Chapter IV: Saskatoon--Buying Machinery

Bert's parents had always been secretly proud of their son as a correspondent. Faithfully he wrote to them from M---- Grammar School once or twice each year. But, later on, whilst articled to an immensely wealthy firm of lawyers at Sheffield, he had communicated with his father much more frequently.

Always his requests were granted. Money requests they were chiefly--for Sir Felix Hamingway, great nonconformist, lawyer, magistrate, knight, Chairman of Directors of Tipsey's Pale Ales, Limited, generous giver to both Home and Foreign Missions, and Bert's employer, had made it a fixed rule never to pay his first-year articled clerks more than fifteen shillings and sixpence weekly. His mental excuse for being so profligate in the matter of salaries was that his minister's ebony-skinned, woolly-headed protégés residing along the banks of the Zambezi were such a drain on his limited purse.

Therefore, being so accustomed to letter writing, it was second nature for Bert to send home a message from Saskatoon. In the evening of the exciting day distinguished by the purchase of a team, he scribbled a missive to his mother, by candle-light. Its contents went something like this:

"I trust you and dad and the girls are in the pink. To-day I have bought a pair of horses, a grey and a sort of blonde, and have named them Tempest and Kruger. Rather jolly names, don't you think?

"From the address mentioned above, you will see that I am writing this from Saskatoon. It is a bare spot, and was not of much importance before we Barr Colonists came. It is merely a score or so of glorified packing-cases sitting bleakly on the prairie beneath a great blue arch of sky, and ringed about with a distant horizon clear-cut as the edge of a silhouette. The South Saskatchewan River, which just now is gorged with, and vomiting, great blocks of ice, runs close by. The town (as they call it here) is threaded on the railway line which connects Regina with Prince Albert, pretty much as a small, dirty-coloured bead is strung on a bit of wire.

"The Canadians, mother, seem to have an odd way of disfiguring a patch of their otherwise decent country. In Yorkshire, when the inhabitants wish to ruin some lovely landscape, they sink a coal-pit, and, if that fails, build a blast furnace. In London, as you well know, they rely more on slums for miasmal effects. Out here, apparently, they nail a few boards together, call it a town, and the ghastly work is done.

"And this fiercely searching Canadian sunlight shows everything up so. Why, there was actually a dead dog stretched out on a vacant piece of ground beside one of the shops where I purchased some stuff to-day. Probably a dead dog is an object of veneration in these parts, but I hardly think so, because on this particular waste patch there was a big signboard planted, bearing the words--THIS LOT FOR SALE.

"If there is such a place as purgatory, mother--and I know you deny it--Barr is galloping there fast. He has stepped rather heavily on the crooked end of this scheme of his, and the other end has tipped up and dealt him an awful whack in the face.

"His plans are boomeranging dangerously. The party is out here, and that's about all one can say. Right at this moment, in the next tent to my own, a matter of ten yards away perhaps, there are two men--and two wives, presumably--screaming at one another with rage over what they persist in calling, in their queer dialect, 'Barr's perfidery.' It is excruciatingly funny.

"As for me, I'm tolerably well pleased with everything so far. I've adopted a partner. Sam Potts is his name--an awfully decent little chap, and smart as a whip. In his own vulgar way he is a gentleman, though not the least bit educated. And yet he seems to know a great deal. He is energetic, uglier than some sins, very irreligious, for he swears terribly, but tremendously amusing. You'll hear more about him from me, I dare say.

"The Barr Colony community hospital is slowly taking shape. It is a bell tent. A big, handsome doctor with splendid eyes, but with a Jewish cast of face, is in charge. I did wonder for a minute whether it mightn't be worth my while to contract some sort of mild, lingering illness, so that I might become a hospital patient, and enjoy a bit of comfort, and a square meal or two; but, after noticing a fearful-looking bucksaw, and an axe, leaning up against the tent, and also happening to catch a side-view of a nurse's face, I have changed my mind, and am now, I'm very pleased to say, really feeling magnificently fit.

"We are starting out on our two-hundred-mile trek to-morrow morning, perhaps--D.V., as you sometimes say.

"Mother, dear! What do you think! I HAVE GOT MY LAND; a charming place--at least I think so. Please tell dad, tactfully, that I expect to run short of money soon.

"And now for bed. More next time. Your affectionate son, Bertie."

* * * * * * * *

Next morning, over coffee and bacon, cooked by Sam on a small rectangular tin stove, the two young men discussed their arrangements for the immediate future.

Between a mouthful of solids, and a big gulp of steaming coffee, Sam said:

"We've got to 'ave 'ay an' oats fer them 'orses on this trek of ourn."

