A FRONTIER POST.
The new world which is the old.--TENNYSON.
Have I told you about Edson and its prospects? No! ah, well, never
mind, I shall do so by and by, when I have talked to the citizens.
While biding my time for a seat at the lunch-counter, I will walk up
and down the station platform. Every minute men are arriving to await
the out-going train to the city. They come and come, apparently from
nowhere, till there are quite a hundred of them. Of course, they
really come from up the street (I should have said from the streets,
for there are two, or, perhaps, three streets), having recently arrived
from the grading camps somewhere up in the mountains. We are going
there to-morrow, or maybe the next day, and then we shall see the
habitat of these battling, brown-throated fellows who nose the stream
of flesh-pots and feed on hunks of brawn.
The men philander about, or sit on the platform planks, and loll lazily
against the sun-warmed wall. They count their money, smoke, and talk,
but on the whole they are quiet. Also they stare at me like they were
gargoyles and whisper the one to the other. This is not because of
rudeness--not at all! Even the white armoured Sir Galahad would find
it difficult to be knightly in the circumstances. For months they have
done naught save stake out and measure up, shovel gravel, dig ditches,
set transits, sweat and swear, for a railway, you may have heard, is
built with heavier implements than batons, pens, or golfsticks. No
woman has come near them except certain will-o'-the wisps whom the
Mounted Police did straightway turn back to town. Their lives have
been filled full of contest, hardship, and loneliness, so that every
mother's son desires, above all else, that some woman (she may be
either saint or sinner) put her hands upon him and tell him he is a
truly fine fellow and worthy to be greatly loved. This is why they
will give her all their money and not because they are of the earth
very earthy.
Do you waggle your head at me! Do you? Then I care not a straw. It
only means you do not comprehend the ways of men at our frontier posts.
Some men are here preparing to take the wagon trail to Grand Prairie in
the Peace River District. This trail, they tell me, is one hundred and
fifty miles long, and may be traversed in six days, a journey which
from other points formerly took as many weeks. Hitherto, it has seemed
the faraway edge of the world, a place for none save the adventurous
blooded and sturdy, but in this day it seems to lie at our very door,
for, in the North, one hundred and fifty miles is merely a stone's
cast. In the spring, fifteen thousand homesteads will be thrown open
for entry, so that presently it will seem that all creation is trekking
this way.
And why not? It requires no fore-vision to know that the land has a
future above anxiety. Up this trail there is a new world to be
possessed, an unequalled empire, in which men may go hither and yon as
they please. It gives my feet a staccato movement to think of it.
Some city folk there are who might fear the trail, but this were
foolish. It is good to ride on a long trail and laugh out loud for
sheer joy. On the trail, the ear of Society is closed and there are
smoked goggles on her eyes.
I have been talking to a stripling from Nova Scotia, who has been here
these four months. When first he came, there were but three girls in
the village; now, there are eighteen. As a result of this increased
immigration, the weekly dance is better attended and is more amicable.
Besides his outfit, this Nova Scotian is taking in a year's provision
to his homestead, and so has been working to secure a sufficiency of
money. He hopes to get a steading that will one day become a town
site. This is the dream of every northern farmer: it is the gold at
the foot of the rainbow. Perhaps, my Boy o' Dreams may find it. Who
can say? Providence keeps a closer eye on farmers than we imagine. As
yet, the boy has not persuaded any girl to accompany him to Grand
Prairie. I would go myself only (I had the reason a minute ago but it
has escaped me); what was it? Oh yes! I remember now, I am already
married. The Land of Cockaigne could not have been situate in the
North, for in that most blessed land every Jack has his Jill and found
no difficulty in keeping her. No! it was never in this latitude.
I went to two hotels before I could find a room. I should have
registered at once instead of loitering at the station. In the first
hotel they could eat me, but to sleep me was out of the question. In
the second, a stout well-looking German--or, as I prefer to call him, a
coming Canadian--took possession of me, remarking in one breath, but
with an air of great punctilio, "You would in my house put up? Der
conductor-man he so told me you to me might come. This my wife is.
You should become to each other known. She a bed for you will
get--water!--towels!--whatsoever Madam she may desire."
