Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  The land Mr. Tollerud’s family came to early in the last century seemed to them a vast, open, but not a desolate place. It was full of life. Besides an abundance of animals, there were signs of previous human occupants. The settlers followed old trails that criss-crossed the prairies, routes chosen hundreds of years earlier by unknown guides. Strange reminders of previous inhabitants kept surfacing unexpectedly. A stone hammer in a ploughed field. A ring of rocks, sunken into the short prairie grass and covered with green and orange lichens, on a windy hilltop in the pasture.

  As a child, he had asked, “Who were they?”

  And was told, “They were Indians.”

  “Where did they come from?”

  “They were Indians. They travelled around.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “They are gone. They live on reservations now.”

  And I stopped writing to wonder, where are those reservations? Established only a few years prior to the arrival of the settler, where were they located?

  A map in my Saskatchewan Atlas showed that the nearest reservation to the Tollerud homestead was a few hundred miles distant. Well, that might as well be half a world away, from the perspective of a pioneer homesteader tied to his land. And a whole world away, in the eyes of a Plains Indian, tied to his or her reservation.

  To an Indian child of the same era, the history of their own great-grandparents may have seemed as mysterious as it was to the settlers. They knew their people had once been bison hunters. Their ancestors had their favourite places to hunt in the summer and pitch their tipis in winter. But they, the children of the reservation, never saw a bison, never walked where their ancestors walked.

  Eric Tollerud also grew up in a different world than his ancestors, and in a world vastly different from the one the previous inhabitants had enjoyed. And all those worlds were foreign to me. I could know them only through personal stories and historical accounts. I realized that entering those worlds might prove to be a more interesting experience than I had anticipated.

  Eric (1917)

  A horse to ride. His very own saddle and bridle. A grownup task entrusted to him alone. Life, for Eric this spring morning, is good.

  “Now, Eric, are you sure you remember the way?”

  “Yes’m. Daddy and I rode there once already.”

  “Mrs. Floden will no doubt invite you to eat with them. Be sure to thank her. Mind your manners.”

  “Yes’m, I will.”

  Eric’s mother pauses for a long moment. Eric shifts in the saddle, legs spread wide, impatient to be gone, waiting for her to release him.

  “And make sure you fasten the pouch buckle after you put in the mail. We don’t want our letters scattered to the four winds.”

  “Yes, Mother, I will.” Eric fidgets, looks towards the hills.

  “All right then. Be off with you. And mind you’re home before dark.”

  Eighteen months have gone by since his misadventure in the slough, a year and a half of growing bone and muscle and confidence, of watching and learning through seasons of planting and harvesting, of preparing for, and enduring, winter. He has watched kittens being born and chickens being slaughtered. He has adopted his father’s walk, his tone, even his habit of pausing to gather words before making some serious pronouncement. His grandparents, aunts and uncles find this endearing. Other children, less so. At community picnics, he has been known to wander away from the children’s games to join a circle of men, where he stands silent, eyes flicking from one face to another as he follows the conversation. The adult world of horses and crops and the child’s world of tag and tadpoles both fascinate him; but sometimes it seems the adult world suits him best.

  He is his father’s shadow, or, as Per likes to say, his right-hand man. When Per puzzles over how to get the mules to pull with the oxen to make a team strong enough to force the plough through the tough clay sod, Eric is there, watching. Per has fallen into the habit of talking to his son as though he is an adult, discussing with him the day’s chores, considering his questions and innocent comments with bemused solemnity. Eric accepts as a matter of course the role of sidekick to his father, just as he accepts being his mother’s chore-boy. It started with gathering eggs, then helping in the garden. To be sent to fetch the cows from the pasture was a step up the ladder. He loves hearing his father call, “Kum, baaas, kum, baas,” encouraging the cows as they plod up the hill to the barn, while Eric switches his stick at their tails. Eric has already hurried through the first stages of becoming a farmer.

