WHEAT AND

i GEORGINA BINNIE-CLARK

JOHN M. KELLY LIBRARY

Donated by
The Redemptorists of
the Toronto Province

from the Library Collection of
Holy Redeemer College, Windsor

University of
St. Michael's College, Toronto

HOLY RftieWMBRARY, WINDSOR

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WHEAT «^ WOMAN

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WHEAT <^ WOMAN

BY

GEORGINA BINNIE-CLARK

AUTHOR OF
"A SUMMER ON THE CANADIAN P§AIRIE "

ILLUSTRATED

TORONTO
BELL AND COCKBURN

1914

HOLY 8EDfe6^ER LlftRARY, WINDSOR

Printed in England

L^t^

CONTENTS

PART 1— HARVEST HOME

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT, HORSES, AND
HIRED MEN 3-14: THE CUSTOM OF DEFERRED
PAYMENT : A PRAIRIE STORM 15-21 : A VAGABOND
GARDEN 22-32 : OF HARVEST, WAGES, THE COST
OF IMPLEMENTS AND PLANTS 33-46 : THRESHING
47-57 : WHEAT SALES : THE FALL OF THE LEAF :
LE BRET 58-74 : FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
IN FORT QU'APPELLE 75-87 : WINTER QUARTERS :
SPRINGBROOK SCHOOL : A POLITICAL MEETING
88-99 : AT HOME BY THE LAKE SHORE : OF CANA-
DIAN DIVERSION loo-iii : NANCY : THE SECOND
PAYMENT : THE FIRST LOSS 11 2-123

PART II— SPRING

A DAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE : THE COMING OF
NANCY 127-134 : THE MIRAGE OF SPRING : MY FIRST
CHORE-BOY : A NEW HORSE AND A NEW MAN :
SEEDING 1 35-151 : CHORE-BOYS : "THE BEAUTIFUL
NECESSITY" : THE STORY OF A PLOUGH 152-162 :
DAIRY-PRODUCE : FENCING : MILKING : GARDEN-
ING : VICTORIA DAY 163-179 : AN IRISHMAN'S FOR-
TUNE : STONING THE LAND : 180- 191 : THE RAINS
OF JUNE : HAYING : HARVEST 192-214 : THE
HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 215-231

vi CONTENTS

PART III— WINTER

OF FUEL AND FEAR : THE END OF THE YEAR
235-252 : PREPARING SEE© GRAIN : NEWCOMERS
253-268 : THE SEEDING-MONTH : THE COMING OF
"FELICITY" 269-279 : THE LAND AND THE MAN
280-298 : SHADOW AND SCYTHE BENEATH THE
SWORD 299-313 : SUMMER DIVERSION : LAW AND
LABOUR : PATRICK O'HARA AND SI BOOTH 3H-329 •
THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 330-348 : THE DAY
OF RECKONING : AUF WIEDERSEHEN 349-358

PART IV— THE TURN OF THE TIDE

THE SEED : THE PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE
361-377 : THE BLADE : THE EAR : THE FULL |

CORN 378-396 : SALES, MORTGAGE : «A LARGER
HEAVEN" 397-413

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Water Chore Frontispiece

To face page

The Round-Up 48

The Industrial Training Schools at Le Bret 66

The Present Phase of Development in Father Huge-

nard's Work for the Mother Country 70

A Pioneer Priest of the Prairie, The Very Rev. J. P.

Sargent, Dean of Qu'appelle 74

Mr. Archibald Macdonald, Last of the " Chief

Factors " of the Hudson Bay Company 84

The Pioneer Statesman of the Prairie Provinces,

Hon. F. W. G. Haultain g8

My Neighbour, John McLeay 150

Victoria Day (now Empire Day) at Fort Qu'appelle 178

Threshing at Binning, 1906 233

The Anglican Church and Rectory at Fort

Qu'appelle 250

In the Heart of a Field of Growing Wheat 310

Shopping at Fort Qu'appelle 356

A Roedean Girl Stoking at Binning, 1913 402
"Unto C^sar." Indians Assembled to Receive their

Treaty-payment 410

" Unto God." The Laying of Foundation Stones,

Regina, igi2 412

vn

" To burn with one clear flame, to stand erect

In natural honour, not to bend the knee

In profitless prostrations zvhose effect

Is by itself condemned, what alchemy

Can teach me this ? What herb Medea brewed

Will bring the unexultant peace of essence not subdued':

" This, too, I had to learn — / thank Thee Lord —
To lie crushed down in darkness and the pit —
To lose all heart and hope — and yet to workP

PART I

HARVEST HOME

ERRATA

p. ji.—For "Hon. A. J. R. Hanson," read
" Hon. A. J. R. Anson.'"

p. 233. — For " Yet in spite of all disquietudes,'
read "Yet in despite of all disquietudes."

— — — "—

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT,
HORSES, AND HIRED MEN

" You gave me your word that if I bought the farm
your son should take off the crop," I said. " We
have been waiting nearly a week for the binder-
reaper. Now that it has at last arrived and every-
thing is ready, your son isn't here. Of what use, do
you suppose, is eighty acres of wheat, or eighty
thousand acres, if we can't get it off ? "

" He'll not be taking less than four and a half
dollars a day for himself and team, I guess," shouted
my predecessor on the note of explanation.

" I don't care what he charges," I shouted back.
" He simply has to come. Even I can see the wheat
shelling all over the place ; and you are not looking
after my interest as you promised you would if I
bought the farm."

" I guess he'll be along some time to-day. Dick
McGusty will have let him know the binder's set
up. You'd best get busy and see about stookers.
'Tis a heavy crop, and will keep two men busy all
the time, I guess. An' your brother, he should be
getting on to the summer fallow. 'Tis the best
crop I ever see on the auld place," he concluded
with a sigh of regret.

Dick McGusty had taken the binder twice around
the crop land on the preceding afternoon, which

3

4 WHEAT AND WOMAN

brought to a close his responsibility as engineer-
agent to the Massey-Harris Implement Company
at Fort Qu'Appelle, and he had departed with a
promise to hurry up other help. A double row of
neat stooks threw a belt around the eighty-acre
field of golden wheat, which was here and there
shedding its wealth reproachfully upon the bosom
of Mother Earth. The brand-new binder-reaper,
for which I had agreed to pay thirty-one pounds ten
shillings cash, seemed to groan as it leaned at
ease listening to the incessant music of its fellows
which floated through the clear atmosphere from
near and far. In the adjoining field it had hummed
from early morning. One could see the pale belt
of stubble growing wider and wider around the
shrinking zone of amber which the winged and active
implement was rapidly laying low.

The old man's thought followed my envious and
possibly angry eyes.

" There's Rolan'. He ain't got much more than
forty acres. I guess he'll have it down by to-morrow
noon. Every man should stand by his neighbour at
harvest-time. He's another Englishman, so I guess
he'll come in with his binder and help you out all
right. Two binders would soon get it down. My !
but it's the finest field of wheat this side of the
valley — the best I ever see on th' auld place since I
came to the country. I shouldn't have sold it if it
hadn't been for my missus ; though you never know
if the frost will knock you out till it's safe down."

" There's a wagon and team coming along by the
side trail," announced my brother, who had been
cheerfully waiting the turn of events in the heart
of one of the big stooks which, even in that first

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 5

year, he built neat, sound, and strong to face the
fury of the prairie winds.

" That's Johnnie all right," said the old man,
" and I guess them others is the men Dick McGusty
has hired on to stook. Now you get along and tell
Rolan' Dennison to come on in here with his binder
as soon as he's got his own wheat down, and I guess
we'll get it all down inside next week." He went
off to meet the little party with a reassuring air
about the shoulders — a Canadian never gives away
the negative side of a situation, but hope and confi-
dence may sit astride and stalk abroad.

" He may continue his guessin'," said my brother
scornfully. " I should like to catch myself asking
favours of a stranger — and an Englishman too ! He
has been over here four years. Drives a fine team.
But I expect he has just got them on time like
everybody else."

I recognized the driver of the wagon as my pre-
decessor's son from a picture in the parlour, and the
man at his side as being the butcher's assistant at
Fort Qu'Appelle. The third gentleman — a veritable
son of Anak — towered over them both in height,
in breadth, in depth.

Dick McGusty had sent the butcher's assistant
on approval. The terms were to be a dollar and a
half a day and his board. The " son of Anak " was
an old hand ; he had left him to make his own terms.

I thought six shillings and threepence a day with
board too much for the outdoor labour of an
amateur, and said so.

" You had better be careful," warned my brother
Lai, drawing me aside. " Farmers pay the most help-
less greenhorns any money at harvest-time. Any fool

6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

can stook, and I didn't feel too well when I got up
this morning. Twice round that field tired me
more than you think, and Dr. Hall particularly
cautioned me to be most careful to avoid anything
approaching over-exertion for a month at
least."

I agreed rather rebelliously to follow his advice,
but promptly closed with the offer of the " son of
Anak " to give him twenty dollars for twelve days'
work, since he looked so altogether promising and
splendid. He informed me that he had worked on
Lord Brassey's farm at Indian Head boy and man,
intimating that his services had not only been
valuable but highly valued.

" Brassey was a downright fine feller," he said
with a tinge of patronage. "" 'Twas he that gave
Indian Head the start, and he gave every man on
the place a new suit of clothes once a year."

I said that he must have been extraordinarily
clever to induce Canadians to accept them ; at
which remark the " son of Anak " winked deliberately
at his fellows. Every one acquiesced in the sugges-
tion that we should dine promptly, and get a long
half-day in the harvest-field ; but I noticed that
neither of the stookers lent a hand to the unharness-
ing of the team.

Before we bade each other good-day Dick
McGusty had dropped a word of wisdom in my
ear which served me well. " If you want to keep
your men, feed 'em. Feed them good, plenty of
meat and potatoes three times a day. Cakes and
jellies ain't no stand-by to a man who has to put
in his ten hours a day on the land. Porridge for
breakfast they'll look for, but, porridge or no

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 7

porridge, plenty of meat and potatoes three times a
day."

In those days sirloins and ribs of beef represented
meat to our British understanding, and for a time
after that solemn warning housekeeping was dis-
tinctly on the expensive side. But as a matter of
fact the average Canadian is quite an easy person
to feed. During the summer he will tackle pork,
salt or fresh, three times a day without a murmur.^
But as I was but five miles from the butcher, fresh . t
beef was always available, and in those days cheap, '-p^^'
though nearly always tough. After a while I got
into the way of making scones almost as well as my
Canadian neighbours, and with pork and beef,
bread, butter, scones, treacle, milk pud3ings, and
stewed evaporated fruit, the advice of Dick McGusty
was fulfilled.

The new binder worked exceptionally well. The
weather was deliciously hot. My sister Hilaria and I
spent many lazy delightful hours resting against one
or another of the daily increasing stooks, and we
noticed that the same manner of taking one's ease
was very popular with both our stookers. At four
o'clock we took out tea and cakes to them, much to
the amusement of our English neighbour and the
scorn of my brother, who had withdrawn entirely
from the harvest-field and was gathering hay from an
adjoining slough with Charles Edward, the diminu-
tive Indian pony, and Kitty, the cart-horse mare ;
Jim, the leader of the big team which we had pur-
chased from Messrs. Johnson and Creamer of South
Qu'Appelle during the early days of the summer
for my brother's homestead, having taken third
place on the binder.

8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

" What a supreme greenhorn old McLeay must
think you ! " remarked my brother in a reflective
friendly tone one morning as we halted by the
slough that Charles Edward might take good breath
before proceeding with the load.

" Why me in particular ? " I inquired.

" To buy a farm with its crops at the highest
price on record, and then to present him with the
hay crop. A nice fix you'll be in next spring, and
I haven't the smallest intention of remaining in
this country, so I shan't be here to help you out.
There are only five acres of oats, and it is all very
well for him to say that he has left us plenty of
hay ; but half the goodness of prairie grass passes
out when it arrives at the seeding phase, and all
the rest is knocked out with the first frost, which
may come at any day now. If you want to save
any winter's feed at all you had better get a second
team at once ; and Dick McGusty says that you
can have that mower and rake standing by the
granary for fifty dollars. They belong to the last
chap that bought the place, but he didn't pay for
anything ; and as he hardly used them, they are in
good order and will save you several dollars."

" I got a draft for three hundred and fifty pounds
yesterday," I answered. " I thought I would just
pay the old man the two hundred pounds initial
payment due on the land ; then Johnson and
Creamer should be paid the three hundred and sixty-
five dollars due on the team, and their harness,
thirty-seven dollars. Mr. McGusty asked me to
settle your note for the buggy and pony harness,
ninety dollars, the wagon, eighty-six, and for the
binder I have arranged to pay one hundred and fifty

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 9

dollars cash. I ought to save enough ready money
for wages and that kind of thing ; but of course if
you think a second team an absolute necessity one
must get them."

" Mr. Creegan says there's a man at Fort
Qu'Appelle named Shore who has a team for sale.
Why not go down and see them to-day ? " he
suggested. " Then to-morrow you might go out
to South Qu'Appelle, cash the draft, and find out
if the bank won't let you draw anything you need
on the strength of the crop. The last chap let
them all in pretty badly I fear, and naturally
bankers and people won't trust women in business.
Besides, in any case they are certain to debit you
with the lesson he taught them ; and I can tell you
that Canada is not a pleasant country in which to
be saddled with a responsibility unless you have
plenty of cash to see it through. Won't you wish
yourself out of it before long ! "

" But, Lai," I expostulated, " the old man says
that there are two thousand five hundred bushels of
wheat at least, and two thousand five hundred
bushels of wheat at a dollar a bushel is two thousand
five hundred dollars, and two thousand five hundred
dollars is five hundred and twenty-five pounds. If
I get five hundred pounds over now I can draw
from my income a further five hundred pounds
in instalments if necessary, and then the wheat
being worth five hundred pounds and possibly
more "

" Well, the wheat is Ai, I grant you," he allowed,
" and perhaps you may come out all right." In
those days one of us couldn't have been more
optimistic than another over the illusion of the

10 WHEAT AND WOMAN

elastic property of money. " Well, I shall have to
throw up my job for the day," he added, " as you
will need Charles Edward to take you down to the
Fort."

" I can easily walk it," I said. " Please go on
getting in the hay. I suppose I was a fool not to
have settled it at halves like the potatoes. But you
see he said there was plenty left for us, and it seemed
rather hard luck to take it from him as he had
gathered it all himself."

" Hard luck ! Isn't it the talk of the neighbour-
hood that you have been silly enough to give fifteen
dollars an acre for the old place ? "

" With the cro'ps,^'' I corrected. " You may be
as pessimistic as you please. I believe in the place
absolutely and entirely. Since an eighty-acre field
can produce five hundred pounds' worth of w^heat
on a three hundred and twenty acre farm, it stands
to reason that if one breaks up the lot it will pro-
duce one thousand five hundred pounds, therefore
it must be extraordinarily cheap at a thousand
guineas, comfortably arranged on a system of two
hundred and ten pounds down, two hundred and
ten pounds after harvest, and the balance in annual
instalments at six per cent."

" You bought the land with the crops, and you
ought to have stuck to the hay," he insisted. " In
Britain hay represents nine-tenths of its own value,
and the labour attached to its harvest the last
fraction. Over here it's precisely the reverse. You
could easily get a hundred tons of hay for the
gathering in the neighbourhood of my homestead.
But first find your labourer."

I set out for Fort Qu'Appelle by the side trail

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT ii

immediately after our twelve o'clock dinner. ,The_
adjoining section of land, consisting of the orthodox'
six Eundred and forty acres, was at that time
the property of the Canadian Pacific Railway A^i\*'^
Company. I had always hoped it would be- o-^
come my own. In 1906 one could have bought
it at five dollars an acre, in 1907 it was offered
to me at seven dollars, in 1908 the price had
risen to ten dollars, and at last in 1910, when I
wanted the south-west quarter for a special pur-
pose, the entire section had been purchased by
its present owner at about eleven dollars an acre.
So that it more than doubled its value in four years,
and owed this increase solely to the rising tide of
Canadian land values, and without a solitary effort
in the matter of contribution from the toil of man.
In the day of its virginity a well-worn trail beckoned
one through this lovely bit of pasture country and
on through the thickly wooded property of my
neighbour, John McLeay, to pause at the door of
his hospitable shack. Curling respectfully around
his potato-bed, it still skirts the bonny wheat-field —
which, sheltered between two giant bluffs, is always
the first in our neighbourhood to pay homage to the
harvest sun — to wind its way on through the lovely
lingering lawless mile of the school section towards
that exquisite oasis of the prairie where nature
called on form and colour, wind and tide, and all
the children of the morning to breathe beauty^
which hovers about the hills and valley of JlortI
Qu'Appelle. On the brow of the southern hill is
God's acre, and the very chant of its sleepers is one
with the song of the spirit of the morning. " Very
pleasant was love and life in the happy valley," they

12 WTiEAT AND WOMAN

seem to say. " Very sweet is rest in the sun-
warmed bosom of its guardian hill."

In those fascinating days, between the space of
four miles, one walked from the place where " un-
certainty is hope " to the mood where hope becomes
certainty. The fine exhilaration of the prairie air
lures one on all the time — always up tTieTiTll, never
down ; and even if it is sometimes to halt at the
place where the gods laugh, it is at least within the
enchantment of an atmosphere where one may
laugh — through one's tears — with the gods.

I ran down the narrow zigzag path full tilt and
met Mr. Creegan at the gate of his house.

" My brother thinks you know a man who wants
to sell a team," I said. " Can you really recommend
them to us ? Most people who have seen our present
team seem to think them a little ancient. But they
work splendidly. Only I should like mares."

" Couldn't Mr. McLeay have let you have a team
on good terms ? " he suggested.

" He wouldn't sell his mares," I explained, " and
as I thought he might have let me have at least one
of them, I wouldn't take his son's geldings at three
hundred and fifty dollars. Especially as they aren't
young either, although they are fine beasts, nearly
as big as our own."

" I can show you the team Jake Shore has for
sale," he said; "they are running over here on the
flats. Good beasts and young. He bought them
of old Yorke the carrier for his son's homestead, but
the poor fellow died. He says he will let you have
them for three hundred and ten dollars, harness
thrown in. But you had better look at them first,
and then go and talk to him about the deal."

OF AGRICULTURAL EQUIPMENT 13

" I can't possibly pay him three hundred dollars
spot cash, and they are not nearly as big as our
own team," I said. But they were good horses of
the middle-weight division. Jess, the mare, was
gentle, black, and quite young — she revived one's
hope of baby horses. Dick was a bright bay with
the friendliest eyes, and a promise of pace which
even the hair on his fetlocks failed to conceal.
I determined to buy them if I could come to
terms.

" Do you think if I offered him sixty dollars down
and the balance a month or so later he would agree
to sell ? " I asked Mr. Creegan.

" I feel sure he would," he answered; " but go
and see him. You will find him in or near his
shack."

I knocked at the door of a little shanty opposite
the Post Ofhce, and a man with sad eyes and a big
grey beard, who looked as though he particularly
belonged to the hills of Fort Qu'Appelle, opened it.
I told him of my errand and proposal of payment,
and that of course I was willing to pay interest on
the amount deferred.

" If you will pay the balance in October and
November, you can take the horses and harness," he
said, " and I shall not be asking any interest for
that short time."

So we arranged that Jess and Dick should join
my forces, and that my brother should fetch them
on the following day. At the top of the hill I
looked back upon them in the valley. A happy,
useful, friendly pair, browsing contentedly on the
sun-cured herbage. Four and five years was the
age which had been given me, but it transpired that

H

WHEAT AND WOMAN

it was rising four and five. At least they will be
good for many years, I told myself ; and long before
I reached John McLeay's shack I am afraid I had
dotted the new landscape with the foals of the new
mare.

II

THE CUSTOM OF DEFERRED PAYMENT—
A PRAIRIE STORM

On the following morning I started for Fort
Qu'Appelle very early in order to avoid driving in
the intense heat of midday. But Charles Edward
was in his most grudging mood, and we arrived in
sight of the Lake of the Woods Elevator just in
time to see every one going to twelve o'clock dinner.
Charles Edward settled himself to a bunch of sweet-
smelling hay in one of the narrow stalls of the
spacious livery barn, after nodding his head with
angry but vain intelligence towards the bag contain-
ing the oats which I gave to the ostler to be given
him later. At the hotel one was offered the usual
midday fare of soup, a choice of roast and boiled
meats with vegetables, sweets, and a cup of tea or
coffee in a cool, clean dining-room for the modest
sum of twenty-five cents. Afterwards I wrote
letters in the " Woman's Parlour " by way of killing
the time which I knew must intervene before I
could hope to find the bank manager, the butcher,
or the harness-maker in the place of my several
needs. " Do your business before dinner, or get
home when you may " is another unwritten law of
life on the prairie.

My drafts had been made payable through the

IS

1 6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Union Bank of Canada. In the manager I was
fortunate enough to find an EngUsh gentleman,
who in the process of event became my adviser,
my censor, and my tyrant without offence. On
that first and on all subsequent occasions of our
meeting he was courtesy itself. I submitted my
copy of the draft, but it appeared that its duplicate
had not yet arrived at the bank. However, on
being informed that the harvest was well under the
binder, and the wheat of the finest quality, he gave
me permission to make the full payment of one
thousand dollars to my predecessor, and also to
draw on the bank for any further sums that might
suit my convenience at the rate of seven per cent.

With a considerably lighter heart I bent my neck
willingly and most gratefully towards the gilded
chain of that obligation ; it was not removed for
many years, and the scar of temporary loan sears
the pages of the history of my experiment. On that
day, however, I was content to sign a bill of three
hundred dollars at seven per cent, for one month,
so that I should not be at the inconvenience of
being without ready money. Within four days the
duplicate draft had arrived, but at the end of the
month its value had been distributed among the
many claims of a new undertaking.

Messrs. Johnson and Creamer I found equally
obliging. Dr. Creamer was out of town, and I
had a hazy idea that if I didn't meet the bill for
the team which fell due on September i I must at
least personally explain the delay, lest the horses
should be seized, and the initial payment of one
hundred dollars forfeited. I made my way to the
harvest field of Mr. Johnson, where no fewer than

CUSTOM OF DEFERRED PAYMENT 17

three binders were careering round a two-hundred-
acre field of simply gorgeous wheat.

Mr. Johnson was driving the third binder himself,
and willingly consented to my request that the
payment might be deferred until November i.
I thought them the very pleasantest people to do
business with, and nothing at all of the fact that
ten per cent, became the charge for interest after
the maturity of the original bill. Nor is the debtor
in Canada one whit less the obliged party because
of the heavy rate of interest. Had I not been able
to settle the whole amount for six or even twelve
months I think my two creditors would have waited
with patience, but certainly not with pleasure. In
Canada money can command almost anything but
labour ; and I haven't the smallest doubt that had I
taken three hundred dollar bills to Messrs. Johnson
and Creamer on the day of purchase, Jim and Kitty
would have changed hands at that " spot cash "
price, instead of the original three hundred and sixty
dollars plus interest on deferred payment at eight
and ten per cent.

I returned home with joints of beef, harness
repairs, various pots and pans, and a crate of delicious
black plums from British Columbia, paying about
seven shillings and sixpence for twenty pounds. As
I drew near the boundary line of our neighbour's half-
section I saw that he had crossed it, and that two
binders were at work in the eighty-acre field. It was
the first of many kind attentions he showed us during
those early days of farming. I drove towards his
binder to thank him, and to ask him to join our party
at supper, but he refused the invitation on the plea of
his evening " chores," and promised to come again if

B

1 8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

we hadn't finished before his own oats were down.
" I would come to-morrow," he said, " because,
there is no mistake about it, your wheat is ahead of
you, especially on the high ground. But I'm in the
same place with my oats, which are shelling almost
as freely. However, I expect we shall both be
through by Saturday." And we should have been m
only there came a violent storm. I

My predecessor departed in the morning with
his first instalment of a thousand dollars, which I
felt quite sure he received with much surprise and
some regret. " I don't want to worry you," he
said at parting, " but I shall be glad when you can
let me have the money for the stock and the cord-
wood. 'Tisn't much, but I've bought a house and
two lots down at the Fort, and a thousand dollars
won't go far."

It was a matter of about a hundred and fifty
dollars, and it included two milch cows and two
bull calves at ninety dollars, a sow at ten dollars,
and nine pigs at two and a half dollars each. Besides
these, there was quite a good stock of fuel of the
dimensions known as cord-wood, a kitchen table, a
heater and its attendant drum. I undertook to pay
the amount within a few days.

" And you should have bought my son's team,"
he added ; " they would have done you well,
knowing the place and the work. That second team
of yours is too light for the others."

" You should have sold me a mare," I answered ;
" if you couldn't part with even one brood mare, I
don't see why I should buy your son's elderly
geldings." But events proved that it would have
been a wiser deal.

CUSTOM OF DEFERRED PAYMENT 19

" Will you buy my bull at thirty-five dollars ? "
he asked.

" Not if you gave him," I answered. " And
please take him away as soon as you can. You
could make a fortune putting him over fences in
an English show-ring. He would beat an Irish
hunter."

" You are doing wrong not to take him," he said.
" I'll be coming up for my things in a day or so, and
maybe you'll change your mind."

" Never ! " said Hilaria from the rear. " At least,
if the bull remains, I depart. Lai and the son of
Anak took fully an hour to drive him back into the
pasture from the wheat field this morning. And
whilst they were in the heat of argument over the
height of an effectual barricade he slipped down on
his knees, and most carefully conveyed his huge
body beneath the bottom strand of wire, and stalked
back into the wheat. It's distinctly weak of you to
have allowed him to remain even for a day ! . . .
Lai met Mrs. Creegan as he was bringing back the
horses," she added, " and she wants you to go to
the Fort this morning and drive with her to Lipton
this afternoon. Some of her people have a furniture
store there, and she thinks you may care to look
round. We shall certainly have to buy some chairs
when these people remove their household gods ;
but I shouldn't buy much more at present in case
a chance should come to get out of it altogether."

It is fully ten miles from Fort Qu'Appelle to
Lipton, and we didn't leave until after two o'clock.
Mrs. Creegan was the gentlest of whips, and on
each of the many occasions she halted to give fat
swift Fussy a rest I refrained with difficulty from

20 WHEAT AND WOMAN

telling her that she and Charles Edward had been
made for each other. The furniture was shrill,
and therefore not indispensable, but we bought a
convenient camp bedstead for four and a half
dollars. We left at dusk, but by the time we
reached the Touchwood trail it was ominously dark,
only for a lurid glow in the distance which I knew
meant a bad storm.

The Creegans begged me to remain at the
Fort overnight, but I thought it possible to get
home. Charles Edward, fresh from his long rest,
climbed Troy Hill gaily by the last gleam of light.
As we emerged into the open the first growl of the
oncoming storm echoed among the hills, but I
hoped to reach home before it broke and blazed as
it only can on the prairie. Spring rains and snow-
drift have caused fainter repetitions of the main
trail on its either side. After wandering off on to
these many times in the black darkness, and literally
feeling my way back with my fingers, I got into a
place which was completely baffling. By the mock-
ing flash of lightning I could see the country for
twenty miles round, but I could not define my exact
whereabouts on the trail, and I hadn't learned to
trust entirely to the instinct of a horse.

Over the space of a mile I wandered up and down
leading Charles Edward, and shouting in the hope
that I was near the farm, and that Lai or Hilaria
might hear me ; but during our summer on his
homestead we had grown serenely indifferent to
delay, and had made it a rule to refuse to worry.
Suddenly my shout seemed answered on a weird
strange dominating note of profound melancholy.
First one, then many other voices echoed to its

A PRAIRIE STORM 21

calling, until it grew into a soul-chilling chorus-
hungry and despairing as the " Adsum " of tired
souls in the leash of the corpse of sin. For the
first time in Canada I heard the music of the
prairie-wolf. I got back into the buggy and waited
in silence. Gradually the storm grew and burst
into magnificent fury. Peals of thunder rose and
fell, like mountains in procession marching to the
battle-cry of the gods by light of the unearthly
splendour in motion which flashed from every
corner of the heavens. The infernal orchestra of
the wolves from all ends of the prairie joined in the
imperial crescendo. Nothing was strange — all
seemed at one with the crash of storm and the cry
of the unseen hosts of the unfamiliar hours of
darkness, and one had a strange desire to step out
of everything and dart to one's place on the wing of
the storm, as, fierce and dry-eyed, it swept on its
way across those plains of peace.

But with its passing the rain fell as though it
would wash away the sway and the trail of tempest
with the relief of familiar discomfort. It drowned
my hat, my pretty frock, my petticoats, my shoes.
Finally it washed me out of the buggy to seek
protection and a touch of warmth on the more
sheltered of the dripping sides of Charles Edward.
In time the deluge ceased, but black darkness
remained until the silent shadows of dawn stole back
to duty, revealing the fact that we were within half
a mile of home, and like a drowned rat I made my
way back to the stable and the cottage.

Ill

A VAGABOND GARDEN

I KNEW nothing whatever of the law of crops beyond
the fact that one must never ride over anything
that springs at springtime. On the night of the
storm I concluded that in its rage and fury it must
have laid low the golden harvest, but I was much too
wet and uncomfortable to care. However, in the
morning the grain was standing erect, all fresh and
sparkling from its bath ; only the land itself was far
too sodden to permit the binder to travel, and the
harvest field was abandoned for the day.

The son of my predecessor borrowed the buggy,
and drove off to Fort Qu'Appelle accompanied by
the late A.D.C. of the butcher ; but the " son of
Anak," whom we had already rechristened " the
Great Boaster," remained, and discussed the dilapi-
dations of the farm with every token of sympathetic
interest, and a hint of permanent intention in his
undertakings.

" My ! But that's a miserable old barn of a
stable they've let you in for," he exclaimed at
dinner ; " we must get some lumber and roof-paper
and me and Lai will get busy and fix up the roof
so as to keep out the rain. I guess we'll have to
put in a good window too — horses don't like living

22

A VAGABOND GARDEN 23

in the dark. So soon as we've got in the crop I
shall get on to the job."

" Why not to-day ? " I inquired. " You must get
so very tired of doing nothing. Don't any Canadians
do anything on wet days ? "

" Guess not many does much. Stable-cleaning,
water-hauling, milking, and wood-bucking is chores
— boy's work. In this country the boss who can't
keep a chore-boy he just does the chores himself.
When a fellow gets paid by the day, I guess on the
days you can't get on the land he principally
lies round."

" But if he turns up three times a day for his
meals, Billy, he is expected to lend a hand with the
chores, at least that was my experience," struck in
Lai. " And as I got water last night, and again
this morning, you just go along and do your bit
now. And to-night you will milk the easy cow,
and I shall milk the hard one. I'll show you which
is which."

" Why, certainly, I'll fetch the water," he
answered affably. " But I guess you needn't go
out of your way to show me which is which in
the matter of cows, seeing as that old bird of Alan's
is known for ten miles round. My, but he's tickled
to death to have got quit of her ! Not much
praise up to him either, as I was telling him, rounding
her off on English greenhorns. Guess you couldn't
be expected to know no better."

" Wait until you come to England," advised Lai,
with the mask of calmness stretched taut over the
wrath which the term " English greenhorn " always
kindles in his British heart. " We'll talk about
* greenhorns ' then."

24 WHEAT AND WOMAN

" I guess I shan't never get that far, Lai," was the
rejoinder. " I ain't what you may call a great
traveller. Likely I might get so far as Regina, but
that's about the limit."

" Well, get along and get the water, and then
come and give me a hand cleaning out the stable,
and earn your supper."

On that afternoon I walked around the farm. It
was a mile east and west by half a mile north and
south, but as it was then unfenced I found it difficult
to be sure of the boundary line at the east end.
I walked through the forty-acre pasture, which
consists of a stretch of rough but attractive virgin
prairie. Five sloughs break up this field, affording
good water for beasts, and a coarse but seemingly
popular herbage when the water dries out towards
the end of July. On the hill at the north boundary
the only bluff of the pasture keeps guard, and it is
the favourite hide-and-seek playground of cattle
and horses. A group of tall poplars graces the fore-
ground, and a thicket of withies in the rear has been
picturesquely graded by horns and hoofs to the pool
of water which marks its silent heart. On that first
day of our association I vowed that no tree should be
permitted to fall from the stately group of poplars,
which stand for beauty from the first breath of
springtime to the last fierce breath of the destroying
angel of the Fall, and through all the loneliness
of the white-clad winter months their form, even
without the glory of colour, is beauty still. Within
a year I had fenced the land, and discovered that
only one-half of the bluff was on the right side of
the fence — but that half included the poplars.

Just beyond the pasture was an even stretch of

A VAGABOND GARDEN 25

prairie measuring fully twenty-five acres, ■ and
unbroken by slough or bluff. It seemed to clearly
cry out for wheat, and I dedicated it to the site of my
first new field. Beyond, again, on the other side of
an encircling chain of hay-sloughs, I was able to
get in another field of twelve acres which runs
north and south across the east line until it dips
to the edge of a most fertile and perfectly round
slough, from which the yield of hay, in England
would pay the rent of a small farm. On that day
from the far side I caught a gleam of glorious
colour isolated in the contrast of the surrounding
prairie. Viewed from a distance it seemed like an
enchanted garden, and I went eagerly though
carefully towards it across the intervening slough.

" And your brother should be getting on to the
summer fallow ; it's forty acres and late in the
year ! "

My predecessor had uttered this advice on a
warning note at every meal. When I stood on the
border of that living mass of loveliness I knew that
I had arrived at the place of " forty acres," because
running down the centre was a narrow strip of
recently turned black soil. And all the rest was
fairyland.

Within the dower of Canadian soil is the supreme
gift of colour — " the soul's bridegroom " — although
the twin-gift of perfume is not there. Turn but
three feet of virgin soil and within a year bloom in
every hue of violet and gold greets your labour.
How these flowers come and whence none knows, but
it is supposed that an understanding exists between
bird, wind, and seed, since the seed always seems to
arrive at the best place possible for its growth.

26 WHEAT AND WOMAN

On that afternoon tall groups of sunflowers and
banks of golden rod lifted rain-washed faces to the
warmth of the harvest sun. Masses of mauve
daisy reminded one that sweet and somewhat sad
September was in London too. Gorgeous violet
thistles, looking like kings of Scotland in love with
exile, mingled with roses whose colour deepens
and glows with the tint that the sun brings back
from the land beyond the horizon. In full bloom
and full head they reigned amidst vagrant beds of
barley, of vagabond wild oats ; they curled round
the stems of the sunflowers, and clung to the beds
of burr which marked the place where the blue
forget-me-not had been; and even in the few
solitary acres which my predecessor had turned
in July the rose of the prairie triumphed over
the power of the plough. From end to end
of this exquisite garden the measure was half
a mile. I never walk or work on " forty acres "
without remembering it as I saw it then; and
although the price of that lovely vision proved
to be several seasons of anxiety, toil, and an extra-
ordinary share of that burden of financial worry
which must attend every business proposition
not soundly enclosed within a fence of adequate
capital, it lives in one's memory as a sunbeam, and
it was a phase of Canada that one knew even better
than the Canadians — those flowers were peculiarly
mine. Within the month I was a guest at a party
given by a neighbour in order that I might meet
other neighbours. Some one asked me what I
found the chief attraction of the prairie. I said
" the flowers." " The flowers ? " inquired my
hostess, who lived in a tiny house at the corner of

A VAGABOND GARDEN 27

a section of land which was literally six hundred
and forty acres of grain. " The flowers ? " echoed
every voice at the table but one. " I guess I saw
you carrying an armful the other morning when I
was out with my gun," observed its owner. " It's
the weeds she means," he explained in a tone that
authorized gentle dealing, and those who succeeded
in arresting their titter merely said, " Well, there ! "

From the far end of the expensive pleasure-
ground I dropped into another round luxuriant
slough which marks the centre of a sheltering slope,
and yields from eight to ten tons of hay, and shelter
from every wind that blows across the North- West.
To the right another stretch of virgin soil climbed a
forbidding hill which later on I compelled to the
service of wheat. From that point to the western
boundary the eighty-acre field stretched north and
south, and I reached the plain- featured cottage well
content with its surrounding land.

It was past supper-time and the meal was in pro-
gress. My brother had persuaded our neighbour
to join us. We talked of the storm, which had
caught him also on the trail. Then we talked of
the crops, and I inquired of him the full meaning
of the term summer fallow.

" Summer- fallow land," he explained, " should
mean that particular third section of one's crop-land
which should be permitted to lie fallow every year.
Canadians will give you many good reasons for this
system of farming ; the ruling reason is that
Canadian soil is not only the finest in the world
for wheat, but also for weed. This third year out
system gives the farmer an opportunity of keeping
down the weed through careful surface cultivation

28 WHEAT AND WOMAN

with disc and harrow. And if you want a par-
ticularly impressive specimen of what the Canadian
prairie can produce in the form of weed on a large
scale, you have only to walk to the forty-acre field
on the south-east corner of this farm."

" I have been there this afternoon," I said. " It is
even lovelier than the wheat-field."

" You will be having an awful mess there next
year if you are not very careful," he said seriously.

" What do you mean ? " I asked.

" We don't deprive ourselves of the use of a third,
or even a fourth, of our crop-land every year in
order to grow wild-flower gardens," he answered.
" I broke that forty acres myself. When I first
came to this country I hired on with Alan McLeay
for a year. It is a beautiful field, and it is a shame
that it is in its present condition in so short a time ;
but, as you may have heard, the farm was sold to an
Englishman two years ago. He knew very little of
farming, and in any case he had no money to farm
with. The old man went to his other place up
north, and the farm got into a pretty dirty condition ;
and although he took possession again in time to
claim the harvest, the weed had got badly ahead.
Last year they managed to get the greater part
of this big field twice ploughed and well worked,
and so knocked out a good many of the wild oats.
But they are there still, and badly in places. I
should recommend you not to sow a stubble crop
next year, but leave it fallow and work it well.
Then in 1907 you could expect to get as fine a crop
as this year, and quite free from wild oats."

" But that would only leave the forty acres for
crop-land," I objected.

A VAGABOND GARDEN 29

" Do you really intend to sow wheat in forty
acres ? " he inquired.

" I understood that the crop grown on fallow land
represented the principal contribution to the grain
harvest," I said, " and as far as I can judge the grain
can be the only substantial source of one's income
for a time."

" Ah ! grain grown from the fallow land which
has been even fairly well worked," he explained.
" This field is the best in the neighbourhood and
I expect its prospect went to Alan's head. At any
rate he put in very little work on forty acres this
year. There is about fifteen acres in the centre
which he ploughed in late June. Didn't you notice
that it wasn't nearly so thickly covered with growth
as the land on either side ? If your brother ploughed
that fifteen acres now, and again in the spring, after
the seed which must be scattered on the present
surface has had time to shoot, it will be a fairly
good bed for barley next year, because barley can
be sown as late as June. But wheat is out of the
question ; and believe me it is perfectly hopeless
to think of using the remaining twenty-five acres
as a seed-bed next year. You should put the mower
to all that growth at once, burn the refuse, then
disc and harrow. Next year plough lightly in May,
then plough deep early in July, cultivate until the
freeze-up, and in 1907 you should obtain a good
result."

" That means that I ought not to put in a crop at
all next year."

" Not quite. There is the fifteen acres your
brother is now at work on, which should yield
excellent pig-feed, and the ten- and four-acre arms

30 WHEAT AND \^^OMAN

of this big field are perfectly clean. You could
quite well sow wheat on this stubble. But it
would be wiser to spring plough and sow oats so
as to make a good reserve of feed, and go nap on
wheat in 1907."

" Are all Canadian farms like this, or have I
made a particularly unfortunate investment ? " I
asked.

" I shouldn't say that exactly," he answered,
" the investment is all right if you have sufficient
capital to work and wait for its return. It is a
common saying in this country that if you don't
get the better of the other man in a deal, he will
get the better of you. In the main this farm
owes its present pHght to the first EngHsh buyer, and
the vendor no doubt thinks that it is quite all right
that the second English buyer should take a share
in the settlement of the score. You have bought
the best farm in the neighbourhood as far as the
wheat-land goes — very little slough and bluff,
a hundred and twenty acres of crop-land, to which
you can easily add another hundred and fifty and
still hold on to that useful pasture. But you
mustn't forget that you have a far more expensive
proposition before you in dealing with the cleaning
of that forty acres than with new breaking. If
you can hold over next year's crop you will be
upsides on the deal ; but if this is the best farm
within the slough and bluff neighbourhood, which
lies between the wheat plains of Wideawake and
Springbrook, it is wiser to face the fact that it is
also about the dirtiest. There is one neighbour
who can beat you in French weed, and another in
wild oats — but you have both ! "

A VAGABOND GARDEN 31

Our neighbour was something of a pessimist,
and a more inspiring companion in good times
than in bad. But he was unusually clever, and never
walked blindfold through experience. On that
occasion certainly his advice was sound and strong.
Also I might have been guided by the sight of his
own agricultural work, which, although limited in
extent through lack of capital, was excellent as far
as it went. But my position was too weak from
every point to dare that fallow year. The further
capital I depended on was but income drawn from
another source of business enterprise, and, sound
and remunerative as it was at that time, I knew
it would probably decrease during my prolonged
absence from England. My father plainly dis-
approved of the Canadian deal, in spite of the fact
that he had advanced the initial capital. He hadn't
sufficient agricultural knowledge to swallow my
glowing report of wheat with a grain of salt, and I
knew that to ask for more money to work and wait
with, as my neighbour advised, would mean a
complete loss of confidence. Family eye-witnesses
in the form of my brother and sister frankly shouted,
" Evil be thou our good and take us out of Canada ! "
I had already spent a good deal of money over the
equipment. I knew that in the long run I need not
fail, and had that initial capital been my own I
should not have hesitated a moment to follow my
neighbour's advice. As things were I didn't hesitate
to decide that it was impossible, and that since I
could not have the full loaf I must make the best
of the half. Lastly, but not least, I had always
believed in the gods, and I hadn't found out that
they won't perform agricultural miracles for you,

32 WHEAT AND WOMAN

but only through you. So even on that night I
slept as soundly as one always sleeps in enchanted
air, until the sun was shining on the wheat-field in
face of my bedroom window.

IV

OF HARVEST, WAGES, THE COST OF
IMPLEMENTS AND PLANT

" Is everything ready ? " I inquired of Lai, who
had brought me a cream-decked cup of tea, an
attention with which he never failed to meet the
early morning no matter how firmly we had decided
to differ the night before.

" The horses are ready and your stookers have just
turned out of bed. I have been up the last two
hours — fed everything, groomed the horses. We
ought to finish to-day, as our neighbour expects to
finish his oats before dinner and is coming along to
help us through. But the Jehu of the binder has
not turned up yet."

" Not turned up ! " I cried. " Lai, what shall
we do ? And every hour matters ! Do you think
he can be ill ? "

" The aftermath of conviviality, I shouldn't
wonder," he answered cheerfully. " He isn't half
a bad sort. Jolly good chap all round. Everybody
likes him."

Billy the Boaster didn't fail to turn his neighbour's
possible backsliding to his own account at breakfast.
" It's a free country," he affirmed, " and I say if a
feUer has a mind to get full let him get good and

33 C

34 ^\^iEAT AND WOMAN

full as often as he likes. But at seeding and harvest
times I guess I'm off the liquor. Threshing ain't
of the same account."

" You cut it a bit fine sometimes, Billy," said my
brother. " You were the heaviest old rip I have
ever lent a hand in putting to bed in a stable since
I have been in this country."

" I ain't been so full as that night, Lai, since Sam
Soundman came back from fightin' the Boers with
his pockets sticking out with dollar bills and his
legs tied round with bits of rag, and there was free
drinks to all. Have you seen me touch liquor since
I hired on ? " he demanded with such force that I
thought it wisdom to turn conversation my way.

" I shall go across and ask our neighbour if it is
quite sure that he can come this afternoon," I said ;
" and I feel certain that our Jehu will be along
within an hour."

" If he doesn't, hadn't some one else better get
on with the binder ? " suggested Lai.

" I don't see how we can since he came as a kind
of favour. Besides, supposing any Httle thing went
wrong it would be a fine excuse for him to go off
altogether. Better wait awhile."

I found our neighbour already at work and expect-
ing to finish at midday. Half-way back across the
field I saw the binder at work again, and waited for
it to come up. To my astonishment, the Great
Boaster was in command. He stopped the horses
at my signal.

" I am quite sure you mean well," I said, " but
it really won't do for you to drive the binder, and
especially with Mr. McLeay's horses. He came as
a favour and at great personal inconvenience, and

OF HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 35

you must see that it is not possible to allow another
man to take his place. Of course it is most annoying,
but we must wait until "

" Wait ! Wait for a man at harvest-time ! My,
if that don't tickle a feller some ! There's no
favours in a free country where you're paying a man
good money. You leave Jack to me. The wheat
is shelling all the time. I'm on this here binder and I
guess I'm stopping on it till he comes along. All the
English greenhorns I've been up against yet I never
heard of stopping the binder because a man "

" Be quiet ! " I shouted. " And if you are going
on, go on and don't talk so much."

" No offence meant nor need be taken," was the
complacent comment. " I've teached them all
some. And I guess you'll larn."

At dinner-time the missing man returned. He
had the pleasantest way of being sorry about things
without actually putting it into words, and I was
reheved to find that he took the Great Boaster's
presence on the binder as a matter of course. Our
neighbour arrived in due time, and by Saturday
noon the wheat was finished, and by evening the
five acres of oats were laid low. The stookers, how-
ever, were miles behind ; but harvest was gathered.
Its labour account ran :

Binder-man with team, 6 days at

$4, and one day team only . $26.75

Stooker, 12 days at $1.50 . . 18

Stooker, 12 days ... 20

Total . . . $64.75

As the general law of the harvest-field in Canada

36 WHEAT AND WOMAN

is three stookers to two binders, and they usually
finish within a few hours of each other, it will be
easily understood that the two stookers who followed
in the wake of the binder in the first year of my
farming experiment had the harvest-time of their
lives. . . . But wages to-day are nearly double,
two dollars seventy-five or three dollars with board
being average pay for stooking.

My general ignorance of agriculture proved de-
plorable in the matter of the selection of implements.
I made a good start with the Massey-Harris up-to-
date six-foot binder-reaper ; but the principal
implement on a farm, especially where there remains
much land to be broken, is a plough ; and into this
booby-trap I fell headlong. Mr. McGusty was the
Massey-Harris agent at Fort Qu'Appelle, and in
duty bound to sell their implements when possible.
I bought the Sulkey model he recommended at
fifty-six dollars in good faith — later in these pages
it may tell its own tale. The disc cost forty-five
dollars. The mower and rake had been purchased,
but not paid for, by the first buyer, and Mr.
McGusty let me have them for fifty dollars. The
mower still does good work ; the rake was not satis-
factory. The seeder, a " Kentucky," I bought of
a neighbour, who was also its agent, for the sum of
one hundred and thirty dollars ; but it is wisdom to
buy an implement of a direct agent, and that he
should be within reach, because of the frequently
urgent matter of repairs. The hay-rack was made
to order at a cost of twenty-three dollars seventy,
which included lumber, bolts, &c., and carpenter's
charges. It was much too heavy and clumsy for its
purpose, and has been succeeded by two — one was

OF HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 37

sold to me for ten dollars by the sharp son of a really
clever father, and finally I had a Yankee model
copied at the inclusive cost of seventeen dollars
seventy-five. A hay-rack is deserving of thought,
labour, and money, as it is one of the most useful of
farm chattels ; but most Canadians make their ov^n,
and the average collection of racks on a threshing
gang is characteristic of Canada, in expressing the
individuality of its particular owner untrammelled
by the law of order or any sense of loyalty to form.
Bob-sleighs I was able to buy at an auction for
eighteen dollars ; there also I bought a second wagon
at forty-six dollars, and might have bought a service-
able seeder in excellent order at twenty-five dollars
had I not already ordered the " Kentucky." A
fanning-mill should be selected with finest dis-
cretion ; and here again I made the mistake of
buying at the door. It was an up-to-date model
of the Chatham separator, and certainly separated
wild oats from wheat in a manner that seemed to
me marvellous, and I didn't discover, until the agent
and my cheque were both beyond recall, that it was
a very slow process entailing great waste of grain.
It cost twenty-six dollars, and was replaced by
another in 1910 which I bought of Morgan and
Vicars of South Qu'Appelle for thirty-five dollars
without its bagging attachment. It did its work
well, but occasionally needs the attention of the
expert, which proves the theory that it is wisdom
to purchase one's implements of an agent within
call. A set of four sections of harrows cost twenty
dollars, and some years later I bought for eleven
dollars a harrow cart — an item of equipment which
none should be without. It is only a slight addi-

38 WHEAT AND WOMAN

tional weight for the horses, and saves foot-weariness
and foot-wear, besides ensuring more faithful service
to the land. I managed with a home-made stone-
boat, and also a home-made wood-bucking board for
some time, at a great cost of energy, patience, and
unstoned land. It is wisdom in purchasing a ready-
made farm to engage a good carpenter for a day or
so to put all implements in order, and supply such
chattels as are absolutely necessary for economy of
time and energy.

The total cost of my original outlay in implements
and chattels amounted to nearly one hundred and
fifty pounds. This included the cost of buggy and
harness which my brother had purchased for his
homestead at about nineteen pounds, and also the
second wagon, which was useful but not indis-
pensable. There was also the cost of binder-twine,
thirty-six dollars, and an account from the local
iron stores for such items as brooms and buckets,
grain-shovel, spades, forks, rakes, barrels, halters,
and those items of stable equipment which are
absolutely indispensable, and the cost of which
always seems inconsiderable ; but its sum demands
a distinct place in the consideration of capital
adequate to secure the success of agricultural
experiment within reasonable time.

When all the sheaves were safely in stook, " the
Great Boaster " spent a day in repairing the stable
roof. At the end of the day my brother told me
that he thought he was anxious to stay on, but that
he would want at least two dollars a day after that
week, and that he feared I should find farming a very
expensive occupation. Between the serious dilemma
of the unploughed summer fallow, the ungathered

OF HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 39

hay, and, to an Englishwoman, the seeming urgent
necessity of immediate repair, I might have made
the deal ; but I had discovered that although,
after his many years' residence in the North- West,
" the Great Boaster " knew his business, he never
lost an opportunity of " resting a piece." That
day two men had chanced to call in search of
employment, and offered their service at one dollar
fifty ; but I felt that a change was inadvisable, and
decided to offer " the Great Boaster " a renewal of
the bargain — twenty dollars for twelve days — but I
intended to map out service day by day.

I told Hilaria of my intention as we were saying
good-night to Charles Edward, and just at that
moment his voice fell on our ears.

" Be sure have the women up in good time to
get our breakfast, Lai. To-morrow we ought to
get in at least live loads of hay."

" Women indeed ! " said Hilaria. " Oh, haven't
you tied yourself up in a knot ! "

However, " the women " as usual served breakfast
punctually, but finding the exclusively egotistical
turn of the conversation a little trying at that early
hour I went off to the gallery-room which Hilaria
and I had fixed up at the head of the stairs.

" Billy wishes to know if you have decided that
he shall work on next week at two dollars a day,"
said my brother. " And if he thinks I am going to
do all the pitchin' whilst he lies on the hay and
smokes, he is mistaken," he added. " Yesterday he
sat on the stable roof like a field-marshal commanding
an army whilst I did all the work. And^I have done
every blessed chore this morning whilst he talked on."

" How very silly of you ! " I answered. " Of

40 WHEAT AND WOMAN

course if you wait on people — you may. And only
yesterday you strongly advised me to renew his
engagement at higher pay ! "

" I said he was a good man, and so he is ; but
who do you suppose is going to work for a woman
in this country without taking advantage of her
ignorance ? If you get rid of him, where will you
be ? I can't do all the work that is waitin' to be
done in this place. And you simply can't get labour
for love or money ! "

" Can't I ? Two real workmen called to ask for
a job yesterday, and only asked a dollar fifty a day.
' The Great Boaster ' may be a good man at his
work on the rare occasions when he puts his power
into practice ; but he is far more reliable at resting
from his labour. He can take twenty dollars for
twelve days' work if he chooses, but I shall dictate
the work, and shall expect him to do it, and not
merely bounce about what he has done for other
people. You can tell him that I say so."

However, there was no need. Through the stove-
pipe in Canadian houses sound carries very clearly ;
in this way a candid opinion has often flown straight
home. On that morning the Great Boaster heard
mine.

" Find fault with my work ! And a woman too !
Not another day ! Tell her to have the dollars
ready. I quit — after dinner."

I had to pay him by cheque, and in Canada the
cost of exchange not only between one bank and
another, but between branches of the same company
located in different cities, is twenty-five cents. In
drawing the cheque I naturally allowed for this
cost of exchange. He received it like an injured

OF^HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 41

Viking, and left without the conventional farewell ;
but in explaining his sudden exit, with the opinion
that we were the queerest outfit that had yet arrived
in Canada from the old country, he sharply defended
us against an accusation of meanness in the fact of
that twenty-five cents.

We were completely fed-up with feeding hired
men. Hilaria expressed the hope almost hourly and
seldom devoutly that she might never again look
upon roast beef and bacon to the end of her days —
the meat which had been so far away as to seem a
boon in the place of my brother's homestead had
become as the quails of the wilderness. My brother,
not altogether unpleased with the situation, decided
that with a spurt he could manage to finish the
ploughing ; and our neighbour kindly offered to
help with the carrying of the hay. I think the
turning of about two-thirds of the fifteen acres was
accomplished, but very little of the grass in the few
sloughs which our predecessor had left became hay,
and before the end of the winter we were in diffi-
culties over feed. From the moment the harvest
was down my mind attached itself to the possibility
of improvement, and my neighbour warned me
that it was necessary to see about new granaries, as
the only one on the place would contain barely
two thousand bushels, and he considered we might
expect at least two thousand five hundred bushels
of wheat, and about four hundred bushels of oats.

The carpenters had to come to build the granaries,
and in that fact I will plant my first mistake in
completely embracing the cottage with an eight-foot
roofed and floored veranda, a luxury primarily
designed to conceal its bald lack of attraction.

42 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Our neighbour, who was an excellent carpenter,
took the measurement of the house, and advised me
to build a ten-foot mosquito-netted veranda on
the entrance and south sides rather than make it
eight foot all round. He explained how useful
would be such an addition as a summer parlour, but
I insisted that only the complete circumference of
a veranda could make the cottage possible ; and
that one could easily add mosquito netting and
dividing doors when summer came. He smiled and
said nothing — just as I now smile and say nothing
when I hear new-comers discuss the plans of next
summer ; and I determined to drive into town the
next day to find a carpenter and make the necessary
arrangements.

On the shady side-walk in South Qu'Appelle
I met an Englishwoman who seemed like an old
friend, since she and her husband had pitched their
tent one midsummer night on my brother's terri-
tory. As a matter of fact, all the hospitality had
been on their side, since they bestowed upon us a
much-needed candle and strawberry jam, whilst all
that was asked of us was boiling water and space for
the tent. But the visit had been an event in our
sojourn on the prairie. He was a barrister, and I
purposely had not asked his advice about the pur-
chase of the farm lest he should side with my
brother and sister. But I asked her to recommend
us a carpenter.

She spoke highly of one who was just then
employed at the Church House. I went in and
told him my business, and he said he would draw
up the estimate immediately and give me the list
of the lumber required ; but for the estimate of that

OF HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 43

cost I must inquire of the lumber merchant.
Mindful of my neighbour's solemn warning, I
impressed on him the fact that I must have the
estimate for the finished work, and would have
nothing to do with a time arrangement ; and that
when the veranda was completed I wanted two
granaries built, each to hold a thousand bushels ;
also I needed some odds and ends in the house, the
estimate for which he could give me when the
veranda was finished. To my utter astonishment
the estimate came out at thirty- five dollars.

" But are you quite sure about the sum ? " I
asked. " It is considerably less than I anticipated."

" If the measurements are correct, that estimate
covers it," he answered.

I inquired how long it would take, and he said
about two or three days, and that if I could send out
for the lumber in time for him to start on the
following Friday he would come out with his men,
start them, and discuss the estimate for the other
matters.

On the Friday he arrived at about eleven o'clock
with three men. To my astonishment, as so far
I had considered the Canadian casual in labour,
they started at once, putting in a good hour's work
before dinner, and by evening the west end of the
veranda was an accomplished fact, and the greater
part of the flooring in the south side was laid.
I poured out my admiration of this Canadian method
and scale of charges to my neighbour as he sat on
the newly erected flooring waiting for his milk-pail
to be filled.

" The charge is all right," he said, " but look
out that he doesn't charge you time ; although if

44 WHEAT AND WOMAN

they go on at this rate that won't be far out of his
reckoning either."

The next day the master unexpectedly took his
departure with one of the men, promising to return
early in the following week. On Monday one of
the men retired to his room with lumbago. On
Tuesday down came the rain, and in came the men.
It was late in the afternoon of this dull day that I
suggested to one of them that I wanted two little
tables, and a kitchen cupboard and some shelves.
He gladly started to work on these furnishing trifles,
which if purchsed at a store could not have cost
more than ten dollars.

Towards the end of the week the master returned,
and again work went forward merrily; but it was
discovered that the measurement had been three
feet out, and that additional lumber must be
fetched. The granaries were then started. The
contractor estimated the cost of the first at fourteen
dollars, the second might be a little less. I suggested
twenty-six dollars for the two, and he seemed to
assent ; but added that the cost of the veranda
would slightly exceed his estimate owing to the
fault in the measurement.

" How much more ? " I inquired.

" Well, the stones have taken time to remove,
and one thing and another made it a more trouble-
some job than I expected."

" It won't come out at more than forty-five
dollars, will it ? " I said with anxiety, although
as a matter of fact fifty dollars had been the original
estimate in my mind ; but had it exceeded that
sum I should have escaped the folly of the veranda.

" Oh, certainly not more than that," he said
reassuringly ; and within the week the veranda,

OF HARVEST, WAGES, IMPLEMENTS 45

the granaries, the odds and ends were all finished,
and we all bade each other a pleasant farewell.

Within the month I was at South Qu'Appelle,
and, encountering him in a store, asked for my bill.
It was one hundred and twenty-five dollars.

Already I had discovered that of all sorts and
conditions of wealth capital is the most powerfully
winged. At first sight the amount subdued me
even more than it annoyed me. It would have
bought three milch cows and two calves or four
sows and forty little pigs — or a horse. I took counsel
of my neighbour.

" I knew he would do it ; they always do," he
said consolingly. " And if you buck at it he will
simply give you a time bill. Have you got his
estimate in writing ? "

But the scrap of pencilled paper had fluttered
anywhere ; although even had I been able to pro-
duce it, the measurements which my neighbour had
taken were incorrect. I reminded him of this not
altogether without malice.

" The writing would have been evidence, and
the difference easy to estimate on the figures given
for the given dimensions," he said. " I knew when
those men stayed on day after day so jolly well
pleased with themselves and their quarters that, no
matter what your estimate might be, they were
being paid by time."

I paid fifty dollars on account, referred to the
estimate, and demanded a corrected account. Back
came an absolutely confounding misstatement of
time.

