Over Prairie Trails

by Frederick Philip Grove

But we made it. By the time we reached the park that forms the approach to the town from the south, the skies had changed completely. There was now, as far as my eye would reach, just one vast, dark-blue, star-spangled expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the earth with a veritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year—as, for instance, Vega’s smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.

I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a narrow bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both sides, makes the stars seem brighter than they appear from the open fields. I have heard that you can see a star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit if it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make my impression less improbable, perhaps. I know that not often have the stars seemed so much alive to me as they did that night in the park.

And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five minutes, fed the horses, had supper myself, and hitched up again.

On leaving town I went for another mile east in the shelter of a fringe of bush; and this bush kept rustling as if a breeze had sprung up. But it was not till I turned north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I became conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was indeed a slight breeze, coming from the north, and it felt very moist. Somehow it felt homely and human, this breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a time, not too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the trees and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in delicate buds. So far, however, its more immediate promise probably was snow.

But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up. Between the two there was a distinct lull. And again there arose in the north, far away, at the very end of my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder wind that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts, with short lulls in between; it still had that water-laden feeling, but it was now what you would call “damp” rather than “moist”—the way you often feel winter-winds along the shores of great lakes or along sea-coasts. There was a cutting edge to it—it was “raw” And it had not been blowing very long before low-hanging, dark, and formless cloud-masses began to scud up from the north to the zenith. The northern lights, too, made their appearance again about that time. They formed an arc very far to the south, vaulting up behind my back, beyond the zenith. No streamers in them, no filtered rays and streaks—nothing but a blurred luminosity high above the clouds and—so it seemed—above the atmosphere. The northern lights have moods, like the clouds—moods as varied as theirs—though they do not display them so often nor quite so ostentatiously.

We were nearing the bridge across the infant river. The road from the south slopes down to this bridge in a rather sudden, s-shaped curve, as perhaps the reader remembers. I still had the moonlight from time to time, and whenever one of the clouds floated in front of the crescent, I drove more slowly and more carefully. Now there is a peculiar thing about moonlight on snow. With a fairly well-marked trail on bare ground, in summertime, a very little of it will suffice to indicate the road, for there are enough rough spots on the best of trails to cast little shadows, and grass and weeds on both sides usually mark the beaten track off still more clearly, even though the road lead north. But the snow forms such an even expanse, and the trail on it is so featureless that these signs are no longer available. The light itself also is too characterless and too white and too nearly of the same quality as the light reflected by the snow to allow of judging distances delicately and accurately. You seem to see nothing but one vast whiteness all around. When you drive east or west, the smooth edges of the tracks will cast sharply defined shadows to the north, but when you drive north or south, even these shadows are absent, and so you must entirely rely on your horses to stay on the trail. I have often observed how easily my own judgment was deluded.

But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know when I approached the bridge that, perhaps through overconfidence, I was caught napping. There was another fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at the time. I have mentioned that we had had a “soft spell.” In fact, it had been so warm for a day or two that the older snow had completely iced over. Now, much as I thought I was watching out, we were suddenly and quite unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even realized that we were near it.

As I said, on this slope the trail described a double curve, and it hit the bridge at an angle from the west. The first turn and the behaviour of the horses were what convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too far. If I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope began and then started them downward at a slow walk, we should still have reached the bridge at too great a speed; for the slope had offered the last big wind from the north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow, thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that had drifted from the south, on the other hand, had been thrown beyond the river, on to the lower northern bank; the horses skidded, and the weight of the cutter would have pushed them forward. As it was, they realized the danger themselves; for when we turned the second curve, both of them stiffened their legs and spread their feet in order to break the momentum of the cutter; but in spite of the heavy calks under their shoes they slipped on all fours, hardly able to make the bend on to the bridge.

They had to turn nearly at right angles to their last direction, and the bridge seemed to be one smooth sheet of ice. The moon shone brightly just then; so I saw exactly what happened. As soon as the runners hit the iced-over planks, the cutter swung out sideways; the horses, however, slipping and recovering, managed to make the turn. It was a worth-while sight to see them strike their calks into the ice and brace themselves against the shock which they clearly expected when the cutter started to skid. The latter swung clear of the bridge—you will remember that the railing on the east-side was broken away—out into space, and came down with a fearful crash, but right side up, on the steep north bank of the river—just at the very moment when the horses reached the deep, loose snow beyond which at least gave them a secure footing. They had gone along the diagonal of the bridge, from the southwest corner, barely clearing the rail, to the northwest corner where the snow had piled in to a depth of from two to five feet on the sloping bank. If the ground where I hit the bank had been bare, the cutter would have splintered to pieces; as it was, the shock of it seemed to jar every bone in my body.

It seemed rather a piece of good luck that the horses bolted; the lines held; they pulled me free of the drift on the bank and plunged out on the road. For a mile or two we had a pretty wild run; and this time there was no doubt about it, either, the horses were thoroughly frightened. They ran till they were exhausted, and there was no holding them; but since I was on a clear road, I did not worry very much. Nevertheless, I was rather badly shaken up myself; and if I had followed the good advice that suggested itself, I should have put in for some time at the very next farm which I passed. The way I see things now, it was anything rather than safe to go on. With horses in the nervous condition in which mine were I could not hope any longer to keep them under control should a further accident happen. But I had never yet given in when I had made up my mind to make the trip, and it was hard to do so for the first time.