A few of the aspects have persisted in my memory, but it seems an impossible task to sketch them.
I was driving along through open fields. The trail led dimly ahead. Huge masses of snow with sharp, immovable shadows flanked it. The horses were very wide awake. They cocked their ears at everyone of the mounds; and sometimes they pressed rump against rump, as if to reassure each other by their mutual touch.
About halfway up from the northern horizon there lay a belt of faintest luminosity in the atmosphere – no play of northern lights – just an impalpable paling of the dark blue sky. There were stars, too, but they were not very brilliant. Way down in the north, at the edge of the world, there lay a long, low-flung line of cloud, black, scarcely discernible in the light of the moon. And from its centre, true north, there grew out a monstrous human arm, reaching higher and higher, up to the zenith, blotting the stars behind it. It looked at first – in texture and rigid outline – as the stream of straw looks that flows from the blower of a threshing machine when you stand straight in its line and behind it. But, of course, it did not curve down. It seemed to stretch and to rise, growing more and more like an arm with a clumsy fist at its end, held unconceivably straight and unbending. This cloud, I have no doubt, was forming right then by condensation. And it stretched and lengthened till it obscured the moon.
Just then I reached the end of my run to the west. I was nearing a block of dense poplar bush in which somewhere two farmsteads lay embedded. The road turned to the north. I was now exactly south of and in line with that long, twenty-mile trail where I had startled horses, rabbit, and partridge on the last described drive. I believe I was just twenty-five miles from the northern correction line. At this corner where I turned I had to devote all my attention to the negotiating of a few bad drifts.
When I looked up again, I was driving along the bottom of a wide road gap formed by tall and stately poplars on both sides – trees which stood uncannily still. The light of the moon became less dim, and I raised my eyes. That band of cloud – for it had turned into a band now, thus losing its threatening aspect – had widened out and loosened up. It was a strip of flocculent, sheepy-looking, little cloudlets that suggested curliness and innocence. And the moon stood in between like a goodnatured shepherd in the stories of old.
For a while I kept my eyes on the sky. The going was good indeed on this closed-in road. And so I watched that insensible, silent, and yet swift shifting of things in the heavens that seemed so orderly, pre-ordained, and as if regulated by silent signals. The clouds lost their sheeplike look again; they became more massive; they took on more substance and spine, more manliness, as it were; and they arranged themselves in distinct lines. Soldiers suggested themselves, not soldiers engaged in war, but soldiers drilling in times of peace, to be reviewed, maybe, by some great general. That central point from which the arm had sprung and which had been due north had sidled over to the northwest; the low-flung line along the horizon had taken on the shape of a long wedge pointing east; farther west it, too, looked more massive now – more like a rather solid wall. And all those soldier-clouds fell into a fan-shaped formation – into lines radiating from that common central point in the northwest. This arrangement I have for many years been calling “the tree.” It is quite common, of course, and I read it with great confidence as meaning “no amount of rain or snow worth mentioning.” “The tree” covered half the heavens or more, and nowhere did I see any large reaches of clear sky. Here and there a star would peep through, and the moon seemed to be quickly and quietly moving through the lines. Apparently he was the general who reviewed the army.
Again there came a shifting in the scenes. It looked as if some unseen hands were spreading a sheet above these flocculent clouds – a thin and vapoury sheet that came from the north and gradually covered the whole roof of the sky. Stars and moon disappeared; but not, so far, the light of the moon; it merely became diffused – the way the light from an electric bulb becomes diffused when you enclose it in a frosted globe. And then, as the sheet of vapour above began to thicken, the light on the snow became dim and dimmer, till the whole of the landscape lay in gloom. The sheet still seemed to be coming, coming from the north. But no longer did it travel away to the south. It was as if it had brought up against an obstacle there, as if it were being held in place. And since there was more and more of it pressing up – it seemed rather to be pushed now – it telescoped together and threw itself into folds, till at last the whole sky looked like an enormous system of parallel clothes-lines over all of which one great, soft, and loose cloth were flung, so that fold after fold would hang down between all the neighbouring pairs of lines; and between two folds there would be a sharply converging, upward crease. It being night, this arrangement, common in grey daylight, would not have shown at all, had it not been for the moon above. As it was, every one of the infolds showed an increasingly lighter grey the higher it folded up, and like huge, black udders the outfolds were hanging down. This sky, when it persists, I have often found to be followed within a few days by heavy storms. To-night, however, it did not last. Shifting skies are never certain signs, though they normally indicate an unsettled condition of the atmosphere. I have observed them after a blizzard, too.
I looked back over my shoulder, just when I emerged from the bush into the open fields. And there I became aware of a new element again. A quiet and yet very distinct commotion arose from the south. These cloth-clouds lifted, and a nearly impalpable change crept over the whole of the sky. A few minutes later it crystallised into a distinct impression. A dark grey, faintly luminous, inverted bowl stood overhead. Not a star was to be seen above, nor yet the moon. But all around the horizon there was a nearly clear ring, suffused with the light of the moon. There, where the sky is most apt to be dark and hazy, stars peeped out – singly and dimly only – I did not recognize any constellation.