I approached my friend the barrister, and deter-
mined to fight out the matter even if I had to take
down every shelf and small table to stand for my

46 WHEAT AND WOMAN

case. He was of the opinion that, as I had no
written evidence, I should have but a poor chance
of winning the case, and in his kind and cheerful
way advised me to pay and look pleasant.

I reasoned with the contractor, who wouldn't
move an inch. The men had returned that time
list, which I could not contradict, as, having made
it clear to him that I would accept no estimate
calculated on time, I hadn't thought it necessary
to make any note of the hours or even days. The
only possible claim I could make against it, he assured
me, was a charge for their board,

" And that you know quite well I shouldn't do,"
I said in the heat of the moment. And he said
" Quite so."

In the end I paid one hundred dollars, absolutely
refusing to settle the balance unless the law obliged
me to do so. I don't think for one moment the
contractor was guilty of intentional dishonesty.
Both of us were unbusinesslike, and I have no
doubt when he received the time sheet from the
men it was as severe a shock to him as was my bill
to me. Possibly he considered that since one of us
must pay for a careless transaction it should be the
more careless of the two. Bitterness rankled in my
heart over that deal for many a day, but in time
we forget everything in Canada. It is a matter
of regret too that I have no copy of the time list,
as such a record of industry could never have been
beaten, or even attained, by the most conscientious
bee in the hive watched over by Maeterlinck. The
incident proves that it is wisdom in all new-comers
to insist that estimates for labour or other services
should be presented formally in black on white.

V

THRESHING

" Have you made any arrangements about thresh-
ing ? " inquired our neighbour. " Because if you
have not, Guy Mazey will take on your job and
mine as soon as he has finished his own. It's only a
small outfit, but he is a reliable chap and will thresh
our crops as carefully as his own. Russell Haynes
wants him to go there, but if you agree he will
come straight through to us after he has threshed
himself out, and then go on to Haynes and finish.
I don't think you will do better. There aren't
many outfits round this year."

I closed at once with this offer, and, with one's
usual way of waving away the detail of responsibility,
I considered the threshing arrangement made, and
that I need think nothing more of it until the engine
and gang came in at the gate. But there is a certain
etiquette to be observed in the ceremony of thresh-
ing in Canada. Some eight days later I got belated
on my way home from South Qu'Appelle and lost
my way utterly and completely in the neighbour-
hood of home, until Charles Edward literally fell
up against Guy Mazey's fence, and, guided by the
barking of many dogs and a bright light, I came
step by step to the comfortable cheer of Mrs.
Mazey's kitchen. In the process of conversation

47

48 WHEAT AND WOMAN

I found that it was quite news to him that he was
to thresh out the crop. It is probable in the dazzHng
brightness of the kitchen my greenness, standing out
from the background of the pathetic darkness in
which I had lost my way, stood me in good stead,
since among the entire threshing-gang only one
tittered audibly at my amazed discomfiture, and he
was promptly shut up. I gladly shared the evening
meal, and before Charles Edward and I were set
upon the right road I had asked my host if he would
be kind enough to thresh for me, and he had most
graciously consented.

The charge was to be four cents a bushel for
oats, and five cents for wheat ; and he found all the
stook teams. So that if one or both my teams were
in the field he was due to pay me for the use of
them ; and the same law held good with the
neighbours. But we were all more casual about
payment in those days when threshing terms were
comparatively low. In due course the engine
arrived at my neighbour's, and Hilaria and I went
over to make acquaintance with the Mazey family,
who were always in the trail of their father, always
choosing some form or another of work for play, and
always happy. At that time they only numbered
eight of the present eleven, and each seemed to have
arrived within easy distance of the other. The
eldest girl was driving a stook team, the eldest boy
was fireman, the third girl had stocked from dawn
till dark through the gathering of the harvest, and
was still busy at one thing or another in the threshing
field, whilst the second girl was at home preparing
meals for the gang of fifteen men, and all the younger
branches took care of themselves and each other.

c
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O 5
Q o

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P

ct^r*^

THRESHING 49

They were a healthy, jolly, friendly group, and in
time we grew to know each other well. On that
occasion I remember taking their photograph on
my new camera, which to this day seldom registers
a success.

Hilaria and I had more than one offer of help in
the entertainment of our threshing party, but the
only one she would hear of was Ella Carroll, the
daughter of our neighbour, — the farmer and post-
master, Sam Carroll of Strathcarrol. We liked her
because she was pretty, and we stood in no awe of
her because she was only sixteen. Hilaria presided
over the cook-stove, and Ella Carroll made scones
by the hundred and raisin pies, apple pies, lemon
pies, and all sorts and conditions of cakes just as
casually and quickly as the average Englishwoman
sits down and sews on buttons with an air of
rest. I was henchman to Hilaria, and usually
dispatched to fetch the meat and merchandize in
the morning, and more meat and all the other things
that had been forgotten from Fort Qu'Appelle in
the afternoon.

For a day and a half all went merrily. The sun
was generous indeed that year, and in October it
was as deliciously warm by day as is the Riviera in
April, and with bright, keen, moonlit, frost-kissed
nights. The two new granaries had been drawn
up side by side in the centre of the eighty-acre
wheat-patch. The wheat was of excellent quality,
plump, and of a deep gold colour, and hard as the
shell of ripe nuts. In the bliss of ignorance we were
unaware that it was freely sprinkled with wild oats.

" There must be three thousand bushels of grain,"
said Lai. " We have nearly filled the first granary,

D

50 WHEAT AND ^^■OMAN

and that patch of cleared land looks to be barely
one- tenth of the field."

But the fact was that those two granaries never
contained a thousand bushels of grain. There is a
simple table in Canadian farm statistics by which
one can calculate, through the number of pounds
of grain due to a bushel, the amount of grain in a
granary by measuring the amount of space it takes
up. The rule is to multiply length by breadth by
height by eight, and cut off the final figure. Thus
a granary measuring fourteen feet by fourteen
by seven should contain one thousand and ninety-
seven bushels of wheat. Oats and barley take up
more space in relation to weight. As oats weigh
but thirty-five pounds to the bushel and barley
forty-five against the sixty pounds which should
find place in the orthodox bushel of wheat, thus
the threshing-charge for the coarser grains is
nominally less, but really higher, than the charge
for wheat, and the Canadian plan of feeding oats
in sheaf saves the cost of threshing and renders the
winter chore of stock-feeding considerably fighter
as the beasts consume first the oats and then the
more appetizing portions of the oat-straw, but there
is always a considerable amount left over for ready-
to-hand bedding. However, some farmers think
that the waste which is entailed through the
shelling of the oats in stack outweighs the cost of
threshing, and the greater number put aside suffi-
cient sheaves for threshing to yield at least three
hundred bushels. Wheat badly frozen or cut on
the green side will fall below the average standard
of weight to the bushel, but on the whole the
method works out well, and its rule should be

THRESHING 51

securely fixed in the memory of the grain-farmer.
My ignorance cost me a considerable sum in more
seasons than one, although I levelled up in one
year through the ignorance or carelessness of the
thresher-man. A new granary had been unsoundly
built, and it broke down on its first journey out. It
leaned slightly on its right side on an incline, and
to its care was confided the grain drawn from a
newly broken sixteen-acre field. The thresher-man
debited me with three hundred and fifty bushels in
that granary, but afterwards when I had sold three
hundred and fifty bushels there remained between
eighty and a hundred bushels, which I treasured for
seed. The grain was sold on the street, and the
dealers at the local elevator are the last in the world
to err on the wrong side. The grain, too, was very
fine, and perfectly ripe ; but it must have weighed
out at the rate of eighty-five pounds to the bushel
to have accounted for the margin.

Apropos of the newly built granaries of my first
harvest a story in connexion with bulk and space
will serve to show how, among other things, stories
grow on the prairie. A neighbour who had been
working for Guy Mazey at that first threshing, and
between then and now has managed to become the
possessor of three farms, was driving his own stook
team at my harvest of 191 1.

The weather was fiendishly cold. Many of the gang
were standing by one of the two granaries waiting
for something in connexion wth the engine to
thaw out, and the topic of conversation was, as is
usual at threshing-time, the quality and quantity of
the grain.

" D'you mind the first year you came to the

52 WHEAT AND WOMAN

place, and Guy Mazey threshed you out, and
charged you at the rate of a thousand bushels to
each of they two granaries, an' you paid it ? " he
inquired.

" Not he nor I," I answered. " I'm not likely
to forget my first year for many reasons, but, as a
matter of fact, the grain was not measured at all.
I paid Guy Mazey a hundred dollars spot cash on
account, and he took my figure of weight from the
return bills of the elevator net — not even gross.
When it was all sold we calculated what was left
for seed, and in the following spring I paid him the
balance."

" Took the figures from the elevator weigh-bills !
Golly ! I wish all the threshing outfits would work
out their sums that way. My returns ain't never
once been quite up to the level of the threshing
bill. Wall now, if that ain't news to me ! I've
always heard tell that he charged you a thousand
bushels each for them two granaries — an' that you
paid it. Any you fellows heard the same ? " he
demanded.

" Sure thing ! That's right," came the chorus.

To return to the threshing of 1905. On the
second day down came a snowstorm.

" It's horribly annoying for you," said our
neighbour, " but Guy means to shut down and pull
over to Haynes. They have their wheat stacked, so
it will thresh out all right in spite of the snow.
But he is quite right not to risk this. We shall
probably get the Indian summer after the snow-
storm, which means six or eight weeks of very hot
weather, so that if the grain passed into the
granary in a moist condition it would probably

THRESHING 53

shoot, which would be ruinous. He will pull in
again directly he has finished with Haynes. But it's
hard luck having the bother twice over as it were
in your first experience of threshers."

" I don't know that I am so very sorry," said
Hilaria. " It's a respite at least. And they are all
very kind and nice, and really no trouble. As for
bucking wood and drawing water, why two of them
bucked enough for a week in an hour. And when
I think of those harvest worthies looking on with
their hands in their pockets, I feel one can't be too
decent to them."

" Oh, they are pleasant enough," I allowed, " but
it's the eternal cooking and smell of cooking. And
then one's so awfully afraid that there shouldn't
be enough when they come trooping in. Lai says
it's a point of honour to do them magnificently —
the farmers' wives do anything to outrival the
reputation of each other. Every kind of iced cake
beneath the sun — stewed fruit — canned fruit
— whipped cream — junket and heaven knows
what ! "

" Don't take the slightest notice of Lai's fussi-
ness," advised Hilaria. " He is either ' pulling our
leg ' or doesn't know any more than we do. Yester-
day just half an hour before dinner he came in
with the tale that three of the men were Jews and
wouldn't touch pork under any condition. I had
two joints of pork in the oven, and of course there
was no more room, so I had to draw on the beef-steak
I had in reserve for supper — to say nothing of the
extra annoyance and trouble at the last moment.
And to crown it all — did not those three Jews eat
pork ? You should have seen them ! "

54 WHEAT AND WOMAN

The Indian summer followed the snowstorm, and
in three days back came the threshing outfit. The
little engine took things easily, and Guy Mazey had
decreased the number of his gang, so that it was
four days before they finished, but they were a
quiet, well-behaved group of men, although drawn
from many nations, and, barring the inevitable
drudgery attached to the washing-up as well as the
cooking of three heavy meals a day, they were no
trouble.

It was on the last afternoon that I went down to
the Fort to replenish our store of sausages for the
final breakfast, and, taking the pace at the lazy will
of Charles Edward, I only reached home just before
supper.

Hilaria met me on the veranda with cheeks
aflame, and wrath in her blue eyes, which always
seemed the bluer in the nearness of her blue
overall.

" It is quite too bad of you not to have managed
to get home before," she said resentfully. " There
have been callers — troops of them ! The first
contingent arrived in quite the j oiliest car just after
I had finished laying the table for supper, and the
last just as I was hoping the others were intending
to depart. Cooking beefsteak for a dozen men is
hardly a merely temporary occupation. Oh, it was
humiliating ! This beastly country — how I loathe
it ! My feet are sore with walking over the stubble
last Sunday, and then standing for ever and ever on
that greasy kitchen floor. And I had put on the
hideous pair of shoes we bought at Lipton when we
were waiting for the lost baggage. That was not
enough — the threshers had left the basin that

THRESHING 55

twelve of them had washed their hands in on- the
veranda just outside the front door. — And
alongside were their towels. — You know their
towels ! "

" It does sound a little appalling," I allowed.
" Never mind. — I hope you gave them tea."

" Oh, I gave them tea, and they only stayed
about half an hour, but it felt like eternity.
They said they wouldn't have come had they
known it was threshing, and that kind of thing,
and I've no doubt they understood. But there
was a man with them. And my blue overall, a
skirt shorter than a petticoat — and those awful
shoes ! "

" You needn't worry about the overall," I con-
soled her. " I should never wear anything else if
I were you."

" It's all very well for you to say nice things," she
said ungratefully. " You weren't there."

" Who was the late arrival ? " I inquired.

" Oh, Mrs. Dugald Bertie. She's charming ! "

" Really ! How ? "

" Beautiful eyes. And at this loose end of the
world bien soignee. She stayed quite a while after
the others had gone, and was quite nice. I could
almost have poured out to her about the shoes.
Her gloves were most fasky — the Indians made them.
She is coming again, and she wants me — that is, of
course, us — to go down."

" If there are to be callers and so forth, I suppose
we shall have to buy chairs and that kind of thing,
shan't we ? " I suggested.

" Oh, I don't know. There was no hint of
* Pleased to make your acquaintance ' in the quite

56 WHEAT AND WOMAN

natural way in which they attached themselves to
the bench and Tate's sugar boxes. I suppose the
cheque-book having swallowed so many extra-
ordinary camels lately has indigestion at the mere
thought of the gnat-like proportions of tables and
chairs."

" Go for a long walk," I recommended, " and for
once let me finish getting supper, wash up, and
prepare the breakfast. Did they come early for
Ella ? "

" Yes ; she is going to a box-social. And if you
don't mind I would rather hold on to my own chores
this last night. But I really am getting a little
played out."

Before noon of the next day the last bag from
the last load of oats had been emptied into one
end of the old granary. There seemed to be oats
enough to last for ever, but our neighbour looked
ominous.

" Not more than two hundred and fifty bushels,"
he said. " I'm afraid you will have to be buying in
the spring. With so little hay this amount of oats
won't tide you over. The old man never grew
many oats, but he was the finest hay and wood
gatherer in these parts. There is quite a good
stack of oat-straw, which you must keep for feed, and
just use the wheat-straw for bedding."

Guy Mazey departed in the trail of his outfit. He
told me he was coming back to measure the grain,
but he didn't come, and it was in this way I sent
him a cheque for one hundred dollars on account,
and suggested that he should take the weight returns
from the weigh-bills received at the elevator, and
I would pay him the balance. He accepted the

THRESHING 57

suggestion in his quiet even way without even a
lurking smile, and I hadn't the smallest idea it was
a little unusual.

It was my brother's suggestion that we should
start hauling at once, and, as everybody seemed to
be waiting for all the money I could get, I agreed.
It was chiefly owing to this that no work was done
on the land that autumn, and what hay there was
remained cocked in the sloughs. Meanwhile, every
morning the wagon-load of wheat went into the
elevator, and afterwards we cheerfully counted
dollars.

VI

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL OF THE
LEAF— LE BRET

My brother and I had come to an arrangement by
which he worked for me at the rate of twenty dollars
a month, and over the business of hauling the grain
he was far and away the best man at the game that
ever fell to my lot. He got up at daylight, cooked
his own breakfast, and we usually heard the wheels
of the wagon as the sun rose up from the horizon.
He made the fourteen miles of distance to South
Qu'Appelle, which at that time was my nearest
wheat town, in about three and a half hours, took from
one to two hours' rest, getting home at about three
thirty, in time to load up for the next day. At first
we tried the big teams on one day and the middle-
weight the next, but Jess, the mare, was distinctly
on the light side for hauling, although Dick took it
as gamely as he took everything else in his splendid
life. The trails too at that early hour in the morn-
ing were soundly starched by autumn frost, which
made the going easy, although on one occasion the
wagon got into a rut, and Hilaria and I had to rush to
the rescue in very little more than our night attire, as
she had felt that my brother's shout for aid couldn't
possibly signify anything less than a broken leg.
The first load went out on October 20. It graded

58

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 59

No. I Northern and fetched sixty cents a bushel.
Wheat is usually low in the market immediately
after harvest, and if one has sufficient capital and
horse-power to hold sales over until May or June, it
can make anything from ten to one hundred per
cent, difference in returns. For example, in 1906
the average sale of the bulk of the crop was about
sixty-four cents, but I had about thirty bushels held
in reserve, and in September I sold it for a dollar a
bushel at the South Qu'Appelle elevator, which equals
one dollar seventeen at Fort William. A farmer in my
neighbourhood had twenty thousand bushels in
reserve that year. I think he got out at rather over
a dollar a bushel, but the price is unusual, and a
sign of bad times rather than good. By December 31
I had sold over 1797 bushels, and I held about 160
in reserve for seed, although in the end I also
marketed this and bought other seed. The total
returns that year amounted to two hundred and
fifteen pounds ten shillings and tenpence. The
experience, disappointments, and mistakes of several
years have taught me that the wheat crop on a
Canadian farm should stand for net profit, charge-
able only with its threshing bill and cost of binder-
twine. Sufficient capital should be invested in stock
at the outset to ensure a comfortable living and an
easy mind in spite of August or early September
frost, which hangs as a sword over the prairie. The
sum of dairy produce from three milch cows and the
annual sale of four steers and twenty pigs should be
sufficient to cover the wages of a hired man, taxes, and
one's household and simple personal expenditure for
the year, under which plan the produce of the wheat
crop would rank as an addition to one's capital.

6o WTiEAT AND WOMAN

In that first year against my harvest receipts was
the sum for harvest labour, binder-twine, threshing
bill, daily expenses attached to hauling ; and the
only addition stock offered was through the sale of
seven small pigs, which cost twenty- two dollars fifty
and sold for thirty- five dollars. Also in the light
of the year that followed I must acknowledge my
housekeeping bills to be of extraordinary amount, the
sum total between August 23 and December 31
standing at five hundred and nineteen dollars thirty.
Many a woman has come to me within the last two
years with a proposal to start farming in Canada on
less than that amount. It must be remembered
that for harvest and threshing seasons, and during
the visit of the carpenters, the provisions account
was heavy, and nothing is cheap in Canada if one
has to buy it ; but it is possible to provide oneself
with almost everything but groceries from the
farm, and with even two good milch cows grocery
bill and dairy sales should balance accounts. Indeed,
I remember in looking over the ready-made farms
in the Shaughnessy colonies I came across an able
man and woman who assured me they were able
to pay the total expenses of their living — barring,
of course, the land payments — from the produce of
three milch cows.

Also my housekeeping bill included some articles
of furniture and a few expensive necessities such as
cook-stove, fifteen dollars ; wood for fuel, twenty-
four dollars ; second-hand box-stove with bedroom
heater, eight dollars. Two bedsteads, two tables,
half a dozen chairs, pots and pans, &c. Then there
was a suite of bedroom furniture from Eaton's of
Winnipeg, which cost eight dollars, and a bath which

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 6i

cost twelve dollars. The " suite " was really' a
consolation through the years that followed. The
dressing-table consisted of two big drawers and a
bevelled mirror, eighteen inches by twenty-four ;
and none can fully appreciate a mirror of those dimen-
sions so truly as the one who has shared a hand-glass for
three months with two bachelor men on the prairie.

The bath I had taken out from England sprung a
hopeless leak on the journey, so that directly we
left the shelter of canvas for four walls and a roof we
sent for one. On the day it arrived we stood like
pilgrims round a shrine whilst the twelve-dollar
masterpiece from Eaton's was safely delivered from
its wrappings, and carefully placed upon the floor
of the veranda. It was a thing of joy, and long
enough even for us. At last in perfect accord we
marvelled at its lustre, its convenience, its cheapness.
Hilaria, with the professional air which she reserved
as an effect from a voluntarily curtailed season of
hospital training, affirmed that the ingenious and
most convenient contrivance for letting out the
water alone was worth the money, and in the
delightful enthusiasm and anticipation of the
moment the matter of letting in the water entirely
escaped consideration. It struck my brother first.

" How in the name of the prophets and all holy
wonders are we to fill it ? " he demanded. " The
well is three hundred yards off, and will run dry at
the very sight of it ! "

I felt it my duty to support the reputation of the
well — which my predecessor assured me had cost
him a hundred dollars and had never been known
to run dry — and I announced that the two stookers
would, of course, haul the water.

L

62 WHEAT AND WOMAN

" I should like to meet the Canadian who would
haul water for an Englishman's bath, or an English-
woman's either ! He would be the rarest bird I
have yet encountered in Canada. However, as you
have bought the thing, I suppose we must see what
can be done. There are four pails, two lard con-
tainers which leak, and the potato boiler. I think
we might make a faint impression in three journeys."

We ran lightly to the well with our empty pails,
but my sister and I returned slowly enough beneath
the burden, which in those days was new to us.
My brother swung along in front, reciting " More
servants wait on man " with fine sarcasm, which I
feel sure " the beautiful psalmist of the seventeenth
century " would have been the first to pardon had
he found himself within kicking distance of a like
circumstance. At the end of the third journey we
agreed to draw lots for the bath, which had been
conveyed with much difficulty into the kitchen.
Afterwards it took our combined force to carry it
to the veranda, which was the only place from
which the water could pass through the ingeniously
contrived exit without disaster. Within the month
we unanimously decided to abandon it in favour of
some less imposing vessel of ablution, and I agreed
to sell it at its original price to a friend who embraced
me at the mere suggestion of the deal. I let her
have it with an easy conscience as she lived on the
Lake shore. It was not my fault, but the irony of
fate, that within six months her husband built a
bungalow at the top of the Western Hills, to which
water had to be hauled from a distance of two miles.
The last time I caught sight of it was in the spring
of 1 910, when I went to buy seed oats of its owner.

WHEAT SALES—THE FALL— LE BRET 63

It was still a bath, but dedicated to the pickling' of
seed grain, and for the first time I honestly wished
I hadn't parted with it.

Lai being on the trail day by day, Hilaria and I
decided that it was time to return our calls. It was
not quite so easy as it sounds, in spite of the fact that
Jess, the mare of our light team, went really well in
single harness, so that we were no longer at the mercy
of the mood of Charles Edward ; but the fact was
that neither Hilaria nor I knew the way to hitch up.
Our neighbour's shack was almost half a mile away
across the big wheat-field, and whenever a desperate
and unexpected occasion arose for going down to
the Fort we used to shout for him ; and even then
neither of us thought of learning the order and detail
of the harness, it looked so clumsy and heavy and
complicated ; and Hilaria always seemed so sure that
our neighbour liked coming. As a matter of fact,
it wasn't until the following spring that I mastered
the simple method of strapping those three simple
main fittings which contribute to the altogether of
single harness.

The occasion was memorable. I had been asked
to an afternoon party at which I really wanted to
be present, and the hired man had gone into town.
For half an hour I worked, very nearly wept, and
utterly failed to make shaft strappings pan out back
or front. In despair I led pony and buggy, per-
suaded together by an arrangement of my own, to
the nearest neighbours, a Canadian family who
hadn't long arrived in the neighbourhood. I knew
there were quite a number of girls, and one always
seemed to meet them in their buggy, so I felt sure
they would be able to do it for me.

64 WHEAT AND WOMAN

They knew very little more than I, but with
some difficulty we improved on my arrangement,
and all went well until I got half-way down Troy
Hill, when a shaft shot up in the air. A passer-by
came to the rescue, and, overcome with the frank-
ness of his criticism, there and then I learned the
simple art of hitching-up.

To return to my story. Our neighbour persuaded
us that there was no hurry at all in returning calls
in Canada, but that on no account should we miss
seeing the hills in their glorious attire before the fall
of the leaf. We promptly agreed to drive with him
the next afternoon, and he came to fetch us in a
buggy distinctly built for two only. However, all
sense of discomfort left us as the horses raced across
the prairie trail to make a bee-line for the coulee^
which leads to the lake-shore trail.

No words can paint the beauty of the transfigura-
tion of the fall in Canada. In the Qu'Appelle
valley the trees are a maze of every tint of gold.
Here and there is sometimes a touch of scarlet, and
in Ontario the autumn carpet is clear vermilion,
but in Saskatchewan the predominating tint of
autumn is gold, and its effect against the rose and
opal tint of sky and the grey-green of the landscape,
and the sharp cold contrast of the water is beautiful
beyond expression. At the foot of the coulee
colour reigned on every side, the very horses seemed
to feel its sway as they danced through entwining
trees down the sharp incline with the gay irrespon-
sibility of a British four-year-old dancing from
cover to cover ; only usually the light-heartedness
of the old country horse means ignorance, whilst the
light-footedness of the true Canadian stands for

WHEAT SALES—THE FALL— LE BRET 65

self-confidence born of the absolute freedom of- the
first three years of life.

The roads in Canada are interesting, and historical
in the finest sense of the word, because indissolubly
one with the history of man — of the men who tramp
them, or grade them through all manner of difficulty
with the dogged determination of those who refuse
to look behind. Of all great examples of this
making of the way in Canada, the grade of the
Canadian Pacific Railway just beyond Glazier House
in the heart of the Rockies seems supreme ; certainly
it is the most impressive, that winding, curling,
persistent, indomitable man-made way, hanging by
its teeth for the defence of its life to the great
obstacle. In climbing or descending that splendid
pass the Spirit of Power always seems to hover in
the hush of the shadowed silent hole in the hills, as
though God breathed eternal thanks for the patience
and power of mankind in the place where just a
man or so made a great way for the race.

And by the southern shore of the eastern lake of
Fort Qu'Appelle there runs another conquering
ribbon of a road, graded into the hip of those fertile
heights which mark the awe and ache of distance
between the shadowed sheet of water, stirred with
the restless pain and longing of the temporal why,
and that far-off shrine where the sun stands for
power, and the moon for peace, and " stars leap out
through blackest night." Winding along until it
reaches an open sweep of hill-sheltered coulee, where
the Indians and the English alike love to pitch their
tents, the lake-shore way suddenly pulls itself
together, tightens teeth with a snap, and climbs the
vertical wall of " Hairpin Bend " without looking

E

66 WHEAT AND WOMAN

backward or sideway into danger, until it reaches
the sun-kissed summit where scarlet lilies first grew
out of camp-fires in June time for love of those
dark-eyed Indian babies, the echo of whose beauty
still lingers in the flesh and the spirit about their
homeland by the lovely lakes of Qu'Appelle.

Just across the lake in the height of a hill is planted
the cross which marks the end of the Mission Trail,
and beneath, in its shadow, is the great Industrial
School for Indian boys and girls, the organization of
which has been the life-work of one Father Hugenard,
a French priest and one of the most useful members
of the British Empire.

The village of Le Bret is built on the choicest
site on the sunny or northern side of the eastern
lake of Fort Qu'Appelle. Constructive genius is in
evidence not only in every detail of the building
and work of the industrial schools, but throughout
the village. The schools are built on the lake shore
at the west end of the village, and occupy very much
the same site and general position as the Hotel
Bristol in Beaulieu on the Mediterranean. The
garden shore curves out into the lake ; one steps
from a bed of brilliant poppies, across a stile, to the
slim beach on which the delicate waves of the lake
lap and gurgle. In summer-time the garden is a
mass of bloom. Pale pink petunias, rose-coloured
creeping geranium, sweet pea in profusion and a
regiment of sweet william in uniform of glorious
tint lend that delicious rosy glow of the morning
to this charming lake-garden. Beyond is a neat and
luxuriant bed of strawberries, then tomatoes, rhu-
barb, lettuce, carrots, onions, cucumbers, gourds of
all species, monster cabbages and cauliflowers literally

O

o

X
u

(73

a
z

<

h

<;
I — I
oi
H

D

G

l-H

w

K
H

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 6^

leap out of the fine soil directly the grip of zero is
loosened, and earth awakes with redoubled energy from
the enslavement of sleep to the liberty of service.

Within the schools the quiet cheerful nuns preside
over the education and well-being of the girl-
children, and school and craft masters train the
boys ; so that the girls leave school equipped with
an excellent education and domestic training, and
the boys are taught a useful trade or craft, besides
learning by doing in the garden and farm attached
to the schools, in order that they may be able to
take possession of the opportunities which civilization
brought to the wonderful treasure-land of their
fathers. That neither education nor training can
wean them altogether from the sway of the spirit
of Hiawatha, who can wonder or deplore ? As you
walk through the bright and sunny dormitories it
seems the best possible arrangement that so many
dear small bodies should be tucked safely and snugly
into so many snow-white beds ; but when you get
back to the lake-shore trail again and watch the
evening sky as it makes its rose and opal offering to
the lake, when you sniff the pungent odour of prairie
herbs, the heart-warming smell of the camp-fires
which mark the freeman's tent, when you breathe in
and breathe out the air of liberty, and the sway of
the fascination of life in the open tugs at the heart-
strings, you know that the children of Hiawatha pay
the price for those opportunities of civilization.

Not that the gentle art of pleasure is neglected
in the general preparation for life. A glance
through the composition books proves the culture
of the imagination to be proceeding on fertile soil,
and signs of the love of joy are in evidence in the

6S WHEAT AND WOMAN

playground, and in the interested and intelligent
faces of the children. One glorious summer after-
noon I had driven some English visitors over to the
schools, and after much inspection and more inquiry ;
after having climbed the tower, and talked with the
saddler, the bootmaker, the carpenter and the baker,
we leaned over the balcony rail and rested from our
labours whilst the kind nun related to us the history
of one or two fair small people among the darker
family, the main point of which was that Father
Hugenard, who is one of the very few absolutely
practical clever persons with whom " the quality of
mercy " is always at home, finds in himself a god-
father and godmother on desperate occasions, and
all the nuns nod Amen. Suddenly there was the
impression of the opening of a great big door and a
sense of wide liberty, followed by the crescendoing
chorus of joy — then the patter of many bare feet
treading the path of pleasure. The children were
off for their daily swim in the lake, the nun explained.
And we listened to the resounding splash and
watched that jolly band of bathers not without envy.
All visitors are impressed with the good manners
of those boys and girls. In Britain we unveil our
sense of the fitness and beauty and power of this
grace in great places. How proud are we yet of the
beautiful manners of King Edward VH, which
persuaded the French nation to forgive 1871, and
forget the long bill they had against us ; and in
St. Paul's Cathedral on the tomb of our great
soldier, General Gordon, all who pass by read
"Manners makyth man"; but in the industrial
school at Le Bret " Manners maketh man " is
carved in " Everyman."

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 69

But besides all these things Father Hugenard and
his brother-priests of the Roman Catholic Church
have most truly bestowed on the children of the
darker race the consolation of religion. On Easter
Day I was lunching with some friends who have a
cottage among the hills which line the lake-shore
trail between Le Bret and the Soo village, which
is the chief centre of the remnant of the tribes in
the Qu'Appelle valley. Sitting in the porch, we
watched the Indians returning from their eight-
mile walk to Mass. Singly or in httle groups, they
swung past with that soothing grace of movement
which they seem to have caught from the swaying
of branches, just in the same happy manner in which
they have charmed into their smile the spirit of
human kindness which, together with their innate
dignity and simplicity, endows them with such
pleasing attraction.

On that Easter morning a squaw, who walked
alone, came through the gate and towards us. She
had walked from the Soo village to the Mission
church to make her communion, and feeling a little
weary, through the length of the way and the heat
of the sun, most gratefully hoped — which is the
best of all possible ways to hope — for a cup of tea.
She made all known to us through the sign of the
Cross and a very few English words distributed
generously among the fascinating sounds of her
mother-tongue. It was so easy to understand that
Easter Day was really a beautiful oasis in her life.
The Indians are quick to catch in religion that
fragrance of rosemary which all bring out " for
remembrance " from the other side of the horizon. In
the brave and patient eyes of Tosh the squaw Easter

70 WHEAT AND WOMAN

incense burned — the sacrifice of Father Hugenard
and his brother-priests was clearly accepted.

Only the day before I had given a small child of
civilization, and another branch of the Christian
Church, an Easter picture from an English magazine.

" What is it ? " demanded the child. " Your
daddy ? "

" No ; it is a picture of the Resurrection," I
answered lamely.

" What's that ? " inquired another, whilst the
picture passed from one to the others, attracting
interest, but also the unmistakable air of wonder.

" But surely you know," I said. Suddenly a
beam of intelligence shot across the face of the
eldest girl, who must have been quite fifteen. "I
know," said she. " He riz."

The Church of Rome in general and Father
Hugenard in particular seem to get wonderful
results in their method of dealing with humankind.
Possibly it's because they never miss the " descent
into Hades," which is laid before them in the
confessional. " 7 out comprendre c^est tout par-
donner.^'' Not that for one moment could one fail
in admiration of the work done by the Anglican
Church in the Prairie Provinces, which is and always
has been of superlative quality as far as it goes. But
in the pioneer phase of the development of Canada,
if the work was less, it was hopelessly scattered, with
very little railway, few good roads, very few men,
and hardly any money to work with. Just a handful
of brave, unselfish, dauntless clergy of the wealthy
and powerful Church of England making " bricks
without straw " on the prairie. History can never
tell what they did, and did without^ in those days

THE PRESENT PHASE OF DEVELOPMENT IN FATHER
HUGENARD'S WORK FOR THE MOTHER COUNTRY

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 71

in order that the Church might not fail her children
in their deepest need. The diocese of Qu'Appelle
was coextensive with the old district of Assiniboia,
its boundaries about five hundred by two hundred
miles ; the priests of its remote and far-scattered
parishes had sometimes to make journeys of over a
hundred miles on foot for the sake of the " two or
three gathered together " in the far corners of the
Empire. Among this gallant band the names of Rev.
the Hon. A. J. R. Hanson, sometime rector of Wool-
wich and afterwards Bishop of Qu'Appelle ; Bishop
Burn, formerly rector of St. Peter's, Jarrow ; the Very
Rev. J. P. Sargent, the present Dean of Qu'Appelle
— who was at one time an ofhcer in the 62nd Foot
now 1st Batt. Wiltshire Regiment ; Archdeacon
Mackay, Archdeacon Tims, Archdeacon Dobie,
Canon Stocker, Canon Beal, now Secretary to the
Archbishop's Western Canada Mission — and the Rev.
F. Palgrave, will never fade from the noble roll of the
Church of England's pioneer priests of the prairie.

With the extension of the railway, the increase
of the population and prosperity, and the extra-
ordinary work of the archbishops, bishops and clergy
and the generous support of the laity, the establish-
ment of the Church of England along the beaten
track of Western Canada became firm and far-
reaching ; although in the diocese of Qu'Appelle,
now ruled by the Right Rev. Malcolm Macadam
Harding, priests and dignitaries are still subject
to the strain of incessant work, not always free from
sordid and distressing worry. Nor do cathedrals
and churches of Canada flatter the generosity of
those dwellers in the Mother Country who have the
privilege of the use of our common inheritance of

^2 W^EAT AND WOMAN

Westminster, York, St. Albans, Canterbury, Salis-
bury, and the whole glorious group of the historic
and beautiful cathedrals, abbeys, and churches of the
United Kingdom, in addition to the treasures
tradition has stored in Europe at the gate. There
is not a church of the Anglican Church in Canada
which could be named as an offering to the Church
worthy of those who enjoy its gift from the past.
Millions are spent freely on the great Provincial
Houses of Parliament in Canada. Miles of patriotic
and appreciative sentiment overflowed the British
newspapers when the hope of Canada's noble contri-
bution to the Navy was received, and, although
that hope has not yet passed into act, the gift of a
million to Regina to build the cathedral for which
the Church of England in Saskatchewan has so
ardently hoped and prayed would still be an appro-
priate thank-offering from those who love and
value and really, if it came to the point, would
quite simply and willingly give their lives to
spare our sacred treasures of the past from
the mad destruction of war. In England too it
should be more clearly emphasized and understood
that it is absolutely impossible for the Church of
England in Canada to keep pace with the hundreds
of thousands of immigrants who flock to the prairies
from all the ends of the earth. It was to meet the
special claim of this ever-growing need that the
Archbishop's Western Canada Fund was started in
1 910 after a conference between the Archbishops of
Canterbury, York, and Rupertsland during the Pan-
Anglican gathering in 1909. The Rev. Douglas
Ellison and Archdeacon Boyd, leaders of proven
constructive genius, were selected for the organiza-
tion of the work which was to break the trail of the

WHEAT SALES— THE FALL— LE BRET 73

Church of England on the prairie alongside the
trail of the newcomers to the prairie homesteads.
The work is financed by the British in the Mother
Country who trouble to think and to care and to
help those who are fighting out the battle of our
Empire with the pick and spade on unbroken soil.
It is manned by a band of young British clergymen
who from the first fell into step and line with their
charge, enduring all those phases of life which are
not easy to endure with amazing patience and cheer-
fulness. There are days in the life of the home-
steader's first year or so when not even the inspiration
of Pan in his finest mood, nor the hope of the future
consolation of far more than one's fair share of
dollars, can induce one to work one's way through
the arduous toil of the daily round. Those sporting
parsons with their splendid fund of enthusiasm
for the thing that is higher somehow filled the
need. The day of their coming is really SundsLj,
and patience and endurance are swift to acknow-
ledge the fact in playing the game through
all the other days. The Archbishop's Mission is
doing truly great and most valuable work in the
social as well as the spiritual development of the
far-out prairie population in forming centres of
social and religious interest, building churches,
beckoning schools, and by every possible way of
admirable organization binding together the Mother
Country and her daughter nation with the beautiful
bond of the National Church.

But on the first day of my visit to Le Bret the
Archbishop's Western Canada Mission was still a
voiceless thought, and the splendid example of
mission work at Le Bret, which one could but admire,
seemed to belong to Rome. Even in the village the

74 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Church was in full sway. The atmosphere was and
still is French. In the centre of the lake shore amid
many trees and sunflowers, was the only church, and
close at hand the clergy-house of the Mission.
Further on there was a convent school for the higher
education of girls ; also there were two good stores,
the post office, and a boarding-house, but no hotel ;
and the little village under the cross seemed to have
the peace and restfulness of a quiet hive of industry.

Passing out from the school buildings, we drove
towards the sunset and Fort Qu'Appelle around
that winding, silent shore trail which we prophesied
would become a great pleasure-ground of the North-
West. At the Fort we halted to collect our mail, and
directly they scented the home trail the horses
flew on their way.

" Would you think it was going to rain ? "
inquired our neighbour, as we came within sight
of the cottage.

We scanned the horizon. Across the valley the
prairie might have been the deep blue sea itself on
an incoming tide, but the sky was of clear pale rose,
flushed here and there with the hectic glow of
geranium.

" No indeed ! " said Hilaria.

" We shall have rain to-morrow," he prophesied.
And on the morrow it rained, and the next day and
the next ; and when we drove again into the valley
the glorious phase of the fall had fled, and even
though the intense heat of the sun of the Indian
summer forbade us to dream that winter was near,
we knew that our sweet day had been drawn into
the quiet chapel of memory only just in time, and
that the Canadian summer had fled.

A PIONEER PRIEST OF THE PRAIRIE—

THE VERY REV. J. P. SARGENT, DEAN

OF QU'APPELLE

VII

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES
IN FORT QU'APPELLE

HiLARiA vowed that as she was not remaining in the
country there was no need for her to pay calls or
go to church.

It was not altogether surprising about church
because on the only occasion we had an opportunity
of being present at an Anglican service during our
summer on the prairie the clergyman, who took
morning service at his other parish twenty-three
miles west, and afternoon service at his third parish
ten miles west, had been an involuntary absentee ;
and in spite of the fact that the lay-reader did his
best with that portion of the liturgy where lay-
readers need not fear to tread, the service was a
little dull. In England we had the inestimable
privilege of living in the very near neighbourhood
of Westminster Abbey, and in new surroundings
one is inclined at first to screen the hallowed and
hallowing associations of home in a winding-sheet
of loyalty. But the exquisite shadows and sounds of
the Abbey have a way of finding channel through
the tenderest intentions, and in those early days
as one sat in the simple little church of Fort
Qu'Appelle, now and again the breath of the
holy beauty of Westminster seemed to live in nearest

75

^e WHEAT AND WOMAN

nearness and full measure in the heart, and for a
moment one was not homesick, but at home.

It was at the close of morning service on a Sunday
in September that I made the acquaintance of the
younger members of a family to whose forsaken
bungalow my pony still offers the unfailing homage
of a homeward turn. The head of the house, who
was also the architect of the bungalow, the gardener
of the garden, the father of its mistress, the grand-
father of the girls and the breadwinner for all, was
one Samuel Brodie, a British pioneer on survey
in Canada, and the nephew of Sir Benjamin Brodie,
the distinguished surgeon and founder of St. George's
Hospital.

We had encountered him on more than one
occasion of our visits to the Fort from the prairie.
Already on the far side of his seventieth year he
was a small, lithe, active person with the arresting
eyes of the pioneer — eager, very blue, and quite
young, they were the kind of eyes which seem to
have the power of seeing what is happening across
the rim of the horizon, as though certainty had
flashed just one stolen glance through the window
of hope. Even as strangers he had always given us
pleasant greeting, and we wondered if he had
learned that courtesy from the Indians.

At first we seldom caught sight of him at the
bungalow, but one Sunday I had gratefully accepted
the hospitality of breakfast, and he came in vdth
a sunbeam from his morning chores. He was a
member of the " Church of St. Thomas " himself,
and, as a rule, avoided discussion which might
lead to argument with members of the Churches of
St. Peter or St. Paul ; but platitudes are impossible

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES ']i

at breakfast, one has to be silent or talk. He was
deeply interested in the trend of thought in the
Mother Country, but he was also very human,
and when his rather assertive reference to certain
irksome conditions obliged me to say that lots of
miserable old prejudices and habits had dropped off
out of sheer decay, and if it was not exactly general
it had at least ceased to be criminal for even the
clergy to use their power to think, I am not sure
that he wasn't just a little disappointed. Honest
emigrants from the Mother Country know that they
leave much behind that softens and sweetens life.
He loved the North- West as being his very own
country in the finest sense of the term, but he
must have missed his intellectual peers badly, and
although I feel sure he would never have acknow-
ledged even to himself the most far-off touch of
heim zveh, he was deeply conscious of the unseverable
quality of the home-tie which like the last string
of the lyre in Watts' " Hope " won't snap, because it
can't. He was a keen admirer of Herbert Spencer,
and on one occasion when he was driving me inch
by inch into a cul-de-sac I propped up my defence
on a passage of Emerson : " Ah ! Emerson," he
said, "but you know I am afraid he permitted
himself to be drawn just a little into the clouds ;
follow Herbert Spencer, the 07ie, who has dared to
think with all his mind, and striven to think with
all his might." I refused to acknowledge the
limitation implied in " the one^^'' but I felt that to
name others would be only to invest them in his
mind with the pall of clouds. Nor was it the
smallest use shouting " clouds of glory." His eyes
had easily crossed the horizon, but he had vowed

■■.'^■wji»i»—

78 WHEAT AND WOMAN

no wings should carry him where his feet might not
tread. He was far and away the most interesting
and fascinating intellectual personality that I
encountered in Canada, and in common with some
others among our most powerful thinkers he was
simple, clean-hearted, human, and kind. Upon
the altar of thought he had raised one of the
strongest friendships ever held fast between man
and man, and that with one of my neighbours, a
man of keen intellect and many acres, who lived
the unadorned life of a bachelor on the prairie.
The greater part of each available Sabbath was
passed with Sandy Stuart in the discussion of things
which matter, and the very last glimpse I caught of
him was in climbing the coulee on his short cut to
the little house wherein his brave, bright, and busy
mind found refreshment and inspiration in the
mind of another. Nor did his influence stop short
at the boundary of a kindred spirit. All the friends
of Sandy Stuart — typical old timers finding love and
life in the land in which they lived, and uniting in
a solemn hatred of class-distinction as the best word
they knew to express their innate sense of the dignity
and force of self-respect — men who would work
alongside Duke or Dukaboon, as man with man, using
the shibboleth of Dick, Tom, and Harry, raised their
hat in reverence to the claim of the master-mind.
" He'll be greatly missed," said one of the best
of them, my neighbour John McLeay, as we talked,
with the regret of those who lose, of the fine and
simple old man who had gone down east for a
holiday, after twenty years of survey work in the
North- West, and then in a brief moment of sleep
had crossed the horizon, - Eh," said the old High-

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 79

lander, " I had a great respect for Mister Brodie ;
he was a fine scholar."

At the time that the two Canadian-born grand-
daughters of Mr. Brodie first claimed acquaintance
in the most natural and kindly manner, one had just
turned up her hair, and presided at the organ,
the other looked about fifteen, and still attended the
public school with all the other boys and girls of
the village.

They walked with me to the foot of Cemetery
Hill, and explained that their mother had been
unable to call on us because they had no conveyance,
and in the end I believe I was their guest without
that tribute to the orthodox. They have always
seemed to me typical Canadian girls, probably
because I knew them more intimately than any
others, and in the perfect appointments of their
simple and delightful home I also drew my type
of "Canadian home which did not run the gauntlet
of public opinion without occasional attack. The
peculiar charm in the household appointments
and delightful appearance of these North- Western
girls was that everything seemed to arise without
effort, never by any chance was one permitted to
" smell the lamp " ; but later on I found that there
lay behind it the strenuous day by day effort of a
British-Canadian woman, in whom was the tradition
of the Mother Country controlled by the splendid
energizing impulse of the North- West.

These girls of the North- West have a peculiarly
characteristic way of investing their household
tasks with an air of accomplishment. I remember
being their guest in a neighbouring city after they
had left the happy valley. My hostess and I returned

Bo WHEAT AND WOMAN

about nine o'clock to the fresh and breezy note of
entertainment. The salon was asleep, and the
adjoining dining-room solemn, but from the kitchen
came cheer. The younger girl in her evening gown
was presiding over an ironing table, and rows of snow-
white, perfectly laundered linen, which included
even big impossible details, such as table-cloths and
sheets to mark the happy end of " the tale of a tub."
In the background was Mademoiselle Sans-Gene
neither tired nor triumphant, martyr nor saint.
The Canadian girls' artistic rendering of the daily
round, of course, has its other side ; unconsciously
she can treat art, that so rarely reveals itself amid
new conditions, as a matter of fact. In the days
when I first knew this family I found the elder to be
remarkably musical. Her technique was almost
brilliant, her memory sure, her sense of rhythm
correct, her ear true ; but her touch needed tone,
and her phrasing thought. I had studied music
in Europe, so for a time we worked together. She
worked well, sometimes almost with enthusiasm,
but she could never rise above the sway of bricks
and mortar, even in the most persuasive and directly
consoling of all the arts. She could work for the
effect of beauty, but not for just beauty. The
work of Beethoven, Bach, Chopin, and Liszt was
in complete possession of her fingers at the first
glance of the eye, and at home in her memory
almost as quickly. Her ear was so unerring that the
professor seldom dared to play before the pupil.
But she fell short of the artist in this same uncon-
scious manner in which the sister performed a
household task as an artist. Before the altar of
Apollo himself one felt she would have cried,

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 8i

" Cui bono ? " A few years later she discovered
from the applause of the people, but she might have
learned in the whisper of a god, that she was a chosen
channel of dehght. " The principles of art are
eternal," but the story seems to make the distinction
between the European and the American artist.

The simple bungalow in which this delightful
family lived at Fort Qu'Appelle deserves quotation.
It was a square lumber and plaster building divided
into three sections. The south division was a big,
two-windowed lounge drawing-room ; at the far
end were a dining table and sideboard, and during
the winter that end served as a dining-room. The
floor was restained once a year and highly polished
all the time, but rugs were here and there to save
the situation. Quite a delightful instrument in
the way of a piano, some books, many interesting
photographs, and even when the temperature fell
to sixty below, always ivy trailing round these
windows which looked out on the lake from the one
side and the hills on the other, contributed to the
impression of restfulness and charm. The north
division of the bungalow was subdivided into three
small bedrooms, and the central aisle into two rooms,
the outer was the winter kitchen and summer
dining-room, and the inner the pleasant lounge
hall, familiar as home itself to many English people
who have passed through or sojourned in Fort
Qu'Appelle. A lean-to kitchen was at the back for
summer use, and a hop-curtained veranda spanned
the north-east walls. The bungalow was heated
entirely by a huge box-stove and drum which could
swallow on demand six Yule logs nearly two feet in
length ; but two were usually sufficient to keep the

F

82 W^EAT AND WOMAN

temperature at its hospitable degree of warmth,
and waking or sleeping I never felt cold in that wind
and weather-proof, well-built, simple house.

Another interesting family who were friendly
and kind to us were the married and unmarried
children of Mr. Archibald Macdonald, a man of
great distinction, not only as being the last of the
chief factors of the Hudson Bay Company, but as
one who played his part well in Imperial matters
during the historic days of the treaties and periods
of disturbance with the Indians.

It was he who stood for intelligence and integrity
on the historic occasion in 1857 when the general
affairs of the Hudson Bay Company passed under
the review of the House of Commons, and in answer
to a leading question as to what class of men the
officials were sending out to Canada this prompt
answer came from Mr. Ellice, M.P. for St. An-
drews, Fife, " such men as Archibald Macdonald
of Invergary." At that time he had barely reached
his twentieth year. Nearly thirty years later, in
1885, during the final phase of the Riel Rebellion,
the people of the Prairie Provinces were in great
anxiety over the fear of the ill-will of the Indians.
The Government looked to Lord Strathcona and
the Hudson Bay Company for help and advice
in dealing with the Tribes, and they looked to
Archibald Macdonald, the boy of Invergary and the
man of Fort Qu'Appelle. Relief came in his one
sentence, " We can manage the Indians."

We were deeply interested in him long before
we had passed the " Good day " stage of acquaint-
ance, because he seemed the patriarch of the
village and was obviously the principal white man

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 83

friend and adviser of the Indians, of whom there
were always few or many customers in the Hudson
Bay Store. He talked to them in friendliest
fashion in their own tongue, was polite to the
squaws and petted the charming dark-eyed children.
The world and his wife called him Mr. Macdonald
with great respect in his presence and " auld Archie "
with the same marked respect in his absence ;
but absent or present he was always " Chief " in
Fort Qu'Appelle. He was profoundly interesting ;
in all those years in the North- West he had gathered
a wide experience of human nature ; he knew men
and motives well, and he had an excellent memory.
One could listen to him with pleasure for hours
on end. But he was also naively and frankly inqui-
sitive, and very deaf. I remember on one occasion
whilst he ruled over the Hudson Bay as last of the
chief factors, in the process of a particularly bad
time it became imperative that I bought horses, and,
therefore, it was impossible that I could settle a
Hudson Bay account. When I had been compelled
to shout the explanation of my embarrassment
on a top note and in full detail several times over,
I lost all sense of guilt, and found the courage of
the situation whilst doubtless every one within
earshot seized on its humour. However, I obtained
time for my bill and bought my horses, but although
Mr. Macdonald served his adopted country, his
sovereign, and the Empire with fine service, he
always served the Hudson Bay Company first, and
it was not the smallest tribute to his most attractive
personality that much was easily forgiven in the last
of the chief factors. His wife, whose lamented
death occurred in December 191 2, had been a

84 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Miss Ellen Inkster, and the daughter of a brother
officer of the Hudson Bay Company. She was a
woman of great charm, in whose quiet courtesy
dignity and gentleness seemed always peculiarly one.
Isolated as were the greater number of the pioneer
families of the North- West, the many official and
distinguished persons who " stopped off " to visit
the historic and beautiful neighbourhood of Fort
Qu'Appelle, or passed through on their way to that
paradise of sportsmen known as " the Head of the
Lakes," seldom missed the opportunity to pay their
respects to Mr. and Mrs. Macdonald who, through
a period extending over forty years, have shown
much kindly hospitality to the English, and some
of the most attractive leaves in the " last of the
chief factors' " book of memory are associated with
British names of which we have good reason to be
proud.

Of his several children two sons were prominent
in the movement of affairs in Canada — the elder,
John A. Macdonald, being Conservative member for
North Qu'Appelle in the Saskatchewan Chamber of
Legislature from 1908-1913; and another, Donald
H. Macdonald, well known in Western Canada as
being one of the biggest landowners and of particular
perspicacity and knowledge in financial affairs, has
also a place in the history of my farming experi-
ment.

I think we returned the Millingtons' call last,
in spite of the fact that they had been the first
to seek us out, because they live two miles on the
far side of Fort Qu'Appelle and on the opposite shore
of the western lake, so that it was fully eight miles
to drive. It was a bitterly cold afternoon on which

MR. ARCHIBALD MACDONALD, LAST OF

THE "CHIEF FACTORS" OF THE HUDSON

BAY COMPANY

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES 85

Hilaria and I faced the wind and possible tempest,
and drove rather silently along the narrow curving
road of the west lake. A mile out we exclaimed in
a breath at a charming cottage actually cradled
in the hills. Afterwards we learned that it was
Crow's Nest, and the property of an Englishman
who had also served under the banner of the Hudson
Bay, and having taken the trouble to understand
the ways and language of the Indians is now the
acknowledged medium of information and com-
munication between the white and darker man in
Fort Qu'Appelle. When in springtime the useful
potato gives out and is not to be bought for love
or money, it is to Mr. Rooke one goes as the unofficial
agent of the Indians, who are never caught out of
the necessities of life at the end or any other period
of the season. From Crow's Nest we swung
down the descent of the trail to sight quite a well-
built house on the left ; but we had been warned
by the Millingtons that their house was just beyond,
and literally curtained by maple-groves, north,
east, and west, but on the south bounded by the
narrow pebble beach of the lake shore.

The lap of the little waves of the lake upon the
beach sounded in one's ears as the echo of the voice
of a dear but distant friend, and the chill, melan-
choly breath of the English autumn seemed in the
Canadian air that afternoon. The Millingtons
have the most lovable garden I have ever known
in the North- West, although the loveliest is the
Mission school at Le Bret. But that day the frost
had nipped all bloom, and even the leaves of the
hops shivered in the shrunken garment of the
past. A golden-haired English girl opened the

^6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

door and took us to a spacious and lofty room,
which opened from a pleasant and almost English-
looking hall. A wood fire leapt and crackled with
a mirth akin to madness in the quite open hearth.
Our hostess gave us the friendliest welcome, and we
were relieved to find all our threshing excuses ready-
made for us. The fair-haired girl brought in tea
English fashion and we spent a cheerful and delightful
hour.

Listening to the voice of the lake I had a sudden
longing to sojourn beside it for a while. I had
intended to spend the winter in New York, learning
the ways of that fascinating corner of the universe
in the most enlightening of all possible methods —
newspaper work — but my father was very insistent
on the fact that I had no right to leave a new
responsibility. However I did not find the prospect
of living in the farm cottage surrounded by an ocean
of snow altogether attractive, and it occurred to me
as we drove towards home that perhaps I might be
able to board through the winter at the convent of
Le Bret. I felt sure one could write well near the
lake, not having grasped the fact that it would be
frozen solid. I asked Hilaria what she thought,
reminding her that I should want quite a lot of
money to work the farm.

" I am sure of it," she said, " and I told you so
from the first. Now, didn't I ? And everybody
says you will simply freeze to death at the farm,
and I believe you don't even know that you are
frozen until it is too late. Go to the nuns by
all means if they will have you. They are always
kind, and you can easily put in a man for the winter
if Lai refuses to stay. You will be able to go up

FRIENDS AND ACQUAINTANCES %j

now and then and see that the beasts are all right.
Nearly all the wheat is sold already, so there is
nothing else to worry over. Of course, the best
thing possible from every point of view would be
New York, but if you feel you really ought to stay
in the neighbourhood, far better stay at the convent.
We will go along to-morrow and see how things
are. I don't mind going away now that one
knows that there are really some nice people within
reach. I think you have brought anything you have
to get through in the way of unpleasantness on
yourself, but I should hate leaving you alone at the
farm. And all these people say it's preposterous
and no doubt think "

" Oh ! Do stop," I interrupted, " if I have made
a mistake at least I can pay for it. And even you
must allow that I am not in the habit of dragging
other people into my worries. Not that I am not
absolutely content with the thing I have done. I
believe in this country from end to end, but espe-
cially I believe the prairie and the wheat and "

" The woman ! " gibed Hilaria.

VIII

WINTER QUARTERS— SPRINGBROOK
SCHOOL— A POLITICAL MEETING

HiLARiA and I drove silently out of the convent
gates at Le Bret and looked about for inspiration.
The nuns would have none of me. The Reverend
Mother was courteous, but unyielding. The number
of nuns was short, one had been sent away for her
health, and none had been sent to take her place.
The pupils required much care and attention ;
there was none to spare for boarders. She advised
me to go on to the old convent, which was then
being used as a boarding-house, and was under the
care of people she could thoroughly recommend.

The old boarding-house is not an attractive
building, but it is built facing the little church
and lake and connecting in line with the cross-
crowned hill. The owner was most kind, and offered
to partition off for my accommodation the greater
part of the old convent nursery, as it was a parti-
cularly warm room. My fellow guests would be the
public school teacher, one of the masters of the
Indian school, and two Frenchmen also employed
there. The terms were only four dollars a week,
and I think I should have accepted the offer at once,
but the windows were very small and very high,
so that one could not see anything without deli-

88

WINTER QUARTERS 89

berately looking for it ; and I obtained permission
to consider her offer for a day or so before making
a decision. Within three days Mr. and Mrs.
Millington paid us a flying visit early in the afternoon
when Hilaria and I were busy in the granary bagging
grain for Lai's load. The Millington girls were
pupils at the convent, and they had heard that I
had sought winter quarters there in vain. Mrs.
Millington kindly offered me a winter home in their
roomy house. Her husband, she explained, through
his office as Inspector of Fisheries to the Government,
was often away during the winter, the girls were at
their convent. She and her lady-help were much
alone. I should be entirely welcome, and she
thought I should find it quiet and very pleasant by
the lake shore.

I gratefully accepted the offer and agreed to join
them two days after Hilaria left for England. It
would have been in that year, as in most years,
quite easy to find a caretaker, but my brother after
much conversation on the eternal drawback of the
situation announced his decision to stay himself
if he might borrow the horses in order that he might
fulfil his duties on his homestead in the spring.
Then he could claim his patent, sell his land, and
return to England.

" Mind, I loathe life on the land as much as ever,
and I am certain you will live to share my opinion,"
he repeated at frequent intervals. " But after the
slavery and discomfort I put in on my homestead I
may as well get anything I can out of it. And I have
a conscientious objection to confer benefit directly
or indirectly on the Canadian Government."

The days flew by, exquisite days of brilliant

90 WHEAT AND WOMAN

sunshine and every night star-laden. Money came
in with the return of the wheat wagon at the rate
of from thirty-five to forty dollars a day, according
to fluctuation of market and difference in weight of
load. It was sufficiently encouraging to cause one
to forget that if it was coming in it was also going
out, and would continue to go out long after the
granaries were empty and wheat sales were over
until the new harvest. Hilaria and I drove about a
good deal, and agreed to forget her approaching
departure.

