CHAPTER XII.
That was a busy night on Fourteen. The girls confessed that they had been on the lookout for us since the first of the month. They had even borrowed Spoof's field glass so that they could sweep the horizon to the eastward far beyond Mrs. Alton's.
"He's the strangest sort of chap, is Spoof," said Jean. "Will you believe me, he hasn't been inside this house since you left? Used to walk over from time to time, and see that the pigs and the cow were living in harmony, and that the fuel had not given out, but was always in a rush home again. Never saw such a man for work; quite different from what he used to be."
Jack looked his sister over with an eye that did not reserve all its approval for Marjorie. "We thought you would have been an accomplished banjo-ist by now," he said.
"Not a lesson—not a single lesson in all this time," Jean grumbled. "And now I suppose he'll be over to-morrow to indulge us with the pent-up leisure of two months!"
Jean's naiveté was little greater than mine. We had been brought up with a sound training in the rudiments of behavior but with little knowledge of its social complexities. My feeling in the matter was a mixed sense of surprise that our neighbour, usually so friendly, had held aloof at a time when he was particularly needed, and of annoyance that Jean should be so obviously put out about it.
But we soon got on to other matters. The girls had dug the potatoes and the garden vegetables, and it was with the honest pride of work well done that they took us into the cellar to view our winter supplies. There is a very real satisfaction in growing one's own food; it gives one a sense of independence, a feeling that the butcher and baker and grocer have no mortgage on one's bodily needs. I think it was that feeling, threaded through with a very homey kind of content, that welled within us as we viewed the heaps of potatoes and turnips and cabbage and carrots and beets and parsnips that filled our cellar to the roof. Jack and I, not to be outdone, felt that now was the moment to show, in concrete form, something of what our harvest labors had meant. We had seized an opportunity while the threshing outfit was shut down on account of rain to drive to the nearest town and lay in a stock of provisions, which Alec Thomson had decently enough allowed us to buy on his account as he, being a contractor, got a better price than the individual consumer. So now we had to carry in the boxes of dried fruits and of canned goods, the sack of sugar, the three sacks of flour, the packages of tea and coffee, the sides of bacon:—Oh, we were going to live well this winter! Then there were the new boots which we had bought all round, and stockings, and an end of cloth which we were sure would come in handy for some useful purpose, and yarn for knitting. We were a happy party.
The girls had a strange treat in reserve for us. It was Jean who told us of it, although, as it seemed to me, her manner suggested a certain lack of frankness very unlike Jean. It seemed that a few days before our return a jack rabbit had loped up within easy distance of the shanty door, where he perked himself on his hind legs, taking observations. Marjorie took the gun down from the wall, aimed it with great deliberation, and fired.
Jean declared that the rabbit was not hit, but that he died of fright. Be that as it may, he furnished the filling for a very deep and tempting rabbit pie.
"And only to think," said Jean, her bright eyes dancing, "it would scarcely have kept any longer. We were managing to freeze it a little at nights, but it would thaw out during the day."
"I don't know but it is a little over-kept as it is," Marjorie admitted, "but we're going to eat it to-night." And so we sat about our little table, with the great rabbit pie in the middle, and great helpings of potatoes and onions on our plates, and flakey white bread and yellow home-made butter within reach, and the light beating down from an oil lamp on the wall, and would not have changed places with any one on earth.
The next day revealed changes in the neighbourhood which we had not had time to notice or discuss in the evening. A number of settlers had come in. The girls had not seen any of them, but could give almost as accurate descriptions as though they had. It seems Spoof had come over to Fourteen every Sunday afternoon during our absence, and, for all the shyness against which Jean had protested, he had managed to regale the girls with the gossip of the community, for our two little shacks were really becoming the centre of a neighbourhood. From Spoof they learned that the Browns had landed from England with three children and hardly anything else, and had built a shack on the south-west quarter of Four. Mr. Brown had been a game-keeper in England. His wife was a wistful little body who seemed likely to have plenty to wist over before her children were raised on the living that a game-keeper would wring from the soil. On the north-west of Eighteen, just four miles west of us, a Scottish shipbuilder named Smith had located. He appeared to be unmarried. Three miles north of us, on Thirty-four, a Swede named Hanson had built a shanty twelve feet square in which he was housed with his wife and six children, and on Thirty-six a Russian had dug himself a sort of cave in the bank of the gully. He, too, had a wife and numerous offspring, but the exact number had not yet been ascertained.
"Ay tank thar bane plenty," Ole Hansen had said, when discussing the subject with Spoof. And as Ole regarded his own six hopefuls as "yust a nice commence," the imagination was rather stirred by the possibilities of what the cave on Thirty-six might disclose to the census taker.
"How do you say his name?" Spoof had inquired.
"Yah don' say it. Yah sneeze it," Ole explained.
