Next Year
A SEMI-HISTORICAL ACCOUNT OF THE EXPLOITS AND EXPLOITATIONS OF THE FAR-FAMED BARR COLONISTS, WHO, LED BY AN UNSCRUPULOUS CHURCH OF ENGLAND PARSON, ADVENTURED DEEP INTO THE WILDERNESS OF CANADA'S GREAT NORTH-WEST IN THE EARLY DAYS OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
By
HARRY PICK
(Barr Colonist)
THE RYERSON PRESS
TORONTO
Copyright, Canada, 1928,
by HARRY PICK
To
ALL BARR COLONISTS, PARTICULARLY THOSE WHO AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ARE STILL STAYING WITH OLD BRITANNIA, AND TO THE MEMORY OF THOSE BRAVE SPIRITS WHO HAVE PASSED ON, THIS BOOK IS INSCRIBED
Extract from the Montreal Gazette
of April 11th, 1903
"St. John, N.B.—Four special trains, carrying the Barr Colonists, numbering 1,960, left here to-day for the Saskatoon district, where the new Canadians will establish homes and cities. The party, which is declared to be the greatest emigration from England since the departure of William Penn, arrived Saturday morning on the steamship Lake Manitoba, whose cargo of humanity was packed like fish in a box. The colonists bring with them half a million pounds sterling. They are probably the finest body of men, women and children that ever landed here. Lawyers, doctors, clergymen, merchants, aristocrats, farmers, clerks, artizans, domestics, tradeswomen and labourers are included, besides babies by the score. On the passage, which occupied eleven days, there was not a death or a case of serious illness on the congested ship. Rev. I. M. Barr, the organizer of the party, is a brisk, business-like man, who is full of enthusiasm over the prospects of his scheme. He says 1,500 more colonists are to follow, and that 10,000 will come next year."
CONTENTS
CHAPTER
I. [A Fight—Choosing land at Sea]
II. [Two Skeleton Biographies]
III. [Saskatoon—Acquiring Transport]
IV. [Saskatoon—Buying Machinery]
V. [Saskatoon—William Trailey]
VI. [Saskatoon—A Temperance Lecture]
VII. [Saskatoon—Martha Trailey]
VIII. [On to Battleford]
X. [Indian Freighters—Eagle Creek]
XII. [Tragi-Comedy in an Alkali Flat]
XIII. [Battleford]
XIV. [Prairie Fires]
XVII. [Land-Hunting]
XVIII. [Wilderness—Planning for Next Year]
AUTHOR'S NOTE
When the S.S. Lake Manitoba carried two thousand all-British Barr Colonists across the Atlantic a quarter of a century ago, she didn't exactly cover herself with glory. Her Board of Trade passenger rating was eight hundred odd.
In one cabin for'ard there were packed three hundred human beings—single men; or what practically amounted to the same thing (as a facetious wag whose wife had run off with the milkman put it)—married men travelling without their wives.
A similar cabin aft enclosed a like number of males. Amidships, but a story or two higher up, the steerage accommodation was crowded with unattached females and married people with their younger children. Recently used as a transport in the South African War, the Lake Manitoba had had her decks and holds painted a snowy white, and divided into compartments with gunny sacking. Into numbers of these elastic cubicles as many as six married couples were squeezed.
Privacy was impossible. No one could undress properly. The drinking water was rotten; the food was worse. The sanitary conveniences would have shamed a monkey cage. The snow-white paint on the woodwork turned out to be merely whitewash, and, when the vessel received a smart smack from a wave, large flakes of it fell off along with the dried undercoat of manure.
Up above, the aristocrats travelled first-class. Theirs was the only passenger accommodation the ship really possessed. Nearly everyone aboard could have afforded to travel cabin, but only those whose applications were received first managed to secure the limited number of berths available. The rest—about sixteen hundred of them—put up with the crudest of steerage fare.
For an interesting view of life aboard an emigrant ship, the single men's cabin for'ard was unique. All sorts and conditions of British middle-class homes were represented, and although it was rather a lot of men to cram into one room, it speaks well for British love of law and order to record that only eleven fights, seven incipient mutinies, three riots, and twenty-two violent interviews with Barr, the party's leader, occurred during the voyage.
This cabin was deep down below the water line. When any of the fellows felt that they needed air, they went up on deck for it. Quite right, too. Why should young single men have things carried down to them?
Climbing to the deck for air worked all right for everybody except those who were dying from seasickness, of whom there were about a score. These poor devils stuck in bed throughout the whole of the voyage. Fortunately, the ship crossed in twelve days, so they didn't have to breathe the same air above a million times.
This cabin stretched clean across the boat. It was one of the holds. As previously stated, it was well up in front, where the men got a longer ride for their money—up and down, as well as forward. The "beds" were in tiers of three, with long tables placed with charming thoughtfulness down the aisles, so that the seasick sufferers might obtain a clear view of the grub.
The occupants of the cabin were pretty quiet during the first couple of days out from Liverpool. The band on the dock had played some haunting melodies, and everyone knows how greatly young single men are affected by such things. Besides, there was only an old plank floor separating them from the place where the bilge was stored.
But presently they became more sprightly. Some chap started a little hymn singing, in between two tiers of bunks where a couple of fellows lay dying. It was highly pathetic. One of the invalids, a little, sallow-faced beggar, was in frightful throes; but, in spite of being almost a goner, he revived sufficiently to curse something awful every time the glee singers struck up "Shall We Gather at the River?"
Across in one corner, a gang played ha'penny nap throughout the trip. Bottles of Guinness, like labelled black ninepins, stuck up all round them. Everyone in the cabin smoked, of course; thus any germs propagated by the overcrowding were quickly choked to death.
About half-way along one side of the stateroom, a dozen budding scalp hunters had crucified the effigy of a man—Barr, it was supposed to represent—on the wall of the ship, and were practising knife throwing. Many men wore bowie knives. Indeed, barring bows and arrows and 8-inch howitzers, they had brought almost a complete arsenal aboard. No man who considered himself sane would dream of venturing into the Far West in those days without being thoroughly armed, so why shouldn't a green Englishman protect himself?
In the middle of the cabin, in a sort of island of space—which the authorities had apparently overlooked—an orchestra practised many times daily. Two fiddles, a melodeon, a cornet, and a telescopic harmonium ground out the music.
Those were the days before civilization had sunk into the depravity of jazz. The orchestra dispensed such noble airs as: "Count Your Blessings," "Daddy's on the Engine," and such like popular tunes of the day, interspersed with a few of Lottie Collins' and Moody and Sankey's special hits. Some of the dying men frequently called for encores. These were hardly ever refused.
In another corner, a chap, who several years previously had spent three weeks in Alaska, lectured on prairie farming. His dialect was pure Tyneside. It was hard work for him, particularly during orchestra rehearsals, but he managed quite well in the intervals.
Those who have heard the Tyneside idiom will know it for a rather desperate affair. In the best society, the vowels are supposed to be sung as limpidly as possible, the consonants being thrown in here and there in shovelfuls of gutturals. As no one understood a single word the lecturer said, he was extremely impressive.
Mixed in with these more artistic entertainments were the usual English gymnastic games; boxing and wrestling; miniature rifle practice, and a few real scraps. Time, therefore, didn't really hang. The dying men appeared to be wonderfully bucked.