My brother brought back the daily news from
South Qu'Appelle ; the General Election was in the
air, and it seemed that every one was talking
politics. " And such politics ! " said my brother
who, relieved from the immediate obligation of
British punctilio, had learned to esteem form and
ceremony as chief among the bulwarks of national
superiority. *' Haultain was in town to-day," he
added, " quite a good sort and speaks well. Not at
all like a Canadian in any way whatever. He is
going to speak at Lipton on the 17th. He is a
barrister. There was a case on in town and he
was over professionally. You should have seen the
Judge ! You couldn't have picked him out of a
British jury — you really couldn't. ' Hullo, Judge,
come along and have a drink,' I heard one chap say.
And he went ! Oh, shouldn't I like to have taken
the whole gang to the London Law Courts, just to
show them how the thing ought to be done."

Mr. Haultain was at that time leader of the
Conservative Party in Saskatchewan ; he is now
Chief Justice of Saskatchewan. The son of an officer
in the British Army, he was born at Woolwich,

WINTER QUARTERS 91

but received his education, took his degree, and
read for the Bar in Eastern Canada. Directly
he had fully qualified as a barrister he went to the
North- West full of the energy and sympathy of the
born pioneer. After fifty years in Canada he is
more typically British than any other prominent
man in Canada, but he is " best man " among
friends and adversaries throughout the dominion.
In Mr. Haultain the spirit of British tradition
and that Canadian spirit of the morning which
breathes out of the North- West is one spirit ; he is
one of the very sound human links between the
Mother Country and the Daughter Nation.

To the development of the Prairie Provinces he
gave his best ; his youth, thought, energy, oppor-
tunities of wealth making ; but when the electorate
for whose coming this far-seeing leader of men made
ready the Prairie Provinces found that he would
not lend himself to the hallucination of the loaves
and fishes of Reciprocity, they returned him with
just six followers to the Chamber of Legislature for
which he had thought and fought, and which he
won for Saskatchewan. But in Canada to-day innate
appreciation for the essence of personality is filtering
through that resistant pavement of the national
devotion to dollars which marks the prominent
trait in the present phase of development in Canada.
Two persons stand particularly for the term of this
illusive and indefinable quality — Sir Wilfrid Laurier
and Mr. Haultain. So that quite unconsciously the
new country gives the " best man " the best it has
to give.

I was eager to know something of Canadian
politics and to hear Mr. Haultain speak, so finding

92 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the date was at the time of full moon I said that
I would drive over, in spite of the fact that it would
be my last night at the farm.

" Why don't you," encouraged Hilaria, " I don't
suppose it will be particularly entertaining, but as
you like that kind of thing it will break the monotony.
And the drive will be delightful."

On November 13 Hilaria left for England.
For the first and only time in Canada I felt a
breath of the ghost of solitude. By way of protest,
I invited all the little Mazey children to tea
on one day, and on the next I walked over to
Springbrook where a kind and friendly neighbour
had promised to take me to call on the village
schoolmaster that I might see the children at work.

There were about thirty of them in all — boys
and girls together, and this, my first glimpse of
co-education, seemed as delightful and desirable
as George Meredith's dream of it. There are but
few married labourers in Canada, nearly every man
works for himself. The pupils were mainly the
children of the farmers of the neighbourhood —
men of substance, growing anything between
two thousand and fourteen thousand bushels of
wheat a year. Probably the greater number of the
small band had been born in the typical shack,
but many of them at the time of my visit were
located in imposing villa residences wherein is to
be found the altar of a bathroom. I listened to
some reading, a little recitation, and then a selection
of copybooks and some writing matter was placed
before me.

It was in passing from one copybook to another
that I caught sight of the familiar face of Sam

WINTER QUARTERS 93

Carroll, who had vainly endeavoured to teach me
to shoot during some jolly half-holidays which we
had spent together on the prairie in company with
my brand-new .22 rifle and a box of shells. For-
getting the direful anecdote and event of my own
schoolroom days and all that has been written in
praise of silence, I asked if I might see his copy-
book.

" I shouldn't have selected Sammy's copybook
if you hadn't asked for it," said the master, on a
note which was as a familiar arrow from the past.

I could have knelt at the feet of Sam Carroll
for forgiveness for my tactless blunder, and in the
embarrassment of the moment I pleaded that he
was a remarkably promising shot ; but his reproachful
face seemed literally set in the giggles of his school-
mates, and it made no secret of his share in my
wish that I hadn't come. But in any case the rifle
is mightier than the pen on the Canadian prairie,
and to-day Sam Carroll is not only a fine shot but
among all horsemen in the Qu'Appelle valley, as a
race-course jockey easily first.

When the boys and girls had been dismissed for
the day I remained for a while and chatted with the
schoolmaster. In the North- West there are often
more schools than teachers, and many Canadian
men obtain their teacher's certificate and put in an
occasional period of school teaching. Some take
it up altogether as a far less arduous means of making
a living than working on the land, some as providing
them the means to pass on to other professions such
as medicine, or the law, others by way of diversion,
or comparative rest. At any rate, many callings
must have been open to this particular teacher.

94 WHEAT AND WOMAN

who, although still young, had travelled in many-
countries, and had been through a period of service
in the American Army. Not long after the school-
room episode I found him employed in building a
church ; then in control of the municipal elevator
at South Qu'Appelle. Later I heard he had gone
into real estate, and on the last occasion I met him he
vv^as the managing director of an important financial
house in Regina. That is the charm of Canada,
none of the doors are closed — yet. The women
teachers also do well, and school teaching in Canada
offers a far better prospect than is usually known
in Britain. Nor is the law of certificated quali-
fication quite as rigorous and unyielding as its word.
I know that a woman who has been a school-teacher
in Britain is permitted to teach in Canada without
obtaining this certificate, because I met one in
October 191 1 at Sedgwick in Alberta. She had
arrived in April, and told me she had not the
smallest intention of teaching when she came out,
but the opportunity came, and in the six months
she had already saved more money than she could
have earned in Britain — where she had taught for
ten years — in a year.

On the last day at the farm I put my house in
order. The wheat had been sold and paid for,
all but a hundred and sixty bushels held in reserve
for seed. I bought winter coats for the four horses,
and that winter I and my brother acquiesced in
the great mistake of keeping them as warm as possible
in the stables, instead of sending them out to seek
warmth in exercise. The two cows were rap'dly
approaching the dry season ; the farm at that time
was unfenced, and the two calves had wandered off

WINTER QUARTERS 95

in search of others of their kind. There was no
special friend to bid " Good-bye " barring Dick,
the gelding of the lighter team, who had something
delightfully English and sportsmanlike about him,
and always played up to our appreciation of his
pace with fine intelligence, although he was too
heavy for a hack, and one had to make friends with
him by less usual methods than the ordinary medium
of bridle and bit.

On the last night I started for the political meeting
at Lipton by that far-reaching white light of the
moon in which one's memory always cradles Canada.
Lipton was across the Qu'Appelle valley, and fully
sixteen miles distant, but not only the moon but
all the stars smiled at distance, and the delicate
but exhilarating ice-breath, which steels the nights
of sun-blessed days in the Canadian November,
delivers one out of reach of the adversary — whether
armoured in terror, or shrouded in mystery, or
clothed in the everyday garment of the humdrum.

The meeting was held in the implement shed of
Messrs. Macdonald and Newth. As I drove past
I noticed that the benches seemed packed — with
men only ! My friend Dick McGusty was hovering
round, and in his usual happy manner sheltered the
fact that I had arrived at the place where the pre-
sence of my sex was certainly not anticipated. He
felt quite sure I should be more comfortable in Mr.
Macdonald's office behind the scenes, and I, who
would not for worlds have missed what such a
number of men had gathered together to hear one
man say, felt that I should be much more com-
fortable if another woman shared the doubtful
honour of my seclusion. I had but one acquaint-

96 WHEAT AND WOMAN

ance of my own sex in Lipton, but her dwelling
was within a hundred yards of the building, and
with great good-nature she cancelled a previous
appointment in order to " stand by."

A quality, implied in the statement " that he
has never spent a dollar of the public money," is
claimed for Mr. Haultain so frequently, and with
such an air of holy exaltation not to say exclusion
as to make one a little curious about Canadian
politicians in general. The frankest information
always leapt to the service of discreet inquiry,
revealing the fact that, in the political development
of a new and wealthy country, vulgar opportunity
is set with the grace and glamour, and endowed
with the special absolution usually reserved for
traditional temptation. I gathered that from the
seats of the mighty, reserved for politicians, one
had only to stretch out the hand in a peculiar
manner to grasp " the cup of Tantalus," and it
seemed that some had more intelligence, others
less resistance, whilst here and there one made " the
great refusal." Inquiring into the ways and means
of entry into the circle I heard so many queer
stories that I came to the conclusion it was empty
gossip, and asked a member of the Legislative
Assembly of one of the Western Provinces if it was
true that in Canada votes could be bought for half a
crown.

" Where did you hear it ? " he demanded with
such real live interest as to send my mind in search
of adequate apology. " That's all right," he answered
consolingly, " only I never got a vote yet for less
than five dollars."

In those days, too, one was always hearing that

WINTER QUARTERS 97

Mr. Haultain was the Rosebery of Canada. Both
statesmen are endowed with most attractive qualities
of voice, both possess the power to see and the
courage to look round a question, and both seem
subject to the possession of the larger vision which
carries the man who dreams himself a party-politician
far past that particular degree of distinction which,
in the mind of mediocrity, bears the label of success ;
but here the resemblance seems to cease. Lord
Rosebery is a perfect and complete medium of
expression ; the inspiration of his thought not only
strikes home to the least complete and most languid
of its relations through his voice and his word,
but even through the newspaper columns of his
reported argument. Mr. Haultain has not this
gift ; one collects the evidence of his greatness
bit by bit in the development of the Prairie Pro-
vinces, in the lives as well as the hearts of his fellow
men, those whom, in the old pioneer days, he pulled
through hard times by sheer force of determined
thought and prompt action. One divines that, in
spite of unquestionable ease in speaking, with Mr.
Haultain expression lags behind thought, but one
feels that the British statesman might have thought
so much further had his power of expression been
less easily perfect. Lord Rosebery is great through
what he has said : Mr. Haultain is great through
what he has done.

On the night of the Lipton meeting he talked
of the National School of Canada. An admirer who
seemed to be located very near the platform, and
to have drunk not wisely but too well, to the success
of the meeting, punctuated the speech frequently,
and a Httle informally, with the protest, " Say,

G

98 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Haultain, old man ! we ain't going to have no
ca-clatachism."

With the pioneer's fatal gift of sympathy and love
of individual justice Mr. Haultain had granted to
the territories the system of separate schools.

In his single-hearted devotion to tolerance he had
failed to perceive the subtle danger of the tolerance
of intolerance, v^^hich however he recognized long
before it fell like a gyve on the freedom and future
of the race in the form of the " Ne Temere " canon
of the Roman Catholic Church. That night he
frankly acknowledged his error, and announced his
intention of thinking and working for the one
National School, in which all the children of the
many sects and nations which pour into Canada
might receive their education together. The an-
nouncement cost him the Roman Catholic vote in
Saskatchewan. In making it he risked the honour
of political leadership in the province which his
genius had formed, and he lost. But when the
day came that he passed quietly out of the Saskat-
chewan Chamber of Legislature to take up the ofhce
of Chief Justice of Saskatchewan, there was not a
successful politician throughout the provincial or
dominion parliaments that might not have envied
the vanquished leader his dignity and reputation.

But as I said, it is in the history of the people
of the provinces, and especially during the pioneer
phase, that one finds the evidence of the power
and accomplishment of Mr. Haultain. On the
night of the Lipton meeting I am afraid I thought
that, as he was so much finer than all the others,
he ought to have been a great deal finer than himself.
And driving home across the prairie I could only

THE PIONEER STATESMAN OF THE PRAIRIE
PROVINCES, HON. F. W. G. HAULTAIN

WINTER QUARTERS 99

feel very bitter indeed against male monopoly
in the kingdom of politics, because as I passed
the windows of the hotel, in which on the night
of my first arrival on the prairie I had been
denied food, and tea or coffee because nine
o'clock was too late an hour to expect such fare,
I noticed that at 10.45 p.m. it was simply packed
with men who were evidently under no difficulty in
obtaining the particular form of refreshment they
required. And it seemed so very hard that whilst
men can so easily obtain everything that is bad for
them, women may not have even the very few things
that are good for them.

IX

AT HOME BY THE LAKE SHORE—
OF CANADIAN DIVERSION

My first day at the Clyst was the " day of rest."
At luncheon I found the two girls had returned
from their convent to spend Sunday, and in the
afternoon they took me out on the lake in their
canoe. It was November i8, the sun was glorious,
and even the water of the lake not really cold ; but
although in 1905 snow did not fall until mid-
December, the night frost must have been strong,
because on December 5 I walked across the ice-
capped lake to my first glimpse of a charming but
deserted bungalow in a curve of the shore. After-
wards I heard that it was built for his bride by an
Englishman who endeavoured to raise horses on a
section of prairie surrounded by grain-fields, and in
time the intelligence of the horses drove their
owners from their lovely, but not entirely water-
proof, home on the lake shore to seek consolation
in a house fitted with all manner of modern con-
venience in the wheat town of Indian Head.

Nearly every afternoon between four o'clock tea
and seven o'clock supper I made my way across the
sparkling ice-path towards the land of the setting
sun and the veranda of that forsaken home among

the shriven maples. Approached from the lake, it

100

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION loi

was a peculiarly arresting spot in the frozen wonder-
land— exquisitely still, yet remote as the lovely
face of a dear friend in the abandonment of death ;
but in summer it is a jewel in the setting of the
indescribably beautiful lake shore, which seems to
hold fast the inspiration of colour in the caress of
shadow and silence, as though, even whilst it
worshipped, it withheld its best gift from the
inexorable enchantment of the sun-god enthroned
over hill and valley, wind and wave, in the clear
compelling majesty of highest heaven.

At the Clyst we lived very simply. The seven
o'clock breakfast-bell rang usually and most mer-
cifully in the neighbourhood of half-past eight.
When my host was at home he read and wrote
through the greater part of the day in his study,
and he always knew the English news according to
the Times. I don't think I ever remember a house
where people talked so much or gossiped less. My
hostess assisted her lady-help in the household
duties, as do the greater number of Canadian ladies.
I made my bed and kept my room in order except
for a weekly turn-out, but I was never permitted
to do the smallest household duty outside the
threshold of my own door. There was also a chore-
boy, who eventually found a place in the early
history of my farming experiment.

He arrived at " the Clyst " about a week after
me, and his name was Heriot Hylton-Cave. He had
come out from England the preceding July armed
with an introduction to some desirable English
people, for whom he had worked through the harvest
and threshing seasons. The son of a clergyman's
widow of limited income, defective eyesight had

102 WHEAT AND WOMAN

prevented him following his brothers into the
Service, and Canada had been selected for him as
it is for so many younger sons, because it is generally
considered to be the refuge of the destitute warmed
by the sun of " the land of Promise."

Heriot Hylton-Cave was at first inclined to be
somewhat homesick, but as he bucked the wood for
the kitchen stove, the hall stove, the dining-room,
the drawing-room, the study, and two bedrooms,
and hauled water from the lake, cleaned the stables,
milked the cows, rode in for the mail every day, and
on Mondays turned the washing machine, he passed
quickly through the phase of home-sickness into the
more permanent period of work-sickness. He was
a philosopher about many things, and always kind
and considerate to the lady-help. Whilst he found
the chores — wood bucking and water hauling —
distressing from the active point of view, they formed
historically for him a theme of which he never tired
and over which he could be graphic and amusing.
One day I remember seeing my brother literally
doubled up with laughter during the happy period
after meal-time when men grow interesting to each
other.

" Oh, heaven and earth ! It's Hylton-Cave," he
explained. " I wouldn't have missed him for a
farm. He has just been reciting to us his list of
so many thousand pails of water and ever so many
more thousands of poles he bucked at the Mill-
ingtons'. I haven't met anything more refreshin'
in Canada."

Once a week Mrs. Millington was at home to her
friends — a custom which is increasing in Canada, and
is particularly convenient in a country where one's

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION 103

friends often have to drive for a long distance in
order to keep the Hnk of friendship and social order
from hopeless rust. Occasionally they gave bridge
parties, and on great occasions a dance. Bridge
parties are in general the special form of entertain-
ment, but where there are younger members of a
family the evening usually ends with a dance.

I was included in the invitations which came to
the Millingtons, but excused myself from social
amenities on the plea of literary work, as I wasn't
sufficiently devoted to diversion to care about
driving or walking in the open with the temperature
at anything below zero to the hospitality of a
Canadian house, which on gala occasions is usually
set at about 90° without any prospect of shade. But
on a day in December Mr. and Mrs. Millington
and the lady-help gave such an interesting account
of the festivities of the night before that I found
myself sharing Heriot Hylton-Cave's frankly ex-
pressed regret that he hadn't been there. The
occasion had been a dance given by our nearest
neighbour — a bachelor. An Englishman and his
wife were keeping his house and farmstead in order
just then, and the arrangement of the evening had
been left entirely to the lady, who had not been
long in the country.

The dance had been a success, but the supper a
triumph absolutely supreme in the annals of dance
suppers in the Qu'Appelle Valley, barring the fact
that the shack was of very slender accommodations
and none of the guests could get into convenient
touch with the supper — stuffed turkey, galantines,
Charlotte Russe, Sec. &c. The expression on the
face of my hostess, taken into consideration with

104 WHEAT AND WOMAN

her own dance suppers, which were perfect in ever^
detail, convinced me that it must have been a truly
great occasion and worthy of a drive in the open
at 50 below.
/ Again and again Heriot Hylton-Cave returned
to the topic of the supper, discussing it with Miss
Lister, who seemed ever ready to produce an
even yet more desirable detail from the historic
menu.

" Ah ! " he exclaimed with a deep sigh, " I would
have given a dollar to be there ! "

" I am sure you would," agreed Miss Lister.

*' But mind you," he added, " I should have
eaten my dollar's worth ! "

The party was such a success that in a few weeks
the bachelor gave another. I am not quite sure
whether it was curiosity or greediness that drew
me, but in spite of the prohibition of " Progressive
Bridge " in a corner of the card of invitation I went,
and nearly came through the ordeal of the game
with flying colours. But either the gods were at
my elbow and basely deserted at half-time, or I grew
unaccountably and miserably hungry, and towards
ten o'clock began to do everything that one shouldn't
in progressive bridge. I shall never forget the face
of my partner, who was regarded as a kind of pillar
of Fort Qu'Appelle and took bridge very solemnly
indeed.

In its proper hour supper arrived, but this time
we fared Canadian fashion. Tiny chicken salads,
and many kinds of sandwiches with lemonade and
coffee, and a choice of strawberries and cream and
trifle were handed round, so that every one saw less
but ate more than on the memorable occasion.

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION 105

When I came to know them well, I told the English-
woman of the sensation her first supper had
created.

" Shall I ever forget it ! " she exclaimed. " For
days I worked hand in hand and egg for egg with
Mrs. Beeton, and then they left it all — positively
all for us to eat meal by meal, until at the end of
ten days we thankfully returned to salt pork."

Another diversion was the children's party at
Fort Qu'Appelle. For this annual event the little
town is canvassed and gives as though endowed with
the beautiful gift of giving. A giant Christmas-tree
is provided, and on this is hung a gift for every
child attending school, from the collected fund, but
anyone is permitted to hang a gift for another on
the tree, so that whilst each small and big child
gets some treasure, some get many. Beautiful toys,
gloves, handkerchiefs, chocolates, candies, an occa-
sional book form the interestingly wrapped parcels
which grace the tree, and in addition from the
subscription list is provided a highly diverting tea
for the children and all who care to join the Christ-
mas party. The ladies of Fort Qu'Appelle con-
tribute cakes, the Hudson Bay Store lends the china,
and the kind of people who do things prepare the
feast. At the 1905 Christmas party after tea the
tables were cleared and chairs and benches placed
in the orthodox manner, the guests sat down, and
from the platform the children presented their
musical programme, which was strong evidence of
the intelligence of themselves and their teachers ; but
as yet the Canadian children do not strike one as
being fun-loving. They were ever so painstaking,
but only two, and those of the tiniest, seemed to enter

io6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

into the spirit of the thing.t The dispensation of
gifts was rather a solemn and silent proceeding, and
when it was all over — there were no games ! No
games for those good-natured little martyrs who had
toiled for weeks towards the programme and who,
one could see, had to screw up the courage of war
to deliver their lines and play their part to the audi-
ence. One simply longed to clear away those chairs
and start a rollicking game of Musical Chairs or
Blindman's Buff, Nuts in May, Kiss in the Ring,
or Puss in the Corner, and make that prim town hall
ring with the mirth of little children. Possibly
the lack of laughter in Canadian children is owing
to the fact that nurses, governesses, and other suit-
able guardians, whose most important business in
life is to make children happy, are very hard to find
in Canada. The children share the life of the
grown-up members of the family and overworked
mothers, only too thankful for their skilful aid
in the tasks of the daily round, are apt to forget
that in an age when the principal and by no means
contemptible cry of the world is to be amused,
the fun-loving side of a child's nature will make
a wonderful return for care and kindness wisely
bestowed. True, the reason may lie in the deeper
cause that the Canadian child is born of endurance.
The " land of promise " has been won by those
who held out against the odds, those who broke
the trail of a new country and dug the founda-
tions of its industrial development in the teeth
of the north-west wind. When in digging through
many feet of snow to find my well after a fierce
blizzard from the west had successfully concealed
it from woman and beast, I began to understand

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION 107

why the Canadians are silent and very patient
and perhaps a little solemn, and it was also through
this active form of understanding I arrived in time
at the conclusion that if ever Canada strays into the
reckless fury and folly of war, the endurance, which
seems to claim the laughter of her children, will
place to the credit of her account a magnificent
army born of men and women not merely trained
but bred to self-control.

Yet another function at which I was present in
the town hall of Fort Qu'Appelle was the Agri-
cultural Dance — " Gentlemen's tickets a dollar — •
Ladies free." It chanced that I was a little late,
as I had to walk from the livery barn to the ball-
room in the darkness, and had taken more than one
plunge from the sidewalk to the snow en route.
Dancing was in full swing when I entered, and with
difficulty I dodged the dancers on my way to the
cloakroom, which is found in a very small and
curtained-off corner of the platform from which
the musicians play, and supper is served, and the
dowagers of Fort Qu'Appelle assemble to do honour
to the occasion.

The crowd of dancers was positively dense.
I wore a tall white muslin gown, but as it was not
off the ground it tailed into ribbons after my second
dance, " the Military," known in Britain as the
Schottische. There were very few waltzes, many
two-steps, fewer three-steps, and that most charming
and graceful and delightful of Canadian dances, the
" Jersey." Lastly, but chiefly, the Canadian dance
which beggars all description and to be appreciated
must be seen — the quadrille — which is stage-
managed by a professional caller-off, who shouts his

io8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

directions in language which is neither in rhyme
nor blank verse nor glorified prose but a unique
mingling of all three.

The caller-off is to be taken quite seriously, and
woe to the man who fails to come up to public
expectation. He must have nerve, vitality, origi-
nality, his own or another's humour, a voice that
inspires and carries, and both discretion and
philosophy in case of failure to please.

The caller-off on this occasion was called in from
Indian Head. Each figure was explained to the
enthusiastic dancers by the professional leader. One
I remember ran :

Birdie in the centre and three hawks round,
Birdie fly out and hawk fly in.
Hawk fly out and give birdie a swing.

Another direction ran :

Ladies in the centre ; gents take a zvalk.
Salute your own and pass her by. Don^t be shy.
Balance to the next and all siving out ;
Gents hook on, ladies bounce back ;
Join your hands and circle a half ; partners

swing
Right and left back to the same old thing.

Another :

Around the hall, gents, take your partner for a

promenade ;
Stand her by and swing to the next ;
Then bring her back with a half galopade.

The opening line of an historic direction completely
absorbed my sense of wonder. It ran :

I

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION 109

Ladies, cross your lily-white hand ;
Gents, your black- and- tan.

I asked the man who works for me what he thought
about it the next day, and he was contemptuous,
not to say severe, in his judgment.

" 'Twas poor callin'-off. He was hard to hear.
Not much to say. It was no sort of calling-oif.
His ticket and supper was quite enough for the likes
of him ; they paid him three dollars, and he had no
call to take the money."

Christmas is an honoured and festive season in
Canada, and was especially observed at the Milling-
tons'. The girls came back from their convent, and
Christmas Eve was penetrated with that atmosphere
of surprise without which no great occasion seems
complete in Canada. The only son, a youth at
college, was brought back for a week's holiday,
smuggled into the house and carefully concealed
until he popped up as a kind of Jack-in-the-box in
the small hours of Christmas morning. At four
o'clock I heard whispers in my dreams — at five
shouts— at six I discovered a series of unexpected
presents, a box of the most fascinating chocolates
from my host and hostess, charming trifles from the
girls, a monster blotting-pad from Miss Lister ; and
the respectable end of these early diversions was
that the Clyst party was most unusually punctual
at church.

In the evening the vicar dined with us. The table
was charmingly decorated. The huge turkey was
brought in by Heriot Hylton-Cave, looking a little
bit cross in his immaculate evening suit, and
followed by Miss Lister, who carried the vegetable

no

WHEAT AND WOMAN

dishes and the side dishes without the smallest
shadow of consciousness of her pretty dinner-gown.
Many interesting guests came to the Clyst that
Christmas week, among them being a very pleasant
Englishman of perfect manners who played bridge
far and away better than anybody else, but who I
noticed was always merciful and even kind to his
partner ; and, best of all, there was a man who knew
music. He was the brother of my host, and I think
the most truly musical man I have met outside
Germany. We had both been students at the Royal
Academy, which was a bond, but he was there in
the days when it was under the directorship of Sir
George Macfarren, before my time. He had gone
out to Canada and was farming in the neighbour-
hood of Elkhorn. I don't think he was wealthy, and
I am not sure that he had a piano in his own home ;
and pianos are sufficiently rare in Western Canada
to be thoroughly appreciated. But he touched
every note as though he loved it, and uttered every
phrase as though he understood ; and he had the
delightful way of passing from one message to
another, just making music without waiting for the
interruption or encouragement of conventional
thanks. The memory of that Christmas octave is
set amidst familiar phrases of Beethoven, Weber,
Schumann and Bach, with Chopin in between and
all around, and strangely shadowed with that
curiously alive bust of Chopin in the Luxembourg
garden, a keepsake which seems to have caught the
spirit of radiant vision, and passionate, reckless
longing and tender acquiescence which reveals
itself in the consolation and inspiration of the ex-
quisite work of Chopin, as though the artist had

THE LAKE SHORE— DIVERSION in

been borne on the wings of the morning to see the
heaven that needed his sweet service and had dropped
lightly back to earth of his own free will to suffer and
to wait.

And so we came to the altar-step of the New
Year.

X

NANCY — THE SECOND PAYMENT —
THE FIRST LOSS

I WAS due to make the second payment of a thousand
dollars on January i, 1906. In November I clearly
saw that I could not pay the whole of it, in December
that I could not pay any of it, and I had to send to
England to ask for a further advance of two hundred
pounds. At the time I had received three hundred
and fifty pounds in addition to the sum I had taken
for wheat. That year I was not due to pay interest.
For the remaining six hundred and thirty pounds
due on the land I gave my predecessor a mortgage
charged with six per cent, interest ; the bank-rate
was just then standing at seven per cent., but a
mortgage on easy terms is usually offered by the
vendor for the greater part of the payment,
as the sale of a farm in Canada is by no means
an easy matter even to-day, although the pur-
chase of ready-made farms for ready money would
be good for the Canadian farmer, and good for the
British newcomer to the farming conditions of
Canada.

On January 6 my funds had not arrived.
True, among my Christmas presents there had
been the very useful one of twenty-five pounds,
but that I had dedicated to the altar of pleasure.

112

NANCY 113

From my earliest schooldays I had carefully guarded
my altar of pleasure — I believed in it then — and
I believe in it now; and I had observed that
Vi^hether it is good for you or bad for you the
one thing the average pastor, or master, or creditor
seeks to take from you is the thing which your
soul loves. Long after I was old enough to know
better I had been greedy about more marrons
glaces and cream-filled chocolate cakes than were
good for me, and vain about the possession of many
more hats than I could wear ; but I loved flowers
most dearly and truly and always insisted upon
having them near. When the particular person in
authority to whom I invariably owed more than the
full sum of my month's pocket in advance discussed
the situation, I always noticed that neither my
expensive greediness nor vanity provoked attack
so much as the few pennyworth of violets that
were always consoling, and kind, and silent, and
there when the world went wrong. The soul
expands with pleasure as the heart expands in
giving, but the people who wait to give until
they can afford to give never give. To return
to the gift upon my own altar, it was reserved
for the inspiration of a visit to New York, and
to return to January 6, 1906, early in the after-
noon my predecessor called on me for the
payment of the thousand dollars already six days
overdue.

I was in no enviable frame of mind. Jim, the
most powerful of the four horses, was ailing, and
my brother constantly complaining of the cold
stables, lack of hay, shortage of oats, and things
generally. He insisted that horses must be blanketed,

H

I

114 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and kept horses and cattle in the stable during the
winter. Experience taught me never to keep them
in a single day to obtain physical comfort through
the rigour of the Canadian winter ; the blood must
be kept in swift circulation, which is only obtainable
through physical motion. I was new enough to
feel very worried over everything, and my prede-
cessor naturally wanted his money. In those days
I was totally unaccustomed to being without suffi-
cient for the emergency of the hour, and by way of
carrying my own grievance into the camp of the
adversary produced the worn-out old argument
of the hayrick, which I had ignorantly and foolishly,
but quite freely, yielded at his request. It would
have been more just and more dignified to have
borne the burden of my own lack of foresight in
silence, but it is not easy to bear the knowledge
that your beasts are threatened with an insufficiency
of food in winter weather. The old man was hurt
and angry at the charge of injustice. He departed
with a cheque for eight hundred dollars, for which
I had obtained permission to overdraw my account,
and he no doubt carried with it a sense of injury.
On the 13th the money arrived from England.
I sent the balance, and being set free from imme-
diate worry, quickly forgot my grudge. But it
is never wise to risk making an enemy where one
may be glad to find friendship in an evil hour,
and if I had suffered in silence I should have been
spared some anxious days.

It was on a January Sunday that I first met
Nancy. Her owner was a familiar friend of the
Millingtons, who came and went as he pleased.
As we were driving into church Nancy's charming

NANCY 115

red head came round the snow-clad corner of the
hill, and seemed to belong at once to the little bunch
of Britishers who own a very green field in my
memory.

Later in the day I told her owner that I liked
his chestnut filly better than anything I had seen in
Canada.

" So do I — nearly, ^"^ he answered. " How old do
you suppose she is ? "

I guessed her four off.

" Wrong," he said, " she's rising ten. But she is
the very gamest, smartest little mare I have come
across in all the years I have been in this country.
I should have to be very hard up indeed to part
vdth Nancy."

In the afternoon I made love to her in the stables ;
but apart from being excellently well-mannered
Nancy is not demonstrative to strangers. She
adored her master, and suffered the adoration of
others. Her owner's pleasure in my admiration
was complete.

" You must ride her, you really must," he
suggested. " The Millingtons have asked me for
next week-end. I'll bring her along and we will
go for a ride on the hills in the afternoon."

I hadn't ridden anything but Charles Edward and
my neighbour's bay mare Mabel since I left
England. Mabel had a fine stride, and after
Charles Edward seemed everything that a hack
should seem. But in those days to be carried by
Nancy was to ride on the wing of a bird. Her
mouth, movement, manners, were in perfect poise,
and as inspiring as a breath of mountain air. We
cantered lightly along the lake-side trail until we

ii6 WTiEAT AND WOMAN

came to Maple Grove, then up through that lovely
gap of the hills best known as Maloney's coulee.

" Let us go and call on the Maloneys," suggested
Mr. Edwardes, as we reached the top, and away the
horses flew on a straight swift gallop to their door.

The Maloneys' house, which is very seldom spoken
of by its orthodox title of French Park, has I think
the most beautiful site and prospect of any house on
the hills of the Qu'Appelle Valley. Whichever way
one looks is Nature in her inspiringly beautiful
mood. The windows of the house face southward
on to the West Lake and catch the full form of the
noble lines of hills, from the heights of which
miles and miles of prairie stretch away into the
violet heart of the never-never land.

The house is a comfortable but unpretentious
building, an extended rather than glorified shack.
The main building is divided into three separate
rooms each leading out of the other, behind is the
inevitable lean-to kitchen flanked by a useful room
which does duty for dairy, larder, and storehouse,
and over the kitchen was the hired man's room.
It is a proverb throughout the Qu'Appelle terri-
tory that there is always a meal in waiting at the
Maloneys, and history also relates that on one
occasion a party of three walked in very late one
night, slept, took breakfast, lit the fire and departed
without interviewing either host or hostess ; and
the only people who didn't seem just a little sur-
prised at so much being taken for granted were the
Maloneys. Irish, happy, hospitable, and kind
they were always. Mrs. Maloney had come out
to Canada as the bride of Captain John French,
who was shot whilst in command of his detachment

NANCY 117

of Mounted Police which supported General's
Middleton's column on the historic occasion of the
Battle of Batoche, when the rebel troops were badly-
beaten although Louis Riel escaped.

• • • •

If Nancy's pace has a superlative movement it is
at pink sundown when the air is light and sharp as
steel and she is homeward bound. I threw the
bridle on her neck and slipped to the ground with
that delightful feeling of elation which occasionally
escapes from the seventh heaven to play round on
Mother Earth usually through the four-footed
channel of " one of the best."

" I think you ought to be perfectly happy to be
her owner," I said to Mr. Edwardes, " I shall never
find anything to quite please me in Canada now
that I have ridden her."

As January wore away the weather grew colder,
but at no point of that marvellously lovely and
temperate winter was it in the least unbearable
on the hill-sheltered sides of the valley. About
the 20th the Millingtons all went away. Miss
Lister, Heriot Hylton-Cave and I took a great walk,
climbing a coulee and running home across the
lake trail, but on either side of the setting sun the
golden sun-dogs threw their challenge of intense
cold to those who dwell in the land of frost.

" We shall have a bitterly cold night," said Miss
Lister. " Heriot, be sure you make up the hall
stove the very last moment."

When we got home she gave us each our choice
for supper. She chose milk-toast and I chose
caviare, and Heriot Hylton-Cave selected porridge ;
and whether the porridge wasn't the right sort of

ii8 ^\^EAT AND WOMAN

supper and our " lord of creation " retired con-
siderably earlier, or whether he failed to put on the
usual number of logs I never knew, but about four
o'clock I awoke to the fact that every bone in my
body was rebelling against the low temperature.
I think it was the only occasion on which I was
uncomfortably cold during that first winter season,
but I only rode about three times and seldom drove,
and I walked a great deal. My weekly eight-mile
journey to the farm I accomplished on foot without
difficulty, and on one occasion I walked to the
farm, sleighed fourteen miles to South Qu'Appelle
and back with Dick in the cutter, then changed
horses and got back to the Clyst all within eight
hours. There is no path in all sorts and conditions
of trails so light and easy as a thoroughly well-
packed snow path.

Every day I looked just a little more gaily forward
to my visit to New York. I had taken Canada and
I expect myself much too seriously that winter,
and instead of writing up this ordinary little every-
day adventure on the prairie I wrote solemn articles
on emigration which the literary agent who controls
such matters for me returned at once with the
frankest intimation that they were unsaleable ; and
in the still franker interpretation of time I easily
recognized the truth in the saying that " a little
knowledge is a dangerous thing," and thanked the
gods, and the agent, that those special papers never
reached the shame of printer's ink. But I was a
little sore to think that it was possible my work
could fall from quite a high price to " unsaleable,"
and I felt that a breath of New York and the atmo-
sphere of my fellow craftsmen would put wrong

NANCY 119

right. So on the 7th of February I packed a cabin-
trunk and a hatbox, and on the 8th I sat waiting at
my writing-table for my brother to drive me in to
catch the transcontinental train. When I caught
sight of him coming up the stairs, I saw at once
that he was in trouble, and my thoughts flew to the
horses.

" It's Jim," I said ; " is he dead ? "

" Not Jim," he answered. " Jess. She seemed
quite all right when I fed and watered them early
this morning. I harnessed her twenty minutes
before I started, and I chose her because I thought it
would be a shorter stage for her, and Dick would be
faster to take us from the farm to South Qu'Appelle.
Before we had come half a mile she suddenly
stopped, rolled over, and when I got to her head
she was dead."

My brother was so entirely upset about the loss
that I could only feign to make light of it ; but even
on that day I felt a kind of premonition that the
shadow which I had refused to recognize might
dodge me — the shadow of bad luck which I had
entirely omitted to take into my calculations.

The misfortune brought us both to the face of
affairs. My brother told me that he had decided
to return to his homestead, and if we could possibly
manage to get the money together he would like
to put up a roomy shack so that he might take on
" stoppers " — passengers on the trail. The Grand
Trunk Railway were grading through just then
about seven miles north of his homestead, all the
supplies were taken over the trail on the edge of
his land, and he considered there was quite a fortune
in it. If I could lend horses and seed from the farm

120 WHEAT AND WOMAN

he could crop the ten acres with oats, break up
the balance of the land required hy the law of
homestead to be put in shape for crop, make enough
to pay his way and repay me before the end of the
season when he would sell up and go home. Eagerly
I put my lips to the draught of enthusiasm, and
swallowed the fresh responsibilities.

" I shall have to start almost at once, the weather
is breaking," he said ; " as I must use the horses to
haul the building materials, I must get it over
before you need them for seedin'. I thought
perhaps you wouldn't mind coming back to the farm
from New York."

" I shan't go," I said. " I can't possibly afford
it now that I must get another horse. I have told
Heriot Hylton-Cave that I will have him as chore-
boy directly the Millingtons can part with him,
and I don't in the least mind staying alone at the
farm whilst you are going backwards and forwards."

When he had gone I thought it all over. I had
bound myself to a responsibility with the bond of
another's capital. The responsibility might demand
a far larger capital than I in my ignorance had
anticipated. That this increase of demand was
certainly not anticipated in England my weekly
mail never failed to impress upon me. The only
thing possible seemed to be to cut all side lines and
throw oneself right into the breach as a working
farmer. When Destiny grasps you by the shoulders
if you fall in with the idea, the burden of compulsion
seems to cease.

The Millingtons were most kind and sympathetic
about the loss, and Mr. Millington advised me to
go over and look at the horses of Mr. Edwardes'

NANCY 121

brother-in-law who was leaving the neighbourhood.
The next day Mr. Edwardes came over and persuaded
me to go back with him and see the horses.

The loss of the mare, the unaccustomed weight of
money worries, had blinded my judgment and
unnerved me altogether, or I couldn't have missed
the splendid chance I had of completing my list
of implements, and securing one or two of Mr.
Mayne's valuable Clydesdales at the astonishingly
low prices for which he offered them. After
sixteen years of hard pioneer work his careful
judgment and splendid patience had supplied him
with a perfect plant for working a three hundred
and twenty acre farm, but in the process the farm
had become mortgaged to the extent of a big
interest ; also that part of the valley seemed peculiarly
susceptible to the attack of early frost, and the
present industrial population of the cities had not
then arrived to cause the demand for meat and
dairy produce which places the commercial farmer
in a very much more independent position than the
pioneer farmer who had to count on wheat alone
to produce money. So Mr. Mayne had resolved to
sell his farm, and to use the balance that remained
to purchase a livery-barn in a city about three
hundred and fifty miles farther west. The sale
of the horses for cash was urgent. He offered me
a four-year-old grey Clydesdale expecting to foal
within the month for a hundred and fifty dollars
cash. She was not nearly as tall as the big team,
but bigger than Dick, and I made that the excuse
for refusing the offer ; but I did not feel sure that
the bank would allow me to increase my overdraft
so far, and I knew that I could buy on the usual

122 WHEAT AND WOMAN

terms of deferred payment. It was my first really
bad " sin of omission," and the law of " no for-
giveness" of course held good — no seed, no
harvest.

There were times in Canada when you might be
worth five thousand dollars yet not be able to raise
five dollars. Mr. Edwardes was deputed to go to
the city in which was the livery-barn. He needed
ready money for the expenses of the journey, and
they both needlessly feared that the horses would
go for half nothing in an enforced sale. When I
refused the offer of the mare Nancy was coupled
to sell her, the price of the two being two hundred
dollars. I felt I couldn't afford both, but remem-
bered the money set aside on the altar of pleasure
and tumbled to temptation by offering a bit of it.
I hadn't the smallest idea that Mr. Edwardes
would accept fifty dollars when I offered it, and I
haven't any real excuse to offer for the wretched
price except that the iron had entered into my soul
over one or two other little deals where I had no
doubt most easily earned the gibe of " English
greenhorn." I had a strong desire to offer to
advance the sale-price and let him redeem Nancy
when things mended, and an honest impulse to
offer at least seventy-five dollars. But he was
in a tight place, and he took my offer because he
knew Nancy's well-being would be in safe keeping.

" Will she go in harness ? " I inquired.

" I have never tried her," he answered. " She
was the best cattle pony I ever rode in my life,
and you can see by her brands what they thought
of her in the Mounted Police. I had hoped never
to part with her. The day you rode her I knew

NANCY 123

you understood about horses. I can't take her as
things are, and I would rather let you have her at a
low price than take chances about her future owner.
And if at any time you have to part with her I feel
sure you would be careful too."

In the end Mr. Mayne's horses sold well. The
mare fetched two hundred dollars cash, and all the
rest were eagerly claimed. I was offered seventy-
five dollars for Nancy at once, and later a hundred
and twenty-five dollars ; but, of course, we never
parted, and to-day she credits my account with one
fine five-year-old horse, three mares, and a colt,
in addition to her own priceless self.

At the sale of implements I bought a second
wagon and a set of bob-sleighs, but the sale went
well and I had to pay a fair price. However, I
could have got a seeder at twenty-five dollars,
but I had already ordered one which cost a hundred
and thirty.

It was in the drive back from Balcarres to the
Clyst that I was so perished with the cold that I
almost made a vow never to drive again in the
winter in Canada, and I always found the best
and in fact the only resource against the worst
days of the Canadian winter to lie in physical
exertion. My last day at the Clyst was like the
first — Sunday. I had arranged for the wagon to go
down for my baggage during the week, and on
Monday, February 12, after four o'clock tea I bad the
Millingtons good-bye and walked back to my post
at the farm.

PART II

SPRING

" But to have lain upon the grass
One perfect day, one perfect hour,
Beholding all things mortal pass
Into the quiet of green grass.

" But to have lain and loved the sun
Under the shadow of the trees.
To have been found in unison
Once only, with the blessed sun."

I

A DAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE
THE COMING OF NANCY

I WENT back to my farm determined to remain in
personal charge until it could be left to fulfil its
role of a successful revenue-producing investment
in the hands of others. I had not the remotest idea
that I was entering on a phase of strenuous labour,
and had certainly no intention of sparing more than
two years of my life, into which I hoped to gather
all that was worth while in every corner of the globe,
to the proving of agricultural or any other kind
of labour on the Canadian prairie. By way of
tempering the wind to the shorn lamb I constantly
assured myself that I would travel east or west
through the coming winter, and that I would make
the cottage as beautiful as I could, since I had to
live in it.

The first days were not exactly inspiring. The
temperature, it is true, was often above zero ; but
an east wind raged, and the stove pipes smoked.
I scrubbed floors and cleaned out cupboards, but
the result simply grinned at my labour, and
finally I lay down with the worst headache on
record.

My brother, returning from a journey to South
Qu'Appelle, where he had been to discover the

127

128 WHEAT AND WOMAN

possible cost of the lumber for his stopping-house,
was kind but not flattering.

" You will only wear yourself out if you rush
your fences, and cleanin' this house is no joke —
I have tried it myself," he said with conviction.
" It is too cold to accomplish anything that you
cannot do within three feet of the kitchen stove.
When you had earned a warm, and a jolly good meal
washin' out your bedroom, I have no doubt that
you returned to the kitchen to find the fire out ;
and in any case that east room is a refrigerator when
there is no fire downstairs. I cannot think why you
like it."

It was no use to explain that the walls were white
instead of a crude and angry blue, and the floor
green instead of yellow ; and at that time I hadn't
even discovered that the sun looked straight into
one's eyes as it came home from the east.

" One can attack things so much better if one's
bedroom is all right and restful," I explained.
" But you are quite right, it is unbearably
cold."

" I will put up the little stove downstairs and set
the drum in here," he promised. " And to-morrow
I shall go over to Mabel Mazey and ask her to come
along and scrub and polish the whole show. She is
a brick, and can do anything. Perhaps you could
induce her to come over once a week. If she can't
come for a whole day, she might for a half ; and it
is wonderful what Canadians can get through in the
shape of work. I shan't have to go north for a
week, as the man whom I want to build my shack
won't be in the neighbourhood before. I can get
plen y of wood bucked, and the stable in apple-pie

2^5

A DAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 129

order, so that you can get along all right until I
come back."

Mabel Mazey arrived just after our midday meal
on the next day and went to work with a will. She
scrubbed the floors, polished grates, helped my
brother set up the little heater, and finally she
washed out every cloth she could lay hands on.
I was lying down with the tail-end of the headache
of the day before, but conversation was general
through the stove-pipes.

" Guess now I'm right down tired. And your
sister, she will be thinking it's supper-time."

It is wonderful what effect the warmth of a
Canadian stove will have on the brain of a chilled
and tired body. Of it come conquering moments
luring one on to new efforts. I went down and got
supper in a twinkling. Mabel Mazey was the
friendliest person, with a well-shaped head set on a
well- formed body, curly hair growing in the prettiest
way off a white brow, smiling eyes, and a humorous,
well-shaped mouth with perfect teeth, and a chin
that just curled off a pillar-like throat ; yet in those
days one couldn't possibly describe her in any other
way than rough and ready.

All her days she had worked in the open air and
loved it. In herding cattle, tending young stock,
ploughing, discing, harrowing, she was equally
useful, happy, and at home ; but she was a true
daughter of the four winds of the prairie, and often
have I listened to argument as to which is the most
rousing way of the wind in Canada — north, south,
east, or west. She didn't jump at the idea of coming
over once a week to break the back of my domestic
duties.

I30 WHEAT AND WOMAN

" I guess I might manage half a day to oblige
you," she said, " but I shall have to stop coming
directly the weather breaks and we can get on to
the land ; and it looks as though it would be good
and early this year. But I'll come till then, seeing
that you are a bit lonesome and green about things.
And when I have to get on to the land there's
Pearl — she's next to me. I guess she wouldn't
mind obliging you if you asked her."

I inquired as tactfully as I could of terms.

*' Well, I guess the pay all round here is about
the same, a dollar a day."

" You will be quite content to take half a dollar
for the half day ? "

" That will suit me all right. Now I guess I
must be getting back to round up the cattle."

" How many cows shall you milk to-night, Miss
Mazey ? " inquired my brother.

" We have only got four milkers now, but none
of the youngsters seems to care about the job.
Ain't you milking ? Well, I guess you will have a
cow coming in soon ; and if you are wanting butter,
maybe mother would oblige you with some whilst
you are waiting. We don't sell except to Roland
Dennison. You see, the kids eat it all. Seven
pounds last week. Guess I shall be late getting
back."

" I'll fetch your horse," volunteered my brother.

" Now that will be real kind."

The horse was of an order that a British M.F.H.
might have ridden with pride, one of the noblest-
looking brutes in my memory — tall, proud, powerful,
generous, masterful, and kind. His name was Paul,
and, like his mistress, he followed the call of the

1^1

A DAUGHTER OF THE PRAIRIE 131

daily round without a murmur, and without ever
losing a breath of his splendid pride. Chasing cattle
in a round-up or racing across a straight mile of
black loam, waiting for the seed, drawing the plough,
the disc, or the harrows, hitched up with three
others, distinctly not of his class, or carrying off the
honours of the show ring, Paul took each separate
detail as though it were the peculiar office which life
had confided to his special care.

Mabel refused all aid and vaulted into the com-
fortable Canadian side-saddle which she has never
forsaken. We watched them skim the stubble.

" I wish I had Paul under me over a line of
British fences ! She can sit a horse, can't she ! "
said my brother, on a note of admiration.

" And clean a house," I added with true homage.
And that night I undressed and fell asleep in com-
fort, and if the temperature ruled a swift accom-
plishment of one's toilet, the kitchen was the
warmest haven even ten minutes after the stove had
been lit.

There are but few duties on a Canadian farm in the
winter. Watering and feeding the stock and clean-
ing the stables were the only ones just then, as
neither of the cows was expecting a calf until March.

" What shall you do about milkin' if a calf comes
whilst I am away, and before Hylton-Cave comes
along ? " inquired my brother.

" Don't suggest any such calamity," I entreated.
" I think I would rather do without milk and butter
for ever and ever than milk. Besides, there is
Mabel Mazey. Since she rescued me from those
household chores I feel within reach of a tower of
strength."

132

WHEAT AND WOMAN

" What shall you do if anyone comes to the house
and asks to sleep, or anything ? " was the next
question.

" I should tell them that I was living alone, and
it wasn't convenient, and that there was a bachelor's
shack and a hearty welcome at every other
corner."

'* Well, they wouldn't think much of your sense
of hospitality. It is considered very bad form to
send people on to a neighbour if they want a meal
or a night's lodging on the prairie. It's nothing to
do with the ' angels unaware ' theory and that
kind of thing, you know. And they are always quite
prepared to pay for their meals. But you really
can't refuse."

" Very well," I agreed, " I will lock my door, and
tell them to make the best of all the rest of the
house and what they can find in it."

" I have never known anyone come yet except
a stray policeman," he said consolingly. " Only
work-seekers will be about soon, so I thought I had
better prepare you. ' When you are in Rome,' you
know."

On Sunday, February 25, the east wind was
blowing hard, and my brother and I were discussing
his stopping-house plans over our midday meal,
when there was a great announcement of arrival
from his dog.

" By Jove ! there's a man and team leadin' a
horse ! " he exclaimed. " And such a jolly little
beast ! "

" It's Nancy," I said, " and Mr. Edwardes ! " and
promptly flew out to meet them, forgetting hat and
gloves and the terror of frost-bitten flesh.

i^

THE C0A4ING OF NANCY 133

Nancy was installed in the fifth place in the stable,
a single stall in the warmest corner, which the great
Boaster and my brother had fitted up with care and
attention to detail in the way of a deep manger and
convenient oat box.

" I thought being newcomers you had probably
omitted to put up any oat sheaves," exclaimed Mr.
Edwardes, " and as Nancy is used to them I brought
along a few. When she knows she is at home she
will get round and find her own feed, but she is
certain to feel a bit strange at first. This stable isn't
very warm, is it ? Have you a blanket ? "

I flew for a set of travelling garments which had
belonged to a dear dead four-footed friend of whom
much too much had been expected in the racing
world. Nancy submitted to her thick and comfort-
able blue and yellow coat as though she had never
seen anything inferior, although the ragged remains
of the four sets I had purchased at Fort Qu'Appelle
in the preceding November were hanging like grey
banners of battle from the rafters. However, they
were the only sample of horse-clothing which I
bought or used in Canada. Circulation by exercise,
and also by plenty of the best of hay and oats,
threshed and in the sheaf, became my method of
fighting the climate ; and even my brother allows
that it is miles ahead of external wrappings.

Mr. Edwardes remained with us overnight. The
experience he had put in through the many years
he had spent in the country made him a most
interesting companion, but I fear he found our
many-windowed cottage unmercifully cold. He
bade his faithful comrade good-bye with a tight-
gripped lip. I offered there and then to let him

134 WHEAT AND WOMAN

have her back at the same price — I hope as though
I meant it.

" Please don't think of anything of the kind," he
protested. " We are off next week to Medicine
Hat. I am quite content with the deal, since I
know she will be well cared for and quite at home in
a day or two."

But Nancy was inconsolable for many a day. She
has the prettiest way of making herself understood,
and all the time "one waited by her stall she didn't
eat, but turned her head and made pathetic little
whinnies of inquiry for her master. She is not
demonstrative, and my ever-increasing affection
throve without any marked return of devotion for
many a day. Indeed, I think it was not until a
year after, when Felicity, her first foal, came into
the world and we shared the delight of her care,
that Nancy acknowledged me as her true owner, but
now her " welcome home " is worth the ten days'
journey.

Two days after my brother, having done every-
thing possible to save me inconvenience during his
absence, went off with Jim and Kit, the big team,
on his forty-mile journey north to meet the
architect of the stopping-house ; and I spent the
only lonely night of many a night alone at the farm.

II

THE MIRAGE OF SPRING— MY FIRST
CHORE-BOY — A NEW HORSE AND A
NEW MAN— SEEDING

Just as the enchanting season known as the Indian
summer usually precedes the severity of the Cana-
dian winter, so does a twin-sister of enchantment,
which is as a mirage of spring, frequently break into
the monotony of winter temperature, sending zero
and its baffling blizzards away on the wings of the
four winds with just one soft breath of delicate and
delicious sweetness. Sometimes the blessed break
is as a tiny oasis in the desert, lasting but a day or
so ; sometimes it lingers on for two or three weeks.
Snow melts, ice shutters abandon the window-panes
with a crash, the glorious sun peers in and lies
deliberately, and most soothingly, about winter never
coming any more ; snow tears drip — drip all day
long from the stable roof ; long stretches of golden
stubble and islands of black loam emerge from the
soft white wrappings of winter, or peer inquisitively
at the sun through a mask of melting snow ; in the
gay sunlight and soft sweet air the plaintive note of
the snow-bird seems to borrow a tone of the English
thrush ; and if it were not that the cautious bluffs
are still bare and dark, that the prudent trees with-

135

136 WHEAT AND WOMAN

hold their garment, and that the voice of the
prairie is still silent, one might dream not only that
spring is here, but summer nigh.

This fair and gracious season followed in Nancy's
trail, warming one's heart and softening the last
days of February and the early days of March so that
one remembered that yellow daffodils were keeping
company with pink tulips and English violets within
the precincts of grey Westminster, and then rode
at full gallop into the shimmering, glowing white-
ness of the prairie snow, since rosemary is not for
spring.

Together Nancy and I learned our neigh-
bourhood. Barbed-wire fencing was not nearly
as general then as now, and but for one solitary
fenced enclosure, which held all the charm of the
unexpected on either side, we could carve our line
to Springbrook as the crow flies. The delicate
and exhilarating air that comes from the union
of ice and sun in this sweet season goes to the head
of mankind and beast, and with the brilliant sun-
shine mocks caution and all sombre virtues. We
followed imaginary trails, and chased vivid and
delightful and evasive bits of landscape through
glorious snow-clad spaces of the prairie, and more
than once even sure-footed Nancy lost her fine
sense of trail and plunged us both into an unexpected
bath in a snowdrift.

It was Mabel Mazey who first took me to Wide-
awake, where we raced in earnest from end to end
of a mile stretch of summer-fallowed seed-bed
which cultivation and the action of frost and snow
had rendered fine as garden soil. Paul and Nancy
travelled over it neck and neck, but Paul's longer

THE MIRAGE OF SPRING 137

nose was in front at the finish. We saw the huge
barns and the prim houses which mark the prosperity
of the prosperous farmers who grow wheat by the
mile from Wideawake to Indian Head. Mabel
commented freely on all we saw, and especially the
direct relation of the size and number of the
granaries which dotted the fields, to the income,
expenditure, and peculiar characteristics of the
owners of the same ; but her cheerful tongue fell
silent at the bleached bones of more than one dead
horse in the neighbourhood of these coffers of
wealth.

" Many's the horse that's killed by getting at the
wheat," she explained. " The land is all open like
in the winter, and sometimes they get at a whole
lot spilled under the straw piles, and sometimes they
get it out of a leaking granary. My, it's a cruel
death ! "

We ambled back to our bluff-clad neighbourhood
and congratulated ourselves that, although there
might be more profit for the farmers on the plains,
the picturesque element of our own immediate
environment was worth much.

The lovely sunset of that day recurs so often in
one's memory ! Beyond and above and all around
the purple bluffs and shining sloughs, and violet
hue of distance, the pale clear tints of the evening
sky, aquamarine, shell-pink, and palest blue, lay
resting on a sea of opal set in pure gold ; and the
prairie, which through all that glorious day had
been yearning to sound the spring song and to
burst into leaf, bowed to the hush of evensong and
seemed for a moment to kneel at the altar of the
setting sun. In face of the sky at sunset hour on

138 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the prairie it is so easy to understand why humanity's
idea of eternal rest and sweetness points to the
heavens as its best expression.

I put Nancy at the timber bars which did duty
for a gate at the Mazeys', and she tucked her legs
under her and rose in the air at the merest suggestion
of a leap, so that I repeated the experiment at my
neighbour's stouter bars, forgetting that my saddle
was attached with one not perfectly sound British
girth that had been through a Canadian winter.
We cleared the timber, but the girth snapped, and
the saddle went one way and I the other. Nancy,
snifhng supper-time, promptly deserted, and went
gaily home alone.

When my brother returned from his consultation
with the architect, the plans for the stopping-house
were frankly discussed. It was simplicity itself in
design, and was to consist of one big living-room
downstairs, its fellow bedchamber overhead, and a
lean-to kitchen ; but everything in the way of
building is costly on the prairie. The old-timer put
up his log-and-plaster shack himself ; the new-
comer usually has to buy lumber, which is extra-
ordinarily dear, and hire labour, which is ruinous.
We agreed that it would take all the fifty pounds that
was coming through from England even to give it any
sort of start ; but the outlook seemed most promising
since he said the solitary Touchwood trail was already
alive with trailers on their way to Kutawa, the
nearest point of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway
which was in process of construction betw^een Winni-
peg and Edmonton. He had already encountered
the leader of the supply section of the outfit, who
had promised to make the new stopping-house their

THE MIRAGE OF SPRING 139

stop-over point, since it marked half-way between
Lipton and their headquarters and was practically
on the trail.

We agreed that I could easily dispense with the
two huge bedsteads I had bought from Mrs.
Creegan, and the big kitchen table, four of the
eight chairs, and the bench and various other odd-
ments.

" I shall make all my expenses and at least five
hundred dollars over long before harvest," said my
brother ; " so that I can let you have the fifty
pounds back just when you want it for wages and
that kind of thing."

" I wanted it for the new work-horse," I said.
" But, as you say, one can buy horses on time, and
it would be a pity to miss such a fine opportunity."