"Sneezit—that'll do," said Spoof. And so, quite without his knowledge or consent, our Russian neighbour was supplied with an English name; a name which may some day—who knows?—be borne with pride by one of our best families.
Then there was Burke, an American from Iowa, a man with a lust for labor and for doing things on a big scale. He and his wife had landed on section Twenty about the middle of August, and, ignoring the tradition that it is useless to break prairie sod in the fall, had already turned over a broad strip from end to end of their quarter section. Burke it was who introduced mules into the settlement. From what the girls were able to gather from Spoof mules called for an even more extended vocabulary than did oxen.
"And you want us to believe that Spoof told you all these things without ever coming into the house?" I challenged.
"Never a foot over the doorstep," said Jean. "That is, hardly ever. It's a big country; why be so particular for a foot or two?"
"Oh, I'm not; not at all. I'm merely checking up what you said last night."
"In my intoxication over your return! How could you, Frank?" And with that I had to be satisfied.
"But the best is yet!" Marjorie exclaimed. "Guess who's married?"
"Jake!" we answered together.
"Oh, somebody told. Yes, Jake. He and his wife are settled on Sixteen. They've a little shack up, and Jake is farming the community, as he calls it. 'Acquaintances,' he says, 'are about all I'll be able to cultivate this year.' He spends most of his time at Spoof's, but I don't notice that Spoof's work goes along any quicker on that account. They called on us a couple of times—Jake and his wife, I mean; they have the advantage over the other settlers of having a light wagon and a team of ponies, which make it easy for them to get about. Mrs. Jake impresses one as being angular and competent, with perhaps more heart in her than her appearance would suggest. They say it was an agency match."
At that point we took up the story with Jake's account of his courtship and wedding, censored, of course, to suit the audience.
"That's mostly lies," said Marjorie, in her matter-of-fact way. "He advertised for her all right, but he went to Minneapolis to meet her, and it was only when he promised to go on a homestead that she consented to come. She told me that much; said she'd had enough of the town, and wanted to get away from everything and everybody. She has a touch of humor, too; said, 'I guess that's what I did, all right, when I came out on the bald-headed with Jake.'"
"But the telegram! He had her telegram."
"He must have faked that. He knew he would meet you boys before he went back, and he had a story made up to show himself in the best light possible."
"How about Mrs. Alton?" I asked.
"She doesn't come out. We've gone over a couple of times, and she receives us with great friendliness, but when we ask her to return our visit she always makes out that she can't leave the boy. Of course she could bring him with her, so that is only an excuse. For some reason she wants to stick close to her homestead."
"We must get Spoof after her," said Jack. "He'll drag her out. Now that we have real society in our community a beautiful young widow must not be allowed to 'waste her sweetness on the desert air.'"
We spent a whole day conjecturing about the new arrivals, and marvelling over the strange assortment of humanity out of which it was the business of fate and our lucky stars—no one else seemed to trouble about the matter—to lay in these prairies the foundations of an enduring civilization. Then we settled down to what little work remained to be done. We found our oat crops harvested, and for that we had to thank Spoof and Jake, who had taken that bit of neighbourly service into their own hands. We made the stable snug, banked up the shacks with earth, and lined them inside with brown paper which we had brought from town for that purpose. We cut firewood in our little park by the pond, being careful to destroy nothing but trees which were already dead or were too crowded for growth.
Before we had completed these jobs Spoof paid us another visit. We saw his tall figure looming up across the brown grass one afternoon early in November. The sun was bright, but swung far to the south, and even its brilliance could not drive a certain chilly nip out of the afternoon air. Spoof walked as one who keeps up his circulation by vigorous exercise. He shook hands with a warm, firm grip. He was brown and rugged, and the prairie winds were leaving their mark on his fine English complexion. In the warmth of his grip, in the sparkle of his eye, in the leisurely confidence of his conversation, there was something about the fellow that was decidedly likable.
"Thought I'd just drop in on you, strangers," he commented. "Have a good autumn's work? I hope you did. I ventured to inquire a few times while you were away, just in case the young ladies might need some help—a man around the place, don't you know? I found them most disconcertingly competent. About the only service I was able to do was to shoot a rabbit for them; one of those big white fellows. Jolly good eating, I should say——"
"How long ago was that?" Jack interrupted, sharply.
"Oh, not so long; in fact, they spoke of saving him for your home-coming."
"Aha! And again, Aha! Come along, you conspirator!"
We seized Spoof by the arms and marched him into the house. Marjorie and Jean were there; although we had two houses the girls were nearly always together in the one on Fourteen. Jean declared that Marjorie was much the better housekeeper of the two, and she came there for lessons.
We thrust the somewhat bewildered Spoof into their presence.
"We have discovered your duplicity," said Jack, sternly, addressing the girls. "We now know the secret of Marjorie's marksmanship."
