It was the first day of August of that first year on the prairies that
Jack and I hitched the oxen to the wagon, threw on board a kit
consisting mainly of a change of clothes and a blanket for each of us,
said a brave but undemonstrative good-bye to the girls, and turned our
faces to the older settlements. We had seen Mrs. Alton's new
house--twelve feet square, it was, and eight feet high to the
plates--under way; we had Spoof's promise that twice a day he would
study the shack at Fourteen with his field glass for the flag that
Marjorie would nail to the roof in case of any emergency; we had laid up
fuel and supplies against the immediate needs of the girls during our
absence, and now we were setting forth to earn what money we could
during the short season of high wages. Our own oat field could wait; we
would cut it for feed, anyway, and a little frost wouldn't matter.
One thing--two things, to be exact--worried me more on that day of
parting than I would have cared to confess. One of those things was
Spoof, and the other was Harold Brook, of the Mounted Police. Brook
might be expected to call any day on his return journey to
headquarters;--I had hoped that that would be over before I left, and
many a glance I shot at the sky-line to the north-west of Fourteen, but
without catching a glimpse of the red tunic riding down upon us, as it
had done once before, apparently out of the heavens.
The subject was a peculiarly difficult one. For days I questioned myself
whether or not I should have a frank discussion of it with Jean, but I
finally decided to say nothing, at least for the present. It was a thing
which I could not even mention without seeming to cast a reflection on
Jean's loyalty, and loyalty, as I have discovered, is one of those
qualities which does not improve under questioning. Every question aimed
at loyalty seems to knock a beam out of its structure, and I began to
suspect that I could not spare any beams from my particular air-castle.
So I decided on the bold course of taking everything for granted, and
when I said good-bye to Jean I gave no hint of the matter that was
uppermost in my thoughts. But Jean, being a woman, probably knew all
about it; perhaps the extra warmth and pressure of her hand was an
answer to the question which I had not the courage to ask.
On the second day out, as we halted on the side of a little knoll to let
the oxen graze and to eat our lunch, we were suddenly aware of the
rumble of an approaching vehicle and the tones of a lusty voice, lifted
in something evidently intended for song. Even before we had identified
the "flyin' ants" we caught the burden of the refrain----
"Lived a min-er, a forty-nine-er,
An' his daugh-ter, Sweet Marie."
"It's Jake, of all the world!" shouted Jack, and together we rushed down
upon him. His pudgy form, sheltered from the hot sun by a broad felt
hat, lolled on one end of the seat of his democrat. He was alone, and
the springs of the seat, from being often ridden on by one person only,
had a way of listing to the right and allowing Jake to find his own
centre of gravity. In such matters Jake followed the line of least
resistance, and bumped along contentedly on the low end of the seat
while the other end projected itself abruptly into the atmosphere. His
eyes were closed, or nearly so; a healthy freshet of tobacco juice
meandered across his chin, and his red, sunburned face was so
expressionless that at first we thought he had not seen us. Not until we
were at his very wheel did he pull the horses up and show an interest in
the surroundings.
"Hello, Sittin' Crow!" was his greeting. "Dang it, stand still a minute,
you piebald lump o' fox-bait"--this to one of the bronchoes, switching
at a horse-fly--"don' you know your friends when you meet 'em? Well, how
goes it on the gopher ranch?"
We shook hands and made him stop and eat with us. "Well, if you're sure
there's no dang'rous Injuns 'roun' here," he demurred.
Jake was fresh charged with Regina gossip, and that of the country for
two hundred miles around. The settlers were streaming in, he said, but
the country was so big it was just like pouring water in the sea. "Only
more profitable," he added, thumping his hip pocket.
"This locatin' game is like a pint flask--all right while it lasts, but
it don' get anywhere," Jake continued. "I've made some lumps o' easy
money, but while I was doin' it other fellers that I brung into the
bald-headed were busy bustin' the sod, an' to-day, dang me, they're
better off 'n I am. Fellows with no more brains than a grindstone! Got a
farm an' stock an' a wife an' kids, an' let me tell you, Crow, them last
two is genooine collaterals. So I figgers to myself, 'Jake, you've trod
the primrose cow-path, or whatever it is, long enough. It's time to get
down to business.'"
"Yep," said Jake, taking a fresh mouthful of tobacco to give his words
time to sink in. "After I saw you fellows trailin' those two fine girls
out into the bald-headed I says to myself, 'Jake, this one-horse
business is out o' date. Better get into double harness.' So bein' a man
of action I wrote out an ad. an' put it in a big paper in the States.
