Prairie Grass

by Joan Soggie

  Marie straightened up, brushed back her grey-streaked hair, and hurried towards the house. Time to start frying that brace of fat prairie chickens Pierre shot this morning. A good supper always made discussions like this easier. They had to move. She, Marie Fagnant La Prairie, had decided.

  * * *

  Jean-Jacques had himself been considering their future as he rode down the trail from the far pasture where the rest of the crew were still rounding up strays. He left his boys, Pierre and Jacques, to work with the cowboys, knowing extra hands were needed. But everything about the scene rankled. As usual, the foreman accepted the boys help but didn’t offer them a salary. Occasionally he’d tossed a few coins their way, with a careless air that seemed to say, “See what a generous fellow I am!” His boys, Jean-Jacques had to admit to himself, were held lower on the careful scale of bunkhouse esteem than any of the shiftless gang of cowboys who did the everyday work of the ranch. Whatever worth he himself had to the ranch, his sons were treated as hangers-on, tolerated, but not valued.

  He did not like that.

  It was different when I was young, thought Jean-Jacques. I felt proud to be a man, excited by the great adventure of life. I did not fear new situations or new people. Oh, there had been those who treated everyone not of their ilk as inferiors; but often those were the whites who most needed our help, so they swallowed their spleen and hid their thoughts beneath a civil exterior. At that time, we were strong within ourselves and could afford to laugh at the fools who strutted their vanity and mistook it for superiority.

  Now it was the fools who could mock with impunity and think themselves clever when they made these raw young half-breeds humiliatingly aware of their youth and vulnerability. Jean-Jacques fumed inwardly over the unfairness. Given time and opportunity, his boys could be a match for any man. But not when they were mocked at every turn. He suspected that it was only the respect the men had for his own ability that kept their horseplay in check.

  “This can’t go on,” he muttered, pulling his horse up short at the crest of a low knoll.

  He cast an appraising gaze over the short grass prairie that stretched gently up to the edge of the poplar bluffs edging the lower reaches of the darkly wooded hills. Called les montagnes des Cyprès by the first Metis to see them, these hills were covered with a species of jackpine, not cypress. But that would not have interested Jean-Jacques. It was the grass that mattered. This symbiotic mixture of annuals, biennials and perennials had fed buffalo for thousands of years. Left to itself, unbroken by the plough, it would feed cattle for thousands more. But this is not my land, these are not my cattle. Those men back there are not my own people. My boys should be working with their own herds, not accepting the donkey-work these men expect of them.

  Jacques is already older than I was when I traveled with Maskepetoon and signed on to hunt for that Captain Palliser, he realized, suddenly shocked that he had never thought of Jacques as anything but a boy. A good shot with his rifle, and a light foot for the merry jigs danced at the rare Metis festivities they’d managed to attend over the years, but a boy all the same. He is no longer a child. He is a man and needs to know he can take charge of his life.

  Late in the evening, Marie smiled serenely as she and Virginie scraped leftovers into the slop pail and cleaned the dishes. That savoury chicken supper had brilliantly succeeded in its purpose. Her husband was more than receptive to the idea of returning to their land along the river. Indeed, when she mentioned wistfully that Pierre had never even seen the dugout along the river where he had been born, Jean-Jacques immediately declared that they must all make the trip there. Ah, l’amour, Marie whispered, amazed at her own power. Virginie turned to stare at her mother, shrugged and smiled as she looked from her mama to her tall rugged father.

  “It’s high time we show our children from where they have come.”

  From that statement, it was but a short step to recognize the need of reclaiming their scrip property. Time to move their herd of cattle, reclaim independence, build a home on their own land.

  Jean-Jacques could scarcely believe his good fortune. My woman, who has been so happy on the big ranch, raised our children here, does not object to leaving it. How she still loves me, this woman of mine!

