The Homesteaders: A Novel of the Canadian West

by Robert J. C. Stead

It was the farmers from the United States, scouting for cheaper lands than were available in their own communities, who first drove the conviction home. They came with money in their wallets; they were actually prepared to exchange real money for land. Such a thing had never before been heard of in Plainville district. At first the settlers were sceptical. Here were two facts almost beyond the grasp of their imagination: that farmers should buy land with money, and the farmers should have money with which to buy land. True, a few of them had already bought railway lands at three or four dollars an acre, but they bought oil long terms, with a trifling investment, and they aimed to pay for the lands out of the crops or not at all.

But a few transactions took place; lands were sold at five dollars, six dollars, eight dollars an acre. The farmers began to realize that land represented wealth—that it was an asset, not a liability—and there was a rush for the cheap railway lands that had so long gone a-begging. Harris was among the first to sense the change in the times, and a beautiful section of railway land that lay next to his homestead he bought at four dollars an acre. The first crop more than paid for the land, and Harris suddenly found himself on the way to riches.

The joy that came with the realization that fortune had knocked at his door and he had heard was the controlling emotion of his heart for a year or more. But gradually, like a fog blown across a moonlit night, came a sense of chill and disappointment. If only he had bought two sections! If at least he had proved up on his pre-emption, which he might have had for nothing! He saw neighbours about him adding quarter to quarter. None of them had done better than himself, but some had done as well. And in some way the old sense of oneness, the old community interest which had held the little band of pioneers together amid their privations and their poverty, began to weaken and dissolve, and in its place came an individualism and a materialism that measured progress only in dollars and cents. Harris did not know that his gods had fallen, that his ideals had been swept away; even as he sat at supper this summer evening, with his daughter's arms about his neck, he felt that he was still bravely, persistently, pressing on toward the goal, all unaware that years ago he had left that goal like a lighthouse on a rocky shore, and was now sweeping along with the turbulent tide of Mammonism. He still saw the light ahead, but it was now a phantom of the imagination. He said, "When I am worth ten thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth ten thousand he found the faithless light had moved on to twenty-five thousand. He said, "When I am worth twenty-five thousand I will have reached it"; when he was worth twenty-five thousand he saw the glow still ahead, beckoning him on to fifty thousand. It never occurred to him to slacken his pace—to allow his mind a rest from its concentration; if he had paused and looked about he might, even yet, have recognized the distant lighthouse on the reef about the wreck of his ideals. But to stop now might mean losing sight of his goal, and John Harris held nothing in heaven or earth so great as its attainment.

So, gently enough, he disengaged his daughter's arms and finished his supper in silence. As soon as it was ended the men started for the barn, and in a few minutes two wagons rattled noisily down the trail.

Beulah helped with the supper dishes, and then came out with the milk-pails to the corral where the cows, puffing and chewing, complacently awaited her arrival. But she had not reached the gate when the hired man was at her side and had slipped one of the pails from her arm.

"Now, Jim, I don't think that's fair at all," she said; and there was a tremor in her voice that vexed her. "Here you're slaving all day with coal and water, and I think that's enough, without milking cows at night."

But Jim only smiled and stirred a cow into position.

"Yes, that's like you," she continued. "Pick Daisie first, just because you know she's tough as rubber. Say, Jim, honest goods," she demanded, pausing and facing him, milk stool in hand, "why do you let father put this kind of stuff over on you?"

"Your father doesn't put anything over on me," he answered. "I'm very fond of milking."

"Yes, you are—not," she said. "You do it on my account, because you're too big-hearted to quit before I'm through…" There was a tuneful song of the tin pails as the white streams rattled on their bottoms.