Chapter III: Saskatoon--Acquiring Transport

In the evening of April 17, 1903, at precisely twenty minutes before seven o'clock, the third of the C.P.R. special passenger trains carrying Barr Colonists steamed gingerly across the old wooden bridge spanning the South Saskatchewan River and clattered into Saskatoon.

The weather was gorgeous. The middle of April had only just slid by, yet the sun shone dazzlingly out of an azure sky. Far-distant objects etched themselves in the magic air with marvellous visibility. Not one single thing in Nature marred the colonists' arrival.

From a tumbled heap of unguarded bell tents, each of which was tucked, pegs and all, into a bag, the settlers helped themselves freely. Long before several hundred of these conical canvas shelters were coaxed--with many imprecations, and much laughter--to stand erect, the sun had disappeared below the edge of the world, leaving behind it a glorious topaz-flaked sky, which slowly turned to purple before melting into mysterious night.

That morning, the hamlet had jumped out of bed with a population of a trifle over a hundred to its credit--or, allowing for a few of the more important citizens being counted twice, say a level one hundred. At night, it retired to rest boasting two thousand. Saskatoon's eclipse was over.

The camp sprang into vivid life early the next morning. There was much to be done. The faces of the natives whom the colonists came in contact with were all burned a deep nut brown, the result of the reflection of the sun's heat off late winter snows. "Everybody's been to the seaside," Bert decided to himself. This tanned appearance, coupled with the narrowing of their eyes, which was caused by squinting through the glare, imparted a by no means unsightly aboriginal aspect to the natives.

The "Barr-lambs" were soon approached by those of the shrewd-looking traders who had horses, or oxen, or something or other to sell. Everything in the district--even portions of the "town" itself--was for sale. No one seemed to mix sentiment with ownership. A practical sort of philosophy, that!--especially when one remembers that one is on earth for only sixty or seventy years.

Most of the males of the Barr party plunged into orgies of buying. It is quite safe to state that never in the history of colonization in Western Canada has such a multitude of wealthy and free-handed spenders been gathered in one place.

It was Saskatoon's day out. Even Fate itself took sides, neglecting its duties of determining the "Heads or tails?" of existence elsewhere on earth, in order to patronize the little hamlet.

Prodigious efforts were made to satisfy the many needs of the colonists. From a baker's shop but slightly larger than a fair-sized room, a man worked day and night in an endeavour to keep the camp supplied with bread. It was an impossible task. So flapjacks, pancakes and bannock bread were concocted.

Weird experiences of the widest variety crowded thick and fast about the ingenuous Englishmen. One young fellow, a pale, thin-cheeked grocer's assistant from somewhere in Sussex, bought a stallion, three sections of drag harrows, and a pair of spurs within twenty-four hours of reaching Saskatoon. The vendor of the horse was an Ontario man. He said the animal's official name was "Napoleon Bonyparte," and that it possessed (which is more than the Emperor himself did) a pedigree longer than from Guelph to Owen Sound.

After about a week, the grocer's assistant rechristened his stallion "Beelzebub," and then traded it off to a man at the livery stable for a second-hand stock-saddle. So what with the harrows, and the cowboy saddle, and the spurs, not mentioning the experience he was buying, he was doing pretty well, particularly as his mind, in its more rational moments, leaned strongly to mixed farming. It was severe pressure from his neighbours in camp, really, which induced him to sever his connection with "Beelzebub." Being springtime, the animal used to plunge about and squeal a lot, keeping tired people awake at night.

Teams of vicious-looking mustangs, hitched to brand-new wagons, careered up and down the main street of the tiny hamlet like runaway fire engines. The more speedy of them, not recognizing the uses of reverse, wheeled in great circles about the adjacent prairie. Others, not so numerous, but sufficiently so to prevent monotony, probably sensing a two-hundred-mile journey into the vast unknown, gave full bent to their natural proclivities for doing their heaviest pulling in reverse. These were called baulkers, which, translated into English stable talk, means jibbers. A few teams were determined neither to back up nor advance, but simply stood stock-still, at the same time wearing a stupid but comic air of the most abject self-pity.

