It was the old earth music, and it drowned the recollection of social conventions and caste distinctions. It was the same to camp-packer and rich contractor’s daughter. As Ida listened it seemed to stir the primitive impulses of her human nature. She took alarm and stopped her ears to it.
“Is it wise to listen?” she asked. “It leads to nothing but restlessness.”
“It seldom leads to any material benefit,” Weston admitted. “After all, I think, one has to be a vagabond before one can properly appreciate it.”
“You seem sure of that?” Ida’s curiosity to know more of him would not permit her to avoid the personal application.
“I’m afraid there must be a little of the vagabond in me,” said Weston, with a smile. “Once I walked into Winnipeg without a dollar, and was fortunate in hiring myself to add up figures in a big flour-mill. The people for whom I worked seemed quite pleased with the way I did it, and paid me reasonably. I lived in a big boarding-house like a rabbit-warren. Through the thin partitions I could hear the people all about me stirring in their sleep at night. I went to the mill in a crowded car every morning, and up to the office in an elevator. I stayed with it just a month, and then I broke out.”
“Broke out?” said Ida.
“Threw the flour-mill people’s pens across the office. You see, I was getting sick for room and air. I presented the concern with my last week’s stipend, and a man at the boarding-house with my city clothes.”
“What did you do then?”
“Took the trail. There was limitless prairie straight on in front of me. I walked for days, and slept at night wherever I could find a bluff. I could hear the little grasses whispering when I lay half-awake, and it was comforting to know that there were leagues and leagues of them between me and the city. I drove a team for a farmer most of that season. Then I went on to a track that they were strengthening and straightening in this province. It ran between the rock and the river, and the snow hadn’t gone. We worked waist-deep in it part of the time, and thawed out every stick of giant-powder at the fire. The construction boss was a hustler, and he drove us mercilessly. We toiled raw-handed, worn-out and savage, and he drove us all the harder when one of the boys tried to brain him.”
“And you never longed to be back in the office at the flour-mill?”