"Not to mention tucker for ourselves," added Bert thoughtfully, as he veneered a chunk of bread with about a quarter of a pound of butter; "besides, something to work the land with, I suppose. Ranching for me, though."

"Rarnchin'--'ell!" scoffed Sam. "You wait till yer knows somethink abaht 'orses, first. Why, I don't suppose yer knows 'ow many young 'uns an 'orse 'as at a litter, do yer?"

"Why are you always so foolishly analytical? What the dickens does it matter how many they have at a litter! The more the merrier, I say. With polo ponies at two hundred pounds a head; and--"

"Ever kep' rabbits?"

"No."

"White mouses?"

"No."

"Pidgins?"

"Good Lord, no!"

"Well, yer don't know nothink. Yore edgucation's a fraud. Wot's the good of Lating, an' law, an' matthewmaticks, an' all that sort of stuff nah? Like I told my ole man when 'e was goin' to 'ave me edgucated: 'No charnce, guv'ner,' I says; 'I don't want ter be no swell, an' ride abaht in carriages over the skelingtons of the bloomin' poor. No,' I says, 'I----'"

"You infernal blithering idiot! Even though you can't talk like a gentleman, do for heaven's sake try to reason like one. Give me a cigarette."

Sam threw a packet of Gold Flakes across to his partner, afterwards taking and lighting one himself.

"Fed the 'orses this mornin'?" he asked.

"No."

"Watered 'em?"

"No."

"Bin ter see if they've 'opped it?"

"No."

"Where did yer get this rarnchin' idea from?"

"It told you all about it in the government pamphlet Barr sent to me."

"An' it told yer abaht a lot more rot. But did it say anythink abaht that lovely cabing on the boat?--or abaht them 'undreds of seasick dawgs 'owling up on deck?--till that chap from Belfarst chucked all but thirty of 'em hoverboard one dark night. Did it say anythink abaht us 'avin' ter scrap ter waggins? No. An' wot abaht that land of ourn? 'Ow d'we know some sneak ain't bin an' gorne an' pinched it? Do try ter reason like a----"

Sam's harangue was abruptly interrupted. Half a loaf of bread caught him with great precision on the side of the head, the valuable missile afterwards ricochetting into the side of the tent.

After a pause filled with broad grins, he went on: "You fancy yerself wiv a pen, don't yer? I saw yer writin' ter yer gel larst night. Write dahn a list of the things we want, an' let's go an' get 'em, an' then slope orf ter see our land."

"Good idea," said Bert, who at once pulled a pencil from his pocket, and on the back of a crumpled envelope commenced to write down a list of the articles they each thought might be useful.

"Cigarettes," Bert said first, jotting the item down.

"Plagh an' 'arrows," said Sam.

"Yes; and tinned milk, by Jove!"

"Oats, an' 'ay--an' a chain, an' a rope."

"Postage stamps."

"A blinkin' 'atchit; an' some matches, an' a buckit."

"Brown boot polish," said Bert, gradually becoming inspired.

"A shovel--an' wot abaht a garding rake?"

"Bally rot! Be sensible. Tooth powder, and--er--a couple of bottles of Scotch for medicinal purposes--or perhaps we'd better make it three."

"'Ear, 'ear!" cried Sam warmly, standing up and stretching himself; "but come on, that's enough, or else we's'll 'ave to 'ire one of them black-lookin' savages wiv pigtails 'angin dahn their backs to 'elp us ter cart it up to our land."

Before six o'clock that morning, whilst Bert had in his dreams been riding after bands of spotted stallions over miles of rolling prairie, Sam had risen, washed himself, and attended to their team, which was tied to the wagon just outside the tent.

Bert rinsed his hands and face in the enamelled basin which rested on three crossed sticks stuck in the ground. Considering the bowl contained the day before yesterday's soap-scummed water, he was able to make himself passably clean. He brushed his velvet cords; smoothed his yellow hair before a miniature mirror which dangled from the tent-pole, and emerged into the open bare-headed.

Sam, disdaining contact with water twice in one morning, had again slipped out to see if the horses were tied securely. He was continually haunted by the fear of their escape on to the fenceless wastes which rolled away to the far-off horizon, and to unknown distances beyond. The grey and buckskin had nosed through the remains of a slight feed of hay, and were industriously nibbling at the wisps of withered grass beneath.

Several hundred tents, most of which resembled their own, were scattered about the plain in haphazard profusion. A few new marquees reared themselves above humbler fellows, their size, and newness, and milk-white colour faintly suggesting ostentation.

