_Saskatoon--Martha Trailey_
The non-arrival of a thousand-pound draft from England was firmly
anchoring William Trailey in Saskatoon. He was a moderately
well-to-do man. He had piled up a little wealth in the insurance
line, when securing new business was ridiculously easy--in the
'eighties and 'nineties of last century. His lawyers at Leeds, where
he used to reside, were slowly but surely converting into cash and
costs for him, some workmen's cottages in which he had invested a
part of his savings. And he was sufficiently acute to be afraid
that, unless he left Saskatoon as quickly as possible, he would be
compelled to cable instruction to his solicitors to dispose of
another row of houses.
Because of their promise to wait for the Traileys, the departure of
Sam and Bert was postponed for more than a week.
Meanwhile, like the snowdrifts surrounding it, the camp slowly began
to melt away. In small convoys--never alone--the colonists started
off on their two-hundred-mile journey away from civilization.
Blissfully unconscious of what lay before them, they bravely set out
to discover a new North-west Passage into Utopia.
In the romantic Crusades, beneath the banner of the Cross, the
mediæval conquerors used generally to ride at the head of their
followers--both in advancing and retreating. Barr did not. In this
respect he was a modern. His theory seemed to be, that, if anything
went wrong, and he was first over the top, he might never come back;
on the other hand, if he stuck to his dug-out, and switchboard, and
dispatch-box, he might save himself a lot of messy travelling. A
fraction of Peter the Hermit's naked courage and stark self-denial
would have made the Rev. Dr. Robbins a much more useful leader, too.
In any case, there was a huge amount of work for the Rev. Isaac M.
Barr to do at Saskatoon. There was a nondescript crew of freighters
to recruit and instruct, and there was a small mountain of stores and
supplies to be bought, for although later on the colonists almost
learned to do without food, they were inclined to treat themselves
rather well at the start. Also baggage had to be found, returning
colonists to be heartened, subordinates to be watched, and a
multitude of minor details to be attended to besides.
The party was brimming with queer characters. These made things very
interesting for themselves, and Barr, and everybody. Puritans and
free-thinkers; university and remittance men; ignoramuses and
intellectuals; socialists and men of vision; ex-soldiers and
ex-stay-at-homes; men who believed every word in the Bible was
inspired by God, and men who believed everything in _The Daily Mail_
was the same; Methodists, Anglicans, Calvinists, Catholics,
Unitarians, Agnostics, and men belonging to twenty other sects;
niggards and spendthrifts; men with brothers who were officers in the
Yeomanry, and men with not a single drop of blue blood in their veins
at all; men with money and very little sense; men with sense and very
little money; men with both and men with not much of either; all
began to dribble westwards along the Battleford trail, their eyes
turned wistfully towards the only, for them, ideal life--HOMESTEADING.
Four hundred wagons at the very least commenced the trip. A few
speedy colonists, travelling light, reached their destination, hunted
their land, scraped the top off a couple of acres, sowed them with
wild oats--and wilder mustard--and were busy hacking some innocent
trees down with which to build shacks, before some of the more
helpless ones even thought of quitting Saskatoon.
Quite early--a week or more perhaps--the trek began to sort out the
invertebrates. These came straggling back to Saskatoon with mossy
chins and bedraggled looks, reciting fearful yarns about how they had
been forced to leave pieces of their backbones in sloughs; the sheen
of their lovely equipment in bottomless muskegs; shreds of nerve
hanging on the almost perpendicular walls of yawning ravines; and,
inferentially, their rapidly dwindling courage in the rapacious ooze
of sticky alkali flats.
At that time, the West possessed (except nearer to Winnipeg) only the
main line of the Canadian Pacific, the Calgary-Strathcona, and the
Regina-Prince Albert branches, in the way of railways. The Canadian
Northern transcontinental had been surveyed the previous summer, and
the spot in the wilderness for which the colonists were bound was
where this survey bisected the 110th meridian of longitude--almost
exactly midway between the Battle and North Saskatchewan rivers.