Numbers of the men had recently been demobilized from the British Army's South African forces, so the language used in course of ordinary conversation was naturally somewhat vivid.
The largeness of the crowd of passengers had apparently taken the steamship company (The Elder-Dempster Company) unawares, their kitchen staff being completely overwhelmed. The Captain soon rectified this, however, by enlisting, in return for a free passage, a number of stewards from the single men's "stateroom." These, not having had much experience in dealing with riots and revolutions, were quite content to stand in the cabin entrance and shy jacketed potatoes, slices of meat, and chunks of plum duff across the heads of the scrambling crowds. Only good all-round cricketers were chosen for stewards; and only first-rate wicket-keepers got plenty to eat.
This far-famed, all-British Colony idea was sired by an Anglican clergyman, the Rev. Isaac M. Barr. Its dam was the pursuit of wealth; grand-dam, adventure; grandsire, the Britisher's intense longing to own a bit of land.
Though a parson, Barr knew a thing or two about business. The more cynical of the passengers aboard the Lake Manitoba, chiefly those from London and the larger cities, had it pretty well reckoned up that if he received commissions—which he was quite entitled to do—from all the interests concerned in supplying the party with things, he would pull down sufficient of "the ready" to enable him to start preaching again.
One chap in the single men's cabin had thrown up a bank manager's berth in one of London's suburbs to try his luck in the Far West. Being clever at figures, he calculated that at only half a sovereign a head from the steamship company, and another from the Canadian Pacific Railway, Barr's perquisites from these sources alone would aggregate two thousand five hundred pounds.
As this rather involved calculation was made, and the result communicated to them after they had enjoyed a magnificent banquet of slices of sour beef, and balls of plum duff whose soggy in'ards had seemingly been shot at with raisins out of a sawn-off shotgun at about two hundred yards, the men promptly flew into a riot. This was one of the disturbances already mentioned.
After its inception, Barr's scheme grew like a toadstool in a hothouse. In a very short time he was inundated with applications from people all over Britain for permission to join his party. Precisely why he did not charter another boat; two, three, a fleet, in fact; or why he refrained from squeezing a few more passengers on to the Lake Manitoba, is not recorded.
Large sums of money were deposited with Barr in London by the members of the party in payment for such things as C.P.R. land; homestead entry fees; bell tents; shares in the community hospital, and in the great co-operative trading company which was to be founded—for the scheme was slightly tinged with that communistic ideal which has for one of its minor aims the coaxing of a rather coy millennium about three centuries nearer.
The emigrants were to be settled in groups corresponding with the localities from which they hailed in Britain. That is to say: Londoners were to be allotted so many townships all to themselves; the people from Nottingham so many; from Yorkshire so many; and so on. Complete freedom of choice was, of course, permitted. For instance, if any poor trusting soul from Lancashire cared to risk his future among the Londoners, or vice versa, there was no rule against it.
It was freely advertised in the Canadian newspapers that the total wealth of the party in specie alone was considerably in excess of one million dollars. It is more than likely this estimate was much too low. Many men brought to Canada with them anything from one to ten thousand pounds, with easy access to more, too, in lots of cases.
On the thirty-first day of March, nineteen hundred and three, the S.S. Lake Manitoba lay in the dock at Liverpool, ready to sail. At last everyone was aboard. Slowly the little liner, with her triple load of human freight, edged away from the quay. Spirits ran high. Cheer followed cheer. Then the band started playing in a haunting, muffled way, "God be with You Till We Meet Again."
The crowd on the quay was suddenly hushed. Women wept. Tears trickled down many a male cheek aboard the boat. Handkerchiefs fluttered, hearts throbbed, and throats filled, as the emigrants stood on the decks, their memories overflowing with the tranquil beauty of dear old England.
But all was well. The weight of the crowds of passengers, and of their profusion of luggage, and dogs, made the tiny boat ride low in the water, but steady. Life belts were noticeably scarce: so were rafts, and lifeboats; but with pocketfuls of money, plenty of armament, and at least three clergymen aboard, the colonists were quite all right should Fate have decided to send the boat to the bottom.
The party was comprised of lawyers, tradesmen, clerks, two or three farmers, commercial travellers, teachers, remittance men, gentlemen (meaning those who were sufficiently wealthy to live without work), ex-varsity men, and artisans. Males predominated. This magnified the attractiveness of even the plainest girls, a situation they curiously enough quickly took advantage of.
Barr's General Headquarters was a cabin transformed into an office, and situated high up on the boat deck. His Aide-de-Camp was George Flamank. His Chief of Staff was the Rev. George Exton Lloyd, who is now that well-known dynamic Anglican Bishop of Saskatchewan. Numerous lesser stars circled round Barr in flickering constellations.
An immense tract of the most fertile, and practically still untrodden, land in the North Saskatchewan valley had been reserved for the Colony. Barr certainly possessed a gift for having things reserved. Besides a special baggage train, three trains were ear-marked at St. John, N.B., to transport the party to Saskatoon, then an insignificant hamlet containing less than one hundred and fifty people. A fourth train was packed with young men destined for distribution at points in Manitoba. These chaps were without funds, so not being of much interest to anybody, they decided not to go as far as Saskatoon.
The S.S. Lake Manitoba arrived at St. John on the Saturday preceding Easter Sunday, but no one was permitted to land. She was at once quarantined. Finally, the Canadian port authorities, failing to discover anything amiss with the passengers beyond a trifling, but nevertheless contagious itch—the itch for land—gave her a clean bill of health.
On Easter Sunday the party landed, and in the afternoon boarded their special trains for the Far West. The bells on the engines tolled mournfully, but the colonists, seeing no funerals about, naturally interpreted this doleful music as a sort of send-off.
Droves of people at St. John gazed with half-suppressed amusement at these queerly-caparisoned Englishmen from feudal Europe. The colonists were far too busy storing away cases of sardines, bread, and other eatables for the trip, to reciprocate properly.
After traversing the frozen east, and being completely bored with the melancholy sight of hundreds of miles of dead and dying trees in the region of Lake Superior, they eventually reached Saskatoon, where the weather was brilliantly warm.
With truly commendable foresight, Barr had arranged for his brother Jack to meet the colonists at Saskatoon with stacks of semi-broken horses. Jack did. There are hundreds of people in Canada to-day who can swear to it. With that gifted insight into futurity possessed only by palmists, and great leaders, Barr had also arranged with an implement company for them to reserve the output of their factories for a month or so, in order that the party might not be deprived of their right to purchase some brilliantly-coloured machinery. Pretty nearly a trainload of wagons alone was shipped to Saskatoon for the Barr Colonists.
Mysteriously, the majority of the oxen—bulls they were also called—in Western Canada gravitated to Saskatoon. These charming creatures calmly chewed their cuds whilst shrewd-eyed philanthropists almost shed tears of sadness at being compelled to part with them for two to three hundred dollars a pair.
Through the kindness of The International Horse Dealers' Society (of North America) Incorporated, a few of the more reputable members of that organization congregated at Saskatoon for the purpose of seeing that the Barr Colonists were not too badly had. At great personal sacrifice, these humanitarians left homes and wives and children to the tender mercies of their better-known neighbours, whilst they themselves set out, some of them over long distances, to obey the orders of their powerful lodge.
