Abe’s brief call at his sister’s had somewhat unsettled him. For a year he had mentally lived on that open, flat prairie, planning and adjusting himself. He needed room; he needed a country which would give scope to the powers he felt within him. Forbidding as it looked, this was that country. But Mary’s casual remark about the cedars had reawakened in him the vision of the old farm as a place to live in: the house in its cluster of cedars, with the gnarled apple trees in the orchard behind; with the old furniture in the rooms–not very comfortable perhaps, but harmonious in the half-light admitted by the scanty windows half closed with vines: mellowed into unity by being lived in through generations. Here, everything was of necessity new and raw. Ruth in the midst of this? She knew nothing of what she was going into except that Abe was to create some sort of home for her: Ruth, whom a year or so ago he had met casually when buying oranges in a store….
Well, he would conquer this wilderness; he would change it; he would set his own seal upon it! For the moment, one hundred and sixty acres were going to be his, capable of being tilled from line to line!
He would conquer! Yet, as he looked about, he was strangely impressed with this treeless prairie under the afternoon sun. This utterly undiversified country looked flat as a table-top. Differences in level, small as they might be, must exist. Why, otherwise, should there be bare soil here and there, with the smooth and cracked surface of a dried mudhole in clay? Whereas elsewhere the greyish-green, silky prairie grass grew knee-high. Why should the spring floods which he had not yet seen drain away to the east, into the river which carried them to the great lake? Why should it have been observed by those who had preceded him that certain sections of this wilderness dried sooner in spring than others? There must be undulations in the soil.
A year ago, Abe had scanned the district from a purely utilitarian point of view. Apart from the bush land in the far north, this had been almost the last district where free land was still available. Within it he had looked for depth of topsoil, for nearness to possible neighbours, for a convenient distance from a shipping-point.
Nothing but such considerations had had any influence with him a year ago. That the general conformation of a landscape might have to be considered, such an idea he would have laughed at. Yet this prairie seemed suddenly a peculiar country, mysteriously endowed with a power of testing temper and character. But that was exactly what he had wanted: a “clear proposition” as he had expressed it, meaning a piece of land capable of being tilled from line to line, without waste areas, without rocky stretches, without deeply-cut gullies which denied his horses a foothold. He wanted land, not landscape; all the landscape he cared for he would introduce himself.
Yet, half unbeknown to him, there was a dream: of a mansion such as he had seen in Ontario, in the remnants of a colonial estate–a mansion dominating an extensive holding of land, imposed upon that holding as a sort of seigneurial sign-manual. Dominating this prairie.
Had he undertaken more than he could do?
So far he had allowed his horses to idle along the faint trail. At this thought he straightened on top of the tent which covered his household goods. There, just ahead of him, came the turn; so far he had gone north, covering four miles in that direction. Now two miles west; and then look out for the stake which marked his corner.
He shook the lines over the backs of the horses and looked up. There did not seem to be even birds about! But this immense and utter loneliness merely aroused him to protest and contradiction: he would change this prairie, would impose himself upon it, would conquer its spirit!
At last he arrived on his claim and stopped just within his lines. Before he climbed to the ground, he scanned the quarter section immediately west. On close scrutiny the monotony of the flatness proved to be broken there by what, at this distance, looked like two blisters in the soil: sod-hut and sod-stable of his neighbour; built by cutting with a spade squares of the prairie turf, matted with ancient roots, and using them like enormous flat bricks. Not thus was he going to build his first abode!
He slipped to the ground and unhooked his horses, throwing the traces over their backs; then he hitched them all four abreast and, behind them, strode over to Hall’s place.
Hall was at home: a short, fat man of forty. As he issued from the sod-shack, which had two small square windows and a plank door fitted into its shaggy wall, he betrayed no surprise.
“Well,” he said, “you got here, eh?”
“Yes,” Abe replied. “Can I water the horses?”
“Sure. Help yourself. Help yourself to anything you can find on the god-damn place.”
“Have a crop in, I suppose?”
