CHAPTER VI
THE PRAIRIE
A strong breeze swept the wide plain, blowing fine sand about andadding to Blake's discomfort as he plodded beside a jaded Indian ponyand a small cart. The cart was loaded with preserved provisions, campstores, and winter clothes; he had bought it and the pony because thatseemed cheaper than paying for transport. The settlement for which heand Harding were bound stands near the northern edge of the great sweepof grass which stretches across central Canada. Since leaving therailroad they had spent four days upon the trail, which sometimes ranplain before them, marked by dints of wheels among the wiry grass, andsometimes died away, leaving them at a loss in a wilderness of sand andshort poplar scrub.
It was now late in the afternoon and the men were tired of battlingwith the wind which buffeted their sunburned faces with sharp sand.They were crossing one of the high steppes of the middle prairie towardthe belt of pines and muskegs which divides it from the barrens of theNorth. The broad stretch of fertile loam, where prosperous woodentowns are rising fast among the wheatfields, lay to the south of them,and the arid tract through which they journeyed had so far noattraction for even the adventurous homestead pre-emptor.
They found it a bleak and cheerless country, crossed by the ravines ofa few sluggish creeks, the water of which was unpleasant to drink, anddotted at long intervals by ponds bitter with alkali. In places,stunted poplar bluffs cut against the sky, but, for the most part,there was only a rolling waste of dingy grass. The trail was heavy,the wheels sank deep in sand as they climbed a low rise, and, to makethings worse, the rounded, white-edged clouds which had scudded acrossthe sky since morning were gathering in threatening masses. This hadhappened every afternoon, but now and then the cloud ranks had broken,to pour out a furious deluge and a blaze of lightning. Hardinganxiously studied the sky.
"I guess we're up against another thunderstorm," he said. "My opinionof the mid-continental climate is singularly mean, but I'd put thisstrip of Canada near the limit. Our Texan northers are fierce whenthey come along; but here it blows all the time."
"We'll make camp, if you like; I don't feel very fresh," Blake replied.
"Not here," snapped Harding. "Where I stop I sleep, and I'm notparticularly enthusiastic about sheltering under the cart. Last timewe tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. Thetent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll goon until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff."
"Very well," Blake agreed. "I dare say we ought to find one in thehollow we got a glimpse of from the last rise; but we haven't had toput up with much discomfort yet."
"That's a matter of opinion. You haven't limped forty miles on a badfoot; but I'm not complaining. It's a whole lot to feel that we havestarted; doing nothing takes the sand out of me."
Blake had once or twice suggested that his comrade should ride, but thepony was overburdened and Harding refused. He explained that theycould not expect to sell it at the settlement if it were in a worn-outcondition; but Blake suspected him of sympathy for the patient beast.
They crossed the ridge and, seeing a wavy line of trees in the widehollow, quickened their pace. The soil was firmer, the scrub throughwhich the wheels crushed was short, and the trail led smoothly down aslight descent. This was comforting, for half the sky was barred withleaden cloud and the parched grass gleamed beneath it lividly white,while the light that struck a ridge-top here and there had a sinisterluridness. It was getting cold and the wind was dropping; and that wasnot a favorable sign.
Pushing the cart through the softer places, dragging the jaded pony bythe head, they hurried on and at last plunged through a creek with thetrees just beyond. A few minutes later they tethered the pony to leeof the cart, and set up their tent. While Blake was rummaging outprovisions, and Harding searching the bluff for dry sticks, they hearda beat of hoofs and a man rode up, leading a second horse. He got downand hobbled the horses before he turned to Blake.
"From the south? You're for Sweetwater?" he asked.
"Yes. How much farther is it?"
"You ought to make it in a day and a half," the stranger said. "I'llride in with you. My name's Gardner. I run a store and hotel atSweetwater, but I feel that I want to get out on the prairie now andthen, and as a horse was missing I went after him. A looker, isn't he?"
The man had a good-humored, sunburned face and an honest look, and hegladly acquiesced in Blake's suggestion that he join them instead ofcooking a separate supper.
The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressivestillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf; but the stillnesswas broken by a puff of icy wind which suddenly stirred the grass. Theharsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jaggedstreak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air wasfilled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the woods, rendingleaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightningflickered about the grass. Then the thunder died away and the hailgave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in theblast and small branches drove past the tent, where the men crouchedinside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamedalong the saturated grass from the huge sinking sun.