Here it is:"
Jake unfolded a scrap of paper from a note-book in which he kept a list
of vacant quarter sections and handed it to us to read.
"WANTED--Wife, about 18 hands high, chestnut preferred, sound in
wind and limb and built for speed. Good looks not necessary; I'm
pretty enough for two. Jake, 148 ---- St., Regina, Canada."
"Do you mean to say any fish rose to such a bait as that?" Jack demanded
sceptically.
"Fish? Shoals of 'em. Say, in about four days I begun to get as much
mail as a new millionaire. An' photographs! I wish I had some to show
you, but she--Bella--burned 'em all up. They were what I call pictures
o' real life. I got so much mail the postman says to me, 'Whatya doin',
Jake; startin' a lottery?' an' I says 'Yep'. Guess I wasn't so far out,
at that.
"Well, jus' as I was thinkin' o' goin' to a business college an' hirin'
a few dozen stenographers, along comes this telegram." He produced a
yellow sheet.
Meet me at Regina station Thursday five p.m. youll know me I am
the only one in the world. Bella Donna.
"Well, I reckons right off that Bella Donna is an alibi, or whatever you
call a false name, an' that some o' the boys is pullin' a gag on me, but
like a fool down I goes to the station, an' there I saw her comin' right
up the platform like a sandhill crane out of a marsh. I knew her, jus'
like she said, so when she comes up I calls her hand.
"'Madam,' says I, 'are you the lady o' the porous plaster?'
"I'll plaster you,' says she, 'if you give me any o' yer lip. But do you
happen to know a Mr. Jake?' says she, gettin' out a paper; 'here's his
address.'
"'Know him!' says I. 'I should say so. An' in case you're thinkin' o'
marryin' him let me tell you somethin', jus' between friends. Jake
buries a wife once a year, reg'lar.'
"'He does, eh?' says she. 'Well, I'm promisin' I'll be a relic' before
he's a widower,' says she. 'Relic' is what she said, but it didn't sound
right to me.
"'That's bettin' on a cinch,' says I, meanin' that she would get the
red ribbon for relics at Regina fair already, but my wit goes over her
head, as it of'en does, an' she comes back at me with 'Wha'd' _you_ know
'bout anybody marryin' Mr. Jake?'
"'Everythin', says I, humpin' my wish-bone with importance. 'Jake tells
me every thin'. I'm his spiritooal adviser, so to speak, which includes
matrimony. The women that wants to marry Jake--lots of 'em rich, too,
Madam,' I says. 'I'm steerin' him clear o' them every day,' I says,
'partly out o' sympathy fer them, on accoun' o' his--his _severe_
habits,' I says.
"'Who _are_ you, anyway?' says she, an' with that I flashes my telegram
on her. 'I'm the party of the first part,' says I, as they say in the
law offices.
"With that she fixes me with an eye that made me think o' Sittin' Crow,
f'rocious an' blood-thirsty.
"'So you're Jake,' she says, pullin' herself up 'till all her angles
stood out like the haunches of a starved mustang. 'Well, you got a hell
of a nerve,' she says.
"I begun to think maybe she was about right, but she gave me no time fer
reflections.
"'Where's a preacher?' she says. 'You wanted speed, an' yer goin' to get
it.' With that she hustled me over town an' had me married before I knew
it, so I'd have to settle fer the supper, as I figgered it out
afterward. Then after supper we go to my shack an' she climbs into my
business papers like a hound after garbage.
"'Wha'd' you do fer a livin', may I ask?' she says, when she finds
nothin' in my papers excep' receipts from the grocer's an' a bunch of
letters in answer to my ad. 'This correspondence o' yours is
interestin', but I wouldn't take it to be very fillin', she says, 'an'
anyway, if this is all you have to do you're out of a job,' she says,
an' with that she gathers up my bundles o' letters, photos an' all, an'
throws 'em into the fire."
By this time the bacon and potatoes were sputtering in the frying pan
and the smell of hot tea lent an extra tang to the prairie air, so Jack
served the meal and for awhile Jake's account of his matrimonial exploit
was lost in a hubbub of vigorous mastication. Bread and potatoes and
bacon, washed down with strong tea, disappeared as though by magic, and
in a few minutes Jake was in a mood to resume his narrative.
"'Do!' says I, musterin' all my dignity. 'I'm a specialist--a specialist
in land. I know the sections with the weak lungs an' the broken knees
an' the spavined joints, an' if a man pays me enough I put him wise, an'
if he don' I let him get wise at his own expense,' says I. 'I'm a
specialist, an' I charge like a specialist,' I says.