As a matter of fact the stopping-house did not
go at all badly, although I doubt if it ever had a
genuine margin of profit. Occasionally there was
quite an embarrassing number of guests, on one
occasion I believe they totalled a score ; but
many of them claimed hospitality in a friendly way,
which of course was against commercial success.
My brother put in his time and his homestead
duties, claimed his patent, and in the end sold his
homestead and house for two hundred and twenty
pounds ! But in Ireland he had earned an income
of five hundred pounds a year as a brewer, and his
homestead experience and result prove the folly of
men who can do well in more suitable openings in
the industrial development of Canada falling back on
the hundred and sixty acres of free land just because
it is free land. Homestead land is usually far from
a railway, and needs all that experience and a true

140 WHEAT AND WOMAN

vocation for agriculture can give towards its develop-
ment. It is a godsend to the migrating agricultural
labourer with a family, and it might be a godsend
to some women-farmers if it were open to them, but
the way it has been used by emigration agents and
others merely as a bait to attract any sort of popula-
tion to Canada has often been bad for the land, and
sometimes worse for the man.

He left finally on March 6, and from then until
the 19th I was alone. The big team went with
him until I required them for seeding. Dick, the
survivor of the light team, and Nancy became great
comrades ; and if Nancy refused to forget her
absent master except when I was in the saddle,
Dick adopted me from the first, and initiated me
into the art of horse-feeding and stable-cleaning.
Immediately after breakfast and grooming he took
Nancy out to graze, but at sundown he brought her
back and waited at the well for drinks, and then
begged for oats in his own matchless manner.

On March 11 a tiny calf arrived. Molly, the
mother, seemed to expect all sorts of things from
me ; but I was not at home with cows and didn't
appreciate the task of cleaning out the cow stable.
Mabel Mazey as usual came to my rescue. She
bundled the newcomer into the five-stall stable,
milked Molly, and gave her a bran mash, fed the
little calf with her fingers, and every day for a week
she rode over twice a day to milk. The matter of
the feeding of the calf I accompUshed easily enough.

" My, you're handy yourself ! " she said one
morning as she watched my method with the little
thing. " Guess it wouldn't take you long to milk
either."

MY FIRST CHORE-BOY 141

" There are two things I haven't the smallest
intention of doing in Canada or anywhere else," I
answered. " Milking and making bread."

On the 1 8th Heriot Hylton-Cave, released by the
Millingtons, joined my forces as chore- boy. Owing
to my ignorance in the art of hitching up, I had
walked five miles down to the Fort for my mail and
two miles on to the Clyst to find out the exact date
of his arrival. I found that it was that same day,
and after four-o'clock tea we set out on the seven-
mile tramp home. Before we marked half-way I
felt quite sure he was feeling a little tired, and,
with a guilty feeling that my companion did not
enjoy walking as much as I, longed for landmarks
long before they were due to arrive. How-
ever, we reached home, and Mabel Mazey's daily
visits and my stable-cleaning duties ceased for a
while.

Without inquiring into the average wages of
chore-boys of Mr. Millington or my neighbours, I
had offered Heriot Hylton-Cave fifteen dollars a
month. He was always up so very early at the
Millingtons', the stables on the occasion of my
visits had seemed particularly clean and tidy, and
he had had the advantage of some months' experience
on the big farm of the Englishman to whose imme-
diate care he had been confided, and to whom from
his own account he had rendered valuable service
at harvest-time. Then he had made his own
dressing-table at the Clyst, and my frankly ex-
pressed admiration of the neat and ingenious
contrivance brought forth the history of his know-
ledge and experience of carpentering which sounded
well, and I felt it would be invaluable and count for

142 WHEAT AND WOMAN

a lot in house and stable. Besides all this he could
milk and hitch up, and he was just an English boy
and I knew him.

The work went fairly well at the start, and I
played my part well three times a day according to
the sound and practical advice of Dick McGusty,
but I could not help noticing that the stables did
not seem quite so neat and tidy as at the Milling-
tons, and the particular and most necessary labour
of shifting the winter manure from the stable and
its environment distinctly hung fire. My new
chore-boy too was occasionally a little melancholy,
although he cheered up over the business of fetching
three loads of hay which I was permitted to purchase
from Guy Mazey as a great favour at five dollars a
load ; and when my brother returned for a few days
at the end of the month his spirits reached top note.
Then came his great and glorious day, which I
signed with so scarlet a mark of appreciation that I
fear it marked the beginning of the end.

I had purchased from Mr. Mayne's sale a set of
bob-sleighs, a second wagon, and another bedstead
for the stopping-house, and Heriot Hylton-Cave
was deputed to fetch them from Balcarres, a dis-
tance of eighteen miles. I had arranged that he
should bring back something for the Millingtons in
the wagon and leave it at the Clyst in passing.
Horses and man breakfasted well, and started on the
journey, but at midday down came a heavy fall of
snow, and even my brother and I, who had set out
for the Fort in the teeth of the north-west wind,
turned back half-way with the remark that for some
journeys life was really too short.

The snow was still falling when we retired at the

MY FIRST CHORE-BOY 143

usual hour, without a thought of anxiety either for
the horses or their Jehu, feeling confident that the
Millingtons would have insisted on their remaining
at the Clyst, especially as Heriot's sight was defec-
tive. At dawn my slumbers were disturbed with a
shout — it might be described as a shout of triumph
veiled in modesty.

" We have been out all night on the prairie.
Couldn't see an inch," shouted Heriot. " I dropped
the lines on the horses' necks and all that kind of
thing, but even old Jim threw up the game. So I
turned them into a bluff and stayed there all night."

" What's all that, Heriot ? " demanded my
brother, rocking with mirth. " Lost in the bluff !
Out all night ! Are Kit and Jim alive to take
breakfast, or are you the sole survivor ? "

" I expect you are very cold and hungry," I said.
" Light the fire, and I'll come down and get you
some breakfast. Only why didn't you stay at the
Clyst ? "

" Well, Mr. and Mrs. Millington both begged me
to stay," he answered, " but I told them that,
whether I got back or not, I knew you would expect
me to go on to the end."

Hoist on my own petard, the only way out of
it was to get breakfast. Besides, it is no joke being
out all night in a snowstorm on the prairie even in
April, and the boy had come well through it,
although it was a case for discretion rather than
valour. However, I made him go to bed, said nice
things, and felt kind and gratefully disposed over
the whole matter.

But the daily round and common task hung fire
badly after this splendid adventure, and as for

144 WHEAT AND WOMAN

manure heaps I will not say that they grew, but
they certainly failed to decrease.

" He is a nice little chap and amusin','' said my
brother as he took leave of me. " But if you mean
to get the seed in quickly, take my advice and get
the best man you can find, and pay him good wages.
But don't give top-hole salary to your chore-boy
until you find out for yourself what he is made of.
If you had offered seven dollars for the first month
and promised to give a rise at the end if he was
worth it, you could have got at least a month's good
work out of Hylton-Cave. He can work if he likes.
But none of us ever choose to work if we can see a
way to avoid it."

My neighbour, who had returned from a winter
in England, also eyed the mountains of manure
wrathfuUy.

" That chore-boy of yours is having a nice easy
time," he remarked. " Are you going to keep
him ? "

" I haven't found a man, and I can't milk," I
said lamely. " I must have somebody, but I am
afraid that he and I are not particularly good for
each other."

" What are you paying him ? "

" Fifteen dollars."

" It is too much by two-thirds."

" That's not the boy's fault — I offered it."

" Well, he can work if he likes, but he wants a
good Canadian hustler behind him. I have two
boys coming out from the Old Country next week,
and their father wants me to find them a job. One
has been a pupil on an English farm for more than a
year ; he ought to know something. You had

A NEW HORSE AND A NEWMAN 145

better take him for a while, and I'll keep the brother
on my place. Danny McLeay would gladly give
your lad a job for the seeding month, and keep him
on after if he is any good. But he hasn't experience
enough for you. By the way, have you decided on
a fourth work-horse ? "

" Not yet. Two men from Springbrook have
been over about one, only one was a gelding and
the other was old. I should so prefer a mare — big
you know, and not too ancient."

" Danny McLeay has a good beast," he said.
" A fine match for Jim and Kit. He is not exactly
young, but an infant in comparison to old Jim. He
is about the same size, only well-covered ; one foot
turns in a bit, but that does not interfere with his
work. He is asking one hundred and eighty dollars
for him. He wants something down on the deal,
but will wait till fall for the balance. If you don't
buy him, I shall."

Tommy was a big, white-faced, white-footed bay.
I closed the deal the moment I saw him, agreeing
to pay eighty dollars spot cash and sign a note for
the balance at ten per cent. My neighbour bought
the two-year-old polo pony, Skye, on the same day,
and Skye became the sire of Nancy's first foal. He
was swift and altogether a delightful hack, but my
neighbour had no particular use for him and sold
him at a fair profit. Eventually he passed into the
possession of a racing man, for whom he won
valuable races.

" What are you going to do about a man ? "
inquired my neighbour one very hot day when
hardly a scrap of snow remained on the landscape.

" It's a serious problem," I acknowledged. " A

K

146 WHEAT AND WOMAN

person named McEwan called on Saturday, and I
engaged him at thirty dollars a month, although I
didn't exactly like him. He was to come in on
Monday. A much nicer man called later in the
day, but I couldn't close with him as I had already
settled the matter, and didn't even bother to take
his address. And now neither word nor sign of
McEwan."

" Nor ever will be," he answered. " Danny
McLeay's cousin, Roddy McMahon, is staying over
there, and he will come along for the seeding month,
at any rate, only he won't hire on without his

team."

" What are his terms ? "

" Three dollars a day, man and team, with board
and forage."

" It seems rather a lot just as I have bought a
new horse," I said anxiously. " What do you advise
me to do ? "

*' They say he is a good man on the land. He
should be too, since he was born and bred on it and
could plough before he could read, I guess. You
see, if you hire him and his team to seed with Kit
and Jim, you can put Hardstaif on to the manure
pile or to do some stoning, or even harrowing. Your
second team can easily draw three sections. He
should be able to manage horses after being more
than a year on an English farm. However, I'll tell
Roddy McMahon to come over and see you."

He came later in the day. I was writing in my
sitting-room when there was a very loud knock at
the door.

" You are Mr. McMahon, I expect ? " I said.
I guess," said he. " Pleased to meet you."

(C

SEEDING 147

I did my best to persuade him to work for me
without the team, but he was firm on the point.
I was buying hay, and oats were almost at vanishing-
point. I foresaw an ever-increasing list of expenses
attached to the actual three dollars a day.

I engaged him for the seeding and he arranged to
come the next day, and I rode away to Springbrook
to request that the new seeder might be sent over
at once. Then I went on to Strathcarrol post office
and had tea and poached eggs and maple syrup with
the Carrols, and Ella rode home with me. In the
distance the glow of prairie fires suggested care, but
I refused fresh worry out of simple gratitude that
my team was made up and a seeding-man secured,
and that night I slept the sleep of the truly thank-
ful. On the morrow there came no hired man.
However, the next day, on April 10, he arrived,
and, to borrow his own phrase, " got right on
the job."

The first movement in the ceremony of seeding
was the ploughing of a fireguard in order that one
might fire the stubble of the eighty-acre field without
danger to the country-side. The law insists on a
thirty-foot guard all round the field, but the usual
plan is to burn with the wind and save oneself as
much trouble as possible. Prairie fires in those
days were very common, destroying whole districts ;
but with the more complete settlement of the
country the big patches of fallow land did much to
check the running sea of flame, and in my neighbour-
hood the danger from prairie fire is nothing in
comparison to what it was in 1906.

When the guard was ploughed to the extent
governed by the conscience of Roddy McMahoDj

148

WHEAT AND WOMAN

my two men drove off in a wagon to the straw pile
and brought back load after load of dry straw to the
skirt of the field, where they laid it in the stubble
to give a good send-off to the fire. The heat of the
sun had caused every breath of moisture to evaporate
from the stubble, and the wind being in a favour-
able quarter it was decided to fire after noon of the
second day. The straw piles went first and raised
a splendid blaze, and all would have gone well had
Roddy McMahon's conscience been just a little
nearer the degree prescribed by the law on the north
side of the fence. But at this point the fire leapt
the guard and got into the bluff which adjoins the
stack-yard and the stable. I had driven down to
the Fort and didn't share the top notes of excite-
ment, but a black-faced but triumphant hired man
supported by all my neighbours greeted me as I
came in at the gate with a tale of marvellous escape
from a clean wipe-out with fire ! Roddy McMahon,
who, if he ploughed furrows before he could read,
probably made prairie fires before he could walk,
remembers this above all other fires, and always
insists that Heriot Hylton-Cave shall share the
remembrance.

" Do you mind, Heriot, that day when the fire
got away on us and come into the bluff ? I never
see anyone so scared in my life. Off you rode for
Roland Dennison, and by the time you come back I
got it all beat out."

The next phase in the preparation was the cleaning
and pickling of the seed-grain. I was arranging to
buy a fanning mill, but Roddy McMahon suggested
that his uncle and my neighbour John McLeay
"might so well loan his." He drove off for the

SEEDING 149

mill, and there came down in its wake my good
friend and neighbour John McLeay and his dog,
and in the wake of both my predecessor and my
brother.

" My, but there's lots of wild oats in that seed,
Roddy ! " said John McLeay.

" And is that the seed you'll be sowing ? "
demanded my predecessor with a hint of sarcasm.
" I guess it's only the English would sow good land
with wild oats."

" Well, a Canadian raised it," retorted my
brother.

" 'Twas so fine a crop as has ever been raised in
these parts. A few wild oats don't count in the
reaping," was the retort ; " but it's only a green-
horn would sow them ! "

Wrath smouldered in my brother's eye, and I
dropped into the argument.

" I don't know anything about wheat-raising," I
said. " But if it is folly to sow that seed, just let
us know a little more and advise me what seed to
sow and where I can get it."

" I guess my own wheat is a lot cleaner than that,"
said John McLeay. " I could smell the smut as I
came within five feet of the granary. I'm not saying
but I have a wild oat here and there, but I have not
got them near so bad as that."

In the end I agreed to buy seed-wheat from John
McLeay, to be cleaned by my men in his own place
at a cent above market price. The wild oats had
seemingly neither discounted the weight nor lowered
the grade at the elevators, therefore I reckoned I
should only be a dollar out on the actual cost, plus
of course the cost of hauling. On the other hand.

150 WHEAT AND WOMAN

between May and September the price of wheat is
usually on the upward grade.

But when the sample of cleaned seed-grain came
from John McLeay I was bitterly disappointed. It
is true that there were not so many wild oats as in
my own sample, but after the seed argument I felt
that there were far too many for desirable seed, and
said so to the man.

" I guess every one in these parts has got wild
oats," said Roddy McMahon, " and there's bound
to be more this year than last because of what's
shelled on the land. Next year when eighty acres
is due to summer-fallow that's the time, I guess, to
clean 'em out."

The process of pickling seemed simple enough.
Heriot Hylton-Cave fetched several pails of water
from the well whilst Roddy McMahon waited at
his ease on the doorstep. When sufHcient water had
arrived, a big paper packet of bluestone was dis-
solved and poured over the load of grain as it lay
on the granary floor. It was then well turned with
the shovel in order that all the grain should get the
benefit of the shower-bath. I learned that this
bath was necessary to destroy the parasite smut
which does much harm to grain, lowering the grade
as can no other enemy except frost.

" I guess it will be all dried out by after dinner,"
said Roddy McMahon. " And we can start seeding."

Easter had intervened, and these preparations had
taken up three days, so that it was at midday on
April 17 that I drove the wagon with ten bushels of
seed-grain to the starting-point. Roddy McMahon
followed with the seeder. He emptied the contents
of a bag into the container, examined the feeders

MY NEIGHBOUR, JOHN McLEAY

SEEDING 151

to see that the passage was clear, and drove away.
As I watched the first seeds fall to the earth I had
a great desire that I might sow Success. By suc-
cess I meant something swift and brilliant. It all
seemed straight sailing and absurdly easy, and I
never dreamed that there lay between me and
success years of arduous toil and seasons of bitter
disappointment. It seemed to me as I walked back
to the cottage that I had assisted at a ceremony
and the ceremony was an inspiration. I wanted to
do my level best, but I was perfectly sure the gods
could do nothing less than theirs in order to stand
by a woman-farmer. So I went in to prepare
supper and attend to my household tasks, and Roddy
McMahon went east and west with the seeder, and
neither of us, I am sure, gave another thought to
the fact that as the wheat-seed dropped from the
seeder to the seed-bed there passed in here and there
a wild oat.

Ill

CHORE-BOYS — " THE BEAUTIFUL
NECESSITY " — THE STORY OF A PLOUGH

Heriot Hylton-Cave received my decision con-
cerning his exit with philosophy, and frankly
acquiesced in the opinion that an experienced
chore-boy would be better for me, and a farmer of
experience better for him. He accepted the offer
of Danny McLeay, and arranged to go at the end
of the month.

On April 20 the Hardwicks arrived. They were
a prepossessing pair of well-built, well-dressed,
manly, healthy Britons. Hating to abandon British
customs, and hating even more to cheapen the
privilege of the using of front names, I dis-
tinguished them as Hardwick major and minor on
the first evening my neighbour brought them
round to the cottage, which they pronounced to
be " not at all a bad show."

It was not quite convenient for Hylton-Cave to
move on to his new job for a few days, so for a
time he and Hardwick worked together. With three
male beings to cater for I had to think quite seriously
about meals, but beyond this I had little trouble.
Hardwick major had put in more than a year
with a farmer who had made his pupils work.
He lit the fire, brought the water, milked quickly,

152

CHORE-BOYS 153

and to the last drop, and did all without grumbling ;
but he banged the pails and the pots and the pans
and the chairs, and everything he touched ; and he
shouted and whistled and sang at all times and
seasons, until I wondered whether milking itself
might not be less hard to endure.

It seems altogether contemptible not to have
been above such trifles, but I wasn't above much,
and I had no experience of the heavy toll hard work
demands of mind and body, as even Hilaria had
seemed to take it for granted that I was hopeless
at skilled labour, and only fit to fetch and carry in
domestic concerns. Noise I hated more than any
evil thing, and would have cheerfully walked miles
or lived with the dumb to avoid it, but it happens
that one of the most attractive traits in average
Canadians is that they speak quietly and work
almost silently, so that I walked honestly into the
pleasant belief that in manual labour gentleness
always accompanies a fine intelligence. Certainly
lack of gentleness lowers the grade of the finest
intelligence. Hardwick shouted at the horses,
threw on their collars and harness, threw it off,
and always arrived on any scene of action with that
irksome bang and a clamour which must be wearing
to the nerves of animals and is certainly wearing
to implements, so that although I liked him and
liked his work I found him very hard to bear in
places. However, feeling that land and beasts
and stable were in good hands I turned my atten-
tion to the beautiful necessity of the cottage.

The first thing I had observed within doors was
that the kitchen was long, and had an air of space,
and although the windows were guiltless of a solitary

154 WHEAT AND WOMAN

correct line, they were graceful. From the south
one looked across the wheatland to the picturesque
bluffland lying between the Touchwood trail and
Springbrook, from the north, away across four miles
of peaceful prairie towards the line of land on the
far side of the Qu'Appelle valley, which from that
distance looks like a friendly sea, blue as the
Mediterranean. So I banished cookstove, pots
and pans, and everything that wasn't in the
picture to the smaller square room which had been
my predecessor's cherished parlour, and had known
the glories of an all-over carpet, an organ, a sofa,
and a wall-paper — rare distinctions in prairie farm
dwellings in those days. Then I bought white
paint for many dollars, and the softest, brightest
shade of green paper for less than two, little dreaming
that I should have to paint every inch of the wood-
work and paste on every scrap of paper myself.
I didn't mind the painting so much, although I
thought my own end must arrive before the end of
the ship-lap ceiling ; but the paper was a different
matter. I procrastinated for weeks, and then
in an evil hour it occurred to me that the two boys
might be able to hang it since it was patternless.

Heriot Hylton-Cave jumped at the idea. He
assured me that his mother frequently papered her
drawing-room walls, and that he had often helped ;
and he talked so convincingly about care and
method in cutting and fitting the strips that I
believed him. I always believed in him when he
spoke of his mother. He adored her, and she had
the kind of face that made one want to be kind to
her son. When he spoke of her I saw him in the
splendid and heroic light of the night out, and

CHORE-BOYS 155

forgot that the daily round and common task
proclaimed his near relationship to the frail family
of the Can-does.

Hardwick was even more cocksure than Heriot,
though less convincing, since his only reason for
confidence lay in the assurance that he " could do
anything." However I gave the paper, the two-
foot measure, and the scissors into Hylton-Cave's
keeping, the paste and the brush to Hardwick,
and went down to the Fort for everybody's mail,
delighted to have got rid of an irksome task.

When I returned half the room was hung with
paper, but it seemed a little unusual. I drew nearer
to find that it had been pasted on from the outside.

" I thought it was a queer thing to do," said
Hylton-Cave, with his hands in his pockets, and a
gleam in his eyes that I mistrusted, only that
one never can be sure of anything that lurks behind
spectacles. " But you see you gave him the paste
and brush, and it wasn't my business to inter-
fere."

" Not your business ! " I said wrathfully. " Didn't
you tell me you had both seen and helped your
mother put on paper a hundred times ? "

" Yes, but Hardwick said he knew a professional
bill-sticker and they always do it this way because
it makes a better job."

I made them pull every scrap of paper off the walls
before supper, and the next day I rose to the occa-
sion and attacked the job myself. It chanced that
it was my birthday and the loveliest day in the world,
but I had to stick to the foot-rule, the scissors,
and the paste-pot, and the paper, long after the sun
slipped down behind the horizon because I knew

156 WHEAT AND WOMAN

if I didn't remain with my task until the very end
I should never return to it.

When it was finished I had the floor scrubbed,
and I oiled and stained, varnished and polished it
myself. I laid the offering of my only Indian rug
in the centre, and hung the cool green curtains at
the windows. I enamelled a packing-case writing-
table, bestowed a picture here and there, placed
my bits and pieces, and bought a comfortable chair,
until it really seemed the place of dole e far niente.
But it was ages before I could be properly idle in
that room. My neck ached when I looked at the
ceiling, my knees ached when I looked at the floor,
and bitterness simply flooded my heart at the
memory of chore-boys when my eyes rested on the
cool, soft tint of the wall-paper.

In the nature of things dolce Jar niente is an
open-air condition. This truth came to me on
the day that Spring really came to the prairie.
Spring comes in a day in Canada. There is none
of the announcement of arrival with which she
invites attention to her coming in England. One
morning at sunrise you look dolefully at a white
landscape, break thin ice with a grumble, and
another firm repetition of your conviction that
she never will come — but before sunset she is with
you, actually sitting there in her petticoat of vivid,
sunlit, delicate, caressing green ; and in the spring
of 1906 the prairie blossomed and bloomed as
though love and life were one indeed. All the
tints bright and subtle, kind and cool, dangerous,
clear and gay, burst forth together. Palms innu-
merable, fragrant and exquisitely lovely ; poplars
drawn up in guardian groups dressed the landscape

"THE BEAUTIFUL NECESSITY" 157

near and far ; the purple petals of the sweet Pasque
flower, tucked snugly in its cup of silvered silk,
spread gay carpets for the fairies on the unbroken
virgin soil. Spring cried : " Awake ! " and the
voice of the prairie rang out of the heart of the
earth sun-clear and strong. The croak of the hosts
of the frog-world in full chorus, the thin high note
of the gophers, the jest of the cat-bird, and the
thirsty rattle of the bittern joined in the spring song
led by the lark's gay, glad summons to hope ; the
grey-blue walls of the sloughs took on a lapis tinge
at the ardent kiss of the sun and where tongues of
fire had licked angry ways across the prairie, a
new-born growth of tenderest emerald hue mocked
the end of destruction in the triumph of life. Azure
sky above, fragrant turf beneath, the magic of the
dry, clear air, the precious glow of the sungod !
The buzz and hum of growing, gathering life which
throbbed from every blade, swayed in the wind,
and whispered in the waters, charming song out
of silence, flame out of ice, warmth out of snow —
gay, glad, gracious, lovable, lovely life was awake
at the call of Spring and cried out : " The altar
of labour, and the place of dolce far niente is the
earth."

Many an hour of sweet idleness did I lay upon
the shrine, because even in that first season I
reahzed that since I had to pay in full for the time
of my hired man I must make full use of it. Break-
fast I served punctually at six o'clock — early rising
soon ceased to be a hardship — so that I had many
hours of leisure between breakfast and the midday
meal, which was always served at noon, and supper
which was timed for 6.30. A teamster is supposed

158 WHEAT AND WOMAN

to put in ten full hours a day on the land in Canada,
and to groom and feed his team of four horses.
Meals are set in the unwritten law at 6 a.m., 12
noon, and 6 p.m. ; but it is far better for beasts
and men to delay the evening meal in order to
allow at least an hour and a half for the midday
rest.

The wheat-field was seeded in six days, and, fol-
lowing the advice of Roddy McMahon, I had the
fifteen acres which had received some vague atten-
tion from the plough in the preceding year,
spring-ploughed, disced, and harrowed, and there
we sowed oats.

" The other twenty-five acres of that dirty land
must be twice ploughed, I guess," he continued.
" It should be ploughed shallow right now to give
the surface seed a start, then when the weed comes
up good and thick we can turn it all in with the
plough. Guess you would like me to be getting
on with some fresh breaking. There's some good
chunks of land left to break up yet on this farm,
Only I guess you will have to be sending Hardwick
up with the pickaxe to get busy on the stones.
It don't pay to keep stopping the plough to pick
out those fellows ! "

" I have found a patch of land on the far side of
the pasture," I said, " and there I think you will
get in more than twenty acres of level breaking.
Of course, you mustn't stop to get out the stones ;
I quite understand. I'll come and show you the
land I mean.'*

" I guess it's quite a piece," he agreed, as we
examined a stretch of unbroken prairie immediately
behind the forty-acre pasture. " Maybe I had

THE STORY OF A PLOUGH 159

better get on to that first. If it comes rain it will
be too sticky for the plough in the summer -fallow.
I'll just get the breaking-plough right here, and then
I can shift on to the breaking come rain. There's
another five acres we can get in on the west — a tidy
little bit of land ; it will make a good field of that
ten-acre stretch across the slough."

I congratulated myself on having the right sort
of man for the land in spite of his superiority to
chores, of which he frankly informed me. At the
same time I felt that I could not afford to pay a
man at the rate of three dollars a day right through
the working season, especially since I had to buy
feed.

" You see how I am placed," I exclaimed, when
I paid him his salary for the seeding month. " If
I had plenty of oats and hay I shouldn't worry,
or even if I hadn't bought the fourth horse, but as
things are I feel I ought not to be hiring horses."

" I guess you've no call to worry about any more
hay ; that last load we got wasn't much good to the
horses anyway. I'll get on out after supper with the
mower, and get in a load of prairie-wool."

Orthodox hay consists of the long grasses cut
from the sloughs of the prairie ; prairie-wool is
the shorter, finer herbage of the prairie proper.
Cutting and gathering this would mean too much
labour, but in spring-time, when feed has arrived at
its vanishing-point, one is only too glad of the
opportunity to gather prairie-wool, and horses
appreciate and thrive on it wonderfully well.

In gathering the prairie-wool my helper blessed
the mower and cursed the rake — implements I
had purchased as a bargain for fifty dollars ; but it

i6o W^EAT AND WOMAN

was three days later when he came to me on the
matter of the plough, for which he seemed to have
no language in reserve.

" I've never been done over a plough I guess
before, but I can't get this fellow to go nohow. I
guess Dick McGusty should take her back all right,
and give you another."

" He won't do that," I answered. " My brother
used it, although not much. But he is certain to
say we have spoiled it."

" He won't waste time saying that to me, I
guess. Anyway I am going down to the Fort this
evening. Guess you best write and tell him the
plough won't work, and he must come up and set
her right."

But Dick McGusty wasn't in town. He had a
valuable homestead in the neighbourhood of Loom
Creek, and he had failed so far to put in time,
or perform the duties attached to the true possession
of the same. Any newcomer in search of a desirable
homestead usually hunts around for these quarter-
sections nominally attached to absent owners, and
has no scruple about taking their place if possible.
Roddy McMahon and I both knew of one who had
an eye on this particular homestead.

" 'Twould take a better man than him to jump
Dick McGusty's homestead," he said, " but I guess
he has shifted him on from the Fort all right. Joe
Salmon, he's down at the Massey-Harris shed now,
but I guess they won't have implements down there
much longer. All the land's settled round the
Fort, and if Dick McGusty's going to Cupar he'll
take all he can with him. Guess 'twas a pity you
paid for that plough."

THE STORY OF A PLOUGH i6i

" Well, I haven't paid for the mower and rake,"
I said.

The Massey-Harris agent arrived the next day
and solemnly assured me the plough would work.

" He don't know no more about ploughs than a
baby," gibed Roddy McMahon, after his departure.
" But I guess you've had to pay for it, and I must
try and work it all right. It ain't so bad on the
level, but get on to the hills and she won't cut an
inch."

I wrote to Mr. McGusty, and expressed my
opinion clearly. A week after Roddy McMahon
came back with the information that he had seen
him in the Fort, and had given him his mind
about it.

" And did you tell him that it was utterly useless
to do decent work with, and that he must write
to the Massey-Harris people about it at once ? "
I asked.

" I did that. And I told him what I thought
myself, good and plain."

" And what had he to say for himself ? " I asked,
fully prepared to enjoy the story of Dick McGusty's
humiliation, and forgetting, I am afraid for the
moment, the frequent friendliness and good advice
I had received from him.

" He said : ' I guess we have all of us had to
learn in this country, Roddy. She'll learn.' "

That year there were only twenty-five acres of
summer-fallow to cultivate, and by hook or crook
Roddy McMahon turned them twice. But the
next year there was heavy work for the sulky plough,
and the Englishman who was working for me asked
me to come and prove for myself the utter impossi-

L

1 62 WHEAT AND WOMAN

bility of doing decent work with such an implement.
It was then that I sent my complaint to the Massey-
Harris office at Regina. They referred me to their
nearest agent at South Qu'Appelle, telling me that
he would put it in perfect order. It took a man and
team a full day to take it in. The agent told me
he knew the model which was brought out in such
and such a year and had proved a failure. He had
half a dozen of them on his hands, but had never
risked losing a customer over them. " It's no use
saying I can make it work all right when I can't,"
said he. " Best buy a new one ; there's a model
that's doing fine work in this neighbourhood."

By " The Waters of Marah " the prophecy :
" She'll learn," recurred in my brain, and also the
fact that I had thrown away sixty-five dollars on a
plough that had turned over twenty-five acres of
summer-fallow after much persuasion, and then
retired from active service. After a month's trial
I bought a John Deere single-furrow plough of a
neighbour, and was so well pleased with it that I
bought the gang model of the same make from the
agents of that Yankee firm at South Qu'Appelle.

IV

DAIRY-PRODUCE — FENCING — MILKING
—GARDENING— VICTORIA DAY

Roddy McMahon agreed to work for me for
a time at one dollar fifty a day and without
horses. It was a great relief, as I had already
bought two hundred bushels of oats at thirty
cents a bushel, and had also started to realize the
fundamental commercial law of remunerative farm-
ing, namely, that one must never buy anything in
the way of food for stock, and very little for household
need. Food for man and beast should be raised
on the farm, groceries and fresh meat should be
obtained in exchange for dairy produce, the great
point being to avoid spending money, which in
the nature of things is scarce and most valuable in
a country whose natural resources are so great,
yet to a certain extent locked up in the earth, and
only to be delivered to the liberty of exchange-
able value through the medium of capital and
labour.

The two cows made excellent contribution to
the revenue. I used all milk, cream, and butter
necessary in the house, and then took several
pounds of butter weekly to the Hudson Bay in
exchange for household necessities. In those days
they gave current price, or rather its value, without

163

1 64 WHEAT AND WOMAN

charging any sale commission ; now like the majority
of traders they get as much as they can and give as
little as they need. I made my butter with cream
scalded and turned Devonshire fashion, and seemed
to obtain more in proportion to my milk than my
neighbours ; but it involved considerable care
and work in scalding the milk, and the only dairy
I had at my disposal was the unlined earthen
cellar of the cottage. Often I bitterly regretted
that the money spent on the veranda had not been
invested in a small stone dairy with a cemented
underground compartment where one's produce
could have been secure from summer and winter
temperature alike, for even in those days there was
money to be made in dairy-farming in the North-
West.

The breaking went well. The five acres on the
west boundary were quickly turned, and this new
field I dedicated to the purpose of raising clean
seed. It was in settling the limit of this small
corner that the orthodox place of my western
boundary first invited discussion. At the time the
farm was bounded north, east, and west by unsettled
land, and I and all my neighbours made use of
each other's trails as a matter of course, so that there
was never the smallest difficulty in reaching the
winding, picturesque, untidy, and by no means
safe by-way known as the Touchwood Trail. But
the fundamental law that governs Western Canada's
most admirable plan of survey is that a road allow-
ance sixty-six yards wide shall be set aside every
mile north and south, and every two miles east and
west for the building up of the highway of the
country, which ensures egress to the national

FENCING 165

highway to every farmer of one hundred and sixty-
acres. But good roads in the urban district of
Saskatchewan are still very few and far between,
and not a few of the best throughout Canada are
due to the national enthusiasm for motoring.

My neighbour assured me that the heap of stones
supporting a lengthy but infirm pole marked the
far side of the road allowance, and not the north-
west corner of the farm ; but Roddy McMahon
contradicted him flatly, and also prophesied that
in any case the surrounding land would never be
settled, and the Touchwood Trail would never be
abandoned. He carried his point, and the limit of
the live acres across the road allowance. Within
five years I was hemmed in on every side, and had
literally to beg my way through a neighbour's
crops to obtain an exit. It seemed the more unjust
since taxes drawn from my half-section had con-
tributed to the development of the country for
over twenty years, and long before any of its
environing land had been claimed for culture —
but in 1 91 3 the road was graded.

This making up of the urban highway is one of
the most important and yet one of the most
neglected of the factors which count in the develop-
ment of Canada. From start to finish its con-
struction should be in the power of experts only,
and held high above the reach of the design of
political intention or the self-interest of individuals
which frequently hampers it.

The end of the discussion of the actual boundary
was that I resolved to fence the half-section on
every side. It was not indispensable, because the
forty-acre pasture was sufficient to protect the

i66 WHEAT AND WOMAN

cropland from my own stock ; and from May to
November herd law compels every one to keep
stock within bounds. In those days also one could
send cattle to graze on the lake-shore land in charge
of the local herd for a dollar a head, which included
their six months' run in good pasture, their collec-
tion and return. To-day the charge has increased
to a dollar a month. But through February, March,
and April bunches of vagabond horses and cattle
had called at the door of the cottage and tramped
round the veranda, in any hour of the twenty-four,
and helped themselves to the greater share of the
vanishing oat-straw stack. All this one might have
forgiven or forgotten but Dick and Nancy had gone
off with them on more than one occasion, and
were by no means eager to return even to the
loaves and fishes of an orthodox stable and generous
supply of oats ; and in consequence I made a two-
strand three-mile barbed-wire fence round the
farm when I could least afford it.

Fencing in Canada is usually done by half-breeds.
They are peculiarly alert and clever in any task
which brings one into direct touch with nature and
elementary conditions. I sent Hardwick out to the
bluffs to get pickets, and grew tired waiting for his
return with less than a score. It seemed so long
and endless a business that I gladly made a deal
with Tom Klein to cut and point the pickets and
to put up the fence.

The three miles of barbed wire cost about
one hundred and sixty dollars, including pickets and
Tom Klein's labour, but the cost now of a
two-strand fence is higher and works out as
follows :

FENCING 167

8 rolls wire . . $24.00

660 pickets . . 19.80

Labour , . . 20.00

63.80 per mile

It made a big hole in one's shrinking capital,
and when it was finished my neighbour consoled
me with his opinion that it was quite the worst of
the many bad fences he had seen in the country,
and that it wouldn't keep in one's own horses, not
to mention keeping out other people's cattle.
However, although in learning the detail and
method of fencing I became aware that the pickets
should have been driven fully ten inches deeper,
the corners strengthened, and the wire stretched
absolutely taut, it certainly served to keep in horses,
and where may the fence be found to keep out a
steer who will go down on his forelegs, get his
head neatly under the bottom strand, raise it on his
back to pull his body through, and finally rise on his
forelegs and squat on his haunches for his final roll
to the other side ? Also my own calves developed
sporting instincts, and leaped barbed wire as lightly
as a hunter leaps a hurdle, and frequently chose to
pasture on the wrong side of the fence.

Before the fence was an accomplished fact
Hardwick had passed into the service and tuition
of Guy Mazey. I don't think we should have parted
quite so soon, as his work was really good in places,
and I was getting accustomed to his noise. But
one afternoon I was bound for the Fort and the
Hudson Bay Store with seven pounds of butter to
trade for groceries. I had washed the dinner dishes,

1 68 WHEAT AND WOMAN

packed the butter, made my own toilette, and the
time limit for Hardwick's half-hour, for digestion,
had expired twice over. I called, but there was no
answer, no sign of a buggy. I went to the stable to
see if Nancy was harnessed, and tumbled over
Hardwick sleeping sweetly. It was a hot day and
a pardonable offence, but there had fallen from
his mouth a half-consumed cigarette, still alight,
within a yard of Nancy's bedding. I said all that
flashed in my mind at the moment, which is seldom
wise on any occasion. Hardwick made use of the
opportunity to inform me that certain men in the
neighbourhood were coming to him daily to beg
for his service, and that the lowest offer he had
received was fifteen dollars a month, and that as
others seemed to think so much better of his
qualifications than I did, he thought he had better
go at the end of the month.

I instantly agreed, and not altogether in the heat
of the moment. I knew that he was good enough
to be much better, and under no circumstances
would I have consented to bar the way to his advance.
Some days after, when we had agreed to forget the
word, and honour in deed the fact that I considered
smoking in stables a criminal offence utterly un-
worthy of a sportsman, he asked my advice as to
which of his offers he should select. I could have
cried : " Iscariot ! " at more than one name on
the list of his would-be employers, but I revenged
myself on them all by advising him to go over and
hire on with Guy Mazey. I told him he would
get there the lowest salary, the hardest work, the
biggest family, unending chores, an endless procession
of toil actually bridging dawn and darkness, and a

MILKING 169

really fine experience from one of the finest workers
in Canada. He took my advice, Guy Mazey hired
him, and I let him go at once. He remained there
three months, giving satisfaction and learning
much, and within quite a short time he went on to
his own land and did well. He was quite perturbed
about who would buck the wood and milk for me.
I didn't mind about the wood as I had learned to
do it myself, but I was in a dilemma about the
milking and not at all sure that Roddy McMahon
would help me over the difficulty, when I remem-
bered the occasion on which I had heard Hardwick
ask him to milk the hard cow.

" Milking, wood-bucking, water-hauling, and the
biggest part of stable-cleaning is chore-boy's work,"
he had answered. " I wouldn't do chore-boy's
work for forty dollars a month."

On the morning after Hardwick's departure he
stood in the doorway : " Guess you want me to
milk them cattle," he said, on the note of
accusation.

" I don't know who, if not," I replied. " You
know that I can't milk."

" Well, I guess I'll milk till a new chore-boy comes
along. But if a man needs to get through his ten
hours a day on the land he ain't got no time for
chores."

But on Saturday nights he always returned to
the Fort to the bosom of his family, and on Sunday
morning I attacked the business of milking. Hard-
wick had given me one lesson, but I was so thoroughly
helpless on that occasion that I thought it would be
wiser to wait and worry it out alone, and on that
Sunday morning I sat through two hours pulling

I70 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and pressing, and squeezing and giving vent to
my feelings. At the end of that time I had about
a quart of Molly's milk in the pail, and I hadn't
even looked at the hard cow. I got up for a moment
to ease my cramped limbs, and Molly, thoroughly
fed up from the prolonged ceremony, walked off
gaily, kicking over the pail in her exit !

As I turned into the cottage with rage and
rebellion in my heart, Hardwick minor came across
the wheat-field. " My brother asked me to come
over and milk for you," he said. " He couldn't get
away himself because of the chores at Guy's. He
said he knew you would be alone, and in difhculty
over the milk."

I told him the story of the morning.

" I'll go and catch her and finish her off now before
I milk the other one," he said, " and as it's late
they will be all right until to-morrow," he added
consolingly.

It is not a scrap of use to pretend because one can
record delightful bits of chivalry, now and then,
that as a rule my chore-boys did their duty. They
didn't and they don't. The newcomer is immediately
taught by the old soldier — in chore-boys — to make
as much as he can and do as little as he possibly can
for his money. But if I had much to forgive
I had also much to be grateful for, and undoubtedly
much was forgiven me.

Later on that Sabbath day there was a sound of
wheels, a well-filled democrat stopped at my gate,
and I recognized the Creegans.

It was the first time they had seen the farm and
they were awfully nice about everything. They
praised the lines of green wheat, the jolly view, the

MILKING 171

two new granaries, and everything within my green
sitting-room, but especially the oiled and polished
floor. Indeed I felt as though the mountain had at
last approached Mahomet when Mrs. Creegan asked
me if I would tell her by what process I obtained
such excellent result, and I think this was the only
occasion on which I have been asked for a hint
concerning any detail In housekeeping. Meantime
another member of the party who accompanied
them had been Introduced to me as Mr. Rosslter,
a fellow traveller of the Creegans, who had just
returned from a visit to England. He was in
search of a job ; he thought as manager of a
farm.

He had been In the merchant service, and with
one's usual habit of taking a great deal for granted,
I reminded him that a sailor, of course, was always
at home in any kind of work, and he acquiesced
without any token of the embarrassment of
modesty.

He told me that he had no actual knowledge of
farming or farm implements, but it would be simply
a matter of watching another do it, and he would
be quite all right.

" We thought perhaps you would be able to
offer Mr. Rosslter an opening," said Mrs. Creegan,
" and that If you liked his work, he and Mrs.
Rosslter would be so useful to you here."

" I am sorry," I answered. " But the Canadian
who is working the land for me suits me so well,
because he knows everything and I know nothing.
I want a chore-boy. But chores, of course, are
worse than tiresome : milking, stable-cleaning, wood-
bucking, water-carrying, and stoning the land on

172 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the breaking. And the salary, of course, is not
much. I only pay ten dollars,"

Before they left Mrs. Creegan confided to me
that she was more than disappointed that I had
not been able to offer him some kind of work :
" He has been with us since he came," she exclaimed,
" and we have neither work nor room for a third
man. I shouldn't recommend him to you only
that I really think he would be useful, he is quite a
good carpenter. And all sailors are handy men ! "

" I have a lot of painting and whitewashing to
get through indoors and out," I said. " I meant to
do it myself, but now that I have the chores on my
hands time seems to shrink. In any case I'll think
it over, and consider if it is possible to offer him a
little more money. But I had made up my mind
to learn to milk ; it would make one so independent
of chore-boys, and I doubt if I shall ever do it myself
as long as some one is round to do it for me."

Usually I spent my hours of idleness on the
shelving, sweet-scented bank of a sheltered slough,
dreaming of the things that I would do on the day
after to-morrow, or watching the sky or the flora
and fauna of the prairie. The ducks made a kind
of nursery of this particular slough ; they were most
fascinating, the parent birds were so fussy and the
long families so foolish — the art of living should be
learned from young ducks. And the gophers !
Crouched on their haunches with their dainty little
forepaws dropped in a most convincing attitude
of supplication, they seemed, like those shallow but
interesting Pharisees of old, to have walked off with
the star parts of virtue without even paying the
orthodox price of a sense of sin. But Fate is

GARDENING 173

presenting her bill to the gophers ; they do not
merely pilfer the grain, but in filling their sub-
terranean granaries with winter's keep they rob
crops by the acre. The Government is now in
hot pursuit, armed with a package of " kill- 'em-
quick " and the sharp sword of the righteous wrath
of the farmers. Yet the dying cry of the gopher is
not a pleasant sound to carry in one's heart, and one
always hopes that the earliest specimens of the
species did not make that attitude of prayer their
very own in vain.

But, alas, the altar, so truly worthy of the thank-
offering of sweet idleness, was a full half-mile
from the kitchen in which it was my daily task to
prepare the food of to-day, and the green sitting-
room in which it was my daily duty to take thought
for the food of to-morrow, and as one new chore
after another encroached on my hours of pleasure I
resolved to raise an altar to dolce far niente at my
door. Beautiful as were the flowers of the prairie,
in the vicinity of the cottage none had planted
flowers. It had something attractive in the way of
form, but the veranda and the colour of the turf
were marred by all sorts and conditions of weed.
So I said there should be eight flower-beds around
my accommodating veranda, but in the end I
threw in the corners and so there were four big ones,
and at north, south, east, and west the turf still
clung to the veranda, affording the convenience of
a comparatively clear approach, and also dividing
the really arduous work of digging into sprints.
Roddy McMahon had initiated me in the Canadian
method of planting potatoes, but there was no
digging attached to that or any form of his agri-

174 WHEAT AND WOMAN

cultural labour. He believed in implements, and
was most anxious to attack my flower-beds with the
plough. He ploughed, disced, and harrowed the
potato-patch, and then he made a very deep furrow
with the plough and I ran behind and dropped in
the potatoes ; the second time round we covered
one row and prepared the seed-bed for the next
and so on until the plot was seeded. Then the
surface was harrowed again, and my leader and guide
said that we had fixed the potatoes all right and
returned to the breaking, whilst I returned to
my spade. By the afternoon of May 23 I had
got through about a quarter of my task when I
went in to get supper for him and for Mabel Mazey,
who was spending her last afternoon with me,
her duties on the land having recommenced in
earnest. Being the eve of x^j first Victoria Day on
the prairie it is excusable that my sense of the
holiday question was undeveloped. I had made
an ignoble compact with 'the man that holidays
should be ignored until the dream of the break-
ing of fifty acres was an accomplished fact. I
served the meal on the veranda, and shared it
with him and my neighbour's daughter, who had so
often played the Good Samaritan in piloting me
through the weekly half-day of more violent
exertions upon which the order of my house
depended.

" You ain't comin' down to the picnic to-morrow !
My, but that's too bad ! " I heard the Good
Samaritan exclaim, as I turned the corner, with the
chief supper-dish of poached eggs and fried potatoes.

" No," he answered. " I didn't make out to take
no holiday before we was through with the breakin'.

VICTORIA DAY 175

Good Friday we sowed, and Arbour Day I never
reckon to count for much. A man may as well sow
oats for work as plant trees an' call it holiday. But
I guess Victoria Day is gettin' to be something pretty
good."

" Of course," I said. " You keep her birthday for
one of your holidays, don't you ? I remember
passing through Toronto last year on Victoria
Day."

" We don't set much store by kings and queens
in this country, but I guess that Queen Victoria
was a real good woman," observed the Good
Samaritan.

" So they tell," agreed the teamster. " And not a
bit stuck up on herself neither, for all she was the
first woman in the world, an' dollars enough to
buy out the whole outfit ! Victoria Day is gettin'
to be pretty middlin' good holiday all right ! If it
wasn't for the breakin' I guess I'd be going down to
the picnic myself."

" Well, I guess it ain't often you've missed a
holiday or a picnic neither. My, you bet there'll
be a crowd ! Dave and Danny've got up a horse-
racin' match — ten dollars aside. Twenty dollars
collected up to yesterday four o'clock for the kids'
sports ! And the Indians bringin' in their ponies
for the races this three days. They are all camped
out by the lake side."

" Is Danny going to run his sorrel mare 'gainst
Dave's pinto ? I guess my Charley horse could
knock 'em both out," said Roddy, with his heart
in his eyes, and eyes and heart many miles away
from my upturned acres.

*' You had better go," I suggested. " A holiday

176 WHEAT AND WOMAN

will do the horses good and I don't mind doing the
chores."

" Guess a day off won't do 'em any harm. I'll
hitch up and get right on down as soon as I've fed

oats."

" But ain't you going to the picnic ? " fairly
screamed the Good Samaritan.

I explained that I ought to be going to Mrs.
Millington's Victoria dance, and that I didn't
want Nancy to make the two journeys.

" Shame you should miss it, though ! It will
keep us guessin' to pack our kids in the buggy or
I'd ask you to go down with us. Why don't you
ride down horseback ? Is it because you've got
nothing to take ? We all take something ; cakes
or cream or butter or sandwiches. It's all put on
the table together, and you take what you like.
Mother could help you out with two jelly cakes,
I guess. Or take a pound of butter. My, but
your butter is all right ! "

It was a warm, sweet-scented, glowing, growing,
Victoria Day. There was no cooking. I measured
up oats all round, took a sun-bath on the veranda
with my morning tea, and dallied with the decision
of the dance. To keep the horses in all day was out
of the question. Yet if they had their honest
share in holiday joy which beckoned from the
forty-acre pasture, I should have to bring them in,
feed them, round up the two cows, milk them,
catch Nancy by hook or crook, harness her, get into
an evening gown, drive seven miles, in an open
buggy, to the hospitable house on the lake shore,
where for several hours, one would breath again the
atmosphere and charm of gaiety unflecked with

VICTORIA DAY 177

hint of honest toil ! Then the seven-mile drive
home, and the task, v^hile still embarrassed by the
skirts of diversion and by the shadows of the davi^n,
of divesting Nancy of her harness. Finally the
ordinary routine of the day's work after a night of
dancing. Everything was against the dance, but the
supreme consideration for the honour of Victoria
Day. If the Canadian wife of an Englishman could
rise to the occasion in the giving of a dance it was
clearly an Englishwoman's duty to be there — I
decided to go.

Delighted with the effects of my efforts with
dandy-brush and curry-comb, a mischievous dweller
in the air compelled me, during the second feed of
oats, to the disentanglement of the love-locks on
Dick's heels. I heard the sound of a blow, and can
just remember wondering who was hurt. It
seemed ages after that I picked myself up from the
far side of the stable door and crawled into the
house with a grinding ache under my left jaw.
It wasn't Dick. Dick was the most chivalrous as
well as the gamest brute that ever bent brave
shoulders to the plough or pulled a cutter across
Canadian snow. He had sniffed at Kitty's oats.
Kitty had promptly struck out at him and I had
caught the blow. Luckily her hoofs were unshod,
but it settled the question of the dance.

" I don't want to frighten you," said the sister
of the Good Samaritan, who had come over to
borrow my saddle, " but it was on Victoria Day that
little Jack Macandrew got a kick in the jaw just
like you. He took sick of lock-jaw, and died in the
hospital the very next holiday." r^f

The blessed sun went on smiling and healing.

M

lyS WHEAT AND WOMAN

There were voices on the trail before nine o'clock.
I was at my end of the veranda and remained there.
It happens that one's presence is not always welcome
on a holiday, but on that night Roddy McMahon
made a great point of coming my way, so I knew
that all was well.

" I brought along this feller. He was lookin' for
work. I guess he'll do all right. He knows he's
got to do the chores."

" Did you have a good time ? " I inquired. ..

" Pretty middlin' ! The Fort fellers ain't up
to much. They got scared over losin' their dollars
and the race was off. There was some good pony
racin' with the Indians, though. My, but I lost
a chance ! There was a breed down there with as
nice a little horse as I ever see. An' he sold him
for thirteen dollars ! Worth a hundred if he was
worth a cent ! "

*' Thirteen dollars ! He must have been mad."

" That was it. Mad-drunk, wasn't he, Pat ?
My missus guessed I ought to buy him for you,
but I hadn't got the dollars with me."

" But you don't suppose that I would buy a
valuable horse of a drunken man for half nothing ! "
I protested. And then knew I had been horribly
tactless, superior, and ungrateful.

" It's different with you, I know," I exclaimed in
contrition. " We don't see the thing in the same
light. Honesty is our one national decency. It has
eaten its way into our bones. We can't help it any
more than you can help your accent ; that is to say,
than zve can help our accent. To have bought
that horse would have been all right from your
point of view, but out of the question for an

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VICTORIA DAY 179

English person. You know what I mean, don't
you, Pat ? "

" I am an Oirishman, lady," said Pat, on the
solemn side of ambiguity. But I felt rather than
heard arrested mirth.

" Who bought it ? " I asked.

" I guess 'twas the little Englishman. I don't
mind his name. He came out last fall with his wife
and kids."

There was a tiny silence, followed by shrieks of
Irish and Canadian laughter, in which I only failed
to join because of my aching jaw. But the reason
of my silence was misconstrued.

*' I shouldn't have said, only you asked me straight
out," said the Canadian. " I guess there's good
and bad in all alike. 'Twill all come out in the
wash ! "

• • • •

From the granary came music. All the stars
drew near to listen :

Scatther his enemies,

Confound their knavish thricks

" I guess we had enough of that comin' along the
trail, Pat. Quit singin' them King songs. 'Tis
Queen Victoria's Day."

V

AN IRISHMAN'S FORTUNE-
STONING THE LAND

On the morning after Victoria Day Roddy
McMahon introduced me formally to the Irishman,
whom he addressed as " Pat."

" I guess he must be pretty badly broke," he
explained. " He come up to me just as I was
leaving the picnic and asked me to ask Jack Leader
if he could sleep in his barn. I said, ' I guess you
must want a job all right.' ' I do that,' said he.
' I can put you straight on to the trail,' said I, ' if
you some along back with me right now.' I told
him I guessed you would be willing to give five
dollars for the first week certain, and a better offer
if he was worth it at the end. I guess he's a good
man all right on the land, and come July I must
be getting some hay up for the winter. Maybe he
would stay on here then and do your chores and
get up the hay. I'll come along and run the binder
through harvest, and he can stook."

I cheerfully assented to the proposal, and the
two went off together.

At the end of the first day Roddy McMahon
came in to supper first, and in most cheerful spirits.

" Pat's worked fine," he said. " I can't think
why a chap like that should be taking a job at twenty

1 80

AN IRISHMAN'S FORTUNE i8i

dollars a month. I guess I'll go down and fetch
my team, and to-morrow he can get on to the
summer-fallow with my team and Dick, and I'll
keep to the breaking with the three big horses.
I guess he's too good a man to waste his time doing
chores and getting out stones."

I was deeply interested in the increase of the land
under cultivation, and eagerly assented to the sugges-
tion that he should go down with Nancy and bring
back the team at once. " I'll do the chores I
promised. 'Twas a piece of luck finding him ! " he
said.

I liked the Irishman well. As a rule when I have
more than one man working for me I don't share
their meal, partly because I couldn't help noticing
that they ate much more when I wasn't there, and
also in those days I often used to dash in from my
outdoor chores at 10.30, light the fire, peel the
potatoes, and make the pudding, and serve it on the
first stroke of 12, and by the last stroke I was thankful
to flop into the armchair in my own room with the
solace of an " individual " teapot and bread and
butter.

But Pat was witty and most willing as a raconteur,
and on one or two occasions — to my cost as it proved
— I shared meals. On Wednesday and Thursday
the work simply raced ahead, you could positively
see the new fields forming from the distance of my
bedroom window, and my flower-beds expanded too.
On the Tuesday night Pat insisted on taking the
spade out of my hand so that I might learn to dig
like an Irishman, the principal point being to dis-
perse the sod with a hard bang from the back of the
spade after turning it. It was delightful to see

1 82 WHEAT AND WOMAN

him dig, and he seemed mightily pleased to hear it
said, although I begged him to take his ease and
look at the papers on the veranda or elsewhere,
after his long day on the land.

But on Thursday down came the rains of June,
a day or so in advance, and in sheets, and with the
rain came ten tiny pigs in the open. Both men
brought in their teams, which I knew meant that
the rain would last. Roddy McMahon knows every
move in the game of shelter and will find it any-
where— under a horse, or a bush, or a wagon, but
he only comes in when it's all up.

" I guess I'd best go down to the Fort and buck
wood for my missus," he said. " Pat here can do
all the chores."

Pat rescued the small pigs and induced the mother
to follow him into a warm corner of the middle
stable. He showed me how to mix her food, and
then he put on his sheepskin coat and returned to
the digging of the flower-beds in spite of the
drenching rain.

" Begorra, and isn't it just the rain itself that will
be getting it into the order of a fine seed-bed," he
explained.

Steadily it fell for thirty-six hours, and I don't
know whether it was due to the long moist interval
between the acts, but when work was resumed on
Saturday things didn't seem to move so easily.

" Pat and me best change teams this afternoon,"
said Roddy McMahon. " Pat, he don't Hke Dick.
The work is a bit hard on Dick, and he won't go for
everybody, I guess."

I felt a little disappointed. There was something
so awfully engaging about Dick. Only a few days

AN IRISHMAN'S FORTUNE 183

before I had driven him in Roddy McMahon's
buggy, which is usually a death-trap, across the
prairie towards the Fort and missed my way.
Suddenly a line snapped, and I remembered that
Dick was supposed to be only four years old — as a
matter of fact he was only three. We were nearing
the valley, and the noisy rattle of the old buggy
plus the sense of liberty that comes with the sudden
snapping of a line was quite enough to go to the
head of an older horse than the long-legged baby,
who just kept to his swift, strong pace between the
shafts as though nothing had happened, until I
coaxed him to obey my summons to halt. Many
men murmured against Dick's ways on the land,
but he was too young to have worked with the
three heavy horses on the implements, and I think
he gradually grew to connect men with the work he
hated and women with his oats and the work he
liked. He was always obedient and kind and helpful,
and seemed to know when the others were trying
one's patience, and did his best to make things easy
all round.

On Tuesday night Roddy McMahon came in
with an air of regret.

" I guess Pat's off to-night, or leastways to-
morrow," he said. " He says he owes you an extra
day 'count of the rain."

" But why off ? " I exclaimed. " You say his
work is excellent, and of course I will pay him its
proper value. Say a dollar a day until you go, and
then thirty dollars a month until harvest, and through
harvest — harvest money."

^ He went out with the information. But Pat was
unyielding — his heart was on the trail. I gave him

1 84 WHEAT AND WOMAN

a cheque for the week's work in the morning, but
remembering that he was very poor and would
probably walk to South Qu'Appelle, I collected all
my small change and borrowed a little more from
Roddy McMahon to make up a dollar in cash, in
case he wanted to buy anything on the road, and I
asked Roddy McMahon to take it out for me.

" Best stay another week anyway, Pat," I heard
him say. " It will be another five dollars for you,
and I guess it will be more. She's that stuck on her
flower garden."

" It's not you nor her that should be advisin' me
about five dollars, Roddy. I'm thinking I've more
in the pocket of my old coat than you've ever seen,
and more than she'll make on her farm for many a
day."

Roddy McMahon returned in the most subdued
frame of mind I have ever seen him in. " I knew
there was something wrong," said he, " when a chap
like that feeds on a five-cent bag of biscuit and looks
to put in the night in an old barn with the horses.
He dragged out his roll of dollar bills right there.
* Roddy,' he says, * I ain't much good at 'rithmetic,
just see if it counts out all right. Should be a
thousand dollars.' And every dollar of it was in the
roll all right."

" But why did he come and work ? " I asked.
" After all, he has worked splendidly."

" Yes ; and I guess he would have stuck to the
job if it wasn't for something you said."

" Something I said ! What can you mean ? " I
asked.

