THE CALL OF THE FARTHER WEST
Notwithstanding Harris's late hours the household was early astir the
following morning. At five o'clock Jim was at work in the stables,
feeding, rubbing down, and harnessing his horses, while Allan and his
father walked to the engine, where they built a fresh fire and made
some minor repairs. Even at this early hour the sun shone brightly,
its rays mellowing in a sheen of ground-mist that enveloped the
prairie, but there is a tang in the Manitoba morning air even in
midsummer, and the men walked briskly through the crisp stubble. A
little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and
the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots
of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her
approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular
column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth
to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and
calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris farm,
like fifty thousand others, rose from its brief hush of rest and
quiet to the sounds and energies of another day.
Breakfast, like the meal of the night before, was eaten hurriedly,
and at first without conversation, but at length Harris paused long
enough to remark, "Riles is talkin' o' goin' West."
"The news might be worse," said Beulah. Riles, although a successful
farmer, had the reputation of being grasping and hard to a degree,
even in a community where such qualities, in moderation, were by no
means considered vices.
Harris paid no attention to his daughter's interruption. It was
evident, however, that his mention of Riles had a purpose behind it,
and presently he continued:
"Riles has been writin' to the Department of the Interior, and it
seems they're openin' a lot of land for homesteadin' away West, not
far from the Rocky Mountains. Seems they have a good climate there,
and good soil, too."
"I should think Mr. Riles would be content with what he has," said
Mary Harris. "He has a fine farm here, and I'm sure both him and his
wife have worked hard enough to take it easier now."
"Hard work never killed nobody," pursued the farmer. "Riles is good
for many a year yet, and free land ain't what it once was. Those
homesteads'll be worth twenty dollars an acre by the time they're
proved up."
"I wish I was sure of it--I wouldn't think long," said Allan. "But
they say it's awful dry; all right for ranchin', but no good for
farmin'."
"Who says that?" demanded his father. "The ranchers. They know which
side their bread's buttered on. As long's they can get grazin' land
for two cents an acre, or maybe nothin', of course they don't want
the homesteader. They tell me the Englishmen and Frenchmen that went
out into that country when us Canadians settled in Manitoba have more
cattle now than they can count--they measure 'em by acres, Riles
says."
Breakfast and Harris's speech came to an end simultaneously, and the
subject was dropped for the time. In a few minutes Jim had his team
hitched to the tank wagon in the yard. The men jumped aboard, and the
wagon rattled down the road to where the engine and ploughs sat in
the stubble-field.
"What notion's this father's got about Riles, do you suppose,
mother?" asked Beulah, as the two women busied themselves with the
morning work in the kitchen.
"Dear knows," said her mother wearily. "I hope he doesn't take it in
his head to go out there too."
"Who, Dad? Oh, he wouldn't do that. He's hardly got finished with the
building of this house, and you know for years he talked and looked
forward to the building of the new house. His heart's quite wrapped
up in the farm here. I wish he'd unwrap it a bit and let it peek out
at times."
"I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to think it's the money that's in the
farm your father's heart is set on. If the money was to be made
somewhere else his heart would soon shift."
"Mother!" exclaimed the girl. In twenty years it was the first word
approaching disloyalty she had heard from her mother's lips, and she
could hardly trust her ears. It was nothing for Beulah to criticize
her father; that was her daily custom, and she pursued it with the
whole frankness of her nature. But her mother had always defended,
sometimes mildly chiding, but never admitting either weakness or
injustice on the part of John Harris.
"Well, I just can't stand it much longer," said the mother, the
emotions which she had so long held in check overcoming her. "Here
I've slaved and saved until I'm an--an old woman, and what better are
we for it? We've better things to eat and more things to wear and a
bigger house to keep clean, and your father thinks we ought to be
satisfied. But he isn't satisfied himself. He's slaving harder than
ever, and now he's got this notion about going West. Oh, you'll see
it will come to that. He knows our life isn't complete, and he thinks
more money will complete it. All the experience of twenty years
hasn't taught him any better."