Harding, with Gardner's help, brought his pile of wood out of the tent,and soon made a fire; and it was getting dark, though a band oftranscendental green still burned upon the prairie's western edge, whenthey finished supper and, sitting round the fire, took out their pipes.The hobbled horses were quietly grazing near them.
"That's undoubtedly a fine animal," Blake observed. "Is it yours?"
"No; it belongs to Clarke's Englishman."
"Who's he? It's a curious way to speak of a fellow."
"It fits him," laughed Gardner. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide andbones--and that's all there'll be when the doctor gets through withhim. He's a sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."
"Then, who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.
"That's not so easy to answer; but he's a man you want to be friendswith if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfootyoung Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to startwith--and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal nowand then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers is more than Iknow."
"We met a fellow named Clarke at the Windsor not long ago. What's helike?"
When Gardner described him, Harding frowned.
"That's the man," he said.
"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium jointwould have been more in his line."
"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.
"Has a farm--and runs it well--about three miles back; but he's awaypretty often in the North, and at a settlement on the edge of the bushcountry. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curiouscrowd--Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."
Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found theman industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, aremarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them,and he understood that these now and then led their followers intooutbreaks of emotional extravagance.
"They make good settlers, as a rule," he commented. "But, as theydon't speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"
"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two orthree of them were mystics, and he was something in that line. He wasa doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn'thave done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us--good, bad,and pretty mixed--and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last.At first, some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses, andmade the women drag the plow; and they had one or two other habits thatbrought the police down on them. After that they've given no trouble,but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."
Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalancedmind is liable under the influence of excitement to indul
ge in crudedebauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarkeappeared to be, should take part in these excesses. He had, however,no interest in the fellow; and he turned the talk on to other matters,until it got cold and they went to sleep.
Starting early the next morning, they reached Sweetwater after anuneventful journey, and found it by no means an attractive place.South of it, rolling prairie ran back, grayish white with witheredgrass, to the skyline; to the north, straggling poplar bluffs andscattered Jack-pines crowned the summits of the ridges. A lake gleamedin a hollow, a slow creek wound across the foreground in a deep ravine,and here and there in the distance was an outlying farm. A row ofhouses followed the crest of the ravine, some built of small logs, andsome of shiplap lumber which had cracked with exposure to the sun, butall having a neglected and poverty-stricken air. The land was poor andthe settlement was located too far from a market. With leadenthunderclouds hanging over it, the place looked as desolate as thesad-colored waste.
Following the deeply rutted street, which had a narrow, plank sidewalk,they reached the Imperial Hotel--a somewhat pretentious, double-storiedbuilding of unpainted wood, with a veranda across the front. HereGardner took the pony from them and gave them a room which had nofurniture except a chair and two rickety iron beds. Before he leftthem he indicated a printed list of the things they were not allowed todo. Harding studied it with a sardonic smile.
"I don't see much use in prohibiting people from washing their clothesin the bedrooms when they don't give you any water," he remarked."This place must be about the limit in the way of cheap hotels."
"It isn't cheap," responded Blake; "I've seen the tariff."
They found their supper better than they had reason to expect, andafterward sat out on the veranda with the proprietor and one or two ofthe settlers who boarded at the hotel. The sun had set, and now andthen a heavy shower beat upon the shingled roof, but the western skywas clear and flushed with vivid crimson, toward which the prairierolled away in varying tones of blue. Lights shone in the windowsbehind the veranda, and from one which stood open a hoarse voicedrifted out, singing in a maudlin fashion snatches of an old music-hallditty.
"It's that fool Benson--Clarke's Englishman," Gardner explained."Found he'd got into my bed with his boots on, after falling down in amuskeg. It's not the first time he's played that trick; when he getsworse than usual he makes straight for my room."
"Why do you give him the liquor?" Harding inquired.
"I don't. He's a pretty regular customer, but he never gets too muchat this hotel."
"And there isn't another."
"That's so," Gardner assented, but he offered no explanation and Blakechanged the subject.
"Unless you're fond of farming, life in these remote districts istrying," he remarked. "The loneliness and monotony are apt to breakdown men who are not used to it."
"Turns some of them crazy and kills off a few," said a farmer, whoappeared to be well educated. "After all, worse things might happen tothem."
"It's conceivable," agreed Blake. "But what particular things were youreferring to?"
