Buying and selling is the life and soul of Canada. Land speculators purchase from the Government with the sole idea of selling to those who follow, and see in the land for sale something with greater attractions than that offered free by the authorities. Again, men must fail in such a country, and here and there are always to be found those unfortunate enough to have to offer their sections, on which they may have expended much toil already. Whereas a quarter section of virgin land, extending to one hundred and sixty acres in all, may be of little value when unbroken, broken and fenced it is almost always of considerably enhanced value; for breaking and fencing mean the expenditure of labour, and labour is terribly hard to come by at times in the Dominion.
"We'll go along and see into the matter to-morrow, then," said Peter, when the question had been further discussed. "Jest throw on a log or two, Joe; it's cold enough to freeze one even inside the shack."
Those few days which followed gave our hero some idea, though not a complete one, it must be acknowledged, of the life of settlers in Canada during the long and severe winter which visits the land. There are those who dread the winter. One meets occasionally a man who has returned to England because of the Canadian winter, because of the inertia it brings to great stretches of the country, stopping all outside work, and, on the farms, cutting off neighbours from intercourse with one another. At other times it is the loneliness and silence of the life which send would-be settlers away; but not very often. There are scores and scores who put up with the winter as we in England put up with decidedly dispiriting weather, resting tranquilly and passing the idle hours as best they can, knowing well that a glorious summer will surely follow.
"Not that there's fogs and suchlike," explained Peter, when telling Joe of the life. "Most days its beautifully sunny and bright, though the thermometer may be down below zero. And as to stayin' indoors all the while, that we don't. Most of us has knocked up runners, on which we put the rigs when we've stripped the wheels from 'em. Jim down below thar being a bachelor, with plenty to spend, and being also a good bit of a sportsman, has dogs, and his team drags him from shack to shack, specially round about Christmas. Even the school children get to school on their snowshoes. There ain't no difficulty about that neither, onless the weather's too altogether bad, for the Government build schools fer each settlement. There only wants to be a matter of seven children, and up goes a stone-built school, and a mistress who's properly trained for the job gets a lodging in the nearest shack, or in the school itself, and starts off to teach the youngsters. As to work, wall, I finds heaps. Winter's jest the time for papering the walls of the shack or fer doing a bit of painting. There's furniture wants making, and last winter I and the hand that stayed with us built a new stable. This time I'll whitewash all the outhouses, as well as the fowlhouse."
"And for me there's enough and to spare to keep me from being idle or from grumbling," interjected Mrs. Strike. "There's the house, in the first place, with the beds to make and sichlike. There's food to be cooked fer all, including the chickens, which have hot stuff every day through the winter. And ef I'm dull with looking at Peter there, I've only to go to the telephone and ring up Mrs. George Bailey. A real nice woman that, Joe. She's a help to her husband, she is, and that can't be said of every woman who's come out from England and has lived her life till then in a villa just outside London, with never any greater difficulty to provide for her family than that of stepping along the street to the nearest shop. If they was all like her, there's many settlers would be more successful."
It was clear that Peter and his wife could have kept on discussing this theme for an hour or more; and to those who knew them it was equally certain that these two worthy souls practised exactly as they preached. They had faced the difficulties and the privations often met with in greater number by early settlers, and they had succeeded. Peter was a man who, thanks to hard work and a genial temperament, had made a success of his quarter section, so that the land which had lain bare for centuries before was now entirely tilled, and yielded handsomely to his efforts. In fact, from the position almost of a pauper, the man had advanced to a point where he earned a handsome income that was more than sufficient for his needs, and allowed him to put by many dollars during the course of a year.
"And it ain't finished there," he told Joe and Hank gleefully, when dilating on the subject. "There's the quarter section. It's worth a tidy heap of dollars—more'n a thousand pounds in English money—and that's what I could get any day of the year. But I don't stand still, not never."
"I've had my eyes around, and have gone in as a partner with a brother of mine who came out to Canada at the same time. We worked together for a while, then he went west into British Columbia. Wall, he took up fruit land when irrigation wasn't much more'n dreamed of and, with dollars I put to his, bought two sections close handy. They're gold mines. He's been able to get labour, and seeing that he has a large family of sons and daughters able to work and help, why, it's only needed honest work to tickle the soil and put in the trees to turn over a fine penny; the land does all the rest. It's that fertile it grows astonishing crops of apples, while peaches, strawberries, and sichlike do thundering well. Tom—that's my brother—was mighty wise and lucky too; he took up ground within easy reach of Vancouver, so that he always has a close market for his goods, putting aside the fact that it allowed him to watch things going on, and buy other bits of land when he thought they were likely to go up in value. That's where some of my dollars has gone. Me and the missus will be sellin' up one o' these fine days, and going west where it's warmer."
Joe was bound to admit that the cold did not trouble him. Not that the winter had as yet set in in full severity, though there had been heavy frosts and a fall of snow; but, as Peter had told him, he always found work to do. Even those few days before departing with Hank were strenuous ones. There were logs to saw for the stove, for the huge iron thing which warmed the shack, and which is essential to a Canadian winter, ate timber wholesale. Then there were the cattle to be tended to—for they required feeding, since they could not graze for themselves—there were the pigs also, while always water was wanted inside the shack, and must be drawn from the well which had been one of Peter's labours.
Of an evening, too, while the weather was so open, George and his brother, Jim and other neighbours would drive over, and there would be a jovial supper, followed by a dance, when Mrs. Strike bustled Joe tremendously, till the rough furniture was cleared aside and the boarded floor made ready for the dancers. Then it was Hank's turn, and sometimes Jim's, though Hank was the one who usually obliged. Seated cross-legged in a corner, his face as serious as if he had an army of Redskins after him, the curious and lovable little fellow would bend over his concertina and send forth such notes, that dancing became easy even to the most clumsy.