Lorimer of the Northwest. Harold Bindloss
settlers make the most of them. The white prairie was broken by a space of ashes and black loam, with a fire still crackling in crimson tongues among the stubble at the further end of it. Straw is worth nothing there, so a little is cut with the ear, and the rest burned off in spring, while the grasses growing and rotting for countless centuries have added to the rich alluvial left by some inland sea which covered all the prairie when the world was young. Nature, as those who love her know, is never in a hurry, and very slowly, little by little, working on through forgotten ages, she had stored her latent wealth under the matted sod against the time when the plowshare should convert it into food for man and beast. There is no wheat soil on the surface of the earth to beat that of Assiniboia and Manitoba.
Harry leaned on the plow-stilts with a smile on his handsome sun-bronzed face, and I smiled at him, for we were young and hope was strong within us.
“Ralph, I feel a hankering after some old heathen ceremonial, 53 a pouring of wine upon it, or a garlanded priest to bless the fruitful earth,” he said, “but we put our trust in science and automatic binders now, and disregard the powers of infinity until they smite the crop down with devastating hail. Well, here’s the first stroke for fortune. Get up! Aw there, Stonewall!”
He tapped the big red ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; and my fingers tingled as I jerked the lines. Then while the coulter sheared its guiding line, and the trampling of hoofs mingled with the soft curl of clods, they seemed by some trick of memory to hammer out words I had last heard far away in the little weathered church under Starcross Moor, “And preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth so as in due time we may enjoy them.”
There was a two-hours’ rest at noonday, when we fared frugally on fried potatoes and the usual reistit pork, while Harry’s oxen waded deep into a sloo, which is a lake formed by melting snow. Neither would they come out for either threats or blandishments until he went in too, with a pike; while Jasper’s broncos, which were considerably less than half-tamed, backed round and round in rings when I attempted to re-harness them. Still, with laughter and banter we started again, and worked on until daylight faded and the stars twinkled out one by one above the dewy prairie. The scent of wild peppermint hung heavy in the cool air, which came out of the north exhilarating like wine, while the birch twigs sang strange songs to us as we drove the teams to the stable through the litter of withered leaves. An hour’s work followed before we had made all straight 54 there, and it was with a proud feeling of possession that at last I patted the neck of one of the horses, while the nervous creature looking up at me with understanding eyes rubbed its head against my shoulder.
When the stove was lighted we drank green tea and ate more flapjacks which Harry had badly burned. I remember that when he handed me the first cup he said, “We haven’t got champagne, and we don’t want whiskey, but this is a great day for both of us. Well, here’s luck to the plowing and increase to the seed, and, whether it’s success or failure, what we have started we’ll see through together!”
Half ashamed of display of sentiment, I clinked the cracked cup against his own, and Harry leaned forward toward me with a smile that could not hide the light of youthful enthusiasm in his eyes, graceful, in spite of the mold of the plowing on his fretted garments. Then he choked and spluttered, for the hot fluid scalded him, and a roar of laughter saved the situation. Made as it was over a cup of very smoky tea, that compact was carried out faithfully under parching heat and bitter cold, in the biting dust of alkali and under the silence of the primeval bush. For an hour we lounged smoking and chatting in ox-hide chairs, watching the red glow from the range door flicker upon the guns and axes on the wall, or the moonlight broaden across the silent grass outside each time it faded, until the mournful coyotes began to wail along the rim of the prairie and we crawled up a ladder into the little upper room, where in ten minutes we were fast asleep on hard wooden couches covered with skins. I remember that just before I sank into oblivion a vision of a half-mile length of golden wheat floated before my heavy eyes, with Grace Carrington standing, sickle in hand, beside it. Her dress was of the color of the ear-bent stems, her eyes as the clear ether above, and the sickle was brighter than any crescent 55 moon. Then it all changed. Powdery snow eddied through the withered stubble, and, against a background of somber firs that loomed above it, there was only the tall forbidding figure of Colonel Carrington. Afterward I often remembered that dream.
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CHAPTER VI
THE FIRST CROP
Each day brought much the same tasks at Fairmead until the disc-harrows had rent up the clods, and with a seeder borrowed from a neighbor ten miles away we drilled in the grain. While we worked the air above us was filled with the beat of wings, as in skeins, wedges, and crescents the wild fowl, varying from the tiny butter-duck to the brant goose and stately crane, went by on their long journey from the bayous by the sunny gulf to the newly thawn tundra mosses beside the Polar Sea. Legion by legion they came up from the south and passed, though some folded their weary pinions to rest on the way, and for a few short weeks every sloo was dotted with their plumage. Then they went on, and we knew we should see no more of them until the first blasts of winter brought them south again. All this appealed to our sporting instincts, but time was precious then, and though I glanced longingly at Harry’s double-barrel, I did not lift it from the wall. Every moment had its duties, and the thought of the mortgage held us to our task.
Then there followed an interlude of building and well-digging, when we sank down some thirty feet or so, and rammed the shaft sides with nigger-head stones, while occasionally some of our scattered neighbors rode twenty miles to lend us assistance. Meantime, a tender flush of emerald crept across the crackling sod, and the birches unfolded their tiny leaves until the bluff shimmered with tender verdure silver inlaid, while the jack-rabbits, which had not as yet 57 wholly put off their winter robes of ermine, scurried, piebald and mottled, through its shadows. Then, while the wheat grew taller, and the air warmer every day, the prairie assumed an evanescent beauty which it presently put off again, for the flush faded from the grasses, and only the birch bluff remained for a refuge filled with cool neutral shadow in a sun-parched land. It was now time for the hay cutting, and we drove the rusty mower here and there across the dazzling plain, upon which willow grove and bluff stood cut off from the levels beneath by glancing vapor, like islands rising out of a shimmering sea. On much of it the grasses grew only to a few inches in length, and we had therefore to seek winter food for our beasts in each dried-up sloo, where they stood sometimes waist-high and even higher. No making was needed; the sun already had done that better than we could, and we merely drove the mower through, after which I went back with the loaded wagon, while Harry rode further out on to the prairie in search of another sloo.
The mosquitoes came down in legions and bit us grievously, until it was necessary to anoint our hair with kerosene. Our dwelling was stifling, so that as a matter of necessity we always cooked outside; but the temperature changed at sundown, and, lying full length on the peppermint-scented hay, we rode home content across the darkening prairie, which faded under the starlight into the semblance of a limitless dusky sea, while the very stillness voiced its own message of infinity. Neither of us would speak at such times. Harry had a turn for emotional sentiment, I knew, but I too could feel that it was good to lie there motionless and silent, and try to grasp its meaning. Then the strained sense of expectancy would fade at the sight of the approaching homestead, or a bronco blundering into a badger-hole would call us back to a work-a-day world. 58
Harvest came, and that year there was neither drought nor untimely frost, and our hearts grew light when the binders piled up a splendid crop. Still, when we proposed to prepare a thanksgiving feast for all our neighbors,