The Homesteaders Part 8

Late in the night the girl heard heavy footsteps in the kitchen and bursts of loud but indistinct talking.

CHAPTER VII

THE CALL OF THE FARTHER WEST

Notwithstanding Harris's late hours the household was early astir the following morning. At five o'clock Jim was at work in the stables, feeding, rubbing down, and harnessing his horses, while Allan and his father walked to the engine, where they built a fresh fire and made some minor repairs. Even at this early hour the sun shone brightly, its rays mellowing in a sheen of ground-mist that enveloped the prairie, but there is a tang in the Manitoba morning air even in midsummer, and the men walked briskly through the crisp stubble. A little later Beulah came down to the corral with her milk-pails, and the cows, comfortably chewing where they rested on their warm spots of earth, rose slowly and with evident great reluctance at her approach. A spar of light blue smoke ascended in a perpendicular column from the kitchen chimney; motherly hens led their broods forth to forage; pigs grunted with rising enthusiasm from near-by pens, and calves voiced insistent demands from their quarters. The Harris farm, like fifty thousand others, rose from its brief hush of rest and quiet to the sounds and energies of another day.

Breakfast, like the meal of the night before, was eaten hurriedly, and at first without conversation, but at length Harris paused long enough to remark, "Riles is talkin' o' goin' West."

"The news might be worse," said Beulah. Riles, although a successful farmer, had the reputation of being grasping and hard to a degree, even in a community where such qualities, in moderation, were by no means considered vices.

Harris paid no attention to his daughter's interruption. It was evident, however, that his mention of Riles had a purpose behind it, and presently he continued:

"Riles has been writin' to the Department of the Interior, and it seems they're openin' a lot of land for homesteadin' away West, not far from the Rocky Mountains. Seems they have a good climate there, and good soil, too."

"I should think Mr. Riles would be content with what he has," said Mary Harris. "He has a fine farm here, and I'm sure both him and his wife have worked hard enough to take it easier now."

"Hard work never killed n.o.body," pursued the farmer. "Riles is good for many a year yet, and free land ain't what it once was. Those homesteads'll be worth twenty dollars an acre by the time they're proved up."

"I wish I was sure of it--I wouldn't think long," said Allan. "But they say it's awful dry; all right for ranchin', but no good for farmin'."

"Who says that?" demanded his father. "The ranchers. They know which side their bread's b.u.t.tered on. As long's they can get grazin' land for two cents an acre, or maybe nothin', of course they don't want the homesteader. They tell me the Englishmen and Frenchmen that went out into that country when us Canadians settled in Manitoba have more cattle now than they can count--they measure 'em by acres, Riles says."

Breakfast and Harris's speech came to an end simultaneously, and the subject was dropped for the time. In a few minutes Jim had his team hitched to the tank wagon in the yard. The men jumped aboard, and the wagon rattled down the road to where the engine and ploughs sat in the stubble-field.

"What notion's this father's got about Riles, do you suppose, mother?" asked Beulah, as the two women busied themselves with the morning work in the kitchen.

"Dear knows," said her mother wearily. "I hope he doesn't take it in his head to go out there too."

"Who, Dad? Oh, he wouldn't do that. He's hardly got finished with the building of this house, and you know for years he talked and looked forward to the building of the new house. His heart's quite wrapped up in the farm here. I wish he'd unwrap it a bit and let it peek out at times."

"I'm not so sure. I'm beginning to think it's the money that's in the farm your father's heart is set on. If the money was to be made somewhere else his heart would soon s.h.i.+ft."

"Mother!" exclaimed the girl. In twenty years it was the first word approaching disloyalty she had heard from her mother's lips, and she could hardly trust her ears. It was nothing for Beulah to criticize her father; that was her daily custom, and she pursued it with the whole frankness of her nature. But her mother had always defended, sometimes mildly chiding, but never admitting either weakness or injustice on the part of John Harris.

"Well, I just can't stand it much longer," said the mother, the emotions which she had so long held in check overcoming her. "Here I've slaved and saved until I'm an--an old woman, and what better are we for it? We've better things to eat and more things to wear and a bigger house to keep clean, and your father thinks we ought to be satisfied. But he isn't satisfied himself. He's slaving harder than ever, and now he's got this notion about going West. Oh, you'll see it will come to that. He knows our life isn't complete, and he thinks more money will complete it. All the experience of twenty years hasn't taught him any better."

Beulah stood aghast at this outburst, and when her mother paused and looked at her, and she saw the unbidden wells of water gathering in the tender eyes, the girl could no longer restrain herself. With a cry she flung her arms about her mother's neck, and for a few moments the two forgot their habitual restraint and were but naked souls mingling together.

"It's a shame," exclaimed Beulah at length. "We're not living; we're just existing. When I get among people that are really living--like the Grants, over there--you don't know how mortified and mean I feel.