The North-West Territories had not yet given birth to the charming
twins, Alberta and Saskatchewan; but the cradle was bought, any
amount of clothes were ready, and numerous attendants, in the shape
of future government officials, waited round to be first with their
congratulations.
Whatever induced Barr to venture so far, when there was any quantity
of available land nearer, is not quite clear. Probably he was the
law of survival's right-hand man; or he may have fancied himself as a
second Moses. There is nothing to prove that the majority of the
colonists would have refused to follow him into the Arctic Circle.
All they desired was "a bit of land "--the land, the piece officially
apportioned to the Colony, and to them.
During the time Trailey's belated draft was delaying them at
Saskatoon, Sam and Bert amused themselves in various ways. The
former decked himself out in a black, satiny shirt, an article of
male apparel then greatly in vogue. These soot-hued garments were
not supposed to show the dirt. Some of them didn't. The idea was a
brilliant one, and the inventor of such a grand, labour-saving device
Was doubtless well rewarded. A store-clerk in Saskatoon tried to
sell Sam half a dozen of them.
"Look at this one I'm wearing myself," he said enthusiastically,
pointing to his own shirt-collar, and then turning his coat-sleeve
back so that Sam might see the wrist-band. "How long d'you think
I've had this on?"
Sam was curious at first, then interested. He surveyed the
store-clerk's collar, and cuff, then looked up in his face. The
fellow was tall, with cadaverous features, and rather an oily skin.
"Dunno," said Sam, "but I should say abaht six months, p'raps."
The clerk laughed. He evidently enjoyed a joke.
"No," he said, "not that long; but I've had it on seven weeks. Ain't
it a corker?"
Sam was awestruck. "Strike me pink!" he blurted out.
"How many d'you want?" asked the clerk.
Sam made a laborious mental calculation. "Give us four on 'em," he
said. "An' 'ave yer got any black undershirts?"
"No," replied the clerk regretfully.
Sam was really grieved. He paid for his shirts and departed. The
thoughts of wash-day hovered over the Barr Colonists, particularly
the bachelors, like concentrated nightmares. Pioneering meant more
than merely doing without tablecloths, and morning newspapers, and
music, apparently. Keeping clean was a problem, too--one little
problem among many much bigger ones.
Bert revolved happily round Esther Trailey, with whom he was now on
speaking terms. He had mixed rather successfully with numbers of
attractive girls in England, had even loved a few of them with a sort
of deathless, polygamous, puppy-like fervour, but there was something
infinitively more fascinating about having one's favourite girl in
camp with one, in a far-off land, to protect from unknown dangers.
It is doubtful whether at home in England Bert would have come within
Esther's orbit. He, as a blossoming lawyer, and she, as merely an
insurance-man's daughter, would almost certainly have been separated
by two distinct divisions of caste, perhaps by more. But Bert was
already succumbing to the democratic Canadian spirit which despises
snobbishness. He was now in a country where Mrs. Tom, and Mrs. Dick,
and Mrs. Harry are all equal; and where social distinctions are
almost unknown; and where janitors' wives, and the wives and
daughters of farmers, and policemen, and small shopkeepers are
welcomed in the luxurious drawing-rooms of high government and
municipal officials, bankers, brokers, and others of the
highly-educated classes.
In any event, Esther's beauty would have bridged the social gulf
pretty efficiently. She was a glorious blonde, and built as
symmetrically as the Medici Venus, only not quite so robustly. She
was easily the loveliest girl among the colonists. All the men under
sixty were unanimous about it. Even some of the women had been heard
to remark that "she certainly would be rather nice if she didn't
spoil herself by being so forward."
Bert thought her anything but forward. She was as tantalizing as a
mirage to him. Actually, Esther was almost as bold as a swan, and
pretty nearly as brazen as a flower. An exceedingly dutiful
daughter, she adored her mother, against whose somewhat nagging
disposition she hardly ever openly rebelled.
