“Say,” Henry Topp exclaimed, “how can a man walk faster than a train?”
His brothers laughed. Nawosad and Shilloe bent their heads to listen. Only Hilmer was absent.
Stanley, sitting at the far end of the culvert, portly yet alert, his single elbow resting on his knee, said quietly, “He can’t.”
“I’ve seen it. By gosh and by gum, I’ve seen it! Perhaps I should say jump, not walk.”
“No,” Nicoll said, “Nonsense!”
The whole group, comprising ten men, exclusive of Abe, was in that relaxed, lazy state of mind and body which, in the country, is induced by the fact that an event beyond man’s control has decreed a holiday. Not even the Sunday brings such utter relaxation of tensions; for the Sunday is, after all, part of an established routine. The relaxation is all the greater when this rain happens to come on a Saturday.
“Well,” Henry went on, “they were shunting a freight train in the yard at Morley. The train was moving quite fast. And there was a fellow walking on top of a box-car, in the same direction in which the train was moving; and when he came to the end of the car, he went right on and jumped to the one in front.”
Nicoll, reclining on a plank at the edge of the ditch, raised himself to a position of attention. “You’re joshing.”
“By golly, no. I saw it with my own eyes.”
Stanley laughed. “What next? He jumped from one car to another. That’s nothing. Four or five feet. But the car was moving, you say. How do you explain that?”
Blaine, sitting nearest the road, was whittling a weedstalk with his pocket knife. “I’ve seen that myself,” he said. “I could do it. You could do it. Nothing mysterious about it.”
“Well, explain,” Henry challenged. “Now show your science.”
“Science”–this with the emphasis of authority–“never explains.”
“What’s the use of science if it doesn’t explain?” Nicoll asked. “I thought that’s what science was for.”
“Science gathers facts and puts them in order. Then they become law.”
“Now you’re talking!” said Henry. “Laws have to be obeyed. If you’ve got a law, you’ve got an explanation. If any one asks me why I pay taxes, I say because it’s the law that I should if I can. Out with your law!”
The reference to taxes brought a laugh.
“It isn’t so simple,” Blaine said. “I’ve forgotten most of my science. But it’s something like this. The motion of the car puts something into the man that carries him over; and they call it inertia.”
There was a silence as if at an anti-climax. Nobody cared to contradict; but nobody was quite convinced.
Abe stirred, picking up his lines. “Too much rain,” he said. “We could do with a dry spell,” Stanley agreed.
“Well, I must go,” and Abe shook his lines. The thin wheels of his buggy were picking up wide rims of mud.
The silence continued till he was out of earshot. Then, “Going to town!” said Hartley with a sneer.
Nicoll looked at him, a question in his eye.
“That’s the place for politicians.”
“Well,” Stanley said, “Spalding’s hardly a politician.”
“At any rate,” Nicoll added, “he’s straight as a die.”
“And he’ll go far,” Blaine said slowly, his head bent over his knees. “Most progressive man in the district.”
“Doing well,” Stanley nodded. “Considering he’s been on his place no more than twelve years.”
“No trick!” This from Hartley. “With money to start with.”
Besides these men who were in constant though half-formal contact with Abe, there were the women. To him they remained vague; but he was to them a huge figure of somewhat uncertain outlines, resembling the hero of a saga. What most of them saw in their immediate surroundings was squalor, poverty, and desperate struggle; what they heard of him grew into the conception of wealth and magic success, especially since he allotted work and paid out public money. When Hartley quitted work, his wife looked to Abe for the reason. To him she looked for his reinstatement. At Abe’s place every one could earn wages in seeding or harvest; and most of them did; their own harvests were barely sufficient to cover payments on live stock and implements. He piped, and they danced; and even though some of them swore at him before they went to his dance-floor, Abe remained a hero and a saga-figure, loved by few, hated by some, but willy-nilly admired by all.