Freighters, opportunists of every denomination, curious sight-seers, generous-hearted old timers, advice-tendering well-wishers, all hovered about the great tented town, which, thanks to a few tips from the South African veterans, and considerably assisted by a benevolent Providence, the colonists had managed to erect.
The paternal Dominion government sent golden-toothed, silver-tongued orators to Saskatoon to welcome the party and scatter incense of hope about its travel-stained spirit. Flamboyantly, and with dramatic gestures, these professional spell-binders waved the colonists onwards towards the setting sun—to a spot in the wilderness over two hundred miles away.
Lloydminster, Saskatchewan, May, 1928.
Next Year
CHAPTER I
A Fight—Choosing Land at Sea
One morning, when the S.S. Lake Manitoba was about in mid-Atlantic, a drizzling rain was being painlessly born out of dank, misty skies. Imperturbably doing her accustomed ten knots, the little liner steadily plunged along through the dripping green seas.
A dense mass of dark-coloured smoke beat down continuously from the single funnel. Trailing for miles astern, it hung over the ship's wake like a shroud. Restless waves, divested by the rain of their usual whitecaps, sloped upwards to lose themselves in the sullen clouds. The cheerless decks, greasy and comfortless, had long since driven nearly everyone into the fetid depths below.
The "orchestra" in the single men's "stateroom" raggedly backed out of their attempt to play the War March of the Priests, and settled down to murder Annie Laurie nice and comfortably. After a time, their nefarious efforts having met with a great deal of success, the performers decided to forbear a little, finishing up with a horrible gasping discord somewhat suggestive of the agony suffered by a pair of overblown bagpipes being struck by lightning.
Several young fellows lounged about diligently on bunks and forms. Thanking the musicians for the recital, they began to discuss their future plans desultorily. The previous day, the Rev. Mr. Lloyd had drawn a crowd of convalescent colonists round him on the boat deck to lecture them on pioneering tactics. The reverend gentleman occasionally blew a shrill blast on a whistle he carried, whereupon a few dozen homesteading enthusiasts would come faithfully to heel to be drilled in the latest theories pertaining to prairie agriculture.
"Ranching for this child," said a medium-sized chap with a bored but lofty air. A magnificent knife, containing sufficient tools with which to erect a factory and a couple of rows of cottages, hung from a belt at his waist. Evidently he considered himself an expert in his future profession, for he added in a tone which expressed great familiarity with it: "I intend to breed polo ponies—classy ones, by Jove!"
"Me, too," echoed another fellow, whose velvet-cord riding breeches fairly knocked your eye out. "This corn-growing they talk so much about seems to be more of a workingman's task; don't you think so, Rex, old boy?"
Rex, a big, red-faced young man, the living image of an assured remittance, withdrew his spotty features from a mug which a few seconds before had been filled with Bass.
"Beastly bore," he said, "following a bally plough. What!"
The fellow with the multitudinous-bladed knife agreed. "Only a silly ass would think of doing such a thing," he remarked. "Fancy going to Canada and degenerating into a common farm labourer!"
"It's too idiotic for words," observed the fellow in velvet corduroys, as he gazed rather thirstily at the empty mug. "It's indecent—positively preposterous. Is there anything left in the bottle, Rex, dear boy?"
Rex laughed. "Not now," he replied, partly filling the mug again. "Last of the Mohicans, too, so to speak. That beastly steward upstairs, the one with the fishy eyes, refused me any more. He says the blarsted cabin people need the rest of the stuff."
The corduroy-bedecked one, a tallish, good-looking, fair-haired Englishman, smothered his disappointment by exclaiming:
"Oh, I say! come off. I know the steward you mean—the putty-faced rotter! Do they really think all the gentlemen on this moth-eaten barge are travelling first? Why it was only because the guv'nor sent my passage money in to Barr too late that I'm compelled to mix with the scum in this awful hole," and he glanced round the crowded cabin contemptuously.
"Scum!" suddenly cried a little pug-faced chap who had overheard the remark—Sam, everyone called him. "Scum, did yer say, yer ruddy himitashun toff?"
Almost two days had elapsed since Sam had fought his last battle; therefore he was spoiling for another. The fellow in velvet breeches stood up and regarded him amusedly, apparently not the least bit nervous—merely a trifle annoyed at being made the cynosure of so many vulgar eyes. He flushed a deep red.
"If the cap fits, wear it, by all means. In the meantime, kindly oblige me by going to the deuce, there's a good chap." Nevertheless, he watched the little fellow out of the corner of his eye, remembering his reputation for pugnacity.
Snub-nosed Sam at once jumped from off the top bunk where he was sitting, and without further pause launched himself straight at the face of the man in velvet. He reached his mark, but with a glancing blow. Owing to the confined nature of the battlefield, and the excessive exuberance of his attack, he stumbled over his antagonist's feet, which were not at all small, and fell sprawling on the floor.
"Good old Sam!" "At 'im, Sam!" shouted the young fellows from the bunks and forms round about, happy as full-grown men at a dog-fight.
Like a cat, Sam jumped to his feet and made another dash, but this time missed his mark completely. A straight clean jab from a long, slim, steely arm caught him plump on the point, or end rather, of his already turned-up nose, and sent him flying among feet and forms.
Universal peace must in reality be a tremendously long way off when two or three hundred young men can be lifted into ecstasy by the prospect of viewing a scrap. Every one who was able to, crowded round and passed encouraging remarks to the combatants. Even the "bandsmen," who had started again to minister to the nausea of the seasick invalids with a particularly discordant prelude, desisted from their charitable efforts to come across to enjoy the fray.
The velvet-breeched one coolly surveyed his handiwork, still on his guard, but obviously not relishing his position.
"Nice one, sir!" "Well played!" "Neat, Gussie, dear!" were a few of the exclamations greeting his success in the first round.
Again Sam rose to attack, though plainly preoccupied with taking astronomical observations.
"Go it, little 'un. Never say yer muvver bred a jibber," some one called to him encouragingly.
More cautiously, as he thought, Sam hit out wildly with his right, managed to disarrange a rather pretty cluster of stars which dangled before his eyes, and, of course, missed his foe again. Then he accepted another little tap on the nose, but there was steel in the blow.
"Strewth!" he groaned under his breath involuntarily.
"Chuck it, you bally little fool," said the velvet-garbed boxer soothingly. "Shake hands and be friends. You're too full of guts to be called scum."
Rather sheepishly, Sam reluctantly did so.
"Wot's yer blinkin' nyme?" he asked admiringly, in a low voice, mopping at his bleeding nose with an enormous mottled red-and-white handkerchief.
"Never mind my name just now. You may call me Bert if you like."
At this point in the peace conference, two arrogant-looking men pushed their way across the cabin. One of them, in a blatant tone, shouted as he waved a piece of paper in his hand:
"Barr's dishin' out land up in 'is office. We've got ourn. Here y'are—Robert Roberts Robertson—North-west, twenty-four, fifty, twenty-six, W. three—whatever the devil that means—and don't you forget it. With the Leicester lot, we are; aren't we, George?" and he turned to his chum, who also had recently become an estate owner.
"It's right, mates. We've got our land," said the other potentate, as the vessel gave a stomach-turning dip into the trough of a wave, slowly returning to a more or less even keel again with a series of shuddering jerks.