And it's not that alone--it's the sense of loss, the sense that life is going by and I'm not making the best of it. You know we are missing the _real thing_; we are just living on the husks, and father is so blind he thinks the husks are the grain itself."

"Your father is hungry, too," said the mother. "Hungry--hungry, and he thinks that more land, more money, more success, will fill him.

And in the meantime he's forgetting the things that would satisfy--the love that was ours, the little devo--Oh, child, what am I saying? What an unfaithful creature I am! You must forget, Beulah, you must forget these words--words of shame they are!"

"The shame is his," declared the girl, defiantly, "and I won't stand this nonsense about homesteading again--I just won't stand it. If he says anything more about it I'll--I'll fly off, that's what I'll do.

And I've a few remarks for him about Riles that won't keep much longer. The old badger--he's at the bottom of all this."

"You mustn't quarrel with your father, dearie, you mustn't do that."

"I'm not going to quarrel with him, but I'm going to say some things that need saying. And if it comes to a show-down, and he must go--well, he must, but you and I will stay with the old farm, won't we, mother?"

But the mother's thought now was for quelling the storm in the turbulent heart of her daughter. Beulah's nature was not one to lend itself to pa.s.sive submission, nor yet pa.s.sive resistance. She was the soul of loyalty, but with that loyalty she combined a furious intolerance of things as they should not be. She had not yet reached the philosophic age, but she was old enough to value life, and to know that what she called the real things were escaping here. At night, as she looked up at the myriad stars spangling the heavens, the girl's heart was filled with an unutterable yearning; a sense of restriction, of limitation, of loss--a sense that somewhere lay a Purpose and a Plan, and that only by becoming part of that Plan could life be lived to the fullest. Her mother was of a different nature, not less brave, but more resigned; content to fill, without question, the niche to which fate a.s.signed her; accepting conditions as a matter of course. Yet at times she had inklings of those deeper questions which arose in persistent interrogations before her child, and she guessed that if Beulah once became convinced that she saw the Plan, not all her loyalty could dissuade her from following it. So she strove to control the sudden outburst in her own heart lest the fire lighted in Beulah's should break forth in conflagration.

"There, there now," she said, gently stroking her daughter's hair.

"Let us forget this, and remember how much we have to be thankful for. We have our health, and our home, and the bright suns.h.i.+ne, and--I declare," she interrupted, catching a glimpse of something through the window, "if the cows haven't broken from the lower pasture and are all through the oat-field! You'll have to take Collie and get them back, somehow, or bring them up to the corral."

Perhaps it was part of the Plan that the diversion should come at that moment, but the rebellion in Beulah's heart was by no means suppressed. Pulling a sun-bonnet upon her head she called the dog, which came leaping upon her with boisterous affection, and hurried down the path to the field where the cows stood almost lost in a jungle of green oats. She soon located the breach in the fence, and, with the help of the dog, quickly turned the cows toward it. But alack! just as victory seemed a.s.sured a rabbit was frightened from its hiding-place in the green oats, and sailed forth in graceful bounds across the pasture. The dog, of course, concluded that the capture of the rabbit was of much more vital importance to the Harris homestead than driving any number of stupid cattle, and darted across the field in pursuit, wasting his breath in sharp, eager yelps as he went. Whereupon the cows turned outward again, not boisterously nor insolently, but with a calm persistence that steadily wore out the girl's strength and patience. They would not move a foot toward the pasture unless she drove them; they would move only one at a time; as she drove one the others pushed farther into the oat-field, and when she turned to pursue them the one she had already driven followed at her heels. The sun was hot, the oats were rank, the wild buckwheat tripped her as she ran; her appeals to the dog, now seated on a knoll looking somewhat foolishly for the rabbit which had given him the slip, and her commands to the cattle alike fell on unheeding ears.

She was in no joyous mood at best, and the perverseness of things aggravated her beyond endurance. Her callings to the cattle became more and more tearful, and presently ended in a sob.

"There now, Beulah, don't worry; we will have them in a minute," said a quiet voice, and looking about she found Jim almost at her elbow, his omnipresent smile playing gently about his white teeth. "I was down at the creek filling the tank, when I saw you had a little rebellion on your hands, and I thought reinforcements might be in order."

"You might have hollered farther back," she said, half reproachfully, but there was a light of appreciation in her eye when she dared raise it toward him. "I'm afraid I was beginning to be very--foolish."

She tripped again on the treacherous buckwheat, but he held her arm in a strong grasp against which the weight of her slim figure seemed but as a feather blown against a wall. The life of the plains had bred in Beulah admiration for physical strength, and she acknowledged his firm grip with an admiring glance. Then they set about their task, but the sober-eyed cows had no thought of being easily deprived of their feast, and it was some time before they were all turned back into the pasture and the fence temporarily repaired behind them.