“They’s seed in the ground; an’ it’s up. Quite a height, too.”
“How much?”
“Thirty acres. But whether it’s going to make a crop–” And the man shrugged his shoulders and flung an arm which came naked out of a sleeve ripped from the shoulder down.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Put in too doggone late. Water didn’t go till nearly June.” There the man stood, hardly raised, mentally and in his aspirations, above the level of that prairie from which he had come to wrest a living. “Truth to tell, if you want to know, if it were to do over again, I wouldn’t do it. That’s flat.”
Abe nodded. “Well, I’ll take the horses down to the pool.”
“Help yourself. Anything you can use, just help yourself.”
“I see you’ve a drag-shovel there.”
“Take it. Take it. It ain’t mine. But the fellow what owns it ain’t hardly going to come back for it. He’s done and gone.”
Again Abe nodded. “Shall have to dig a pool myself.” And he turned away with his horses to where, behind the stable, a dam of yellow subsoil circled the waterhole in which a supply of the precious liquid remained from the previous thaw-up and the summer rains.
Half an hour later, back in the south-east corner of his own claim, Abe tied the horses to the wheels of his wagon, took a steel measuring-line from a pocket, and marked off a hundred and twenty yards to west and north. That was to be the site of his farmstead. It was done half in protest against a rising discouragement; and, yielding completely to that need for a protest, he returned to his wagon, threw the tail-gate out, and pulled from under the load a huge hand-plough, which he lowered to the ground with a supreme effort. For a while he was busy fitting evener and trees to the implement. Then, looking up at the sun, which was approaching the western horizon, he hitched his horses in front.
“Get up there!” he shouted; and, throwing the plough over, so that the share slipped smoothly along the ground, he went north, to the point where, from his measurements, the line of his yard was to be. Reversing the plough, he slanted the point into the virgin prairie and began to step out behind his team, throwing his weight now to right, now to left, according as the plough threatened to be thrown out of the ground by such resistances as the soil afforded. Thus he drew a furrow around the site of the yard; and, having finished it, he returned once more to the point whence he had started and began the task of breaking his first field. He did shallow ploughing; for he knew that the prairie should be broken and back-set. As he stepped along, he did double work: he guided his plough and counted his steps; and when he had taken three hundred and eighty strides he turned, for on the trip west he had figured out that that line squared would give him thirty acres.
At the end of his back-furrow he stopped and hesitated. Should he let it go and put up his tent, so as to have shelter for the night? If he was to have a meal, he must get ready for cooking.
No. He reversed the plough for another furrow; and once he was committed to more than one round, he stayed with the work till it was too dark to see. He was here to conquer. Conquer he would! Before long he had opened ten furrows; the sun was down; and still he went on. A slight mist formed close to the ground, and he had the peculiar feeling as though he were ploughing over an appreciable fraction of the curvature of the globe; for when
ever he turned at the north end of his furrow, he could no longer see his wagon, as though it were hidden behind the shoulder of the earth.
By the time he left off it was after ten and quite dark. He had gone sixteen rounds. He unhitched and unharnessed near the wagon, fed his horses a modicum of oats poured on the ground, staked them out, and supped on bread and raw bacon. Then he rolled up in a blanket under the wagon, with the tent for a groundsheet, and fell at once into a dreamless sleep.
THE IDYLL
A year had gone by. Again Abe Spalding was in town, driving a team of rangy bronchos hitched to a topless buggy. He had taken a can of cream to the station, to be shipped to the city. Every motion of his betrayed hurry. Having dispatched the can, he drove to the Vanbruik store and, among the many other teams that were slanting back into the road, tied his horses to the rail of steel piping which ran along the sidewalk in front of the windows.
As he entered the swing-door, clad in a dark-coloured suit of combination overalls–jacket and trousers in one–and began to make his way through the crowd–for the store was flourishing and attracted custom by special Saturday sales, one of which was in progress–the manager of the establishment espied him from his vantage-point on the mezzanine landing of the flight of stairs leading to the upper story where furniture, rugs, and similar goods were displayed.