  He stretched his long legs and loosened his belt, satisfied and expansive. The future was falling into place before him. After a good meal, it was time to dream big dreams, to muse aloud on the possibilities. He would demonstrate for his sons how they should prepare for this move, how they should not only look for doors of opportunity but be prepared to push those doors open.

  “When I was in Swift Current for supplies last month, I heard this big outfit from Texas was sniffing around for land. On our way to the Landing, I’ll stop and have a word with the fellows at the livery stable, let them know we are available to help. I know that land. With the railroad bringing in homesteaders, we must keep it for cattle, not the plough. It’s a good time for us to move, maybe get in with this big Texas ranch that has money and power, the right connections. They will need men like us who know the land.”

  He paused, then added, “Even small ranchers can get big if they have the right friends. Maybe not big like Seventy-Six Ranch, but big enough for our family.”

  The young folks were excited at the prospect of moving from the only place they had ever called home. Virginie protested the celebration of her wedding would be overshadowed by the bustle of this move but smiled at the realization it meant her beloved mama would be no farther from her when they both settled into their new homes, she in the Qu’Appelle, her parents near the Landing. Jacques and Pierre whooped with joy at the thought of their own spread, punching each other as they argued over what brand they should use.

  Jean-Jacques spoke more sharply to them than he intended. “Don’t think you know everything you need to know! Such changes I have seen in my lifetime. You need to learn, be quick to understand when times change. You will see things you have not imagined, and your minds must stretch to hold them all.”

  “Moi, I’m ready for a change!” shouted Pierre, shoveling the last of the bannock into his lanky six-foot four-inch frame. “But don’t worry, Maman, you can always cook for us. We don’t want that to change.”

  Preparations for the move moved more slowly than Jean-Jacques had imagined. The ranchers seemed to have acquired a belated appreciation for his boys’ abilities and tried every trick to entice them to stay on. Autumn turned to winter and winter was melting into sodden spring before they waved a last goodbye and turned their faces north. Virginie’s marriage was well-celebrated in a spell of crisp midwinter weather, with friends coming from Metis and Indian settlements a hundred and more miles away. Jean-Jacques, Jacques, and Pierre made a half-dozen trips to Swift Current and on to the Landing where they’d built a dug-out shelter and a sod shack, already furnished with Marie’s stove, in a steep coulee by the river.

  Jean-Jacques signed his X to a contract to train horses for the Jackson Horse Outfit, a job he planned to turn over to the boys. And he made a verbal commitment to act as driver and guide for the Texas ranch agent due to arrive by rail in the cow-town of Swift Current next month. That job he planned to keep for himself.

  “We don’t want them taking land too close to ours,” he confided to Marie in bed one night. “I will do what I can to keep them to that wide-open range land north of us, across the river, beyond the Landing, near the boys’ scrip land. That way, our herds won’t get mixed, but the boys can get work whenever they want. And those Texans will need our help whenever they’re moving cattle to or from the ranch. No one knows the river crossings better than I do.”

  He turned over and pulled the Hudson’s Bay blanket high around his shoulders. “And no one knows those hills better than I do, either.”

  When Lucas Scott showed up at the livery stable in Swift Current the day after Jean-Jacques had been summoned, he looked, Jean-Jacques thought, more like a bookkeeper than a rancher. The broad-brimmed hat and boots were in
congruous accents to the gentleman’s travelling suit and starched collar. As he fussily arranged a grey blanket over his knees, he cast a critical eye over the high wheeled wagon Jean-Jacques had chosen for the trip.

  Before they’d reached the Landing, the Metis was satisfied the Texan knew as much about grass as he was purported to know about cattle. And the way Scott questioned Jean-Jacques and listened attentively to his replies assured him that respect was mutual. When he put into words Jean-Jacques’s own unspoken credo, their friendship was assured.

  “Grass and water. It all comes down to that. Find the right land, take care of it, and you and your cattle will do alright.”

