"An' here's somethin' more," he said, setting an example for us by walking stealthily on his pudgy legs through the clumps of willows. At the other end of the wooded space we found a little pond opening out, and a score of wild ducks drowsing placidly on its smooth surface. The bright colorings of the drakes, the beautiful archings of their necks, and their graceful movements on the water held us for a moment in silent admiration.
"An Englishman," Jake remarked, when we had turned back, "would take this farm fer the duck pond alone. They're the dangdest people ever was fer wantin' to kill somethin'. He don' care if his farm is all sand or wallows, 's long as there's somethin' to shoot, the Englishman don't. But fer a Yankee it mus' be every acre wheat land. He don' care fer nothin' but the long green." Jake paused as though to think over these national characteristics.
"I dunno which is the worst," he said at length. "I reckon us Canadjuns is about right, with a little o' both."
"It has been said that a Canadian is half Englishman and half Yankee," I remarked. "What do you make of it?"
"Nothin' to it," was Jake's emphatic answer. "When a Canadjun is enjoyin' an argyment with a Yankee he's all English, an' when he's pullin' off a deal with an Englishman he's all Yankee, an'——"
"He gets the sixty pounds," said Jack.
Jake braced himself on his short, stout legs, and made a gesture that might have been interpreted as a belligerent attitude. He ended it by flapping his arms in imitation of flying, and emitting a series of caws.
Jack was duly suppressed. "Let's get to business," he said. "Explain this soil. Will it grow anything, and if so, what?"
"Let's find a badger-hole," said Jake, and we had little trouble in locating one. "Now look at this. This hole goes down five, six, seven feet, maybe more, in the ground. Look what his nibs has kicked out. Fine, loamy, sandy soil, not too light an' not too sticky, all the way down. That goes plumb to Kingdom Come. Course, the top is a little darker, on account o' the grass roots, but it's all soil. None o' yer down-east three inches-o'-muck-an'-a-rock-bottom to that."
Jake took a fresh chew of tobacco and looked out over the greenish-brown prairie. It certainly was a picture to kindle the imagination. Almost as level as a floor, one could have seen a jack-rabbit jump anywhere within a mile. The little gully was quite lost in the vista; you would not dream of its existence until you came right upon it. In no direction was there a sign of life, but far on the horizon a whiff of smoke hung like a fading pennant in the still sky.