work the land with, I suppose. Ranching for
me, though."
"Rarnchin'--'ell!" scoffed Sam. "You wait till yer knows somethink
abaht 'orses, first. Why, I don't suppose yer knows 'ow many young
'uns an 'orse 'as at a litter, do yer?"
"Why are you always so foolishly analytical? What the dickens does
it matter how many they have at a litter! The more the merrier, I
say. With polo ponies at two hundred pounds a head; and--"
"Ever kep' rabbits?"
"No."
"White mouses?"
"No."
"Pidgins?"
"Good Lord, no!"
"Well, yer don't know nothink. Yore edgucation's a fraud. Wot's the
good of Lating, an' law, an' matthewmaticks, an' all that sort of
stuff nah? Like I told my ole man when 'e was goin' to 'ave me
edgucated: 'No charnce, guv'ner,' I says; 'I don't want ter be no
swell, an' ride abaht in carriages over the skelingtons of the
bloomin' poor. No,' I says, 'I----'"
"You infernal blithering idiot! Even though you can't talk like a
gentleman, do for heaven's sake try to reason like one. Give me a
cigarette."
Sam threw a packet of Gold Flakes across to his partner, afterwards
taking and lighting one himself.
"Fed the 'orses this mornin'?" he asked.
"No."
"Watered 'em?"
"No."
"Bin ter see if they've 'opped it?"
"No."
"Where did yer get this rarnchin' idea from?"
"It told you all about it in the government pamphlet Barr sent to me."
"An' it told yer abaht a lot more rot. But did it say anythink abaht
that lovely cabing on the boat?--or abaht them 'undreds of seasick
dawgs 'owling up on deck?--till that chap from Belfarst chucked all
but thirty of 'em hoverboard one dark night. Did it say anythink
abaht us 'avin' ter scrap ter waggins? No. An' wot abaht that land
of ourn? 'Ow d'we know some sneak ain't bin an' gorne an' pinched
it? Do try ter reason like a----"
Sam's harangue was abruptly interrupted. Half a loaf of bread caught
him with great precision on the side of the head, the valuable
missile afterwards ricochetting into the side of the tent.
After a pause filled with broad grins, he went on: "You fancy yerself
wiv a pen, don't yer? I saw yer writin' ter yer gel larst night.
Write dahn a list of the things we want, an' let's go an' get 'em,
an' then slope orf ter see our land."
"Good idea," said Bert, who at once pulled a pencil from his pocket,
and on the back of a crumpled envelope commenced to write down a list
of the articles they each thought might be useful.
"Cigarettes," Bert said first, jotting the item down.
"Plagh an' 'arrows," said Sam.
"Yes; and tinned milk, by Jove!"
"Oats, an' 'ay--an' a chain, an' a rope."
"Postage stamps."
"A blinkin' 'atchit; an' some matches, an' a buckit."
"Brown boot polish," said Bert, gradually becoming inspired.
"A shovel--an' wot abaht a garding rake?"
"Bally rot! Be sensible. Tooth powder, and--er--a couple of bottles
of Scotch for medicinal purposes--or perhaps we'd better make it
three."
"'Ear, 'ear!" cried Sam warmly, standing up and stretching himself;
"but come on, that's enough, or else we's'll 'ave to 'ire one of them
black-lookin' savages wiv pigtails 'angin dahn their backs to 'elp us
ter cart it up to our land."
Before six o'clock that morning, whilst Bert had in his dreams been
riding after bands of spotted stallions over miles of rolling
prairie, Sam had risen, washed himself, and attended to their team,
which was tied to the wagon just outside the tent.
Bert rinsed his hands and face in the enamelled basin which rested on
three crossed sticks stuck in the ground. Considering the bowl
contained the day before yesterday's soap-scummed water, he was able
to make himself passably clean. He brushed his velvet cords;
smoothed his yellow hair before a miniature mirror which dangled from
the tent-pole, and emerged into the open bare-headed.
Sam, disdaining contact with water twice in one morning, had again
slipped out to see if the horses were tied securely. He was
continually haunted by the fear of their escape on to the fenceless
wastes which rolled away to the far-off horizon, and to unknown
distances beyond. The grey and buckskin had nosed through the
remains of a slight feed of hay, and were industriously nibbling at
the wisps of withered grass beneath.
Several hundred tents, most of which resembled their own, were
scattered about the plain in haphazard profusion. A few new marquees
reared themselves above humbler fellows, their size, and newness, and
milk-white colour faintly suggesting ostentation.
