_Indian Freighters--Eagle Creek_
Notwithstanding Mrs. Trailey's covert opinion to the contrary,
Bertrand Paul Tressider was not entirely devoid of ideas. True, he
had been educated at one of England's most ancient, and, therefore,
most noted, preparatory schools, which, like all others of its kind,
annually turned out droves of mediocrities. Sparring with the gods
of Greek mythology, wrestling with the heroes of Roman history, and
dabbling in other ancient and dead things, though ruining many good
men's chances of excelling as first-rate stevedores, or potmen,
hadn't spoiled Bert. The very fact of his cutting loose from the
fustiness of English law in order to join in Barr's search for a
prairie Elysium proves that. And his training among Yorkshire men,
in a Sheffield solicitor's busy office, had taught him that
indubitably five beans counted five. No one, no matter how finely
educated, can mix for very long with Yorkshire men without learning
that much. If the beans are represented by pounds, or even by
halfpence, the knowledge is usually acquired very quickly.
All morning, on and off, Bert's mind had reverted to the unthankful
task which lay before them of releasing the wagon from the slough.
He quite realized that a good deal of wet, dirty, cold and laborious
work would be involved in the job.
He soon broached a suggestion to Trailey. The ex-insurance
superintendent had finished his breakfast, and was seated on the
wagon-pole, absorbed in dislodging a refractory morsel of bacon from
a hollow tooth by the aid of a stiff stalk of grass. Thoroughly
imbued with gentlemanly instincts, he stopped toying with his teeth
when Bert addressed him, and became dreamily attentive.
"How about paying some of these Indian chaps to pull your wagon out
of the slough?" said Bert. "You don't feel like tackling the job
yourself, I suppose?"
Trailey didn't exactly leap at the idea. He never leaped at
anything. "Ah," he drawled, "that doesn't sound like a bad
suggestion."
"Well," went on Bert, "it's your wagon, y'know; and getting it out
may cost a trifle, and all that, but I'm sure it's the wisest thing
to do." Bert's Yorkshire training cropped up here--making it
perfectly clear that there must be no mistake about who would be
liable for the cost of the work.
Esther overheard the proposal, and endorsed it very heartily. She
said she thought the scheme was an exceptionally brilliant one, and
conveyed to its originator, by means of a swift glance of admiration,
her opinion of how absolutely unique she thought it was. This
powerful stimulant sent the blood rollicking through Bert's body so
fast that he remained silent for a little while so as better to enjoy
the sensation.
Martha Trailey, full of memories of the previous evening's incidents,
clinched the suggestion with a few appropriate remarks about "girls
gadding off with wild young harum-scarums, while she was left to
drown in a bog."
"You may as well decide to let the Red Indians do it," she said to
her husband, after she had made several extraneous references to his
past career, chiefly to do with his early married life. "At
present," she continued, "you've more money than sense; but goodness
knows what will happen to us when it's all gone. Oh, dear me! well
might my Aunt Rebecca say the very day I was married, that, although
she detested mentioning it, she had an idea I might possibly live to
rue it."
Sam and Bert, noticing the finger of Mrs. Trailey's barometer moving
rapidly round to "stormy," edged quietly away from the tent, outside
of which the discussion was taking place.
"You shouldn't talk like that before strangers, mamma," Esther
remonstrated gently; "it makes every one feel so uncomfortable."
"Strangers! Strangers, did you say? Well, what next, may I ask!
Strangers!--and after we've been carried across the pond with our
arms round their necks! Allow me to tell you that the very thought
of it makes my blood boil; and so it would yours if you weren't so
brazen. What young women are coming to these days, I don't know.
And in broad daylight, too! Why, I remember when I was your age, no
respectable young woman would dream of putting her arms round a man's
neck till after it was dark. Please don't forget that, my girl."
Naturally, that settled the matter. Quite soon along came the usual
tribe of Indian freighters--a whole string of them. Bert shouted
across the slough to half a dozen of the men who were investigating
the crossing. He motioned vigorously towards the mired wagon, and
made pregnant signs indicative of dollars being counted out.
In a calmly stoical sort of way, the Indians seemed quite interested.
