On and on, over the rolling prairie, rattled the hot, dusty train. They were in Indian country now, and at every station a dozen or more dark-faced Crees crouched on the platform, offering buffalo horns for sale.
And this reminds me that I have not mentioned one very important portion of Tom’s outfit. It was a fine No. 4 Kodak, of which he was very proud, and which he “snapped” mercilessly at all sorts of persons and things on the journey. There were other amateur photographers on the Excursion—a dozen or more in all—and great was the good-natured rivalry in securing good views. Indians were bribed, soldiers flattered and precipices scaled in this fascinating pursuit. As to the hundred travelers, the photographers snapped at them and one another with hardly an apology; and as the subject usually looked up and smiled broadly at the critical moment, the general result must have been a collection of portraits of the most marvelously and uniformly merry company that ever boarded a C. P. R. train, or kodaked a Siwash canoe.
Each wielder of this terrible weapon had a different way of holding the camera and doing the deed. Mr. Selborne focused from under his right arm, that embraced the instrument firmly. Pet, who had a little No. 1, always winked hard, and occasionally jumped when she “pressed the button”; thereby, as she afterward discovered, giving her characters a peculiar misty effect, which she declared was enchanting. One indefatigable lady from Kalamazoo invariably held her kodak out in front of her at arms-length, and took aim over the top of it before firing; a proceeding which never failed to disconcert and terrify the subject beyond description.
At a settlement called Swift Current, Tom undertook to photograph an old Cree squaw, who stalked away indignantly around the corner of the freight house. Away went crafty Thomas in the opposite direction, meeting the squaw just half-way around the building. Tom tried to purchase a sitting with a silver quarter, but the wrathful Indian woman poured out a torrent of Cree invective, and hooked at him with a pair of buffalo horns she held in her hands. Finally, he turned his back to her, and holding the camera backward under his arm, pressed the button and so obtained one of his best negatives on the trip.
It must be confessed that he felt rather shabby in thus procuring her portrait against her will; and to atone for his conduct, Bessie knelt beside two little Indian girls and tied bright red ribbons on their arms, to their intense delight.
At Moose-Jaw (which Mr. Houghton said was an abridgment of the Indian name meaning, “The-creek-where-the-white-man-mended-the-cart-with-a-moose’s-jaw-bone”), the travelers were shown a villainous-looking Sioux, who was one of Sitting Bull’s band that massacred General Custer and his troops a few years before. The Indians in that whole section of Canada are kept in order by mounted police—fine-looking fellows, sauntering about the station platforms with whip and spur, and by no means averse to having their pictures taken, Pet found.
All this is very pleasant, but as the day wears on, the green hills and flowery meadow-land give place to scorched, parching, alkali desert, stretching away in dry, tawny billows as far as the eye can reach. Here and there is a lake—no, a pool of dry salt, like the white ghost of a lake. The air in the cars becomes insufferably hot. Look at the thermometer, where the sun does not shine, and the air blows in through the open window. It marks full 105°. Mr. Selborne wins popularity by contracting for a large pitcher of iced lemonade, which he passes through the car. Dust and cinders pour in at doors and windows with the hot air. Waves of heat rise from the shriveled grass. Will night ever come?
Yes, it comes at last, as God’s good gifts always come, to refresh and sweeten our lives. The sky flushes with sunset light. Shadows creep up from the east; a cool breeze touches the fevered faces. Night, beautiful, restful, kindly night, spreads its wings over the weary travelers, and, still flying onward through the darkness, they sleep peacefully and dream of the dear New England hills and of home.