It is impossible to estimate how long this remarkably edifying dialogue might have continued; probably it would have gone on for a week or two, had not Sam, becoming restless, pulled at his companion's sleeve, and, with a backward jerk of the head, beckoned Bert away a little.
"Don't know wot that big bloke's gassin' abaht," he whispered cautiously, so as not to be overheard, "but 'e's a very 'appy man. Jus' look at 'is weskit, an' 'is neck, an' 'is trahsers! 'E's like one of them joints of meat tied rahnd an' rahnd wiv string. 'E mus' be tellin' the trufe, though. No man wot tells lies can be 'appy, like 'e is. That plagh's bound ter be a good 'un. Let's buy it."
So they did—being guided in the purchase of a disk and harrows by the same wonderful process of reasoning.
CHAPTER V
Saskatoon—William Trailey
So sanguine is youth, and so undismayed by the future, that Sam and Bert were not the slightest bit disturbed either by the profound muddle Barr's leadership had sunk into, or by the contemplation of their long, rugged trek into the unknown. But to the calmly thoughtful, middle-aged colonists, especially those having nearly as many young children as dollars, the prospect looked dark indeed. In the whole badly-managed scheme, the only certainty these men could reckon on was the grim uncertainty of everything.
Barr added nothing to his fading reputation by appointing another clergyman to his staff—the Rev. Dr. Robbins. As far as physical beauty went, this latest addition to Headquarters' establishment was hardly an Adonis. In ability, he ranked nowhere. He wasn't even interesting. He called himself a doctor, but what of, nobody knows, for sure—certainly he never cured a colonist of any ailment, either mental, spiritual or physical. Why he joined the colonists at Saskatoon at all is a mystery. He left no mark on their affairs, unless a memory of his bulbous figure so much like that of a comic brewer's drayman can be counted one. Two thousand men, women and children waiting to be led deep into the wilderness by a triumvirate of parsons surely makes the Barr Colony unique, even if nothing else does.
Fortunately, the serious-minded immigrants, those with grit, and perseverance, to say nothing of self-respect and ambition, were no more affected by the behaviour of the incompetent freaks at the head of things than the weather is influenced by the planet Jupiter (always excepting, herein, the conduct of the Rev. G. E. Lloyd, whose exemplary management, when later it got its chance, set him miles apart from, and above, the others).
Having laid in a plentiful supply of cigarettes and such like things so essential to successful pioneering, Sam and Bert were quite ready for a very early departure from Saskatoon the following morning—about half-past ten o'clock, Bert suggested.
Two candles, inserted in the clefts of a couple of split willow-sticks driven in the loose soil, shed a spluttering glimmer which fought bravely with the tent's obscurity. A little oblong camp-stove, the smoke-pipe of which issued from a tin-bound hole in the sloping canvas wall, radiated a drowsy but slowly dying heat.