Amateurish campfires filled the sparkling air with whiffs of pleasant-smelling wood smoke. A dozen or so of dogs, brought all the way from England, and wearing brass-mounted collars made of leather which would still be in its prime when the harness with which the colonists were decking their teams would be thrown away, barked and whined after the few lean but good-natured native canines.

Women, some enchantingly neat, others sloppily untidy, moved about and in and out of the tents over unfamiliar tasks. Some of the ladies resented the free and easy mixing of castes. These blue-blooded females tried to prevent their own sweet offspring from fraternizing with the far less charming kids of other people. But democratic childhood would have none of it, and went yelling and scampering about the camp, disturbing the everlasting siestas of phlegmatic oxen, and running frightful risks with the heels and even more treacherous fore feet of hypocritical bronchos.

Men, who were blissfully ignorant of the mysteries of Canadian harness, taught others, who were more so, how to do things. Every little while a knowing native would win for himself some sweet-tasting admiration by initiating a crowd of wondering colonists in the art of inserting an iron bit between the tight-clenched teeth of a stupid horse with its head about three miles up in the air.

Barr's G.H.Q. marquee was a seething whirl of disorganized organization. The troubles and complaints of dissatisfied and grumbling colonists came sliding and tumbling and breaking over the leader's harassed head in avalanches of inquiries, and cascades of protest.

Flamank could do no other than bob about on the storm-tossed sea of trouble like a light cork. At every twist and turn he was shot at with unanswerable queries. Both going and coming he was riddled with broadsides of acrimonious remarks. Though let down continually by his chief; constitutionally excitable; with all the clerical work connected with a small army of mutinous colonists passing through his hands, and head; a perpetual target for the darts of ignorance, and innocence; yet, in spite of all, he survived eventually to become the Colony's first postmaster.

The Rev. George Exton Lloyd, veteran of the Riel Rebellion, moved about with hands tied, inwardly boiling with suppressed indignation, but absolutely impotent without the mantle of authority. Why a man of his experience, and punch, and unbounded energy didn't throw up, or blow up, or attempt to wring Barr's neck, is incomprehensible.

The Rev. Isaac M. Barr himself, founder and head of the scheme, beginning early to lose his grip, copied many a worse, and better, man, before and since, by seeking solace in whiskey. Booze was procurable at Saskatoon. But the mellowest of whiskies, not even excepting those which are renowned for their subtle, inspirational qualities, will inevitably fail when relied upon to do a job like the one Barr had tackled. Barr should have known that whiskey--like fire, and some leaders of enterprises--makes a very fine servant, but a poor master.

The non-abstaining members of the party--and there were at the very least two or three--showered deserving praise on the Canadian system of dispensing drinks, a method which allowed them to help themselves from bottles--some with suspiciously dirty labels--of Scotch, whilst leaning on a bar psychologically contrived to be of exactly the correct height.

The price of the drinks was another matter, though. The Englishmen from Yorkshire and other northern counties gave themselves some horrible shocks by translating cents into pence--like some of them are doing twenty-five years afterwards. But, generally speaking, the quality and quantity of the liquid refreshment induced the most comment, and heartburning.

As Sam and Bert threaded their way through the litter of the camp and its environs, so suggestive of a busy horse-fair, they unconsciously gulped into their lungs large draughts of winy spring air. From a cloudless, turquoise sky, a glittering sun shed waves of summer-like warmth. Cooling breezes flowed gently through the heated camp.

As far as eye could see, small glistening snow-banks, relics of winter's blizzards, flecked the tawny plains in silvery clusters. From beneath snowy mounds, the sudden heat sent tiny streams of water trickling and biting their way over the thawed-out surface of the soil. Following the easiest channels, these transient brooks went gurgling on, joined with others, mixed, laughed, swelled, grew most important as they bubbled along, then all at once--like the colonists themselves did later on--rushed blindly into an ambushed slough.

Before crossing the railway line to enter the village, Sam and Bert lingered a while to hear the Rev. Isaac M. Barr addressing--and being addressed by--a large group of acrid-tempered colonists.

"... Just listen to me, men," he was saying earnestly; "the worst is now almost over. Have faith! Follow your leaders into the land of promise, where independence is waiting for those who will work. My transportation company is not dead, as some mischief-makers would have you believe..."

The reverend gentleman was standing on somebody's big black cabin-trunk. He looked worried. His clerical spruceness was fraying at the edges a bit. Pausing nervously to open a folded sheet of paper--a telegram from St. John appertaining to the trifling matter of five hundred tons of missing luggage--he took advantage of the break in his speech to moisten his lips with his tongue. They were dry, like ashes.

