The Youngest Sister: A Tale of Manitoba

by Bessie Marchant

Fortunately, Bertha had some weeks before constructed a kind of tunnel between the house and the barn by walling up the snow on either side of the path, then laying some sticks of firewood across. On the sticks she had piled masses of the beaten, tangled straw from the ruined wheatfields, of which there was such a sad abundance everywhere, and then the snow had drifted on to the straw and completed the process of roofing in. So she was able to pass between house and barn in comfort, looking after the cow, the fowls, and old Pucker, which, with three lively pigs, made up the sum total of the livestock.

The great trouble in her mind was lest the kerosene barrel should run empty, because then they would be condemned to so many hours of doing nothing, and she wanted every moment of that mid-winter leisure for writing. It did not matter if the food was coarse and monotonous in kind, she and the children were hungry enough to eat almost anything that was eatable, and there had been sufficient saved from the big packing case of good things for Grace to have the variety of nourishment necessary for her.

The solitude of those days might well have driven anyone mad, but, strangely enough, Bertha minded it not at all this year, although last winter, when it was not nearly so bad, the isolation was almost more than she could bear. Grace was nervous and anxious on account of her husband, wondering and wondering, as she lay in her helplessness, where he was spending those blizzard days, and whether there was food to eat and fire to warm him.

The three days of storm were followed by two days of fog, so dense that the barn was not visible from the house, then came another day of heavy snow, which seemed to clear the air; for at night the barometer went up and the thermometer came down, until everything was crackling and sparkling with the frost. When the next morning came, the sun showed itself for the first time in a week, so, wrapping herself up warmly, Bertha went out for a breath of fresh air; for after a week of imprisonment between house and barn it was good to be outside once more.

What an awful desolation it was! As far as eye could reach on every side there was nothing but snow to be seen—snow, snow, snow—until sight grew dim and senses reeled before the glare of the unchanging whiteness.

She did not stay out long. It seemed better to bear the cramped confinement of the house than to face the dazzle of snow and sun outside. There was work to be done, too—the animals and the poultry had to be looked after, there was bread to be made, the house to be put tidy, and Bertha’s time went by in a whirl of business. The short winter day began to draw in, and she was just going out to the barn to milk the cow and feed the stock for the night, when, chancing to look from the window, she was amazed to see a two-horse sledge approaching the house. It was not coming very fast, and it was so piled with things, that she supposed the horses must be tired.

A wild thought flashed into her mind that it must be Tom who was returning so suddenly, and she thought that he must have got some of the other members of the expedition to bring him over on their way to their own homes, or why this mountain of luggage? But she would not raise the hopes of Grace lest they might have to be dashed again later on; so merely saying that someone was coming, but she could not see who it was, she threw a shawl round her and ran out of the house.

The horses came at an easy walk right up to the door and stopped, then, to her dismay, she saw that there was no driver. What had happened? And where was the driver?

Bertha walked up to the horses, patted their heads, and fastened them to the veranda post pending enquiries, and then, dragging at the outer rug in order to cover them from the cold, she was appalled to see that there was a man lying underneath. A dead man he looked; but of course he might be only unconscious from the extreme cold. But what was she to do? And how could she, singlehanded, get a full-grown man out of the sledge and into the house in his dead or unconscious condition?

“But I must do it somehow; for he is a stranger, and we must know why he has come,” she said to herself; then, stepping into the sledge, she took hold of the man by his shoulders and began to haul away at him with all her might.