Nobody, not even Nicoll, had an idea of the tension in which Abe was getting ready for the great and decisive year. Nobody knew how he worried. He worried about everything, about the weather, the flood, and about help; for it was clear that he could not hold Bill Crane. He had found another man, Harry Stobarn; but he disliked him and did not trust him with his stock. Bill was getting restless and talked of taking up land himself; he did not know when he had a good thing, for Abe had raised his wages by five dollars a month, in spite of the fact that he gave less and less value for his money. Abe felt as though he were staking his whole existence on a single throw next year: twelve hundred acres under wheat! The cost of putting that crop in the ground! If the season proved inauspicious?…
These thoughts never left him. The present season was wet: rain followed rain; the straw was too long; and when the ears should have been setting and filling out, even the blades remained green.
Never did these thoughts leave him; and they were passing through his mind as, on that Saturday afternoon, he drove south on his way to town. Slowly he drove, for the road was heavy; and the mud picked up by the wheels measured a foot across. It was still cloudy; and on all sides the prairie looked as though lifted up to the sky.
From everywhere eyes were focused on him as he drove along. Nobody ever went to or came from town but everybody in the district knew it. The prairie is too open for any move to remain hidden. When a caller came to a settler, all of them knew and talked of it at once; when a settler went to call somewhere else, remarks were made in every house.
Thus, as Abe approached Hilmer’s Corner, there was a discussion going on about him in the Mennonite’s shack.
This shack, the roof of which slanted from front to rear, was divided into three rooms. At the north end was a bedroom where the Grappentins lodged at night. Next came a large, hall-like space which served as the general living-room and Hilmer’s workshop combined; for Hilmer plied the trade of a harnessmaker; and south of it followed his own bedroom, a mere cubicle six feet in width. When Mrs. Grappentin’s husband was at home, the children were at night bedded down on the floor of the shop; when he was absent, they slept in his bed.
On the Saturday in question, the whole family was assembled in the central room. The children were playing in a corner; at one of the two small windows piercing the front wall sat old Mrs. Grappentin, looking out; her head resembled a bird of prey perched on her shoulders, her hooked nose corresponding to its beak. Near her, on a canted chair, lounged a middle-aged man of ferocious aspect, with prominent teeth slanting forward in his mouth, below a straggling red moustache; his blotchy, purplish complexion betrayed him to be addicted to the copious use of liquor. This was the third husband of Hilmer’s mother–a man who had married the older woman under the promise that he would work the farm left to her by her second husband; but it proved that he had done so chiefly in order to extract, through her, from her industrious eldest son the wherewithal to support his idle, drunken, dissipated life. While he had money, he was never at home.
Young Hilmer himself, in black sateen shirt and black cotton trousers, a small black cap on his head, for he was sensitive to draughts, was working in the centre of the room, in front of the open door, where on two planks supported on trusses a set of harness in need of repairs was spread out. His chief characteristic was introspectiveness.
Among the grown-ups a desultory conversation went on in German.
The mother at the window was the first to see Abe coming from the north; and from that moment on an unbroken stream of abuse flowed
from her lips. “Da kommt der grosse Herr!” she exclaimed. “There comes the great lord! Silent and haughty as ever, looking over the land as if he owned the world. Pride comes before the fall! What’s made him so great? What has he done? He settled down here when this was a wilderness, with money in his pocket, that is all. He made it hard for his neighbours, so he could buy their land cheap. And then he waited till we came and made it worth money. He’s been lording it ever since, running school and ward and county–die Grafschaft–as if he had not only the money but the knowledge and the power and the right all to himself. When any one else wants something, he puts his foot down and says he mustn’t…”
“Sein Sie doch still, Frau Mutter!–Be quiet, Mrs. Mother!” said her son, walking about with awl and waxed thread. Yet, in spite of his ostentatious preoccupation with the work in hand, he too, bending forward, peered through the door at the proud figure of Abe behind his bronchos. “Everybody lives in his own way. He lives in his. I’ve never heard it said except by his enemies that he has acquired land and position by anything but hard work and ability, Mrs. Mother.”