Beulah stood aghast at this outburst, and when her mother paused and
looked at her, and she saw the unbidden wells of water gathering in
the tender eyes, the girl could no longer restrain herself. With a
cry she flung her arms about her mother's neck, and for a few moments
the two forgot their habitual restraint and were but naked souls
mingling together.
"It's a shame," exclaimed Beulah at length. "We're not living; we're
just existing. When I get among people that are really living--like
the Grants, over there--you don't know how mortified and mean I feel.
And it's not that alone--it's the sense of loss, the sense that life
is going by and I'm not making the best of it. You know we are
missing the _real thing_; we are just living on the husks, and father
is so blind he thinks the husks are the grain itself."
"Your father is hungry, too," said the mother. "Hungry--hungry, and
he thinks that more land, more money, more success, will fill him.
And in the meantime he's forgetting the things that would
satisfy--the love that was ours, the little devo--Oh, child, what am
I saying? What an unfaithful creature I am! You must forget, Beulah,
you must forget these words--words of shame they are!"
"The shame is his," declared the girl, defiantly, "and I won't stand
this nonsense about homesteading again--I just won't stand it. If he
says anything more about it I'll--I'll fly off, that's what I'll do.
And I've a few remarks for him about Riles that won't keep much
longer. The old badger--he's at the bottom of all this."
"You mustn't quarrel with your father, dearie, you mustn't do that."
"I'm not going to quarrel with him, but I'm going to say some things
that need saying. And if it comes to a show-down, and he must
go--well, he must, but you and I will stay with the old farm, won't
we, mother?"
But the mother's thought now was for quelling the storm in the
turbulent heart of her daughter. Beulah's nature was not one to lend
itself to passive submission, nor yet passive resistance. She was the
soul of loyalty, but with that loyalty she combined a furious
intolerance of things as they should not be. She had not yet reached
the philosophic age, but she was old enough to value life, and to
know that what she called the real things were escaping here. At
night, as she looked up at the myriad stars spangling the heavens,
the girl's heart was filled with an unutterable yearning; a sense of
restriction, of limitation, of loss--a sense that somewhere lay a
Purpose and a Plan, and that only by becoming part of that Plan could
life be lived to the fullest. Her mother was of a different nature,
not less brave, but more resigned; content to fill, without question,
the niche to which fate assigned her; accepting conditions as a
matter of course. Yet at times she had inklings of those deeper
questions which arose in persistent interrogations before her child,
and she guessed that if Beulah once became convinced that she saw the
Plan, not all her loyalty could dissuade her from following it. So
she strove to control the sudden outburst in her own heart lest the
fire lighted in Beulah's should break forth in conflagration.
"There, there now," she said, gently stroking her daughter's hair.
"Let us forget this, and remember how much we have to be thankful
for. We have our health, and our home, and the bright sunshine,
and--I declare," she interrupted, catching a glimpse of something
through the window, "if the cows haven't broken from the lower
pasture and are all through the oat-field! You'll have to take Collie
and get them back, somehow, or bring them up to the corral."
Perhaps it was part of the Plan that the diversion should come at
that moment, but the rebellion in Beulah's heart was by no means
suppressed. Pulling a sun-bonnet upon her head she called the dog,
which came leaping upon her with boisterous affection, and hurried
down the path to the field where the cows stood almost lost in a
jungle of green oats. She soon located the breach in the fence, and,
with the help of the dog, quickly turned the cows toward it. But
alack! just as victory seemed assured a rabbit was frightened from
its hiding-place in the green oats, and sailed forth in graceful
bounds across the pasture. The dog, of course, concluded that the
capture of the rabbit was of much more vital importance to the Harris
homestead than driving any number of stupid cattle, and darted across
the field in pursuit, wasting his breath in sharp, eager yelps as he
went. Whereupon the cows turned outward again, not boisterously nor
insolently, but with a calm persistence that steadily wore out the
girl's strength and patience. They would not move a foot toward the
pasture unless she drove them; they would move only one at a time; as
she drove one the others pushed farther into the oat-field, and when
she turned to pursue them the one she had already driven followed at
her heels. The sun was hot, the oats were rank, the wild buckwheat
tripped her as she ran; her appeals to the dog, now seated on a knoll
looking somewhat foolishly for the rabbit which had given him the
slip, and her commands to the cattle alike fell on unheeding ears.