"'Humph!' says she, jus' like that. 'Between your fine words I figger
that you pick up a dollar now an' again by tottin' these tenderfoot
sod-busters out over the bald-headed.' I dunno where she got it, but she
had all the language necessary, an' more. 'Let me see your bank book,'
she says.
"So I dug it up, an' it showed a balance in my favor of forty-three
dollars an' twenty cents. Fortunate there was nothin' in it about the
hundred dollars I owed at the livery stable fer the board o' the flyin'
ants, but I let sleepin' dogs lie, as the sayin' is.
"'How old are you, Jake, dear?' she says, all of a sudden as smooth as
oil.
"'Forty-three,' I says, perhaps because that was the figger in my mind
at the moment, an' I was shavin' it a little, at that.
"'Then you've made a dollar a year--so far,' says she, droppin' back to
her nat'ral voice that kind o' sounds like two mill-wheels an' you
between 'em. 'You'll die before you're sixty,' she says; 'I can see it
in your eyes,' although I wasn't lookin' at her, findin' that rather
painful, 'an' leave an estate o' less than sixty dollars. Jake, that
wouldn't buy me an outfit fer the funeral, fer believe me I'm goin' to
do you justice when the time comes. We're goin' to take a homestead.'
"'Not me,' I says. 'The seat o' my democrat is as near as I want to get
to a homestead. They're all right fer sod-busters, but fer a woman o'
culture----'
"I thought that would get her, but she was as imperv'ous to compliments
as an ox to an oration, so to speak.
"'Very well,' says she. 'If you won't take a homestead, I will.'
"'You can't,' says I, with sudden boldness. 'You ain't a widow.'
"With that she gives me another o' those
through-the-gizzard-and-nailed-to-the-wall looks o' hers. 'I will be, in
about twenty seconds,' she says, 'if there's any more discussion,' she
says. So here we are."
"Have you located?" I asked Jake, when he was silent for a minute, and
seemed to have dropped off into meditation.
"Yep. It was easy fer me, knowin' as I do ev'ry willow between the
Souris an' the Saskatch'wan. You remember section Sixteen, that you
fellows were lookin' at? I didn't figger it was good enough fer you,
bein' clients o' mine, but it would do me in a pinch, so I jus' filed on
it myself."
"Aha!" said Jack, who was always a little shrewder than I. "So that is
why we couldn't get Sixteen. Surely you weren't contemplating matrimony
so far back as that?"
"Not exac'ly contemplatin' it, but takin' precautions." Jake admitted.
"Rather lets the wind out of your fine story," was Jack's comment. "How
much do we take for gospel, and how much for romance?"
Jake clambered to his feet and struck a pose intended to be heroic.
"Behold in me a young bridegroom," he orated. "Would you expec' me, on
an auspicious occasion like this, to stick stric'ly to the map? Out o'
the fullness o' my heart I have given you good measure."
We expressed the hope that Bella Donna would prove a sticker.
"She will," Jake prophesied. "Of course that ain't her real name; I jus'
gave you that fer--fer instance, an' her first name's Bella, so it's
half true, which is a pretty good average in this country. Wait 'til you
see us, a-chariotin' behind the flyin' ants over to Fourteen an'
Twenty-two! I'm figgerin' on organizin' a school distric' right away."
We gave Jake our blessing and watched him ride off in his wobbly
democrat with its spring seat up-tilted to larboard and his fat figure
settling down like a sack with a hat on it. But Jake was evidently in
good spirits, for before he had gone beyond ear-shot we heard him
singing,
"O my darling, O my darling,
O my darling, Clementine,"
and we knew that all was well with him, at least for the present.
Sitting on the grassy knoll, digesting our lunch by the aid of the
straws which each of us was unconsciously chewing, we watched Jake until
he was a speck in the distance.
"What do you make of it?" said I at last.
"I'm not saying," was Jack's cautious rejoinder. "Either he's married,
or he isn't." Jack had not forgotten the incident of Sittin' Crow.
But we had occasion to be thankful we had fallen in with Jake, for he
had been able to direct us to a farmer within a day's drive who hired
both us and our oxen for the harvest, or until the beginning of
threshing. His name was Keefer; a short, thick-set man of fifty-five,
with a stubby whisker turning an iron grey. He received us in his stable
yard, hatless and coatless, and with his thumbs hooked under his
leather suspenders in the confident manner of one who is accustomed to
rely on himself and is not likely to be disappointed.
