THE PRAIRIE
A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about, when
Blake plodded beside the jaded Indian pony that drew his Red-river
cart. It was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter
clothes, and he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper
than paying for transport. The settlement for which he was bound
stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which
stretches across central Canada, and means of communication between it
and the outer world were scarce. Harding, accordingly, had agreed to
the purchase of the animal with the idea of selling it afterwards to
one of the settlers.
Since leaving the railroad they had spent four days upon the trail,
which sometimes ran plain before them, marked by dints of wheels among
the wiry grass, and sometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a
wilderness of sand and short poplar scrub, through which Blake steered
by compass. Now it was late in the afternoon and the men were tired of
battling with the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp
sand. They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie
towards the belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens
of the North. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous
wooden towns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of
them, and the arid tract they journeyed through had so far no
attraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.
They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines of
a few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, and
dotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places,
stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part,
there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. The trail was heavy,
the wheels sank deep in sand as they climbed a low rise, and, to make
things worse, the rounded, white-edged clouds which had scudded across
the sky since morning were gathering in threatening masses. This had
happened every afternoon, but now and then the cloud ranks had broken,
to pour out a furious deluge and a blaze of lightning. Harding
anxiously studied the sky.
"I guess we're up against another thunderstorm," he said. "My opinion
of the mid-continental climate is singularly mean, but I'd put this
strip of Canada near the limit. Our Texan northers are fierce when
they come along, but here it blows all the time."
"We'll make camp, if you like; I don't feel very fresh," Blake replied.
"Not here," snapped Harding, "Where I stop I sleep, and I've no use for
sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded
and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a
chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee
of a big, solid bluff."
"Very well," Blake agreed. "I daresay we ought to find one in the
hollow we got a glimpse of from the last rise, but we haven't had to
put up with much discomfort yet."
"It's a matter of opinion; you haven't limped forty miles on a bad
foot, but I'm not complaining," Harding rejoined, "In fact, I've most
been happy since we left the depot. It's something to feel that you
have started; doing nothing takes the sand out of me."
Blake had once or twice suggested that his comrade should ride, but the
pony was overburdened and Harding refused. He explained that they
could not expect to sell it in a worn-out condition, but his partner
suspected him of sympathy for the patient beast.
They crossed the ridge and seeing a wavy line of trees in the wide
hollow, quickened their pace. The soil was firmer, the scrub the
wheels crushed through was short, and the trail led smoothly down a
slight descent. This was comforting, because half the sky was barred
with leaden cloud and the parched grass gleamed beneath it lividly
white, while the light that struck a ridge-top here and there had a
sinister luridness. It was getting cold and the wind was dropping,
which was not a favourable sign.
Pushing the cart through the softer places, dragging the jaded pony by
the head, they hurried on and at length plunged through a creek with
the trees close in front. A few minutes later they tethered the pony
to lee of the cart and set up their tent. Then, while Blake was
rummaging out provisions and Harding searching the bluff for dry
sticks, they heard a beat of hoofs and a man rode up, leading a second
horse. He got down and throwing a bundle off his saddle hobbled the
beasts before he turned to Blake.
"From the south? You're for Sweetwater?" he said.
Blake told him he had guessed correctly, and asked how far they had
still to go.
"You ought to make it in a day and a half," said the other. "I'll ride
in with you; run a store and hotel there, but feel I want to get out on
the prairie now and then, and as a horse was missing I went after him.
A looker, isn't he?"
Blake admired the animal, and suggested that the stranger had better
join them instead of cooking a separate supper. The fellow, who told
them that his name was Gardner, had a good-humoured, sunburned face and
an honest look. The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there
was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf,
but when Harding came out of the bluff with a load of wood a puff of
icy wind suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was
followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell
from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of
driving hail. It swept the wood, rending leaves and smashing twigs,
while the men crouched inside the straining tent and a constant blaze
of lightning flickered about the grass. By and by the thunder died
away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender
trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent. This
lasted some minutes, after which the rain ceased suddenly and a fierce
red light streamed along the saturated grass from the huge sinking sun.
Harding, who had brought the wood into the tent, took it out and with
the stranger's help soon made a fire.