"Urbanity" is the one word that fits the German, my host. His Frau,
who is of the pure Teutonic type, has a heart of great goodness, with
emotions that lie close under the exterior.
All might have been well with me at this hotel, but, unfortunately, in
descending the closed-in stairway, I stepped on a sleeping cat and
plunged headforemost to the bottom.... "Der drouble mit you," says my
host, "a crick in der back is." The cat's "drouble" seems to be
paralysis.
Some one has said that reserve is a sign of great things behind. Sweet
Christians! this is entirely true; I realized it to the full while
holding back the tears and assuring the assembled household I was not
even jarred. I am proud of the way I behaved, and sorry my own folk
were not there to see. Now, they will never believe it.
One of the maids brought me brandy which I did not drink, but after
awhile, my hostess fed it to me in what she called canards. You dip a
lump of sugar into the cognac and transfer the lump to your mouth--that
is all. You could never believe how nice they taste, or how curative
they are for "crick" in the back.
Before long I am able to limp down the street and call on the doctor.
I used to know him in days when we both lived farther south. But any
way, a previous acquaintanceship would have made no difference. We do
not need introductions at a frontier post like this, for there is an
undercurrent of good fellowship which understands that the stranger who
talks to you is not necessarily a scalawag, with subtle designs on your
purse or your person. Any one who fails to grasp this plainly obvious
fact is either a newcomer or a solemn humbug.
This doctor has charge of the hospital car that lies in the station
yard, and most of his time is spent travelling from camp to camp down
the line of construction. I saw the car to-day, or rather I nosed it,
for the smell of iodoform came siftingly through like dry cold. It is
owned and operated by the railway company for the benefit of their
employees. At certain stations along the line, the company have placed
cottage hospitals where emergency cases are treated. Those who have
fevers or require major operations, are usually taken to the city.
Long ago, when the earlier railroads were being constructed it was not
possible to supply such life-saving appurtenances, so that nothing
remained for the wretched fellows but to drag themselves away and die
like hurt dogs. There is a current aberration that the golden age was
"once upon a time," but, in my opinion, it is here and now, or at least
it will be when every municipality has instituted classes to teach
policemen the difference between drunkenness and a fit. I will say a
prayer about this some of these days. One must be business-like.
As he builds up and smokes a cigarette, the doctor tells me that the
navvies and teamsters have a singularly critical taste in the matter of
medicine. They do not like tablets or medicine with an innocent
flavour. Unless it be distinctly pungent, they feel cheated.
"Do you accede to their demand?" ask I.
"I do, Good Lady," says he. "It is modesty that prevents my describing
to you the excellency of my flavours" (and here he assumed a truly
sagacious air): "my medicines have 'nip' to them and a body that is
really desirable. They are indescribable, but most they approach the
little girl's definition of salt--'that which makes potatoes taste bad
when you do not eat it with.'
"I see, Dear Lady, you are still of inquisitive mind," says this Man of
Medicine. "Yes! I can see that and I dare say you will put me in a
book, so I shall not rise to your questions--not I! Let us prefer to
talk of how we shall invest our money when we sell our lots, and things
like that."
"Real-estate is a valuable asset in this place," continues he, "if you
buy it 'near in' on the original town site, but three miles out of the
subdivisions, it is equal in value to a pop-corn prize. And yet who
can say? Who knows? In these new places, the bread we cast on the
sub-divisions has a way of returning to us in meat and pie and cake.
It is often the height of wisdom to be foolish. That singularly
unattractive person on the doorstep across the way--the shrunken,
hollow-stomached one--has made much money in buying and selling."
"Do you believe me?" he asks with some trace of heat; "then pray heaven
speak!" For I have fallen into silence. But I will not speak--not one
word--but only smile in an enigmatical way, for the stop I am pulling
out is one of intended indifference. It is about the navvies and
teamsters I would talk and not of hollow-stomached men who gather much
money.
The doctor rolls up two cigarettes and offers me one.
"You will smoke?" asks he.
"No!" says I, "not till I am sixty."
"Let me see your palm and your nails. Humph! Lady, you had better
start now as a mere matter of expediency. Why not try this one?