Philosophical oxen of biblical aspect, contrasting vividly with their vendors' appearance, waddled along in yokes, or in meagre harness, or lay down in various attitudes of peaceful somnolence, apparently dreaming of a bovine heaven carpeted with luscious green grass.

A whole trainload of machinery was being unloaded. The colonists queued up, and in some instances actually fought, for the wagons, which were in huge demand. Spot cash was paid for everything--a proceeding which almost paralyzed the natives at first, but, true to their characteristic adaptability, they quickly grew accustomed to the miracle.

"Wot are we goin' to get to our land wiv?" queried Sam, the third or fourth evening after they reached Saskatoon--"hoxen or 'orses?"

They were talking things over in Bert's bell tent, which was one of the hundreds flecking the yellow prairie west of the then Canadian Pacific Railway line--the Regina-Prince Albert branch.

Bert adopted an air of supreme wisdom, ridiculously unnatural in one so young and green.

"I rather fancy horses, myself," he replied; "although they do say those bally bullocks can get along without anything to eat."

Sam sniffed. "I'm fer the gee-gees. Know a bit abaht 'em an' all. My ole man used ter drive a blinkin' cab. 'E once drove the Juke of----"

"Damn the Duke! What's that to do with it? The question is--can you hold your end up when it comes down to business relations with these horse dealer chaps?"

"'Old my end up in an 'orse deal! Wot d'yer tyke me for--a ruddy vetingary surgeon?"

"Perhaps we'd better commission one of the government men," observed Bert. "I hear they are familiar with horse-flesh, and, being in the colonial civil service, they are sure to be as straight as a gun-barrel."

The discussion was shelved for the time being, but the next day they took pot-luck at a team. Saskatoon was well awake by the time they plunged head-first into the turbulent sea of horse-trading.

"Ow old is them 'orses?" says Sam to a tall, dark man, eyeing a grey and a buckskin with wise unwisdom. The team was tied to the side of a second-hand wagon, and was dressed in a rather ornate set of harness plentifully bespattered with unpolished brass knobs and things.

The vendor wore a tranquil appearance almost approaching benevolence, as though he might have a New Testament tucked away in his pocket somewhere. Not being particularly good at arithmetic, Sam's question had completely stumped him. However, he spat slowly a couple of times, to give himself a chance to reckon up, and then said:

"Eight and nine."

Only a confirmed cynic would have doubted him, he was so obviously sincere.

Presently Bert says: "How much?"

The tall, dark man's face was like a mask, but an acute observer might have noticed that his conscience wiggled a bit at Bert's abrupt question. He soon put that in its place, however.

"Five hundred for the outfit," he said, as coolly as though it were the middle of winter. Then Sam and Bert, looking frightfully sagacious, sidled away for a private consultation.

"Wot abaht it?" whispered Sam. "Ain't that grey 'orse got a wickid eye? The yeller 'un looks a faithful sort of animal, though."

Right in the middle of some profound thinking by Bert, whose father's hard-earned money was soon to be involved, a short, thick-set man, dressed in a pair of faded blue overalls and a week's growth of reddish whiskers, slouched up and spoke to them.

"You boys wantin' a team?"

"We are, my son," returned democratic Sam, cheerily. Bert, not having been introduced, was naturally annoyed at the rude intrusion. With true "Arbuthnot" training, he drew back a little, and kept silent. But his English aloofness rolled off the fellow's gall as easily as mercury off a sheet of glass.

"That pair there," said the thick-set man, pointing at the grey and buckskin, "is the best team in North America. I drove 'em all day yesterday, so I ought a know. Draw! Say, boys, you just oughta see that there grey get down and heave."

Sam hid his suspicion behind a vacuous grin, his big, rather ugly, mouth opening like a cheap purse.

"Wot are you gettin' aht of this?" he asked.