  Today’s errand is the next step: a job that will last the day, take him far from the farm, and be accomplished alone. He feels no apprehension, no uncertainty, only excitement at the adventure before him. The prairie teems with mysteries waiting for him to discover. Who knows what he might see on this all-day ride?

  The farmyard has sometimes yielded its own surprises. While hunting for the nest of a broody hen last week, he surprised something else. As he parted the grass where it grew long and thick beside the pasture fence, his hand slipped right into a small woven-grass tunnel. His fingers closed around something warm, soft, light. Holding his breath, he had gently drawn out first one, then a second bundle of feathers. Not a hen’s fat yellow chicks, but two tiny baby larks. Eric had never seen anything so wonderful and knew at once his mother would be delighted by them.

  Running to the soddie, baby birds cradled in his shirt, he burst through the open door. “Mama, Mama, look what I found!”

  Abigail knelt beside him and took the trembling little birds in her hand. Lightly stroking them with the tip of one finger, she asked, “Where did you find them?”

  Eric told her and watched as a frown creased her forehead.

  “Eric, that poor meadow lark will be worried sick, wondering where her babies have gone. You must take them back right away, put them back in their nest.”

  Shamefaced, Eric did as his mother told him. He saw the mother meadowlark flutter away as he approached. She pretended to drag an injured wing, frantic to lure him, the dangerous boy, away from her nest.

  “I wasn’t going to hurt them, you know,” he muttered.

  The rest of the day he had felt under a cloud, resenting the injustice of being shut out from that magical world within the grass. But that evening after supper, before he could slip off the old wooden trunk that was his seat at the table; his mother put her hand on his shoulder and sat down beside him. She smiled at him and began to sing. The simple melody he recognized, but the words were new. This was a song she had made especially for him. Her brown eyes held his gaze as her arm encircled him and her clear voice surrounded him.

  Now tell me Mother Meadowlark, what sorrow fills your breast.

  You chirp and cry so piteously, you flutter around your nest

  Your nest is bare, your brood is gone, your home is empty quite.

  Who’ll feed your hungry little ones and shelter them at night?”

  Abigail sang the story to its happy conclusion.

  “Swift he runs to fetch her babes, the hallowed brood he bears.

  Forgive me Mother Meadowlark — Take back your little dears.”

  In the days since then, the words and melody have melded into his heart and mind, so that whenever alone or preoccupied with a task, he hums the song. It seems to him that Mother Meadowlark must feel glad to hear he is nearby, to know she can trust him. Her babies are safe.

  He sings now as his horse jogs along. The hills and sky unfold around him. The world is perfect, his task clear. He’s on his way to Floden’s to fetch the mail. Five miles there, five miles back. Maybe a few more miles, if he dares search out a duck’s nest or follow a badger. Time to dream, to be the hero of some great adventure, daydreams fed by the call of the wild geese and the fierce winds of a spring blizzard, as much as by the Boys Own Book stories read aloud by his father on lamp-lit winter evenings. Hero-hungry, he has watched the bow-legged taciturn cowboys from the adjoining ranch ride past in all weather, moving cattle or sear
ching for a stray calf. When alone, like now, he pretends to be one of those cowboys.

  The sun is high by the time he arrives at Floden’s farmhouse. For the past hour he has been ‘Hank’ the Pradera Ranch foreman, and his gruff, aloof manner remains in place as he rides into the yard. He nods curtly to the seven-year old who clambers over the corral railing shouting a greeting.

  “Think you’re mighty big just ‘cause you ride that big old horse, don’t you,” Harold sneers at him, stung by his friend’s coolness.

  Eric deflates to his not-quite-six-year-old self. He remains silent for a long moment as he climbs down from his saddle.

  Mrs. Floden saves him from having to think of a response by calling to them from the step. Her kindly face, flushed red from the hot kitchen stove, beams down at them. The warm, sweet smell of baking wafts out the open door, and reminds Eric that breakfast was hours ago. He recalls hearing his mother once say, with a note of primness bordering on disapproval, that Mrs. Floden is over-generous with her use of cream and sugar in her everyday cooking. His stomach rumbles.