Beating up against the pleasant breeze, fragments of a song being sung uproariously, struck his tired ears in variable gusts of sound, now faint, now loud. With perfectly diabolical clearness, the ribald voices wafted verse after verse across to the crowd.

"Barr, Barr, wily old Barr,
He'll do you as much as he can;"

"Men!" shouted the dispirited leader in a desperate attempt to smother the song's ugly significance. "Be British----"

With a crowd's usual cruelty, a few of the bravest cowards jeered and mocked. Meanwhile, relentlessly, like the toppling crest of a wave breaking on the beach, the verse went on--

"You bet he will collar,
Your very last dollar,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."

The crowd burst into loud laughter. Barr, with a mechanical sort of effort, tried bravely to compel his own strained features to smile, but he failed miserably.

In a bell tent, about a hundred yards off, half a dozen throaty prodigies were seated comfortably on the ground with a nearly-emptied bottle of Saskatoon's choicest wassail nice and handy. In ironical tones, they ripped out the chorus of the song, totally unaware of the devastating effect it was having on Barr's meeting.

"Farm, farm, do let us farm,
We're sure that the most of us can;
We'll plough and we'll sow,
And we'll reap and we'll mow,
In the valley of the Sas-katch-e-wan."

"The Nautch Girl" was the particular musical comedy honoured with the supplying of the air in which this marvellously poetical masterpiece was rendered. The author of the "poem" had, between spasms of biliousness aboard the _Lake Manitoba_, composed eighteen stanzas of it, before crawling away to die.

Like most early Barr Colony experiences, this particular incident at Saskatoon was pathetic, yet at the same time comic. With a dreary gesture of hopelessness, Barr stepped down from the trunk and hurried within his tent. Contemptuously, the crowd gradually dispersed.

Half pityingly, Sam murmured--"Gawd!" He bore Barr no special malice. Indeed, if anything, he was very grateful to the reverend leader for being the means of his separating himself from his sordid environment in London.

"I feel a bit sorry for the old boy," was Bert's only comment, as the pair headed towards the village.

Stepping into Saskatoon's main street, a wide, unkempt, dirt-metalled thoroughfare, irregularly bordered on one side with unpainted wooden structures, and running alongside the railway station, Bert and Sam set about purchasing their goods.

The few business men were doing a roaring trade. To most of the colonists, prices mattered little--even though these were occasionally inflated. Both English and Canadian money was abundant. A composite odour of cheese, boots, shirts, soap, men and mice permeated all the stores, branding them with a smell as characteristic as that possessed by the interior of an Indian's teepee.

Suddenly descending upon a hamlet containing only one hundred people, this horde of immigrant buyers, with the almost as numerous crowd of traders and hangers-on, all spending their proportion of wealth with true prairie prodigality, created a sort of premature heaven for Saskatoon's storekeepers.

Groups of idlers lounged about everywhere--in the stores, near the livery-barn, and round the hotel. A few tired creatures leaned listlessly against the strongest of the buildings. Skirting these, Sam and Bert came to a place where farm implements were exposed for sale.

"We's'll want somethink ter plagh the garding wiv," said Sam, stopping to admire the gaudily-painted machines which were spread about on some waste ground, and on the board sidewalk, overflowing into the sandy roadway.

"Of course," observed Bert. "This is a plough, I presume," and he flicked a speck of dirt off the iron seat of a rather flashy disk harrow.

Sam said nothing. He had never been on a farm, nor had he even seen one at close quarters. The prattle of agriculture was as Sanskrit to him; so, like a sensible man, he left the subject entirely to Bert, who knew almost as much.

"That ain't a plough," laughed a great, ponderous man who wheezed over towards them; "that there's a disk. What d'you boys want?"

The speaker was a very large, swarthy-faced man with baggy eyes, cheeks and trousers. He wore one gold-coloured ring, two lodge symbols, three chins, four tobacco-stained gold teeth, and a big, smooth smile. Glancing at him with mild curiosity, Bert said:

"We want something to cultivate our land with--a plough is the best instrument, I suppose,"--concluding apologetically--"we aren't going in for corn-growing, though; are we, Sam?" Bert looked towards his little companion for affirmation, but Sam was busily occupying himself with salvaging about an inch and a half of badly-mutilated cigarette from his right-hand waistcoat-pocket, and pretended not to hear.

The fleshy Goliath slipped a cigar across to the opposite corner of his mouth, which then tightened conveniently in a smile.