"Really," she used to think when she was alone sometimes; "I don't
wonder at mamma being so irritable, when she sees how fearfully
helpless dad is. Fancy him sacrificing all the comfort of our dear
little home in England to drag us out here to live on a ranch--or
whatever it is they call it! Why, he... Poor old dad!" and she
would smile to herself as she recollected how pitifully pathetic he
had looked when one of the horses one morning had stood on his foot,
the one with the corn on it. "Ranching!" she often mused
contemptuously. "Dad should have rented one of the allotment-gardens
on the Headingley Road and tried his hand at that first."
It was the third or fourth morning after her father's inspiring
temperance lecture in Bert's tent that Esther laughed outright at her
thoughts, which had been running along lines like those just
mentioned.
"What are you laughing at?" her mother demanded peevishly. Mrs.
Trailey was rinsing a couple of towels in the wash-hand-basin just
outside the entrance to their tent. "I don't see anything to laugh
at," she went on; "especially now your father has taken to drink."
"Drink! Father!" cried Esther in astonishment. "What on earth do
you mean, mamma?"
"What I say--silly," snapped Martha Trailey. "He's gone and broken
my poor heart," and she twisted and wrenched at a helpless towel in
the extremity of her grief.
"I can't believe it, mamma. Why, father used to lecture at the Band
of Hope meetings at chapel!"
"Don't I know it! And now he's brought us down to this! Mind you
don't marry a man who lectures at Band of Hope meetings--they're all
alike, you may depend. The Rev. Jeremiah Sittingbourne's words are
coming true--every one of 'em. The very day you were christened,
when he came for tea, and I hadn't any cake made, and I had to give
him bread and butter and jam, and he asked a blessing just the same
as if it had been one of my best plum cakes, 'Yes, my dear Mrs.
Trailey,' he said, after he'd drunk four cups of tea, and then wiped
his whiskers on his pocket-handkerchief--you remember his white
whiskers all stained yellow round his mouth, don't you, Esther?
'Yes,' he said----"
"Of course, I don't remember, mamma. I was only a baby. But where
did dad get the drink?"
"How do I know where he got it? He's saturated with it yet. He
smells like that low public-house at the top of the High Street,
where that cat, Mrs. What's-her-name, the one the chapel-folks said
did away with her first husband; you know the one I mean--'The Woman
in Black'--or is it Pink?--the public-house is called. Oh, dear me!
what will become of us now? What with a drunken husband; and a
daughter that should have been a son---and would have been if my
prayers had been answered--but it's like the Rev. Mr.
Sittingbourne----"
"Sh-h, 'sh-h, mamma! here's dad coming now. One of the horses is
bringing him on the end of its rope. Don't for goodness' sake let
him hear you carrying on so. Perhaps he was worrying about our long
journey, and----"
"Worrying! Your father worrying! Would to God--Oh! that ever I
should say such a thing!--and me with two brothers missionaries--or
would have been if they hadn't both been taken to heaven in their
infancy when your grandmother Bickering was having children too fast.
Mind you never have children too----"
"Mamma! Stop it! Do please remember that I'm grown up now, and may
understand some of the things you are talking about."
"Ah, my girl, you'll understand well enough if you ever get a
drunkard for a husband. And you'd better watch yourself with that
young fellow next door but one. Those flighty young men who wear
velvet corduroy breeches generally come to a bad end. I remember the
Rev.----"
"Mamma! I won't listen. Here are Sam and Mr. Tressider coming this
way now.... How do I look in this old blouse?"
Esther hurriedly disappeared within the Trailey tent, where, among
many other things, a mirror was conveniently kept.
The two young men were indeed approaching. Bert, ignoring
formalities, commenced chatting with Mrs. Trailey. Sam, who had
noticed the sparks falling from the good lady's eyes, went and
assisted her husband to tie his horse to the wagon. Tying knots in
halter-shanks was a problem in advanced mathematics for Trailey, and
one which threatened everlastingly to remain as much of a mystery.
