"Sham, me bhoy," he said, "'tever you do, keep away from—hic—the curs-ed drink. It's Satan 'imself. Goo'-night," then, turning round, he toppled through the tent-door, which Sam, with his habitual good sense, was at great pains to refasten.
CHAPTER VII
Saskatoon—Martha Trailey
The non-arrival of a thousand-pound draft from England was firmly anchoring William Trailey in Saskatoon. He was a moderately well-to-do man. He had piled up a little wealth in the insurance line, when securing new business was ridiculously easy—in the 'eighties and 'nineties of last century. His lawyers at Leeds, where he used to reside, were slowly but surely converting into cash and costs for him, some workmen's cottages in which he had invested a part of his savings. And he was sufficiently acute to be afraid that, unless he left Saskatoon as quickly as possible, he would be compelled to cable instruction to his solicitors to dispose of another row of houses.
Because of their promise to wait for the Traileys, the departure of Sam and Bert was postponed for more than a week.
Meanwhile, like the snowdrifts surrounding it, the camp slowly began to melt away. In small convoys—never alone—the colonists started off on their two-hundred-mile journey away from civilization. Blissfully unconscious of what lay before them, they bravely set out to discover a new North-west Passage into Utopia.
In the romantic Crusades, beneath the banner of the Cross, the mediæval conquerors used generally to ride at the head of their followers—both in advancing and retreating. Barr did not. In this respect he was a modern. His theory seemed to be, that, if anything went wrong, and he was first over the top, he might never come back; on the other hand, if he stuck to his dug-out, and switchboard, and dispatch-box, he might save himself a lot of messy travelling. A fraction of Peter the Hermit's naked courage and stark self-denial would have made the Rev. Dr. Robbins a much more useful leader, too.
In any case, there was a huge amount of work for the Rev. Isaac M. Barr to do at Saskatoon. There was a nondescript crew of freighters to recruit and instruct, and there was a small mountain of stores and supplies to be bought, for although later on the colonists almost learned to do without food, they were inclined to treat themselves rather well at the start. Also baggage had to be found, returning colonists to be heartened, subordinates to be watched, and a multitude of minor details to be attended to besides.
The party was brimming with queer characters. These made things very interesting for themselves, and Barr, and everybody. Puritans and free-thinkers; university and remittance men; ignoramuses and intellectuals; socialists and men of vision; ex-soldiers and ex-stay-at-homes; men who believed every word in the Bible was inspired by God, and men who believed everything in The Daily Mail was the same; Methodists, Anglicans, Calvinists, Catholics, Unitarians, Agnostics, and men belonging to twenty other sects; niggards and spendthrifts; men with brothers who were officers in the Yeomanry, and men with not a single drop of blue blood in their veins at all; men with money and very little sense; men with sense and very little money; men with both and men with not much of either; all began to dribble westwards along the Battleford trail, their eyes turned wistfully towards the only, for them, ideal life—HOMESTEADING.
Four hundred wagons at the very least commenced the trip. A few speedy colonists, travelling light, reached their destination, hunted their land, scraped the top off a couple of acres, sowed them with wild oats—and wilder mustard—and were busy hacking some innocent trees down with which to build shacks, before some of the more helpless ones even thought of quitting Saskatoon.