" You mind that day you was having dinner with
us and telling us about Old Country ways you said,

STONING THE LAND 185

* Get hold of a good English workman and you
can't beat him the world through ' ? Well, when
we got outside, Pats says, ' So it's an Englishman
will be the first workman, in her way of thinking.
Well, there may be room here for a Canadian
Roddy,' he says, ' but after that an Irishman will be
after taking the trail.' "

• • • •

I had mastered milking and become quite in-
dependent about wood and water, but I had found
out in some indefinable sort of way that Roddy
McMahon hated working alone. It was true that
every evening after work was over he went off to
his uncle or his cousin, whose farms were within
easy reach ; but all the men who came along voted
him good company, and men who are good com-
pany seldom care about being much alone. I
remembered the Creegans' visitor, and went down
the next day to offer him the job of second man, as
I was particularly anxious not to risk any hindrance
to the work on the land. I could see the work was
going ahead, and I didn't want to part with the man,
who seemed always a bit of the land.

" I was recommended a man who has just come
out, the other day," I told him at dinner-time.
" I'll go down this afternoon and see if he is still
disengaged. Next year's seed-bed, I see, is the
first consideration, and you shan't have the smallest
interruption if I can avoid it."

" Breaking land and leaving the stones ain't
right," he agreed. " I tried getting off the plough
and turning up the biggest fellows myself. But it
ain't any sort of job, an' makes a man mad. Pat
he ought to have stopped on. Hardwick got out a

1 86 WHEAT AND WOMAN

few, but he wasn't much good. You couldn't tell
him anything. He had too much courage."

" Too much ! " I exclaimed. " But one can't
have."

" Well, he always got his answer back, and was
looking to teach me to work the land all over again,
I guess."

" Ah ! We call it cheek," I explained.

" That's it. He was well fixed with cheek all
right. I'll milk the cattle for you. Guess it may
be late before you get back," he said magnani-
mously.

I offered Mr. Rossiter twenty dollars for a month's
work. I told him he must milk, and that I should
probably want him to do house painting and a little
carpentering, but that his principal duty would be
the monotonous work of stoning the land in front
of the breaking plough ; but that Roddy McMahon
was good-natured, and knew the land and its
implements from A to Z, and, I felt sure, would
teach him anything he wanted to learn.

Afterwards I heard that he had said, " If I am
expected to do carpenter's work, why of course I
shall want carpenter's money." I think he was not
at all anxious to move away from the hospitality of
the Creegans, and that it was a very special effort
on the part of Mrs. Creegan that induced the move.
However, I carried him off in triumph, and to me
he was courtesy itself, so that I didn't even resent
his rather blatant note of self-confidence.

" I can do anything when I make up my mind,"
he said. " Don't trouble about that. I am not
one of those who talk a great deal about what they
can do. But I have no doubt when I have been a

STONING THE LAND 187

day or so on the place you will see that others can
do just as well as this man McMahon."

I saw I was up against a strong sense of the com-
parative, and inquired about his wife and child.

When we got home I found that Roddy McMahon
had finished work, cooked his own supper, and gone
on to his cousin's for the night.

I prepared supper and took it with the new man,
thinking he might be lonely, as undoubtedly he was.

" Ah, how different it all is ! " he said with a deep
sigh after he had thrown a most unflattering glance
around the kitchen. " At home you should have
seen my house. My dining-room — a carpet, arm-
chairs, sideboard and all."

In the morning milking was a slow process.
Roddy McMahon, always kind to newcomers,
helped him out with the hard cow, and then took
him off with the team and pick, crowbar, and stone-
boat to learn the meaning of stoning the land.

At the end of the morning he returned looking
so very tired that I said that I would go along and
help in the afternoon, and he enjoyed himself
thoroughly when I spent a full ten minutes getting
together all the little stones that don't matter.
Roddy McMahon got off the plough and took me
to a big fellow in the neighbourhood of the plough,
and showed me how to test its depth and raise it
if possible by inserting the crowbar as a lever, and
when it was too tightly set to move in this manner
to free it from the imprisoning earth with the
pick ; and all without a word, barring the usual
phrase of encouragement at the end, " I guess you'll
get them out all right — but it ain't no work for a
woman."

1 88 WHEAT AND WOMAN

I stayed out until it was time to go along and
prepare supper. It is hard work stoning the land,
and when the sun is on one's back almost exhausting ;
but if you don't dissipate the best of your strength
trying to do the work of ten minutes in one, and
take it in a firm and easy way, it is not altogether
disagreeable, since one works in particularly close
contact with the soil, and at least one can go home
from the half-day's work with the consolation that
the seed-bed is free from a few of the monsters
which occupy a great deal of valuable space, obstruct
and destroy implements. The insect population
seeks the shelter of a stone as the natural centre for
industrial development, and verily every " big
fellow " that is rolled off in triumph means disaster
for a miniature city on its site.

At the end of the second morning the new man
was obviously done.

" Rest this afternoon," I advised. " I'll go on
with the stoning, and when you are sufficiently fit
I shall be glad if you will go on with my work on
the flower-beds instead."

My garden bed had not, however, advanced when
I got in.

" Well, how did you get on ? " he inquired.

" Oh, I got out quite a few," I said. " Do you
feel well enough to milk ? It's Sunday to-morrow,
take a long rest, and perhaps by Monday you will be
fit again."

But on Monday he complained that the land
work was beyond his strength. He was down-
hearted, disappointed, homesick. And one never
really knows whether people who appear to have
an extraordinary opinion of their own power are

STONING THE LAND 189

not putting it on just to hide the weakness of which

they are really conscious.

He wanted to go back to the Creegans, but I

suggested he should put in the month doing odd

and light jobs such as whitewashing and painting,

and give himself a chance of growing physically

stronger be^forehg abandoned the idea of life on the
land. .^ -r-^.^^,,, .. ,. _ „ ._.^

He started on the roof. I always helped him on
to the veranda, and about every fifteen minutes he
used to call me to pass my opinion on his work
with all the manner of a portrait-painter. When we
were not yet through one-half the roof the paint
gave out, so I said I would send for some more, and
he could go on with the work in the house whilst
we were waiting for it. He painted the kitchen
ceiling, and did it well, but spoilt my pleasure in it
entirely by insisting on mixing that wretched
pigment which produces putty colour instead of
white. He also distempered two of the bedrooms.

" What do you think of it all, Mac ? " he demanded
of Roddy McMahon v/ith the pride which at least
made no pretence to ape humility.

" I guess it takes a mortal long time," was the
withering answer. " If my work took me so long
time as yours, guess we should be seeding when the
wheat was ready for the binder ! "

'* I guess that feller ain't feeling good," he told
me after. " He was offering Bert Mazey a dollar a
week to come and milk the hard cow. His sort is
best back in the Old Country."

It was early one morning that he flatly refused to
continue distempering, but the climax came on a
day when I drove off to South Qu'Appelle directly

190 WHEAT AND WOMAN

I had served dinner, and returned somewhat late in
the evening.

My brother, who had come down for a day or
so, met me at the gate. " I can't stand talking
about another chap's work," he said, " but that new
man is no good, and you ought to get rid of him.
He grumbles about everything, and the moment
you had driven off to-day he turned into his room
and said he had finished work for the day, and he
advised Roddy and me to do the same."

" I am sorry you won't work," I said to him the
next morning. " You know I have tried everything
that could possibly make things easier for you ; but
I can't have anyone round who refuses to work
except through illness. It isn't fair to the others."

" Pay me my month's wages and I will go at once,"
was the answer.

" Your month's wages f " I inquired.

" Certainly. You engaged me for a month, and
you will pay me for a month, or the law shall make
you."

" When the law makes me, most certainly I will
pay," I answered. " Until then you have worked
so many days and so many half-days. A month's
pay in Canada is due to twenty-six working days.
My brother will give you a lift to the Fort, and here
is your cheque."

" How am I to know that it is any good f "

" By inquiring at the bank. I never keep dollar
bills in the house.'*

Other insults, led by the well-worn invitation to
search his boxes, followed. This particular man had
received nothing but consideration from me. I was
unutterably sorry for him and honestly tried to do

STONING THE LAND 191

everything I could to cheer him along. He might
have been a particularly useful member of society
had he chosen. As it vi^as he deliberately added
helplessness to hopelessness, and he was the only
person with whom I had a stormy passage or with
whom I agreed to differ in Canada and in whose
conduct I failed to discover my share of the blame.
And one's share in the blame is always just a little
consoling.

"You're best quit on him," said Roddy McMahon.
" I never see anyone yet to do so little and to want
so much praise for it. 'Twas a fright ! "

VI

THE RAINS OF JUNE— HAYING-
HARVEST

On the Canadian prairie the harvest depends on
the " rains of June." In 1906 these " rains of
June " fell in floods, and one saw the grain literally
leap up from the earth to meet them. Mabel
Mazey hardly ever came over just then, but her
sister Pearl kept the weekly tryst with my household
chores, which, however, only occasionally included
the washing. From her I learned that Mabel was
busy on the farm with disc and harrows, and even
with the breaking plough, and every week used to
hear how much work had been done on Guy Mazey's
land.

At my neighbour's advice I left a bridle-path
through the wheat-field. " It won't hurt for a
time," he said ; " indeed, the wheat just there will
be the thicker for the packing."

Pearl arrived one sun-warmed afternoon that had
come in the trail of days of rain. " My, the rain
has brought on the crops fine ! " she said. " But
I guess you are going to have rare trouble with the
weed — it's a fright ! Stinkweed and mustard and
shepherd's purse. I've never seen any so bad ;
though they do say you can't see the wheat for

stink- weed on the trail to the Head."

192

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 193

" Do show me which is which," said I, " and I'll
go out and weed."

" My ! but you could never weed out that great
field. And there's wild oats, too, I guess. Father
says there always has been wild oats on this farm.
I guess you had better wait and let the grain knock
the weed out this year, and next year you'll be
summer-fallowing the field. But if you should do
any weeding — why, take out a grain-bag and take
the weed right off the land and burn it. It's
no use to leave it lying round in heaps. Father says
stinkweed comes up to seed every month."

I did a little weeding, not much, as it seemed to
make no impression. As a direct result of that
afternoon's conversation I blocked my end of the
bridle-path through the field, under the impression
that if I was to be disgraced by weed, the eye should
not be allowed to see what the tongue should not
carry.

I worked hard through June at the stoning, and
started to harrow, at first with only three sections
drawn by Dick and Nancy. From the beginning
I was perfectly happy working on the land, only I
wished it was some one else's turn to get those
tiresome three meals a day. I had conquered milk-
ing after a fashion. That is to say, I could extract
every drop of milk even from the hard cow, but it
still took a very long time ; forty minutes for two
cows, and Mabel Mazey could milk Molly dry in
five. I never overcame the difficulty of milking
with the left hand, and to this day get at least
seven-eighths of the milk with the right hand only,
to the horror of some of the ardent disciples of
method who have sojourned at my farm from^time

N

194 WHEAT AND WOMAN

to time. But even the worst kicker submits to my
method, so it has its points.

It was early in June that a letter came from my
eldest brother to say that he was coming out. His
intention was to start a brewery. I hoped that he
would find the water of Fort Qu'Appelle good
enough for anything. He intended, however, to
put in a month on the land with me, and he wished
to spend that month precisely as he would spend it
were he one of a thousand immigrants tailed off to
work for any farmer. I was delighted. He had
justly earned the reputation of doing things
thoroughly. Great interests had often been placed
in his care with a sigh of relief, and the more dilficult
the task the greater pleasure he had always seemed
to take in ploughing his way through. He was due
to arrive about the third week in June, and when
day after day passed and there was no news of him
I got most horribly anxious. Besides, the haying
season was approaching, and at last in despair I
engaged Harvey minor for a month, so that he
might help Roddy McMahon put up a few loads
in case my brother had wandered up another trail,
although I began to feel quite certain he was dead.

I walked over to my neighbour one Sunday after-
noon and confided to him that I was most wretched
because all through the night a spider had ticked
the death-watch on my bedroom wall. He led me
into three corners of his shack, and I heard the same
funeral march in each ; and then he advised me to
spend a couple of hours weeding the mustard in my
wheat-field by way of a nerve tonic.

On the next day Roddy McMahon's father came
to see me, and he always came to stay. He had the

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 195

pleasantest way with him, and must have poached
on the preserve of the Irishman's blarney-stone.
He had the deplorable misfortune to lose both legs
in a fifty-below-zero night out on the prairie. I
always admired him for the pluck and resource
with which he endured the blight of such a mis-
fortune, but I think even still more because he was
such a fine shot. He sat up in his old buggy, which
had a very vagabond air even beside my own, and
with the lines gripped between his stumps he
brought down duck or rabbit and everything that
flew or ran as though by magic. He often talked
to me about the days of his youth in Scotland, and
his aunts, who must have been gentle-mannered,
kindly women of the well-to-do order, and he was
always regretting he should never see the old land
again.

" Oh, but you will some day," I told him. " If
you want a thing so very badly, you can always get
it ; only of course you have always to pay, and
sometimes to wait." In my heart I didn't feel
quite so sure about it, because I knew his land was
mortgaged right up to the margin of its loan valua-
tion, and only that day he had been entreating me
to find some one who would give him nine hundred
dollars for it. But I don't think he had ever been
a very careful farmer, and his entire quarter section
was dirtier than the dirtiest bit of my bad field.

" But if I sold it for five thousand dollars I should
never go back home again," he said with a sigh.
" I was a fine brae lad when I left. I would never
have my aunties see me without my legs."

I was in bitter trouble that day about the loss
of a calf, and it was harder to bear because I felt

196 WHEAT AND WOMAN

it was in a measure due to my carelessness. I had
tethered my two small beasts in the garden as usual,
and immediately after breakfast had gone out picking
stones. I had to scramble to prepare dinner in time,
and when I went out after the men were served
I found the younger calf lying down and obviously
sick. Roddy McMahon said it was sunstroke, and
acting on his advice, I bathed it frequently with
cold well water ; but all in vain, at sunset the
little thing died. It sent a gloomier shadow over
my deep anxiety about my brother, until my
neighbour came along with a wire which told me
he had arrived safelv but had been detained in
Montreal.

On the evening he came we walked all round the
farm. The mosquitoes were out in furious swarms,
but he said he did not mind a bite or so. He was
full of admiration for the oats, which were really
very beautiful : strong and healthy and thick enough
to conceal all weed. He thought, too, that the
wheat-fields looked beautiful, but not as thick as in
England, where, however, I believe grain is never
sown on stubble. He raised my spirits almost to
the point of rapture by saying the farm surpassed
his expectations, and that in England such a place
might be worth three hundred pounds a year. Nearly
all the land in my immediate neighbourhood was un-
cultivated, and one of the first visits we paid was to
one of the model farms of the further neighbourhood,
owned by Mr. Thomas Grigg, who came up from
Eastern Canada with less than two hundred pounds
capital, but had bought and sold pigs and horses and
steers and dairy produce all the time, so that he made
enough money to cultivate his grain land really well.

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 197

His wheat-fields were two hundred acres and even
more in extent and as even as a lawn, and his house
was the pleasantest villa that I can think of on the
land in Canada, with a cement cellar and bathroom
and every convenience under the sun. His barn and
stables, too, were great, and the little block of build-
ings was set on the side of a big, beautiful gully
which on the other side stretched away over miles
and miles of wheat land.

Mr. Grigg had then been farming in the North-
West for over twelve years, and he had very little
to learn when he came up from the east. I admired
his farm more than I can say, and so did my brother,
who occasionally made of it a channel through
which to talk at me of the relation of admirable
method to excellent result.

I thought I let my brother down very gently.
I had taken quite easily to the habit of rising with
the sun, sometimes even at dawn, and I took him
tea and that kind of thing before I even mentioned
the time. When my brother Lai had brought me
tea in the morning I had felt that I had no claim
to a single growl throughout the day. The fact is,
new-comers make rather a mistake charging every-
thing as though it were easy, then they hate it
when they find it isn't. For instance, my newly
arrived brother said, *' I have never milked, but of
course I can milk. Give me the pail."

" The hard cow is rather a test," I warned him.

" Well, if you can milk her, I suppose / can," he
said with dignity. How he grew to loathe and
detest that cow, and the curses he wasted on her !
But the worst of it was I didn't know much about
the laws that govern the generation of stock, and

198 WHEAT AND WOMAN

as he had once spent two months studying with a
veterinary surgeon I took it for granted he knew all
there was to know. He solemnly assured me she
was not going to have a calf, that she was as old as
the farm itself, and he most strongly advised me to
get rid of her. In the bitter end I traded with
Roddy McMahon for a four-year-old heifer which
drank its own milk. As her calf was supposed to be
coming shortly, I didn't find this out for a long
time, because as a matter of fact the calf failed to
arrive until nearly a year after, and just a month
before the hard cow, who had passed into the
possession of Danny McLeay, produced a heifer,
and another and another as the seasons passed by.
Five years later I wanted to buy her back, for she
gave the richest milk I have ever seen in Canada,
but he asked me forty-five dollars without the calf,
and I had only paid my predecessor forty-five
dollars for her including the calf.

Just about that time my brother Lai arrived,
bringing with him a sheaf of oats in bloom and four
feet high, grown on the ten acres of his homestead
which he had broken during my residence the year
before. He came to borrow the mower and rake
for a few days, and it was arranged that my elder
brother should go to Lipton with the wagon at the
end of the fourth day from the departure of the
mower and rake, and bring them back.

Remembering how the trails had bothered me
when I first knew the prairie, I volunteered to pilot
him on Nancy. My habit was dripping and dry
again long before we reached Lipton, but by the
time we had bidden Lai good-bye and turned on
the homestead route a July edition of the rains of

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 199

June had set in, and when we reached Troy Hill
it was a miniature Niagara, and I saw that the safe
conveyance of the rake hitched on to the mower
hitched on to the wagon was going to be a problem
sufficient to tax the ingenuity and experience of
Roddy McMahon himself.

At the hip of the hill we decided to take off the
rake and push it back into the wide wayside.
Relieved of the tail of the outfit. Tommy and Jim
persevered gamely until they came to the neck of
the hill, which, however, really defied footing, and
there was nothing for it but to get rid of the mower
and pull the team and wagon along in sprints.
Sheets of rain poured down on us, darkness was
falling, thunder rumbled all around and in and out
of the hills. My poor brother ! And poor Canada !
But the next day he was so nice about the adven-
ture and so sorry about his expressive expressions,
which I really hadn't noticed, and in any case should
have considered he was quite justified in using. But
when he said, " I wish I had your patience," I was
so flattered that I really had to tell the truth.
" You wouldn't," I said, " if it had been a wind
storm. I rather like rain."

To the hay harvest he was quite a godsend.
Never since the days of his sojourn have I seen such
marvellous loads. The few Canadians who saw them
stared in amazement, and indeed on one occasion
there was nearly a tragedy. With Hardwick minor's
help he had already pitched and packed two loads
on my advice. I had not seen the size of the loads,
and Roddy McMahon had assured me that three
in the morning and two in the afternoon was a fair
average. They had gone out for the third. Twelve

200

WHEAT AND WOMAN

o'clock came, half-past, one o'clock, and no sign of
hayrack or men. I climbed on to the stable roof,
but could see no glimpse of them, and as my brother
was born on the keynote of punctuality, I made up
my mind that they had met with an accident, and
set out on the side-trail to seek their remains.
I met them a short distance up the trail. My
brother wore his best expression of resignation.
Hardwick minor was a little flushed.

" Where have you been ? " I shouted. " I felt
sure you were dead, or something of the kind.
What a ripping load ! "

" Load 1 " said my brother bitterly. " It was a
respectable load when we turned to come home.
I cleared out that big slough near John McLeay's
pasture fence, and, fool that I was, I trusted the
lines to Hardwick for a moment as we pulled out
of the slough, and the horses wouldn't have made
a mistake had he left them alone, but as it was just
as we came up the incline the whole outfit pitched
over."

I couldn't help laughing, and Hardwick joined in
the mirth.

" It's all very well for you who weren't there,"
said my brother, " or for Hardwick, who saw what
was coming, and fell clear on the right side ; but it
is no joke being buried under a ton and a half of
hay within an inch of the pitch-fork."

" Beastly experience," I acknowledged. " Come
and dine." It takes an Englishman to put up a ton
and a half load of hay on the Canadian prairie, and
if a Canadian had been looking on he would
have qualified his Englishman with the usual
colouring.

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 201

" It was such a splendid load ! " he murmured.
" And of course the steak is dried to a chip."

" It was," I acknowledged. " But I remembered
how you hated it, so I gave it to Pax, and put ready-
some more. By the time you have unhitched and
watered the horses the meal will be just ready."

Throughout that pleasant summer I rode much.

I didn't appreciate men of method then as I do
now, but it was delightful to have one's horse
saddled for one again, and the saddle and bridle and
iron and things all polished and shining and as they
should be. My brother wouldn't take Nancy, but
Charles Edward paid us a short visit in exchange for
Dick, and although he certainly was not an inspiring
mount, he saw much of the country in the beautiful
Qu'Appelle valley. We usually rode between 6 and

II P.M., and one Sunday night we lost our way
hopelessly, and it was certainly Charles Edward who
led us back in safety to the gate of the new fence.

Acting on my neighbour's advice, I engaged a
man who was breaking seventy-five acres for him
to break twenty-five for me. He was to break,
disc, and harrow, in short put in shape for crop,
twenty-five acres, and the charge was to be five
dollars an acre. He found his team of four horses
in fodder, and I agreed to board and lodge him ;
and I found this by far the cheapest way of breaking
up the land. The name of the breaker was Si
Booth, and in common with most of the other
Canadians with whom I seemed to come in contact
he was distinctly more individual than typical. He
was very tall, lean, with a sunburnt, well-formed
face and those far-seeing blue eyes that always
seem on the lookout beyond the horizon. He hated

202 WHEAT AND WOMAN

that his work should be ruled by the clock, or even
the sun. " If I work by the piece when I'm in the
mind and horses feeling good I can break three
acres a day easy. And when I feel like quitting
work for a day or so, why, I'm free to quit."

He had a perfect way of handling young horses,
and reduced all the " frights " in the neighbourhood
to a lamb-like docility and to do him cheerful ser-
vice, either as one of his team of four on the land or
even in single harness. He had a delicate digestion,
which I never failed to bear in mind. He was
always friendly and kind, and my brother and I used
to love watching him at his work. Everything went
with such tranquil ease as he walked untiringly
behind his team of four horses, two out of which
were usually unmanageable bronchos with whom no
other man could afford to have dealings.

I reckoned that the addition of this twenty-five
acres would bring my 1906 seed-bed up to seventy-
five acres breaking, in addition to thirty acres
summer fallow and the arms of the eighty-acre
field, which would be seeded with oats after spring
ploughing. In addition there were the five acres
for the seed garden, which I stoned heroically.
I knew I couldn't afford the extra breaking, as it
was already clear to me that my stubble crops from
the eighty acres wasn't going to produce anything
near the result of the first year's crop gathered from
a summer-fallowed seed-bed. But I couldn't afford
anything, so I kept my mind's eye front and posi-
tively refused to turn to the right or the left where
the comforters of Job are always in ambush.

My brother was very busy cultivating the thirty
acres of summer fallow, which he assured me was

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 203

still in very rough condition, and that in his opinion
Roddy McMahon got over the ground too quickly.
However that may have been, it is certain that he
got through more work in that first season than in
any succeeding year ; but my own idea is that the
weed of two years' seeding choked the land, and
hindered the miserable plough. Here and there it
just scratched the undulating land in the dips,
leaving the seed-bed shallow in places, and a lot
of extra work for disc and harrows. In constant
accompaniment to some excellent work, my brother
grumbled. He confounded the disc, the harrows,
the horses, the mosquitoes all in a breath, but to the
furthest of all possible limits under the sun he
confounded my cooking.

I didn't condescend to stand up for myself about
the cooking, but I said that Roddy McMahon, who
at least knew his business, did awfully good work on
the implements, and considered the horses the best
team in the neighbourhood.

" Mac could plough with an old nail and disc
with a hairpin," he said scathingly. " Not an
implement, not a solitary thing, on the whole place
is complete. Where there should be well-fitting
bolts and nuts I find bits of wire, hairpins, bits of
string ! Anything does for Mac."

" Well then he has resource, you must allow," I
claimed.

" Resource ! There is such a thing as too much
resource. Sometimes I think I almost dislike
resourceful people. It is all very well to be able
to fall back on an alternative, but your resourceful
people always seem to select the alternative. I don't
profess to know anything about implements, and I

204 WHEAT AND WOMAN

can tell you it is not easy to learn on Roddy's
implements. And you do things yourself in exactly
the same way. I take the trouble to get up at dawn,
or go out after work, so that there may be birds at
least for the table. And instead of taking the trouble
to pick them you skin them. Yesterday I shot a
couple of canvas-backs that might have almost
resigned one to life on the prairie, and you skinned
them and tossed them into a stew. A positive sin !
I shot a snipe this afternoon and I picked it for your
supper. If you eat it yourself, you may understand
the difference."

I wondered if my brother would fall back on
alternatives or if he would continue to pick the
feathers off small birds if he had to prepare food for
the three meals for three men day by day, week in
week out, not to mention washing up ; but I wasn't
altogether indignant.

After all he was married, and so many wives make
of the dining-table an altar of propitiation that it
isn't to be wondered at that quite a number of
husbands and others seek their best moments of life
in the hour and at the place of meat-offering.
Besides, although I never felt quite so inferior as
in glancing at my reflection in his correct mind, I
managed to score sometimes ; seldom in the satis-
factory form of word, it is true, since life among
*' the lords of creation " was teaching me the force
of discretion, but occasionally in deed.

The memory of one Sunday morning sends a glow
of victory through me to this day. It was over the
water question. The water question in nineteen
cases out of twenty is a little difficult on the prairie.
Broken in on a homestead where I lived through

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 205

three months of appalling discomfort on the top-
note of health without any other than slough water,
I had developed an unconcern as to colour, flavour,
and convenience, which seemed to arouse nothing
I less than exasperation in the mind of others in any
special time of stress. My well is quite the best
in my neighbourhood from the greatest number of
points of consideration. If it sometimes is over-
full, it is never empty. All through the winter,
when many of my neighbours were melting ice and
snow to supply their stock, I had enough and to
spare of pure and sparkling quality. But before the
spring flood dries out of the slough the well is a
little difficult of access. The usual method of
bringing the water to the house is by means of a
barrel set on a stone-boat drawn by a horse to a
point as near the kitchen entrance as possible. I
used Dick and Nancy on these excursions, and never
had the smallest difficulty with Dick. Occasionally
Nancy wandered off into the slough with the
barrel whilst I was occupied with the pail and
the well, and now and then she objected to the
weight of the load, but she could always be coaxed
home.

On the occasion of which I write the colour and
quality of the water were excellent, but the well
still a little difficult of access. The water had only
just dried out of the slough ; the pathway across
was beset with pitfalls for the uninitiated, and even
under the best of conditions it is wisdom to haul
the water barrel in patience and good temper.

Suddenly through the pleasant Sabbath atmo-
sphere shot the fierce breath of wrath, reproach,
regret, recrimination, curses ! My brother came

2o6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

round the little group of poplars that guards the
open-air pigsty alone.

" What's wrong ? " I inquired.

" That obstinate devil won't budge an inch
although the barrel is only three parts filled ! Look
at the state of my clothes ! On this place one has
literally to go to Hades for water. Of all the "

" Oh, hush ! /'// come," I said indiscreetly in
the stress of the moment.

" And you may come ! But I'll lay you a five-
pound note to this miserable farm, which I should
think you would be glad to get rid of at any price,
that you will not get that obstinate beggar to haul
in the barrel."

Dick and I knew and liked each other better than
anyone in those early days on the farm. It was
during the first temporary absence of the big team
that I learned through him how to clean stables,
groom horses, feed and water them. I knew that
if I couldn't compel him to bring the barrel to
its destination, at least I could induce him to
try, and in two minutes back we were with our
splashing load. The same kind of tragedy occa-
sionally occurred with Nancy, who was an angel in
the saddle, but only submitted to harness, and now
and then didn't fail to let me as well as others know
how very far she was born above it. On one occa-
sion, before I understood her, we were half way up
Troy Hill when she suddenly started to travel back-
wards, and then stopped. I felt that only physical
pain or weakness could cause such behaviour, and
at once got out and led her to the top. To this
day she frequently stops at the foot of Troy Hill
and turns her head with the unmistakable request

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 207

to me to get out and walk, but an appeal to her
vanity in the form of a compliment always saves
the situation. My brother wouldn't condescend to
cajolery, and occasionally there was a scene. He
grew a little bitter, and I am afraid so did I. Nancy
was one with the beautiful bits of the prairie.

August came : one walked in shimmering, friendly,
gossiping green oats up to one's eyes. The green of
the stately and more self-possessed wheat was turning
to pale gold at the tips, and in places deepening to
the hue of amber, so that one might have dreamed
it full harvest time but for the wind which waved it
here and there to prove to the watching, waiting
farmer that the surface of gold was still flecked and
lined with lingering green. A hayrick weighing
about fifteen tons, taller than is usual on the
prairie, but not particularly orthodox in form and
altogether unthatched, graced the stackyard. It is
claimed in this land of heavy work and scarce labour
that the winter veil of snow provides all protection
necessary for hay ; but much is wasted through
rot caused by autumn and spring rain, and now
that the dawn of the day of commercial farming is
really come to the prairie, and all farm produce is
consequently on the ascending scale of value, it is
probable that much more labour will be expended
on the cultivation of grass and protection of hay.

We saw much of our neighbour John McLeay,
whom we all liked well, and who told us plain,
unvarnished tales of the rebellion ; of the good
money that was made by the land settlers through
the hire of their wagons and teams to bring in the
stores and ammunition for General Middleton's
forces. He showed us the repeater with which

2o8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

they were armed, and he might well have presented
it with a tall tale of heroism, as it was of the kind
that made one feel ready to meet all Europe ; but
he frankly acknowledged that he and most of the
neighbours lived in fear of the Indians, and that at
the first word of their possible presence owner and
repeater sought refuge under the bed. For my
effort in agriculture he had the kindliest encourage-
ment and most soothing flattery. He wouldn't see
any wild oats nor smell any smut in my fields or
granaries after that first occasion, and always had
his finest word of praise ready for the pigs and the
cows and the horses. When I needed advice and
a little reassurance I always walked along the pleasant
side-trail and talked to him in the shack which he
built and which he has lived in for over twenty
years, and which is quite the most primitive prairie
home in the Qu'Appelle neighbourhood. Up John
McLeay's trail went also both my brothers when
feeling fed up with the ache of toil and the pain of
mosquito bites and the stress of things in general
on the prairie ; and our kind host had always a
soothing word for our ills and a pleasant yarn of the
days when he took three months to come out from
Scotland in a sailing-boat, or the days he cleared
his homestead down east, and the crops they gathered
from just an acre or so to hoard as gold ; and then
the splendid day, already more than twenty years
old, when he came West to select his homestead
and choose the loveliest half-section in the Qu'-
Appelle valley because a prudent adviser begged
him to make wood and water his first consideration ;
and how he had selected homesteads here and there
for one and another member of his family until it

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 209

seemed quite a McLeay settlement. Once or twice
I had tea in the shack — tea without milk, because
although he had about half a dozen milch cows he
never bothered to milk — and bacon of his own
curing, and bannock of his own baking. And for
me the cups and plate went through the infrequent
ceremony of regeneration by water. For hours
have I listened to his yarns, and never was an unkind
word spoken of friend or neighbour or stranger. He
is first favourite with the Jevator men, and always
imagines he gets a pull with them in grade and
price, but on that point I have my doubts.

So on the second Sunday in August John McLeay
and Lorna, his faithful dog, came along the trail to
inspect the crops. As usual his judgment was
flattering.

" It's the finest stubble crop in these parts, I
guess, and you'll be getting a great harvest. But
say now, dinna be in a hurry to cut. You should
be a good eight days behind me with the binder,
and I'll not be cutting till next Thursday."

He took his drink of milk, which is the only form
of hospitality which we can persuade him to accept,
and when he had rested awhile and the sun was
going west he got on to the trail again.

" So-long," said he as we parted at the gate.
" I guess I'll go and have a look at your breaking,
and get home by Danny's. Maybe I'll be seeing
you again before the binder gets to work."

On August 17 Roddy McMahon took the binder
into the wheat, and my brother and I did our best
to keep up with it as stookers. None but those
who have followed the binder day after day can
realize the monotony of this labour of stooking.

o

210 WHEAT AND WOMAN

I did a fair share between the preparation of meals,
but, heartily as I disliked the form of indoor labour,
it broke the monotony ; to my brother it must
have been almost unbearably irksome. I stooked on
the left wing of the field, and after supper I worked
by moonlight to endeavour to keep up with my fair
share, and in the cool reviving air of evening the
entire character of the work changed as though
some monotonous measure of duty had suddenly
softened to a soothing chant. The desire to growl
ceased to pursue me. All one's irritating angles
and corners seemed to round off in some soft and
silent process of the early night. But the stooking
of that eighty-acre field of stubble crop, and the
sight of a wide and totally unexpected area of wild
oats, brought my brother's dismal experience of a
prairie farm to its final summing-up.

" If we had plenty of capital and could buy a
decent place with a decent house, and a decent barn,
and a decent bathroom like the Griggs', and could
afford to get out trained English labourers to work
it properly as we do in England, there might be
something in it," he said, " but as it is, Lai is quite
right, it is a convict's life. I am afraid you have
taken on something you will never see out. And I
am very sorry for you," he added with due solemnity.
" I determined to see you through the harvest, and
I am afraid it will be far below your expectation
owing to these wild oats."

" You must allow that the feed oats are splendid,
and the hay is good, and at least I have learned to
live economically and to do without things," I said
in the energy of self-defence. " And if I don't see
it out, at least it shall never see me out. Next year

JUNE RAINS— HAYING— HARVEST 211

I shall have all that newly broken virgin seed-bed,
and although expenses will be a long way outside
the value of the crop, I can draw on my other
enterprise to meet the difference, and that at any
rate is a commercial success."

" You want eight good horses and two good men
to get this place into anything approaching successful
commercial enterprise," he insisted. " However, I
must move on east to see what prospect Canada
holds out for a brewery. It should be good con-
sidering one pays a shilling here for a bottle of
stout that is sold for twopence in Ireland."

On September 12 he left, and was obviously not
sorry to go, although kind if a little inclined to be
angry about what he no doubt considered to be my
obstinate determination to pull through. If he
worked as a martyr all the time, at least his work
was stamped with that quality of excellence with
which genuine martyrs sign their work ; and the
fact is I wasn't in the mood to be generous to men
just then. Always at the back of my mind had been
the belief that they had a genuine title to the
splendid term which has come to be a byword,
" lord of creation." To make life possible one
drank at the fountain of the thought of men, not
women ; but through the shoulder-to-shoulder rub
of everyday working-life in Canada it grew clear
that although more giants had issued from the male
division, within the crowd men have hoisted their
pretension to superior power not on the rock of
superior work, but on the sands of superior wages —
the misappropriation and unfair division of money.
Had my brother been a little more sympathetic
about the fact that I had to wash towels which were

212 WHEAT AND WOMAN

called upon to perform the united service of sponge,
loofah, and occasionally of soap and water for the
man on the land, I might have been a little more
sympathetic about his having to use the towels I
washed. As it was, he sat on the edge of the
veranda with a face like a boot and washed out his
own towels in Hudson's soap, used strictly according
to the directions on the wrapper ; and I heartily
wished that it had been the fate of a great many
more men to wash towels all their lives. But I
admired him immensely in many ways and envied
his order and method, as I did every one who came
to the farm armed with these fine weapons. The
truth is that, like Nancy, and, according to Browning,
even the good Lord, both of us were badly in need
of a little praise. When he had gone I looked about
me, and in view of the many stooks in the wheat-
field which bore the wild oat crest, I knew the
result of the year must be a financial failure, so I
tossed my hope and faith to the next. I saw that
the ten and four acre arms of the big field were
clean and free from wild oats, and I determined
to use them for oats in the following year, so
that I might reserve every acre of the land of
the new seed-bed for wheat. Roddy McMahon
agreed.

" It would be a good act all right," he said. " I
guess we must try and get in a threshing outfit good
and early, so that you can get threshed out, and we
can plough up that much easy this fall. There ain't
nothing doing between now and threshing, so I
guess I'll quit. You can do the chores all right and
don't need to be paying a man. Alan Redcliffe
he'll be threshing out John McLeay and Danny and

JUNE RAINS— HAYING—HARVEST 213

Dick Ryan and that bunch, so I guess it will be
wise to get him to come on in here same time. I'll
take a team for you on the round, and they'll all
come back and help you out."

" Do," I assented. " Make the usual arrange-
ments and tell me what they are, only be sure and
let me know a day or so before when the threshers
are coming."

" That's all right. I guess I shall bring back the
team most nights. Old horses want good stable
this time of year, the nights begin to get cold."

He brought me a load of wood before he went,
and that afternoon I was again alone, but this time
in tune with things in general and absolutely
independent. I could hitch up a team, haul water,
buck wood, harrow. I could milk the hard cow
with patience and Molly with ease. My cooking
chore was at an end ; I need no more wrestle with
the washing of towels. I was most easefully and
blessedly and thankfully alone. A soft sweet rain
came sweeping up from the West. I sat in a deck-
chair on the veranda and watched it in sweetest
idleness as it dripped on to my flower beds, in which
nasturtiums, mignonette, and love-in-a-mist already
flourished amazingly. And there came to me with
the silence and the softly falling rain of that restful
afternoon a deep and abiding love of solitude which,
like the consoling breath of the soil, cleanses the
channels of one's understanding to sun-clear vision,
discovering all the arrogance and unkindness in
criticism, revealing the illusion of difliculty, proving
one's anger and wrath and righteous indignation and
clamour for justice occasionally funny and always
unworth while. Like rain falling softly on the

214 WHEAT AND WOMAN

parched bed of thirsty flowers, solitude revives one's
energy of life ; in its atmosphere there comes the
bird of peace with its reassurance of the hourly
vanishing waters of the flood of things temporal, the
tendril of truth gathered from the tree of knowledge,
which is the eternal centre of the homeland of the
soul.

i

VII

THE HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING

It is recorded in my diary that within the first
week of my release from the service of men many
weak spots revealed themselves in the armour
which the daily round and common task forged
upon me in my first season on the farm. On the
first day I met with bad luck. I was due to fetch
barley chop from Guy Mazey for the well-being of
my pigs, but Nancy burst her halter and made off,
and refused to be caught until after sunset. It is
registered that I failed to milk that night. On
the following day comes the entry, " Stayed in
bed until 7.30, being deeply interested in 'The
Marriage of William Ashe,' but remembered my
duties suddenly and got out on the stroke of remem-
brance." On the next, " An awful morning,
intensely hot. Severe headache, and took at least
two hours to find the cows, who had got right away.
Lost my temper and blasphemed badly and loudly
and bitterly. I haven't the common sense to lay
hold of method to prevent these happenings, nor
the self-control to bear the natural result." Later
in the week, " Rose with the sun. Went out and
did my chores one by one thinking of the thing
I was doing all the time, or at least remembering
to try to. Kept my temper when Molly kicked

215

2i6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

over the pail of milk which had taken me forty-
five minutes to extract from the hard cow."

From the twenty-first of September through
three whole days the rains descended, and as usual
miniature floods came down the chimney, and in
through the cellar shaft, to which one of my newly
made flower beds had discovered an entrance for all
things that should not be found in cellars — flies
and gophers, and rain and dust, and on one occasion
I found there a family of lizards. Guy Mazey
passed through one day on his way to the Fort,
and he prophesied that when the rain cleared the
wind would blow the stooks " good and dry," but
he added that the rain was most penetrating, and
that he feared it would both discolour and soften
the grain, and maybe lower it a grade. It is
marvellous how its tiny leaf envelope protects the
wheat-kernel ; but it is in the season when the
grain doesn't need protection, when it is caught
dead ripe by the reaper-binder under the top-note
of the harvest sun, and stands for twenty-one days
at ease in stook, sun-drying through the day, and
hardening to the kiss of the early frost by night,
and finally passes through the threshing process into
a sound granary without having once known the
contact of moisture since harvest, that Canadian
prairie provinces send into the world's market
wheat for which the world can find no match, red-
gold and hard as bone.

Tempest followed the heavy rain. The wind-
storm is the one mood to which Nature is subject
on the prairie in which I found it hard to find a
part. The very power of thought as well as action
seems to desert one, and even when you remain

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 217

in the house it is physically exhausting, and nerve
racking ; and the sense of rest and relief when the
wind storm has passed over is inexpressible. How-
ever, on this occasion my sense of relief was short-
lived, since I perceived that in the force of its
passing the greater number of the stooks had come
to grief. Some had blown hither and thither at the
sport of the wind, others had merely collapsed, but
I knew in my heart that I ought to restook every one,
and to begin that very hour.

But one does not tumble into the chore-boy's and
every other duty on a farm without paying the
penalty in physical fatigue. In those early days
even milking tired me, but cleaning out stables
reduced me to something too limp even to grumble ;
and in stooking but a small share of the harvest
sheaves I had become fully aware that this is one
of the strenuous tasks in the life of an agriculturist, a
task requiring sharp attack and sustained resolution
to pull it through. A day of blazing sunshine followed
rain and wind. I procrastinated for two days.

" I am afraid your wheat may be injured if you
don't get your stooks together," my neighbour
warned me.

That day, the next, and the next I stooked and bit-
terly I reproached myself for the delay when here
and there I found a bonny yellow sheaf with some
of its members already in tendril on the rain-
softened bosom of Mother Earth, discoloured and at
first sight almost mildewed. But, like most ills
that befall from without, the appearance of injury
was greater than the actual damage, although
stooks should never be permitted to lie on the
ground but should be replaced on the earliest

2i8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

possible occasion when storm has dispersed th^m,
since in spite of the special care provided in its
natural envelope the grain will soften even if it
doesn't discolour or burst into growth. For two
days I restooked rather grimly, passing from row
to row without daring to look more than twice
a day at all the rows behind. I finished at four
o'clock on Saturday, and went into the cottage and
flopped upon my bed and remained there some
hours over Sabbath sunrise, so the cows must have
had another night off.

Nature grew tired of her vagaries, and the avenging
brightness of the fall set in. The Qu'Appelle
valley lay like an irregular trail of blazing gold
beneath the Indian Summer sun, and on either side
the grey-green, sun-tanned tint of the prairie
seemed to gaze with a little weariness, and just a
little wistfully at colour. Colour that had but to
come and lay in laziest loveliness by the lake-side
watching the sky to draw throbs of worship from
those who passed through the valley. Colour
that had done nothing, whilst the prairie-land
which had thought, and energised, and brought
forth richest offerings for man, and had grown
weary sharing the burden of toil seemed to become
a little more faded, and was almost disregarded —
except in its special gift patches of amber stooks —
because Beauty chose to save her supreme gift for
the hills and coulees of the lake-side. Colour,
" the soul's bridegroom," was in the happy valley
drawing all that was glad, and sad, and best worth
having from the soul of man ! And in the Indian
Summer even the monster wind goes off for a holiday,
or goes to sleep, so there is none to whisper to the

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 219

prairie that the winter snowfall will soon cover
the features and face, and almost change the form
of the Great ]\Iother ; that after all hill and valley,
lake and coulee are just bits of her, and that its own
gay, glad, new day of spring is always coming.

Nancy and I spent delightful hours along the
more silent and unfrequented paths of the prairie
which stretch and wind along the hills east and west
of Fort Qu'Appelle, and between Le Bret and
Katepwa and on the western side to that paradise
of sportsmen known as the Head of the Lakes.
Returning from such an excursion one evening
my neighbour tossed me into a fever of anxiety
by hinting that in all probability I shouldn't get
threshed out at all, as Guy Mazey was threshing his
crop and then moving south to a bigger job ; and
that no outfit would come out of its way to do my
solitary wheat-field, especially when they saw the
wild oats in the corner !

But on the Sabbath morrow came John McLeay
to say all was well. The threshing outfit of one
Alan Redcliffe, a farmer who owned many acres
on the wheat plain of Wideawake, had promised to
come to our corner directly he had threshed out
his own crop. The outfit was to move into Danny
McLeay's on the evening of the next day, from him
it would go to John McLeay, then to me if I were
willing. If !

No words can make clear how much I owed to
John and Danny McLeay in my first seasons.
It is true they were relations of Roddy McMahon,
who had a quiet way of going after them in every
untoward or impossible occasion connected with the
well-being of the beasts or the moving of granaries.

220 WHEAT AND WOMAN

In late years in London sometimes I have felt
inclined to add a note to the jeer that greets the
threadbare argument that women must not be
allowed the privilege of a voice in the selection of
their lawmakers lest chivalry, which has held for
so long such a comfortable armchair in the hall of
tradition, might be heard of no more. But although
to whatever degree generosity may enhance the
quality of justice, it must never be allowed to take
its most sacred place, I can't say chivalry hasn't
any real existence when I remember how often
those three men came across the prairie to do me
service in time of need ; when I think of their
simple courtesy and kindness, their word of sympathy
and advice when things went wrong. To deny that
the advantage of careful breeding, and training,
and culture is each in its measure a factor in the
creation of the completely gentle man is ridiculous,
the thoroughbred is as unmistakable in the human
as in the equine order of beings ; but the Canadian
gentleman begins indeed on the prairie, and the
development of manner is as interesting and full
of promise as the development of character and the
material prosperity of this great nation which is so
sure of a leading place in the history of the world.

In the morning came Roddy McMahon to claim
my sheaf-rack and team for Danny McLeay's use,
and towards evening I heard the hum of arrival.
I rode over to see the wheat ; it was of a most
beautiful sun-kissed colour, and clean and hard,
but not quite so hard as it had been in the previous
year. Wheat in stook cannot stand such rain as
fell in that September. Heriot Hylton-Cave had
assured me that Danny McLeay must be contem-

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 221

plating matrimony as he was sowing lawn grass in
front of the shack, and he added that after the
ceremony had taken place the shack would hardly
continue to be free quarters for bachelors, nor
would ducks be any longer cooked in butter.
Roddy McMahon's sister was cooking for the
threshers, because Danny McLeay didn't marry
until the next year, when the shack grew to a four-
roomed cottage and became the cleanest, neatest, and
most comfortable prairie home I saw in Canada.

" It's good wheat all right," he said, " as we
leaned over the top-bar of his roofless granary,
but I should have been away ahead if I had stacked
before the rain came. But it's going to be a better
yield than I looked for ! "

The outfit came on to me a few days later, just
twenty-four hours before I expected them. At
three-thirty Nancy was objecting to carry sausages,
roasting meat, and the crockery which in those
days the Hudson Bay Company, under the chief
factorship of Mr. Archibald Macdonald, made a
sportsmanlike practice, worthy of the business
enterprise and tradition of the " Adventurers of
England," of lending to their customers for the
festival of threshing without charge, and at six-
thirty I had to feed fifteen hungry men.

" My ! and no woman to help you. But I
would have come myself only that I have been away
from home helping John and Danny these three
days," said Roddy McMahon's sister, who some-
times came with her three boys to pay me a
visit.

" It's all right," I said, " Miss Ryan has promised
to come. Hazel said Mrs. Ryan would have come

222 WHEAT AND WOMAN

herself only she had to go down to the Fort to
attend the Woman's Aid Meeting."

Hazel, who was one of the brightest, kindest
children I remember in Canada, had offered to
stop herself. But I always envy Canadians the
power of getting through their household duties as
easily as one puts on one's clothes. If I hadn't
learned to achieve mine with glory, at least I could
get through without shame — in silence. But if
conversation was expected of me there was no end
to contretemps ; baking-powder went into the
gravy instead of flour, salt was in the place where
sugar should have been, and everything in need of
the temporary process of the oven was completely
forgotten until the perfume of its ashes told the
tale ; and the teapot could never be found.

Miss Ryan came in before the dishwashing hour,
but she had come from assisting some bachelors
through their threshing, and was obviously suffering
from severe headache caused by overwork. I
dispatched her to my room for rest and sleep,
having served the meal of beefsteak and potatoes,
scones and stewed apples v^thout mishap. Utterly
weary and worn out my guest slept until morning.
I had told Roddy McMahon to tell the men on the
outfit that they could use the two remaining bed-
rooms as they had no caboose and sleeping in
granaries is cold and uncomfortable when once
frost has set in ; but I hadn't bargained for a
guest in my own room. However, the training
in my brother's homesteader's shack and its atten-
dant tent has often made difficult matters easier
to deal with, and I spent the night on my bedroom
floor covered with a travelling-rug and an evening

O

OS

o

I— «

03

h
CD

U

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 223

coat, and a dressing-case for a pillow. It says
something for prairie chores as well as prairie air
that I did sleep, to wake with the first shadow of
dawn, and I served my fifteen guests with porridge,
sausages, and fried potato, scones, and treacle on
the stroke of 6 a.m.

My kind " aide," however, was no better ; I
thought she was on the verge of illness, and insisted
on her going home before noon. Through two
days I roasted joints, and occasionally dropped
them, fried beef-steak and bacon, peeled potatoes,
made scones and puddings, served my guests and
washed up without daring to pause for a moment.
The men of the outfit were wonderfully pleasant
and considerate as they always are, and Roddy
McMahon milked, hauled water, bucked wood,
made the tea and poured it out, and proved that
his power of resource did not begin and end on the
land.

The harvest was not encouraging, although dis-
tributed in three granaries it looked a great deal
more than it proved itself eventually at the elevators.
I paid for the threshing of one thousand two hundred
bushels, but it yielded only seven hundred and
eighty bushels at the elevators, where all but the
first four loads was heavily docked in grade and
in weight for smut and wild oats — and, of course,
my seed grain. Over and above the seed grain I
used was forty bushels which I had cleaned and did
not need. I sold this at South Qu'Appelle in August
as No. I Northern for a dollar a bushel without
dockage, precisely the same wheat as the bulk
which had just passed as No. 2 Northern with, I
should think, the heaviest dockage within the

224 WHEAT AND WOMAN

experience of the elevator men of South Qu'Appelle.
I determined to sell no more wheat at the local
elevator, though there are times when this is
practically unavoidable, but I always contend
that in justice to the farmer, who is the chief
corner-stone in the foundation of the prosperity
of the country, in every town marked by an ele-
vator, Government weights and an expert grader
appointed by the Government should stand sentinel
by its side. In his first hand-to-hand struggle
with the land the farmer of little or no capital has
often far less to weary and dishearten him than
when he arrives at the stage where his dealings
with banker and trader set in until he passes through
their difficult way to the place of prosperity where
he is no longer at the mercy of either.

However, when the threshers departed I hadn't
any premonition that the wheat crop would yield
me just five hundred and thirty-three dollars
fifteen cents and the seed for 1907. I was in the
centre of granaries no longer empty, huge-straw
piles were here and there covering the stable-roof
and lending an appearance of prosperity, and con-
tributing vastly to the shelter and comfort of the
stock during the winter. The oat granary, too, was
replenished to the joy of Ricky, and about one
thousand five hundred of the worst of the wild-
oat sheaves were stored on the log-stable for pig-
feed during the winter. The pigs throve won-
derfully well on it, and it also provided excellent
litter. When the outfit had moved on I felt quite
at my ease. The boundary fence kept my stock
within bounds and the two cows, the two yearling
steers, and the calf were free to glean. I harrowed

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 225

the seed-beds of 1907 for a few hours every day
with Nancy and Dick supporting big Kitty on either
side, Tommy and Jim having gone on with Roddy
McMahon to complete the fulfilment of my
threshing obligation to my neighbours.

Among the men on the threshing gang there was
one to whom my attention had been especially
drawn. He was obviously a newcomer and my
fellow countryman. It was about three o'clock
of the last afternoon when he came into the cottage.
The waterman's part is a very cold although not
strenuous one. I asked him if he wouldn't go and
warm up at the kitchen stove.

" Didn't the fireman ask you to keep my dinner
hot ? " he inquired anxiously.

" Dinner hot ? " I repeated, with a glance at the
clock. " But didn't you come in with the others ? "
" The boss told me to go along and get the tank
filled just as they were coming in, so that there
might be no risk of a wait. I had some trouble in
getting it, and the fireman said he wouldn't
forget to tell you."

The semi-cold remains of the worn-down joint
offered little consolation, and Mabel Mazey could
not return for at least an hour from the Fort
with the beefsteak which she had promised to
bring me for supper. In deep contrition I turned
out of my special store three eggs, the remains of a
pot of anchovy paste, a cherished pot of strawberry
jam and an apple turnover.

The boy was ever so grateful and said that the
apple turnover was the nicest thing he had eaten
in Canada, and told me of his home, his plans, and
his experiences since arrival.

p

226 WHEAT AND WOMAN

A few days later Roddy McMahon came back
to consider hauling and fall-ploughing.

" You mind that Englishman," he said, " him
that was on the tank ? "

" Yes. What of him ? " I asked.

" He's going to quit Redcliffe."

" Quit ! But he hoped to be kept on for the
hauling ? " I said, not without concern.

"Well, he's quitting all right, I guess. Alan
Redcliffe's only keeping on two. Jack thought
Redcliffe might have given him more money.
He was just a greenhorn when he came out. They
come over here and hire on for ten or fifteen
dollars a month, and when they find other fellows
who've been out here a long time getting good
money they kick. I said to him, ' Ain't no use
kicking. Jack, and threshing wellnigh through.
Keep quiet and stay on comfortable through the
winter, and you'll get good money I guess next year
all right. A fellow don't work for Alan Redcliffe
through a work season without learning something.'
But I guess he couldn't keep quiet like, and
maybe he'll suit you for chore-boy."

" But he is almost a man, certainly not a boy,"
I objected. " And after six months on a farm
like that, he should be earning a great deal more than
I can afford to pay."

" I guess you've no call to pay him much. Offer
him fifteen dollars. He can give me a hand hauling the
wheat out. We shall soon get it out two loads a day,
and then maybe he can do that bit of ploughing."

" I'll hire him for hading," I said, " but I'd
rather you did the ploughing. He has only been
harrowing for Mr. Redcliffe, and you know the

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 227

plough is not easy for a new hand. I'll offer him
a dollar a day and his dinner. Then if I like him,
I'll offer him to stay whilst I am away."

Jack Douglas eagerly accepted the job, and my first
four loads of cleanest grain scored No. i Northern
and fetched seventy-seven cents per bushel, but
was sharply docked in weight for wild oats. At the
end of the second day Roddy McMahon asked
me to let him off the hauling job, and gave such
excellent reasons for the request that I couldn't
refuse. The four loads settled the threshing
expenses and the balance of the wages due to my
helper. I owed no money to the trading people,
only a very tall note to the Union Bank which
included all such payments, with the exception
of the hardware store bill, which at that time
included binder twine as well as general repairs.
My land payment was not due until January i,
1907, and I had long foreseen it would have to come
out from England. Full of thought and anxiety
for the coming season, which I felt sure must
bring down the scale of event to the credit of my
side, I refused to worry about dollars, and just
in time, since Jack Douglas returned from South
Qu'Appelle that night with the news that the
price of wheat had fallen locally, owing to a hopeless
blockade at the elevator, and the next day he
ploughed the garden as a preliminary canter, before
attacking the important work of the four and ten-
acre arms of the big field.

No sooner had my new man attacked the plough
than I understood the wisdom of Roddy McMahon's
advice to pay only fifteen dollars a month. Jack
Douglas got well on to his work, and stuck to it

228 WHEAT AND WOMAN

grimly in spite of the unfriendliness of the weather
and severity of the wind. But he neither understood
the irnplement nor had he any practice in ploughing.
He took the greater part of two days to plough,
disc, and harrow three-quarters of an acre of garden,
and ten days to plough ten acres of land. But I
liked him. He was quiet and obliging and trust-
worthy, and I felt sure that beyond all, he was really
fond of beasts. He had walked the horses home
most carefully after disposing of his load, no matter
how forbidding the weather, and he always tucked
them up most snugly at night, sparing neither time
nor trouble over plenty of hay in the manger and
ample bedding. It seemed a real pleasure to him
to make them comfortable. He rebuilt the manger
and put in a window. It is true he won my assent
to pulling the heavy but expensive hayrack to pieces
to provide the lumber, but at the time we had
already entered into an arrangement by which he
undertook to remain for his board and the sum of
fifty dollars through the winter, and the seeding
time, and possibly through the next season up to
harvest, for twenty-five dollars a month ; so that
when he assured me that in the spring I could get
the lumber and he could then replace what he was
borrowing from the hayrack, I assented at once
and I thought I was particularly fortunate to have
come across him. I drew water and bucked wood
no more. I remember one day I was paying a
call in Springbrook and had most carelessly left
Nancy untied at the gate. When I came out to
get into the buggy I found that she had already
left, and, in consequence, I had to walk home four
miles. Half-way across the wheat-field I met

i

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 229

Jack Douglas coming to look for my remains in great
distress. Nancy had arrived quite safely, but the
empty buggy had aroused his anxiety. Nothing
can ever cancel my debt to Roddy McMahon for
having bestowed upon me the gift of independence
through his own hatred of chores, but I was not the
less grateful for the attention and consideration of
the British newcomer.

When ploughing was over, I started to look for
winter fuel. On the adjoining section which at
that time was virgin prairie, and the property of
the C.P.R., there was any amount of green poplar,
but very little dry wood, but my neighbour, Richard
Ryan, was a first-rate fuel man and he most kindly
suggested that Jack Douglas should work with him
in the bluffs.

Meantime I started out myself with Dick and the
stone-boat to clean my favourite bluff in the
pasture of many loads of young and very dry poplar,
which had been killed through the passing of
prairie fires, and which had, beyond all other fuel,
the power of producing immediate and intense heat.
Provided with this, one can prepare breakfast in
fifteen minutes, and on a forty below zero morning
the kitchen will be glowingly hot in ten.

Two gloriously happy days I spent in the heart
of this bluff dragging out contributions to the
various piles which Dick hauled home on the stone-
boat. He was absolutely happy, nosing round for the
choice scraps of pasture outside the bluff, whilst I
worked within, and no other horse could have taken
home the load quite so cleanly, or so cleverly have
avoided the snares which beset his path.

But after noon had passed on the second day

230 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the wind which had blown bleak and chill in the
face of a brilliant sun, fell softly and abruptly
almost as though it had turned back in sudden fear ;
a sombre veil dropped between earth and the golden
sun, the little snow-birds started to chant their
haunting note of requiem, delicate snowflakes fell
here and there, heralds of the thin white sheet
of the first snowstorm which came sweeping out
of the north. When snow is coming to the prairie,
there precedes it that strange and indefinable
melancholy hush that is felt at sea when the fog
swoops down. The winter pall drops softly with
tenderness and with beauty upon the face of the
great mother, yet sadly, and with relentless
intention to divide. The end of the working
year is come, so very soon the kindly generous,
consoling earth that is still at hand, awake to the
touch of her children, will be far away in stone-like
sleep. Dicky's bright bay coat, and whinny of
triumph and greeting to the other horses, as we
sighted them bringing home their load, were the
only cheerful notes to break the complete and
saddest silence. It was in removing my glove to
fasten the barbed wire that I discovered the loss
of a cherished treasure in a strange familiar stone
which had dropped from its place in a marquise
ring that I had worn from my schooldays. On a
background of soft green stone, sensitive to all
change in the weather, had been carved with perfect
art the slender, exquisite form and delicate head of
a woman. Somehow time and association had
given her a place in the consolation which is so
often hurled as a threat from the pulpit, that " God
sees all." Anything would have seemed eventful

HARVEST OF MY FIRST SEEDING 231

and significant that afternoon, but a scrap of one's
cherished life seemed to have vanished with her,
completing the sense of abandonment which the
coming of the snow always brings about one. I had
an almost overpowering impulse to break through
my armour of philosophy, and go back and seek the
thing that I cared about. But the snow had
already obliterated the marks of our passing ;
the row of guardian poplars by the bluff seemed to
stand with arms uplifted to a vanished heaven.
In the intense silence, in the atmosphere of pro-
found sadness which has its sacred place in the heart
of the solitude of separation, winter swept into
possession of the prairie.