Where's the use of a mouth and an index finger if you do not smoke?"
Now, I cannot say why I do not smoke, except that there are so many
reasons why I should, and so I return to our first topic and ask, "Does
your medicine make the men well again?"
"No, no, decidedly no!" he replies--"they allow me to hold no such
illusion. The talismans they carry, work the cure--a bear's tooth, a
lucky penny, or the image of a calendar saint. A snake's rattle is a
panacea for anything but a broken heart. Time was when men only choked
on grape seeds as did the old poet chap, Anacreon, but in these days,
the navvies get appendicitis from them. It would be offensive to
suggest other causes, in spite of the fact that most of them never
taste grapes. No! it would not be right for me to put my patients in
the wrong and shockingly poor policy."
"Have you much trouble with drunkenness?" I query.
"Not a great deal!" he makes answer, "for the Mounted Police have a
disconcerting habit of probing into bales of hay and of finding false
floors in wagons. They have fifty-fox power, these police fellows,
although I have heard tell that a gallon or more of whisky has been
within roping distance of them and escaped. A bottle that gets by them
is worth ten dollars, but the navvies declare whatever it costs it is
worth it. But, dear me, there are other liquids for inordinate and
uncritical thirsts, such as----"
"Your medicine?" I suggest, whereupon our conversation abruptly ends,
for he will be no longer beset by me; and he will not give me a bottle
of liniment for "crick" in the back; no, not if I die in Edson, without
even a graveyard started wherein to bury me. He supposes Providence
knows his business, but how ever woman came to be made is a mystery far
beyond his wit's end.
Huh! Huh! I am tingling to scratch this man's eyes out, but I only
call him a brown pirate.
Do you think I care so much as a snap of the fingers for the medicine
of this spiteful doctor of the countryside? Not a bit of it! One of
the navvies will give me a talisman if I cannot find the cordial tree
for which I search. It grows in the North, and the fruit gives life to
strong people and faintness to the weak. It was Theophile Tremblay who
told me about it. He lives always in the woods. Once, he found the
tree but he was afraid to eat of it, for how could he know whether he
was strong or weak? He has heard tell that, in the tree, there is a
wood's-woman and that sometimes she laughs aloud, but he thinks it may
be a soul or something like that.
* * * * *
The only drawback to happiness is the peculiar impermanence of its
character. Happiness is a large, comely person, but, withal, as
elusive as the smallest sprite. Such hours of pain as I spent last
night on this wretched sagging bed--I who was so happy only
yesterday--with nothing to look at save a little lamp with a flame like
a bleary red eye. Truth to tell, it was the eye that looked at me. It
stared till I became hypnotized, when by the blessing of God, I fell
asleep.
This morning, I am consumed between a desire to get up and one to lie
still. In all such crises of the will, it is better to follow the line
of least resistance, and so I lie in bed. My hostess brings me an
amazingly pungent liniment which she calls "Herr the Doctor's
medisome." It came last night, but Daisy, who is a waitress, neglected
to deliver it. Perhaps the sarcastic advice which the doctor set down
for me under the word "Poison," may have frightened Daisy.
"She a lump is, that Daisy!" says the Frau. "Believe me, Madam, for I
know. I tell her a thing to do and she doing it keeps on, till I to
stop tell her. Then I to her explain that she is not for ever to stop,
nor for ever on to go, and all the time, about everything, I have her
so to tell."
The Frau pours on the liniment with generous measure and rubs me till I
prickle with it, and feel for all the world like a wet newspaper caught
in a wire fence. She rubs me with a used-to-things way until I beg her
to desist. I should not be surprised if Herr the Doctor took this
means of venting his spitefulness on me.
The Frau tells me she had a vision once. I wish to experience a
vision, or a miracle, but nothing comes to me save presentments which
have their terrible plain origin on the basis of cause and effect. Her
vision was about heaven. She saw heaven quite distinctly and the
streets were really made of gold. There were no children there, but
only men and women, so that there must be a special Paradise for boys
and girls. The Frau believes heaven will be a failure because there is
no division of the sexes provided for. How, she would like to know,
could a woman enjoy heaven with men there all the time looking at
everything she does. It would be an impossible situation.