He had tied hundreds of men to annual insurance premiums for the rest
of their lives--making a neat job, too; but when it came to tying a
horse to a wagon-wheel with a bit of rope, well, that was not so easy.
"I trust the howling didn't upset you the other night," Bert was
saying. "It was rather an unearthly row, wasn't it?"
"Yes; and they say those animals are ferocious and will attack women
and children when they are in packs and famished."
Mrs. Trailey was inclined to sacrifice everything to fluency. She
turned towards Sam, who with Trailey had strolled up to the tent.
She was just going off into another reminiscent flight, when the
little man broke in:
"Them animals are skulkin' cowards, missis." He had evidently
overheard Mrs. Trailey's last remark. "They ain't got no more nerve
nor a sixpenny rabbit. That one the uvver night shut up when me an'
yore good 'usband 'ere went ahtside an' made a noise like a dyin'
sheep."
Mrs. Trailey went for Sam as though she had known him for years. Her
face reddened, and her greenish eyes flashed fire.
"So you were with my husband, were you? And you're the serpent in
his garden, are you?--tempting him, and leading him away from the
narrow path. Then perhaps you can inform me where he got his drink
from?"
Sam was not the slightest bit discomfited by Martha Trailey's anger.
"I only brought 'im 'ome, ma'am," he said, with his customary
good-humour. "My pal 'ere, Mr. Tressider, gev 'im a little
snifter--ter keep aht the cold hair, as yer might say. 'E'd bin fer
a walk dahn ter the river, ter communicate wiv 'is thoughts."
Mrs. Tressider now faced Bert, whom for some inexplicable reason she
liked much less than she did Sam.
"You ought to be downright ashamed of yourself, Mr. Tressider.
You've ruined my life--wheedling my poor, weak-minded husband away
from the fold. Never since he signed the pledge the year we were
married, and then started speaking at the Band of Hope, has he
touched a drop of drink, and that's twenty-two years come June
quarter-day. I remember it well, because the Rev. Duncan
Mc--Mc--dear me, what was his name now, William?--McWhipple, was it?
No--it must have been McNoddy, or McTavish, or some name like that.
Never mind, though. I remember when he filled in the form for my
husband to sign, I asked him if he knew of a public-house where we
could sell the barrel of ale we had in the cellar. My husband wanted
to empty it down the drain, but that seemed such a sinful waste. 'I
really don't know of such a public-house, Mrs. Trailey,' the Rev.
McWheesey said---Ah! that was his name; I remember now! And then he
told us to try The Flying Horse on the corner, because, he said, the
proprietor was Church of England, and would most likely allow us half
what we'd paid for the ale, and so--
"So the Rev. McWhat's-his-name was a bit of a lad, eh?" interposed
Bert laughingly.
"He was sixty, if he was a day; and as good a preacher as ever came
to our chapel. He was a saint, young man--if ever there was one.
That's why we got him to marry us. My husband gave him four
shillings for himself--two two-shilling pieces. I remember it all
just as if it were yesterday. But he died soon after, poor creature."
"Ah-h," sighed Trailey, "so he did." That sleepy-eyed rancher was
seated on a box of evaporated apples which stood conveniently just
without the tent. "So he did," he repeated absently to himself,
being careful to turn well away from his wife's challenging eyes.
Martha Trailey was a smallish woman with faded, yellow hair; and she
was a scold. Also she carried the worship of cleanliness to the
point where it becomes a nuisance. The husbands of such women never
know the glory of dropping cigar-ash on their own carpets, neither do
they experience the joy of paddling through the house in muddy boots.
They slink about their own homes like lodgers three months in arrears
with their board-bill, and unless they go into the furniture-removing
business, so that they may with impunity upset other women's rooms,
they are likely to look henpecked and soured, and soon begin secretly
to wish they were either unmarried or dead, whichever strikes them as
being the more preferable state.