"I was thinking of men who go to the devil while they're alive.There's a fellow in this neighborhood who's doing something of thekind."
"Rot!" exclaimed a thick voice; and a man's figure appeared against thelight at the open window. "Devil'sh a myth; allegorolical gentleman,everybody knowsh. Hard word that--allegorolical. Bad word too;reminds you of things in the rivers down in Florida. Must be some inthe creek here; seen them, in my homestead."
"You go to bed!" said Gardner sternly.
"Nosh a bit," replied Benson. "Who you talking to?" He leanedforward, in danger of falling through the window. "Lemme out!"
"It's not all drink," Gardner explained. "He has something like shakesand ague now and then. Says he got it in India."
Benson disappeared, and a few moments afterward reeled out of the doorand held himself upright by one of the veranda posts.
"Now I'm here, don't let me interrupt, gentlemen," he said. "Niceplace if this post would keep still."
Warned by a sign from Gardner, the others ignored him; and Hardingturned to the farmer.
"You hadn't finished what you were saying when he disturbed you."
"I don't know that it was of much importance; speaking of degenerates,weren't we? We have a curious example of the neurotic here: a fellowwho makes a good deal of money by victimizing farmers who are forced toborrow when they lose a crop, as well as preying on young fools fromEngland; and, by way of amusement, he studies modern magic and indulgesin refined debauchery. It strikes me as a particularly unhallowedcombination."
"No sensible man has any use for hoodoo tricks and the people whopractise them," Harding said. "They're frauds from the start."
"Don't know what you're talking about!" Benson broke in. "Not alltricks. Seen funny things in the East; thingsh decent men better leavealone."
Letting go the post, he lurched forward; and as the light fell on hisface Blake started. He had been puzzled by something familiar in thevoice, and now he recognized the man, and had no wish to meet him. Hewas too late in hitching his chair back into the shadow, for Benson hadseen him and stopped with an excited cry.
"Blake of the sappers! Want to cut your old friendsh? Whatsh youdoing here?"
"It's a mutual surprise, Benson," Blake replied.
Benson, holding on by a chair back, smiled at him genially.
"Often wondered where you went to after you left Peshawur, old man.Though you got the sack for it, it wasn't your fault the ghazees brokeour line that night. Said so to the Colonel--can see him now, sittingthere, looking very sick and cut up, and Bolsover, acting adjutant,blinking like an owl."
"Be quiet!" Blake commanded in alarm, for the man had been a lieutenantof native infantry when they had met on the hill campaign.
Benson, however, was not to be deterred.
"This gentleman old friend of mine; never agreed with solemn oldColonel, but they wouldn't listen to me. Very black night in India;ghazees coming yelling up the hill; nothing would stop 'em. Riflescracking, Nepalese comp'ny busy with the bayonet; and in the thick ofit the bugle goes----"
Raising a hand to his mouth, he gave a shrill imitation of the call tocease firing, and then lost his balance and fell over the chair with acrash.
"Leave him to me," said Gardner, seizing the fallen man and with somedifficulty lifting him to his feet. After he pushed him through thedoor there were sounds of a scuffle, and a few minutes later Gardnercame back with a bruise on his face.
"He's quiet now, and the bartender will put him to bed," he said.
There was silence for the next few moments, for the group on theveranda had been impressed by the scene; then a man came up the steps.He was dressed in old brown overalls and carried a riding quirt, butHarding recognized him as the man they had met at the hotel in Montreal.
"Have you got Benson here?" he asked.
"Sure," said Gardner. "He's left his mark on my cheek. Why don't youlook after the fool? You must have come pretty quietly; I didn't hearyou until you were half-way up the steps."
"Light boots," Clarke answered, smiling; "I bought them from you. Idon't know that I need hold myself responsible for Benson, but I foundhe wasn't in when I rode past his place and it struck me that he mightget into trouble if he got on a jag."
He turned and nodded to Blake.
"So you have come up here! I may see you tomorrow, but if Benson's allright I'm going home now."
He went into the hotel and soon afterward they heard him leave byanother door. An hour later, when Harding and Blake were in theirroom, the keen young American brought his fist down on the bedpost withvehemence.
"I tell you," he said, "there's something queer about that fellowClarke--something even Gardner don't know. I don't like that lookthat's behind his eyes, not in 'em; and the less we see of him, Ireckon the better."