After awhile, Daisy brings me a meal. There is a tremendous finality
about the way she sets down a tray. Daisy, in spite of her name, is
not so much a housemaid as what they used to call a stout serving
wench. She is courtly neither in figure nor manners. Her hair is
puffed out over her ears and drawn down low, till her head looks like
the husk of a hazel nut. But what odds? Daisy is splendidly plebeian
and really of more value to the community than a writing person who
falls downstairs. She cannot see for the life of her how I happened to
come out here, and so I am apologetic and find it necessary to explain.
She asks permission to try on my hat and tells me she has ordered a new
one from Edmonton. It is to have three "ostridge" feathers.
To assure me that the cat I stepped upon is not dead, she descends to
the kitchen and returns with it. The cat seems all right except that
it sags in the middle, but Daisy says this is because it has just been
fed. I am glad I did not kill it, in that I always associate a cat
with Diana Bubastis, the Egyptian goddess who presided over childbirth,
and who was represented with a feline head. Indeed, Bubastis is said
to have transformed herself into a cat when the gods fled from Egypt--a
play of gods and women and cats that has continued even to this very
day.
After dinner, I am able to go down to the sidewalk where I fribble away
the hours agreeably enough. It is a sun-shot afternoon, but the air is
cool to one's skin, and grateful after the scorching heat of yesterday.
Some civil engineers who came in on the train with me are playing
baseball on the road. These are no aesthetic feeblings, these merry
gentlemen, but a sturdy breed, upstanding and handsome, with skin like
the colour of well-seasoned saddles and a smell of burnt poplar in
their hair. I think the rough clothes they wear throw their good looks
into relief. Or it may be that the people _are_ better looking in the
North and have better physiques. It must be so, for the South has in
all ages drawn upon the northern blood for rejuvenation just as, in
these days, they need hard wheat to tone up their softer varieties.
I write of them as merry gentlemen because this fornight agone I had
been watching them make ducks and drakes of their savings. When they
come to Town, which they do once or twice a year, they cannot be
accused of nearness. Each mother's son holds to the amended maxim of
this country, "Hard come, easy go." "Jack ashore," I called one the
other day. "Possibly so! Possibly," answered the delicious boy, "but
I prefer to think of myself as March--in like a lion and out like a
lamb."
The whole Town is a foraging pasture for the engineers on vacation.
They buy everything they do not need, from gramaphone records and
swearing parrots to Gibbon's _Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire_.
They yell into the telephones as if it were a lung tester, and it makes
their hearts dance like daffodils to hire taxicabs for the day, boxes
at the theatre, and to give suppers and dances to all and sundry of
their acquaintances. Neither are they laggards in love. They are
vastly appreciative of the girls, and I am told go sweethearting with a
directness there is no possibility of misunderstanding. It is well the
girls do not take them too seriously, for they are roving bachelors
all, and would seem to be as faithful as the poet who vows his love for
Kate, and Margaret and Betty and Sweet Marie.
Yet, once in a blue moon, an engineer and a girl make decision "to be
man and wife together," and to live in a shack on the Residency, much
to the annoyance of the townsmen, who dislike the engineers, being
inordinately jealous of them.
The game of baseball which the engineers carry forward on the highway
is strenuous rather than scientific. Things that are considered
important in the league matches have no significance here. As I watch
the pitch and toss of the ball, it occurs to me that this game has
filtered down the ages from the primeval woods where orang-outangs
threw nuts from tree to tree. They pitch them that the young lady
'rangs might admire their cleverness and good form. You may credit me
this was the way of it.
A Chinaman and some Indians are also watching the game. The Indians
think it fine fun, and fetch and carry the lost balls like spaniels
retrieving sticks. I like the Indian men for several reasons, but
chiefly because they are shrewd riders; have a sovereign indifference
to appearance, and never quarrel over theology.
The game of ball was not completed, the interest of the players being
diverted by a blindly vindictive fight between a staghound and a
bulldog. I did not see the conclusion of the fight, but the honours
lay with the bulldog. "For you must know, Dear Lady," explains one of
the engineers, "that all things considered, the grip on the throat is
an eminently practical one."