Unhurriedly, they condensed a few thoughts into fewer words, which
they communicated to each other, after which they made signs
that--for Indians--they would be tickled to death to come to some
arrangement. Seeing that the worship of money was one of the
religions the natives had picked up from their white brethren, their
consent was understandable enough. Two active young bucks jumped on
a couple of spare ponies, numbers of which slunk about the convoy,
and rode through the slough to negotiate terms.
Two or three dusky women of uncertain age and beauty gabbled away to
each other, pointing at the bogged prairie schooner and laughing.
The ladies seemed to take a much more humorous view of life than did
their men-folk. They squatted atop of their loaded wagons like
images of fat Buddhas togged out in green, purple and pink robes.
After much argument, during which the two dark-skinned ambassadors
preserved a dignified reserve, contrasting strangely with the comical
gesticulations of the civilized white men, the transaction was at
last completed. The payment for extricating the wagon was to be ten
dollars. The aboriginal votaries of materialism stuck out grimly for
cash in advance. Possessing the whip hand, they got it.
"Give 'em the money," said Bert, addressing Trailey, who had wandered
down to the water. Sam watched carefully whilst the transfer of the
cash was made. "It's dirt cheap, guv'ner," he said, encouragingly.
He was glad to be rid of a job which would have devolved mostly upon
him.
Four teams of cayuses were hooked to the bogged wagon--two to the
pole, and one on each side, to the box. Then, with a mixture of
whoops and whips, chiefly the latter, about two-thirds of the ponies
took it into their heads to pull the load--and the rest of the
ponies--across the slough. The drivers splashed through the water
alongside, apparently enjoying its coolness.
Some of the natives looked as solemn as though they had just drawn a
hearse full of dead medicine-men through the water. Others cast sly
grins at the white party. When they had all jumped on the bony backs
of their ponies and returned to their own convoy, Sam and Bert, with
a little assistance from Trailey, commenced to pack up.
That evening they reached the gash in the earth known as Eagle Creek.
Sam strolled to the edge of the ravine and stared into the shadowy
depths. "It's too bloomin' late ter commit sewercide ter-night," he
decided. "Gawd! 'ave we got ter go dahn there?" he mused, awed by
the fearsome steepness of the trail.
So the little party camped for the night beside the coulee. Thanks
to their outdoor exertions, the high, clear altitudes, the
ever-changing scenes, and the freedom from the worries, both petty
and large, of congested humanity, they all invariably slept like
tops. Sam and Bert and Esther were enjoying to the full every second
of their lives. They extracted pleasure from the fascinating novelty
of everything, like bees do honey from flowers.
As for William Trailey, he was hardly on the earth at all, except for
meals. "Ah," he would sigh whenever anything particularly startling
or novel was pointed out to him, and then his big, dreamy, blue eyes,
after taking in the object, would go soaring with his thoughts in
long, wandering journeys through realms of abstraction. What really
were his visions, and ideas, and ambitions, no man knew, even if he
did himself.
Martha Trailey was perfectly contented to be discontented. She
cooked, and washed, and rattled about in energetic storms of striving
after a sort of super-cleanliness. Her pots and pans and utensils
were all clean and polished as though they had been lined up in her
kitchen back home in England. In return for this monumental
efficiency, all she desired was to be able to make it impossible for
her husband to forget that he was married.
Eagle Creek, whatever it is now, was in those days an awesome chasm
on the Saskatoon-Battleford trail. Probably half a dozen lively
recollections spring to the mind of each Barr Colonist as he searches
the recesses of his memory for pictures of far-gone days. Dulled a
little by distance, perhaps; made a trifle cobwebby by time; and,
possibly, half-buried under a litter of subsequent experiences, but
totally eclipsed by no other event, is the clear remembrance of the
crossing of Eagle Creek.
Many Barr Colony legends originated here. Numerous foolish
experiments for descending the slopes of a ravine as steep as a
house-roof were attempted. The biggest wonder is that no one was
killed. Not a few colonists strove to leave their bones
there--unintentionally, of course, but none the less with
considerable perseverance.