She was in no joyous mood at best, and the perverseness of things
aggravated her beyond endurance. Her callings to the cattle became
more and more tearful, and presently ended in a sob.
"There now, Beulah, don't worry; we will have them in a minute," said
a quiet voice, and looking about she found Jim almost at her elbow,
his omnipresent smile playing gently about his white teeth. "I was
down at the creek filling the tank, when I saw you had a little
rebellion on your hands, and I thought reinforcements might be in
order."
"You might have hollered farther back," she said, half reproachfully,
but there was a light of appreciation in her eye when she dared raise
it toward him. "I'm afraid I was beginning to be very--foolish."
She tripped again on the treacherous buckwheat, but he held her arm
in a strong grasp against which the weight of her slim figure seemed
but as a feather blown against a wall. The life of the plains had
bred in Beulah admiration for physical strength, and she acknowledged
his firm grip with an admiring glance. Then they set about their
task, but the sober-eyed cows had no thought of being easily deprived
of their feast, and it was some time before they were all turned back
into the pasture and the fence temporarily repaired behind them.
"I can't thank you enough," Beulah was saying. "You just keep piling
one kindness on top of another. Say, Jim, honest, what makes you do
it?"
But at that moment the keen blast of an engine whistle came cutting
through the air--a long clear note, followed by a series of toots in
rapid succession.
"I guess they're running short of water," said Jim. "I must hustle."
So saying he ran to the ford of the creek where the tank-wagon was
still standing, and in a minute his strong frame was swaying back and
forth to the rhythmic clanking of the pump. But it was some minutes
before the tank was full, and again the clarion call of the whistle
came insistently through the air. Hastily dragging up the hose, he
uttered a sharp command to the horses; their great shoulders socketed
into the collars; the tugs tightened, quivering with the strain; the
wheels grated in the gravel, and the heavily-loaded wagon swung its
way up the bank of the coulee.
Meanwhile other things were transpiring. Harris had returned from
town the night before with the fixed intention of paying an early
visit to the Farther West. He and Riles had spent more time than they
should breasting the village bar, while the latter drew a picture of
rising colour of the possibilities which the new lands afforded.
Harris was not a man who abused himself with liquor, and Riles, too,
rarely forgot that indulgence was expensive, and had to be paid for
in cash. Moreover, Allan occasioned his father some uneasiness. He
was young, and had not yet learned the self-control to be expected in
later life. More than once of late Allan had crossed the boundary of
moderation, and John Harris was by no means indifferent to the
welfare of his only son. Indeed, the bond between the two was so real
and so intense that Harris had never been able to bring himself to
contemplate their separation, and the boy had not even so much as
thought of establishing a home of his own. Harris sometimes wondered
at this, for Allan was popular in the neighbourhood, where his good
appearance, strength, and sincere honesty made him something of a
favourite. The idea of homesteading together assured further years of
close relationship between father and son, and the younger man fell
in whole-heartedly with it.
"We'll hurry up the ploughing, Dad, and run West before the harvest
is on us," Allan said as they rode home through the darkness. "We can
file on our land and get back for the fall work. Then we will go out
for the winter and commence our duties. The only question is, Can
they grow anything on that land out there?"
"That's what they used to ask when we came to Manitoba," said his
father. "And there were years when I doubted the answer myself. Some
parts were froze out year after year, and they're among the best in
the country now, and never think of frost. The same thing'll happen
out there, and we might as well be in the game."
To do him justice, it was not altogether the desire for more wealth
that prompted Harris, It was the call of new land; the call he had
heard and answered in the early eighties; the old appetite that had
lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood,
waiting only a suggestion of the open spaces, a whiff from dry grass
on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar
into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of
homesteading revived rich old memories--memories from which the
kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the
hardship, and left only the joy and the courage and the comradeship
and the conquering. It was the call of the new land, which has led
the race into every clime and flung its flag beneath every sky, and
Harris's soul again leaped to the summons.
