Chapter VI: Saskatoon--A Temperance Lecture

When William Trailey issued from Bert's tent, he had but the haziest notion where his own lay. He was completely turned round. Also he was very sleepy, so much so that all the tents in the neighbourhood looked alike to him.

Even in the daytime he found it necessary to rely on the colour of his horses, more than anything else, to guide him home. He had purchased a pair of flea-bitten greys specially for that purpose; but soon the camp became filled with horses of a similar colour, tied to Bain wagons of a design exactly like his own.

Nor did the weird ghostliness of the night contribute much help to his extremely unreliable sense of direction. At last, however, after wandering about like a somnambulist for nearly half an hour, he saw at a distance a light-coloured team, so he promptly made towards it.

"Ah-h," he sighed contentedly, "here we are at last," and he commenced to hum one of his favourite tunes--"Throw Out the Life-Line."

Everything invariably came out all right in the end for William Trailey. Other people might try to drift along on the stream of life, but sooner or later they found themselves plunging over falls, or grounding on sand bars, or striking submerged snags. Not so he. Just when the stream began to race, preparatory to rushing over a weir, something always steered him into a peaceful backwater, where overhanging branches of trees sheltered him from the sun, and where he could--if it weren't mealtime--climb out on the grassy bank and enjoy a quiet snooze.

Nevertheless, when he stood beside his tent, a vague fancy seemed to warn him that one of his horses looked a bit different. But then horses were such puzzling creatures. How did he know that they mightn't change their colour and become cream-, or buckskin-, or even sorrel-tinted. Didn't politicians, and billboards, and dining-room walls, change their coats mysteriously sometimes? Certainly they did. Then why not horses?

Such subtle reasoning as this was one of Trailey's strong points. Had he been a soldier by profession, doubtless he would have argued that because the walls of Jericho fell down flat to the crash of Joshua's trumpets, such a feat could easily be repeated in a modern siege. It is conceivable he might have become a general in the subsequent Great War of attrition, had he been sufficiently lucky to be of military age about that time.

He now knew positively that it was his own tent he stood against, because there was the wash-bowl, and there was the chimney-pipe jutting out in the same place. How absurd of him to harbour silly doubts! He held his breath for a moment to listen to the far-off wail of a coyote. Indescribably sad, the dismal cry drifted across to him from out of the spectral night.

"Thank goodness I'm not out there alone," he mused.

No light shone from his tent, for the simple reason that his wife and daughter must have retired for the night. They always did. They never worried about him. Why should they? He was only a husband, and a father, of course, but he was a man. They were sensible enough to appreciate that much, at any rate. Moreover, he was now to all intents and purposes a rancher. At this encouraging thought he felt himself puff out with pride, like a suit of underwear on a clothes-line, bellying in the wind.

Another thing--had not Martha, his wife, known for twenty years and more, that, if he ever set off to go anywhere, he would ultimately reach some destination or other, even though it might not be the particular one for which he started? He might, for instance, intend to visit the library, or the museum, or a lecture somewhere, and in the end land up outside the chapel where he was accustomed to worship, but it was always all right. If the chapel presented a dark and deserted appearance, which it generally did, that made no difference. The meeting, or whatever it was he was supposed to attend, must have been postponed, and he hadn't known about it. On the other hand, if the place showed signs of life, which occasionally it did, he went in and made himself at home, possibly assisted in passing an important resolution or two.

No one ever dreamed of turning William Trailey out of anywhere. He was too trustful, too guileless, too delightfully detached for that. Besides, he was always wrapped in such an air of quiet dignity. He was one of those men whom, in spite of their vacuity, people cannot help respecting. Then he would go home from the meeting, or lecture, or whatever it was, and, after dispatching a quarter of a pound of ripe Stilton cheese, a plateful of pickles, and three or four cupfuls of cocoa, would climb upstairs, dreamily say his prayers, fall into bed and drop soundly asleep.

William Trailey was an expert drifter simply because he tackled effortlessness in a thoroughly effortless way. It was a gift with him, and one which adorned him as naturally as digging sewers, or "heeling" in politics marks other people out for distinction.

He was reaching over the tent to untie the flap, when, seemingly from quite close behind him, that frightful cry of despair was again repeated. Wail after wail followed each other in nerve-paralyzing succession, finally trailing away into a ghastly sob. His blood froze in his veins, and he distinctly felt his hair rising straight up on his head--particularly in the bald places.

Then horrible panic seized him. Ripping the canvas open, he plunged into the tent, caught his foot in the loose folds of the low wall, partly recovered himself, stumbled about blindly in the dimness, and then, with his full thirteen stone, trod plump on sleeping Sam's face.