Grappentin, the stepfather, spat contemptuously on the scoured floor which was covered with a thin layer of white sand from the river. “Hard work! Nobody gets rich by hard work. He’s played his tricks, I’ll warrant, the son-of-a-gun!–Der Hundekel!”
“Now, now, Herr Stiefvater!” Hilmer muttered. “I don’t like to hear such things said in my house. I am glad Mr. Spalding has made a success. It shows what I may be able to do, with hard work and industry.”
“Look at him, look at him!” the woman screeched. “There he goes around by the field! As if the road were not good enough! Perhaps he has done something there by which he’s got all his money!”
“Hush, hush, Mrs. Mother!” exclaimed Hilmer as though oppressed by the vicious imagination of the old woman. “I know better. And so do you. The mud is deep at the spot. A regular hole.”
“I can’t stand the sight of the great and rich. It wasn’t to see them that we came to this country.”
“Right, Mrs. Mother. We came to get great and rich ourselves.”
Grappentin burst into a guffaw; but Hilmer worked quietly on. Grappentin rose, bent his arms over his head, and stretched with a yawn.
“Look at that!” the old woman cried; for, beyond the trail, Abe’s horses were taking the sharp, slippery incline to the culvert in wild bounds, nearly upsetting the buggy. Mrs. Grappentin broke into a shrill senile laugh. “I wish he had broken his neck!–Ich wollt er haett sich den Hals gebrochen!”
“For shame, Mrs. Mother!” Hilmer reproved without looking up.
Grappentin stood before the young man in a spreading sprawling attitude, hands on hips. “Would you mind,” he said with an ironic imitation of Hilmer’s sobriety, “would you mind, Mr. Stepson, telling me why the great lord is always alone and does not mix with the rest of us as other Christian people do?”
Hilmer fixed a mild but steady eye on the other man, holding it there for a moment, before he answered. “Because,” he said at last, “he thinks greater thoughts and aims higher than all the rest of us do.”
THE CHILD
It was in connection with his work on the council that Abe succeeded in solving the problem of finding a successor for Bill Crane.
Ward One of the municipality, in its south-east corner, was represented by a man called Rogers with whom Abe found himself voting most of the time. One needed only to look at this man to see that he was of a different type from the rest of the councillors. The council was divided into two groups, three of its members being typical politicians, as was Mr. Eastham, the reeve; these four were ostensibly also farmers; but they occupied their farms chiefly for the purpose of qualifying for their political positions; their income came from “pickings.”
They were opposed by Rogers, Abe, and a Mennonite from the so-called Reserve by name of Bickert.
But Rogers was different from all others. He owned and operated a farm; but he worked it along English lines. He was what is commonly called a “remittance man,” i.e. being a younger son of a landed family, he drew an independent income from an estate in England. He preserved a distinctly English accent and used words which, though comprehensible to the others, yet marked him off as belonging to a different level of education. From the beginning he felt drawn to Abe, and admittedly because Abe was Mary Vanbruik’s brother. While the doctor had practised at Somerville, Mr. Rogers had been a frequent caller at his house; and Mary had spent weekends at the Rogers place. Though of medium height, Rogers looked tall and slender; his handsome, tanned face with the appressed ears was divided by a short, brown moustache. He was always well dressed; yet he never looked as though dressed for the occasion; he felt too much at home in his clothes.
Now and then, some matter being put to the vote, he would raise a smiling glance to Abe’s eyes; and Abe invariably understood its meaning. Invariably, in such cases, they voted together, supported by Bickert; and the reeve gave his casting vote to the other side.
After meetings, Rogers and Abe often spent a few minutes in conversation; and one day, towards the end of the summer, the subject of the brief exchange of words was the problem of help.
“I,” Rogers said, “always advertise for Ukrainian families new to the country. I keep an Englishman or two besides. For the routine work I prefer the foreigners; they are willing and reliable.”
“How much do you pay?”