And then the grey bowl seemed to contract into patches. Again the change seemed to proceed from the south. The clouds seemed to lift still higher, and to shrink into small, light, feathery cirrus clouds, silvery on the dark blue sky – resembling white pencil shadings. The light of the moon asserted itself anew. And this metamorphosis also spread upward, till the moon herself looked out again, and it went on spreading northward till it covered the whole of the sky.
This last change came just before I had to turn west again for a mile or so in order to hit a trail into town. I did not mean to go on straight ahead and to cut across those radiating road lines of which I have spoken in a former paper. I knew that my wife would be sitting up and waiting till midnight or two o’clock, and I wanted to make it. So I avoided all risks and gave my attention to the road for a while. I had to drive through a ditch and through a fence beyond, and to cross a field in order to strike that road which led from the south through the park into town. A certain farmstead was my landmark. Beyond it I had to watch out sharply if I wanted to find the exact spot where according to my informant the wire of the fence had been taken down. I found it.
To cross the field proved to be the hardest task the horses had had so far during the night. The trail had been cut in deep through knee-high drifts, and it was filled with firmly packed, freshly blown-in snow. That makes a particularly bad road for fast driving. I simply had to take my time and to give all my attention to the guiding of the horses. And here I was also to become aware once more of the fact that my horses had not yet forgotten their panic in that river drift of two hours ago. There was a strawstack in the centre of the field; at least the shape of the big, white mound suggested a strawstack; and the trail led closely by it. Sharp shadows showed, and the horses, pricking their ears, began to dance and to sidle away from it as we passed along its southern edge.
But we made it. By the time we reached the park that forms the approach to the town from the south, the skies had changed completely. There was now, as far as my eye would reach, just one vast, dark-blue, star-spangled expanse. And the skies twinkled and blazed down upon the earth with a v
eritable fervour. There was not one of the more familiar stars that did not stand out brightly, even the minor ones which you do not ordinarily see oftener than, maybe, once or twice a year – as, for instance, Vega’s smaller companions in the constellation of the Lyre, or the minor points in the cluster of the Pleiades.
I sometimes think that the mere fact of your being on a narrow bush-road, with the trees looming darkly to both sides, makes the stars seem brighter than they appear from the open fields. I have heard that you can see a star even in daytime from the bottom of a deep mine-pit if it happens to pass overhead. That would seem to make my impression less improbable, perhaps. I know that not often have the stars seemed so much alive to me as they did that night in the park.
And then I came into the town. I stayed about forty-five minutes, fed the horses, had supper myself, and hitched up again.
On leaving town I went for another mile east in the shelter of a fringe of bush; and this bush kept rustling as if a breeze had sprung up. But it was not till I turned north again, on the twenty-mile stretch, that I became conscious of a great change in the atmosphere. There was indeed a slight breeze, coming from the north, and it felt very moist. Somehow it felt homely and human, this breeze. There was a promise in it, as of a time, not too far distant, when the sap would rise again in the trees and when tender leaflets would begin to stir in delicate buds. So far, however, its more immediate promise probably was snow.
But it did not last, either. A colder breeze sprang up. Between the two there was a distinct lull. And again there arose in the north, far away, at the very end of my seemingly endless road, a cloud-bank. The colder wind that sprang up was gusty; it came in fits and starts, with short lulls in between; it still had that water-laden feeling, but it was now what you would call “damp” rather than “moist” – the way you often feel winter-winds along the shores of great lakes or along sea-coasts. There was a cutting edge to it – it was “raw.” And it had not been blowing very long before low-hanging, dark, and formless cloud-masses began to scud up from the north to the zenith. The northern lights, too, made their appearance again about that time. They formed an arc very far to the south, vaulting up behind my back, beyond the zenith. No streamers in them, no filtered rays and streaks – nothing but a blurred luminosity high above the clouds and – so it seemed – above the atmosphere. The northern lights have moods, like the clouds – moods as varied as theirs – though they do not display them so often nor quite so ostentatiously.
We were nearing the bridge across the infant river. The road from the south slopes down to this bridge in a rather sudden, s-shaped curve, as perhaps the reader remembers. I still had the moonlight from time to time, and whenever one of the clouds floated in front of the crescent, I drove more slowly and more carefully. Now there is a peculiar thing about moonlight on snow. With a fairly well-marked trail on bare ground, in summertime, a very little of it will suffice to indicate the road, for there are enough rough spots on the best of trails to cast little shadows, and grass and weeds on both sides usually mark the beaten track off still more clearly, even though the road lead north. But the snow forms such an even expanse, and the trail on it is so featureless that these signs are no longer available. The light itself also is too characterless and too white and too nearly of the same quality as the light reflected by the snow to allow of judging distances delicately and accurately. You seem to see nothing but one vast whiteness all around. When you drive east or west, the smooth edges of the tracks will cast sharply defined shadows to the north, but when you drive north or south, even these shadows are absent, and so you must entirely rely on your horses to stay on the trail. I have often observed how easily my own judgment was deluded.