Amateurish campfires filled the sparkling air with whiffs of
pleasant-smelling wood smoke. A dozen or so of dogs, brought all the
way from England, and wearing brass-mounted collars made of leather
which would still be in its prime when the harness with which the
colonists were decking their teams would be thrown away, barked and
whined after the few lean but good-natured native canines.
Women, some enchantingly neat, others sloppily untidy, moved about
and in and out of the tents over unfamiliar tasks. Some of the
ladies resented the free and easy mixing of castes. These
blue-blooded females tried to prevent their own sweet offspring from
fraternizing with the far less charming kids of other people. But
democratic childhood would have none of it, and went yelling and
scampering about the camp, disturbing the everlasting siestas of
phlegmatic oxen, and running frightful risks with the heels and even
more treacherous fore feet of hypocritical bronchos.
Men, who were blissfully ignorant of the mysteries of Canadian
harness, taught others, who were more so, how to do things. Every
little while a knowing native would win for himself some
sweet-tasting admiration by initiating a crowd of wondering colonists
in the art of inserting an iron bit between the tight-clenched teeth
of a stupid horse with its head about three miles up in the air.
Barr's G.H.Q. marquee was a seething whirl of disorganized
organization. The troubles and complaints of dissatisfied and
grumbling colonists came sliding and tumbling and breaking over the
leader's harassed head in avalanches of inquiries, and cascades of
protest.
Flamank could do no other than bob about on the storm-tossed sea of
trouble like a light cork. At every twist and turn he was shot at
with unanswerable queries. Both going and coming he was riddled with
broadsides of acrimonious remarks. Though let down continually by
his chief; constitutionally excitable; with all the clerical work
connected with a small army of mutinous colonists passing through his
hands, and head; a perpetual target for the darts of ignorance, and
innocence; yet, in spite of all, he survived eventually to become the
Colony's first postmaster.
The Rev. George Exton Lloyd, veteran of the Riel Rebellion, moved
about with hands tied, inwardly boiling with suppressed indignation,
but absolutely impotent without the mantle of authority. Why a man
of his experience, and punch, and unbounded energy didn't throw up,
or blow up, or attempt to wring Barr's neck, is incomprehensible.
The Rev. Isaac M. Barr himself, founder and head of the scheme,
beginning early to lose his grip, copied many a worse, and better,
man, before and since, by seeking solace in whiskey. Booze was
procurable at Saskatoon. But the mellowest of whiskies, not even
excepting those which are renowned for their subtle, inspirational
qualities, will inevitably fail when relied upon to do a job like the
one Barr had tackled. Barr should have known that whiskey--like
fire, and some leaders of enterprises--makes a very fine servant, but
a poor master.
The non-abstaining members of the party--and there were at the very
least two or three--showered deserving praise on the Canadian system
of dispensing drinks, a method which allowed them to help themselves
from bottles--some with suspiciously dirty labels--of Scotch, whilst
leaning on a bar psychologically contrived to be of exactly the
correct height.
The price of the drinks was another matter, though. The Englishmen
from Yorkshire and other northern counties gave themselves some
horrible shocks by translating cents into pence--like some of them
are doing twenty-five years afterwards. But, generally speaking, the
quality and quantity of the liquid refreshment induced the most
comment, and heartburning.
As Sam and Bert threaded their way through the litter of the camp and
its environs, so suggestive of a busy horse-fair, they unconsciously
gulped into their lungs large draughts of winy spring air. From a
cloudless, turquoise sky, a glittering sun shed waves of summer-like
warmth. Cooling breezes flowed gently through the heated camp.
As far as eye could see, small glistening snow-banks, relics of
winter's blizzards, flecked the tawny plains in silvery clusters.
From beneath snowy mounds, the sudden heat sent tiny streams of water
trickling and biting their way over the thawed-out surface of the
soil. Following the easiest channels, these transient brooks went
gurgling on, joined with others, mixed, laughed, swelled, grew most
important as they bubbled along, then all at once--like the colonists
themselves did later on--rushed blindly into an ambushed slough.
Before crossing the railway line to enter the village, Sam and Bert
lingered a while to hear the Rev. Isaac M. Barr addressing--and being
addressed by--a large group of acrid-tempered colonists.
"... Just listen to me, men," he was saying earnestly; "the worst is
now almost over. Have faith! Follow your leaders into the land of
promise, where independence is waiting for those who will work. My
transportation company is not dead, as some mischief-makers would
have you believe..."
The reverend gentleman was standing on somebody's big black
cabin-trunk. He looked worried. His clerical spruceness was fraying
at the edges a bit. Pausing nervously to open a folded sheet of
paper--a telegram from St. John appertaining to the trifling matter
of five hundred tons of missing luggage--he took advantage of the
break in his speech to moisten his lips with his tongue. They were
dry, like ashes.
