Chapter XV: Black Desolation

There were only four colours in Nature the next morning--an azure sky, a few banks of fleecy white cloud, some unburned patches of fawn-coloured grass, and a dead, black earth.

"The world's in mourning; let's hope it isn't for us," observed Mrs. Trailey to her husband as she viewed the funereal landscape from her tent door.

The transformation had left Trailey a little bewildered. He hated such rapid changes. From the wagon-pole, where he sat combing his whiskers and trimming his finger-nails, he looked round him as calmly as any surprised man can look.

"My dear," he said, "it's wonderful."

Mrs. Trailey breathed disgust. "It gets on my nerves," she grumbled. "The other day the earth was white; yesterday it was yellow; and now it's black."

"It will be green next, mamma," interposed a voice from inside the tent, adding, with marvellous logic: "You remember what a heavenly green the country was on the way to Liverpool, don't you?"

"Remember! How can I ever forget it? Wasn't I born and reared there? How you can ask such silly questions, I don't know. Gypsies and Hottentots would be more suitable for this country, I'm thinking"--this with a contemptuous glance at the surrounding waste. "They wouldn't show the dirt--like Sam says his shirt doesn't; but I notice that's getting greasy-looking round the neck. Not that he doesn't do plenty to make it so. He's a good, honest worker, that little fellow is. Does everything before you can speak. William! William! Fetch me a bucket of water from the slough. And mind you don't fall in."

Sighing deeply, William obeyed.

"Don't you think Mr. Tressider is a nice young man, too, mamma?" cooed the voice from within the tent insinuatingly.

"Yes, I've nothing particular to say against him. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, of course; but he can't help that, poor fellow. This country isn't for that kind, I'm----"

"Hut, mamma; don't you think Bert will get on?"

"Mr. Tressider may get on, if that's who you mean---especially if he is lucky enough not to marry a brazen hussy like most of the young women are nowadays." Mrs. Trailey paused, then continued: "And how long have you been Berting it, I'd like to know?"

Esther emerged from the tent and crept up quietly behind her mother, who was now stooping over a pailful of dirty dishes, and embraced her with rather an excessive display of emotion. As she stood up, the lines in Mrs. Trailey's face softened somewhat.

"There, that'll do. I know how you feel. He's all right; though I did think at first he was one of those educated know-nothings like your father says the Tories are always putting into Parliament. But I've changed my mind. The way he acted yesterday raised him in my estimation a lot. He'll be as good a man as Sam some day, perhaps--if he keeps off the drink."

"Mamma, he'll never drink again if I ask him not to."

"Ask him, then. And be sharp about it. But it's precious little you know about men's promises, young lady. Pie crusts, every one of them. Look at your father. Who'd ever have dreamt that he'd become a drunkard? A life-long abstainer, nearly. Why, he used to fly into awful tempers just after we were married, all because James Tipplin, the millionaire brewer, presented our chapel with a stained-glass window. There was a fearful to-do about it; and your father----"

"But, mamma, darling; Bertie cares for me sufficiently to keep all his promises. He says so."

"----And your father left our chapel and went over to the High Street Primitives; but, when he found that one of their trustees had a cousin who kept a grocer's shop with an outdoor beer license, he returned to the old place. Your father used to be dead against the drink traffic. He was the one they tried to persuade to warn the ministers not to preach temperance when Jimmy Tipplin was in his pew. But your father refused. They said they'd picked him because he was so full of tact. Tact! your father! H'm! What funny judges of men other men are. It takes a woman to read a man--a married woman, that is. Why, your father would have sold the Distillery shares his Uncle Toby left him if it hadn't been for me." Martha Trailey once more contemplated the scene around her. After ruminating for a little while, she went on: "But we've got them yet, thank goodness!--and when I look round at this great big wilderness, the colour of soot, and wonder what's going to become of us all, it's a blessing we have."

Mrs. Trailey's remarks here came to an end. Her spouse had toiled wearily into camp with a heavy bucket one-third filled with water containing some very interesting zoological specimens. Most of the Western fauna and flora, barring buffalo and pine trees, appeared to be represented therein. If there is any truth in the theory that man is distantly related to the lower forms of life, then the Barr Colonists must have swallowed a good many of their uncles and aunts whilst trekking from Saskatoon.