"I'm a glutton for work," he said, when he had hired us, "and I expect
my men to feed hearty at the same trough. I wouldn't put your bulls on a
binder on a bet; there's too much side-play to their gait, but I can use
'em discing the summerfallow. You'll have to sleep in the granary, but
we all eat together at the house. I'm starting two binders in the
morning; I'll expect you to keep up to them, and I'll know by to-morrow
night what you're made of."
Keefer was as good as his word. He called us at half past four, while
the night was still hanging grey about the buildings, and the stronger
stars looked down, cold and steely, through a temperature which had
dropped dangerously close to the freezing point. He had an hour's work
for us about the stables, and at six we went in to breakfast.
The table was set in the kitchen; Mrs. Keefer and her sixteen-year-old
daughter Nellie must have been about almost as early as were we. The
breakfast was of oatmeal porridge with milk--the belief that every
prosperous farm abounds in cream, is, alas, a delusion;--following the
porridge came salt pork and potatoes, with good bread and butter, both
the latter the products of the housewifely skill of Mrs. Keefer and her
daughter. The table was of boards, covered with oilcloth; Mr. Keefer sat
at one end, with a husky chap he called George, his permanent hired
man, at his right, and his fourteen-year-old son, Harry, at his left.
Jack and I sat opposite, and Mrs. Keefer occupied the seat at the other
end of the table from her husband. Nellie did not sit down, but waited
on the company until the first table had finished. Apparently there were
younger children upstairs, as we heard her admonishing them for their
failure to get up; evidently she would eat with them.
"It's early for harvest," Keefer volunteered to us, when he had finished
his porridge and was half way through a plate of potatoes and pork. "I
didn't figure on it so soon, but the last few days have been hot, and my
barley field has come along a-whoopin'. It gives me a chance to try out
the binders--and the new hired men."
Keefer smiled as he spoke, but he had a way with him that made us aware
that anyone who failed to come up to his standard as a workman would get
short shrift around his establishment.
By seven o'clock two binders, each drawn by four magnificent horses,
were in the barley field. Keefer drove one team and George the other,
and when each had made two rounds we started stooking. I saw Keefer
watching us as we started, evidently taking note whether we would follow
the binders or go in the opposite direction, and when we did the latter
he nodded, as much as to say. "They'll do," and drove on. Although we
could not claim to be experienced farm hands we had lived close enough
to farm life in the East to be something better than greenhorns, and
our summer on the prairie had made us as hard as nails.
We needed both our strength and our fortitude before sundown that night.
The barley crop was heavy, and a trifle over-ripe, and the sharp-pointed
awns which this cereal throws off had a way of seeking out our
vulnerable points that was almost devilish. They crawled under our
shirts and into our hair and most particularly through our socks just
above the boot-tops. The thermometer during the day hung close to the
hundred mark, and as the afternoon wore on we gave way to the temptation
to drink heavily from the water keg. It was a forty-acre field, which
Keefer was bent upon cutting in one day, not because he needed to but
because he had laid that down as a standard for a day's work with two
binders. But the horses felt the drag of the first day of harvest as
much as we did, and as the field grew smaller they lost more and more
time at the corners.
By evening the red rays of the setting sun, hitting squarely in our
faces, revealed in Jack's eye a glint of the light of battle such as I
had seen there only once or twice, and I knew that nothing short of
utter exhaustion would prevent him finishing like a thoroughbred. My own
muscles were numb, and now seemed to be working quite mechanically; my
clothing was saturated through and through, but I had a strange feeling
that the limitations of the human body were suspended and that I could
go on permanently, like a machine.
The field grew smaller and smaller, and the shouting of Keefer and
George at the tired horses grew more and more insistent, but just as it
was almost too dark to see Keefer came down the last stretch with his
knives flashing clear on both sides of the remaining ribbon of barley.
"Now," Jack shouted in my ear, "for all that's in you!" And drawing from
unsuspected reserves of energy which we had stored about us somewhere we
went down the field at a run, setting up the remaining sheaves at a
terrific pace. Just as Keefer reached the end of his swath we overtook
him, and Jack, seizing the sheaf that was still in the binder, tore it
from the knotter and flung it to me where I stood beside a stook waiting
to receive it.
Then Keefer did a gracious thing. He climbed down from his binder seat
and shook hands with us.
"Boys," he said, "I didn't believe it was in you." Which was a very
high compliment from Mr. Keefer.