"Oh, by Jove!" Spoof exclaimed. "I seem to have messed things up. I'm afraid you will think me an awful rotter, Miss Hall. Really"—turning to Jack—"really, it wasn't I that shot the bally hare at all——"
"You're only getting in deeper," said Jack. "'Fess up, and stay for supper."
Spoof did both, and a jolly night we had, playing euchre after the supper dishes were cleared away. But before he left he recalled that an errand of mercy lay at the bottom of his visit.
"I dropped into Brown's the other day," he said. "Mrs. Brown is a bit fed up. Staring out of the window, and all that kind of thing. Poor old Brown is quite useless; worse than I am, if that is possible, but his wife has quality in her that will count, if she doesn't go under first. She needs you two girls over there now and again, just to put a bit of sunshine in her soul."
"This is a land of sunshine," I said, quite inappropriately.
"Of physical sunshine, yes. But the heart withers up on that alone. You natural born pioneers don't understand. You are the second or third generation at the business, all of you. You glory in the wilderness, you revel in it, you subdue it. The lust of these things is born in you. But she—she is a game-keeper's wife. You can't possibly understand. The memory of it all; the hedges and lanes and rose-gardens and the—the security of England; the memory of these is tearing her very heart out."
"They know where we live."
"They have not been introduced."
"Nonsense!"
"I know it's nonsense," Spoof continued. "I've learned that much. They haven't. Do you think they would be guilty of such an unpardonable thing as to call on you first? You can't understand, but over in England we have a saying, 'It isn't done.' When an Englishman says 'It isn't done;' the argument is ended. After that has been said the thing really isn't done, and everybody understands that it can't possibly be done. Now just hitch up the oxen to-morrow and slip over to section Four and jolly her out of the dumps."
"Well, suppose we do," Jack agreed. "But how about you keeping up your end of the social service? Why wish it all on to us?"
"I don't follow you. I have already been to the Brown's——"
"But not to Mrs. Alton's, so far as we can learn. Mrs. Brown may have no monopoly of loneliness."
Perhaps it was only imagination, but it seemed to me that Spoof's face, usually so frank and open, suddenly became a mask. But he came back quickly and easily.
"I could hardly do that, don't you know? It would not be quite the thing."
"Why not?" said Jean, as ingenious as ever.
"Why, it would hardly be the thing—it's not in accord——"
"You mean it isn't done," I supplied.
"Exactly; or, at least, it's not supposed to be."
"You were flattering yourself a minute ago," said I, with show of severity, "that you had learned that on the prairies one doesn't wait for an introduction. You have some other things to learn. One is that on the prairies there is no such saying as, 'It isn't done.'"
"My word!" said Spoof. "Isn't that rather dangerous? But of course I know I'm a greenhorn yet, even though I am beginning to ripen in spots. That reminds me, I've had another letter from the Governor. He wants me to shoot him a young chinook."
"A chinook!"
"Yes. When I wrote him a recent treatise entitled 'An Incident in a Hay Field, or, How about a Cheque for a Hundred Pounds'—you will remember the time—I covered the ragged edge of my purpose with a dissertation upon the prairie climate. I told him that it consisted of a melange of everything from Naples at its best to Norway at its worst—from sleepy kittens purring in the sun to wild she-tigers raging through the jungle. From climate I moved to grass by easy stages, and from grass to hay, and from hay to our little conflagration, and from that to the matter of one hundred pounds. On the way I explained that this part of the country is not really in the chinook belt, although occasionally one came down this far. So now I am commissioned to shoot for the Governor a young chinook. He thinks the skin would look a bit of all right on the library floor, don't you know?"
"And of course you will shoot one?"
"A request from one's immediate paternal ancestor, accompanied by a draft for a hundred pounds, is not to be lightly disregarded. We may have another fire some day, and the price of wagons may go still higher."
"Let me think," said Jack, and for a few moments we remained silent to give his mind elbow-room.
"I have it!" he suddenly exclaimed. "Has your Governor ever seen a badger?"
"Not likely, except possibly at the Zoo."
"We must take that chance. You must shoot a badger, Spoof, which we will formally christen a chinook, and send it to your Governor in time for Christmas."
"I think it's just wicked to do that," said Jean, whose sympathies were always with the under dog. "No doubt Mr.—Mr. Spoof, senior, is a delightful old gentleman, and it isn't fair. Fancy some one from America visiting him and Mr. Spoof goes showing off the chinook which his son shot on the banks of the Saskatchewan. 'Chinook nothing!' says the visitor. 'That's a badger, as common as rabbits, almost, and I would describe your son as another prairie animal, smaller than a badger, with two stripes down its back.'"
"Oh, listen to Miss Prim!" Marjorie interrupted. "Who would think she had a letter from her mother asking if she was canning any buffalo beans?"
It was not until Spoof's tall form had dissolved out of view in the starlight that it occurred to me how skilfully he had changed the conversation from the subject of Mrs. Alton. It was something to think about.