William Trailey set the pail down with such an enthusiastic thud of relief that some of the aquatic life slapped over on to his wife's hands, just as she was picking up a saucer out of the other pail to dry it.

Trailey wiped the accumulated sweat off his unwrinkled brow with his handkerchief and stammered a brief apology.

"Oh-h-h-h! Take it off! Take it off!" screamed Mrs. Trailey, as something resembling a miniature alligator fastened itself on the back of her hand. She was the sort of woman who found it very difficult not to become hysterical when she felt anything crawling on her flesh. If human beings are blood brothers to the worm, why does this abhorrence persist?

Esther, with marvellous presence of mind, pulled her skirts tightly round her legs and commenced to echo her mother's "Oh's." This display of filial affection and sympathy proved so soothing to Martha Trailey that she immediately stopped shrieking and merely continued to moan that she was being eaten alive. "Oh, take it away, somebody! I'm blood-poisoned! My arm's swelling as big as a tree already; I can feel it."

"My own darling mamma," sobbed Esther, throwing her arms round her mother's neck. "Oh, if Bertie were only here."

But Bertie wasn't there to slay the dragon. Romance missed fire for once. The redoubtable Bert, accompanied by Sam, was at that particular moment engaged in the much less spectacular task of washing his feet in an adjacent slough. William Trailey was there, though. Very fortunately, that modern knight had by now regained some of the strength he had lost through the exertion of carrying the heavy pail of water to the camp.

Although, as a boy, Trailey had been exceedingly ambitious to become either a mighty hunter of big game, or a butcher, he had never voluntarily killed anything in his life. Hating death with his whole soul in spite of the fact that a certain measure of business success in former days had been based on his rather harrowing suggestions of an early demise for the non-insured--he felt that something drastic must be done in the present instance, and that soon.

Martha Trailey was still shuddering and holding at arm's length that portion of her hand which she imagined was not yet eaten.

"Hold still, my dear," counselled her courageous husband, who, by means of a piece of thin stick, was vainly trying to dislodge the clinging slug. Then a brilliant idea flashed into his brain. With the palm of his hand he would crush flat the venomous creature.

"Keep perfectly still, Martha," he exhorted, and, before she could utter another wail, he smote his wife's hand with such vigour as pretty nearly to break the good lady's wrist.

Martha Trailey was just about to fall back swooning into her daughter's arms when she received this terrific smite; but the shock brought her very much to life again. Almost at once, she comprehended that it was her husband who was trying to do away with her hand, and not the slug. As quickly as light, she transferred her dislike from the miniature crocodile, now thoroughly squashed, to her heroic saviour.

"You cowardly beast! striking a poor, helpless woman like that! Aren't you satisfied with having ruined our home without being a low wife-beater as well? I'd be downright ashamed of myself if I were you. But, there"--abruptly changing her tone to one of commiseration--"perhaps it's not your fault. Your father was just the same. Mrs. Spreditt told me many a time that he used to treat your poor mother something shameful. She lived next door to them for years. She said it was through them quarrelling so much that her own husband spent so much time at the public-house. To think what your mother must have gone through! Poor woman! No wonder she died before her time"--William Trailey's mother had been carried off prematurely, aged seventy-seven--"But I shan't--not to please you; let me tell you that, William Trailey. And, heredity or no heredity, you're not going to bully me----"

"Mamma----" Esther commenced to remonstrate.

"----I've put up with it long enough," rattled on Mrs. Trailey, her anger fanning itself into a flame. "Ask Esther here if I haven't. She'll tell you. Your own daughter, too!--having to tell you your faults. I'd be ashamed. Thank goodness she takes after my side. She's a model, if I do say it myself. She----"

"Mamma! Why not let dad explain?"

"I only did what I thought was the best, my dear," interposed Trailey meekly. "Somebody had to kill the beastly thing. And even now you might get blood-poisoning."

"And you wouldn't care if I did. I know very well you've been wanting to get rid of me for years. I'm not blind. The trouble is----"

"Rubbish, my dear."

"----I've been too fond of you. But I'll go away. You just give me the money and I'll show you. It would suit you to see me go without a penny, wouldn't it? But I'm your wife, remember. Nobody would think so, though, if they knew the way you treated me. But I've got my rights. I'm no simpleton, if I have spoilt you. You--just--give--me--the--money, that's all," and, with this admirable attempt at a marital reconciliation, Martha Trailey dropped three large tears into the dirty pots.