  Jean-Jacques nodded his agreement. At the Landing, they left the wagon, and mounted saddle horses to cross the river and explore the crests and valleys of the high range of hills rising for miles on the north side. Mackenzie drank it all in. That night he penned his report to the owners of the Texas Pradera Ranch.

  “We rode all day, and never were out of sight of water. The grass grows right to the tops of the mountains.”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  June grass. Bluish green blades, upper surface uniformly ridged. Spike-like pale green to purple panicles. Common throughout prairies. Fibrous roots. Good forage. Gabriellas’ Prairie Notes

  Gabby (2012)

  Andy had tried to teach me how to recognize the crops we passed on our drive to Grasslands Park. That brief weekend, which may have been our last together, was now only a memory. But with a long country drive my present reality, I decided to put his teaching to good use. Although I had to admit I seldom agreed with his conclusions, or his line of reasoning, I’d found his facts, from ancient artifacts to current agricultural crops, were generally correct. Thanks to him, I could now tell a cereal crop from a pulse crop. However, to me, peas look like lentils, and that yellow mustard field might turn out to be canola. The little I’d learned served mainly to underscore the massive amount I did not know. That seemed a common theme in my recent experience.

  With every insight I’d gained into this land and its history came the unsettling conviction that I had more to learn.

  Jo’s invitation to meet her at her brother’s farm had come as a welcome distraction from my mental quandary.

  I’d called her Sunday evening to ask about Eric. It seemed his condition was unchanged. He slept, took fluids, and occasionally stirred to semi-consciousness.

  “But if you want to, you should come see him. He liked sharing his stories with you. And although he’s unresponsive, I think it would do him good just to hear your voice.”

  “I want to show you some of the places Dad has told you about,” she continued. “The land where the soddie stood, where he grew up and where he and Mom raised my brothers and sisters and me. The hills of home. Everything will make more sense to you when you see that, don’t you think?”

  I agreed, gratefully. Any story about Eric would be incomplete without at least a slight understanding of the specific place that had been home most of his life. In the past few weeks I had clambered over cliffs and coulees in the river breaks, jogged along the creek that runs through Swift Current, swum in a cold prairie lake, basked in the wilderness surrounding Madeline’s cabin, where aspen parkland melds into spruce forest. But this past weekend, I had met the great open grasslands just north of the US border.

  The Grasslands. What can I say? The sheer immensity of land and sky pressed down on me. Something genuine and alive demanded my attention. This must have been what the country was like when Jean-Jacques was raising his family, or when Eric was a boy.

  I found myself considering the sentient quality of landscapes, the almost mystical bond between people and the land. Subsistence required trusting the land for food, water and shelter. Human existence now and in the future must rely on the same resources. And I wondered, how can we humans survive if we are alienated from the land? And from each other?

  “You cannot expect to have neighbours if you want to farm the whole country yourself.”

  Eric Tollerud’s words echoed in my mind as I drove the lonesome country road out to the homestead where Eric lived as a small child, and where he returned to raise his own family. That farm was now owned by one of his sons. Half an hour or more from the nearest town, it was not an easy place to get to. Hilly pastureland flashed by my window, followed by a patchwork of green and yellow fields. Although most of the land was cultivated, inhabited farmsteads were rare. The country seemed empty.

  I turned off the main road, as Jo had instructed, at the wooden sign “Tollerud Farm”, and followed a narrow gravel road for a few kilometers until, as I scooted over a long hill, the farm buildings behind long rows of trees came into view. This was the land Eric had described to me, the place that mattered most to him.

  I turned at the lane and followed it to the ranch-style bungalow. Jo was waiting for me in her shiny blue pickup.

  “James is at a cattlemen’s meeting and his wife’s at work. But they said to show you the farm. C’mon and hop in the truck with me.”

  As she drove, Jo talked. “In the thirty years since James took over the farm, he’s turned most of the cultivated acres back to forage. Besides the grasslands that were part of the original homestead, and the sections of native prairie Dad used as pasture, he changed what was essentially a grain-farm into a ranch producing range-fed beef.”