But still I felt so absolutely sure that I should know when I approached the bridge that, perhaps through overconfidence, I was caught napping. There was another fact which I did not take sufficiently into account at the time. I have mentioned that we had had a “soft spell.” In fact, it had been so warm for a day or two that the older snow had completely iced over. Now, much as I thought I was watching out, we were suddenly and quite unexpectedly right on the downward slope before I even realized that we were near it.
As I said, on this slope the trail described a double curve, and it hit the bridge at an angle from the west. The first turn and the behaviour of the horses were what convinced me that I had inadvertently gone too far. If I had stopped the horses at the point where the slope began and then started them downward at a slow walk, we should still have reached the bridge at too great a speed; for the slope had offered the last big wind from the north a sheer brow, and it was swept clean of new snow, thus exposing the smooth ice underneath; the snow that had drifted from the south, on the other hand, had been thrown beyond the river, on to the lower northern bank; the horses skidded, and the weight of the cutter would have pushed them forward. As it was, they realized the danger themselves; for when we turned the second curve, both of them stiffened their legs and spread their feet in order to break the momentum of the cutter; but in spite of the heavy calks under their shoes they slipped on all fours, hardly able to make the bend on to the bridge.
They had to turn nearly at right angles to their last direction, and the bridge seemed to be one smooth sheet of ice. The moon shone brightly just then; so I saw exactly what happened. As soon as the runners hit the iced-over planks, the cutter swung out sideways; the horses, however, slipping and recovering, managed to make the turn. It was a worthwhile sight to see them strike their calks into the ice and brace themselves against the shock which they clearly expected when the cutter started to skid. The latter swung clear of the bridge – you will remember that the railing on the east-side was broken away – out into space, and came down with a fearful crash, but right side up, on the steep north bank of the river – just at the very moment when the horses reached the deep, loose snow beyond which at least gave them a secure footing. They had gone along the diagonal of the bridge, from the southwest corner, barely clearing the rail, to the northwest corner where the snow had piled in to a depth of from two to five feet on the sloping bank. If the ground where I hit the bank had been bare, the cutter would have splintered to pieces; as it was, the shock of it seemed to jar every bone in my body.
It seemed rather a piece of good luck that the horses bolted; the lines held; they pulled me free of the drift on the bank and plunged out on the road. For a mile or two we had a pretty wild run; and this time there was no doubt about it, either, the horses were thoroughly frightened. They ran till they were exhausted, and there was no holding them; but since I was on a clear road, I did not worry very much. Nevertheless, I was rather badly shaken up myself; and if I had followed the good advice that suggested itself, I should have put in for some time at the very next farm which I passed. The way I see things now, it was anything rather than safe to go on. With horses in the nervous condition in which mine were I could not hope any longer to keep them under control should a further accident happen. But I had never yet given in when I had made up my mind to make the trip, and it was hard to do so for the first time.
As soon as I had the horses sufficiently in hand again, I lighted my lantern, got out on the road, and carefully looked my cutter over. I found that the hardwood lining of both runners was broken at the curve, but the steel shoes were, though slightly bent, still sound. Fortunately the top had been down, otherwise further damage would have been sure to result. I saw no reason to discontinue the drive.
Now after a while – when the nervousness incident upon the shock which I had received subsided – my interest in the shifting skies revived once more, and again I began to watch the clouds. The wind was squally, and the low, black vapour-masses overhead had coalesced into a vast array of very similar but yet distinct groups. There was still a certain amount of light from the moon, but only just enough to show the texture and the grouping of the clouds. Hardly ever had I seen, or at least consciously taken note of, a sky that with its blackness and its massed multi
tudes of clouds looked so threatening, so sinister, so much like a battle-array. But way up in the northeast there were two large areas quite suffused with light from the north. They must have been thin cloud-layers in whose upper reaches the northern lights were playing. And these patches of light were like a promise, like a word of peace arresting the battle. Had it not been for these islands of light, I should have felt depressed when I looked back to the road.
We were swinging along as before. I had rested the horses by a walk, and to a casual observer they would have seemed to be none the worse for their fling at running away. But on closer scrutiny they would again have revealed the unmistakable signs of nervous tension. Their ears moved jerkily on the slightest provocation. Still, the road was good and clear, and I had no apprehensions.
Then came the sudden end of the trail. It was right in front of a farm yard. Clearly, the farmer had broken the last part of the road over which I had come. The trail widened out to a large, circus-shaped flat in the drifts. The snow had the ruffled appearance of being thoroughly tramped down by a herd of cattle. On both sides there were trees – wild trees – a-plenty. Brush lined the narrow road gap ahead; but the snow had piled in level with its tops. This had always been rather a bad spot, though the last time I had seen it the snow had settled down to about half the height of the shrubs. I stopped and hesitated for a moment. I knew just where the trail had been. It was about twenty-five feet from the fence of the field to the east. It was now covered under three to four feet of freshly drifted-in snow. The drift seemed to be higher towards the west, where the brush stood higher, too. So I decided to stay as nearly as I could above the old trail. There, even though we might break through the new snow, the older drifts underneath were likely to be firm enough.
Over Prairie Trails Page 14