PART III
WINTER

" Tet in spite of all disquietudes

• • • • •

In spite of doubt, despondency, and death

though lacking knowledge alway, lacking faith

Sometimes, and hope ; zvith no sure trust in aught

Except a kind of impetus within,

Whose sole credentials were that trust itself ;

Yet, in despite of much, in lack of more.

Life has been beautiful to me . . ."

OF FUEL AND FEAR— THE END OF
THE YEAR

In winter my cottage could not be described as
cosy, although now and then, when men have been
in residence, I have sometimes had to fly from the
Scylla of a burning fiery furnace within, to the
Charybdis of the temperature outside, no matter
to what degree below zero it may have chosen to fall.
Jack Douglas curled up at the first breath of
winter, but many newcomers curl and uncurl.
Within a few hours of its first appearance, the snow
lay very deep in the bluffs, and only the slenderest
instalment of fuel had been felled and brought in.
My heart sank as I observed my helper stepping
gingerly out to his chores, with his collar pulled
up to his eyes, his head hidden between his shoulders,
his uncovered hands in his pockets, and a general
air of being prepared to go under to winter, who,
like all bullies, is a coward, and delights in the special
torment of those who fail to look her straight in
the eyes. Ominous also was the fact that he loved
to watch the fire ; I thoroughly understood the
temptation, but I would not have dared to give
it place in Canada. Directly his night duties in
the stable were over he put out the kitchen lamp,
opened the stove door and watched the fire until

235

236 WHEAT AND WOMAN

after ii p.m. . . . fire that was consuming winter's
fuel, nine-tenths of which he had still to fell, clean,
and haul. In the morning came the natural result
of the night-watch, and it seemed as though he
could not get up to feed the horses at sunrise, so
that in spite of his obvious love of animals and what
I feel sure was a fine sense of duty I grew anxious
concerning the prospect of the horses through the
frozen months. Oats late or oats early are always
oats, but all stock should be patiently and faithfully
watered until each has fully satisfied the craving
thirst of winter, which is no less severe than the
parching thirst of summer. The well was quite
a hundred yards from the house, in the open, and
even in February and March when the days grow
long and bright, the icy wind can cut and sting
through every moment of a water-chore.

I resolved to be peremptory over the matter of
fuel. My aide considered himself an excellent
woodsman. I thought him fair. I asked my
neighbour how many poplar poles a man should fell
in an hour and he said the half-breeds brought
down a hundred easily. I took the information
home to Jack Douglas, who refused to believe it,
and affirmed that if by any outside chance it could
be accomplished it would certainly not be with
the axe with which I supplied him. Within the
week he felled about three loads ; at the end of
each day they were gathered together, piled in a
neat heap, and counted, so that there might be no
dangerous optimism in any calculation concerning
the sum of one's ammunition. But having presented
the standard of a hundred poles an hour the woods-
man used it to dwarf all other considerations. He

OF FUEL AND FEAR 237

slashed north and south, right and left, omitting to
stop either to clean or to collect, with the result
that the tall indignant poplars fell over one another
like men on a battle-field, root and branch interlaced,
and it was plain that a heavy fall of snow would
render their rescue a most arduous, if not hopeless
task.

" I have a great favour to ask you," he said one
day at dinner, " will you promise to grant it ? "

" Not until I hear what it is," I answered, " but
I'll do my best."

" May I have a half-holiday this afternoon to
go to the Fort, and buy a new axe ? I'll pay for it."

The final clause annoyed me badly. " I have
told you that a certain amount of fuel must be
felled, cleaned, packed, and ready to haul before
the next snowfall," I answered. " It may come at
any moment, and if so it will be impossible to work
in the bluffs within a few hours. The fuel must be
gathered. If the axe is difficult I am sorry, but it
has'brought down so much that it can bring down a
little more, and a half-holiday, with snow already
here, and more coming, is ridiculous."

" But I don't mind working in the snow," he
objected, "and after all it isn't your affair. You
won't be here through the winter. It's my own
look-out."

" Is it ! " I said in exasperation. " Where would
you of all people be without sufficient fuel ! A
person who dreams for hours on end by the fireside
at night, and has to be driven to gather fuel by day,
is not the person to find his way into prairie bluffs
in mid-winter. A nice story would go round the
world if you happened to be laid up here without

238 WHEAT AND WOMAN

fuel. Your well-being is my direct responsibility
up to a point, so just get back at once to the
bluff, and presently I will come along with the
hatchet, and clean for you."

All the afternoon he sulked. He was so slow in
getting down the poles that he had time to muse a
hundred grievances. At supper-time he gave me a
week's notice.

It was rather trying. Over our six months'
arrangement, providing he took fair care of my stock
and belongings as I believe he would have done,
both of us would score. But if he left at the moment
I had to pay him at an excellent rate of wages for
the work of an amateur, and a very slow although
a very promising amateur.

In the anger of the moment I said I would not
pay him according to the higher, but the average
rate ; and, in his anger of the moment, he said it
was exactly the thing that every one had prophesied
would happen if he hired on with a woman.

"You have been gossiping about me," I said.
" That concludes the argument. You leave to-
morrow morning."

"Oh, but I couldn't," he protested. "I'll
stay on a week or until you are suited if you can't
easily find anyone. But you can't possibly be left
alone with all the winter chores to do. What would
every one say ! "

" That is the last thing that matters," I replied.
" You leave to-morrow morning. Not to-night,
because of the snow."

In the morning I paid the full extent of his claim
at the full rate and he left. The story probably
proves me arbitrary and severe ; but I was still

OF FUEL AND FEAR 239

very inexperienced, and still rebelling against the
newly acquired knowledge that in everyday shoulder-
to-shoulder life men take so much kindness and
consideration from women for granted but calculate
the value of every scrap of their own service ; and
then, in their veneration for the world's opinion,
demand that woman shall also fill in the blank
space, or erase the blot on the record which every
man is still under the illusion he keeps with the
wellnigh exhausted tradition of chivalry.

I have always felt sore about the matter, at the
time because he was my fellow countryman and he
hadn't been out long, and because in behaving as
a schoolboy about the half-holiday he had forced
me into the unattractive role of schoolmarm,
which I played with ease ; and also because, although
reason and justice were on my side in the wages
argument, I wished with all my heart I had said
no word, but paid with a tight lip ; but later on,
most of all because in the second year of his stay in
Canada, where in time he did excellent work for
one of the best farmers and straightest men in my
neighbourhood, and in spite of occasional moods,
won the respect and goodwill of his comrades, he
died from the kick of a horse.

When I parted from my hired man I had every
intention of engaging another to fill his place, and
of carrying out my intention to spend the winter
in England. But after a further snowfall the
weather cleared. I fed the stock at 7 a.m. and found
the mornings amazingly brilliant and inspiring.
One day, as I crossed from the oat granary to the
stable with breakfast, two prairie wolves sprang up
and galloped away from the door of the hen-roost.

240 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Pax, my dog, started off in pursuit with a yell of
desire, and for the first time I wished I had been
any sort of shot. I owe so much of the joy of
life on the prairie and elsewhere to living things,
that the very sight of a gun seems the symbol of
treachery to a friend ; but the prairie wolf does
incredible mischief in the poultry yard, and threatens
the prosperity of the country to such an extent
that in most districts of Saskatchewan the Govern-
ment still pays a dollar a head bounty. As anything
from four to six dollars may be obtained for a good
skin, wolf-hunting may be described as the com-
mercial sport of the prairie.

The sight of those two hungry faces, the note
of desire in the yell of Pax, suggested wolf-hunting
and that a winter with the stock should prove an
experience with delightful points. I felt confident
that I could never again be poorer than I was at
the moment and reckoned that in putting in the
winter myself I could save at least twenty pounds
over the wages and winter's keep of a hired man,
in addition to my travelling and personal expendi-
ture ; so I resolved on a winter alone.

Far more than the strenuous work attending
the care of stock and culture of land, the prospect
of solitude seems appalling to many women for
whom the active pursuit of farming offers strong
attraction, and material inducement. Often women
have talked to me with a flattering little hush of
awe in their voice about what they term one's
courage in relation to this winter spent on a prairie
farm with one's stock for company ; but surely
the true definition of courage is to do the thing
you are afraid to do. For instance, only the year

OF FUEL AND FEAR 241

before I came out to Canada I was spending the
summer in Paris in the pleasantest atelier- a p-parte-
ment I can remember. It was quite at the top of
a very long stone staircase of a tall house just behind
the shops of the Avenue des Ternes. From the
window of stained glass around which inquisitive
bits of ivy fluttered one looked across some lower
buildings into a lovely garden with tall trees, and
sniffed in the perfume of the limes in the Bois
which, once you have spent a whole day with them,
will float to the altar of the imagination at any point
in Paris. The household gods in this artist's home
were few in number, and this, together with the
delicately polished floor, gave it an air of space.
An old oak-chest, a book-case, a lounge by day
which became a bed by night, two chairs and a
writing-table found a place on the floor, and on
the walls glowing bits of landscape, the work of
my friends who owned the flat, and just by the
glass-panelled door which led into the atelier there
wa^ the unsigned portrait of a cavalier which cried
out, " I am a child of the genius of Hyacinth
Rigaud." One was never alone, or unwatched, or
dull with the portrait in the room. " Life is sweet
we know," said the cavalier at dawn, at noon, in
the softening light of eventime, and even when he
grew a little sad in the light of the one lamp which
was kinder to all else in the room than to him.
" Life is sweet we know," echoed the spirit of joy
which some poverty-stricken genius had arrested
in a fly-smudged terra-cotta bust of a boy which I
had bought in one of those shops, peculiar to certain
quarters of Paris, where for a few francs treasures
may be reclaimed from a dust-heap. But at night

Q

242 WHEAT AND WOMAN

there was another presence in the place, and neither
the concierge, nor the jemme de menage, nor the
cavalier, nor the boy, nor my friend the owner of
the apartment who had moved across the Seine
to live in the Rue de Val-de-Grace, would explain.
It is true she allowed that the Cambridge don,
who had been its tenant through the long vacation
in the year before, had also felt, but not seen, the
thing she saw because she was endowed with the
gift of unveiled sight, which is usually named
clairvoyance. She assured me that people endowed
with this gift felt no fear, meantime I need have
none, since, although she could not tell me all, she
could at least assure me that It of the shadows would
not harm me. From that day in order to curtail
June's short hours of darkness I sat in the two-
franc seats of the Opera-House or elsewhere night
after night, and walked home as slowly as possible,
and quite unmolested, through the " dangerous "
streets and boulevards of Paris ; but although the
cavalier simply shouted " Life is sweet and nothing
matters " as I opened the doors as noisily as possible
so that I might not hear the beating of my heart,
and although my smiling boy pleaded that he loved
the pleasant, peaceful room better even than the
home where his creator had snatched a wandering
sunbeam, and hidden the treasure in his eyes ;
and although my friend of the unveiled sight said
I could take it on at the end of her lease for the
beguiling rent of sixteen pounds a year, I left before
my tenancy expired because I simply couldn't
stand it any longer. I ran away from the inde-
finable, haunting, suffocating something I was
afraid of. I know about fear, and it isn't on the

OF FUEL AND FEAR 243

prairie ; on the contrary solitude here seems always
healing and soothing to the mind, just as the
reviving air of evening seems to refresh the toil-
worn body after the very hottest and most arduous
day spent under the sun.

I found my stable-chores strenuous, but in fair
weather not severe. I wore felt boots, and thick
woollen mitts covered with leather pull-overs, but a
thick coat was not necessary, and was usually
discarded after ten minutes of stable-cleaning
had set one physically aglow. A thousand bushels
of grain had been threshed within two hundred
yards of the stable. When the wind was down
bucking straw across to the stable for bedding was
pleasant exercise, when wind was up it was purga-
torial penance, and when a blizzard raged it was
impossible.

At first I continued to rise with the sun in spite
of its late winter hours, and lit the kitchen fire,
and warmed up before feeding the stock ; but as
I had five horses and six head of cattle, besides the
pigs, to serve with breakfast, I usually found my
wood-fire rather low on my return, so when the
need for economy in the matter of fuel became
obvious, I abandoned the practice as a luxury, and
lit the fire on my return from the stables.

After I had taken my own breakfast I returned
to the stable, and as neither of the cows was in
milking form, I watered all who required water,
and they went on their way for the day. When
a storm was before us they usually remained very
near home, and looked with threatening envy over
the stack-yard fence, which had been put up by
my predecessor and had started to show the strain

244 WHEAT AND WOMAN

of time. After they had gone on their way I cleaned
the stable, fed the pigs, who are late risers, bucked
wood for fuel, passed my time usually in reading
and writing until half-past three, when I made
tea, and prepared for about two hours work among
the beasts, who usually came home at sunset in a
bee-line led by Nancy.

My neighbour was obviously perturbed concerning
my determination to stay on through the winter
without help. He tried every warning and argu-
ment in turn, and I couldn't help thinking that I
caught a glimpse of something I had seen before
in the eyes of hunting men when women take
chances at the particular phase of a run where
the claim of chivalry would be hard to bear, and
harder to obey.

I refused all idea of difhculty, and set my inten-
tion tight against help. I said I had several loads of
wood cut, and I had only to gather it. He was
anxious to gather at least one load for me as he
was going down to the Fort to stay with friends,
and considered I ran a most dangerous risk. How-
ever I determined not to run the risk of exposing
the nakedness of the land by setting him on the
trail of my own fuel store, and, remembering that
John McLeay had offered me a load of dry wood
from his fine store if I would send for it, I said if he
would fetch that for me I should be most grateful.
The greater part of my own store, I explained, was
neither cleared nor piled, and as I very specially
wished to reserve that exercise for myself I shouldn't
have it hauled for the present.

He was obviously resentful about the whole
matter, but he went off and fetched the wood ;

OF FUEL AND FEAR 245

and throughout the winter when he was at home
he often came across to see how I fared, and his
man came through on several occasions and always
insisted on doing something or bringing something ;
but that year the snow was very deep, and it took
nearly an hour instead of the usual twenty minutes,
to walk from the shack to my cottage.

As the cold grew stronger I found that my most
difficult chore was in getting hay from the rick
built Canadian fashion. The snow packs the hay
tightly, and the frost freezes the snow into a kind
of invincible thatching. If one can get it off in
sheets hay-feeding is comparatively easy, but to
pack the mangers tightly full for the night makes a
great demand on time and energy. When the
weather was kind I rather enjoyed it, but when a
wind raged or the mercury dropped badly below
zero, one had to draw on the outside notes of
patience and endurance.

Quite the pleasantest duty of the day was the
8 P.M. feed of oats. To begin with it was usually
preceded with two hours reading by the pleasant
warmth of the stove, and one can nearly always
arrive at the " heights of one's own heart " via
the ladder and lamplight of another's. Afterwards
I climbed the rickety ladder which led to the big
store of oat-sheaves on the stable roof and from
that point I dropped them all overboard, and then
descended to distribute this favourite form of
feed among my four-footed family. The cattle
seldom used their stable, and I always tried to en-
courage a love of liberty ; but they had no honour
about seizing on the oat-sheaves as they fell from the
roof, and sometimes the evening feed was performed

246 WHEAT AND WOMAN

in anything but the silence of the night. The
stable roof, too, had its weak points, and one night
my leg went through a thin place in the roof and
then set so tight that I endured all the torments of
the legless in ten seconds. Sometimes the wind
blew so hard that one had to set one's teeth to climb
the ladder, search for the binder-twine of the
sheaves by sense of touch, because snow falling on
the warm glass of the storm-lantern meant grave
destruction to fifteen-cent chimneys in bad times.
But in average weather the chore of the last feed
was altogether delightful, one could see the white
landscape for miles around by light of the moon, the
wind seldom stirred, the cattle lay around, gazing
in restful content at the heavens, or munching big
caverns in the oat-straw stack. None could possibly
feel lonely within sound of the friendly, flattering
greetings that are heard from the stable at the first
sound of your footstep until the last gallon of
oats has been deposited in the last empty box,
and the day's work is really over. One walked
back to the cottage under a world of stars and the
drawn swords of the glorious legions known as the
Northern Lights, a regiment which the archangels
might have provided as a Royal Guard to guide all
strangers through the new land, where Fear the
gaoler cannot breathe.

Early in December I was confronted with trouble.
With great care I had kept my own cattle out of the
tack-yard, except for one defiant steer who leaped
a barbed-wire fence as a chaser leaps a hurdle.
Tom Klein had completed my ring-fence, but being
in a hurry to attend a fair, had gone off without
making a gate. With the optimistic intention of

THE END OF THE YEAR 247

putting up an orthodox English-looking gate I had
failed to insist on his return, with the result that a
very second-rate imitation of the Canadian barbed-
wire gate had been thrust into a position it was
powerless to hold. The cattle of my neighbour
Richard Ryan simply breathed on it and it fell over,
and they proceeded at once to the stack-yard and
laid siege to the hayrick.

It is not what cattle eat in a stack-yard that
raises Cain in one's heart, but what they render
useless, and from that day through many weeks
of the winter a certain portion of the day was spent
in hounding them out. Pax was a good cattle-dog
and we could always get rid of them, although
never without the prospect of return, but the
loss of time and annoyance and physical exhaustion
attached to this daily warfare were altogether
trying.

Then too I had to face the fact that I was des-
perately short of money. On January i I was due
to pay one thousand one hundred and sixty dollars
to my predecessor, one thousand dollars being the
third instalment of my five payments of one thousand
dollars each, plus one hundred and sixty dollars,
the agreed rate of interest at six per cent. The
blockade at the elevators was likely to last, but this
was more or less a relief as the bankers knew one
really could not sell and settle, and it would have
been awkward at that period to get my wheat hauled
fifteen miles to the elevators. The working expenses
that year were very heavy : the fence, the breaking,
the balance of one hundred and eighty-six dollars for
the horse Tommy, had overdrawn my balance at
the bank considerably, and the note came in every

248 WHEAT AND WOMAN

month to remind me that I was in the Bank's debt
for a sum considerably in excess of one thousand
dollars, plus a monthly increasing interest. I had
done very well indeed with my butter, eggs, and salt
pork, selling sometimes as much as eight pounds a
week of butter to the Hudson Bay Store in exchange
for provisions, and had also disposed of a great deal
of all sorts of food-produce to my neighbour in
trade for oats. My pigs were not in condition for
sale ; John McLeay brought his friend David
Chambers to look at the eldest family, but he offered
less by a dollar each than I asked, and the second
family were very late comers indeed ; but I should
probably have made the deal with Mr. Chambers
had I not been well supplied with wild oats for
feed. Pigs won't go outside if they can avoid it
in the winter, and they throve wonderfully well
on the oats in sheaf, also the straw kept them
warm and comfortably bedded. As the manure was
always burned there was no danger of the wild oats
regerminating over the land, and I knew the pigs
would render me a useful contribution towards
expenses in the spring. It did not occur to me
that there could be any difficulty about bank loans ;
money had seemed almost to walk towards one from
the bank counters at first, and eight per cent, has
such an attractive sound in the way of interest,
that I always considered that the Bank held the
weightier end of the obhgation, and that they
certainly would not wish to lose so valuable a
customer. But the fact remained that the two
hundred and thirty pounds I was expecting from
England would be entirely absorbed by the ^..nd
payment and its interest, and that a few hundred

THE END OF THE YEAR 249

bushels of wheat Hable to fall in grade and certain
to be docked in weight for its measure of wild oats
was all I could rely on to settle my bank bill and
to meet the working expenses of spring and of
summer, as my neighbour insisted that this year
there could no longer be any doubt about the fact
that I must plough the big field shallow in early
June and deep at the end of July.

The only economy I could put in practice at
the moment was to save on myself. I dispensed
with storm-windows and all superfluous food.
Guy Mazey had sold me the forequarter of a steer
for something just over or just under eleven dollars,
but hacking off joints with an axe was a toil so I
passed it on to my brother for the use of his guests
at the stopping-house, and used the few remaining
joints of the pig which Roddy McMahon had killed
for me just before threshing. There were two legs
and they lasted each about three weeks ; with the
frost well in one could not have distinguished this
pork from cold turkey, and it became no more
monotonous than the tea and coffee and bread and
sultana cakes which completed the menu. I had
learned to make bread as I found it was much
cheaper to buy flour than bread. I had neither
milk nor butter nor eggs through December and
January, but I was really being nourished on the air,
which suited me amazingly as long as I lived this
rather unusual life of outdoor service. Directly
I attempt to pass the winter between the con-
trasting temperature of the orthodox heat within
and the average cold without, I feel both extremes
to be almost unbearable. It was the outdoor
interest that made things not only possible but

250 WHEAT AND WOMAN

even delightful, and often have I looked back
regretfully on those mornings of exhilarating work
and healing solitude when a breakfast of sugarless,
milkless, but newly made coffee, and bread thawed in
the oven, seemed truly a feast for the gods.

Just before Christmas I drove into the Fort to get
a fresh supply of necessaries, and the delicacy I
resolved on was a pound of butter. It cost forty
cents, and when I got home I was so cold that I
forgot it was in the sleigh and only remembered it
in the morning when I saw a piece of grocery paper
by the door. Roddy McMahon's dog Rover and
several of his friends had followed us home and
evidently devoured the spoil. Butter is a great
luxury at Christmas-time, while eggs cannot be had
either for love or money, but my friend Mrs.
McDougall received a pound of butter, I think as
a Christmas gift, and shared it with me.

On Christmas Day I drove in to service at the
Anglican Church. A biting wind blew a fierce
pain between my eyes, so, declining various invita-
tions, I spent the greater part of the feast day in
my stack-yard and, I am afraid, made Christmas
night anything but a time of peace and good tidings
for my neighbour who came to seek his marauding
cattle. But I had been tried in the fire and found
wanting all through the day, and as a climax, in
chasing the beasts out of the yard, I lost one of the
pretty earrings that had been among the Christmas
gifts sent to me from England. When you have
never a moment to examine your own reflection
except when the mirror is frozen over, when if
you do catch an unexpected glimpse of yourself
you wish you hadn't, earrings are a refuge of the

THE END OF THE YEAR 251

destitute, for if matters are past improvement at
least they effect a change. By the time I had
ended my attempt to impress upon my neighbour
the depth and breadth of the value of the gift of
w^hich his wretched cattle had robbed me, I believed
it all myself, and w^ent to bed on Christmas night
a very injured person indeed.

The morning found the temperature set forty
below zero, and the wind biting. I went out and
worked at the fence and the gate, but in sprints of
ten minutes only. I was vainly endeavouring to
staple barbed wire into place when I saw Mrs.
McDougall driving up the trail with a hoHday
Ij guest.

" I guess I could make you a gate in no time,"
she said. I did not doubt it, because she really
could do anything.

We had a long and pleasant gossip about English
people and things as we sat around my stove, but I
think she was the first and last of my visitors that
winter, barring my neighbour and the Vicar.
The cold settled in badly, the thermometer spending
its time anywhere between forty and fifty below
zero. In the last days of the old year I went in to
tell my predecessor that my bank draft from England
might be late, so that if it did not reach him by the
first he would understand.

To my intense surprise he expressed himself
perfectly content to wait as long as I pleased, not
only for the principal, but for the interest.

I thanked him and was greatly relieved, but
declined the offer to postpone payment of the
interest, having heard once that compound interest
would^break the Bank of England. However, he

252 WHEAT AND WOMAN

told me he had great confidence in the value of the
security, and I was only too thankful to have the
opportunity of falling back on the capital to settle
my bank overdraft for the year. I had tea by the
bright stove in the pleasant house from v^hich one
looks out on both lakes, delicious tea with cream,
which clearly hailed from a relation of Molly, and
the jolliest cakes.

I drove home with an easier mind, and the year
of 1906 passed into its very last day . . . the day
of the spirit of farewell. It dawned in brilliant
winter glory, but grew silent and solemn after the
hour of noon was passed. From the south window
of my green room I saw the string of beasts returning
for drinks. It was my duty to prepare for their
coming at the well, but on that last day of the year
I tumbled to the temptation of thinking back.
For a moment I remembered ungenerously that some
of the hours of the dying year had been sad and many
almost unbearably weary. " But many were glad
and none were bitter " smiled the pale gold sun,
as it slipped behind the shore-like line of grey
which veiled the horizon. It seemed like the last
word of a friend. I did my chores the better for it.
If you have to water horses, pigs, and chickens, all
anxious to drink from the same pail at the same
moment, all born in the faith of the survival of the
fittest, you must take with you as your weapon the
temper of a devil, or, as your shield, the patience of
an angel.

II

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN— NEWCOMERS

Heavy snowstorms fell in the first weeks of the New
Year, but I pursued my programme with the horses,
who in all kinds of weather spent some hours of
each day in the open. I forsook the green room and
spent my days in the kitchen, since the wood pile
visibly decreased, and I knew that in the North-
West lack of fuel is not a case of Spartan endurance
but a matter of life or death. But January
ID was bright and clear, and I attempted a
journey to Fort Qu'Appelle. Not caring to take
the wagon-box and team through the unbeaten
track, I borrowed my neighbour's cutter, but before
we had made a mile of the road Nancy pitched me
head foremost into a snowdrift, and then made off
towards Mr. Ryan's house fully a mile west. By
the time I had caught her and we had ploughed
our way through the snow to the trail it was too
late to dream of going down into the town, and I
returned to my neighbour's with the cutter and
shared the excellent beefsteak which formed the
fiece de resistance of the midday meal.

On the next morning I counted my remaining
poles, and later in the day went off with an axe in
the direction of the bluff where John Douglas had
been right and left, north and south, in order to

2S3

254 WHEAT AND WOMAN

arrive at the standard which my neighbour had set
up. The poles had become deeply imbedded in the
snow, but many of them had been robbed of the
sap through the prairie lires and were in fine con-
dition for warmth-giving fuel ; others were green,
but desperately intertwined and closely packed by
three feet of frozen snow, and the difficulty of
getting them out was greater even than it appeared.
To free one tree and clean it and get it away was
out of the question. One found the base, chopped
off each branch as it occurred on the way to the
summit, and when eight or nine branches had been
chopped the tree had to be raised to gauge the
possibility of getting it out. Sometimes by great
good luck I struck the last that had fallen, which
simplified the matter of rescue ; but many of the
first to fall had gone down head foremost with the
trunk in the air. However, disentanglement was
almost interesting ; at least, it always had the
flavour of the unexpected. Pax begged so hard to
come with me, and felt the cold so bitterly when he
came to the place where he had to rest during my
labour, that for his sake rather than my own I
limited the time to an hour ; for, once I had crossed
the bleak quarter of a mile of stubble, it was impos-
sible to fail in getting warm between the axe and
the cleaning and emancipation of six poplar poles.
It is just at such times as this that evil may happen,
for the body being roused into unusual warmth, the
mind loosens its hold of the fact that the tempera-
ture is still fraught with danger. One day, deeply
interested in the head and shoulders of my last
pole, I allowed my leg to remain for a moment or
so in the hole into which it had slipped. Victor

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 255

over the tree, I turned to draw out my leg and found
it fixed as in a vice. The ghastly fate of the lower
limbs of Roddy McMahon's father flashed to my
brain, and I had a bad moment. Most thankfully
I made the passage home on two sound limbs, and
resolved never to take chances concerning my most
useful extremities, and kept the vow.

In the intervals between stable and feeding
chores and the emancipation of felled trees it was
almost unbearably cold. On Monday, January 14,
I learned from my neighbour that the temperature
had dropped to fifty-five below. I begged that he
would not tell me of any further descent, and felt
thankful that I didn't possess a thermometer.
Nevertheless, the following notes in my diary bear
witness to the fact that one is physically in thrall
to the inexorable hold of extreme cold.

" "January 16. — Chored, and made good progress
with th'e wood pile. Bitterly, almost unbearably, cold.

" January 17. — Sleepless nights and feeling the
cold badly. Could do nothing worth doing to-day.
Getting up late and going to bed early to economize
fuel.

''''January 18. — An appreciable shade warmer.
Small addition to wood pile, as poor Pax feels the
cold terribly and whined to come home early.

" January 19. — Mr. Green (my neighbour's hired
man) brought me a loaf of excellent bread and did
a splendid morning's work for me. Temperature
considerably easier but the wind bitter, and every
sign of a blizzard. Felt bad and sad. My lesser
ills are so trying. Chilblains and occasional rheuma-
tism, and even the horses can be rather exasperating,

256

WHEAT AND WOMAN

especially Jim, at the well. Cannot get in to the
Fort to collect my mail, but post it through Tommy-
Johnson.

^^ January 21. — Glorious day. Many shades
warmer. Cleaned stables. Baked. Worked at the
wood pile. Attacked a short story. I haven't
dared to start writing before, the fire goes out in
two minutes, and the ink is usually frozen solid.
The Vicar called, and we had tea in the most untidy
kitchen. He seemed frightfully perturbed because
I bucked wood. If that were all ! Reading
Plutarch's ' Lives ' again. Excellent company in
these days.

*' January 22. — Wild night and morning, but
temperature decidedly easier in spite of bitter wind.
Cleaned pots and pans and sawed one of the big
logs. Unfortunately they don't seem to throw out
as much warmth as one might think. Still, any-
thing to get back to my own room and the inkpot
again. The kitchen is dreary and depressing with
frost-bound windows and everything packed on the
stove to thaw out. Pax much better.

" January 26. — The very loveliest day in spite
of piercing wind. Felt well and worked well and
wrote well. Mr. Green came over under the
impression that it was Sunday. But it must be
to-morrow ; I can't have lost the schooldays'
instinct for the extra hour of the day of rest.

" January 27. — Sunday."

On Monday I was walking across the wheat-field
en route for the stage-coach to post my mail. Tommy
Johnson was not always in command through that
winter, but each Jehu in turn was friendly and

PREPx\RING SEED-GRAIN 257

kind about taking in my letters. Half-way across
the field I met Roddy McMahon.

" I guess you'll likely let me have a couple of
loads of oat-straw in trade for a load of wood," said
he. " I'm right clean out of hay for my horses,
and I know you got lots, and more oat-straw I
guess than you'll get through. I'll bring along a
good load of wood in a day or two."

I closed the deal eagerly and thankfully, and told
him of my difficulty in getting the wood out of the
snow.

" It's a nasty job that anyhow. The snow is good
and deep all right in the bluffs. There's quite a
few of us got a permit to get down wood on the
other side the valley. I'll be along with a load by
time you're ready I guess, an' I'll just get along
with the sleigh and haul in what you got ready
before I load up the straw-rack. Just show me
where to find it."

I posted my mail, and when I got back there was
the wood of my gathering piled in the vicinity of
the kitchen door. Roddy McMahon had bucked
about as much in five minutes as I could get through
in an hour ; so that night Pax and I and the frost-
bitten cat who had adopted us kept royal cheer by
the hearth.

January's last day but one brought a terrible
blizzard. I had great difficulty in watering and
getting sufficient hay for the night's feed, and for
the last feed of all I had to fall back on the inspira-
tion of Caesar and the Rubicon in order to climb on
to the stable roof and gather my sheaves in the howl
of the storm ; but by morning the weather had
cleared. Mabel Mazey came over and brought me

R

258 WHEAT AND WOMAN

a pound of butter from their first churning. The
last entry of my diary for January reads : " Thanks
be, to-morrow is February i ! "

Blowing and snowing came February. Then
frost hard and obstinate, even in the shining face
of the sun, which contrived to win its way through
the storm-clouds from time to time. One night
just as I had watered the last beast I heard the
sound of sleigh-bells, and Roddy McMahon came
in view hauling a simply ripping load of wood.
My diary contains an entry concerning this occasion
which should have been in scarlet letters : " I have
been warm all day ! It seems that it is quite
easy to keep warm if one has plenty of the right kind
of fuel." I finished my baking, got through all the
outside chores, and came in for a cup of tea and a
lazy, restful evening. It was so perfectly delightful
to be comfortable again. Pax revelled in the
warmth and wouldn't move from the stove even at
the music of the preparation for tea.

On February 5 I went to South Qu'Appelle on
financial business, and as I drove back I hardly
dared believe it true, but there was an impression
that the oasis of the mirage of spring was waiting
round the very next corner. My neighbour, who
was very kind when he forgot to be furious about a
woman doing everything he considered she shouldn't,
was busy with the buck-saw. He had put the stable
in apple-pie order, filled the mangers with hay,
cut a reserve supply with a hay-knife he borrowed
from another neighbour, lit the kitchen fire and
boiled the kettle, and after the warmth-producing
power of all this physical exertion he was absolutely
cocksure that the mirage was at hand and spring

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 259

itself just behind her own illusion. We had tea in
my pleasant sitting-room, and told each other the
heat of the stove was almost unendurable after the
unusual heat of the sun ; and we discussed our
seeding plans, and he told me of the wonderful
year in which seeding had been finished by the last
day of March, and I believed him. That night the
temperature eased off, there was a complete thaw,
the mirage cheered us for just three days, then back
we fell into the clutch of zero. But it did cheer
one, how completely none can quite explain.

On February 9 I walked into the cow stable to
find a small heifer. My neighbour came over and
milked Molly for her first milking, but she wa
perfectly quiet, and although absolutely inconsolable
for a day or two after he took Julia into the horse
stable, she was able to take all the consolation I
could offer in the form of oats and salt and bran
mash, and before long she cheered up, resigned
herself .to the inevitable, and rejoined the bunch.
Julia was perfectly content in her warm nest in the
horse stable just behind Dick, who was immensely
interested in the frequent attention shown the new-
comer, with whom he always remained good friends.

On February 14 I made my first butter of the
year, and that season I sold a considerable quantity
at the excellent price of thirty-five cents a pound,
which was maintained until July, and I think did
not fall below twenty-five cents through that year.
Milking and attention to Julia must have increased
my work, as just past the middle of the month I
find these notes in my diary :

" February 1 7. — Up with the sun. Milked and

26o WTIEAT AND WOMAN

chored before breakfast. Had a long morning in
an initial effort to clean out the cattle stable. One
shouldn't let these things get behind. Very tired
and stiff. The wind grew very strong towards
evening and all the beasts came home early —
significant of storm.

" February 22. — Very cold again. Three eggs.
Read ' David Harum.'

" February 23. — Made three pounds of butter.

" February 24, Sufiday. — Mr. Green came over
with a loaf, as usual much better than mine. Wind
very cold, but able to use green room again. Feeling
rather out of sorts. No time for reading or writing ;
no easy time. Not much sun in these days, but the
spring is coming !

^^ February 25. — Weather growing colder. Pax
hates it badly.

" February 26. — Breath freezing on the blankets
again. Reading Plutarch and Emerson and Wilber-
force — ' Romulus,' ' Fate,' and ' The Awakening.'

" February 27. — Very cold. Wood very low.
Read 'Lycurgus and Power.'

" February 28. — The last day of February and
bitterly cold. Everything frozen in the kitchen.
Anxious and depressed over news from England.
The low state of fuel means spending one's days in
the kitchen again. Reading Wilberforce, and Mere-
dith's verse.

^^ March i. — The third month. Very much
warmer, and fresh load of fuel arrived with Roddy
McMahon. Now I really have no excuse and must
try to get to work again."

I had vowed that I would not sow a wild oat in

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 261

the land which I had broken, and as at the time I
knew of no grain-fanner which would separate wild
oats from wheat, I determined to clean my seed by
hand. I took a two-bushel sack into the kitchen
and filled it in four half-bushel journeys from the
granary, and by daylight and lamplight I stuck to
my task. Of course it was quite absurd to have
contemplated or even to have hoped to clean over
sixty sacks of seed-grain in this way, and I don't
know that I was ever under the impression I could
finish ; but I didn't leave off, and when three
filled bags were facts accomplished, standing side
by side against the kitchen wall, the pride I felt in
showing the contents to anyone who came along as
a sample of my 1907 seed-grain, absolutely free
from smut, wild oats, or any sort of weed-seed,
baffled qualification.

My method was to throw a basinful of grain on
the kitchen table, which was covered with white
linoleum, and separate the good from the evil with
the blade of a knife. If the good was beautiful, the
evil was profoundly interesting. None could imagine
that half a dozen cupfuls of smut and weed-seed in
a sack of seed-grain could be so dangerous to the
growth and financial value of a crop, or that it could
be so varied, strange, and vividly vile in appearance
and powerful in its evil purpose. Of all grain and
flowers of the field, I think wild oats seem most
strikingly full of life in the seed — it is like a vegetable
grasshopper ; whilst a ball of smut gives one the
same kind of expression of its place in the vegetable
world as does the Watts portrait of Mammon in
the human race. The accomplishment of cleaning
all the grain was practically hopeless, but it had

262 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the tremendous incentive of being complete in
detail ; every basinful of wheat that M^ent into the
grain bag, every teacupful of weed that went into
the fire, meant health and strength for the crops of
1907 and its ensuing crops. Of course there were
moments when I had to acknowledge that it was
absolutely impossible to get through, when my back
and head and hands and heart ached, but deliverance
came in the middle of March.

My brother arrived from his homestead on the
6th and remained until the loth. He told me
that a man had passed the night at his stopping-
house who held the agency for a fanning mill which
he guaranteed would separate wild oats from wheat.
He promised to write to ask him to call on me with
a specimen of the mill, and said he should tell him
no better sample of grain could be found in the
country for the advertisement of the purpose of the
mill.

The man and the mill arrived in due course.
He remained overnight, and the next day he set
up the mill in the granary and extracted the wild
oats from the wheat in a manner which seemed
amazing as it practically removed every wild oat
from the seed-grain. Freely I gave the twenty-six
dollars which he demanded for the treasure, and
through two seasons it did good although very slow
service ; but always there was a great deal of waste,
partly through the milled wheat which fell under,
but also of an important percentage of the very
finest grain, which passed out at the back of the
mill with the wild oats. Later it became slower
and more wasteful, and it was then that the lack of
judgment in buying farm implements from a

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 263

travelling agent was brought home to me. I wrote
to Chatham complaining of the changing mood and
time of the mill, and received several neatly typed
sheets of argument and copies of unsolicited testi-
monials in reply, chiefly in testimony of the immense
satisfaction the Chatham separator had given to
every one else in the North-West. The unsolicited
testimonials included one from the Minister of
Agriculture in the province of Saskatchewan, and
was evidently intended as the final proof of my
personal lack of intelligence, or veracity. Of
information, or in answer to my suggestion to trade
for another mill, neither ink nor paper nor the valu-
able moments of working hours of a stenographer
were thrown away, and, swallowing another expen-
sive lesson from experience, I purchased another
model from Messrs. Morgan and Vicars of South
Qu'Appelle. This operated as a fanning mill in
addition to its special purpose as a wild-oat separator,
and although it cost more it was well worth the
difference in price.

From the time of the arrival of the mill I cleaned
many bushels of grain in the forbidding tempera-
ture of the granary, instead of a few bushels in the
comfortable warmth of the kitchen ; but the cleaned
seed-grain was soon ahead of my stock of grain bags,
which vanish from the prairie far more surely and
certainly than illusion itself. So I fell back on an
empty bedroom as a seed-grain store, and before
the end of March I had eighty bushels ready for
seeding, including eight bushels I had cleaned by
hand and which I reserved for the five-acre seed
garden I had broken on the north-west boundary.

One Sunday in March the Mazey girls came over

264 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and helped me do my evening chores. They pro-
nounced the horses to be looking just splendid, and
really they were a jolly group. Jim and Tommy
looked so huge and powerful in their big coats,
which were starting to come off by yards with the
curry-comb ; and Ricky who, in spite of his love
of wild gallops with the jolly bands of old and young
horses who at that time spent the winter in the
unrestricted freedom of the prairie, always seemed
glad to get home again, and who thrust his soft nose
in one's hand and left the well a little laggingly in
the trail of the others — just enough to convey a
tiny consoling impression of regret that one couldn't
come too. Nancy was looking brilliant and younger
than ever. She always led the band, and her dainty,
elastic movement seemed in friendliest contrast to
the slow, deHberate intention of the huge cart-
horses to follow in her wake.

Quite early in March I drove into the Fort to
see the Macdougalls, and for the first time I was
aware of the effect of the solitude of the winter.
My voice seemed deep and strange, but it was
delightful to be with one's friends again. Later in
the month I drove back to Fort Qu'Appelle with
my brother on his way to his homestead, and went
into church for morning service, then walked across
the lake and lunched at Crow's Nest, and back to
tea at the Mound. I had to leave early because of
my evening chores, so Mrs. Macdougall walked back
with me as far as John McLeay's gate. But,
pleasant as were such days as this, my diary throws
a light on the sharp and constant contrast of the
weather in that altogether exceptional year of
1907:

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 265

"March 17. — Lovely day, very warm. Felt
inclined to sit on the stable roof among the sheaves
and read, but cleaned the cow stable and stuck to
my guns generally. Found a stolen nest with
fourteen eggs.

"March 18. — Awoke to a terrible morning.
Blinding blizzard and heavy snowdrifts here and
there.

" March 19. — Bright fair day with very cold
north wind, bnt snow melting in the sun, which
cancels a good deal of anxiety about the beasts.
The well has gone well through the winter, but
now there is trouble. I most carelessly left it
uncovered and the snow got in. Mr. Robb came
over to ask me to exchange cockerels for hens for
his daughter's wedding-breakfast. He mended my
stove-pipe, for which I was most truly thankful."

But in March, although storms may blow, the
warm rays of the sun pierce the clouds in the inter-
vals of the warfare of the elements and the snow
melts at its magic. Towards the end of the winter
my task of watering the stock had become a severe
test of patience. The spring still flowed as generously
as before, but the ice at the base of the wooden
casing had thickened, and the water gathered daily
in the ice-basin. Sometimes one pail took six
journeys to fill its comrade, and occasionally two
horses would attack the half-filled pail and spill the
hard-won water. Often exasperation got the better
of reason on such occasions, and one realized how
easy it might be to become brute-like in the service
of the very brutes that make life so well worth living,
and when one got back again to the precincts of the

266 WHEAT AND WOMAN

stove, and skirts and temper thawed out together,
wrath seemed so unutterably silly. So that when
the thaw brought shining pools and none bothered
any longer to fight for first drink, it was an extra-
ordinary relief. But although after a blizzard I
have had to dig through twelve feet of snow to get
to the place where I must dig twelve feet down for
the well, I really never dare grumble, because
whilst many other wells give out from drought, or
frost, my good spring gurgles in through all seasons,
and at least I have been spared the ache of sending a
thirsty beast away without its full measure of water.

By the end of March the weather became loaded
with the intense anxiety attached to the coming of
the seeding month. All wheat should be in its
seed-bed by May i. Oats may be sown as late as
May 20, and the very last seeding day of the species
of barley warranted to mature and ripen in sixty
days is June 15 ; but much can be done towards
wheat seeding in the matter of perfect preparation,
and I did all I could to reduce worry by work, the
object being that Roddy McMahon should not be
kept waiting one moment for cleaned and pickled
seed. Seeding, harvest, and threshing times are his
strongest points, and I always found him a rock of
defence in these very critical periods of the short
farming season on the prairie.

The end of March had its days of promise, or I
should not have agreed with him to return as early
as April 8, except that it is the very best time
possible to clear off big stone which has been got
out but not taken off the seed-bed. The following
notes in my diary close the season, and should have
closed the natural period of winter, but the year

PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 267

1907 from start to finish was exceptional, not typical.
It proved such a ruling factor in the history of my
experiment, occurring as it did at the critical
moment, that it is essential it should be faithfully
recorded. It is seldom, however, that the entire
wheat crop raised in the prairie provinces escapes
without a scratch of early frost here or there ; this
is hardly to be wondered at considering the enormous
expanse of land included in these provinces. The
failure of the 1907 crop was not caused by early
frost but through the belated spring and lack of
sun in July and August. The whole season was in
strongest contrast to the sun-blessed perfect seasons
of 1905 and 1906, which years caused a leap in the
development of Canada's prosperity, proving again
that the farmer is the god in the car of this nation
of most brilliant promise. To return to the closing
days of March 1907, the record of my diary reads :

" March 29. — Good Friday. A bright but bitterly
cold day, the wind seeming to blow from every
quarter and absolutely piercing. Two men called
in search of a job. Spent most of the day as I spent
Christmas Day, trying to keep the cattle off the
remnant of hay which with care will easily pull us
through the seeding month. Temper distinctly
milder on these occasions, but horribly tired and
rather down-hearted. The weather is trying one
just now far more than in the worst of winter days,
when at least nothing mattered but oneself.

" March 30. — Cleaned seed. Very cold. Hard
frost and wind.

"■March 31. — Bitter piercing wind. Hard frost
and Easter Sunday — the greyest Easter I have ever

268

WHEAT AND WOMAN

spent, but the sun went down in vivid gold. Bert
Mazey wasted my whole morning discussing the
price of my pigs of the future in connexion with
his hayrack of the past. I haven't the smallest
intention of selling the pigs, and wish I had gone
to church. Miss Lister and Mr. Smith came to
tea. Towards evening the wind softened, and
March went out more or less as the proverbial
lamb."

iir

THE SEEDING MONTH— THE
COMING OF "FELICITY"

April came, my very own month, and I forgot it.
I lay in bed long after my friend the sun had risen,
and positively without excuse since it was a fine and
gracious morning, warm and exquisitely bright, with
that indescribable quality of exhilaration in the air
which we name the joy of life and in our hearts
prize more truly than any other gift. When I had
worked my way through chores that couldn't be
avoided, I claimed the first of April's days as holiday,
and walked over to John McLeay's with Pax, whose
unbounded delight was good to see. John McLeay
was out, but we rested at his door and walked home
again, carefully selecting our path by guidance of
the herbage, whose earth-bed had already claimed
its measure of sun, yet for all our care occasionally
I sank with startling suddenness knee-deep into a
drift.

The next day I returned to the wheel of the
grain separator, but poor Pax, who seemed so fit
and well and kept me company the whole day in
the granary in spite of his strong dislike of the
music of the mill, had a very bad fit towards evening,
and I wondered if I really ought to follow my
neighbour's advice to have him destroyed. But all

269

270 WHEAT AND WOMAN

beasts of the prairie love life with their very last
breath ; they seem to thank you for the final effort
to save, and to hope on with you all the time. The
hardest thing required of one in the circumstance
and event of farm life is to kill.

On April 3 came a blinding snowstorm. On the
4th I sold two pigs to the local butcher for the
sum of twenty-five dollars, but the bargain was
immediately followed by a fierce hurricane, with
another fall of snow and the wildest weather. The
sudden reverse was evidently too much for my
newly acquired patience, since, following an
account of the day, and in spite of the deal with
the butcher which was always for ready money, I
read in my diary the following words of a mood
of despair : " Clothesless, bootless, penniless,
wretched ! "

The fact is that the winter in Canada demands a
very special outfit for the protection of hands and
feet : felt boots and leather-covered woollen mitts
made in the form of a baby's glove. Both hand and
footwear are useless directly winter is fairly away,
because the softening snow at once penetrates the
felt boots, and the mitts are in the way when one
requires full use of the fingers. There is nothing
in the wardrobe scheme that one is so thankful to
buy or so glad to burn as these particular symbols
of the Canadian winter. I had probably burned
mine all too soon, and the return of winter found
me minus armour. However, the mood seems to
have been as transitory as the weather, since the
record of April 6 reads :

" Woke at sunrise to a perfect day. Fed oats
without hat or coat. Milled seed- wheat with

THE SEEDING MONTH 271

door and window open. Softest, warmest sun-
shine. Good day's work."

On April 8 Roddy McMahon returned for the
seeding month. It was cold and stormy, but he
wasn't afraid of the weather, and talked with much
energy about the stones, although eventually I
removed the greater number of these myself, stoning
not being among his strong points. We were both
very anxious to get in the seed early, and he was
mightily pleased that it was so clean and good to
look at and to show other people. He promptly
volunteered to take his turn at the mill-handle,
although he criticized my new purchase as " good
and slow all right." In my heart I was afraid he
might not be quite so careful as I was in picking
out any stray wild oats when bagging up ; but I
had determined to pickle every grain myself, and
reserved that occasion for the final capture of those
strange, dark, creeping vampires of the grain world
which, when they once obtain entrance, take pos-
session of the soil with swiftest power, and cannot
only take the place of the wheat but suck health
and strength from the few blades here and there
that fight through its thrall into a puny existence.
Wild oats can knock off three-fourths of the
value of a wheat crop almost before the farmer
has time to realize that the enemy is within the
field.

The second day after the return of Roddy
McMahon I awoke to a heavy snowfall, and fell
back on a heavy heart.

That time I was utterly, completely rebellious.
Through the winter weeks I had got up on time
and done my chores more or less cheerfully, but the

272 WHEAT AND WOMAN

moment I had no choice and had to cook breakfast
for another I simply longed to sulk, to refuse to do
a single thing, and to remain in bed until the winter
had really and truly gone on its way. However, the
porridge was cooked, and the bacon and potatoes,
when Roddy McMahon came in like a big hurricane,
covered with snowflakes and his face alight with
good tidings.

" You've got a new horse," said he.

If anyone had reason to sulk that day it was the
new horse, Nancy's first foal. Nancy didn't seem
to possess all the knowledge mothers are supposed
to have on these occasions, but she was simply
bubbling over with pride and pleasure and maternal
anxiety at the curious creature at her side. And
Felicity was curious. Skye, the two-year-old pinto
pony that my neighbour had bought of Danny
McLeay when I bought Tommy, was her sire ; and
Felicity was a pinto too, with one wicked Skye-like
grey eye and another most lovable Nancy-like
velvet brown eye ; but in form she was absolutely
perfect, and life on the prairie brought her glorious
health and strength.

" Do you know what I should do with that brute
in the stable if it was mine ? " said my neighbour
after the first glimpse at her.

" What brute ? " I asked.

" Nancy's foal. I should wring the creature's
neck before anyone could see it."

" Nancy adores her," I answered, " and so do I."

Nancy from the first allowed me a big share in
the care of the baby, who was the happiest thing in
the world ; and in spite of all the ills that blow in
with wind and weather the name Felicity became

THE COMING OF FELICITY 373

her, since life to her seemed just joy itself, and every
fresh surprise brought a new delight. The other
horses were most deeply interested in the new-
comer, and so were all their many bands of friends.
On the Sunday afternoon after her birthday I
heard the tramp of hoofs and the rush of a four-
footed host in full gallop, and across the wheat-field
through the falling snow I saw Nancy racing at top
speed with Felicity at her side, and about fifty
horses of all sizes, age, and colour, gentle and simple,
in hot pursuit. Fearing that too much sport might
affect the milk, I went to the rescue and found
Nancy fearfully perturbed, but Felicity was greeting
them all in the equine form of Canadian " pleased
to meet you," and obviously enjoying the fun
without a touch of fear. If she didn't succeed
in changing the face of the weather in that most
unpromising seeding month, she at any rate made
one forget the anxiety with which it was loaded ;
and she- also brought good luck in her trail, since
two brothers and two sisters complete the family of
Nancy up to date.

Three days after her advent, a big white sow, one
of the litter born in the rains of the preceding
June, produced ten small pigs ; but one was
suffocated within a few hours. I had also three
sows of the same tribe from whom I hoped for
families of ten or more ; and in addition there
were eight small pigs born in October, being the
final contribution from the sow which I had bought
for ten dollars of my predecessor ; but these late-
comers had not thriven so well as the June family
and were not nearly ready for market. I was offered
twenty-five dollars each for my three sows, which

s

274 WHEAT AND WOMAN

was an excellent price at that time ; but through
the folly of counting my pigs before they were born,
I refused to part. Even had all gone well I had not
sufficient food for them, and the farmer should
never, or only at the outset, or in emergency, buy
food for her stock ; she must grow it. Had I sold
all for seventy-five dollars and spent half the money
on weaned pigs at two dollars fifty, and the other
half in my emergency on barley-chop for their
food, I should have made over cent, per cent, in the
deal at food price within six months ; but pigs
were the one corner of my proposition which had
always seemed to be there in time of urgent need
of food or money, and I foolishly staked all on the
chance of number, without even taking due con-
sideration for every point of the chance. As it was
I had bad luck with each of them, partly through
allowing them to stray round the straw piles and
make their own nest of welcome, and the end of it
was that the united families of the three numbered
but ten in survival, and never throve quite as well
as the nine which arrived in the snow.

The weather being quite hopeless, Roddy Mc-
Mahon returned to the Fort, and did not come
back again until April 22. In the interval I had
the misfortune to lose Pax. I had to go into South
Qu'Appelle on business, and he begged so hard to
be allowed to come that I took him, only I didn't
like to take him into the hotel dining-room, so I
bought him some meat at the butcher's and left
him outside whilst I took my meal. Through the
dining-room window I caught a glimpse of him
walking up and down looking a little frightened and
forlorn, and from that hour he vanished. I went

THE COMING OF FELICITY 275

to every livery-barn, advertised, offered a reward,
and returned to South Qu'Appelle on the following
Sunday, but all in vain; I never saw my faithful
comrade of the winter any more, and for several
months remained dogless ; but the pigs made such
onslaught on the potatoes that, in hope of settling
the matter, I accepted Bobs from a mutual friend
in exchange for sixteen pounds of butter.

When Roddy McMahon returned from the first
day's stoning on April 22 he said that the surface
of the summer-fallow was in fairly good trim, and
that we should seed with good luck on the next
day but one. However, there came hard frost and
bitter wind, and it was the first week in May before
we started to seed the summer-fallowed land. In
despair I started preparation for the pickling of my
seed-grain, although it is not wise to give the seed
its bath until within a few hours of seeding.

For the cleansing and disinfecting process nearly
all farmers who once used blue-stone now use
formalin, the quantity being about two pounds to
sixty bushels of grain. The main object is to get
every seed bathed so that it becomes proof against
the infection and attack of smut ; and also in this
the last procedure before passing under the pressure
of the soil, much smut-ball and weed-seed of the
lighter kind will rise to the surface of the water,
and can be skimmed off and burned. Guy Mazey,
who had over two hundred acres to seed that year,
and never risks loss of time, plunged his two-bushel
sacks into the pickle, left them immersed for ten
minutes, and withdrew them, allowing the grain to
dry in the sack. This process saves time all round
and is quite permissible with perfectly clean seed ;

276 WHEAT AND WOMAN

although even perfectly clean seed affords some work
for the skimmer in the open bath. I might have
used this method for my six bags of hand-cleaned
seed, but was confronted with the difficulty of
hauling the heavy grain-bags in and out of the
barrel ; besides, I enjoyed looking at it. The
Creegans used the bath I bought from Eaton's, and
that was quite the nearest approach to the model
of the latest pickling bath which that year was to
be seen at Mr. Dillon's hardware store, and was
purchased and greatly appreciated by many of the
wealthier farmers. The greater number of my
neighbours used two barrels, plunging loose wheat
into the pickle in the top barrel, and when they
considered the immersion sufficient they withdrew
the cork and let the pickle run out into the second
barrel, threw out the pickled seed to dry, carefully
covering the heap with sacks in order to prevent the
escape of the fumes of the formalin, and then
repeated the process until all the seed-grain had
been through the ceremony of the bath. The
most primitive and least effective of all methods is
the one I quoted in my account of the seeding of
1906 ; and my own process is slow and unusual, but
excellent in result.

I turn a bag of grain into a barrel of pickle, and
after three editions of stirring and skimming I
remove the grain from the barrel in a half-gallon
milk-strainer and toss it into a corner to drain, being
careful to cover to keep in the fumes of formalin.
Of course if I could have afforded to purchase Mr.
Dillon's orthodox seed-bath, which revolved, and
stirred, shook, and drained forty bushels of grain
at one immersion, I should have saved much time ;

THE COMING OF FELICITY 277

but hours are usually more plentiful than dollars
through the first few years of a farmer's proceeding.
When the pile of bathed grain is dry, I bag, pouring
the grain rather slowly into the bag in order to
seize on any wild oat that has escaped annihilation.
I had sown dirty seed and reaped its harvest in
1906, but I think I can truthfully say no farmer
sowed cleaner wheat than I in the years that
followed. That year, 1907, my grain was pro-
nounced the cleanest that went into the town ;
and it chanced that in 1910 seed-cleaning and
pickling was the first form of farm labour into which
I initiated some Englishwomen who came out to
me as pupils. It is always a test of patience, almost
of endurance ; but the result again was excellent,
my 1910 crop scored No. i Northern and was
declared to be the cleanest and best sample of grain
threshed in the neighbourhood. I sold a quantity
of it for seed, and about seven hundred bushels in
the following May at a dollar a bushel. But of
course clean seed is only half the battle ; the land
also must be clean, and that is a far more difficult
matter to deal with.

To return to 1906. My pickling process can be
very cold, and it was not possible to do a great
quantity at a time in the granary as the water froze
in the barrel and the pickled grains froze together
in the heap, and my hands were painfully numb and
helpless ; so with a little persuasion I got a barrel
into the kitchen, and there I pickled seed-grain in
comfort, if I cooked in more or less disorder.

In all I cleaned nearly two hundred bushels of
my 1906 crop, but not nearly so much was used for
seed. I had many bags of tailings for the pigs, and

278 WHEAT AND WOMAN

also forty bushels over, which I sold the following
September in South Qu'Appelle at a dollar a bushel
net. My seed-oats I bought from Mr. John A.
Macdonald, for some years the member for North
Qu'Appelle and eldest son of the last of the chief
factors of the Hudson Bay Company, who is a keen
agriculturist and who at that time owned a quarter
section at the foot of the hills which skirt South
Qu'Appelle on its southern side. This land is now
divided up into building sites, but at that time oats
were raised from corner to corner of the one hundred
and sixty acres. The big field was quite a centre
of local interest, and Mr. Macdonald used to sell
every grain of its produce as seed, usually at double
the average price of oats.

This seed I sowed in the ten- and four-acred arms
of the big field, which had been full ploughed after
bearing its two crops of wheat. Barley was sowed
in twelve acres of the forty-acre field. Roddy
McMahon disced and harrowed it directly we got
on the land, in order to give the surface seed a bed
to rise through ; and when he had finished wheat
and oat-seeding he ploughed in all this voluntary
growth and sowed barley. Barley matures so
quickly that it should be harvest-ripe before any
voluntary accompaniment of wheat or wild or tare
oats can arrive at generating point, so that it all
comes down together without danger of wasting
good in spreading evil seed.

In the eighteen acres of summer-fallow, the
twenty-five acres of breaking Si Booth had broken,
and the thirty acres Roddy McMahon had broken,
we sowed wheat ; but the last five acres to be sown
in the wheat-seeding was the seed-garden on the

THE COMING OF FELICITY 279

north-west boundary, and therein went my hand-
cleaned seed.