"Not a dam' nickel. I'm only trying to do you boys a good turn"--then, approaching the team, the stranger exclaimed--"Ho, there, George!" and he caught hold of the buckskin's tail, twisted it sharply aside, then in a charmingly familiar manner smacked the inside of the animal's left thigh several times.

The horse, George, lifted his foot dangerously. A stored-up kick or two lurked somewhere about; but the supreme self-confidence, and personal magnetism, of the man in reddish whiskers completely awed him. Then he put his foot down again as meekly as a half-dead cab horse might have done.

Sam surveyed the playful stranger's overalls, then his discoloured sweater, then his whiskery chin.

"So you are one of them there good samaringtons wot goes abaht the purple world doin' kind hactions, are yer?"

The stranger appeared somewhat surprised at the scepticism so plainly stamped on Sam's ugly face.

"If you boys don't believe me," he protested, "don't, that's all. And I ain't no good samarington, either. That's a new one on me. I'm a liveryman. I work at that barn over there," and he waved his hand towards a mass of sway-backed, neoteric architecture of noble dimensions which graced one of Saskatoon's main thoroughfares. Evidently deeply grieved at being misunderstood, he made himself look as much as possible like a martyr being condemned to the stake, and then walked off in the direction of the livery-stable.

"That man's an 'ostler, Bert," remarked Sam, "but 'e's tellin' the trufe. The silly fool's as innercent as us. Why 'e don't even know wot a good samarington is!"

"Obnoxious fellow," muttered Bert, "poking his nose into a gentlemanly transaction, like that."

"Never mind 'im," returned Sam. "Let's buy the 'orses. They seem 'armless. An' just look at the neck of that grey 'un!"

The tall, dark owner of the team was patiently waiting. Not a muscle of his face moved. Not the slightest hint did he give as to whether he were a lying horse dealer, or a recently converted cavalryman.

Bert, assuming an air of perspicacity positively weird in its gravity, went over and felt of the horses' legs--the front ones, luckily. After conducting a very minute search for blemishes, and, finding no indications of spavins or poll evil on their kneecaps, he bought and paid for them.

Coldly the owner accepted the cash, rolled it up and shoved it into his pocket, spat once with great satisfaction, never said Thank you, Go to blazes, nor uttered a single one of the many similar pleasantries which are reputed to smooth the path of trade, and then calmly sauntered away towards the livery-barn.

The ghost of a smile drifted fleetingly across his inscrutable features as he peeled a ten-dollar bill from the outside of a thick roll and handed it to the reddish-whiskered tactician. That model of truth and virtue was wasting some of his valuable time filling a very large wheelbarrow with exceedingly small forkfuls of horse dung in the main gangway of the overcrowded livery-barn.

"That's two hundred and a quarter you cleaned up on that deal--eh?" he grinned, as he folded the ten-spot about eight times and thrust it into an empty tobacco sack. "Ha-ha-ha!" he gurgled. "Pretty good! Pretty good! How would it be if we went along to the Queen's and had one on the green Englishmen?"

This rather clever suggestion appeared to meet with the tall, dark stoic's silent but sincere approval, for immediately they both walked out of the barn as though to carry it into effect.

"What's that silly ass intend to do about his wagon and harness, I wonder?" demanded Bert of his little partner, a few minutes after the vendor's departure. "Surely he doesn't expect us to take care of them for him. Run across and ask him what we're to do with them. Sam!"

Rightly or wrongly, Sam had all his life been trained to regard the striving after excessive purism in business as an infallible sign of approaching idiocy.

"Say nothink wotever abaht 'em. If 'e don't worry arter 'em 'isself, why should we? Come on, let's slip orf before 'e begins ter think abaht rememberin' 'e's forgot 'em."

Bert almost blushed at the dishonourable proposal. But he was much too sensitively constructed to appear ultra-virtuous, so he silently acquiesced.

With a little instruction, and less assistance, from two or three interested onlookers, they hitched the horses to the wagon and drove off to purchase a schooner-top. Something must have propitiated Fate. The horses went along all right. Though being almost old enough to vote, they were perfectly honest.