"Land, did someone say?" feebly moaned a prostrate form close by, as it wiped its splitting brow with its hand. "My God! if only it's true."
The attention of the idlers was immediately transferred from the reconciliation to more important matters. Another crowd soon gathered about the pair of bloated landowners, eagerly demanding more complete information, which was condescendingly given.
The hunger for land spread with great rapidity. None of the men desired water. They were sick of the filthy, rusty-hued stuff they were forced to drink; and they were tired of the dreary expanse of the salted variety which was spread out all round them in such illimitable quantities.
"Wot abaht a bit of land?" said Sam to Bert, as familiarly as though they had attended school together.
"Brilliant idea, Sam, me lad. Come along," returned Bert: so up to G.H.Q. they went, followed by several more of the men to whom the very word "land" was suggestive of blissful solidity and freedom from that ghastly up and down motion of the steamer.
After waiting half an hour outside the door of Barr's office, the two landseekers went in together. They were both from London, though from widely separated suburbs. No thought of such an ill-assorted companionship as they had apparently struck up had ever entered either of their heads. It was merely the influence of battle which, as so often is the case, had been the means of cementing their new friendship. They had taken each other's measure, and were seemingly well satisfied.
The Rev. Isaac M. Barr, dark, squat, heavily-built, preoccupied, was seated at a table. Spread out before him was a large-scale map of the far-away Saskatchewan valley. His A.D.C., George Flamank, mercurial, dark-brown eyes glittering, sat beside him. The Rev. George Exton Lloyd stood on one side—tall, lithe, keen-eyed, the embodiment of energy leashed. A little old chap with greying hair, and scarlet nose and waistcoat, stood handily by, exuding waves of synthetic dignity.
"Well, men, you want some land, I suppose?" said Barr, addressing neither of the pair particularly.
"Yes, if it is convenient to you," replied Bert.
"Not 'arf, sir," said Sam, glancing across at the little man's red nose. Sam stroked his own smarting and swollen proboscis and wondered if the other had acquired his the same way.
Visions of an estate dotted with deer, and duck-ponds, and with redskins peering through the undergrowth—his undergrowth—flashed before Bert's mind's eye.
Barr cleared his throat, which appeared a trifle dry.
"Let me see," said he, addressing Bert, "you're from London, aren't you?" Bert nodded affirmatively.
"——And you're from Birmingham?" Barr added, turning to Sam and obviously guessing.
"No, guv'ner—an' thank Gawd for it," retorted Sam fervently. "I'm from the blinkin' smoke, like 'e is," indicating his companion with a nod.
The little red-nosed man with the flaming waistcoat turned round politely and tried to cough, but he surprised himself, and everybody else, by sneezing seven or eight times instead. Flamank's eyes gleamed. The tall figure of the Rev. Lloyd disappeared through the doorway. Barr smiled mechanically, plainly bored, and said:
"Then you both wish to be with the London party, I presume?"
Sam said they did, and was quite vehement about it. Bert confirmed his answer. At this, Barr turned and spoke to Flamank.
"Put them with the London group. What is there left in fifty-one, twenty-seven?"—meaning township and range. He stood up and leaned over the table, whilst Flamank fished among a pile of papers.
"How would this place suit you?" Barr asked, indicating on the map with his finger an attractive square situated about six hundred miles north-west of Winnipeg.
Bert carefully examined the location. "It looks very nice," he said, after a moment or two.
"It's 'andsome, I calls it," observed Sam, who had squeezed his chunky self in between the little red-nosed man and Bert.
As this was the first map Sam had ever inspected, his opinion naturally went a long way with his new pal. The place on the plan to which Barr had referred was a pretty pale-blue section bordered in brown, nicely-shaded, and with a couple of wavy lines—war-paths, probably, thought Bert, who was slightly romantic—running across it obliquely. After a little pause to consider the matter, Bert said:
"It's a delightful place, really. That'll suit us fine, won't it, Sam?"
Sam thought it was "the best bit of land 'e'd ever clapped eyes on." They were both immensely in love with the location.
Barr, through his A.D.C., allotted them adjoining homesteads. Flamank, with pen poised over paper, looked at Bert and said: "Name, please."
"Bertrand Paul Tressider."
"——And yours?"—this to Sam, who was dreamily caressing his turned-up nose.
"Samuel Adolphus Potts—guv'ner."
They handed over their entry fees and, after a record of the location of the land had been duly made, turned and left the cabin.
With new bubbly feelings in their respective young hearts, they descended to the dreary steerage deck. Sam glanced disdainfully at the watery waste surrounding them. It still rained dismally. After spitting in the ocean once or twice, he said, meditatively:
"A 'undred an' sixty blinkin' acres of land's a lot, ain't it, Bert?"
"A half-mile square. Why?"
"Oh, nothink. I feel too prahd ter speak."
Bert laughed and strolled away.
"Hey!" Sam called to him. "If you 'appen ter see my man abaht anywhere, tell 'im I want 'im at once, will yer?"
NOTE.—Although sounding far-fetched, scores of Barr Colonists picked their homesteads from a map in Barr's office aboard the S.S. Lake Manitoba in mid-Atlantic. A few of them are still living on those same farms to-day.—H. P.
CHAPTER II
Two Skeleton Biographies
Bertrand Paul Tressider had been born into a fairly well-to-do, middle-class family. As usual, the unchangeable law of life governing such things permitted him no choice of parents. Presumably, therefore, he would consider himself lucky in not appearing on earth as a Chinese coolie, or, worse still, an African pygmy.
Having been respectably, if not actually luxuriously, ushered into "this best of all possible worlds," he at once became the victim—like everybody else—of environment, heredity and his own devices. He was another unit of evolution; another tiny speck in the pattern of the universe; another spark of energy let loose in a scheme, apparently eternal, for the furtherance of some vast, unfathomable design.
Except for two or three sisters, who appeared on the scene years later, he was an only child. At birth he had been endowed with a very large head. For this reason, his parents watched him closely, hopeful that he might turn out to be a prime minister, although at the same time fearful lest he develop into an imbecile. One never can tell with big heads. Only expert phrenologists know for certain. A bump or two either way, and...
But there was no occasion to worry. Pretty soon little Bertrand began to make it quite plain that he wanted his own way in everything. Also he commenced to exhibit a keen desire to smash things up—toys, and pots and things; all to the accompaniment of violent outbursts of temper. It was a happy day for the fond parents when they definitely accepted this infallible proof of their darling boy's saneness.
As time went on, Bertrand's over-sized cranium, instead of being reckoned a possible symptom of idiocy, became the subject of joyful speculation.
"Mark my words," said Tressider, senior, one evening, when he and his wife were admiring the way the young prodigy was trying to throttle a kitten; "he'll be a great lawyer some day."
Bertrand's mother thought not. She was descended from a family which in the last hundred years had shot forth stray branches delicately blossomed with Church of England clergymen. She said she quite thought her son was cut out for a bishop.
Tressider, senior, of lineage far less esthetic, noting young Bertrand's display of acquisitive gifts, countered with schemes for the boy's future more in keeping with the world's idea of success.