When seeding was over I looked out upon the
new fields, newly sown with grain which I had
cleaned with my best effort, and felt that I had
done all I could towards the harvest of 1907. In
my diary I find this entry :

" The most difficult time of the first year is over ;
another has its fair start. It was a year of much
toil and a certain amount of hardship, disappoint-
ment, and worry ; but always there was the inspira-
tion and consolation of the beasts. In spite of
failures and my many failings, especially a habit of
occasionally doing my work in a rebellious sort of
way — one may just as well do the inevitable
amiably — I have made a step forward in my work
and got on terms with the daily round. I am going
strong — absolutely independent of people and cir-
cumstances ! "

Here the record of my diary ceases for some
months, as if the arrogance of the last phrase had
bared itself to invite annihilation from the arrows
which were lurking in the future. Yet with truth
and without offence against the spirit of humility
I might have written : " When all my sins great
and small stand up to claim me, let it stand for my
defence against the sin of omission that in those
frozen months which waylaid spring in 1907 I
cleaned seed-grain with all my power."

IV

THE LAND AND THE MAN

At the end of the seeding month I had to find a
new hired man. My shrunken capital absolutely
forbade me to hire a man and team, no matter
how strong was the argument for the land's sake.
But if only I had been strong enough to take that
special chance, I should have saved myself eventually
much anxiety, worry, disappointment, grave financial
loss, and possibly the life of a horse.

Nothing need trouble any farmer but this
matter of working expense, since for labour one
can train oneself to fill all emergency. But horse
power or steam power is imperative, and none can
insure against occasional casualty. Over and over
again I have known the traditional run of bad
luck with horses confront the newcomer, and occa-
sionally the old-timer, on a prairie farm. For this
reason mares should always be purchased when
possible in preference to geldings ; the years go
by so quickly, and in case of loss or mishap none
can realize the relief of going out to the pasture to
select a horse to fill the vacancy, in place of going to
one's banker for an eight per cent, ticket to the
market, where even now good horses are more easily
sold than bought. The newcomer, too, should
invest a generous margin of capital in cattle :

280

THE LAND AND THE MAN 281

steers and heifers grow into money so quickly, and
from two years old upward steers stand in emergency
for substantial and immediate contribution to the
imperative purchase of horses, or implements, or
hire of labour ; and these three occasions can be
at any unexpected moment absolutely essential for
the successful working of the land on which one's
net profit and ultimate prosperity depend.

The cost of living on five acres or five hundred
is entirely a matter of choice, when the degree of
necessity is left behind. The degree of necessity
demanded from me in the winter of 1 906-1 907 an
expenditure of twenty-two dollars seventy from
November i to April 13. Incidentally, it in-
cluded flour, tea, coffee, sugar, lamp-oil, marma-
lade, raisins, currants, baking-powder, yeast-cakes,
matches, salt, tapioca, jam, and for other food
I had my turkey-like pork. After the middle of
February, too, I had a good supply of butter,
eggs, milk, and cream from the stock ; and also a
contribution from the sale of such produce to set
against my twenty-two dollars seventy. It is
wisdom to pay cash down for one's land, and to break
no more of it than one has capital to work ; but a
living can always be obtained in farming on the
prairie, and the life of a woman-farmer is very
different from the life of a farmer's wife on the
prairie. Some may prefer one, some the other ;
but the one is an entirely different proposition from
the other.

Roddy McMahon was, I think, sorry to leave,
and might have also waived his objection to hiring
on without his team, but he had an offer to break
land near Lipton at the rate of five dollars an acre.

282 WHEAT AND WOMAN

This sounds well, and comes out well under the
satisfactory conditions of board and residence for
man and horses, barring oats. But he told me after-
wards that he had a rough and uncomfortable time,
and found there was little if anything in it ; and I
have always found it to be the cheapest way of
breaking new land, and getting it put in shape for
crops, providing you have a breaker who really
knows the work — one who has won the knowledge
through much experience.

On the last day but one I drove over to Indian
Head to look for a man. I had left it until rather
late, and in the end I had to drive the eighteen
miles in a gale. A gale at this season of the year
means that you hold on to your seat and the lines,
and trust yourself to the discretion of your horse,
with eyes shut fast against a merciless cloud of soil,
blown by the wind from the seed-beds which line
the way on either side of every road allowance
between Wideawake and Indian Head. I arrived
in the spick-and-span little wheat town with a face
that was literally, but so completely, black that it
marked one as hailing from another race, rather than
as being a member of the great unwashed. I had
to decline the printed invitation to take a bath
at the Imperial Hotel for the sum of fifty cents,
because of the message of the clock, and immediately
after the midday meal I set out to find a man. I
could hear of none anywhere. At the livery barns,
in the hotels and stores there was the same tale of
the numbers who had been work-seeking yesterday,
and the other numbers who would most certainly
come off the work-seeker's train on the morrow.
I had given up the quest as hopeless, when I caught

THE LAND AND THE MAN 283

sight of Sergeant-Ma j or Dubuque in the High
Street, and turned back to ask him if he could
help me.

It chanced that a young man was doing a wood-
bucking chore for him at the moment whom he
thought might be useful to me. He had just re-
turned from a sojourn in Regina, where he had been
a guest of the Government ; but the Sergeant
assured me that the part he had played in a horse
deal was certainly not the leading part, although
it had carried off the penalty, and that he could
honestly advise me to give him a trial. Also he
recommended me to offer him fifteen dollars a
month, and what he was worth at the end of it.

I had expected to pay at least twenty-five or
thirty dollars, and I engaged the man, whom I
will call Adam, on the spot. He dropped the buck-
saw, put his coat over his overalls, and got into
the bug'gy after he had fetched a small brown-
paper parcel from the house. On the way home
he sat at the extreme edge of the seat, which must
have been most uncomfortable, and at the half-way
point of our journey he carefully unfastened the
brown-paper parcel, and refreshed himself from
its contents of dry bread which was keeping company
with a collar, a tie, and a brush and comb.

" They give it to me when I left the jail yesterday
morning," he explained. "But that Sergeant —
what's his name ? Dubuque ? Well, he's a good
man all right. A man needn't go hungry there."

I shouldn't refer to his visit to Regina only that
from the first he discussed it so frankly himself,
his chief topic of conversation was of life within
walls of the house with the barred door, and the

284 WHEAT AND WOMAN

usual word of his defence of any act or habit with
which I found fault, " Well, I guess you know
what you want, but, Boys Alive ! that's how we
did it in jail." He was full of the kindest senti-
ment and good feeling towards his caretakers, and
couldn't say enough in praise of the kindness of
Sergeant Dubuque ; in fact every detail of prison
life had his strong commendation. It seems that
prisoners in Regina are comfortably lodged, well
fed, and have liberty in the intervals of work to read,
write, and talk to each other ; and there was a bath-
room, not reserved for the ordeal of that first
baptism of humiliation, but for the regular care
and cleansing of the body which most surely is of
aid in the refreshment of the energy of the soul.
Judging from his personal experience the entire
prison system of Regina seemed formed on the basis
of a generous, wholesome desire for the uplifting,
rather than the down-treading, of those human
beings who lose their footing in the mire.

I listened with deep interest, and was so glad
to think that I was at last in a country, and a British
colony, where, since there was clearly no mauvaise
honte about doing time, a system of justice had
been thought out, altogether ahead of that which
condemns the fallen to pass out of the unhealthy
and demoralizing atmosphere of the sacred frying-
pan of the Scribes into the even more debasing
period of torture in the sanctimonious fire of the
Pharisees. One day, in talking to a mutual acquaint-
ance, I expressed my satisfaction at Adam's service
as hired man, and also my admiration for the system
of justice which encouraged a young nation to stand
up for the fact, that once a transgressor against the

THE LAND AND THE MAN 285

common law had paid its penalty, he stands among
his fellow men a really free man — free to live and
love and work as any other man. But the Canadian
was silent, only the suspicion in the eye said far
more plainly than words, " Birds of a feather."

As we drove through the beautiful grain-lands
of the Indian Head trail the comments of Adam
were altogether inspiring to his new employer.

" My, that's as pretty a piece of breaking as
ever I see down East ! But I don't care to see so
many stones. Those fellows should be cleared I
guess. And that land is too much on the ridge
like. Boys Alive ! Give me breaking turned right
flat on to its back."

Just as we turned into the bluff and slough land
of my own neighbourhood Dick cut off across an old
trail that we had used in the early spring, and the
farmer came out to us in great wrath for driving
over his newly sown breaking.

Canadians are most casual about such matters
as a rule, and I have never been called to order
before or since on this point, and was rather ridiculed
by Mr. Grigg for picking my road most carefully
round his b'g crops before the road between us
was graded. However I apologized most sincerely,
and explained that I was a farmer too, and wouldn't
do mischief for worlds ; and in the end I was
graciously permitted to continue on my way across the
new breaking instead of being compelled to turn back.
Adam worked well the next day harrowing with
three sections behind the seeder, but on the morning
after I had said good-bye for that season to Roddy
McMahon I nearly lost his successor.

I think he felt lonely, and on second thoughts

286 WHEAT AND WOMAN

was not sure that he cared about a woman " boss " ;
but the reason he gave was that my terms were far
too low for his service.

He walked across the field to my neighbour's,
and I thought I had seen the last of him, but he
came back within half an hour.

" Well there ! Boys Alive ! Guess I'll stay my
month. The fellow over yonder says maybe I'll
have to go back to Regina if the Sergeant hears I've
quit."

He assured me he was bred on a farm in Eastern
Canada, and I concluded that he was perfectly at
home in the use of all implements, and farm work
generally. He rose literally at daybreak, and sang
long before the lark. At any moment after 3 a.m.
one might hear him descending the stairs, and his
invitation to the cows to attend the ceremony of
milking might be heard across the valley. He was a
very slow milker, and I do not think a good one, as
Molly developed warts and a general soreness which
usually may be traced to a rough or misunderstanding
hand. Neither was he kind on the surface of
things. " There ain't a beast on this here place as
minds," was his constant complaint. " You've got
to make a beast mind," his verdict on my happy
family, until at last I sharply requested him to
mind his own business. But he could be thoroughly
trusted in the matter of their food and water, and
I came to the conclusion that there was more love
of noise than any ill-feeling about his constant abuse.

I had complete confidence in his power as a plough-
man, drawn I must confess from his most able
criticism of the landwork we had passed on our way
from Indian Head. One day I left him to strike a

THE LAND AND THE MAN 287

furrow on a piece of land which I intended to add
to the big wheat-field beneath its left arm.

When I returned about an hour later shouts and
shrieks guided me to the place where he stood
raving at the horses. I followed his furrow which,
barring the fact that here and there the plough
had slipped out allowing the soil to remain unbroken,
reminded one of a winding, curling, English stream,
bent in reaching a river some day in its own
particular time and place.

" I thought you told me you had ploughed before,
Adam," I said.

" Quite a bit down East," he answered without
turning a hair.

" Take the horses in now. Supper will be ready
in an hour."

I was within a few yards of my neighbour's gate,
and I thought it wisdom to ask his advice. He came
backwithme to see the furrow and laughed until he
reached its end. " By Jove ! you had better stick
to the chap," he s-^id. " He is certainly not lacking
in perseverance. I heard a great noise going on,
and thought you must be killing pigs. His quarter
of a mile furrow stretched out would measure a
mile from point to point, and by the look of it
the shear is blunt as a board. Well, I'll swear the
greenest Englishman that ever ploughed with horse
or ox has never left a furrow on the Canadian
prairie to beat that."

" But what am I to do ? " I said wrathfully.
" I can't afford to hire a man with horses, so I
couldn't keep on Roddy McMahon, and men are
as usual scarce and expensive."

" You have no business to be breaking in any case,"

288 WHEAT AND WOMAN

he said. " You have all you can do to get through
the ploughing and cultivation of the big field v^ith
your limited horse power. I should put him right
into that. Begin on my corner w^here the wild oats
are thickest, and then if you haven't time to plough
the whole field twice over, you can get through
the worst part of it. I have a plough here I can
lend you until I need it myself, and if you will
bring the chap over to-morrow morning I'll start
him on."

On the morrow Adam and I crossed the field with
Jim, Kit, and Tommy, and took the first lesson in
ploughing. At the time I hadn't the smallest idea
of tooling any of the implements but the harrows,
which I found perfectly simple to deal with, and
for a good walker, pleasant exercise made interesting
through the presence of horses. But I waited to see
Adam take his lesson that morning and digested it.
My neighbour cut the leading furrow, turned and
brought back the horses ; put us into line with the
next, and went on his way leaving us to worry it
out. Of course I knew the " Gee " to the right,
and " Haw " to the left rule of the road, and the
mechanism of the levers, but it seemed to me that
the fundamental rule of the furrow in process was
to keep Kitty always safely in the furrow, more
especially as she had a distinct inclination to recon-
noitre to the right or left. I turned a few furrows,
and at the end of the time Kitty knew the meaning
of the command " Furrow, Kitty," and obeyed it.

At Adam's turn he slipped out badly more than
once, the sod of course remaining uncut, and
unturned in consequence.

" How careless you are, Adam," I exclaimed.

THE LAND AND THE MAN 289

^' Didn't I tell you to keep Kitty in the furrow ?
Try to say ' Furrow, Kitty ' ; she will keep to

It."

" The fellow didn't teach you that," he answered.
" Boys Alive ! I guess I know more about ploughing
than any woman."

" If you dare to answer me again," I said, " I
will immediately send you back to Sergeant Dubuque.
And now you can get on the plough, and make the
best of your difficulties without my help."

" No offence ! No offence ! " he insisted. " Only
I guess I know all about a plough."

In the course of an hour he had caught on to the
principle, and, although slow does not describe the
pace, had I governed my ploughing after the moral
of the fable I should probably have come through
that season's work with the triumph of the tortoise.
Adam loved his new accomplishment. I yelled
myself hoarse over calling him in to dinner, and
actually voiceless in calling him for supper ; and in
the end I had to walk across by the last glow of
sunset to induce him to unhitch. During the day
his work had steadily improved, and although he
had accomplished no more than Roddy McMahon
would have got through in half a day, it was carefully
done with no untrimmed patches, and neat, with
most respectable turns. The horses, too, in spite
of their long day were cool and comfortable, without
any trace of fatigue. I slept with a lightened
heart, but the self-satisfaction of Adam in the
knowledge of his increasing experience and power
found vent in a freedom of habit which I couldn't
endure.

" Adam," I said one day, at the end of my tether,

T

290 WHEAT AND WOMAN

*' understand that I will not have you give way to
that disgusting habit in the house."

" Which ? Chewin' ? "

" No, spitting ; but either is disgusting."

*' If a fellow chews he's got to do the other, I
guess. Boys Alive ! Can't quit chewin'."

" You can go outside when you require to do the
other."

From that hour he left the table several times
during a meal with the preface of " Scuse me."
" Boys Alive ! Handy things them verandeys," was
always his tribute on his return.

Before he had been with me a week, my brother
came down to borrow Kitty and Jim to put in his
crop of oats. I knew I ought not to spare them,
but there were none that we could hire, and there
was no way out of it. Adam was by way of sulking
at the horses being taken away, and I sharply
reprimanded him for a remark he had made over it.
*' No offence," said he. " I was only having a laugh.
Boys Alive ! I guess a fellow's got to put up with a
lot from a woman boss."

I thought that the time of my brother's visit
would be an excellent opportunity to kill a pig.
It was already getting late because they should
never be killed during the season of thunderstorm
or in excessive heat, as it is most difficult, even with
the greatest care, to get through the pickling process
in time to avoid any risk of loss of meat. My
brother never hesitated to refuse to kill himself,
but he said if Adam could do the act, and the pig
wasn't so very big he could assist.

" Can you kill a pig, Adam ? " I inquired. " If
not, it must be sent to the butcher. But I don't

THE LAND AND THE MAN 291

like sending them to the butcher, because although
I think an expert can probably get through the
business much more swiftly and humanely than the
average man, I am sure a pig would rather die
ten swift deaths than be caught and hoisted into a
wagon, and taken on a long, strange, jolting journey
to a place of dread.

'' Kill a pig ! Boys Alive ! " said Adam. " Kill a
dozen. Kill a hundred. Butcherin's my trade. I
learned the knife with a butcher down East. Kill
pigs ! Boys Alive ! You have me there, and cattle too.
Butcherin' ! That's my job of all the lot. If you
want to give me a job to suit me fine and good, just
show me the knife, hold him down, and one, two "

" Be quiet at once," I said, hating him I think
more than I had ever hated human being before.
His eyes had a ferocious, bloodthirsty look, and his
face, with the Friday chin of those who use a razor
once a week, looked like the face of one who killed
with glee. " See that everything is ready, so that it
is got over as quickly and quietly as possible, and
come and tell me when it is done."

All the winter through I had fed those pigs, who
were friendly creatures, not very big, and pigs can
be so human. I waited in the granary for the wail
of the announcement of the end. Two or three
unusually feeble editions came at intervals of
about ten minutes, and I felt my poor beast was
going through the hateful business over and over
again. At last I heard my brother call me.

" Is it over ? " I asked.

" That bragging, bouncing, cowardly fool," he
said, " and after all his yarns about butchering down
East ! He can no more kill a pig than I can. He

292 WHEAT AND WOMAN

shook like a woman the moment I had everything
fixed so that we could get it over in a second, and
then he wanted me to do it."

" And didn't you ? "

" No, but I admitted I couldn't. If I had known
about it, I would have brought along my gun.
Of course, if it was a matter of starvation I could do
it, I have no doubt."

I was furious with them both, but especially
Adam, as he took the whole proceeding as a fine joke,
and wasn't in the least concerned at being caught out
in lying bounce.

" Boys Alive ! Two nice pairs of greenhorns you
got on that butcherin' job. Couldn't kill a pig,
not both the two of us."

The poor little pigs were cowering in a corner
with frightened eyes, and didn't die for a further
six weeks, and the occurrence brought about one
excellent rule on the farm, which is never broken.
Every pig has to be shot through the head before it
is butchered in the usual fashion ; it makes very little
difference to the meat, and all the difference left
in this world to the pig, who, instead of dying a
hundred deaths through terror, is dead before it
knows it has to die.

One morning going in from work within an hour
of dinner-time I found a tall and very athletic-
looking Englishman waiting on the veranda. I
recognized him as a man who had been recom-
mended to me by some friends in South Qu'Appelle.
I explained that I had already engaged a man, but
he dined with us, and when I heard a glowing
description of the two years he had passed on a
Manitoba farm, of the acres he had ploughed, disced,

THE LAND AND THE MAN 293

and harrowed ; of the horses and cattle he had taken
two miles to water through that dire winter, and
finally of his positive preference for the use of a
walking-plough — and John McLeay, and Sandy
Stewart, and David Chambers all swore by walking
ploughs — I began to think it would be wisdom to
strain a last point, and pay him the thirty-five dollars
a month he required until the ploughing was through
which, with his experience, should not be more than
six weeks, and keep Adam on for chores and stone-
gathering, haymaking, and carrying. The plough
only required three horses, leaving Dick and Nancy
for lighter but most necessary work ; and before
Mr. Oliver left it was decided that he should come
back a week from that day, when the horses would
be ready for him.

I walked across the field to put him on the line
for the stage, and we met my neighbour.

" He has had excellent experience in Manitoba,"
I explained, as we watched him swing across towards
the coming stage, " and if there is anything he doesn't
quite understand you'll advise him, wont you ? "

" A man asking thirty-five dollars a month has
no business to need advice on his job from anyone,
and you should have hired horses instead of letting
yours go north. You haven't nearly enough horse
power for three hundred and twenty acres, and how
can you expect to run five hundred with them.
Adam started on his work well, and you could have
got on to the harrowing in his trail with Dick and
Nancy, and I think you might have pulled through.
This man may be all right, up to his work, but you
never can tell ! Any man who has been in the
country five minutes will swear to experience."

294 WHEAT AND WOMAN

My brother was later on his return than he anti-
cipated, and my new helper had no team.

" But, of course, with your experience, you can
fence," I suggested. "Please get the four corner-
posts in for the garden, and then go to the bluff,
cut and point the necessary pickets, and begin to
fence the house between the posts."

When I returned from the Fort I saw at once that
fencing was distinctly outside his experience. " I
know it requires practice," I said, " but you see it is
impossible for me to pay two men, and also a half-
breed, to do this kind of work."

As a matter of fact fencing is very simple ; it is,
like most work in Canada, monotonous, and requires
patience and perseverance, but the reason of the
failure of the average white man to fence is that he
is too lazy to prepare with the crow-bar sufficiently
deep holes for his pickets. Every picket should be
at least eighteen inches in the ground — twenty-
four is better. If one examines the fence, and even
the fence repair of the average hired man, it will be
found that the pickets are put in anyhow, with a
blunt end, and from six to ten inches in the ground ;
yet it is not only easy work for a man, but quite
possible work for a woman. It is straining taut
the barbed wire that is the real diiBculty, although
the sound picketing is the test of the fence. But
it is far cheaper to employ expert labour, and pay
from sixteen to twenty dollars a mile to get it
thoroughly done by half-breeds, than feed white
men and pay them by day or week for the same job.
The best fence I have seen in Canada was in
the Sedgwick Colony of the Shaughnessy Ready-
Made Farms prepared for the settlers of 1912,

THE LAND AND THE MAN 295

and I think only white labour was employed for
this.

" My work has been entirely on the land," Mr.
Oliver explained. " I might begin a little breaking
to-morrow with the two horses, as I really don't
seem to make much headway with this kind of thing."

Adam was looking on, first at the fence and then
at the fence-maker, his hands in his pockets, and
there was no mistaking the look in his eyes for
disappointment or sympathy.

The next day Mr. Oliver attacked a patch of
scrub-like land just outside the garden fence. It
wasn't exactly successful, but I knew it must be
difhcult to accomplish with just Dick and Nancy to
pull the plough, to say nothing of an ancient
rubbish heap en route, which kept guard over a pot
and pan pit at its side, and which I should think
had been in use a dozen years. But in the evening
my brother and the team returned.

" Boys Alive ! Lai. Seen his fence ? " I heard
Adam inquire of my brother.

" Whose fence ? "

" The other green Englishman's."

" Look here, Adam," was the wrathful reply. " I
never hit a chap beneath my own size, but if I ever
hear that word ' green Englishman ' from you again
I'll give you a bath in the slough."

" Boys Alive ! No offence ! An' I guess I'm so
clean as any man on the land come Sundays, though
I don't go in for style."

" Ah ! and you can kill a pig can't you ? "

" Boys Alive ! So well as any green "

My brother drew just a little nearer.

" Say it, Adam, say it, and back you come to

296 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Regina if I have to drag you there in the stone-boat
myself."

"Boys Alive! That's all right. No offence! No
offence."

In spite of the dialogue Adam was as wax in my
hands before the advent of Mr. Oliver, then he
sulked, and was as unmanageable as an untamed
broncho. He rose at his usual hour — rather earlier
— and milked the cows, and then sat on the veranda
and talked to himself, and sang dirges until I called
him in to breakfast.

" Why aren't you helping in the stable ? " I
inquired. " I won't have men sitting round doing
nothing before breakfast."

" I ain't going to do the Englishman's work for
him. Guess it's his team now, not mine. And I
ain't going to work in the stable whilst he's there."

" What has he done to you ? He doesn't interfere
with you in your work in any way," I said angrily.

" Boys Alive ! Didn't he take away my ploughing
after the other feller up north had taken my team ?
Still he^s all right, I have not a word against him,
but this other greenhorn, he's too fond of chewing
the rag."

We should probably have parted at that moment,
without further exchange of sentiments, but one of
my neighbours appeared at the gate.

" Good morning, Adam," he said. " I guess you
haven't seen my cow round."

" I see a cow so thin as a razor," said Adam.

" That's my cow."

" Boys Alive ! I shut her in the pasture long with
our bunch. Guess I'll come along and give you a
hand."

THE LAND AND THE MAN 297

" That's real kind, if it won't be taking you off
your job."

" Got no job. She's handed over my team to a
green Englishman."

The ploughing seemed to go well the first day
or so and then between my many chores and
household duties I failed to go and examine the
work every day. Hoping and believing it was going
well I arranged that Mr. Oliver should have every
other Saturday afternoon off to go down to the Fort
for tennis. But every day there was a bad quarter
of an hour at the start. Between Roddy McMahon
and Adam I had become the champion early bird
of the neighbourhood, and to see the new man play
with his five o'clock breakfast when I knew he
wouldn't get another meal till twelve, made me
perfectly wretched.

At the end of his month Adam passed into the
domain of Danny McLeay. I was awfully sorry to
part with him but I didn't like living in a quarrelsome
atmosphere ; and I felt sure that when Mr. Oliver
realized that he was entirely responsible for the
work, he would rise to the occasion. Besides, it is
the greatest mistake to imagine that because you
are paying a man a low salary you can't lose much
by him in Canada where labour is so expensive and
so scarce. An extra hand outdoors always increases
the indoor work, and no man is kept for nothing.
The cheapest labour is the best labour and the best
system of all for the woman-farmer is to train herself
to do all her own chores and hire her field labourer
at special seasons by the day even if she has to pay
the very highest market price. In Britain we grow
up with the idea that kitchens and bedrooms are

298 WHEAT AND WOMAN

born clean and remain in that state without labour ;
none can make clear the labour and energy which
women distribute, looking after the personal need
of men who never give a thought to the work they
are creating, but will spend hours meditating on the
work they can evade.

V

SHADOW AND SCYTHE BENEATH THE

SWORD

It was about this time that divers members of a
party of British immigrants who had come over to
work on the main line of the Grand Trunk Pacific
Railway between Winnipeg and Edmonton found
fault with their work and left it, I believe in several
cases long before they had worked out the balance
of their fares, according to arrangement with the
British shipping authorities who had sent them out.

On their way down from Kutawa they passed my
brother's stopping-house, and it appears that he
told them that I should probably be able to recom-
mend them work in my neighbourhood, and that
certainly they would not be allowed to continue
on their way to South Qu'Appelle vdthout an
opportunity of restoring the body after the fatigue
of sixty miles on foot.

The first to claim my hospitality was a party of
four or five, but as they only asked for bread and
boiling water to make their tea by the wayside, it
was easily given. The next was a very famished
and miserable-looking person named Thomas. He
pitched the sorriest tale of woe and hardship in
the railway camp, to say nothing of the torture
of fatigue and hunger on the sixty miles' walk with

299

300 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the sole sustenance of half a loaf of bread given
him by my brother. That he was really half
starved his phenomenal increase in size within the
conditions of peace and plenty which fell to his
lot proved indisputably. It was the day of Pearl
Mazey's weekly visit, and we gave him the best
meal we could collect, and Pearl said that never
within all the years of her recollection of the annual
visit of threshers had she seen a man so hungry.
I sent for my neighbour, who was looking for a
man who could cook and look after the house, and
who could be left in full charge during his occasional
absence.

" Adam can work splendidly, as we both know,"
I said, " but his cooking would be dire, and I don't
think it would be wise to leave him. This man
looks sensible and comes off a bad time. Why not
give him a trial ? "

" Si Booth is round doing some more breaking,"
he said, " and it's a cook and house-help I am
wanting. It takes a great deal too much of my
time. I'll give him a month's trial."

So Thomas departed in my neighbour's wake
engaged as hired man at twenty dollars a month.

Such numbers came off the trail to call on me
after this that I left off meals and gave advice
instead ; and also I began to make pointed inquiries
as to how much of their contract for fare they had
settled before deserting their post, and not in one
single case did I find that the game had been played
out to the end.

In defence they pleaded that the hardships had
been unbearable : irregular work, poor food. But
in their eyes the cruellest wrong of all was the

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 301

compulsory subscription to the medical fund.
" And never an ache or a pain in my body these
twenty years, and they call this a free country !
Give me England ! " said one.

" Well, it's something to have made that dis-
covery," I reminded him.

" And I assure you the snow blew into the tent,
and it was positively an inch deep under the
mattress. And they've got the impudence to call
it Eden ! " said another.

" A mattress ! " I exclaimed. " You don't mean
to tell me they allowed you that luxury ? "

" And if you could have felt it, miss, you might
well call it by that name," he said in derision.

"How much were you earning in the Old
Country ? " I inquired of each, and the answer of
nearly all of them was to the effect that they were
earning good wages when they could get work ;
but this average worked out at about one day and a
half in seven.

" And you contrived to get over to this country —
where you can get good wages six days out of seven
— because Canadians have been reared in the tradi-
tion that our word is as good as our bond," I said ;
" and the first thing you have done in the new
country is to break contract and raise reproach and
ill-feeling against England. Don't talk woman's
twaddle about hard mattresses and weak tea to me !
Who cared about comfort, do you suppose, at the
Front the other day ? And what of our history in
the Crimea ? How many of your vdves haven't
pawned your clothes for your meals ? No matter
what were the conditions of discomfort of your
camp, you couldn't have got out without signing

302 WHEAT AND WOMAN

that contract. I don't think much of the people
who sent you out on those lines ; but the point is
that, having taken it on, the least you could do was
to see the thing through."

Whether the news spread that I was no longer
sympathetic or " agin the Government," or that
Thomas was in control of my neighbour's kitchen,
I don't know, but my cottage was no longer the
selected stopping-house. One morning in passing
through the precincts of my neighbour's shack, on
my way to the Mazeys', I saw a son of Erin in the
doorway, and when I returned my neighbour said
he thought among the visitors of Thomas there was
one who might suit me as hired man.

Patrick O'Hara had a shock of auburn curls, blue
eyes, and eyelashes which he fluttered in a heart-
softening manner.

" I followed the plough as a boy in Ireland, lady,
and, faith ! though the farmer would not have me milk
because he caught me having just one drink out of
the can on a thirsty morning, shure it'll all be
coming back to me."

" I have a teamster," I explained, " and your
work would be chores for the first month at least ;
and I want the stable roof returfed, and the stables
kept clean and comfortable. Also there is a great
deal of stoning to be done, and fencing ; in fact,
you would have to do anything I required, and the
pay is only fifteen dollars for the first month. If
you suit me later, you might take the teamster's
place ; and I want a really reliable man as care-
taker for the winter. Mr. Dennison tells me you
have a wife and child whom you are anxious to
bring out."

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 303

Patrick O'Hara crossed the field with me, and
that afternoon the yard was indescribably neat and
tidy, and all the mangers were well filled for the
incoming of the horses ; ^^and the next day he
started sodding the stable roof. In the afternoon
he requested me to come to his aid in order that
he might make quicker progress. I had seen some-
thing of sod-work in the summer I had spent
among Hungarian settlers in my brother's home-
stead, but then I had only collected the turf and
looked on ; on this occasion I pitched sods from
the wagon, and Patrick O'Hara caught them on his
fork on the roof, until some gigantic sods fell by
the wayside, and I followed them in sheer exhaustion.

I am afraid that the " all things to all men "
trait was very strong in Patrick O'Hara, but un-
doubtedly he was a good man on the land or any-
where else when he chose to work. Mr. Oliver
called hirii into all the difficulties in the matter of
ploughing v^th excellent result, and long before
the month of trial had expired Patrick was fluttering
his eyelids and murmuring much of his loyal and
unwavering intention of fulfilling his contract, while
he mourned the absurd inadequacy of a salary of
fifteen dollars a month to the need and merit of a
brilliant Irishman.

Just at this time my attention was drawn to
certain portions of the ploughed land which the
plough had barely scraped in its passing. But long
before that, and in many ways, I had realized that
both Mr. Oliver and I had exaggerated the value
of his experience in Manitoba. He was looking ill
and worn. The very early hours, which are so
healthful to the strong, are more than trying to

304 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the men and women of weaker physical stamina ; and
my horses, with but half their work of the season half
done, were all looking wretched — harassed and spirit-
less and worn as I had never seen them look before.
" I am sure you are not strong enough for the
work," I told Mr. Oliver, " but I can't take chances
over the ploughing. Better stay on as my guest for a
while and rest. I'm sorry, but Patrick must take over
the plough and the care of the team from to-day."

Patrick had agreed to remain with me through
the season for twenty-six dollars a month, and
harvest wages through harvest days. On the depar-
ture of Mr. Oliver his wages were raised to thirty-
five dollars, of course on the understanding of
remaining to the end of the working year, and that
there would be no other man. Winter terms we
had not discussed, but it was understood that his
wife and child would come out ; and meanwhile I
had at his request instructed an agent to pay her
ten dollars a month on account of his wages.

Mr. Oliver stayed on for a day or so, and shortly
after he left he returned to tell me he had found
work which suited him ever so much better — brick-
laying on the new cathedral at South Qu'Appelle.
'' Two and a half dollars a day," he said ; " but
of course I have to find my own board. But
presently we are going to build a big house for a
rich farmer in the neighbourhood, and then we
shall get our board thrown in. It is quite near the
Fort, and I shall try and get down for tennis on
Saturday afternoons."

He was the son of an English clergyman, the
patron of whose living had secured for his son an
opening in one of the most important shipping

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 305

offices in London. But although in his heart he
didn't love the plough, he never hated it as he hated
the pen. I heard with great regret a year later or so
that my suspicion concerning his health had been
only too well founded, and that he was lying
seriously ill in a hospital many miles west.

That there must have been a few isolated days
of the typical sunshine of the prairie during May
and June I am sure, because I have always in the
smiling corner of my memory a picture of Julia and
Felicity lying on a manure heap under the blazing
sun, and ever so many small pigs running in and
out their legs and sniffing round their ears, and then
bolting like an army of cowards when Julia flicked
her friendly tail or Felicity raised her inquisitive
head ; but when the rains of June started to fall
it was obvious that the shadow of 1907 which had
veiled the way of spring was lingering on the prairie.
Cold, wild days were with us still although no hint
of frost, and the well-advanced grain had leaped
into long luxuriant growth. The prairie was an
oasis of deep green, waiting in coolest patience for
the harvest sun. I looked thankfully and hope-
fully at the crops, but disconsolately at the big field,
from end to end of which the plough still made its slow
but strenuous way. Before the exit of Mr. Oliver
I had abandoned hope of a second ploughing, with
the exception of the few acres Adam had ploughed
first, and which now bore a growth far and away
thicker than any seeding. These acres lay in the
south-west corner, catching every sunbeam that
strayed from threatening clouds, a brilliant sheet
of emerald grain threatening to fulfil the natural
law of its maturity long before the plough

u

L

3o6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

could get to the place in time to stop the
catastrophe.

Had I known more all would have been better ;
but, knowing very little, I was face to face with the
severest test in farming on the prairie — knocking
out the wild oats. Had I retained the service of
Roddy McMahon that year I might have done
better in 1908 and got entirely rid of them more
quickly, although I should have learned less ; but the
wild oats were right in the land, and the only way to
get them out was to encourage them to grow out.
That the difficulty is not confined to the newcomer
or incompetent farmer I proved in the season of
1908 and 1909. One day, riding in the neighbour-
hood of Springbrook, I passed a very perfect seed-
bed. It ran, I think, over a hundred acres, and
was quite even, and as far as cultivation went it
might have been an immense market garden pre-
pared for an expensive system to be worked on a
colossal scale. I hadn't seen the implement the
farmer was using, so I rode over and learned that
it was a cultivator ; also that its owner, Mr. George
Robb, had been plagued and pauperized with wild
oats through more than one season, but he thought
he had knocked them safely out of his 1908 seed-bed.
" I shall go through once more with the cultivator,"
he said, " that will make the fourth time ; then as
many more strokes of the harrows as I can get in
before freeze-up." I was not in Canada in 1909,
but in 1 910 he was my neighbour at the hotel dinner-
table in South Qu'Appelle, and reminded me of our
meeting.

" How did the crop on that field turn out ? " I
inquired.

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 307

" I seeded it down with my best wheat," he
answered, " and when it was well up it was the
thickest crop in Springbrook, only you couldn't tell
whether it was wheat or wild oats that had been
seeded. So I ploughed a good fire-guard and fired
the lot. I guess they are right out of the land now."

I think they must have been too, because this
year Mr. George Robb is putting up quite the
biggest and most modern of any of the many modern
houses in Springbrook.

But to return to the field which was destined to
be the strength or the weakness of my own proposi-
tion. It was certain that by double discing,
followed immediately by continual harrowing, I
might have produced, and immediately killed, the
greater part of the surface weed-seed which had
fallen through the crops of the seasons of 1905 and
1906. The very deep ploughing of 1907 not only
turned up the wild oats which my predecessor had
deliberately buried out of the way of the average
turning of seed-bed soil, but it retained all the
surface seed shed from the two crops I had harvested,
laying up a fresh edition of disappointment, loss,
and toil. Meantime I faithfully practised the good
methods I knew of. Patrick O'Hara made clear to
me the excellent work and time-saving that is
accomplished by immediately following newly
ploughed land with a stroke of the harrows. In this
way the soil has no time to cake in chunks, a great
deal of weed is pulled out of root to the surface,
and pulverization is accomplished in the end with
far less work. Every day at four o'clock I went
out with the harrows and relieved Pat so that he
was able to get well on with the chores before supper

3o8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and in this way the harrows kept close in the trail
of the plough.

But the fence of the forty-acre pasture was giving
out badly, and we not only had wandering calves
occasionally, but we couldn't be quite sure of
keeping horses within bounds through " the day of
rest." To this I owed my first regular experience
of ploughing which stood me in such good stead in
a day of need which was not far on in the future.
Patrick constantly called me to put in a half-day
*' following the plough " whilst he mended the
fence. I learned to manage it fairly well consider-
ing how much more difficult it is when weeds have
grown so rank and strong that even very deep
ploughing will seldom bury them and will not
always quite turn over those of deeply penetrating
root ; so that, desirable as my deeply ploughed
acres looked, and soft as was this seed-bed prepared
for 1908, I knew, when I cared to face the truth,
that many strange seeds were there ; but I looked
right and left and saw the dark green crops gracious
and glorious as they swayed with the wind or stood
up straight and strong through the heavy rain, and
I said in my heart, " With the harvest I shall pull
through in spite of things."

On the strength of my faith and their promise
I commissioned Si Booth to break and put in shape
for crop a further twenty- four acres for 1908.
Four he added to the big field, sixteen he broke
east and west, taking a difficult hill in his passing,
and four he added to the original six on the east
boundary. I begrudged the four and said so almost
complainingly.

" The land in that corner is sandy, it hardly

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 309

seems worth while to risk twenty dollars there," I
said. " Did you notice how thin the wheat is
compared even with the other breaking ? I'm not
sure that there isn't even alkali at the far end."

" Your summer-fallow crop is the finest I ever
buried head and shoulders in, and shoiild yield forty
bushels to the acre if I ever saw it in this country.
But it isn't headed out yet. The grain on the east
fence is in full head. You'll not be sorry, I guess,
you broke up that land."

" Is your wheat in head yet ? " inquired my
neighbour.

" Only here and there," I answered. " But the
barley looks almost ready for the reaper."

" Take care of it then, it's about the only crop
you'll get this year."

" Oh, do be quiet ! " I answered. " You invite
disaster with your eternal prophecies of bad luck."

" It's^ July 23," he answered, " and sunshine
— nowhere ! Wheat sl.ould be in head by July 12.
I reckon we are a gooa three weeks behind, with
the indispensable condition of sunshine dead against

us."

" The sun will blaze for us presently," I pro-
phesied, " and we shall have the most bountiful
harvest on record."

" It will need to blaze soon or it will be an un-
recorded harvest."

On Sunday, July 28, the sun shone in amazing
brilHancy. I walked through the pasture into the
twenty-five acres beyond to find the wheat in full
head and in its most delicate and exquisite stage of
flower. It was absolute in its beauty, so alive, so
strong, so glorious — just a living, breathing blessing ;

3IO WHEAT AND WOMAN

and in that gleaming, silent day of rest, as I stood
in the heart of the field with the lovely thing
around me I was glad to think that because I came
to Canada that specially clean and beautiful field
of wheat was there ; and when every event and
circumstance of the harvest of 1907 has faded in
my memory I shall still see its glorious prophecy,
still watch the tall mass of living loveliness sway
towards me from every side, still be glad with the
sunbeams playing in and out among the delicate
green shades of the waving grain, still remember
how it seemed to thank one for having helped it
into its kingdom of clean, sweet life.

But after that day there was so little sun, so
little progress. Nancy and I, with Felicity in tow,
made our way east and west through the wheat-
plains of Wideawake, Indian Head, and Spring-
brook, and the lovely environment of wheat-lands
that line the banks of the strange creek which runs
up through Springbrook from Fort Qu'Appelle.
Never had the promise of life been so glorious in
our special part of the prairie provinces. Walls of
green grain rose in surpassing fullness and beauty
on either side of everywhere, and although there
had been much rain there was but little wind and
tempest, and in consequence very little had lodged.
It seemed as though Providence couldn't fail it,
not so much because of fear of financial loss, or
even the care and labour that those miles and miles
of grain stood for, but because of hope and the best
kind of faith — it was life itself, a phase of Providence
incarnate.

It was just at this time that Ricky first showed
signs of that most evil of all disorders to which

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SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 3 1 1

horses are subject in the, generally speaking, health-
giving and health-preserving condition of life on
the prairie — swamp-fever. I noticed him flinch at
weight, and shrink back from his work one day when
he was called upon to take fourth place on the disc,
and it was obvious that he couldn't pull. I told
Patrick to take him off and put him in the pasture.

*' Ye canna get through without the disc, and
three horses canna draw it. Dick can pull if he
chooses," said Pat.

" Take him off," I repeated. " I must get
another."

My neighbour Richard Ryan the elder was break-
ing with two bronchos and an old horse on his side
of the west fence. He had a fine way with horses,
and was always gentle and careful and kind. These
old-timers seem to get through quite as much work
as the modern hustlers, and they are nearly always
gentle and clever with horses. I admired the man
and his work immensely, and especially the patient
way he walked so quietly through a run of bad luck
till the gods cried " Enough ! " and he slept in the
acre on the hill. He gave me a day's trial of the
old gelding, whom he strongly recommended and
on the point of whose age he was perfectly frank.
The price was a hundred and fifty dollars cash, and
I was glad to think that if I had to part with a
hundred and fifty dollars just then, it would be to
him. The manager of the Union Bank at South
Qu'Appelle advanced me the money in spite of his
pessimism over the weather ; and nearly all bank
loans depend on the weather between June and
September i. Ricky went into the pasture, and
from that day did no more work except that now

312 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and then I took him a short distance in the buggy.
It was on such an occasion that I first heard the
fear which had been hovering in my mind put into
words by another. " Dick's failing," said a woman
who had been born and bred on the prairie and knew
every phase and turn of that dread disease of the
equine race, swamp-fever. " Dick's failing " ! In
that moment I knew that life held more in the
balance than a hundred harvests, and realized the
full meaning of the difference in animal and vegetable
life. Dick, who had been swift as a sunbeam as he
pulled the cutter across the snow, strong as a young
lion, and gentle as a child as he lent his brave shoulder
to the disc or harrows, or scampered with the buggy
over the trail — Ricky, who had never omitted to
whinny forth a friendly greeting even when oats
were almost under his nose, was failing / Out of
the clear intelligence of his eyes he made one under-
stand that it was no good, that something in the
very centre of him had given way and he couldn't
go on ; that even to draw me just a mile or so
across the prairie was too much.

My neighbours came to see him. Guy Mazey,
who had lost six horses through swamp-fever in less
than as many months, another neighbour who had
lost twelve. All of them were of the same opinion
that Ricky was smitten with the dread disease in
which the victim first shows unmistakable signs of
failing energy, then passes into that stage where
life seems gradually consumed through internal fire,
and the horse fades slowly away like a human being
in the last stage of consumption. Happily this
terrifying form of sickness seems to be passing away
from the settled parts of the prairie, and I never

SHADOW & SCYTHE BENEATH SWORD 3 1 3

felt quite sure that the illness of my poor horse was
due, or entirely due, to this disease. With generous
workers, human or equine, there is always the
danger of overwork. It was Father Hugenard, one
of the leaders of the giants among the workers of
Canada, who, when he found himself stricken with
sudden physical failing, said to me, " No, I have not
done well ; had I done well I should not now be
unable to work. To be imprudent is not to do
well." In taking full measure of the splendid
swiftness, the great heart, the generous nature of one
of the noblest and most lovable horses I can remember,
amongst many in the Old Country and the new,
undoubtedly there had been imprudence. I was
so proud of his speed and the splendid way he
charged Troy Hill. Felicity takes it in just the
same way, only Dick was so young, younger than I
knew ; and in any case one should never take all
a three-year-old will give. I sent for Dr. Creamer
the well-known horse-surgeon of South Qu'Appelle,
and he thought rest and special food and tonic
might pull him through, and that it was altogether
best for him to be out. So he remained with his
favourite Nancy and Felicity in the pasture ; but
although Felicity was kind, Nancy, to whom he
had always been so good, was cool. Horses are
selfish in their affection for each other ; the old
and the sick usually walk alone. But although
through the end of the summer and the early fall
Ricky was happy " in the quiet of green grass," and
eating voraciously of the luxuriant herbage of the
slough, he became thinner and thinner, and the
shadow came nearer in the depths of his kind eyes.

VI

SUMMER DIVERSION— LAW AND LABOUR
—PATRICK O'HARA AND SI BOOTH

Tennis and dancing were the favourite forms of
diversion in the historic village of Fort Qu'Appelle,
vi^hich since the coming of the Grand Trunk
Pacific Railvi^ay has developed the plain and useful
features of a town without losing any of the
attraction of its exquisite environment which
blesses the trail of the Qu'Appelle valley all the
way.

One cannot dance through the summer months
even in the cool region of the Qu'Appelle lakes ;
but the tennis club of Fort Qu'Appelle has all the
distinction of tradition defended by the force of
exclusion. At one time, to be known as a member
of the club gave much the same cachet in the district
as presentation at Court during the Victorian era.
Also, in common with many of the great persons of
the Victorian era, face value went for little. None
would guess from a glance at the club enclosure
with its distinctly primitive pavilion the important
part it played in the creation and preservation of a
social atmosphere in the little village that grew
round the Hudson Bay fort in the centre of the
valley wherein the Indians love to dwell.

On Saturday afternoons the members of the club

314

SUMMER DIVERSION 315

take it in turn to provide tea. At one time it was
tennis and tea, the very simplest affair ; but gradu-
ally tea was threatened with symptoms of an attack
of the comparative degree, and some one whispered
that the powers had ordained that there were never
to be more than two kinds of cake, lest the humiliating
suspicion of tea and tennis should fall upon this
gala day of an association of the North- West
Territory which marked the manner of things
social according to the tradition of the Mother
Country. However, whether it was because of, or
in spite of, tradition and exclusion, some very
delightful people were to be found among the
members of the club from time to time ; and
although I very rarely had time to get down to
the Fort even to collect the necessaries of life, I
appreciated the privilege of admission to the club
and faithfully kept my day for tea.

That year it chanced to fall in July. Patrick
O'Hara packed me, and the tea-things, and the
rolls and the rock cakes and the big cake, which I
greatly feared was still uncooked in the middle,
and Molly's cream, which is the very nicest
cream in the Qu'Appelle valley, into the wagon. In
fact nothing was forgotten except the indispensable
items of tea and water, and drawn by Jim and
Nancy, with Felicity in the rear, we came, in Jim's
time, to the enclosure, which is an odd corner of
one of the loveliest bits of hill and lake scenery in
the world. A friendly man dashed off for a pound
of tea at the Hudson Bay Store, and the Macdougall
girls, with all the other friendly men in tow, went
off for water by the short cut to the Mound, which
always saves a lot of time providing you are

3i6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

sufficiently agile to make the passing of the creek
without mishap.

My tea was quite a success, and no doubt I
must have arrived home with an air of triumph, or
at least unusual enjoyment, since Patrick O'Hara
made use of the occasion to impress on me that a
holiday did every one a power of good and it was
" aisy to see it's yerself that's the better already."
Later I heard that the South Qu'Appelle fair was
to fall on a day in the following week, and Fort
Qu'Appelle fair a week after ; and although Thomas
and Si Booth and the first division of the Mazeys
and all the neighbours were going, Pat himself was
not even dreaming of a wish to go.

Every one went to South Qu'Appelle, and he
gave me its history in all the glory of fact and
fiction, adorned with many expressions of thankful-
ness to exalted representatives of supreme wisdom
who had decreed that Patrick O'Hara should have
a natural preference for duty, in the form of the
plough, on those special days on which the other
ninety-nine chased special pleasures. We had
reached the last section of the ploughing at the near
end of the big field, but it ran into several acres,
and when it was finished there were still the
brilliant acres which Adam had turned, with wild
oats of all lengths and sorts and sizes rushing into
more life unless the means of annihilation could
catch up in time. On every possible occasion I
encouraged horses and cows to feed from the
volunteer crop on the principle that every little
helps ; but a field of tame oats and my cherished
seed-garden were close at hand, so I never dared to
turn all the beasts on to it, although that has since

SUMMER DIVERSION 317

become the most effectual method of checking wild
oats' scourge in this neighbourhood.

On the afternoon before the fair at the Fort, as
I went out to relieve Pat of his team at harrowing-
time, I saw Thomas walk away from the plough.

" They're that set on having me with them
to-morrow," said Pat. " They'll likely be having a
race. Mr. Dennison has lent them the buggy,
Si Booth will drive the baulky mare, and Thomas
says he will be riding. ' Ye're throwin' away boot-
leather and your throuble, Thomas, coming over,'
I tould him, ' for, faith, ye'll not be seeing me at
Fort Qu'Appelle fair.' "

" Pat, I know you must be wanting to go with
them all," I said. " It's very plain-saihng just
here, I can finish quite a piece of the section during
the afternoon, and next week we can get on to the
last, and maybe we can catch out those oats after
all."

After a few orthodox protestations, not quite up
to his usual form, Pat yielded to my suggestion, and
the next day after dinner he vanished across the
field in his Sunday clothes.

On the morning after the fair I awoke with a
sense of vexation and walked to the window. At
the gateway of the pasture the horse which Si Booth
had ridden stood bridled, but without any hint of
an owner.

Pat's room was empty, the bed had not been
slept in. I caught the horse easily and put him in
a stable, and after breakfast I harnessed the team
and waited until I could nurse my wrath no longer,
and walked over to my neighbour's dwelling, expect-
ing to find them all there with a penitent Pat.

3i8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

But there was no sign of life within the shack.
I climbed the diihcult way to the sleeping apart-
ment. It was exactly as they had left it. I turned
home determined to waste no more valuable time,
but to hitch up the team and get on to the plough-
ing, whilst my sentiments of Pat searched space in
vain for adequate terms of expression.

At eleven o'clock Thomas came limping across
the ploughed land, and he dared to come with a
laugh — a shamefaced smile, it was true, but it was
distinctly intended to show mirth. So I told him
he was a living disgrace to the British Empire, and
brought other truths to the wrong side of discretion.
Thomas resented my sentiments, my words, and
my interference, and reminded me that we were
in a free country. I forswore magnanimity and
asked him how free he had been in the free country
on the first day of our acquaintance. To my
surprise he became contrite. " But you say too
much," he added. " A fellow don't care to be
told he is a disgrace to his country."

" And what is a Briton but a disgrace when he
puts in a night in jail for drunkenness ? " I said,
drawing my bow at a venture.

" We wasn't the only ones. Every man round
town was full, and six of us was in the coop ! Mr.
Dennison came and bailed us out this morning.
Paid the fine. Pat hopes you will advance his wages
to repay it."

" If it wasn't for Pat's work I wouldn't advance
a single dollar. Six men finish their holiday in
Fort Qu'Appelle jail, and all British, I suppose ! "

" No, there was one half-breed ; and all the
Canadians was drunker than any of us."

SUMMER DIVERSION 319

" Quite so, but not so silly ! "

" It was Pat's fault, he got quarrelsome. We was
all comfortable in the bar, and I said, ' Pat, I'll go
and get the mare and hitch up, and we can get
back easy like.' Says he : ' All right, Thomas, I'll
wait here.' I found Dolly and put her in the
buggy, but when I got back, Pat he had taken more.
* Be damned to you ! ' he says. (Excuse me, miss.)
' I'll fight you ! '

" ' Pat,' says I, ' you're drunk, man. Come on
home now, and I give you my word I'll fight you in
the morning.'

" ' It's drunk I am ! ' says he. ' I'll fight any
man in the room ! ' But nobody offered. ' I'll
fight any man in the Dominion ! ' said he, encouraged
like. And the half-breed he started up and there
was no stopping them. I came out of it all and
sat on the side-walk to think what was best, and
the police-sergeant took me for doing nothing. And
it cost a lot.

" This morning Mr. Dennison came and bailed
us out, and we started to come home with Dolly,
and just as we got to John McLeay's gate she bolted.
Pat jumped out of the back of the buggy, but I sat
tight until she started to jump the fence. Then I
fell out. The mare's cut herself mortal bad and
the buggy is in splints, and you bet Pat's afraid to
come back ! "

In the afternoon Mr. Macdonald's little daughter
came to see me, and I left the plough to get some
tea. My neighbour had been staying with her
people for the fair, and she knew all about the
escapade.

" Shall you keep Pat, or send him away ? " she

320 WHEAT AND WOMAN

asked, as I searched for cream in the cellar of what
I thought was my empty house.
. " Oh, I shall keep him," I answered. " It's of
no use to pay a man full wages up to harvest just
to secure his service through harvest, and let him
go at the very time you need him."

" Is he a very good man ? " she asked.

" Yes, he is a good all-round man when he
chooses — very — only he is like most newcomers in
this country, very slow."

Meantime Pat had returned and heard my
verdict from his room. My wrath had burnt itself
out over Thomas. I was prepared to behave to
Pat as though nothing had happened. Undoubtedly
an old temptation had overtaken him, and I could
not forget that in the several weeks through which
he had worked for me there had been no sign of
such a weakness, and that the simple Irish labourer
had behaved as a gentleman.

" Have you had food to-day, Pat ? " I inquired.

" Not a crumb."

I cooked him some beefsteak and made him some
strong tea ; it inspired confidence.

" You'll be giving me the dollars to pay back
Mr. Dennison the fine ? " he ventured. " Fifteen
dollars."

" Yes, I'll let you have it at once. It was rather
an expensive adventure, wasn't it ? "

" Faith, miss, it's cruel ! An' not a scrap of
breakfast. I'll say that for them in the auld country
jails, they'll always be giving you your breakfast."

Shortly after I met my neighbour and he spoke
of the affair.

" I suppose you know he is talking of quitting

LAW AND LABOUR 321

you," he said. " It seems that he heard you say-
he was slow."

Not for a moment did I believe that he really
thought of leaving ; but whether it was the result
of wounded vanitv or of reaction after his adventure
I know not, certain it was that Patrick O'Hara's
work began to flag. Si Booth was busy on the
breaking, and the barley crop being ripe he under-
took to take it off with my binder and team. Pat
left following the plough, which seemed to be
moving more slowly than ever, and he and I stooked
before noon, but at dinner-time he said the old
wound on his leg was giving him great pain, and in
the afternoon I finished the barley stooking,
leaving him to prepare supper and attend to the
stock.

I didn't get back until eight o'clock. I was hungry
and very tired, and greatly enraged to see the calves
outside the fence and Pat looking as though it did
not matter.

" It's divil a bit of use thryin' to keep thim in.
Faith, I've done my livil best ! "

" Then you must lock them up. You know as
well as I do that they will spend the night in the

oats."

The next day we returned to the ploughing.
I relieved Pat at four o'clock with the harrows, and as
usual he had a place here and there to point out
to me where I had carelessly allowed the seed-bed
to escape the harrow — but these landmarks were
never allowed to escape the observation of my
tutor. One can't help noticing that those who
stand most in need of a little charity for themselves
in the judgment of others seldom fail to carry round

322 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the eye for eye and tooth for tooth measure in their
judgment of others.

He came to me in the evening. " Since it
seems my work's no longer suiting you, maybe
it's better I should be going at the end of my
month."

" Your work suits me well when it's good work.
I can't risk the cattle getting into my neighbours'
crops, and I intend to say what I think when you
are inclined to let things slide," I answered. " My
engagement with you is through harvest. If you
leave, I pay you the original wage agreed upon
before you took Mr. Oliver's place and not a cent

more."

" I have done my work well. You've said so
yourself more than once."

" I could get any number of men to work well
for me at a dollar a day between June and September.
If you leave before harvest, you will get that rate,

no more."

I knew the fifteen dollars' fine must have been a
hard hit, and he had asked for money more than
once to send home. I quite concluded that the
discussion had put an end to his intention.

On September 3 I met my neighbour in his gate-
way. " What are you going to do about harvest
help ? " he inquired.

" It will depend on the weather. If we escape
the frost, I shall hire stookers ; if not, I shall stook
myself."

" Who is to drive the binder ? "

" Pat. He is awfully keen about it. Si Booth
showed him exactly how it worked at barley-harvest,
and his bad leg gives out stooking."

LAW AND LABOUR 323

" But Pat is leaving you and comes to me to-
morrow to stook for me through harvest."

" Impossible ! " I said. " I have heard no word
of it. A week or so ago when I spoke to him about
slacking he hinted he would like to be off, but when
I showed him I should use my privilege over the
wages there was an end to it."

" Well, he came over to me and said he was
quitting then ; that you had found fault with him,
not because of the jail episode but because he was
slow. He has been round nearly every day since,
and said that whether I gave him a job or not, he
should quit. I didn't know you weren't fully aware
of the whole thing. Men being scarce, I told him
he could come on."

" But I raised his wages to the end of season on
the sole condition of his remaining," I said ; " and
he is caretaking through the winter for me, and his
wife and child are to come out in the spring."

" I think you will find he is leaving you," said
my neighbour.

I called Pat. " What is this that I hear about
your going on to Mr. Dennison and leaving me on
the eve of harvest ? "

" Dennison needn't make too sure of getting me
there. Plenty of others round is wanting men."

" You have been bothering Mr. Dennison for
days to engage you. You want to get there simply
because you think you will get an easy time and
because amongst men you are free more or less to
disgrace yourself, as you did the other day. Under-
stand that if you leave me without notice you will
pay for it. / shan't. I need not pay you a farthing
for breaking your contract. I shall consult a

324 WHEAT AND WOMAN

magistrate and let you know exactly what I shall
do in the matter."

" I've earned my money."

" You've done nothing of the kind. Had you
remained until the end of the season you might
have earned the full sum on the average of the
higher rate of wages after August ; and until the
day of Fort Qu'Appelle fair I thought I should be
leaving a trustworthy man with my beasts. Had
you left at the end of your first month you would
have drawn just fifteen dollars. I should have
hired Roddy McMahon and his team to finish the
ploughing and it would have been finished weeks
ago. If I were you, for very shame I could not
leave that worn-out job for another."

" I've earned my money."

" If the magistrate decides that it is so, I shall
obey the law of the country."