It was getting dark, though a band of transcendental green still burned
upon the prairie's western edge when they finished supper and, sitting
round the fire, took out their pipes. The hobbled horses were quietly
grazing near them.
"That's undoubtedly a fine animal," Blake remarked. "Is it yours?"
"No; it belongs to Clarke's Englishman."
"Who's he? It's a curious way to speak of a fellow."
"It fits him," said the other. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide and bones,
and that's all there'll be when the doctor has done with him. He's a
sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."
"Then who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.
"That's not so easy to answer, but he's a man you want to be friends
with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot
young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start
with, and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now
and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers or on the jag is
more than I know."
"We met a fellow called Clarke at the _Windsor_ not long since. What's
he like?"
Gardner described him and Harding said, "That's the man."
"Then I can't see what he was doing at the _Windsor_; an opium joint
would have been more in his line."
"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.
"Has a farm, and runs it well, about three miles back, but he's away
pretty often in the North and at a settlement on the edge of the bush
country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious crowd;
Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."
Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them
an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a
remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them,
and he understood that these now and then led their followers into
outbreaks of emotional extravagance.
"They make good settlers, as a rule," he said. "But, as they don't
speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"
"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two or
three of them were mystics and he was something in that line. He was a
doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn't
have done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us, good, bad,
and pretty mixed, and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last.
At first some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses and
made the women drag the plough, and they'd one or two other habits that
brought the North-West Police down on them. After that they've given
no trouble, but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."
Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalanced
mind is liable under the influence of excitement to indulge in crude
debauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarke
appeared to be, should take a part in these excesses. He had, however,
no interest in the fellow and turned the talk on to other matters, and
when it got cold they went to sleep.
Starting early next morning, they reached Sweetwater after an
uneventful journey and found it by no means an attractive place. South
of it rolling prairie ran back, greyish white with withered grass, to
the skyline; to the north straggling poplar bluffs and scattered
Jack-pines crowned the summits of the ridges. A lake gleamed in a
hollow, a slow creek wound across the foreground in a deep ravine, and
here and there in the distance one could see an outlying farm. A row
of houses followed the crest of the ravine, the side of which formed a
dumping ground for domestic refuse. Some were built of small logs, and
some of shiplap lumber which had cracked with exposure to the sun, but
all had a neglected and poverty-stricken air. The land was poor and
the settlement located too far from a market. With leaden
thunderclouds hanging over it, the place looked as desolate as the
sad-coloured waste.
Following the deeply-rutted street, which had a narrow, plank sidewalk,
they reached the Imperial hotel; a somewhat pretentious,
double-storeyed building of unpainted wood, with a verandah in front of
it. Here Gardner took the pony from them and gave them a room which
had no furniture except a chair and two rickety iron beds. Before he
went out he indicated a printed list of the things they were not
allowed to do. Harding studied it with a sardonic smile.
"I don't see much use in prohibiting folks from washing their clothes
in the bedrooms when they don't give you any water," he remarked.
"This place must be about the limit in the way of cheap hotels."
"It isn't cheap," said Blake; "I've seen the tariff, but on the whole I
like the fellow who keeps it."
They found their supper better than they had reason to expect, and
afterwards sat out on the verandah with the proprietor and one or two
of the settlers who boarded at the hotel. The sun had set and now and
then a heavy shower beat upon the shingled roof, but the western sky
was clear and flushed with vivid crimson, towards which the prairie
rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows
behind the verandah, and from one which stood open a hoarse voice
drifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an old music-hall
ditty.
"It's that fool Benson--Clarke's Englishman," Gardner explained.
"Found he'd got into my bed with his boots on after falling down in a
muskeg. It's not the first time he's played that trick; when he gets
worse than usual he makes straight for my room."
"Why do you give him the liquor?" Harding inquired.
"I don't," said Gardner drily. "He's a pretty regular customer, but he
never gets too much at this hotel."
"And there isn't another."
"That's so," Gardner agreed, but he offered no explanation and Blake
changed the subject.
"Unless you're fond of farming, life in these remote districts is
trying," he remarked. "The loneliness and monotony are apt to break
down men who are not used to it."
"Turns some of them crazy and kills off a few," agreed a farmer, who
appeared to be well educated. "After all, worse things might happen to
them."