  As we bumped along over the dusty trail, I gazed out at green hills rolling to the horizon. James and his family didn’t have many neighbours. But they were surrounded by some beautiful natural landscapes.

  “I think Dad was surprised when James started turning his wheat fields into pasture,” Jo continued. “He was bucking the trend to cash crops like canary seed and lentils and canola. Most farmers felt they had to maximize their investment, take risks to squeeze a few more dollars out of the land. James once described that process to me like this: ‘In the spring you take a hundred thousand dollars and spread it on your fields. Come fall, you go looking for it.’”

  “Doesn’t sound like a very viable way of life,” I observed.

  “Lots of farms went under in the nineteen-eighties and nineties,” agreed Jo. “Some agricultural pundits insisted we had to stop thinking about farming as a way of life and treat it as a business like any other business. Factory farms were the wave of the future. Well, you can imagine how much Dad liked that.”

  I grinned and nodded.

  Jo continued. “Dad took a pragmatic attitude about most things, in farming or in life. But that mindset, reducing everything to dollars and cents, that disturbed him. He used to tell our youngsters, his grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the few who chose to farm, that they needed to know their fields. He told them, ‘The best fertilizer for any land is the farmer’s footsteps.’”

  She grinned as she gestured towards the grass-covered hills. “I doubt that James spends much time walking through these pastures. But I guarantee he knows every inch of them from horseback.”

  We drove towards the hills, following a trail by the fence-line. Jo explained the cow-calf herd was on summer grazing near the river, land that had once been part of the Pradera Ranch. The pasture before us would remain empty until fall, when the cattle would be moved back home.

  We stopped by a pond that at first glance seemed to be another of the naturally formed potholes or sloughs that dot uncultivated land. Jo pointed out the earthen dike planted with willows at the end of a draw.

  “I don’t think this dam has ever been dry since Dad built it back in the thirties,” she said. I recognized a common thread in any conversation with the elder generation of this land. They were people who didn’t take water for granted.

  Good water. Good land. I got out and climbed through the fence to the top of a small hill overlooking the dam. A sudden breeze brought the scent of sage and wild roses, contrasting clumps of pink and gray glowing on the opposite hillside. Orange and brown lichen covered the boulders cresting the hill, whose slopes maintained a natural
crop of winterfat and blue grama and needle grass. Good winter grazing.

  I once wondered if old Eric Tollerud valued the land for itself, or only for the riches it provided his family. In my recent reading about the wrongs done the Metis and Indigenous people of this land, it was tempting to dismiss all settlers as greedy, soul-less leeches who took without thanks and destroyed without thought. Looking over the acres of unbroken, never-damaged prairie, I knew Eric’s words weren’t meaningless platitudes. He had tried to pass on an appreciation of the land that, perhaps, could not be properly learned second-hand. It had to be lived, day by day, in all seasons, until the land became almost your mother or your child, and the creatures that shared it with you, your own brothers and sisters.

  Jo sat down on one of the boulders. I did the same.

  “Your dad really loves this land, doesn’t he,” I remarked.

  “Yes. And everything about it.” Jo smiled. “Let me tell you a little story. A dozen or more years back, Dad had just moved to the senior’s home in Hillview ...”

  Eric (2000)

  Eric slumped in the passenger’s seat, frowning. It was only a year since he agreed to give up his driver’s licence and sell his car, about the same time he’d agreed to move into the Retirement Centre in town.

  The past six years had been lonely. Ever since Catherine was struck down by a massive stroke. He’d sat by her bed day after day, holding her hand, talking to her, hoping for one more flicker of awareness. And when she finally slipped away, he had been at home, asleep.

  For the first time in his life he became mired in depression, empty of purpose. It sometimes felt as though he himself must have died with Catherine. Just as the farm was his link with the land, Catherine had been his connection with their children and grandchildren. Both were as necessary to his existence as breathing.