"You bet he will collar,
Your very last dollar,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
The crowd burst into loud laughter. Barr, with a mechanical sort of effort, tried bravely to compel his own strained features to smile, but he failed miserably.
In a bell tent, about a hundred yards off, half a dozen throaty prodigies were seated comfortably on the ground with a nearly-emptied bottle of Saskatoon's choicest wassail nice and handy. In ironical tones, they ripped out the chorus of the song, totally unaware of the devastating effect it was having on Barr's meeting.
"Farm, farm, do let us farm,
We're sure that the most of us can;
We'll plough and we'll sow,
And we'll reap and we'll mow,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."
"The Nautch Girl" was the particular musical comedy honoured with the supplying of the air in which this marvellously poetical masterpiece was rendered. The author of the "poem" had, between spasms of biliousness aboard the Lake Manitoba, composed eighteen stanzas of it, before crawling away to die.
Like most early Barr Colony experiences, this particular incident at Saskatoon was pathetic, yet at the same time comic. With a dreary gesture of hopelessness, Barr stepped down from the trunk and hurried within his tent. Contemptuously, the crowd gradually dispersed.
Half pityingly, Sam murmured—"Gawd!" He bore Barr no special malice. Indeed, if anything, he was very grateful to the reverend leader for being the means of his separating himself from his sordid environment in London.
"I feel a bit sorry for the old boy," was Bert's only comment, as the pair headed towards the village.
Stepping into Saskatoon's main street, a wide, unkempt, dirt-metalled thoroughfare, irregularly bordered on one side with unpainted wooden structures, and running alongside the railway station, Bert and Sam set about purchasing their goods.
The few business men were doing a roaring trade. To most of the colonists, prices mattered little—even though these were occasionally inflated. Both English and Canadian money was abundant. A composite odour of cheese, boots, shirts, soap, men and mice permeated all the stores, branding them with a smell as characteristic as that possessed by the interior of an Indian's teepee.