"What are you going in for, then?" he asked, amusedly.

"Ranching."

"Ranching what?"

"Horses--polo ponies."

Sam edged away and lighted his cigarette. He tried to borrow a match from a passer-by, who must have been of Scottish descent, for, although being in a desperate hurry to be gone, he preferred wasting five minutes over giving the little cockney a light from the bowl of his pipe.

The big man was smiling broadly at Bert. It would have been rude to laugh outright; besides, that would have necessitated the removal from his mouth of the freshly-lighted cigar. This enormous man had sold machinery for almost twenty years; then had collected for it, finally becoming an inspector. But he wasn't cold-hearted. He had too much fat round his heart for that. After recovering from a fit of asthmatic coughing, which he presently indulged in, he said, kindly enough:

"What you boys want is a walking plough, a set of drag harrows, and a disk. Even if you go in for ranching"--and his smile broke out afresh, spreading along a couple of deep grooves to the back of his neck--"you'll want them things."

"Here's the plough you want," interjected a thin, wiry, though round-shouldered man, evidently the agent in person, who had just that minute sold a blue-and-red disk to a party of pink-cheeked colonists driving a team of black oxen hitched to a vividly green wagon with a white schooner-top.

The agent grasped the long, conveniently-placed handles of a combination walking plough, bore down on them, which seemed much easier than raising them, besides being more graceful, and went on:

"Best plough in the world. Fourteen-inch; fin coulter--better not try a rolling coulter where you boys is going; two shares; two moldboards; two spanners; thirty-five dollars," and he continued tilting the plough up and down, causing the draw-link to tinkle musically.

"Dandy plough," said the ponderous inspector. "Use nothing else on my farms for breaking an' backsetting."

Had he explained that he used one as an anchor for his private yacht, the information would have enlightened Bert quite as much.

"Don't need a man to hold it," echoed the agent, still clinging fondly to the long handles. "Light draft; two fourteen-hundred-pound horses can draw it easy."

"Just right for light land," added the inspector, as he carefully tested and then lowered himself on to the pole of an adjacent seeder, causing it to bend like a cane. "What sort of land is it where this Colony is headin' for, anyway?"

"Heavy stuff," returned the agent, miss-cuing; "grass up to your knees. I was down in that country last fall--hunting a bunch of my stray cayuses."

"Couldn't be beat for that clay land," volunteered the inspector, wiping the inside of his whitish collar with a whitish pocket-handkerchief.

The agent threw an affectionate look at the plough in endorsation of his chief's revised statement.

"I once turned three acres over with one of them ploughs in nine hours," he said; "with a pair of broncs you could carry under your arms."

"And you know old man Cleviss, Fred, down on the coulee?" said the inspector, who still had some breath left. Fred nodded. "He says he wouldn't sell his plough for a million dollars if he couldn't buy another like it."

"Don't blame him none, either," said Fred, opening wide his eyes, so plainly astonished was he at the mere mention of such an idiotic possibility. "A man with a farm like he's got would be crazy to part with that plough of his. Them short-handled Spiggott ploughs all go here"--he stooped down and indicated the point of the share belonging to the implement he was rocking up and down--"split clean across, every one of 'em, like a rotten twig."

"Say, Fred!--you remember when I was on the road for Spiggott's?" Fred nodded. "Why, them ploughs of theirs pretty near drove me crazy. What with that share breaking; and old Sandy Quinlan queering my expense account; and the company squeezing the poor dam' farmers, I quit 'em. Yes, sir, quit 'em stone cold. But our company can't make ploughs fast enough. Sold over two hundred this last three days. That's some talking point for a plough, boys, eh? I'll say. Good company, too. Repairs always on hand--ain't that right, Fred?"--Fred nodded--"Elegant company to travel for. Never go after the poor dam' farmers. Dandy company; you bet."

It is impossible to estimate how long this remarkably edifying dialogue might have continued; probably it would have gone on for a week or two, had not Sam, becoming restless, pulled at his companion's sleeve, and, with a backward jerk of the head, beckoned Bert away a little.

"Don't know wot that big bloke's gassin' abaht," he whispered cautiously, so as not to be overheard, "but 'e's a very 'appy man. Jus' look at 'is weskit, an' 'is neck, an' 'is trahsers! 'E's like one of them joints of meat tied rahnd an' rahnd wiv string. 'E mus' be tellin' the trufe, though. No man wot tells lies can be 'appy, like 'e is. That plagh's bound ter be a good 'un. Let's buy it."

So they did--being guided in the purchase of a disk and harrows by the same wonderful process of reasoning.