Beating up against the pleasant breeze, fragments of a song being
sung uproariously, struck his tired ears in variable gusts of sound,
now faint, now loud. With perfectly diabolical clearness, the ribald
voices wafted verse after verse across to the crowd.
"Barr, Barr, wily old Barr,
He'll do you as much as he can;"
"Men!" shouted the dispirited leader in a desperate attempt to
smother the song's ugly significance. "Be British----"
With a crowd's usual cruelty, a few of the bravest cowards jeered and
mocked. Meanwhile, relentlessly, like the toppling crest of a wave
breaking on the beach, the verse went on--
"You bet he will collar,
Your very last dollar,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
The crowd burst into loud laughter. Barr, with a mechanical sort of
effort, tried bravely to compel his own strained features to smile,
but he failed miserably.
In a bell tent, about a hundred yards off, half a dozen throaty
prodigies were seated comfortably on the ground with a nearly-emptied
bottle of Saskatoon's choicest wassail nice and handy. In ironical
tones, they ripped out the chorus of the song, totally unaware of the
devastating effect it was having on Barr's meeting.
"Farm, farm, do let us farm,
We're sure that the most of us can;
We'll plough and we'll sow,
And we'll reap and we'll mow,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
"The Nautch Girl" was the particular musical comedy honoured with the
supplying of the air in which this marvellously poetical masterpiece
was rendered. The author of the "poem" had, between spasms of
biliousness aboard the _Lake Manitoba_, composed eighteen stanzas of
it, before crawling away to die.
Like most early Barr Colony experiences, this particular incident at
Saskatoon was pathetic, yet at the same time comic. With a dreary
gesture of hopelessness, Barr stepped down from the trunk and hurried
within his tent. Contemptuously, the crowd gradually dispersed.
Half pityingly, Sam murmured--"Gawd!" He bore Barr no special
malice. Indeed, if anything, he was very grateful to the reverend
leader for being the means of his separating himself from his sordid
environment in London.
"I feel a bit sorry for the old boy," was Bert's only comment, as the
pair headed towards the village.
Stepping into Saskatoon's main street, a wide, unkempt, dirt-metalled
thoroughfare, irregularly bordered on one side with unpainted wooden
structures, and running alongside the railway station, Bert and Sam
set about purchasing their goods.
The few business men were doing a roaring trade. To most of the
colonists, prices mattered little--even though these were
occasionally inflated. Both English and Canadian money was abundant.
A composite odour of cheese, boots, shirts, soap, men and mice
permeated all the stores, branding them with a smell as
characteristic as that possessed by the interior of an Indian's
teepee.
Suddenly descending upon a hamlet containing only one hundred people,
this horde of immigrant buyers, with the almost as numerous crowd of
traders and hangers-on, all spending their proportion of wealth with
true prairie prodigality, created a sort of premature heaven for
Saskatoon's storekeepers.
Groups of idlers lounged about everywhere--in the stores, near the
livery-barn, and round the hotel. A few tired creatures leaned
listlessly against the strongest of the buildings. Skirting these,
Sam and Bert came to a place where farm implements were exposed for
sale.
"We's'll want somethink ter plagh the garding wiv," said Sam,
stopping to admire the gaudily-painted machines which were spread
about on some waste ground, and on the board sidewalk, overflowing
into the sandy roadway.
"Of course," observed Bert. "This is a plough, I presume," and he
flicked a speck of dirt off the iron seat of a rather flashy disk
harrow.
Sam said nothing. He had never been on a farm, nor had he even seen
one at close quarters. The prattle of agriculture was as Sanskrit to
him; so, like a sensible man, he left the subject entirely to Bert,
who knew almost as much.
"That ain't a plough," laughed a great, ponderous man who wheezed
over towards them; "that there's a disk. What d'you boys want?"
The speaker was a very large, swarthy-faced man with baggy eyes,
cheeks and trousers. He wore one gold-coloured ring, two lodge
symbols, three chins, four tobacco-stained gold teeth, and a big,
smooth smile. Glancing at him with mild curiosity, Bert said:
"We want something to cultivate our land with--a plough is the best
instrument, I suppose,"--concluding apologetically--"we aren't going
in for corn-growing, though; are we, Sam?" Bert looked towards his
little companion for affirmation, but Sam was busily occupying
himself with salvaging about an inch and a half of badly-mutilated
cigarette from his right-hand waistcoat-pocket, and pretended not to
hear.
The fleshy Goliath slipped a cigar across to the opposite corner of
his mouth, which then tightened conveniently in a smile.
"What are you going in for, then?" he asked, amusedly.
"Ranching."
"Ranching what?"
