So while Winnipeg and Selkirk indulged their visions Emerson was already enjoying to the full the prosperity which accompanied the inrush of settlers. Although the immigrants were not wealthy as the term is now understood even in an agricultural community, most of them had enough money to pay for their outfitting and place them on their homesteads for operations. Accommodation in Emerson was at a premium; hotel space was out of the question, and even the barest rooms commanded mining-camp prices. Those commodities which the settler must needs have had taken their cue from hotel prices, and were quoted at figures that provoked much thoughtful head-scratching on the part of the thrifty and somewhat close-fisted new arrivals from the East.
Harris left his wife with a company of other women in the Government immigration building while he set out to find, if possible, lodgings where she might live until he was ready to take her to the homestead country. He must first make a trip of exploration himself, and as this might require several weeks his present consideration was to place her in proper surroundings before he left. He soon found that all the hotels were full, and had they not been full the prices demanded were so exorbitant as to be beyond his reach; and even had it been otherwise he would have asked her to share the hardships of the exploration trip rather than leave her amid associations which were all too apparent in the hotel section of the town. The parasites and camp-followers of society, attracted by the easy money that might be wrung in devious ways from the inflowing tide of farmers, were already represented in force, and flaunted brazenly the seamy side of the civilization which was advancing into the New West.
Turning to parts of the town which were less openly engaged in business, legitimate, questionable, or beyond question, Harris inquired at many doors for lodgings for himself and wife, or for his wife alone. The response ranged from curt announcements that the inmates "ain't takin' boarders" to sympathetic assurances that if it were possible to find room for another it would be done, but the house was already crowded to suffocation. Great lines of washing in the back yards, and groups dirty children splashing in the spring mud, bore testimony to the congestion. The March sun was beating down with astonishing fierceness and the unside-walked streets were a welter of slush. In two hours Harris, notwithstanding his stout frame and his young enthusiasm, dragged himself somewhat disconsolately back to the immigration building with the information that his search had been fruitless.
At the door he met Tom Morrison and another, whom he recognized as the teller of Indian stories which had captivated the children of his car. Morrison was a man of forty, with a dash of grey in his hair and a kindly twinkle in his shrewd eyes; his companion was A bigger man, of about the same age, whose weather-beaten face bore testimony to the years already spent in pioneer life on the prairie.
"And what luck have ye had?" asked Morrison, seizing the young man by the arm. "Little, I'll be thinkin', by the smile ye're forcin' up. But what am I thinkin' of? Mr. McCrae is from 'way out in the Wakopa County, and an old-timer on the prairie. He knows every corner in the town, I'm thinkin'—"
"Aleck McCrae," said the big man. "We leave our 'misters' east of the Great Lakes. An' Ah'm not from Wakopa, unless you give that name to all the country from Pembina Crossing to Turtle Mountain. Ah'm doing business all through there, an' no more partial to one place than another."
"What is your line of business, Mr. McCrae?" asked Harris.
"Aleck, I said, an' Aleck it is."
"All right," said the other, laughing. "What is your business,
Aleck?"
"My business is assisting settlers to get located on suitable land, an' ekeing out my own living by the process. There's a strip of country in there, fifty miles long by twenty miles wide, that Ah know like you knew your own farm down East. It cost me something to learn it, an' Ah sell the information for part of what it cost. Perhaps Ah can do something for you later, along professional lines. Just now, as Tom here tells me, you're hunting a house for the wife. Ah know Emerson too well to suppose you have found one."