The startled Cockney let out a fierce yell of pain and surprise, which must have wakened practically every sober man in the vicinity, and all the women. Trailey's boot was not of the mountaineering variety, fortunately, so it slipped off Sam's unlovely profile rather smoothly, if somewhat heavily, without doing much damage.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed Trailey with his usual aptness. "Where am I?"

Sam sat up and nursed his slightly-abrased face with one hand, then struck a match and lighted a candle with the other.

"---- yore sole, guv'nor," he muttered venomously.

Trailey knew almost at once, even before he heard Sam's familiar voice, that he was not in his own tent. His wife and daughter slept on folding camp-cots. Moreover, Martha would unquestionably have shrieked at the sudden disturbance caused by a man bursting into her tent and standing on her face.

After the startled Trailey had mildly expressed his regrets, he became gently remonstrative as Sam's remarks continued being painfully corrosive in tone and purport."

"Please don't use such language, Sam," he pleaded; "there is One above listening, don't forget."

Sam glared at the penitent "rancher," now turning uplifter.

"I 'ope there is. An' I 'ope--but wot's the good of 'opin'? Yer can't 'elp it. A hinfant in arms knows more 'n you. Wot d'yer want in 'ere?"

Deep concern chased the absent-mindedness from Trailey's face for a minute or two. Sam's pointed remarks pricked him ever so slightly despite his armour of calm detachment.

"I went for a stroll in the moonlight," he hedged stoutly to his questioner, and to his own immaculate conscience.

"An' got lawst," sneered Sam.

"It's such a peaceful night," Trailey murmured, ignoring the other's harshness; "and I thought when I saw your tent and horses that they were mine. Then that terrible cry..." and he shuddered at the recollection.

"It's a norrible row all right, guv'ner," said Sam, beginning to drop the ire from his voice and manner. "My opinion is this 'ere blinkin' camp at Sarskatoon's 'aunted. You get ready as quick as yer can, an' let's slope orf ter the Colony ter see our land."

"Give Mr. Trailey a drink, Sam--to steady his nerves," volunteered Bert, genially, as he sat upright and dragged a green-and-gold dressing-gown from the bed, draping it round his shoulders. "Have a little touch, Trailey; it'll do you good. It's rather a chilly night for visiting."

Precisely at the moment when Trailey's sudden entrance had awakened him, Bert was joyously riding a magnificent pinto stallion across the plains at full gallop. In fact, he was just going to bend over and pick Esther up off the ground, where she was lying directly in the path of two million buffaloes. The vivid novel, the ethereal night, Trailey's earlier visit, half a flapjack Sam had given him for supper, and the little man's glowing remarks concerning Miss Trailey, which somehow conveyed infinitely more than they described, all stimulated his romantic dreams. It was a bit of a come-down to have to talk about whiskey after soaring to such heights of heroism, but he tried to make the best of it. This absent-minded-looking wanderer was Esther's father, at any rate, and that was something.

After many weakly-expressed protestations, Trailey fell before Sam's repeated coaxing, and at last consented to try the flask. In extenuation, he said that in certain circumstances, of which undoubtedly this was one, such an act was not sinful.

Sam, with much gravity, duly absolved him. "Put it dahn yer, guv'ner," he urged, whereupon Trailey emptied the tiny flask like a shot, as though it were nothing but a bottle of stone-ginger. "Ah-h," he exhaled, pulling a wry face and gasping a little. In the meantime, Sam was delving into an imitation crocodile-leather portmanteau, in which he stored all his belongings, and from which he produced another half-bottleful of Scotch. He poured a reasonable quantity into an enamelled cup and held it to his lips.

"Good fer a crushed face," he said, winking impishly at Trailey, and then popped it down with that sublime faith which everyone now knows is more than half the battle of recovery.

Bert said that that beastly wailing had seriously affected his own nerves, and wondered if their visitor would object to him tasting a little drop on his own account, purely as a soporific, y'know.

"Yes, do, Mr. Tressider," rejoined Trailey, expansively. "The necessity is obvious."

"I believe I'll take Mr. Trailey's advice, Sam, if you'll---- Ah, thanks!" Sam was passing Bert a smallish dose in the cup.

Within five minutes, Trailey said he was feeling a lot better, and that he really ought to be going back to his tent, as his wife might be lying awake wondering where he was; so he sat down on Sam's blankets.

"You'd better 'ave anuvver, sir," said Sam, in a wheedling voice, "to 'elp keep the uvver one dahn, an' assist yer ter find yer way 'ome."