"No, my dear," he had said, "he'll never be a bishop. He's much too wise for that. Look how he keeps his chubby hand round the throat of that kitten where it can't possibly get at him. That's extremely clever. No, Ethel, dearest, we'll give him a good education, and I shall be altogether mistaken if he doesn't turn out to be a highly-successful man, and become rich, and the envy of all his friends."
"I did so hope," responded Mrs. Tressider gently, "that he would follow in his Uncle Theobald's footsteps. Such a calm, peaceful nature he had; so good; so deeply spiritual; so true to his own church, the only church; not a bit like these modern ministers who go about converting and upsetting people, and hobnobbing with other sects; so——"
"For God's sake, don't talk so much, Ethel," interposed Tressider, senior, irritably, "or else say something more to the point. I thought we were discussing the boy's future. It isn't to be imagined for one moment that his talents should be wasted like that. Look at him! Just look at him now! Take particular notice of the way he recognizes me as his father. Did you ever see such intelligence written on a human face? And that head of his—neither too small, nor yet too big; in fact, just right. And we used to be nervous about it. Tut! Tut! No, my dear, if that boy doesn't turn out to be either a Lord Chancellor, or a Viceroy of India, I'll eat my best silk hat, hang me if I won't. Why only the other morning, Tom Bett—and you know very well he never exaggerates—told me when he was signing me up for another thousand-pound insurance policy, 'Tressider, old fellow,' he says, 'that boy of yours is an absolute marvel, he is, indeed. It's my firm opinion he's smart enough to be a law——'"
"Why, John, dear, Mr. Bett has never even seen Ber——"
"There you go again, always interrupting me. Let me tell you once for all that I've finally decided Bertrand shall be a lawyer. He's almost three years old now—or is it two?—no matter, he——"
"Thirteen months, and three days——"
"No matter, I say. It's quite time we did something about his future. Life is short—too short. Look at me—-fifty gone, and only a civil service clerk. True, it's the higher civil service; and we're well off, I know; but what have I really accomplished? Nothing—absolutely nothing. Let it be a lesson to us. Let us choose Bertrand's profession for him, and carry the idea out, not deviating one hair's-breadth from our intention. Let—— There, just what I expected! That wretched cat isn't to be trusted. Didn't I tell you not to allow him to play with the thing?——Good Lord, can't you stop him squalling? I never heard such a row in all my life. Do something with him for goodness' sake. Feed him. Shove that ring in his mouth. Something's sticking into him somewhere. Great Scott! what a vile temper. Shall I tell Harriet to come up and see to him, dear? I'm going to the club, and I can easily call to her on my way out. She's bound to be in the kitchen with one of her favourite flames, I suppose. I shan't be late, dearest. Don't bother sitting up for me."
* * * * * * * *
So, after deciding, with such admirable judgment, upon making a lawyer of Bertrand, his parents saw to it that he was well educated. First he was sent to a select private school which was conducted by the Misses Arbuthnot—a couple of elderly spinsters who were distinguished by being distantly related to a major in the Indian army. At this scholastic temple he was taught to consider it a frightful vulgarity to laugh in the street when he saw the butcher's boy set his basket down so as better to chase a cat, whilst a dog slipped off with the tripe and the mutton chops.
Next he went to a big grammar school where the masters were able to teach him nearly as much as his companions did; finally he was pitchforked into the office of a large and successful firm of lawyers at Sheffield as an articled clerk.
Neither Foggum on Conveyancing, Grabbit on the Law of Entail, Splitup on Divorce, nor any legal luminary on the whole bag of tricks of jurisprudence, managed very much to amuse Bertrand. Eventually he succeeded in making a frightful hash of his final examination, which event occurred just about the time Barr invented his all-British Colony scheme in London. Bert promptly seized the legal bit in his teeth, ran off as though a dozen County Court judges were exploding behind him, made Barr's acquaintance over a couple of whiskies-and-soda, then calmly waited for the sailing of the Lake Manitoba.
Bert had never really forgotten the Leatherstocking tales of Fenimore Cooper; nor yet Mayne Reid's Scalp Hunters; nor all the other Wild West stories among which he had contrived ingeniously to sandwich his legal studies. Some irresistible force within himself urged him towards the great open spaces. The romance of the endless prairies beckoned to him seductively with its adventurous imaginings. And, besides, he couldn't help himself. He was in the grip of heredity. Several of his progenitors had been wanderers. One of them had been hanged—so his father frequently boasted—by the Spaniards as a heretic, at Santa Cruz, because he refused to kiss a cross made from blood-stained Inca gold.
When his father heard of the move, he argued against it—a trifle weakly though. He himself had many times nursed secret longings for a career filled with yardarms, pieces of eight, tomahawks and shark-infested lagoons. Bert was obdurate. With horrible recklessness, he sacrificed his chances of the Woolsack, greatly to his father's rather insipidly-expressed disappointment. However, when the time for the sailing of Barr's pioneering crusaders drew near, the old gentleman paid his passage, financed him to the tune of five hundred pounds, and also provided him with an exceedingly generous kit.
Samuel Adolphus Potts' life history had been much less complicated. That little man's wits had been tempered in the environment of a fairly prosperous cab driver's home; rough-ground in a huge jam factory, among the sophisticated emery wheels of crowds of both sexes; finally burnished and sharpened as an extra barman in a not-very-high-class but well-patronized London public house.
Sam's capital consisted of twenty-odd pounds, clear of travelling expenses—plus an invincible common-sense.
CHAPTER III
Saskatoon—Acquiring Transport
In the evening of April 17, 1903, at precisely twenty minutes before seven o'clock, the third of the C.P.R. special passenger trains carrying Barr Colonists steamed gingerly across the old wooden bridge spanning the South Saskatchewan River and clattered into Saskatoon.
The weather was gorgeous. The middle of April had only just slid by, yet the sun shone dazzlingly out of an azure sky. Far-distant objects etched themselves in the magic air with marvellous visibility. Not one single thing in Nature marred the colonists' arrival.
From a tumbled heap of unguarded bell tents, each of which was tucked, pegs and all, into a bag, the settlers helped themselves freely. Long before several hundred of these conical canvas shelters were coaxed—with many imprecations, and much laughter—to stand erect, the sun had disappeared below the edge of the world, leaving behind it a glorious topaz-flaked sky, which slowly turned to purple before melting into mysterious night.
That morning, the hamlet had jumped out of bed with a population of a trifle over a hundred to its credit—or, allowing for a few of the more important citizens being counted twice, say a level one hundred. At night, it retired to rest boasting two thousand. Saskatoon's eclipse was over.
The camp sprang into vivid life early the next morning. There was much to be done. The faces of the natives whom the colonists came in contact with were all burned a deep nut brown, the result of the reflection of the sun's heat off late winter snows. "Everybody's been to the seaside," Bert decided to himself. This tanned appearance, coupled with the narrowing of their eyes, which was caused by squinting through the glare, imparted a by no means unsightly aboriginal aspect to the natives.
The "Barr-lambs" were soon approached by those of the shrewd-looking traders who had horses, or oxen, or something or other to sell. Everything in the district—even portions of the "town" itself—was for sale. No one seemed to mix sentiment with ownership. A practical sort of philosophy, that!—especially when one remembers that one is on earth for only sixty or seventy years.
Most of the males of the Barr party plunged into orgies of buying. It is quite safe to state that never in the history of colonization in Western Canada has such a multitude of wealthy and free-handed spenders been gathered in one place.