So this morning father and son were especially anxious that not a
moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was
particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in
a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning
the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious
glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in
sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory summons into
the air. Harris looked up from the ploughs, and the two exchanged
frowns of annoyance. But the water stood high in the glass, and Allan
did not reduce the speed, although he cut the link action another
notch to get every ounce of advantage from the expansion. Down the
field they went, the big iron horse shouldering itself irresistibly
along, while the ploughs left their dozen furrows of moist, fresh
soil, and the blackbirds hopped gingerly behind. But the water went
down, down in the glass, and still there was no sign of a further
supply. Allan again cut the air with his whistle, and at length, with
a muttered imprecation, he slammed the throttle shut and jumped from
the engine.
His father ran up from the ploughs. "What do you think of that?" the
younger man exclaimed. "Jim must have had trouble. Bogged, or broke a
tongue, or something. Never fell down like that before."
"Keep a keen eye on your fire," said Harris, "and I'll go down and
see what's wrong with him." So the farmer strode off across the
ploughed field. The delay annoyed him, and he felt unreasonably cross
with Travers. As he plodded on through the heavy soil his temper did
not improve, and he was talking to himself by the time he came upon
Travers, giving his team their wind at the top of the hill leading up
from the creek.
"What kept you?" he demanded when he came within a rod of the wagon.
"Here's the outfit shut down waiting for water, and you--"
"I'm sorry, Mr. Harris--"
"That ain't what I asked you. You can't make steam with sorrow. What
have you been foolin' about?"
"I haven't been fooling. As to what delayed me--well, you're delaying
me now. Better jump on and ride up with me."
"So you won't tell me, eh? You think you can do what you like with my
team and my time, and it's none of my business. We'll see whose
business it is."
Harris came threateningly toward the wagon, but was met only by the
imperturbable smile of his hired man. He thrust his foot on a spoke
of the wheel and prepared to spring on to the tank, but at that
moment the horses stirred and his foot slipped. Seeing that the
farmer was about to fall Travers seized him by the collar of his
shirt, but in so doing he leaned and lost his own balance, when the
weight of the falling man came upon him, and the two tumbled on to
the grass in each other's arms.
Allan, having satisfied himself that the engine would take no harm,
had followed his father, and came over the crest of the ridge above
the coulee just in time to see Jim apparently strike his employer and
the two struggling on the grass together. In an instant the young
man's hot blood was in his head; he rushed forward, and just as Jim
had risen to his knees he struck him a stinging blow in the face that
measured him again in the grass.
It was only for an instant. Travers sprang to his feet, a red line
slowly stretching down his cheek as he did so. Allan came upon him
swinging a tremendous blow at the jaw; but Jim guarded skilfully, and
answered with a smash from the shoulder straight on the chin, which
laid his adversary's six feet prostrate before him.
Allan rose slowly, sober but determined, and for a moment it looked
as though a battle royal were to be fought on the spot, both men
strong, lean, rigid, hard as iron, and quick as steel; Allan angry,
careful, furious; Jim calm, confident, and still smiling. But Harris
rushed between them and seized his son by the arms.
"Stop it, Allan; stop, I say. You mustn't fight. Jim didn't hit
me--I'll say that for him. Now quit it. As for you" (turning to Jim),
"I'm sorry for this, but you have yourself to blame. I'll give you
one more chance to answer me--what kept you?"
"I don't choose to answer," was Jim's reply, spoken in the most
casual tone. His eye was rapidly closing where Allan's blow had
fallen on it, but his white teeth still glistened behind a smile.
"All right," said Harris. "You can go to the house and tell Mrs.
Harris to pay you what is coming." And the farmer climbed on to the
wagon and took the reins himself.
When Jim entered the kitchen he was received with astonishment by
Mrs. Harris and Beulah. "Why, whatever has happened?" they exclaimed.
"Has there been an accident? You're hurt!"
But Jim smiled, and said: "No accident at all. I have merely decided
to go homesteading." And he went up the stairs to pack his
belongings.