CHAPTER VI
THE PRAIRIE
A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about and adding to Blake's discomfort as he plodded beside a jaded Indian pony and a small cart. The cart was loaded with preserved provisions, camp stores, and winter clothes; he had bought it and the pony because that seemed cheaper than paying for transport. The settlement for which he and Harding were bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweep of grass which stretches across central Canada. 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.
It was now 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 toward 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 through which they journeyed 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'm not particularly enthusiastic about 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 dare say 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."
"That's a matter of opinion. You haven't limped forty miles on a bad foot; but I'm not complaining. It's a whole lot to feel that we 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 at the settlement if it were in a worn-out condition; but Blake 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 through which the wheels crushed was short, and the trail led smoothly down a slight descent. This was comforting, for 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; and that was not a favorable sign.
Pushing the cart through the softer places, dragging the jaded pony by the head, they hurried on and at last plunged through a creek with the trees just beyond. A few minutes later they tethered the pony to lee of the cart, and set up their tent. 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 hobbled the horses before he turned to Blake.
"From the south? You're for Sweetwater?" he asked.
"Yes. How much farther is it?"
"You ought to make it in a day and a half," the stranger said. "I'll ride in with you. My name's Gardner. I run a store and hotel at Sweetwater, but I feel that 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?"
The man had a good-humored, sunburned face and an honest look, and he gladly acquiesced in Blake's suggestion that he join them instead of cooking a separate supper.
The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf; but the stillness was broken by a puff of icy wind which 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 woods, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. Then 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, where the men crouched inside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass from the huge sinking sun.
Harding, with Gardner's help, brought his pile of wood out of the tent, and soon made a fire; and 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 observed. "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," laughed Gardner. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide and bones—and that's all there'll be when the doctor gets through 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 is more than I know."
"We met a fellow named Clarke at the Windsor not long ago. What's he like?"
When Gardner described him, Harding frowned.
"That's the man," he said.
"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 commented. "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 plow; and they had one or two other habits that brought the 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 part in these excesses. He had, however, no interest in the fellow; and he turned the talk on to other matters, until it got cold and they went to sleep.
Starting early the 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, grayish 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 was an outlying farm. A row of houses followed the crest of the ravine, some built of small logs, and some of shiplap lumber which had cracked with exposure to the sun, but all having a neglected and poverty-stricken air. The land was poor and the settlement was located too far from a market. With leaden thunderclouds hanging over it, the place looked as desolate as the sad-colored waste.
Following the deeply rutted street, which had a narrow, plank sidewalk, they reached the Imperial Hotel—a somewhat pretentious, double-storied building of unpainted wood, with a veranda across the front. 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 left them 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 people 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," responded Blake; "I've seen the tariff."
They found their supper better than they had reason to expect, and afterward sat out on the veranda 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, toward which the prairie rolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windows behind the veranda, 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. He's a pretty regular customer, but he never gets too much at this hotel."
"And there isn't another."
"That's so," Gardner assented, 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," said a farmer, who appeared to be well educated. "After all, worse things might happen to them."
"It's conceivable," agreed 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 neighborhood 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 Benson. "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."
Benson disappeared, and a few moments afterward reeled out of the door and held himself upright by one of the veranda posts.
"Now I'm here, don't let me interrupt, gentlemen," he said. "Nice place if this post would keep still."
Warned by a sign from Gardner, the others ignored him; and Harding turned 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 deal of money by victimizing farmers who are forced to borrow when they lose a crop, as well as preying on young fools from England; and, by way of amusement, he 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 people 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 on his face Blake started. He had been puzzled by something familiar in the voice, and now he recognized the man, and had no wish to meet him. 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.
Benson, 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 commanded 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.
"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 'em. 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 to cease firing, and then lost his balance and fell over the chair with a crash.
"Leave him to me," said Gardner, seizing the fallen man and with some difficulty lifting him to his feet. After he pushed him through the door there were sounds of a scuffle, and a few minutes later Gardner came back with a bruise on 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
veranda 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 hotel 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? 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 tomorrow, but if Benson's all right I'm going home now."
He went into the hotel and soon afterward they heard him leave by another door. An hour later, when Harding and Blake were in their room, the keen young American brought his fist down on the bedpost with vehemence.
"I tell you," he said, "there's something queer about that fellow Clarke—something even Gardner don't know. I don't like that look that's behind his eyes, not in 'em; and the less we see of him, I reckon the better."