Seeds of Pine

by Emily F. Murphy

He has yellow fruit for me, and cherries, but hands them out carefully, for the smell of steam from the stove shows that dinner is deliciously imminent. The cook is turning cakes on a pan with a spat like the sound of clog-dancers on the stage. He turns them with a grace and intelligence which I may never hope to equal. I have an idea his elbow and wrist work on ball-bearings.

The glorious tall stranger whose name is not Burney (but it will do as well as any other) tells me he was reared down by the Miramichi River. He went back East to see his mother last Christmas, but it took her some days to get used to the grown man who had left home a lad. I can see this thing in my mind's eye. His mother is very clever and has a beautiful face. He need not have told me this. It is true of every man's mother "back home."

Burney was among the first men who scouted for the railway to the West and helped run the try-lines. Falling into the pose of the raconteur—one very natural to the northman—he tells me tragic things, and some that are both tragic and humorous.

One of these was about a Mounted Policeman who was sent out from his post to bring in a murderer. It was terribly cold weather, the mercury almost falling out of the tube. Now, the wanted murderer is the wariest game in the world, and to take him in those mountains one needs boldness and caution in the right proportions—that is to say ninety-nine per cent. of the former, and one per cent. of the latter. The policeman who was sent out was only a stripling, but there was no yellow in him save the streak on his trouser-legs. The round journey was one hundred and twenty miles, but, alone and unaided, he brought in his man, not even waiting to sleep. Almost immediately on a fresh mount, he again started out from the post, but this time to bring in the corpse. The second hundred and twenty miles were terribly long and arduous ones, and the cold cut like a blade. By shutting your eyes you can see and feel this thing: the two frost-covered horses plodding through the bleak and sterile mountains that are grim as eternity—no sound save the cry of starveling wolves, or the white whine of the sleepless wind, these and the sharp-drawn breath of the men. No! we must be mistaken. Only one man breathes, the other seems strangely still, and his lips are tight shut. There is something peculiarly defective in his stony eyes and stony face. If you look closer you can see he is roped close to the horse, and that he doesn't give to the lope.... God of men and beasts! that is a dead man that rides through the snow, and he rides to confront his slayer.... And when the two reached the police post, the live dare-doing man was found to be terribly exhausted from hunger, lack of sleep, and the long, long ride, so that his brittle nerves were like to snap in two. This was how they came to give him the stimulants which in some way (it is not for a tattling civilian to say the way) had not entirely worn off when he was summoned to give evidence at the inquest.

The auditory consisted of engineers, and chainmen from the residencies who resented this grim sitting with a murderer, a judge and accuser, and the white, stark man on the table, whom presently they would put to bed with a spade. They were sitting austerely upright with grave faces as became the occasion, when it came upon them suddenly that the police stripling was intoxicated. It is true he faced the judge with an uncompromising attitude and stood erect, and "at attention" as if a perpendicular rod braced his body from his crown to his heels, but when the judge's glance wandered for the fraction of a moment, the stripling would wink prodigiously at the engineers, and in an unholy manner that threw them into suppressed convulsions. The thing was grievously grotesque. It was as though a stone altar-saint had suddenly awaked and had put his fingers to his nose in a way that was sinister. Comedy with her wry face was peeping through a tragic mask. It is a way of hers.

It was not until the judge observed the policeman constantly dropping his papers and picking them up in a stiff unjointed way, that the reason of the court's commotion became apparent to him.

"What is the rest of the story?" you ask. I do not know. I am a reviewer of books and never go so far as the end.

Sirs and Mesdames, but it is an athletic feat climbing out of the cupola of a caboose. I stepped on the shoulder of Burney, who is admirably strong, and then down to a chair. The brakesmen enter the cupola off the roof and have a way of sliding to the floor backward. It looks easy, and if I were alone, I would surely try it.

There were four of us for dinner, and we had pork and beans, beefsteak, potato-cakes, rolls, peaches and coffee. The butter was tinned, but withal toothsome, and so was the milk. The butter is shipped here from Nova Scotia, and is supplied to all the camps on the road. I help the cook clear away the dishes, but he thinks me rather unhandy, for I upset both the sugar and salt. He comes from Kilmarnock in Scotland, and is a nice lad, I can see that. He has a thicket of hair that stands erect from his head like a growth of young spruce, and he always looks as if he had just heard some good idea. His latest idea, he confides, is a job with the purveyors who contract for the supplies for all the grading camps on the line.

Hitherto, I have always looked upon a caboose as something commonplace, but now, I know it may be truly a Castle of Indolence. I have a sweet tooth for this kind of life, and have no objection to continuing it for a month. Journalists, and important people with stamped passes, go on private cars, but the advantage of mediocrity is that you can travel in a caboose and need not view the scenery as a commercial commodity. When I can think of what to say, I will write a story called "The Romance of a Railway Van." Its setting will be in the hills. The heroine will be a southern girl of probably twenty summers (with a corresponding number of winters). She shall be no fine die-away lady, but middling strong and built to go out in all weather. Each move of the romance will be made by invisible kelpies, ogres and dryads, who will say "Ha! Ha!" and "Ho! Ho!" and who will clap their hands when the wicked flourish, or valour wins against the odds. But I never could think this story out, so I pass it on to you.