Bits of fire still smouldered in the bluffs. The prairie was carpeted with ashes of burnt grass, which crunched beneath boots, and rose in a black, powdery dust. Clothes became permeated with it. The tramping horses and the wagon-wheels raised clouds of the stuff, and in the complete absence of wind it enveloped everything like an irritating fog. As the little convoy slowly made its way over the blackened ground, the men and women soon began to resemble nigger minstrels.

Fortunately, the fire, because of its speed, had left long, narrow strips of grass unburnt. Sloughs had turned aside the devouring blaze, which, in its raging haste to overwhelm everything, had occasionally blown itself completely out rather than retrace its course against the wind to lick up the patches it had missed.

It was upon these tiny areas of feed, and the coarse, rank, thatch grass standing above the water in the sloughs, that the hundreds of horses and oxen belonging to the colonists (and the freighters) had to depend for subsistence. A couple of weeks of this diet, followed by the new, sappy, green grass over which they positively went mad, put the finishing touches on scores of emaciated animals. In more ways than one, the scattered fragments of miserably thin pasture left by the fire were "the last straws" for many a dying horse.

Later on dozens of transport animals perished. Lack of care; the hardships of the two-hundred-mile trek; ignorant mishandling; swamp fever, and a feed ration entirely devoid of oats, put out of commission for a very long time even those which survived.

It was in the region where the Trailey party almost met with disaster by fire that the Rev. Isaac M. Barr gave final and complete demonstration that, although by profession a parson, he was by nature really a highwayman. He tried to corner the oat market for the benefit of the heroic colonists and their suffering horses. He bought all the oats available in the district at forty cents a bushel, and, without handling them, or even seeing them, left instructions with the vendors that they were to be retailed to the members of his party at one dollar per bushel. Such a modest profit must nearly have broken his Shylock heart.

By this time many of the colonists' horses were nothing but staggering bags of skeletons. Galled, neglected, literally dying through exposure, lack of care and proper feed, their ghastly condition wrung the spirit of one, Peter Paynter, from whom Barr had purchased most of the oats, and through whose yard the trail the colonists were following led.

Ordinarily a taciturn man, Peter Paynter's temper could flare up like a rocket, and die away as quickly. He was a true Westerner, and an ex-Mounted Policeman. When he deigned not to ignore the victims of his wrath, he didn't speak to them, he absolutely seared them. No man did more for the trekking Barr Colonists. He stretched his generous nature to the limit.

Paynter knew very little about religion, less still about theology, and practically nothing at all about the preaching of either. But his innate goodness was there all the same. It was like his skin--with him all the time; not like his Sunday suit, packed away and quite likely badly creased. His one fetish was the drawing in his mind, with a very sharp indelible pencil, a clean, straight line dividing right from wrong. This line put Barr well on the latter side.

The Trailey party happened to be camped near Paynter's ranch when the Rev. Isaac M. Barr (travelling light, with one companion and a big bag of oats) passed through on his way to Colony Headquarters. Besides point-blank refusing to stain his soul with the despicable oat deal, Paynter emptied his mind of its accumulation of bitter scorn all over the reverend philanthropist, very nearly making a martyr of him.

Barr was already beginning to look a good deal like a fugitive. He was taking everybody's blame, of course. That is one of the advantages of being a leader. In vivid language, many colonists had castigated him pretty severely. But Peter Paynter handled him pitilessly. The cold, steely eyes of the experienced Westerner read all the signs of the long trek. Unerringly, he gauged the misfortunes and hardships awaiting the colonists. Every wagon belonging to the party passed his door. The story of the struggle of the men, and the heroism of the women, was writ large for him. Mrs. Paynter squandered her foodstuffs, and her Irish sympathy. This generous-hearted couple stamped their name ineffaceably on the memories of scores of grateful Barr Colonists.

Over the oat transaction, Paynter dissected Barr into little pieces with his flaying speech. When the latter gathered up the bits, he found that there was a small fragment of his anatomy left over. Being somewhat at a loss to know what to do with it, Peter must have suggested that he make a tail of it, for immediately afterwards Sam and Bert saw him speeding into the setting sun, with something tucked ingloriously between his legs.