  “Here is your mail, Eric. You must stay and have dinner with us. Harold has something he would like to show you, too, I think.”

  “Thank you, Ma’am.” Eric turns to Harold and asks, “Okay if I tie Pet here?”

  Mollified, Harold nods, and watches Eric loosen the cinch on the saddle. As he hands his friend a rope halter to replace the bridle Eric slips from the horse’s head, he remarks in an off-hand manner, “Bet you never shot a bow and arrow, did you.”

  “No,” replies Eric. “Have you?”

  “I sure have! Got one of my own! Come see!”

  Gleefully, Harold leads the way to the bare trampled yard behind the house. A bullseye painted in red barn paint on a scrap of tar-paper and nailed to the clothesline pole serves as his target. The bow is made of a smooth peeled branch — “Chokecherry wood,” Harold says, sliding it between his fingers — and the arrows of sharpened sticks.

  “Pete made it for me. He says it’s like what he and Jack had when they was kids. They practiced all the time, shooting at a target, then at birds and gophers. When they got really good, they could sneak up and shoot a rabbit or maybe even an antelope. They learned to be real hunters that way.”

  Eric pulls on the rawhide string. It takes all his strength to fit the arrow in place and then it slips and hits the ground just a few feet away. A stab of envy pierces his belly.

  I’ve just been pretending, but Harold is learning to be a hunter!

  Aloud he asks, “Who’s Pete? And Jack?”

  “You know, the Laprairie brothers.”

  “Who’re they?” he asks, wrinkling his face.

  “Well, maybe you don’t know them. Pete and his brother, they live in a shack back in the hills. Guess they wouldn’t have much reason to ride over your way. They have some cattle and horses that range free, and they work for us sometimes, fixin’ fence or branding. Anyways, they bin here forever, and know everythin’ about coyotes and hunting and just everythin’!”

  Eric looks at his friend with disbelief.

  “How come you never told me about them before?”

  “Jeepers, what does it matter? WE got the bow and arrow! Come on, I’ll teach you how to shoot!”

  The afternoon sun is still high as Eric starts for home. His mind is full of what Harold has told him. Why has he never heard about these Laprairies? Why has no one told him there was someone right here who could teach a boy everything about being a hunter?

  With sudden resolve, he pulls his horse to a halt, tugging on one rein to turn Pet around. Back in the hills, Harold had said. Why not ride out there and see for himself? He follows the trail that branches off towards the high rangeland west of the farm.

  It seems to Eric as though he has ridden for miles. The shallow coulees and low buttes spread around him in depressing monotony. What if the trail does not lead me back and I wander through these hills forever? As sudden panic rises, he sees the outline of a building half hidden down a draw. His horse pricks up her ears and quickens her pace.

  The small building appears to be a house, partially dug into the hillside, its sod roof so overgrown it looks like a haystack. An empty corral. A lean-to off to one side. Nothing else. No smoke from the chimney. No one around.

  Eric does what he knows his Dad would do. “Halloo! Anyone home?”

  He didn’t really expect an answer.

  “Who’s askin’?”

  The deep gruff voice comes from over by the lean-to.

  A tall spare figure appears, horse by his side. Has he been there all along? Watching me?

  “Dah boys, dey aren’t to home,” continues the stranger. “Do you have a paper for dem, dis time?” His leathery face crinkles in a grin.

  “No, sir, I was looking for the Laprairie place. I just wanted to see where they lived.”

  “So, dese Laprairies, you know Pierre? Or Jacques, mebbe?”

  “No, I’ve never even met them, and I guess they don’t know me, either.”

  “Well, dat’s all right. You and me, we know each udder.” The tall old man measures the boy with his eyes. “You’ve growed up some since I fish ta outta dat slough, but me, I remember you. I tink you remember me, too. Not too many lak me and my boys round ‘ere.”

  “No, sir,” agrees Eric. “I’ve never met anyone else like you.”