It was Saskatoon's day out. Even Fate itself took sides, neglecting its duties of determining the "Heads or tails?" of existence elsewhere on earth, in order to patronize the little hamlet.
Prodigious efforts were made to satisfy the many needs of the colonists. From a baker's shop but slightly larger than a fair-sized room, a man worked day and night in an endeavour to keep the camp supplied with bread. It was an impossible task. So flapjacks, pancakes and bannock bread were concocted.
Weird experiences of the widest variety crowded thick and fast about the ingenuous Englishmen. One young fellow, a pale, thin-cheeked grocer's assistant from somewhere in Sussex, bought a stallion, three sections of drag harrows, and a pair of spurs within twenty-four hours of reaching Saskatoon. The vendor of the horse was an Ontario man. He said the animal's official name was "Napoleon Bonyparte," and that it possessed (which is more than the Emperor himself did) a pedigree longer than from Guelph to Owen Sound.
After about a week, the grocer's assistant rechristened his stallion "Beelzebub," and then traded it off to a man at the livery stable for a second-hand stock-saddle. So what with the harrows, and the cowboy saddle, and the spurs, not mentioning the experience he was buying, he was doing pretty well, particularly as his mind, in its more rational moments, leaned strongly to mixed farming. It was severe pressure from his neighbours in camp, really, which induced him to sever his connection with "Beelzebub." Being springtime, the animal used to plunge about and squeal a lot, keeping tired people awake at night.
Teams of vicious-looking mustangs, hitched to brand-new wagons, careered up and down the main street of the tiny hamlet like runaway fire engines. The more speedy of them, not recognizing the uses of reverse, wheeled in great circles about the adjacent prairie. Others, not so numerous, but sufficiently so to prevent monotony, probably sensing a two-hundred-mile journey into the vast unknown, gave full bent to their natural proclivities for doing their heaviest pulling in reverse. These were called baulkers, which, translated into English stable talk, means jibbers. A few teams were determined neither to back up nor advance, but simply stood stock-still, at the same time wearing a stupid but comic air of the most abject self-pity.
Philosophical oxen of biblical aspect, contrasting vividly with their vendors' appearance, waddled along in yokes, or in meagre harness, or lay down in various attitudes of peaceful somnolence, apparently dreaming of a bovine heaven carpeted with luscious green grass.
A whole trainload of machinery was being unloaded. The colonists queued up, and in some instances actually fought, for the wagons, which were in huge demand. Spot cash was paid for everything—a proceeding which almost paralyzed the natives at first, but, true to their characteristic adaptability, they quickly grew accustomed to the miracle.
"Wot are we goin' to get to our land wiv?" queried Sam, the third or fourth evening after they reached Saskatoon—"hoxen or 'orses?"
They were talking things over in Bert's bell tent, which was one of the hundreds flecking the yellow prairie west of the then Canadian Pacific Railway line—the Regina-Prince Albert branch.
Bert adopted an air of supreme wisdom, ridiculously unnatural in one so young and green.
"I rather fancy horses, myself," he replied; "although they do say those bally bullocks can get along without anything to eat."
Sam sniffed. "I'm fer the gee-gees. Know a bit abaht 'em an' all. My ole man used ter drive a blinkin' cab. 'E once drove the Juke of——"
"Damn the Duke! What's that to do with it? The question is—can you hold your end up when it comes down to business relations with these horse dealer chaps?"
"'Old my end up in an 'orse deal! Wot d'yer tyke me for—a ruddy vetingary surgeon?"
"Perhaps we'd better commission one of the government men," observed Bert. "I hear they are familiar with horse-flesh, and, being in the colonial civil service, they are sure to be as straight as a gun-barrel."
The discussion was shelved for the time being, but the next day they took pot-luck at a team. Saskatoon was well awake by the time they plunged head-first into the turbulent sea of horse-trading.
"Ow old is them 'orses?" says Sam to a tall, dark man, eyeing a grey and a buckskin with wise unwisdom. The team was tied to the side of a second-hand wagon, and was dressed in a rather ornate set of harness plentifully bespattered with unpolished brass knobs and things.
The vendor wore a tranquil appearance almost approaching benevolence, as though he might have a New Testament tucked away in his pocket somewhere. Not being particularly good at arithmetic, Sam's question had completely stumped him. However, he spat slowly a couple of times, to give himself a chance to reckon up, and then said:
"Eight and nine."
Only a confirmed cynic would have doubted him, he was so obviously sincere.
Presently Bert says: "How much?"
The tall, dark man's face was like a mask, but an acute observer might have noticed that his conscience wiggled a bit at Bert's abrupt question. He soon put that in its place, however.
"Five hundred for the outfit," he said, as coolly as though it were the middle of winter. Then Sam and Bert, looking frightfully sagacious, sidled away for a private consultation.
"Wot abaht it?" whispered Sam. "Ain't that grey 'orse got a wickid eye? The yeller 'un looks a faithful sort of animal, though."
Right in the middle of some profound thinking by Bert, whose father's hard-earned money was soon to be involved, a short, thick-set man, dressed in a pair of faded blue overalls and a week's growth of reddish whiskers, slouched up and spoke to them.
"You boys wantin' a team?"
"We are, my son," returned democratic Sam, cheerily. Bert, not having been introduced, was naturally annoyed at the rude intrusion. With true "Arbuthnot" training, he drew back a little, and kept silent. But his English aloofness rolled off the fellow's gall as easily as mercury off a sheet of glass.
"That pair there," said the thick-set man, pointing at the grey and buckskin, "is the best team in North America. I drove 'em all day yesterday, so I ought a know. Draw! Say, boys, you just oughta see that there grey get down and heave."
Sam hid his suspicion behind a vacuous grin, his big, rather ugly, mouth opening like a cheap purse.
"Wot are you gettin' aht of this?" he asked.
"Not a dam' nickel. I'm only trying to do you boys a good turn"—then, approaching the team, the stranger exclaimed—"Ho, there, George!" and he caught hold of the buckskin's tail, twisted it sharply aside, then in a charmingly familiar manner smacked the inside of the animal's left thigh several times.
The horse, George, lifted his foot dangerously. A stored-up kick or two lurked somewhere about; but the supreme self-confidence, and personal magnetism, of the man in reddish whiskers completely awed him. Then he put his foot down again as meekly as a half-dead cab horse might have done.
Sam surveyed the playful stranger's overalls, then his discoloured sweater, then his whiskery chin.
"So you are one of them there good samaringtons wot goes abaht the purple world doin' kind hactions, are yer?"
The stranger appeared somewhat surprised at the scepticism so plainly stamped on Sam's ugly face.
"If you boys don't believe me," he protested, "don't, that's all. And I ain't no good samarington, either. That's a new one on me. I'm a liveryman. I work at that barn over there," and he waved his hand towards a mass of sway-backed, neoteric architecture of noble dimensions which graced one of Saskatoon's main thoroughfares. Evidently deeply grieved at being misunderstood, he made himself look as much as possible like a martyr being condemned to the stake, and then walked off in the direction of the livery-stable.
"That man's an 'ostler, Bert," remarked Sam, "but 'e's tellin' the trufe. The silly fool's as innercent as us. Why 'e don't even know wot a good samarington is!"