"I can't thank you enough," Beulah was saying. "You just keep piling one kindness on top of another. Say, Jim, honest, what makes you do it?"

But at that moment the keen blast of an engine whistle came cutting through the air--a long clear note, followed by a series of toots in rapid succession.

"I guess they're running short of water," said Jim. "I must hustle."

So saying he ran to the ford of the creek where the tank-wagon was still standing, and in a minute his strong frame was swaying back and forth to the rhythmic clanking of the pump. But it was some minutes before the tank was full, and again the clarion call of the whistle came insistently through the air. Hastily dragging up the hose, he uttered a sharp command to the horses; their great shoulders socketed into the collars; the tugs tightened, quivering with the strain; the wheels grated in the gravel, and the heavily-loaded wagon swung its way up the bank of the coulee.

Meanwhile other things were transpiring. Harris had returned from town the night before with the fixed intention of paying an early visit to the Farther West. He and Riles had spent more time than they should breasting the village bar, while the latter drew a picture of rising colour of the possibilities which the new lands afforded.

Harris was not a man who abused himself with liquor, and Riles, too, rarely forgot that indulgence was expensive, and had to be paid for in cash. Moreover, Allan occasioned his father some uneasiness. He was young, and had not yet learned the self-control to be expected in later life. More than once of late Allan had crossed the boundary of moderation, and John Harris was by no means indifferent to the welfare of his only son. Indeed, the bond between the two was so real and so intense that Harris had never been able to bring himself to contemplate their separation, and the boy had not even so much as thought of establis.h.i.+ng a home of his own. Harris sometimes wondered at this, for Allan was popular in the neighbourhood, where his good appearance, strength, and sincere honesty made him something of a favourite. The idea of homesteading together a.s.sured further years of close relations.h.i.+p between father and son, and the younger man fell in whole-heartedly with it.

"We'll hurry up the ploughing, Dad, and run West before the harvest is on us," Allan said as they rode home through the darkness. "We can file on our land and get back for the fall work. Then we will go out for the winter and commence our duties. The only question is, Can they grow anything on that land out there?"

"That's what they used to ask when we came to Manitoba," said his father. "And there were years when I doubted the answer myself. Some parts were froze out year after year, and they're among the best in the country now, and never think of frost. The same thing'll happen out there, and we might as well be in the game."

To do him justice, it was not altogether the desire for more wealth that prompted Harris, It was the call of new land; the call he had heard and answered in the early eighties; the old appet.i.te that had lain dormant for a quarter of a century, but was still in his blood, waiting only a suggestion of the open s.p.a.ces, a whiff from dry gra.s.s on the wind-swept plains, the zigzag of a wagon-trail streaking afar into the horizon, to set it tingling again. The thought of homesteading revived rich old memories--memories from which the kindly years had balmed the soreness and the privation and the hards.h.i.+p, and left only the joy and the courage and the comrades.h.i.+p and the conquering. It was the call of the new land, which has led the race into every clime and flung its flag beneath every sky, and Harris's soul again leaped to the summons.

So this morning father and son were especially anxious that not a moment of their ploughing weather should be lost, and it was particularly aggravating when the hired man's long delay resulted in a bubbling sputter followed by a dry hiss from the injector, warning the engineer that the water-tank was empty. Allan shot an anxious glance down the road to the coulee, but the water team was not in sight. Seizing the whistle cord, he sent its peremptory summons into the air. Harris looked up from the ploughs, and the two exchanged frowns of annoyance. But the water stood high in the gla.s.s, and Allan did not reduce the speed, although he cut the link action another notch to get every ounce of advantage from the expansion. Down the field they went, the big iron horse shouldering itself irresistibly along, while the ploughs left their dozen furrows of moist, fresh soil, and the blackbirds hopped gingerly behind. But the water went down, down in the gla.s.s, and still there was no sign of a further supply. Allan again cut the air with his whistle, and at length, with a muttered imprecation, he slammed the throttle shut and jumped from the engine.

His father ran up from the ploughs. "What do you think of that?" the younger man exclaimed. "Jim must have had trouble. Bogged, or broke a tongue, or something. Never fell down like that before."

"Keep a keen eye on your fire," said Harris, "and I'll go down and see what's wrong with him." So the farmer strode off across the ploughed field. The delay annoyed him, and he felt unreasonably cross with Travers. As he plodded on through the heavy soil his temper did not improve, and he was talking to himself by the time he came upon Travers, giving his team their wind at the top of the hill leading up from the creek.

"What kept you?" he demanded when he came within a rod of the wagon.

"Here's the outfit shut down waiting for water, and you--"

"I'm sorry, Mr. Harris--"