Presently Esther emerged from the tent, looking as lovely as the
sparkling, spring morning itself. Smiling a greeting at Bert and
Sam, she stood listening to the conversation. She wore a white silk
blouse, short grey tweed skirt and polished brown shoes. Her hair of
burnished gold was drawn back loosely and tied low on her neck. The
light from a glittering sun played hide-and-seek in its folds, while
tiny currents of breeze wafted a few stray wisps of silken splendour
about her face.
Bert was lost in admiration, and showed it, and, not being buried
under six feet of earth, Esther rather enjoyed the sensation. Even
Sam was constrained to mutter to himself--"Gawd! wot 'air!"
Esther had heard her mother's prolix reminiscences from within the
tent. Thinking to make some sort of excuse for them, she said:
"Mamma is a bit harassed. She doesn't sleep very well in the tent."
"And how do you know, young lady?" Mrs. Trailey retorted, eyeing her
daughter from golden crown to shining shoes in one swift glance of
appraisal tinged with pride. "I notice you sleep well enough--and
long enough, too; even if we are pigging it in a beastly
tent--leaving your mother to wash and worry and battle with this
everlasting dirt. Why, when I was younger than you are by three
years and more, and long before I ever dreamt of marrying a
drunkard"--and Martha Trailey cast a scorching glance at her husband,
who was dreamily surveying a fluffy bit of cloud which hung in the
crystal air like a tiny puff of white smoke--"I was scrubbing and
washing and darning my finger-ends off from morn till night--H'm!
there goes that dolly who was in our cabin on the boat, Mrs.
What's-her-name--the one who was always pulling people to
pieces--never did her hair in the morning; only half washed herself;
shoes all undone; her bodice where it showed above her blouse as
black as Sam's shirt there; just lolled about and talked and talked
till I thought sometimes I should scream. I pity that husband of
hers. Just look at the poor fellow perched on top of that load!"
"Anuvver rarncher," commented Sam, as they all turned to watch a
city-bred colonist, in white collar and cuffs, driving an ox-team,
which waddled past with a ludicrous, swaying gait.
"I suppose we shall look something like that in a day or two," said
Esther--"mother and I balanced on top of the load, and dad driving
the horses."
Mrs. Trailey snorted disgust and flung a towel across a tent-rope
where she left it to dry.
Trailey withdrew his vacant stare from the speck of fleecy cloud and
let it rest for a moment upon the passing oxen.
"Ah-h," he sighed, but whether with regret, resignation, sublime
content, or indigestion, it is difficult to say. It was his
favourite expression, and one equally applicable to all situations.
It seemed to denote a sort of fatalism, a passive "amen" to
everything.
"Would you care to come for a stroll through the camp, Miss Trailey?"
said Bert, apparently anxious to ease the tension obviously existing
in the Trailey family.
Esther smiled consent, whereupon the couple walked off in the
direction of Saskatoon, which was about a quarter of a mile away.
They were a splendid-looking pair. Both were bare-headed. Esther's
hair glistened gloriously in the sun. Many an admiring glance was
cast in their direction as they slowly threaded their way through the
camp. Youth, that incomparable ally, was heavily in league with them
both.
"Did you really give father some drink, Mr. Tressider?" Esther asked
presently.
Bert smiled and looked down at his lovely companion. She didn't
appear to be the least bit annoyed.
"Yes--a drop. Why?"
"Mother will never forgive you. She has such a horror of the drink."
"So has your father, I assure you. He took quite a lot of persuading
at first; but after he'd drowned his conscience in the preliminary
gulp, he became quite partial to it. What is your own standpoint on
the drink question?"
"I'm not rabidly prejudiced. In fact, I think a good spree would do
some temperance fanatics good."
"For a Band of Hope lecturer's daughter you are a trifle advanced,
aren't you?"