"It's conceivable," said Blake. "But what particular things were you
referring to?"
"I was thinking of men who go to the devil while they're alive.
There's a fellow in this neighbourhood who's doing something of the
kind."
"Rot!" exclaimed a thick voice, and a man's figure appeared against the
light at the open window. "Devil'sh a myth; allegorolical gentleman,
everybody knowsh. Hard word that--allegorolical. Bad word too,
reminds you of things in the rivers down in Florida. Must be some in
the creek here; seen them in my homestead."
"You go to bed," said Gardner sternly.
"Nosh a bit," replied the other. "Who you talking to?" He leaned
forward in danger of falling through the window. "Lemme out."
"It's not all drink," Gardner explained. "He has something like shakes
and ague now and then. Says he got it in India."
The other disappeared and a few moments afterwards reeled out of the
door and held himself upright by one of the verandah posts.
"Now I'm here, don't let me interrupt," he said. "Nice place if this
post would keep still."
Warned by a sign from Gardner, the others ignored him, and Harding
remarked to the farmer, "You hadn't finished what you were saying when
he disturbed you."
"I don't know that it was of much importance; speaking of degenerates,
weren't we? We have a curious example of the neurotic here: a fellow
who makes a good many dollars by victimizing farmers who are forced to
borrow when they lose a crop, as well as young fools from England, and
by way of amusement studies modern magic and indulges in refined
debauchery. It strikes me as a particularly unhallowed combination."
"No sensible man has any use for hoodoo tricks and the folks who
practise them," Harding said. "They're frauds from the start."
"Don't know what you're talking about," Benson broke in. "Not all
tricks! Seen funny things in the East; thingsh decent men better leave
alone."
Letting go the post, he lurched forward and as the light fell upon his
face Blake started. He had been puzzled by something familiar in the
voice, and now he knew the man, whom he had no wish to meet. He was
too late in hitching his chair back into the shadow, for Benson had
seen him and stopped with an excited cry.
"Blake of the sappers! Want to cut your old friendsh? Whatsh you
doing here?"
"It's a mutual surprise, Benson," Blake replied, and the other, holding
on by a chair back, smiled at him genially.
"Often wondered where you went to after you left Peshawur, old man.
Though you got the sack for it, it wasn't your fault the ghazees broke
our line that night. Said so to the Colonel--can see him now, sitting
there, looking very sick and cut up, and Bolsover, acting adjutant,
blinking like an owl."
"Be quiet!" Blake said in alarm, for the man had been a lieutenant of
native infantry when they had met on the hill campaign.
Benson, however, was not to be deterred and addressed the rest: "This
gentleman old friend of mine; never agreed with solemn old Colonel, but
they wouldn't listen to me. Very black night in India; ghazees coming
yelling up the hill; nothing would stop them. Rifles cracking,
Nepalese comp'ny busy with the bayonet, and in the thick of it the
bugle goes----"
Raising a hand to his mouth, he gave a shrill imitation of the call
"Cease fire!" and then lost his balance and fell over the chair with a
crash.
"Leave him to me," said Gardner, who seized the fallen man and with
some difficulty lifted him to his feet. After he pushed him through
the door there were sounds of a scuffle and two or three minutes later
Gardner came back with a bruise upon his face.
"He's quiet now and the bartender will put him to bed," he said.
There was silence for the next few moments, for the group on the
verandah had been impressed by the scene; then a man came up the steps.
He was dressed in old brown overalls and carried a riding quirt, but
Harding recognized him as the man they had met at the _Windsor_ in
Montreal.
"Have you got Benson here?" he asked.
"Sure," said Gardner. "He's left his mark on my cheek. Why don't you
look after the fool? Anyhow, you must have come pretty quietly; I
didn't hear you until you were half way up the steps."
"Light boots," Clarke answered, smiling; "I bought them from you. I
don't know that I need hold myself responsible for Benson, but I found
he wasn't in when I rode past his place and it struck me that he might
get into trouble if he got on a jag."
He turned and nodded to Blake. "So you have come up here! I may see
you to-morrow, but if Benson's all right I'm going home now."
He went into the hotel and soon afterwards they heard him leave by
another door.