  The man guffaws. “Used to be, my people, we was the only ones here. We would’ve been damn surprised to see a kid like you ridin’ around. Your kind, dey was da strangers den.”

  Eric frowns. What does he mean? Certainly he, Eric, belongs here. And their farm is here, Mother and Dad made it, no one else did it. He wants to object to that word, strangers, but thinks it might be rude to do so. He says nothing.

  But the old man seems to guess his thoughts.

  “Ma mere’s people, dey use’ ta hunt here. You know, dat trail, dat goes past your Papa’s place. When I was so big lak you, I rode dat trail wit a hunnerd of my people, wagons makin’ dust you could see all a way to dah Landing.”

  “Where were you going?”

  “Why, we jus’ goin’ about our business. Some of dem haul meat from la summer hunt to dah trading post at Touchwood Hills.”

  Summer hunt? Trading post? Questions pour so fast through Eric’s mind that he cannot grab hold of one to ask. Instead he just gapes at the man, as Pet shifts uneasily sideways, eyeing the water trough.

  “Here, boy, you’d best get down off of dat mare and let her drink. Me, I’m headin’ back up to da Landing. Jus’ stopped to see the boys. Since dey not here, I’ll ride wit you for a ways. Might as well ride on to dah Pradera summer camp, out past yer Papa’s place. See how dem guys is doin’.”

  At least that much makes sense to Eric. Although he has never been there, he knows the Pradera Ranch corrals and bunkhouse, the cowboys’ home base between spring and fall roundup, is somewhere south of his home. Towards the river. Beyond the hills.

  They ride slowly as the shadows gradually lengthen through the long spring afternoon. The old man keeps his horse reined in to match Pet’s unhurried gait and seems as willing to match his answers to the boy’s innocent questions. Yes, he said, he hunted buffalo. Long ago, when he was young. Then, suddenly, the great herds were all gone. The final blow came when Sitting Bull took refuge in the Cypress Hills. The American army tried to starve him out by setting prairie fires to steer the herds of buffalo away from the border.

  “Dat trick, dey learned from us,” the old man says wryly. “We’d burn off dah prairie wool to keep da western herd outta dat Blackfoot land.”

  For a few glorious hours, Eric’s hungry imagination fills up with stories of daring and danger, of war-parties and weapons. He listens, open-mouthed. If he had felt excluded from the almost magical world of wild birds; now he feels invited, welcomed, into an even more fascinating landscape, strange and unfamiliar. The old man talks to him in the same matter-of-fact way his Dad likes to tell about how he outran a storm
while hauling a wagon-load up the river breaks from the ferry. Not bragging. Just the facts.

  They ride up the hillside north of Eric’s home. The sod house and corrals come into view. The man reins to a stop and raises his hand in farewell.

  “Me, I’ll tak de trail along de hills from here,” he says. “Bin a pleasure keepin’ you company. Mebbe we’ll meet up again someday.”

  “But you don’t have to go, do you?” asks the boy. “Why don’t you come to the house? Mother will have supper ready.”

  “No tanks, young feller. I’ll get my grub wit de cowboys at ta camp tonight.”

  Eric watches the old man riding away, his fringed jacket and long gray braid blowing in the stiff westerly breeze. Only when the distant figure rides out of view does Eric realize he forgot to ask the most important question. What is the man’s name?

  He can ask Dad. After all, his Dad knows just about everyone. He must know about the Laprairies, and this man called them “the boys.” His boys.

  The day has been one long glorious adventure. And yes, the mail is safely buckled into the saddle bag.

  With a click of his tongue and kick of his heels, the boy quickens the mare’s pace to a slow trot. Horse and boy hurry home to supper.

  Chapter Three

  The grouping of plants continually changes as, with further research, more is learned about the relationships among and within species. With this improved understanding comes a change in names. Gabriella’s Prairie Notes

  Something old Mr. Tollerud said in our first interview stuck in my mind. I scrolled back through the recording of that day to find the clip.