"Obnoxious fellow," muttered Bert, "poking his nose into a gentlemanly transaction, like that."
"Never mind 'im," returned Sam. "Let's buy the 'orses. They seem 'armless. An' just look at the neck of that grey 'un!"
The tall, dark owner of the team was patiently waiting. Not a muscle of his face moved. Not the slightest hint did he give as to whether he were a lying horse dealer, or a recently converted cavalryman.
Bert, assuming an air of perspicacity positively weird in its gravity, went over and felt of the horses' legs—the front ones, luckily. After conducting a very minute search for blemishes, and, finding no indications of spavins or poll evil on their kneecaps, he bought and paid for them.
Coldly the owner accepted the cash, rolled it up and shoved it into his pocket, spat once with great satisfaction, never said Thank you, Go to blazes, nor uttered a single one of the many similar pleasantries which are reputed to smooth the path of trade, and then calmly sauntered away towards the livery-barn.
The ghost of a smile drifted fleetingly across his inscrutable features as he peeled a ten-dollar bill from the outside of a thick roll and handed it to the reddish-whiskered tactician. That model of truth and virtue was wasting some of his valuable time filling a very large wheelbarrow with exceedingly small forkfuls of horse dung in the main gangway of the overcrowded livery-barn.
"That's two hundred and a quarter you cleaned up on that deal—eh?" he grinned, as he folded the ten-spot about eight times and thrust it into an empty tobacco sack. "Ha-ha-ha!" he gurgled. "Pretty good! Pretty good! How would it be if we went along to the Queen's and had one on the green Englishmen?"
This rather clever suggestion appeared to meet with the tall, dark stoic's silent but sincere approval, for immediately they both walked out of the barn as though to carry it into effect.
"What's that silly ass intend to do about his wagon and harness, I wonder?" demanded Bert of his little partner, a few minutes after the vendor's departure. "Surely he doesn't expect us to take care of them for him. Run across and ask him what we're to do with them. Sam!"
Rightly or wrongly, Sam had all his life been trained to regard the striving after excessive purism in business as an infallible sign of approaching idiocy.
"Say nothink wotever abaht 'em. If 'e don't worry arter 'em 'isself, why should we? Come on, let's slip orf before 'e begins ter think abaht rememberin' 'e's forgot 'em."
Bert almost blushed at the dishonourable proposal. But he was much too sensitively constructed to appear ultra-virtuous, so he silently acquiesced.
With a little instruction, and less assistance, from two or three interested onlookers, they hitched the horses to the wagon and drove off to purchase a schooner-top. Something must have propitiated Fate. The horses went along all right. Though being almost old enough to vote, they were perfectly honest.
CHAPTER IV
Saskatoon—Buying Machinery
Bert's parents had always been secretly proud of their son as a correspondent. Faithfully he wrote to them from M—— Grammar School once or twice each year. But, later on, whilst articled to an immensely wealthy firm of lawyers at Sheffield, he had communicated with his father much more frequently.
Always his requests were granted. Money requests they were chiefly—for Sir Felix Hamingway, great nonconformist, lawyer, magistrate, knight, Chairman of Directors of Tipsey's Pale Ales, Limited, generous giver to both Home and Foreign Missions, and Bert's employer, had made it a fixed rule never to pay his first-year articled clerks more than fifteen shillings and sixpence weekly. His mental excuse for being so profligate in the matter of salaries was that his minister's ebony-skinned, woolly-headed protégés residing along the banks of the Zambezi were such a drain on his limited purse.
Therefore, being so accustomed to letter writing, it was second nature for Bert to send home a message from Saskatoon. In the evening of the exciting day distinguished by the purchase of a team, he scribbled a missive to his mother, by candle-light. Its contents went something like this:
"I trust you and dad and the girls are in the pink. To-day I have bought a pair of horses, a grey and a sort of blonde, and have named them Tempest and Kruger. Rather jolly names, don't you think?
"From the address mentioned above, you will see that I am writing this from Saskatoon. It is a bare spot, and was not of much importance before we Barr Colonists came. It is merely a score or so of glorified packing-cases sitting bleakly on the prairie beneath a great blue arch of sky, and ringed about with a distant horizon clear-cut as the edge of a silhouette. The South Saskatchewan River, which just now is gorged with, and vomiting, great blocks of ice, runs close by. The town (as they call it here) is threaded on the railway line which connects Regina with Prince Albert, pretty much as a small, dirty-coloured bead is strung on a bit of wire.
"The Canadians, mother, seem to have an odd way of disfiguring a patch of their otherwise decent country. In Yorkshire, when the inhabitants wish to ruin some lovely landscape, they sink a coal-pit, and, if that fails, build a blast furnace. In London, as you well know, they rely more on slums for miasmal effects. Out here, apparently, they nail a few boards together, call it a town, and the ghastly work is done.
"And this fiercely searching Canadian sunlight shows everything up so. Why, there was actually a dead dog stretched out on a vacant piece of ground beside one of the shops where I purchased some stuff to-day. Probably a dead dog is an object of veneration in these parts, but I hardly think so, because on this particular waste patch there was a big signboard planted, bearing the words—THIS LOT FOR SALE.
"If there is such a place as purgatory, mother—and I know you deny it—Barr is galloping there fast. He has stepped rather heavily on the crooked end of this scheme of his, and the other end has tipped up and dealt him an awful whack in the face.
"His plans are boomeranging dangerously. The party is out here, and that's about all one can say. Right at this moment, in the next tent to my own, a matter of ten yards away perhaps, there are two men—and two wives, presumably—screaming at one another with rage over what they persist in calling, in their queer dialect, 'Barr's perfidery.' It is excruciatingly funny.
"As for me, I'm tolerably well pleased with everything so far. I've adopted a partner. Sam Potts is his name—an awfully decent little chap, and smart as a whip. In his own vulgar way he is a gentleman, though not the least bit educated. And yet he seems to know a great deal. He is energetic, uglier than some sins, very irreligious, for he swears terribly, but tremendously amusing. You'll hear more about him from me, I dare say.
"The Barr Colony community hospital is slowly taking shape. It is a bell tent. A big, handsome doctor with splendid eyes, but with a Jewish cast of face, is in charge. I did wonder for a minute whether it mightn't be worth my while to contract some sort of mild, lingering illness, so that I might become a hospital patient, and enjoy a bit of comfort, and a square meal or two; but, after noticing a fearful-looking bucksaw, and an axe, leaning up against the tent, and also happening to catch a side-view of a nurse's face, I have changed my mind, and am now, I'm very pleased to say, really feeling magnificently fit.
"We are starting out on our two-hundred-mile trek to-morrow morning, perhaps—D.V., as you sometimes say.
"Mother, dear! What do you think! I HAVE GOT MY LAND; a charming place—at least I think so. Please tell dad, tactfully, that I expect to run short of money soon.
"And now for bed. More next time. Your affectionate son, Bertie."
* * * * * * * *
Next morning, over coffee and bacon, cooked by Sam on a small rectangular tin stove, the two young men discussed their arrangements for the immediate future.
Between a mouthful of solids, and a big gulp of steaming coffee, Sam said:
"We've got to 'ave 'ay an' oats fer them 'orses on this trek of ourn."
