The Minute Man on the Frontier

by William George Puddefoot

I tried to fancy my host's feelings as he thought of the sharp struggle in the old land, and as he looked over his broad acres now, richer than the farmers he once envied as they drove in on their stout cobs to market.

Near by was another home. Here, too, were fine gardens, and another old couple out of the grip of poverty, which well-nigh killed them in the struggle. This good lady was once the only white woman on a large island, which to-day is laid out in sections, has towns, villages, schoolhouses, and churches, and every farm occupied. The old couple had an unmarried son left; and he, too, was about to quit the parent nest, and start a home for himself. And now I must tell about the wedding.

But first a word about the climate, soil, and conditions, in order to understand what follows. The whole country had once been forest, the home of the Hurons, Chippewas, and other tribes of Indians. The Jesuit had roamed here, suffered, and often become a martyr. Some time in the past, either from Indian fires or carelessness, the forest caught fire, and tens of thousands of acres of choice maples and birch were burnt down to the very roots. The soil is clay, but so charged with lime that you can plough while the water follows the horses in the furrows in rivulets that dash against their fetlocks. This in clay, as a rule, would mean utter ruin until frost came, and the ground thawed again. But not so here. As the ground becomes dry, it pulverizes easily under the harrow.

This section was subject to storms that filled the narrow streams until they became dangerous torrents, sweeping all before them, and sometimes making a jam of logs twenty miles long. One spring I noticed that all the bridges were new, and that they had all been built some four feet higher than before. I was told that the spring freshets had swept everything before them, and had been so unusually high that the change of level became necessary.

It was the night before the wedding, and I was preaching in a little schoolhouse that held about twenty people. It was a very hot night for that latitude, and every one was depressed with the heat. A great black cloud covered the heavens, except an ugly streak of dirty yellow in the west. It was not long before the yellow glare was swallowed up by the night; and then from out of the dense black canopy shot streaks of vivid lightning, forked, chained, and of every variety, and "long and loud the thunder bellowed."

We were not long in closing that meeting. All that rode in our wagon had more than two miles to go. The horses were terrified, but to those who enjoy a thunder-storm it was sublime. We crossed one bridge in the nick of time; for it went thundering down as the back wheel bumped against the road, only just clear of it.

One man was asleep in his shanty, and did not know of the storm until his little dog, tired of swimming around the room, climbed on the bed, and licked his face. The man awoke, and put his hand out of the clothes and felt the water. He sprang up and lit a lamp, and found two feet of water in his room. In the morning it had run off and taken all the bridges again.

And this was the wedding morn. The bridegroom had been away for the ring, but had not returned. We were getting anxious for him when we saw two horses coming on the jump, and a wagon that was as often off the ground as on it, as it thumped along the macadamized road of a new country, with stones as large as a cocoanut, five and six feet apart; but, as the settlers said, it was good to what it once was, and I believed it too.

He came in splashed with mud; but although he had been without sleep, victorious love shone in those light blue eyes, and with his fair complexion and rich rosy cheeks he was the personification of a Viking after victory. He had covered four times the distance on account of bridges carried away.

A hasty breakfast, and off we started, forgetting, until we were almost there, the bridge which had gone down the night before. We turned back to find another bridge afloat and in pieces; but, luckily, the stream had become shallow, and after the horses had danced a cotillon, we succeeded in getting across.