This manager, Mr. Diamond, was a smart young man of good build and appearance, well dressed, with a dash of metropolitan refinement, his blue-serge trousers being sharply creased, his linen spotless, his face freshly shaved to the quick. That he went about in shirt-sleeves seemed done, not to spare his coat or to make him comfortable, but to put himself on a level with the crowd. He was a shrewd business man, willing to give liberal discounts for the sake of a quick turnover; yet hard to deal with when a note given in payment was not redeemed in time or when a long-term credit was asked for. To such pleas the doctor was less inaccessible; he had been known to take over a debt owing to the store, accepting a personal note and allowing it to be forgotten. Mr. Diamond’s motto was “Cash and Carry” though with such as worried more over their debts than their bills receivable he urged the convenience of a charge-account. To travelling salesmen he said, “We discount our bills.” He would not have been out of place in a large city store; but this rural establishment he might own one day.
As he caught sight of Abe, he came running down the stairs. That Abe was singled out for personal attention may have been due to the fact that he was the owner’s brother-in-law; but it was sufficiently explained by the consideration that he had one of the largest and most reliable monthly accounts, which he settled with “cream cheques.”
Mr. Diamond flashed a gold-filled smile. “Anything for you, Abe?”
“Yes,” Abe replied and produced a slip of paper on which Ruth had written out a list of her needs. “Have these put into my buggy. The bronchos, right at the door.” The better customers’ horses were known to the clerks as well as the customers themselves.
“I’ll have it attended to at once.” And Mr. Diamond held up a finger to one of the white-frocked clerks.
“The doctor at the store?” Abe asked.
“I don’t think so. He’ll be at the house.”
But the manager led the way to look about, for the store was too large to be swept by a glance. Abe’s physical superiority reduced the other man to a mere satellite. He himself looked like a fact of nature.
They made the round without finding the doctor. Abe stood irresolute. In the course of the year he had learned not to resent his brother-in-law’s ways any longer. But now he half blamed his sister for the fact that she and Ruth did not pull together.
“I am going to the post office,” he said at last. “I won’t be back. I am in a hurry.” He always was.
“No need.” Mr. Diamond nodded. “You’ll find your things in the box.”
Abe passed through a door and went briskly along the sidewalk fronting a second, much smaller store conducted by a tiny, square-bodied Jew. Crossing the second street, the far corner of which was occupied by a hardware store, he reached, a few hundred yards beyond, a white frame building in which the post office was housed.
Like every place accessible to the Saturday crowd, the public room was filled with people who stood about conversing, the weekly trip to town being made quite as much for the sake of the social intercourse it afforded as for the purpose of trading. All these men came from south of “the Line.” It would have been easy for Abe to strike up acquaintances and to have himself admitted to the general conversation about the weather, the prospects of the crops, and provincial or municipal politics. But he merely nodded; and, under a general cessation of the buzzing talk, a few of those present silently and casually returned his nod. As if to expedite matters, they stepped aside and opened a lane for him to pass on to the wicket.
The reason for this reception was that Abe had not only made no advances but had even met such advances as were made to him with an attitude of reserve. He was considered proud; and he did look down on people satisfied with a success which secured a mere living. His goal was farther removed than theirs, and the very fact that he had so far realized few of his ambitions made him the more reticent; he was not going to allow himself to be judged by what he had done rather than by what he intended to do.
Having received from the aged postmaster that bundle of circulars which constituted his weekly mail, he left as briskly as he had entered.
He went to his sister’s house, where Mary met him at the door.
“You’ll stay for a while? I’ll make a cup of tea?”
“I just want to see Charles for a moment.”
“He’s in the study.” Mary looked queerly at her brother. When she had so much wished to have him in the district, he kept aloof!
