There's one man in Alberta who comes to see me regularly once a month and no snub or plain telling that I prefer my own company to that of any others makes any impression upon him. He is painfully, hopelessly Scotch. However, one cannot quarrel with a man who has saved one's life. I am, or was, what they call in the west a "lunger." I was definitely diagnosed as "T.B." But if any one doubts that my lungs are sound now they should hear me let out a war whoop that would compare well with old Chief Pie Belly's. Pie Belly is a Stony Indian and I have learned some things of that Indian. Not that I make a daily practice of war whooping, but there's sport in letting the full volume and force of one's lungs pour out across the utter silence of the prairie. If my voice carries to my neighbors—the nearest is five miles off—no doubt they take me for a coyote.
That Scotch doctor likes to pick a quarrel, to argue, to find fault and to bark like a dog. Alberta, according to him, is a "mon's land." There is no sentimental reference to "God's country" or "Sunny Alberta" from him. It is a hard land—a mon's land. I've no right here. I should not work outside the house. I should engage a couple to work the place on shares. I should dress as a "lass"; I should permit my hair to grow "as God planted it"; I should chasten my bitter tongue and heart; I should cultivate my neighbors, and I should not set myself up against my fellow men. Hm! Sounds very fine, my Scotch friend, but what do you know of what I have been through? How can you know that I am frozen inside?
My ranch—and I would rather write of my ranch than dig into my personal thoughts and emotions—if there are any left in me—my ranch lies midway between the good grain lands on one side and the hill country, the cattle lands, on the other. I suppose I am part of Yankee Valley. I am sorry for that because I do not like Americans. They are noisy, insincere, and a boasting, bragging lot. As far as that goes, I like the English less. The Scotch are hard to tolerate, and as for the Irish, the devil made them in his own likeness. If it comes down to that, I don't know a single nationality that I can respect, and I have lived all over the world.
To farm is to gamble on the largest scale possible, for the earth may be said to be our board, the seed our dice and the elements, the soil, the parasites, the hail, the frost and the drought, these are the cards stacked against us. But, like all gamblers, we are reaching out for a prize that enthralls and lures us, and that "pot of gold at the end of our rainbow" is the harvest—the wonderful, glorious golden harvest of Alberta. Some day, it will come to me also.
In the spring, our land is excessively fragrant. The black, loamy soil fairly calls to one to lay the seed within its fertile bosom. Anything will grow in Alberta. It's a thrilling sight to see the grain prick up sturdy and strong. When first my own showed its green head above the earth, I suffered such exhilaration that I could have thrown myself upon the ground, and kissed the good earth. Those tiny points of green, there on the soil that I myself had plowed, disked, harrowed and seeded. I suffered the exquisite pang of the creator.
If only one might shut up memories in a box, close the lid tight and turn the key upon them. If but the past could be blotted out, as are our sins by death, then, methinks, we would find comfort and compensation in this poor life once again.
The last generation of the Lorings were a soft-handed, dependent race. I come of an older, primitive breed, I am a reversion to type, for I love to labor with my hands. Had I been a man, I might have been a ditch or a grave digger. I love the earth. When I die, I do not want to be cremated. I want to go back to the soil.
I talk here of compensations and of my ranch which I say is what I have to live for, yet life has not been sweet or easy for me in Alberta. It's been a battle with a grim antagonist—for poverty and sickness and cold—what can be grimmer than these? And then, much as I love to put in my crop, I have not yet had the joy of reaping it, for cutworm took my first, and this year early frost destroyed my grain when it had attained almost full growth. But never mind—that is all part of the game. The hardest part has been the enforced work at the Bar Q. No one enjoys laboring for those beneath them. I don't mean the laboring men. I have no sense of caste whatsoever, and they are as good as I am, I suppose. But Bull Langdon, the man whose pay I must take. He is a wild beast, one of the two legged cattle that should go to the shambles with his stock.
Yet I am not afraid of Bull Langdon. He never shouts at me. He only blusters, and his bloodshot eyes fall before mine. He may be the great boss and bully of the Bar Q. With his big bull whip in hand, his cattle may cower before him, and his men quail and slink away; his wife and Jake may tremble at the sound of his voice or step. I have his "number." I know that he is a coward, a great sneaking bully. He can lord it over small men and women and half-witted Indian boys. He never employs stronger or bigger men than himself. A giant in stature, and a Samson in strength, nevertheless I assert he is a coward, a big unwhipped bully, whose own strength will some day prove his boomerang.
It's queer, as I have run along, I have omitted all mention of one in Alberta whom I should call a friend. Just a poor, illiterate young girl. I never can forget Nettie Day as I first saw her. Sickness, delirium even, may cast a glamour over things. It may be then our imagination pictures things as they are not; but nevertheless, Nettie's face, bending above my own, with its gentle look of tenderness and compassion, seemed to me as sweet as the "blessed damozel's" as she looked down from heaven to the earth beneath. She had wide, deep blue eyes, a child's eyes, full of an unplumbed innocence and questioning. Strange how one can come into our lives for such a little spell, disappear beyond our sight, and still remain in our hearts. I have seen little enough of Nettie, and the last time I saw her I hate to recall that I scolded her.