“I give them house and garden; they help themselves to all the milk they want. In addition I pay the man three hundred dollars; and the woman at the rate of a dollar a day when her help is required.”
“Do they stay?”
“Till they take up land. Three, four years. One man has been with me for twelve years now. He gets four hundred.”
“How much do you farm?”
“Three quarters, nearly. The river cuts away a corner of my land.”
“I’ll try that,” said Abe.
The consequence was that, just before harvest, Bill Crane left Abe. A Ukrainian by name of Horanski moved into the house west of the yard. Abe fenced a three-acre lot for him; for he had a family of five children. Abe wanted to give him a chance of making additional money by raising potatoes and garden truck. Horanski was a squarely-built man of middle age who knew no English but proved adaptable and indefatigable in his work. Nor did his wife, a broad, comfortable woman, shrink from such tasks as she could do. Abe was ready for the coming year.
The yield of the crop in the fall of 1911 turned out better than Abe had expected. He threshed late, Victor Lafontaine furnishing machine and crew as he had done for a number of years. Consequently, fall-ploughing remained incomplete. Yet, when the first frost came, more than a thousand acres were ready for the seeder. In a reasonably early spring, the tractor would take care of the rest. The whole district was aware of the extraordinary preparations which Abe was making; and the whole district adjusted itself. Since work a-plenty could be had for the asking, people held back on their own land while wages flowed.
Abe now planned building a new barn, partly in order to separate cows from horses, partly because his ever-increasing store of machinery would find room in its eastern half, for the open shed admitted the snow in winter. As for the house, he might have built that fall; but he wanted to be sure that he could, next summer, carry on without using his credit at the bank, so that the whole crop would be available for what he might care to do. Once he had built, Ruth was never again to complain about lack of space!
When spring opened up, without extraordinary developments, there was the usual rush of work. The tractor, driven by Henry Topp, drew a ten-share plough; behind it, drawn by horses, trailed two disks; and endless units of drags were followed in turn by the seeders of which there were six, two belonging to Nicoll and Stanley. The weather was singularly propitious; but the more propitious it seemed, the more Abe worried.
He had heard it said by old-timers from south of the Line that wet years run in thr
ees, as do dry years, with one normal year completing a seven-year cycle. A few of the weather-wise even went so far as to say that, the first year, it was the spring which was wet; the second year, it was the summer; the third year, it would be the fall; and the year 1911 had borne them out. Neither a wet spring nor a wet summer did Abe any harm. In 1910 and 1911 he had had a surplus of hay, so that he had been able to give a whole stack of such as were short of roughage. Even Wheeldon had taken advantage of the offer. As for the grains, the straw had been heavy; and it had “lodged”–had been laid down by the heavy rains–so that it had been hard to cut; but the yield had been above the average of nineteen bushels per acre. Most settlers had complained that half their crops had been “drowned.” If it had not been for the detested road work, there would have been outright distress.
Abe worried; too much was at stake. If the prediction of the old-timers came true, the wet weather would come in the fall–the only time when it could ruin him. Before long it was clear to Ruth and Mary that Abe was living through a new crisis. But this time he did not drown his worries in work; more often he was seen stalking along the margins of his enormous fields, inspecting his crops. The work he left more and more to the broad, obsequious Ukrainian and his wife, there being no fallow to plough. Mrs. Horanski was glad to earn an extra five or ten dollars a month by doing the milking; and Abe thought it good policy to give her all the work she wanted.
When Abe stalked about his fields, he did not pull weeds as in the past; what could be done with an acreage of two square miles? And his idle walks led to a new development in his life.
One night when the children were playing about the house, the weather being just right for the crops, neither too hot nor too cool, and the soil just right, neither too wet nor too dry, Abe’s oldest boy, now a child of eleven, spied his father north of the yard and, obeying an impulse, left Jim and the girls and joined that man who was almost a stranger to him. He took his hand and walked along as though he respected his worries and were getting God knew what enjoyment out of it.
Fruits of the Earth Page 10