It has for years been widely broadcast, that, in an effort to defeat
the gravitational urge of his thirty-hundredweight, top-heavy load,
one chap hobbled his oxen. This is a gross distortion of fact. He
hobbled only one of them.
Sam knew the fellow. He was a dark, sallow, melancholy-visaged man
from Shropshire, which is a buffer county between England and Wales.
"Wot made you 'obble one of yer bloomin' hoxen when yer went dahn
Eagle Creek?" Sam asked him several weeks later when they met at
Headquarters camp (Britannia).
The Shropshire man pulled a wry face. He was very despondent--more
so than usual. "I didn't care a hang what 'appened to me," he
replied glumly.
Sam was very sympathetic. "Why?" he asked.
"Oh, I don't know. Somehow, everything seemed to be going wrong."
Smiling a twisted smile, the Shropshire man went on: "You see, my
blessed bulls were green, and you couldn't hold 'em back with the
ropes on their horns. My wife wanted to turn back all the time. I'd
been wet to the skin for three days. Two of my youngsters had the
whooping-cough. Barr had one hundred and seventy-five pounds of my
capital, which I'd said good-bye to, of course. And, then, blow me
if I hadn't found out at Saskatoon that Barr had given the other
three 'omesteads on our section to two Welshmen and a Lancashire man.
I tell you, prospects looked none too rosy."
"So yer thought yer'd try an' do away wiv yerself--eh?"
"Ha-ha!" cackled the Shropshire man sardonically; "I may have been
unlucky, and a trifle down-'earted, but I wasn't as far gone as
that." His voice was very husky with talking to his bulls, which
hadn't died yet.
There were runaways galore at Eagle Creek; but the stream at the
bottom, and the steep rise beyond, stopped most of them. Inertia
decrees that a body in motion shall tend to continue so. Some
colonists attempted to outwit this law. They zig-zagged down the
declivity. This was all right till one of the wheels on the high
side hit a stone or a knoll, then over went the wagon, shooting its
conglomeration of packing-cases, harrows, stove, and everything else
down the bank like coals being tipped into a cellar.
Only six weeks previously, these colonists had been seated in offices
pushing pens over paper; selling shirts across mahogany counters
under the watchful eyes of lordly shop-walkers; teaching sleepy
children in Sunday school the tale about the Israelites trekking into
Egypt; catching the nine-fifteen to business every morning, with a
weekly half-day for a football match, or a fish in the river;
enjoying the numberless advantages of a cultured land, from the daily
halfpenny newspaper to listening to the thunder of an organ in a
five-hundred-year-old cathedral--and now here they were, gazing over
an abyss which had to be crossed before they could arrive at the land
of promise--Barr's promise. No wonder some of them, when they looked
into the yawning depths of Eagle Creek, suffered an attack of
faint-heartedness, and straightway turned back.
But the stimulating fact remains, that easily three hundred teams,
driven by the greenest aggregation of men who ever came to the West,
contrived somehow or another to cross the creek safely.
Early the following morning, Sam piloted each wagon in turn down the
precipitous slope. The rear wheels of both vehicles were locked with
heavy logging chains. Professional freighters, who also had camped
at the creek, instructed him in the art of tying the chains so that,
besides being non-slipping, they contributed their greatest braking
effect.
The chains were allowed to become taut at a point which brought the
half-hitch sufficiently near to the ground to dig into it. With both
hind wheels gripped by such knots, which themselves were gouging into
the trail, the descent was rendered comparatively simple. Both teams
were free from the mysteries of breeching tackle. Only Sam really
knew how to harness the horses properly with the leather puzzles they
already possessed, though Bert and Trailey were slowly learning.
"Thank God for that!"
William Trailey uttered these words as he gazed at the awful
declivity down which the wagons had been guided by the indispensable
Sam. The little party was resting on the bridge which spanned the
tiny stream gurgling along the bottom of the creek.
Esther, who lived much nearer to the earth than her father usually
did, and whose gratitude on that account was inclined to be more
practical, came along to Sam and, with a pretty gesture,
half-serious, half-jesting, shook hands with him.
"And thank you, Sam," the beautiful girl said; "what ever we should
do without you, God alone knows." The little Cockney blushed, and
his eyes shone.