Beginning to glow with a wonderful content, William Trailey seemed only the tiniest bit reluctant, so Sam, with the manner of a fatherly retainer, partly filled the cup again and passed it to him.

"It's against my conscience," murmured Trailey; "but I'm quite sure the case warrants it. I feel that I'm already forgiven," and he passed to Sam the empty flask which he had forgotten he was still clasping lovingly. "Ah-h," he breathed, as the second portion of the flaming fluid crept along his veins and coiled pleasantly round his heart. "Just think," he said, "that this cursed drink is the ruin of thousands, yea, millions of men. Think of the starving children, and the drunkards' homes. Think of the degradation, and the prostitution, and the everlasting damnation which can be traced--like footprints in the sands of time--to the curse of strong drink. Think----"

"It's a bloomin' shyme, guv'ner," said Sam, closing his left optic at his partner on the bed.

"It really ought to be stopped," echoed Bert, smiling at Sam and at Trailey's rhetorical flight. That gentleman was fast regaining, in fact had regained, his customary placidity. The awful cry of distress was happily forgotten. He was no longer lost in a wilderness of tents. The world was a glorious place after all, with the millennium only half a mile or so round the corner, and beautifully downhill all the way.

Occupied with these delicious sentiments, Trailey absently refused another little touch, but, upon noticing the rather hurt look on Sam's face, he said he would try to change his mind for the sake of friendship, which he did. Almost immediately he became by turns conversational, and ranting.

Enlarging on one of his themes, he said that a cousin of his, who was a steeplejack, had one bright morning fallen from the top of a very tall church spire in Derby, whilst under the influence of a small bottle of Allsopp's beer, which he'd consumed for his supper the night before. He said that this cousin, being a very fat man for a steeplejack, had bounced off the roof of the church and landed in the back-yard of "The Pig and Whistle" public house next door; and that when the landlord rushed out to him with a glass of neat brandy, he refused it.

"Great Scott! what ever for?" ejaculated Bert ironically.

"Because he was dead, Mr. Tressider," replied Trailey with deep earnestness. "The drink had killed him, poor man."

Sam appeared to be deeply moved by the story. He said that "'e thought it all sounded very true an' feeziable, an' jus' like one of them rotten stories wot yer read abaht in the newspypers. All the syme, 'e should very much like to 'ear wot the landlord did wiv the glarss of brandy arfterwards."

Trailey replied that the landlord turned teetotaler right on the spot, and threw the brandy away; which Sam, as an ex-barman, observed "was a wilful prevershun of the trufe, besides bein' a dam' silly thing ter do."

The lecturer now became still more discursive. He explained that the money spent in England in one year on intoxicating liquors would pay off half the national debt, build twenty-seven modern battleships carrying 12-in. guns, equip and maintain a home for fallen women at Okhotsk, and even then leave sufficient money over with which to erect and endow a tin-roofed temperance tabernacle at Timbuktu.

"By Jove!" cried Bert, to whom the news was a complete revelation. "Just imagine what could be done if we spent twice as much!"

"Not 'arf," said Sam, who was temporarily paralyzed by the astounding information.

"Or three times as much," added Bert, as his keen legal brain instantly grasped the significance of the statement.

As for Trailey himself, he had never paid for a drink in his life, so naturally he registered considerably less awe for his own statistics than did the others. Quite soon, being congenitally drowsy, he fell back on Sam's bed and lapsed into peaceful slumber.

Upon being prodded awake again, he asked Sam as a very special favour to take him home, a request the little Cockney, with his usual good-nature, readily granted.

Hastily jumping into a few clothes, Sam dexterously steered Trailey through the torn tent opening. They stood outside for a little while, ostensibly to admire the effulgent beauty of the matchless prairie night, but actually to permit Trailey to instruct the man in charge of the roundabout to stop the giddy thing at once. This the stupid fellow refused to do; so, tacking along in weird, zig-zaggy spurts, stumbling over pegs and ropes, the pair made their tortuous way to Trailey's own tent, which was a matter of only thirty or forty yards distant.

Sam noiselessly opened the flap and then began gently to push his lurching companion into the opening.

"Ah-h," sighed Trailey wearily, "so here we are at last, eh?"

Responding to a sudden mood, he turned and faced Sam. Swaying gently back and forth in the light wind which still went whispering among the tents, he surveyed his little guide in quite a fatherly and tender manner.

"Sham, me bhoy," he said, "'tever you do, keep away from--hic--the curs-ed drink. It's Satan 'imself. Goo'-night," then, turning round, he toppled through the tent-door, which Sam, with his habitual good sense, was at great pains to refasten.