"Oh, I don't know. Even the daughters of temperance lecturers can
have opinions, I suppose--not to say tolerant ones. Some people are
so occupied with their neighbours' failings that they entirely
overlook their own. I don't for the life of me see what right anyone
who is full of envy, and spite, and cant, and who eats as much as a
pig, has to talk about a man who occasionally drinks a drop too much."
"By Jove! you're something of a philosopher. That's rather unusual
for a woman, isn't it?--a young, good-looking one, at any rate."
"Am I good-looking then?" laughed Esther carelessly.
"No, you're not. You are the most beautiful----"
"Just look at the sky. Did you ever see it so far away in England?"
Bert looked at his companion's upturned face, which was rosy with
blushes.
"No, I didn't. It's too dashed far away. This country would be a
lot cosier if it weren't so big. But coming back to----"
"----And this air," interposed Esther; "surely it is blowing from off
a frozen sea of wine," and she opened her pretty mouth slightly,
inhaling deeply.
"You evidently hate compliments," said Bert.
"I detest them. Talk about something else. What are you intending
to do when you get to your land?"
Bert paused a little while before replying. The change of subject
was too sudden, too much of a flop from the heights of playful
badinage with a lovely young woman, to the sordid depths of reality.
"Jolly well get married--that is if I can persuade some charming girl
to have me," and as Esther turned and looked at him, probably to see
how earnest he was, his eyes twinkled, half humorously, half
seriously.
"Some nice girl you know in England, I suppose?"
"Quite likely," returned Bert seriously--then all at once thinking of
something, he abruptly extracted a photograph from his inside
jacket-pocket, and passed it to his companion.
"What d'you think of that young lady--for a rancher's wife?" he asked.
Esther examined the picture with careful interest.
"I think she is a very strong-minded girl," she said coolly, as she
returned the portrait.
"You are absolutely right--she is. She's my cousin."
Esther requested another glimpse of the photograph.
"Hasn't she lovely features?" she said. "And her eyes are simply
wonderful. Married, I suppose?--but I think you said so, or----"
"Yes, married, thank God! the day before we left Liverpool."
Esther returned the picture to its owner. All at once she felt
generously inclined towards the original.
"She's the loveliest girl I've ever seen--in a photograph, of course.
How lucky her husband must think himself!"
Bert, who was only twenty-one, whereas Esther was at least getting on
for twenty, was a shade baffled by this sudden display of enthusiasm.
"Thanks!" he said, returning the photograph to his pocket. "He must.
But haven't we gone far enough? Let's wander back; or, better still,
let's stroll down by the river and watch the logs and trees go
floating by; we can circle into camp that way."
"I should love to, but we must go straight home. Mamma will be
awfully vexed if I'm not there to pretend to help her with dinner."
"Very well. Have you enjoyed the walk?"
"It's been lovely."
They strolled back. Esther was radiant. She was full of piquant
remarks regarding the curious sights surrounding them. With an
adorable mixture of ingenuousness and shrewdness she asked Bert
innumerable questions, which he, in his tremendously superior wisdom,
took great joy in answering.
When they had almost reached their tents again, Bert commented on
Esther's high spirits. "You are evidently looking forward to our
trip to the Colony, Miss Trailey?"
"Yes, I am. It will be so amusing to watch dad driving the horses,
and mamma sitting on top of the packing-cases giving a thousand
orders."
"And you--what shall you be doing?"
"Oh, I shall walk most of the time. I love walking."
"So do I. Perhaps we can arrange to----" but just then, annoyingly,
Esther excused herself, and ran off into the tent.
Bert joined Sam, who was busily engaged with William Trailey,
teaching him how to steer a team by pulling an imaginary left rein to
go to the left, and an imaginary right one to go to the right.
"We s'll make a rarncher of yer yet, guv'ner," said Sam, as the
intricate problem slowly percolated into his pupil's intelligence.
Trailey didn't seem at all sure about it. At the close of the
lesson, he said: "Thank you very much, Sam. I think I shall be able
to manage it after a few years."