"Horses--polo ponies."
Sam edged away and lighted his cigarette. He tried to borrow a match
from a passer-by, who must have been of Scottish descent, for,
although being in a desperate hurry to be gone, he preferred wasting
five minutes over giving the little cockney a light from the bowl of
his pipe.
The big man was smiling broadly at Bert. It would have been rude to
laugh outright; besides, that would have necessitated the removal
from his mouth of the freshly-lighted cigar. This enormous man had
sold machinery for almost twenty years; then had collected for it,
finally becoming an inspector. But he wasn't cold-hearted. He had
too much fat round his heart for that. After recovering from a fit
of asthmatic coughing, which he presently indulged in, he said,
kindly enough:
"What you boys want is a walking plough, a set of drag harrows, and a
disk. Even if you go in for ranching"--and his smile broke out
afresh, spreading along a couple of deep grooves to the back of his
neck--"you'll want them things."
"Here's the plough you want," interjected a thin, wiry, though
round-shouldered man, evidently the agent in person, who had just
that minute sold a blue-and-red disk to a party of pink-cheeked
colonists driving a team of black oxen hitched to a vividly green
wagon with a white schooner-top.
The agent grasped the long, conveniently-placed handles of a
combination walking plough, bore down on them, which seemed much
easier than raising them, besides being more graceful, and went on:
"Best plough in the world. Fourteen-inch; fin coulter--better not
try a rolling coulter where you boys is going; two shares; two
moldboards; two spanners; thirty-five dollars," and he continued
tilting the plough up and down, causing the draw-link to tinkle
musically.
"Dandy plough," said the ponderous inspector. "Use nothing else on
my farms for breaking an' backsetting."
Had he explained that he used one as an anchor for his private yacht,
the information would have enlightened Bert quite as much.
"Don't need a man to hold it," echoed the agent, still clinging
fondly to the long handles. "Light draft; two fourteen-hundred-pound
horses can draw it easy."
"Just right for light land," added the inspector, as he carefully
tested and then lowered himself on to the pole of an adjacent seeder,
causing it to bend like a cane. "What sort of land is it where this
Colony is headin' for, anyway?"
"Heavy stuff," returned the agent, miss-cuing; "grass up to your
knees. I was down in that country last fall--hunting a bunch of my
stray cayuses."
"Couldn't be beat for that clay land," volunteered the inspector,
wiping the inside of his whitish collar with a whitish
pocket-handkerchief.
The agent threw an affectionate look at the plough in endorsation of
his chief's revised statement.
"I once turned three acres over with one of them ploughs in nine
hours," he said; "with a pair of broncs you could carry under your
arms."
"And you know old man Cleviss, Fred, down on the coulee?" said the
inspector, who still had some breath left. Fred nodded. "He says he
wouldn't sell his plough for a million dollars if he couldn't buy
another like it."
"Don't blame him none, either," said Fred, opening wide his eyes, so
plainly astonished was he at the mere mention of such an idiotic
possibility. "A man with a farm like he's got would be crazy to part
with that plough of his. Them short-handled Spiggott ploughs all go
here"--he stooped down and indicated the point of the share belonging
to the implement he was rocking up and down--"split clean across,
every one of 'em, like a rotten twig."
"Say, Fred!--you remember when I was on the road for Spiggott's?"
Fred nodded. "Why, them ploughs of theirs pretty near drove me
crazy. What with that share breaking; and old Sandy Quinlan queering
my expense account; and the company squeezing the poor dam' farmers,
I quit 'em. Yes, sir, quit 'em stone cold. But our company can't
make ploughs fast enough. Sold over two hundred this last three
days. That's some talking point for a plough, boys, eh? I'll say.
Good company, too. Repairs always on hand--ain't that right,
Fred?"--Fred nodded--"Elegant company to travel for. Never go after
the poor dam' farmers. Dandy company; you bet."
It is impossible to estimate how long this remarkably edifying
dialogue might have continued; probably it would have gone on for a
week or two, had not Sam, becoming restless, pulled at his
companion's sleeve, and, with a backward jerk of the head, beckoned
Bert away a little.
"Don't know wot that big bloke's gassin' abaht," he whispered
cautiously, so as not to be overheard, "but 'e's a very 'appy man.
Jus' look at 'is weskit, an' 'is neck, an' 'is trahsers! 'E's like
one of them joints of meat tied rahnd an' rahnd wiv string. 'E mus'
be tellin' the trufe, though. No man wot tells lies can be 'appy,
like 'e is. That plagh's bound ter be a good 'un. Let's buy it."
So they did--being guided in the purchase of a disk and harrows by
the same wonderful process of reasoning.