The study was a small room opposite the dining-room. In contrast to the rest of the house its floor was bare; the general impression it made was that of an untidy litter. Its walls were lined with unstained bookshelves made by a local carpenter; the furniture consisted of a table strewn with papers, a roll-top desk, and two Morris chairs in one of which the doctor was sitting, a book in his hand; the seat of the other was encumbered with pamphlets and letters.
As Abe entered, Dr. Vanbruik looked at him over his glasses, dropped the hand holding the book, bent forward to sweep the encumbrances of the other chair to the floor, and said unsmilingly: “Sit down, Abe.”
If the doctor’s whole physique was small, his face was diminutive. It looked contracted, as if its owner lived in a perpetual concentration of thought. His dark clothes, though old, still bore traces of having been well tailored; but the creases at shoulders, elbows, and knees were worn in beyond the possibility of being removed by pressing. He had his right foot drawn up on his left knee and, with his free hand, was nursing its ankle.
As Abe sat down, there was a moment’s silence.
“Hall’s ready to sell,” Abe said at last. “He’s entitled to prove up if he gets the buildings he needs.”
The doctor nodded. “You know my views. The farmer who isn’t satisfied to be a farmer makes a mistake. You want to be a landowner on a large scale. You’ll find you can’t get the help you will need. At least you won’t be able to hold it.”
Abe gave a short laugh. “Machines.”
“Well, we might thresh it all out again. It would lead nowhere.”
“What I want to know is this,” Abe said. “I could put up the buildings for Hall; or I could buy them and haul them out. But it’s illegal for him to pledge the place before he has his patent. You have known him in a business way. Is he going to do what he promises when I can’t force him?”
“No. You want his farm. If he owes you money when he proves up, he will sell to the man who offers cash, if he can find him.”
“I offer him eight hundred dollars.”
“Don’t pay a cent till he turns his title over.”
“He must have that house, worth three hundred dollars. And meanwhil
e he must live.”
“Get more work out of him.”
“That’s your advice, is it?”
“If you must have more land, that’s the way to go about it. As for Hall, I wouldn’t trust him across the road.”
Abe rose. “That’s what I wanted to know. I must be going.”
As he passed through the living-room, Mary stopped her brother. “You won’t stay? Not for half an hour?”
“I can’t. Work’s waiting.”
“It’s Saturday. Other farmers have time.”
“They!”
“How’s the baby?”
“All right as far as I know.”
“Ruth?”
“The same.”
Mary stood and looked at him. Abe laughed, patted her back, bent down to kiss her, and turned to the door.
As he backed out of the row of vehicles in front of the store he looked at his watch. He had acquired the trick of timing himself on his drives. When the trail was dry, he tried to beat his own record, cutting off seconds from the time required.
He was sitting bolt upright and held his lines tight; the wheels bounded over the road. It took him twenty-four minutes to cover the four miles to the turn west. Having made the turn, he used the whip, just flicking the horses’ rumps.
As he approached his claim he looked about. What he had achieved in a year might justify pride. There was a two-roomed shack, built like a shed. East of it lay a pile of poplar boles, hauled from the river, a distance of twenty-five miles, in winter; there was a year’s fuel left, well-seasoned now. Along the west edge of the yard stood a frame stable large enough to house six horses and four cows, but too small right now. The yard was fenced with woven wire; and a strip thirty-two feet wide, inside the fence, was ploughed and kept black, to be planted with four rows of trees next spring. South of the stable loomed two large haystacks, cut of the wild prairie grass west of Hall’s. North of the barn there was a huge water pool, forty by a hundred feet, fifteen feet deep. The whole south line, too, was fenced; with barbed wire only, it was true; but the posts were of imported cedar; and along the other lines posts and coils of wire were laid out, the posts all pointed, ready to be driven into the ground with a wooden maul after the next soaking rain. North of the yard lay the field, forty acres of good wheat. The remaining hundred-odd acres were all broken; black as velvet they stretched away as far as one could see. That being so, Abe needed more land; with more land he would need help; a good thing that so far he had a thriftless neighbour willing to work for wages rather than to attend to his own claim.
Fruits of the Earth Page 2