"Not to mention tucker for ourselves," added Bert thoughtfully, as he veneered a chunk of bread with about a quarter of a pound of butter; "besides, something to work the land with, I suppose. Ranching for me, though."
"Rarnchin'—'ell!" scoffed Sam. "You wait till yer knows somethink abaht 'orses, first. Why, I don't suppose yer knows 'ow many young 'uns an 'orse 'as at a litter, do yer?"
"Why are you always so foolishly analytical? What the dickens does it matter how many they have at a litter! The more the merrier, I say. With polo ponies at two hundred pounds a head; and—"
"Ever kep' rabbits?"
"No."
"White mouses?"
"No."
"Pidgins?"
"Good Lord, no!"
"Well, yer don't know nothink. Yore edgucation's a fraud. Wot's the good of Lating, an' law, an' matthewmaticks, an' all that sort of stuff nah? Like I told my ole man when 'e was goin' to 'ave me edgucated: 'No charnce, guv'ner,' I says; 'I don't want ter be no swell, an' ride abaht in carriages over the skelingtons of the bloomin' poor. No,' I says, 'I——'"
"You infernal blithering idiot! Even though you can't talk like a gentleman, do for heaven's sake try to reason like one. Give me a cigarette."
Sam threw a packet of Gold Flakes across to his partner, afterwards taking and lighting one himself.
"Fed the 'orses this mornin'?" he asked.
"No."
"Watered 'em?"
"No."
"Bin ter see if they've 'opped it?"
"No."
"Where did yer get this rarnchin' idea from?"
"It told you all about it in the government pamphlet Barr sent to me."
"An' it told yer abaht a lot more rot. But did it say anythink abaht that lovely cabing on the boat?—or abaht them 'undreds of seasick dawgs 'owling up on deck?—till that chap from Belfarst chucked all but thirty of 'em hoverboard one dark night. Did it say anythink abaht us 'avin' ter scrap ter waggins? No. An' wot abaht that land of ourn? 'Ow d'we know some sneak ain't bin an' gorne an' pinched it? Do try ter reason like a——"
Sam's harangue was abruptly interrupted. Half a loaf of bread caught him with great precision on the side of the head, the valuable missile afterwards ricochetting into the side of the tent.
After a pause filled with broad grins, he went on: "You fancy yerself wiv a pen, don't yer? I saw yer writin' ter yer gel larst night. Write dahn a list of the things we want, an' let's go an' get 'em, an' then slope orf ter see our land."
"Good idea," said Bert, who at once pulled a pencil from his pocket, and on the back of a crumpled envelope commenced to write down a list of the articles they each thought might be useful.
"Cigarettes," Bert said first, jotting the item down.
"Plagh an' 'arrows," said Sam.
"Yes; and tinned milk, by Jove!"
"Oats, an' 'ay—an' a chain, an' a rope."
"Postage stamps."
"A blinkin' 'atchit; an' some matches, an' a buckit."
"Brown boot polish," said Bert, gradually becoming inspired.
"A shovel—an' wot abaht a garding rake?"
"Bally rot! Be sensible. Tooth powder, and—er—a couple of bottles of Scotch for medicinal purposes—or perhaps we'd better make it three."
"'Ear, 'ear!" cried Sam warmly, standing up and stretching himself; "but come on, that's enough, or else we's'll 'ave to 'ire one of them black-lookin' savages wiv pigtails 'angin dahn their backs to 'elp us ter cart it up to our land."
Before six o'clock that morning, whilst Bert had in his dreams been riding after bands of spotted stallions over miles of rolling prairie, Sam had risen, washed himself, and attended to their team, which was tied to the wagon just outside the tent.
Bert rinsed his hands and face in the enamelled basin which rested on three crossed sticks stuck in the ground. Considering the bowl contained the day before yesterday's soap-scummed water, he was able to make himself passably clean. He brushed his velvet cords; smoothed his yellow hair before a miniature mirror which dangled from the tent-pole, and emerged into the open bare-headed.
Sam, disdaining contact with water twice in one morning, had again slipped out to see if the horses were tied securely. He was continually haunted by the fear of their escape on to the fenceless wastes which rolled away to the far-off horizon, and to unknown distances beyond. The grey and buckskin had nosed through the remains of a slight feed of hay, and were industriously nibbling at the wisps of withered grass beneath.
Several hundred tents, most of which resembled their own, were scattered about the plain in haphazard profusion. A few new marquees reared themselves above humbler fellows, their size, and newness, and milk-white colour faintly suggesting ostentation.
Amateurish campfires filled the sparkling air with whiffs of pleasant-smelling wood smoke. A dozen or so of dogs, brought all the way from England, and wearing brass-mounted collars made of leather which would still be in its prime when the harness with which the colonists were decking their teams would be thrown away, barked and whined after the few lean but good-natured native canines.
Women, some enchantingly neat, others sloppily untidy, moved about and in and out of the tents over unfamiliar tasks. Some of the ladies resented the free and easy mixing of castes. These blue-blooded females tried to prevent their own sweet offspring from fraternizing with the far less charming kids of other people. But democratic childhood would have none of it, and went yelling and scampering about the camp, disturbing the everlasting siestas of phlegmatic oxen, and running frightful risks with the heels and even more treacherous fore feet of hypocritical bronchos.
Men, who were blissfully ignorant of the mysteries of Canadian harness, taught others, who were more so, how to do things. Every little while a knowing native would win for himself some sweet-tasting admiration by initiating a crowd of wondering colonists in the art of inserting an iron bit between the tight-clenched teeth of a stupid horse with its head about three miles up in the air.
Barr's G.H.Q. marquee was a seething whirl of disorganized organization. The troubles and complaints of dissatisfied and grumbling colonists came sliding and tumbling and breaking over the leader's harassed head in avalanches of inquiries, and cascades of protest.
Flamank could do no other than bob about on the storm-tossed sea of trouble like a light cork. At every twist and turn he was shot at with unanswerable queries. Both going and coming he was riddled with broadsides of acrimonious remarks. Though let down continually by his chief; constitutionally excitable; with all the clerical work connected with a small army of mutinous colonists passing through his hands, and head; a perpetual target for the darts of ignorance, and innocence; yet, in spite of all, he survived eventually to become the Colony's first postmaster.
The Rev. George Exton Lloyd, veteran of the Riel Rebellion, moved about with hands tied, inwardly boiling with suppressed indignation, but absolutely impotent without the mantle of authority. Why a man of his experience, and punch, and unbounded energy didn't throw up, or blow up, or attempt to wring Barr's neck, is incomprehensible.
The Rev. Isaac M. Barr himself, founder and head of the scheme, beginning early to lose his grip, copied many a worse, and better, man, before and since, by seeking solace in whiskey. Booze was procurable at Saskatoon. But the mellowest of whiskies, not even excepting those which are renowned for their subtle, inspirational qualities, will inevitably fail when relied upon to do a job like the one Barr had tackled. Barr should have known that whiskey—like fire, and some leaders of enterprises—makes a very fine servant, but a poor master.
The non-abstaining members of the party—and there were at the very least two or three—showered deserving praise on the Canadian system of dispensing drinks, a method which allowed them to help themselves from bottles—some with suspiciously dirty labels—of Scotch, whilst leaning on a bar psychologically contrived to be of exactly the correct height.