I consulted Mr. Thompson, postmaster and justice
of the peace at Fort Qu'Appelle, and he said it was
the worst case of the treachery of a farm-hand that
had ever come under his notice. " Dock him a
fortnight's wages," he advised, " and if he insists
on his claim let him sue you. As you have no
written evidence it would be a little difficult to
judge exactly how you stand over the change of
wages. But a man that leaves his employer on the
eve of harvest engaged at a scale of wages to carry
him over harvest will not go unpunished in this
country."

I docked the two weeks' wages, but as I had
advanced his wife two pounds through an agent
in England the fine was considerably curtailed. He
put his shoulder to his work on the last day as he

PATRICK O'HARA AND SI BOOTH 325

had done on the first and left my yard in perfect
order. He came in just before he crossed the field
to my neighbour's shack.

" Shall you pay me my wages, miss ? "

" Less a fortnight for your dishonesty in leaving
me at this time. If you still think you are entitled
to the full amount you must sue me."

" I shall not do that, miss, I'm no believer in the
law."

" I can quite believe it."

"I've worked well for you."

" You have played the meanest trick that a
workman can possibly play, and — not that I con-
sider it makes the matter better or worse — you have
played it on a woman."

So on September 4 I was in the midst of a
hundred acres of grain, which the frost might attack
any night, and I had hay to cut and carry, and six
acres of my field still to plough.

Si Booth returned with his team that afternoon
to disc and harrow the acres he had broken. He
was a man of few words. " That's the meanest
trick I've known any man play in this country," he
said. " He's been after Roland Dennison to hire
on ever since the day of the fair. It's too bad."

However, I was too busy to worry. I wasted no
time in words, but mowed and raked and got right
down to the ploughing, which was none the easier
because I knew that my ex-professor and hired man
was watching me finish my bits and pieces which
were very near the windows of his new abode ; and
even now I do not finish the bits and pieces in good
style, but I never leave an inch unturned. I
finished late on Saturday night, the sun had gone

326 WHEAT AND WOMAN

beyond the horizon a full hour, there was just a
pink glow in the west as I walked home behind my
team across the seed-bed of 1908, and again I
consoled myself with the old illusion that the gods
would set everything right which was wrong with
that seed-bed because they knew so exactly how
things had been. But it is only the half-gods who
spare in the making.

No words can make clear the intense anxiety that
gripped the heart of the people of the prairie
provinces in that first week of September 1907.
It was true that the year was preceded by two years
of perfect weather and of the most bountiful crops
on record. But this had but increased the general
desire to extend possession. Thousands of acres
had been bought on the system of extended pay-
ment at from six to eight per cent, interest, imple-
ments had been bought to work it, and increased
horse power. But in 1907 the September moon
arose on a green and unripe crop ; only a miracle
of the weather could save the situation, but the
general hope was that the spring having been so
late in coming, frost also might keep off a week or
so.

On Sunday evening, September 5, I called at the
house of my neighbour Richard Ryan, and there I
found several people who know every phase and
symptom of the fates that wait on harvest. Mr.
William Nicoll was there, and he owned several
sections of wheat that year ; among them was a
thousand acres which he had raised in partnership
with Mr. Ryan's eldest son.

" Shall you start, or wait ? " I inquired of
him.

PATRICK O'HARA AND SI BOOTH 327

" We start to-morrow morning."

*' But do you think I ought to start ? " I asked.
" My wheat has barely turned in places, and since
we have had winter nearly all the summer, mightn't
we reasonably expect a dash of the saving grace of
summer now ? "

" We shall get it," he answered with a rather
weary smile. " The Indian summer — after the
frost."

" But it seems so unreal — Harvest ! and I haven't
seen a solitary yellow field ! "

" And you won't see one this year," he said, " it
will be a green harvest all right. George Seymour
cut a week ago ; it was always his father's plan.
He is making huge stooks so that it can ripen good
and slow in stook, and I guess he'll get the pull of
us all. It's all up — don't wait. No farmer can
afford to wait in this country when once September

is m.

((

Well, you should all know better than I. If
you are intending to cut immediately, I ought not
to wait," I said ; " only it seems to me that the
sun cannot fail this glorious crop."

On the following day I made arrangements with
a man to come that night and start on the oats the
following morning. He failed to appear. I waited
until nine o'clcok. It was a glorious day, perfect
harvest weather, and the oats at any rate were just
ready for the reaper. I walked over the newly
broken field on which Si Booth was finishing his last
stroke of the harrows.

" What will you charge me to take off the crops ? "
I asked him. " I can't afford to hire horses, as you
know, with an expensive season behind me and with

328 WHEAT AND WOMAN

this awful uncertainty in the air. But I won't risk
the grain, and I am entirely in your hands about the
charge."

" I can't very well work without my own team
I guess," he answered. " But if you will find them
in feed I'll take off your crops with three of my
horses at four dollars a day."

At that time the greenest stooker was asking and
getting two dollars a day. I had expected a demand
of anything from six dollars a day upwards.

I thanked him. You can't gush in Canada, it
seems almost as bad form in the freedom of service
on the prairie as a breath of patronage ; only it was
the kind of thing that makes one want to stand up
for all Canadians for ever and ever.

" If you will go straight across to the four-acre
oat-field with the binder," I said, " I will hitch up
my own team and start discing the big field. I
would rather not start stooking until you have got
several rows down."

The sun shone on one's back in kindliest fashion,
and oh, it was healing-sweet after all those days of
work and worry and suspense. And the disc never
demands much of one's intelligence. I grew rested
and refreshed and hopeful ; the hum of the binder
was as " Consolation " by Liszt. Long before I
went to dinner I was hoping again — believing. But
by three o'clock the wind had turned bitterly cold.
Now and then I had to get off the disc and walk.
Suddenly there blew from the north a storm of cold
and penetrating rain. Si Booth unhitched his team
and went in ; it is not wise to bind wet grain even
at the point of the sword of frost. An hour later
I followed.

1

PATRICK O'HARA AND SI BOOTH 329

For four days it stormed, then cleared two
hours before sunset — fatal hour ! That night of
September 9 marked the end of suspense, the frost
came — twelve degrees.

VII

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907

In a way the actual coming of the frost was a positive
relief. The strain of suspense was over, the sword
had fallen and hope was dead.

On the morning following the frost I stooked oats
and I hoped Si Booth would go out with the binder,
but he told me the heavy wheels would not turn over
the sodden ground, and that he doubted that he
would be able to start even on the morrow. How-
ever, on the next afternoon I called him in triumph
to hear the hum of my neighbour's binder ; but it
ceased almost as suddenly as it had started.

" Couldn't travel I guess ; but it should be going
all right after to-day," said he.

" It's Sunday to-morrow," I said regretfully,
" Have you any conscientious objection to harvesting
on Sunday ? "

" No," said he, " I've no conscientious objection
to it I guess."

" Neither have I," I agreed hopefully. " It is
preposterous to think that it is not the truest and
highest service to make every possible effort to
save the wheat of the world ; and after all, it is the
teaching of the One in whose honour the day is
kept, isn't it ? The beasts of the field had to be
helped, and for the hungry wheat was gathered,

330

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 331

wasn't it ? So we will take the binder out to-
morrow, and if anyone has to do time, why I will
do it — after harvest."

He looked a little surprised, but quite determined.
" I ain't got any conscientious objections — 'tisn't
that ! And I think what you say is the thing.
But I wouldn't be the first to do what none of
the neighbours do."

" If you won't, then there's an end to the matter ;
but I think that in a year like this people should be
commanded by priest and parHament to go out
into the fields and save the harvest."

" It sounds all right," he agreed.

A killing frost should have supported my theory,
but the Sabbath night was exquisitely soft and
soothing and the new day dawned warm and fair.
We started on the six acres I had despised because
of the sandy element in the soil. I had decided
that I couldn't afford a stooker and must do it
myself. Si Booth shook his head ominously, but
I hoped by stooking by moonlight, when he wasn't
there, to convey the impression that I could keep
up with the binding. As I had to walk half a mile
to the field and then leave it an hour ahead of him,
to prepare meals, I knew I should have to feel my
way through, since I couldn't possibly see it.

" This six acres is good and ripe," said he, as I fell
on a line of sheaves. " If it was only all as ready to
cut as this it would be all right. It's hardly frozen ;
with another day's sun on it, it would have been
shelling out. You got a bit of the best wheat of the
country just here."

By the time I had washed up the dinner things
he had crossed the adjoining stretch of prairie

332 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and was reaping the twenty-live-acre field. I was
rather thankful to be out of his watchful and some-
what disapproving eye. The monotony of stooking
ceased to bother me after my first season, but it is
rather exhausting physically, and that year excep-
tionally so, owing to the bulk of the sheaves being
green and in consequence very heavy to lift and
difficult to place. I hadn't finished six acres when
I had to leave to prepare supper, but I returned
and completed the field by moonlight, and walking
home round twenty-five, stooked the rows of fallen
sheaves that lay in the way, and felt that I had
considerably lightened the task of to-morrow.

On Tuesday the same programme exactly.
On Wednesday afternoon twenty-five was nearly
down when the binder came sharply against a stone
and snapped a small but most important member.
" I'll get into town for the repair right now,"
said Si Booth, " but it's vexing, and all going so well.
I guess I'll bring back a stooker if I can find one."

" Perhaps it would be as well," I allowed,
" although I have enjoyed it immensely so far.
But you are getting rather far ahead, aren't you ?
Still, I shall pick up this afternoon."

I worked east and west along the rows of the
twenty-five-acre field until the stars came out. It
wasn't possible to finish, but as I was alone at least
there was no supper to get. I could milk and go
at once to bed. As I walked across the pasture
bitterness threatened me ; I was deadly tired,
the sheaves had been greener and heavier than usual,
and it seemed to me hopelessly unripe. I came
within an ace of the suffocating conviction of utter
failure when suddenly out of the dusk came a friendly

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 333

whinny, and Felicity galloped up to welcome me»
with Nancy in close attendance, and my poor old
Ricky plodding along in the rear. The three horses
walked with me to the gate, and I remembered that
grain was not the only produce on a prairie farm,
and that one who knew things had said that every
situation had its compensation. And the beasts
did make up for a lot and were always there. The
cloud lifted. I determined to work my way over
the rock of difficulty gamely.

The light of a lamp shone from my bedroom
window. I thought that perhaps my brother had
come along from his homestead to help me through,
but I found Marjorie McDougall, who had come up
on the mail to stay a day or two with me to help
me with my chores.

The house already bore the McDougall mark of
a house in order. The kitchen was warm and bright,
supper was ready, and an air of good cheer pervaded
the whole.

Si Booth did not get back till the next evening,
and the next day we finished the reaping of the
breaking. That night a very severe run of frost
set in, and after that the forty-nine acres of summer-
fallow blackened day by day in the rays of a blazing
sun.

The new stooker had not long been out from
England. He was the son of a tailor, living in the
neighbourhood of London, and had been appren-
ticed to his father. He knew nothing whatever of
life or work on the land. On Saturday night a
gale blew, and on Sunday morning just twelve
stooks stood for the four dollars due for his pay.

I restooked the greater part of his beat with

334 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Sabbath patience, and told him as nicely as I could
that in stooking I must find my superior, and that
he wouldn't do. I heard months after that he went
on to Regina to follow his own trade, and a year
ago that he was doing wonderfully well, and had
already been back to England to spend a winter with
his own people. I drove him into Fort Qu'Appelle,
and went on to a house on the lake shore where I
heard an Englishman and his wife were to be found
who had farmed in the Mother Country. They
were looking for work, and would possibly be glad
to become my caretakers for the winter.

The English woman was fair and beautifully neat
and clean. A flufl^y-haired, fairy-like little girl
was running about in a scarlet dressing-gown,
just out of her bath. The house was spotlessly
clean. The mother told me that her husband was
away on the hill, stooking for some people that I
knew, but that her brother-in-law had just arrived
and might possibly care to come and stook for me.
I drove up and recognized the young Englishman
who had lately arrived from New Zealand through
his likeness to the little girl. I told him my business
and that I was prepared to pay twenty cents an
hour — two dollars a day, but that I required his
services immediately. He stopped at the house to
get his bag, and drove home with me in the wagon
to the farm. I undertook to finish twenty-five
acres, and he crossed over at once to the farther
breaking. He stooked from dawn to dark without
a hint of waning energy, and he asked me if
twenty cents an hour held good if he could get in
an hour extra.

" That's a great man you found," Si Booth said.

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 335

to me two days later. " He's the first stooker that
ever made me get an extra hustle on the binder."

The Wiltons arranged to come to me. I agreed to
pay a dollar a day wages till freeze- up, and to
board them with their two children. Through the
winter they were to receive ten dollars a month
wages and plain board, consisting of meat, meal,
potatoes, tea, sugar, rice, evaporated fruit, and
dairy produce, and what butter and eggs they did
not need in the winter had to be bartered in exchange
for groceries. I made it quite clear that any more
luxurious fare they might require for themselves
and their children they had to provide for them-
selves ; but subsequent events proved that I failed
to make it quite clear that although I undertook
to pay for adequate fuel from Hudson Bay Reserve
or elsewhere I expected him to fell it and have it
home ready for use.

I was still busy stooking when Mrs. Wilton came
up to see what my house offered as a comfortable
home for the winter, and we concluded arrange-
ments for them to come in on Thursday, October 3.

Meanwhile, my stooker had justly earned my very
highest opinion, backed by Si Booth. He was the
most energetic, intelligent, and conscientious work-
man I met in Canada. He had trained as a chartered
accountant in England, but his health obliged him
to seek a less sedentary occupation, and he had gone
to New Zealand, and from there he came on to
Canada, to compare the possibilities of the two
countries, before advising his brother which to select
from the points of view of farming and family con-
sideration.

His fame spread, and my neighbour George Hart,

336 WHEAT AND WOMAN

who is a born hustler himself and loves another,
offered him three dollars a day to finish the season.
However, he was anxious to remain with his people
and asked me if I could arrange to let him work at
the stacking, discing, and fencing with his brother
until he received a summons he was expecting from
Chicago. He said if it could be arranged he would
gladly accept a dollar a day as the rate of remunera-
tion.

I wasn't in a position to afford an extra dollar a
month for labour just then, and, in fact, was mar-
shalling all my force and power of resource to meet
the day of the year's settlement, but it seemed
unwise as well as ungracious to refuse the labour
of so excellent a workman at such a rate of wages,
and in stacking oats I reckoned I should be preserv-
ing good spring feed, and also that I should evade
the cost of threshing at least five hundred bushels
which would balance his month's wages. He did
some fencing, which could not be described as
excellent, but in any case it is far cheaper to get
this fencing done by experts ; and at least he com-
pleted a very useful small pasture for the horses,
and meantime my bunch of cattle held fine bean-
feasts many hours a day round the stooks of frozen
wheat which marked the sacred five acres sown with
my hand-cleaned seed. Fate had decreed that these
acres should be left until the last, the grain was
frozen black — even the pigs looked at it with a
discontented air ; Nature, bless her, seldom provides
a moral to adorn a tale, she hasn't time. All the
grain that I reaped which was worth having, and it
was the best in the neighbourhood, I drew from
the six acres I had despised because of the light soil,

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 337

and I thankfully used every grain of it for seed in
1908.

Before the threshers arrived my excellent English-
man had departed to a lucrative but temporary
post at Chicago, but the bogey of the frozen crop
frightened these useful people and valuable
settlers off farming on the prairie, and the co-opera-
tive system and more temperate climate of New
Zealand had all the attraction of the " distant
drum." Before the younger brother left they had
absolutely decided to move on to New Zealand in
the spring.

Again that year the Redcliffe outfit threshed for
me and my neighbours, and for once I presided over
my threshing with enjoyment and peace since at
leisure from my household chores. Mrs. Wilton
was an excellent housekeeper, and marvellously
quick. My party of eighteen was fed thoroughly
well three times a day, and in the afternoon she found
time to take the children out to watch the engine.
Every one had a word of praise for her, and they were
acknowledged throughout the neighbourhood as
" real good people all right," although he never
shared her gift of speed, nor she his grace of tact.

No threshing outfit would work on the usual
terms that year, although I think had they done so
it would have come out all right for the owner of
the outfit, as it is in the weight far more than in
bulk that frost sets its seal of damage in the gathered
grain. Mr. Redcliffe's terms that year were forty
dollars a day, and I think I had to find five stook
teams. The threshing of the crop took two days
and cost eighty dollars.

During June Mr. Oliver and Adam had hauled

338 WHEAT AND WOMAN

my wild-oat wheat crop to the elevators at South
Qu'Appelle and I had been badly hit and very in-
dignant over the sales. That one should be docked
in weight for wild oats on a fair scale is perfectly
reasonable ; to be docked in the grade of your wheat
because another grain is mixed with it is grossly
unfair. The same wheat which was graded No. 2
Northern and docked unmercifully was graded
No. I Northern when I had cleaned it, and bought
without dockage also at South Qu'Appelle. The
moral seems why not clean all, and retain the tailings
for pig-feed ; but this would take up very much
valuable time, whereas the fanning mills at the
elevators are so speedy and so perfect that the wheat
is cleaned almost as easily as it is shifted from the
grain-wagon into the elevator-bin. I determined
never again to sell on the street in my wheat town ;
but I hadn't the slightest hesitation in lodging a
thousand bushels at the Municipal Elevator whilst
waiting for my car, because the man whom I had
first met as school-teacher of Springbrook was
managing that elevator in 1907, and I knew I should
get a fair and square deal. The depot -master takes
all applications for cars, and applicants are served
in rotation ; one farmer one car is supposed to be
the order of service. Only twenty-four hours
are allowed for loading, and therefore it is impossible
when hauling grain from a distance to get it all
in without lodging it at its starting-point. It was
satisfactory from all points of view that I had perfect
confidence in the holder of the scales of justice
that year, the difference in the value of frozen
and sound grain cannot be truly gauged until it
arrives in the scale and then it is startling. I

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 339

expected to fill my thousand-bushel carload easily
from my two granaries, and also to have a few loads
over, — hope seldom left my side for long. The
end of the reckoning was that I had to borrow
a wagon-load from Mr. George Seymour to com-
plete my thousand bushels, which went in due
course to Fort William, after being sighted and
graded at Winnipeg, and which netted thirty-five
cents a bushel after freight and attendant expenses
had been settled.

Mr. Wilton hauled carefully and well, and he
subscribed to the absolute need for economy with
good feeling and intelligence. It is the custom
when hauling grain to stable one's horses for at
least two hours at the end of the journey. A gallon
of oats for each horse goes on the load, and a feed
of hay is due to them from the proprietor of the
livery-barn. The livery charge for team is twenty-
five cents, and the charge for the teamster's dinner
at either of the hotels or the restaurant was, at the
time, also twenty-five cents. I had to arrange that
year that my team took their rest and feed unhitched
by the roadside, and Mrs. Wilton suggested that
she should cut her husband sandwiches for his
midday fare, which he could eat with a five-cent
cup of coffee at the restaurant, and have his principal
meal of the day on his return in the evening. I am
afraid my armour wasn't proof against such enforced
economies ; it didn't hurt either horses or man,
but the fact was I was within constant sight of the
day of reckoning; I grew impatient and irritable
and hardly ever stopped to laugh at the absurdity
of being either. Also here and there, during 1907,
I had been a little imprudent about work, and not

340 WHEAT AND WOMAN

only was horribly worried about affairs, but tortured
with the sight of my poor sick horse, who, in spite
of Dr. Creamer's strongest tonic, and boiled oats,
and perfect rest, and the sweet air of the prairie,
looked every day more like " a shadow in the grass."
Altogether it is quite certain that I was difficult just
then, and I think the English are always exacting
and inclined to be fussy and hysterical over trifles
when they first come out ; and the end of it was I
nearly lost my excellent caretakers, and they nearly
lost comfortable winter quarters, and quite a useful
sum of money.

A " little rift " crept in over the subject of the
children's noise, but the bottom fell out of the lute
over the matter of the winter fuel.

Within my limited experience my countrymen
are not clever woodsmen. Even Mr. Wilton's
brother had gone to seek poplar poles with the box
on the wagon, and had then brought home the
tops instead of the poles of the poplars, in all the
green glory of trimmings. Then again they are
as a rule over-anxious about fuel, and never by any
chance can find it ; nor are they quick to discrimi-
nate between the heat-producing property of poles
in different stages of qualification for fuel according
to the evaporation of sap. They set a huge kettle
of water on a stove packed with green poplar, and
go away to wash their hands whilst they leave the
frying-pan set in an open stove lit with the lightest of
fuel burned match-dry through the passing of a
prairie fire.

One dazzhng November morning Mr. Wilton
was shovelling the wheat into the wagon from the
granary, and I was shovelling back to the far corners ;

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 341

I think it must have been one Monday morning
and that there had probably been tea and conver-
sation after church the day before.

" Have you ordered the fuel for the winter ? " he
asked.

" Ordered the fuel ! What do you mean ? "

" Our arrangement wsls that you should find me
w^inter fuel, and I must see it all in before you leave.
The neighbours tell me that I shall require seventeen
loads."

" Do they ! Then it is certain that I had better
abandon my intention of going since I don't see
you felling, cleaning, and hauling seventeen loads
of wood in seventeen centuries of Sundays unless
a miracle arrives to your method. I used six, but
that's outside the argument. I am perfectly willing
to pay for seventeen or twenty-seven loads for you
if necessary, but you must understand that you have
to fell it, and to clean, and to haul it with my horses.
I have arranged to pay the Hudson Bay Company
a dollar a load to cut from their reserve. Roddy
McMahon says you can go along with him when
he is out with the others felling and packing, and you
can haul it home as you need it."

" I am sorry, but I must have the whole of the
winter's fuel before you go. The neighbours
tell me that it is a matter of life and death — that
the risks of the winter are terrible indeed."

" You and your family have been better housed
and fed and cared for since it has been more or less
my responsibility than the family of any neighbour
in the district, — and yet you find it necessary to
go to them for advice concerning my obligation
to you ! " I said angrily, and, in short, lost my

342 WHEAT AND WOMAN

temper badly, whilst he kept his with the same
careful and deliberate precision that he kept his
spectacles.

When I had said everything that I shouldn't, he
shook his head sadly, " You can't be expected to
understand a man's duty to his family," he said,
and that was the beginning and end and the sum of
his argument.

" I understand perfectly," I contended. " Don't
I know and love to do my duty to my beasts ?
Through that alone I not only understand but
appreciate your anxiety about your family ; it is not
that, but your lack of confidence in me which I
resent. I am just as anxious about the comfort of
my beasts during the winter as you are about the
comfort of your children, but I don't insult you by
discussing your ability to carry out your respon-
sibility with the neighbours, and I don't even
worry you to hurry on your stable preparations a
little, although I sometimes fear winter will be
through the chinks before you have finished the
plaster chore. I worried myself, and worried a very
good man last year about the fuel, although he was
altogether too inclined to let the whole thing slide,
but I didn't then know that I could pay five dollars
for a permit to cut on the Hudson Bay Reserve,
and that the men at the Fort usually cut in gangs,
and many of them make their living in the winter
by supplying people who have no convenience for
obtaining it themselves. Besides there are half a
dozen good loads left on the place, and in the
immediate neighbourhood, if you take the trouble
to go and look for it. However, to-morrow I
will take out the wheat, and you will go out and get

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 343

fuel and see what you can do in a day towards the
felling and cleaning and packing and hauling of
your seventeen loads."

I walked back to the cottage, but couldn't get
back to even terms with myself, and writing or
reading was out of the question. I took up the little
hatchet which I had used to clean my hidden fuel
in the frozen months, and went down to the bluffs
of the unclaimed land on the far side of the west
fence, and there I started to fell trees. I had felled
a stray one here and there before, but nothing
approaching a load. At first I only got down about
twelve to the hour, but they were good poles,
big and sound, yet thoroughly dried out, with an
excellent promise of warmth-giving fuel. I cleaned
at an interval of four poles, and gradually the work
got into my blood and I liked it. There was interest
in seeking and keenest satisfaction in finding a little
group of sap-dried trees, and getting them down
was the nearest approach to sport at which I ever
arrived on foot. By three o'clock I had sixty
stout poles neatly packed, and I determined not to
say a word until I had doubled my quantity. It is
unnecessary to add that the satisfactory result of
my labour did not soften my feelings towards
Mr. Wilton. We loaded the grain-wagon as usual
on the following day and I drove off on the
fourteen-mile haul to South Qu'Appelle. Mr.
Rogers showed me exactly what to do at the
elevator ; it was quite simple. I did my shopping
whilst the horses fed, and got home just before
dark.

I had enjoyed the day immensely, and said so,
although I have no doubt I should have found the

344 WHEAT AND WOMAN

prospect of many such days on end distinctly
monotonous.

The shadow of event was in the atmosphere as I
took my supper. Over my last cup of tea, hand in
hand they broke the news to me they were not
happy, and that they should go.

I was furious ! I had paid him good wages for
slow work, as except for the hauling and stacking
Mr. Wilton's work at that time was too slow to be
valuable in the actual land-work of a Canadian
farm, and just as we were entering into the place
where I should score — because I knew they would
be honest, conscientious, kind, and careful care-
takers— they were going ! I told them what I
thought in few words, adding, " I am fifty dollars
out of pocket."

" And what are we ? " said Mr. Wilton. " We
smashed thirty dollars' worth of furniture coming
up the hill."

" Heaven and earth ! " said I. " Do you dare sit
there and quote the natural result of your own
lack of foresight and common sense, and charge it
up against me. That is quite enough ; if you are
going the sooner the better, and also the less said
the better."

In the two days' interval I went on with my wood-
gathering, and always with increasing success. The
hard work and the satisfaction I got out of it, and
the anger I had got rid of at the moment left no
place for malice.

" My wife and I would like to walk into the
Fort to-morrow to look at houses," said Mr.
Wilton.

" There is no occasion to walk," I said. " Take

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 345

the wagon, only it must go out first without the
box to haul in the load of wood."

He hauled it in looking just a little below his
average degree of self-respect, which was always an
honest self-respect without a hint of complacency.
" It is an excellent load of wood," he said. He was
always just.

" There are two more beyond. Try and get
them in to-morrow." They looked at each other,
and at the wood, and at me, and I tried to look as
unlike a person crowned with unusual honours as
possible, although victory was positively sitting on
every note of exaltation which time and event
had failed to break in my everyday heart.

In the evening they returned. Both were very
quiet, and obviously down-hearted. I learned
about everything in due course. Houses were
appalling dear — fuel at least four dollars a load. I
held every card.

" I expect you would like to reconsider your
decision to leave me," I said.

" If you are able to get fuel I certainly ought to be
able to do so," allowed Mr. Wilton. " You say very
sharp things when you are out of temper," he added,
" but even then you allowed that on the whole we
gave you satisfaction and that you trusted us. If
matters could be arranged "

It was my very own moment and I could have
backed out of the salary. I was far poorer than I
had dreamed possible on the day I engaged them,
the country was badly hit over the frozen crop,
the storekeepers had followed the lead of the Bank ;
nothing could be obtained except for ready money.
Free quarters and free board was that year a fair

346 WHEAT AND WOMAN

return for the winter's service, but a tear was
running down the woman's cheek, and it hardly-
seemed worth while.

" Don't let us say anything more about it," I
suggested. " We will forget everything but your
claim of my share in the ruin of your household
gods coming up Troy Hill — I shall never be able to
forget that."

I never gave Mrs. Wilton the opportunity to
tell me much about myself, but she didn't alto-
gether share her husband's grace of tact, and one
day she seized it. I thought it would be good for
her to remember that at least I did not take the
smallest advantage of other people and reminded
her of my lost opportunity.

" Yes, but it must have suited your purpose or
you would never have done it," she said in a tone
of profound conviction, which also convinced me
that I had not been the only one to notice the lost
opportunity.

The snow fell early in 1907, the musk-rats had raised
many huts in the sloughs, and there was every
prospect of a long but pleasant winter. Although
the snow was on the ground the sun was brilliant,
and there was hardly any wind. The Wiltons had
bodies of reasonable requirements, and hated over-
heated rooms even more than I did, the house was
kept at a reasonable temperature, and I never
remember being quite so comfortable in the
cottage. The wood-box in my room was always
filled, the house was spotlessly clean, my breakfast
and four o'clock tea were served in simple, dainty
fashion, and in the main I knew that I was in great
good luck to have found such estimable people.

THE FROZEN HARVEST OF 1907 347

One morning I looked out of my bedroom window
and saw Ricky standing in the shelter of the granary
where he might catch the gleam if not the warmth
of the brilliant winter sun. I went down and tucked
him in the English horse-blanket, but he seemed so
cold and frail, and so obviously beyond the liberty
of the law of my outdoor theory, that I led him back
to a box that I had caused to be railed off in the
middle stable, and then I took in piles and piles of
straw, and fed him with scalded oats and chilled
water ; but his eyes were very close to the horizon.
I dared not think of him through the winter, but
the thought of a bullet was hard to bear.

On that afternoon I drove down to the Fort,
and when I returned I learnt that he had contrived
to get out again, and had fallen over. Mr. Wilton
had gone at once for Danny McLeay, and they had
managed to get him up, and back into the stable,
and thought even then that he might pull through,
and they were all awfully good and kind about
him.

But two days later I found him at the well, just
half an hour after I had fed and watered him. He
turned with his odd little greeting and fell over
again, and that day Mr. Wilton had gone Into South
Qu'Appelle, and so had every one else but Patrick
O'Hara, who came over and did all he could to help
us raise him. When Mr. Wilton got back, we all
tried again, until poor Ricky's eyes were glittering
like the multitude of stars and the lovely moon which
seemed to be shining down all too soon that night
on the place where he lay in the open.

It was seven o'clock, when the first chorus of
wolves came across the snow, bringing the curious

348 WHEAT AND WOMAN

dread from which death itself seems a gateway of
deHverance, ahhough it is always claimed that
wolves will not attack a horse as long as a spark
of life remains in the body. To the last he welcomed
his oats, with the same appreciation as in the pre-
ceding winter when he had been the healthiest,
kindest, happiest member of my bonny bunch, and
it almost seemed as if his intelligence grew brighter
as strength forsook the poor emaciated body. There
was no longer the smallest doubt in my heart as to
what ought to be done, the wail of the wolves had
voiced decision. Just before nine o'clock some one
fetched Patrick O'Hara with his gun. Pat was for
the better part a sportsman and an unerring shot.
Only those die who are forgotten. Presently the
report came through my open window. . . .
Ricky's spark of life had sped home to life's centre.

VIII

THE DAY OF RECKONING
— AUF WIEDERSEHEN

I HAD turned the corner of 1906 with a big deficit
on the account of my working expenses. In 1907
I took less than five hundred dollars for my wheat,
pigs, and butter in cash ; but I had sold a great
deal of meat and butter and eggs to my neighbour,
although I had to purchase of him oats for my
horses as I was insufficiently supplied. My working
expenses for 1907 amounted to just over one thousand
and fifty dollars. It must not be forgotten that this
is the story of an individual working out an experi-
ment with very little knowledge and insufficient
capital. Had I, instead of breaking up more land,
put every cent of available money into cattle and
pigs and a good poultry-house, I should have made
much money in a comparatively short space of
time. But I arrived in Canada in one of its most
glorious wheat seasons ; cattle and pigs were scorned
as money-makers in 1905 and 1906; to-day it is
difficult to buy them for money. Again, although
in 1906 I did badly owing to the unprepared seed-
bed and the harvest of wild oats, it was, generally
speaking, a brilliant season in the prairie provinces ;
and if the disastrous season of 1907 was badly felt,
its lesson was very badly needed.

349

350 WHEAT AND WOMAN

The list of my working expenses for 1907 reads

Feed and seed .

Breaking twenty-five acres

Wages

Taxes

Fencing .

Fanning mill

Binder-twine

Hail insurance

Horse

Grocery, flour, and meat, repairs

veterinary attendance
Threshing and teams

Total

$64.90

100.00

260 . 70

15.00

9.50

26.00

27.00

19.50

150.00

245.00
133.00

I

.$1050.60

In an average year this should be less by almost
half. Wages have of course almost doubled since
1907 ; but my grocery and repairs bill is far too
high. The finest form of insurance against hail or
any other catastrophe affecting the wheat crop is
to put the stakes into stock ; but threshing expenses,
binder-twine, wages, and taxes are standing expenses
which must be provided for year by year through j
one means or another ; and a good poultry-house, fj
netted in with poultry-wire, should never be
omitted in the beginning of a farming experiment.
Turkeys are easy to rear, and average from three to
five dollars in price. There is an excellent market
for all kinds of food in the present phase of develop-
ment in Canada, which is marked by a great increase
in population and an admirable improvement in
building accommodation not only in the cities but
on the prairies. The shack-phase was very attrac-

THE DAY OF RECKONING 351

tive in many ways, and one would not have missed
the experience; but, " for the good of all," the
well-being of the rising generation of the Canadian
nation, the farmhouse of adequate accommodation
for the average household of the farmer and his
wife is a very real necessity, even if the building, as
is frequently the case, should cost more than three
hundred and twenty acres of land.

The two years' reverse might have seen the end
of my experiment, and I should probably have left
the prairies with just a wider experience of life and
work at the end of 1907, and content to accept the
offer of my predecessor to buy back the greatly
improved farm he had sold in 1905 for the same
price in 1907, but land had gone up in price and
held its own in spite of the frozen harvest. The
price of the adjoining section, without an acre of
it turned and with its timber-value decreasing
steadily, had risen from five to seven dollars an
acre. Even the price of my money back offered
by my predecessor was something of a compliment,
because he sold with a crop harvest-ripe that yielded
a thousand dollars, although all the world of Fort
Qu'Appelle wondered at the time that even ever-
green England could produce anyone green enough
to give fifteen dollars an acre for the place. But
although things were bad, it was no small thing to
have learnt the worst, and if I had very little avail-
able capital to draw on for future intention I
had a considerable amount of practical knowledge.
I had learnt that wheat should stand for net
profit, chargeable only with the cost of its seed
and threshing ; and that much, even in the season
of 1907, the proceeds of the crop at its worst

352 WHEAT AND WOMAN

supplied. Food and wages and all expenses that
do not definitely increase the value of capital in
land, stock, and working plant, ought to be supplied
through annual sales of stock and dairy produce.
It was too late to establish those lines, more especially
as the income I drew from a share in a business-
concern in London had already shrunk considerably
since my absence from England. But one should
not only insure against the loss of one's wheat crop
by making, but by saving. I knew that in future
years I could save on wages, and determined to hire
expert labour for seeding and harvest seasons and
for a certain amount of ploughing, but to do all
cultivation myself. Discing and harrowing, mo\nng
and raking are easy work ; one drives the whole
time, and except that in mowing the vibration of
the mower is occasionally jarring to the nerves of
some people, one can return from a day's work on
either of these implements with energy practically
untaxed. A hired man and woman constitute a
luxury to be recommended to all those who can
afford it. Married couples are usually seekers of
home and capital ; the average hired man seeks
wages, and some of them bring more work into the
house than they succeed in putting on to the l-^nd.
The woman who can hitch up her team and ^o
quietly off to the cultivation of her land not only
saves her purse the expenditure of the average wage
of five shillings a day plus board, but she saves on
herself — she conserves her energy.

The distribution of the sum left at my disposal
required thought and care. It was hopeless even
to think of the land pa}-ment of a thousand dollars,
and even its interest was a matter of almost painful

THE DAY OF RECKONING 353

calculation. I had always faithfully paid to the
credit of my account at the Union Bank all moneys
that came to me from British sources or as payment
for produce ; in consequence my credit was on the
stronger side. But the banks had shut down loans
at the first rumour of frost, and were demanding
payment of outstanding money wherever there was
the smallest chance of obtaining it. I had not
many creditors as I had made a point of paying
ready money, even when I had to pay eight per
cent, for the use of it ; and it is far and away the
best plan. A current account often pins you to
the dearest market, and always persuades you to
think lightly of necessary and unnecessary expendi-
ture. The interest of my land-payment account,
my repairs and binder-twine, the balance of my
threshing account, the greater part of the breaking,
were still unpaid. The market was practically
flooded with grain of a low grade, and although
good prices were being asked and paid for it in
Liverpool, sales on the street of the average wheat-
town were at below zero prices, and many of my
neighbours were forced to accept these prices in
order to meet interest due on land payments and
implement accounts and the necessities of life.
One did not see the heart-breaking, degrading signs
of poverty as seen in England ; there was a sufficiency
of meal and potatoes and bacon and necessaries,
there was fuel, and sufficient clothing — for the men
at any rate, who could not do their winter work
without it. But worry was on the face of every
man, and the knowledge that the year of 1908 must
be a year of redoubled toil charged with the unpaid
bill of 1907 was still within the coming of the

z

354 WHEAT AND WOMAN

spring. I cleared thirty-five cents net a bushel for
my wheat at Fort William after paying for my car.
My neighbours the Collinsons had less than a
thousand bushels, and were forced to sell on the
street at South Qu'Appelle. It was practically the
same sample as mine, and they had to take anything
between twenty-five and thirty cents net. For
wheat of practically the same grade, certainly not
varying more than one degree, John McLeay
obtained from sixty to seventy cents a bushel in the
following spring.

I have said that bank loans were practically
unobtainable. It is to be remembered that the
frozen harvest of 1907 occurred in the same moment
as the financial panic in the States, and although it
seemed unjust and unfair that in the time of dire
necessity the farmers, whose labour is the rock-
bottom of all Canadian values, could obtain little
or no aid from the banks of Canada, I found when
I reached the States that my friends had to give
considerable notice before they could withdraw
small sums of the money lying to their credit.
I complained bitterly to a wealthy neighbour that
when I came to the country and hadn't particularly
needed it money had been positively placed in my
way, and now that I would have offered almost
any reasonable price for it to settle outstanding
debts without the sacrifice of my grain crop, I
couldn't get a cent.

" Hold on ! It will all come out in the wash,"
was his advice ; but he told me that even he had
the same difficulty in obtaining money, and that
he had heard on excellent authority that the banks
had issued an order to all branches that no money

THE DAY OF RECKONING 355

was to be loaned to any client whose realizable
security did not mark at least five thousand dollars.

I tell the tale as it was told to me, but whether
an absolute fact or not, it is most certainly a fact
that the small farmer is not aided as he should be
either by the Government or the financial authori-
ties in Canada. He seldom has one thousand bushels
to sell in the early years of his wrestle with the land,
usually weighted with the full charges for imple-
ments and horses and lumber, plus heavy interest.
The rich farmer can command labour at the critical
moment ; the small farmer has to break his heart
doing the labour of three men in order to get the
one thing into the land which a few years ago was
the only farm produce to command market and
money.

It is the farmer in Canada, the man on the land,
who has made those astonishing land-values which
are being shouted to-day in every country in Europe,
and in a time of stress things go harder with this
man on the land, the producer, than with any
member of those sections of society who depend
on the foundation established and sustained by
him to maintain their values.

It is claimed that the banks of Canada are
admirable in the basis of their system and working
principle, but the fact remains that they exist
mainly for merchants of considerable capital and
the farmer whose realizable security exceeds x ;
also the law of the price of bank money in the
North-West is nothing under eight per cent. The
finest gilt-edged security which British capital could
obtain in Canada, one of the soundest and most
promising and most effectual links of Empire, would

356 WHEAT AND WOMAN

lie in the establishment of a farmers' bank for the
financial aid of farmers whose realizable capital
does not exceed x, and the law of the price of money
loaned should rule the highest price not to exceed
five per cent. ♦

My predecessor was both just and kind about my
land payment and its interest, and his wife kinder ;
but he pointed out to me that of course the money
rate was very high, and that he could easily obtain
eight per cent, for that for which I was paying only
six. I suggested that in future it should be held
at seven, and he assented, and told me not to bother,
for he was quite sure I should send it to him before
long. He advised me to be sure and not fail to go
and see his son-in-law, who was owner of the hard-
ware store, and whose bill I was also not prepared
to pay at the moment. There too I always obtained
consideration, and when I offered to pay interest
on an overdue account it was not taken.

The Union Bank would make no advance on
wheat in the granary, or even lodged at the elevator.
-*^' This was hardly to be wondered at since South

Qu'Appelle was literally choked with low-grade
grain. Mr. Donald H. Macdonald, the second son
of the chief factor of the Hudson Bay Company,
ran a bank at the time in connexion with his land
business at Fort Qu'Appelle, and he lent me two
hundred and fifty dollars on my carload, and just
at the time thirty-six pounds fell due from London.
I settled everything I possibly could, took a twenty-
five-dollar excursion ticket to New York, and for-
swore sleepers, and got out my baggage, which was
rusty and dusty from its two and a half years'
sojourn on the prairie.

a!
<

Z/
O

'J

o

Iku

AUF WIEDERSEHEN 357

On the last day my brother came down from his
homestead and invited my dog back for the winter.
So on the very last night of all I made my round
after the last feed, and saw all the beasts tucked up
comfortably with bedding up to their knees and
mangers full of the hay they love so well. This is the
saving grace in chief of farming on the Canadian
prairie ; the frost may seize your marketable grain,
but there is always food for beasts and men. I knew
that every four-footed friend would have plenty of
provender and be well cared for during my absence.
Things still jarred at times between me and my
caretakers, who had many of the failings of their
many virtues, but the give-and-take theory is in
everyday practice in Canada, and they proved
entirely equal to their undertaking, and no words
can convey one's appreciation of their care and
thoughtfulness and general trustworthiness through
that winter. Mr. Wilton nursed the new horse
night and day after he had badly staked himself ;
and when I got back in the spring everything was
in perfect order, and the bill from the Hudson
Bay Store for the groceries supplied in excess of the
sum credited to the farm for eggs and butter was
Jive cents. Through them it has always seemed to
me that, although the British have much to learn
from Canadians in their method of active work on
the land, they are most valuable and desirable as
general caretakers and overseers. These people,
who were in every way worthy of British tradition,
and amongst those who have gained for the British
the homage revealed in the term " salt of the earth,"
went on to New Zealand in the spring, and New
Zealand was the richer. They would have done

358 WHEAT AND WOMAN

exceedingly well in Canada had they remained to
take part in the more commercial farming of the
present phase of development.

On the last night of my two and a half years'
sojourn in Canada I find this entry in my diary :

" December lo. — My last day for the present.
Drove into the Fort with Lai. Cashed cheque,
paid taxes, &c. Breakfast with the D. H. Mac-
donalds. Walked up Baker Hill to say good-bye
to the Griggs and the Seymours at Springbrook,
then home. Horribly downcast. Felt a miserable
failure — financial situation appalling — temper
abominable. What will these years bring forth ?
They seem strange seed as one watches them lying
in the soil to-night — roses must always ' unfold
within the mould,' but seed doesn't always mean
roses. I tried to do my best, but one can't do that
from day to day, one's level best comes out in
occasional throbs. One thing I have learned — to
criticize myself without flinching. ' Know thy-
self.' One can't do that everywhere ! Oh, the
hardship, the hope, the trials, the sweetness and the
sadness of these two years ! How I have loved the
beasts, and how heartily I have hated people and
things here and there, and the end of it is for the
present that I have to go off with a pen to save the
plough, and that by to-morrow this time I shall be
on my way to New York travelling in front of the
dining-car minus a sleeper, certainly uncomfortable,
probably hungry, and doing my level best to assure
myself that — nothing matters ! "

The next day I left by the stage for South
Qu'Appelle and New York.

PART IV

THE TURN OF THE TIDE

" But noon beheld a larger heaven."

THE SEED— THE PASSING OF A
PRAIRIE FIRE

I GOT back to South Qu'Appelle by the early train
on April 14, 1908. Things had gone well with me.
All the world was interested in Canada ; I was
possessed of practical and first-hand information.
Offers of work from various magazines approached
T^.-y pen, and although I was by no means out of
the wood, many of the brambles which beset the
way within were rendered removable. But on the
morning I got back and fell off the train in the
usual place and manner, which is always very far
in the rear of the platform at South Qu'Appelle,
gloom was in the air. Snow was falling, and I
knew at once that I should have to drive through
the fifteen miles which lay between me and any-
thing that might have occurred within a two weeks'
journey without any mail, in the teeth of the north
wind. Whilst I waited for the democrat I took
breakfast in Mrs. Walker's excellent restaurant, and
there I learned that many farmers had already made
use of the few fair days in the preceding week to
get in the seed, and with all my heart I wished I
had hurried on before, although April 15 is usually
in excellent time for seeding anything under a
hundred and fifty acres.

361

362 WHEAT AND WOMAN

At the farm a delightful surprise awaited me.
Mr. Wilton had communicated with me most
regularly in my absence, and in one letter he told
me that he had forwarded a sample of the seed-
grain to the Government Seed Commissioner to
undergo the germination test. I had read the
result as forty-six germinative with a heavy heart,
as it meant that I really ought not to sow the seed
at all ; but if I did sow, it would need a great deal
more than the average one bushel two pecks to the
acre. But instead of forty-six it proved to be
ninety-six per cent, germinative, so that I was
provided with some of the best seed in the country
which, having been grown on newly broken land,
had been, even before winnowing, almost entirely
free from weed-seed. Mr. Wilton had done all
the cleaning through the winter, and got on as far
as possible with the usual preparations for seeding.
His charge concluded with my arrival, and he and
his family set out almost immediately for Vancouver
en route for New Zealand.

I had arranged with Roddy McMahon to come
to me that season for seeding, spring-ploughing,
mowing if necessary, and harvest. The next day
but one, warmest sunshine having followed on the
trail of the snowstorm, the seeder started on its
way across the big field. Good Friday fell in that
week, and on Easter Eve the thermometer stood at
seventy in the shade, and to all appearance the land
was as dry as a biscuit.

It was after dinner that some well-disposed dweller
in the air compelled my attention to one of the
granaries which had not yet been brought in from
the twenty-five-acre field. I scanned it from a

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 363

distance. There was a faint smell of fire in the
air. Clouds of smoke rose here and there from
sixteen to twenty-four miles distant on the far side
of the Qu'Appelle lakes, and, turning to the north-
west, I perceived a further cloud which seemed
ominously near. It was a spur to my procrastinating
sense of caution, and I called to my brother, who was
smoking the after-dinner pipe of peace with Roddy
McMahon, and who vowed that on such a day it
was killing work to remove a granary with four horses.

" Get two stout poplar poles to raise it," I
suggested. " Once out of the rut, it is quite a
short pull to the pasture trail, and then, bar stones,
it will run as easily as a bathing-machine."

Thirty-five minutes later the neat little granary
was grouped with its near relatives among the some-
what unconventional farm buildings, and my con-
science was eased of a load.

The long absence from active outdoor and
domestic work had unsettled my attitude towards
" the daily round and common task." There was
bread to bake, butter to make, flower seeds to sow,
stables to clean, it would have been wise to pickle
Monday's seed and rest through Sunday ; in short,
there was a great deal more work than one could
possibly get through under a brilliant sun set in a
blue heaven, so I gave ear to the voice of the
charmer and drove away towards tea and tennis at
Fort Qu'Appelle.

Two miles up the trail Nancy cocked her ears
and laid hold of the bit. The smell of fire which
had hovered in the air for three days was suddenly
suffocatingly near. We topped the little hill that
marks half-way ; hot air fanned my left cheek, and

364 WHEAT AND WOMAN

we were almost abreast of the long, thin scarlet
line which ate its way across the biscuit-tinted
prairie and left in its wake stretching away back
to the southern hills of Fort Qu'Appelle a coal-
black waste, grim and lifeless save for a smouldering
bluff here and there where the fire had found food
for its tarrying.

I remembered with relief that my nearest neigh-
bours on that side of the trail, who were Canadians,
had insured their homes against the danger of
prairie fire by firing the wide outskirt of their own
land, so that there was no necessity to turn back on
their account. I hurried along my way to encounter
smouldering and charred remains of fallen telegraph
posts barring my line. The single wire which runs
from South Qu'Appelle station to Prince Albert
was down. I stopped to consider.

Not a breath of air stirred. The trees had only
just started to bud, but the golden sun blazed down
from a summer sky. Across the hills from the valley
below one caught a glimpse of the lake, with ice-
bound bosom still offering dumb resistance to the
challenge of the sun. The contrast was specially
unusual and fascinating to an Englishwoman. I
longed to draw nearer. My only danger lay in the
chance of the fire leaping the trail, and the odds of
that chance with the wind right down lay at a
hundred to one against. I went on.

At the top of the hill I perceived with dismay
that the fire had leapt the trail and was travelling
backwards towards the cemetery. I hurried on my
way to carry the news of the danger to Fort
Qu'Appelle, but it proved to be no news to the
usually sleepy little town that dozes in the heart of

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 365

the valley of lakes. Fort Qu'Appelle was alive with
anxiety. It appeared that for twenty-four hours
the fire had played in and out of both lines of poplar
and maple-clad hills which guard the valley on the
southern side, and ill-tidings of distress and disaster
fallen and feared were on every tongue. As I stood
at the door of the post ofHce a man was brought into
the town in appalling agony. He had been badly
burned in endeavouring at the last moment to
plough up a guard. The fire, it seemed, had cut
round and caught him out on the last furrow.
Three of the horses had got off with a singeing, but
one had been moved to the veterinary hospital at
South Qu'Appelle severely injured ; and the man
had been brought down to the Fort — to die, said
some ; others that he would never open his eyes
again. Happily none of these sad prophecies was
fulfilled ; patient and painstaking medical treat-
ment combined with careful nursing pulled him
through, and he was about again before seeding was
finished, but the faithful horse had earned the long
rest and went under.

Homeward-bound I climbed the long steep hill
with a heavy heart. On the brow a democrat
passed me in which were men of the North- West
Mounted Police and men of Fort Qu'Appelle on
their way to fight the flames from God's acre on the
hill.

The hill behind us, we raced along, and this time
on either side of the trail lay the black waste, but
in less than a quarter of a mile we arrived at the
scarlet line on the near side. It was eating its way
very slowly due east and not perceptibly gaining
ground south. For a moment I had both intuition

366 WHEAT AND WOMAN

and intention to get out and put it out. I could
have done so in ten minutes, but I found on
examination that the foot-mat of the buggy was
missing, and experience had already taught me
that one runs a foolhardy risk in attempting to
tramp out fire on dry prairie. I consoled myself
with the reflection that it must be starved out at
the side-trail in the east, and feeling anything but
comfortably conscience-clear, I turned the search-
light of judgment off myself and on to the men who
had driven promptly to the rescue of the grave-
stones of the dead and as promptly and thoughtlessly
away from the rescue of the lands and possibly lives
of the living. I drove towards home fully deter-
mined to have my fire-guard ploughed — the first
thing on Monday morning ! At the gate I met
Roddy McMahon going home for Sunday, and
told him of the havoc the fire was working. He
seemed to think we lay safely out of its reach, since
it could not travel far with the wind right down ;
but we agreed together that in spite of the hold
of the night-frosts the guard must be ploughed —
the first thing on Monday morning !

I had no easy mind. Those creeping scarlet lines
were reflected on my brain, and as the sun went
down and the swift Canadian twilight passed into
nightfall the lurid light in the north seemed to
grow brighter and to draw nearer. My brother
and I agreed that every beast should be turned loose,
and that we would keep watch in turn. At the
coming of each hour one or the other of us scanned
the outlook. At dawn the red glow seemed to fade,
at sunrise to die. Still smoke was rising and the
wind had freshened, but it is in the nature of fear

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 367

to fade with the daylight, and I turned in and slept
soundly until there came a shrill whistle from my
brother and the announcement that it was a quarter
to nine and the kettle boiling.

Breakfast was laid in the veranda — Sunday break-
fast : tea and toast and Crosse and Blackwell's marma-
lade, to be taken at the hour one pleases, which is
a contrast to the working-day six-o'clock farm-hour
breakfast consisting of porridge and fried bacon and
potatoes, that can only be thoroughly appreciated
by the man or woman who prepares both. I sat
down in the sun's warmth and gazed on the sunlit
landscape with a feeling of intense pleasure at being
back once more to breathe the clear exhilarating
air of the prairie. Suddenly the dweller in the air
was at my elbow. Without any conscious motive
I forsook my teacup and walked around to the north
side of the veranda, and from there more sharply
out beyond the garden-fence to the place where the
side-trail lies in view. From the distance of a mile
I saw a wave of flame rolling in towards us as the
incoming tide rolls in on the seashore. On the
east side of the trail a dense cloud of smoke, and
on the west a gleam of scarlet announced the
approach of other links in a literal chain of fire,
and I knew there was but one way out of a clean
sweep — " on the prairie fight fire with fire."

I went back to my brother. " The fire is just
on us," I said. " We are all right south and west,
as the summer-fallow runs a guard, but unless we
can burn off the overgrown guard that runs from
the east to the west corner of the fallow we are

straight in a line with the fire and "

But he was already scanning the outlook. '' I

368 WHEAT AND WOMAN

understand," he said. " We have from fifteen to
twenty minutes at the outside to get through with
the job, and if we fail it's a finish. Come on ! "

The wind was towards us, the stable-yard still
covered with litter of threshing straw which had
lain under the snow during the winter but was now
all too dry and inflammable as shaving. It was a
desperate and most dangerous resource but the only
chance. The sound and solid English grain-bags
I had brought out with me, and which Canadians
refuse to handle as a rule on account of their weight,
did good service that morning. Armed with one
each and a bucket of water, we started in at our
task, I working east, my brother west. For a short
space there was silence save for the muffled roar of
the oncoming enemy and the banging of the damp
bags with which we quenched our several fires as
the flames reached the limit we ruled.

As long as it was concerned with the old guard
only our task was comparatively easy. The snow-
cured and sun-dried herbage blazed up as swiftly
as straw and as swiftly perished to the fine dust of
flame. But farther east the ploughing of the
original guard had been less effective. The fire
just frolicked into the straw-belittered yard, and
three times I had to call my brother to aid me as
the flame seemed to be beyond my power to
extinguish. The third time he came his face was
blackened with smoke and his lips set tight. " Don't
call again," he said, " if you can possibly avoid it ;
the last time I came round I only just stopped my
fire from getting into the bluff, and if it gets there
it's a finish." So I set my teeth and made fresh
flames, and beat them out until my hands and

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 369

throat and eyes were as red-hot cinders caught in a
whirlwind.

I had nearly reached the potato-patch, which
would form another and considerable link in the
guard, and would give the flames at any rate a
roundabout trail to the house and the two- thousand-
bushel granary, which still contained seed and feed
grain of considerable value, when a growth of extra-
dry grass gave a sudden impulse to the flame. It
leaped into the air and raced along on its way
towards the stable-door. I plunged my sack into
the water and went for it with a desperate effort,
which was successful, but my last for the time being.
To my horror I found that energy had played out
completely ! For a moment there was neither a
bang nor a yell left in me, and between the burnt-
out guard and the potato-patch there still stretched
a patch of dry herbage. I looked towards the
flaming prairie to measure time. Between the
scarlet flames, now no longer steadily but audaciously
advancing along the fireproof trail, there came
running towards me the figure of a man I knew, and
in a few seconds he was at my side. He took up the
sack and went on with my task, and I made my
way round to the other side to find that my brother
had succeeded in linking his guard with the guard
of fallow land, so that we were comparatively safe
on that side from the big fire, though still in serious
danger from our own as the ever-freshening wind
rekindled dying sparks to vigorous life, and from
half a dozen places flame was creeping with the
swiftness of a serpent to the invasion of the bluff.
But my strength had come back and we fought them
one by one.

2 A

370 WHEAT AND WOMAN

Then came the sound of wheels. A buggy
drawn by a little Canadian pony, prairie-bred and
fearless as fast, flew on its way between the fences
of flame until it reached the black waste of our own
making which no flame could leap. It was Roddy
McMahon, and his wife was with him, and her
baby in her arms and two small children in the
bottom of the buggy.

*' So you burned the old guard," he commenced.
" 'Twas a wise act. You've saved a burn-out all
right."

" The fires will meet in the dip by the gateway
and extinguish each other," I answered, " but there
is still a wide opening to the worst danger. If
it makes its way up the hill through the little
pasture field it will catch us by the gateway of
the big pasture — close to the oat-rick, where we
dare not fire a guard with the wind facing. If the
rick fires we must still be burnt out."

" Guess that's right enough," said he. " There's
Joe Collinson. Here, Joe, give me hand to get
the team on plough. Guess we have got to plough
up some sort guard round the oat-stack rick 'fore
the fire can get round."

The sulky plough was away on the land, the shear
of the hand plough blunt as a board ; the frost was
only just out of the surface of the land, and the
newly broken guard made but a poor show as a
defence to the giant straw-rick which loomed
behind it. The little gathering had grown to the
number of a dozen, neighbours who, realizing that
I was straight in a line with the danger that menaced
us all, but for which Canadians and old-timers are
usually prepared, had come to offer a helping hand.

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 371

An angrier note in the roar of the fire gave
warning that the two blazes were approaching each
other. I turned to see the main fire dash wrath-
fully down the hill to devour the lesser flame we had
sent out to meet it. For a second the flames leaped
high as they closed in a throttling embrace only to
find mutual extinction. But the eastern arm came
on as I had surmised it would, not with the mad
menace of the flame that had found death in
^ another, but with quiet indomitable purpose and
wide-eyed for prey.

There was nothing more to be done. We stood
by the inadequately guarded corner, within twenty
yards of the oat-straw rick, each armed with a sack
and ready to do battle with the flame-wave if it
challenged, but each of us knew in our heart that
if the flame continued to get within fighting dis-
tance the whole place was doomed. What could
be done at the last moment had been done, the rest
was with the Power that works behind phenomena.

The increasing roar announced the surviving
flame to be gaining strength and power. With
eyes set straight for the fatal corner from which it
must approach, I suddenly remembered that I was
not insured. I had fully intended taking out a
policy before leaving Canada the preceding winter,
but the frozen harvest had indefinitely postponed
my intentions, luxurious and utilitarian. That was
the one absolutely bitter moment of my life on the
Canadian prairie, for then, and I think only then,
through all the ups and downs of my farming
experiment, did I doubt that my comrade " the
Power that works behind phenomena " was playing
the game. The well-worn path through the pasture

372 WHEAT AND WOMAN

reminded me of the arduous toil of the previous
harvest which I had steadily refused to acknowledge
at the time. The icy hours of the winter of
1 906-1 907 recurred to my brain, with the serious
personal disappointment of the sum total of my
wild-oats harvest of 1906, and the far more serious
because general calamity of the frozen harvest of
1907 — big reverses these — but with my fresh flow
of capital and experience I knew I could force a
way through. Only the fire would wipe away
everything : seed-wheat, seed-oats, house and gran-
aries and barn. True, the most precious of my
possessions — my four-footed friends — would be left
to me ; but the black and dreary waste grinned down
even this touch of consolation, whilst a mocker in
the air whispered : " To sell or to starve ! "

It was the last straw. Involuntarily my eyes
quitted their post to glance their way. There they
were, racing away towards safety in a slough, driven
by a scarlet line of flame which was literally sweeping
the pasture out of recognition and had contrived
to leave my house and the unorthodox farm build-
ings, the granaries, the seed-grain, the feed-grain
and my goods and chattels in the safeguard of a
black unbroken circular fence. The hill and the
north-west wind had fought against each other ;
the wind was with the flames, but " the Power
that works behind phenomena " was posted on
the hill.

" Gee ! but it's cut round in the bottom."

" Well, say now, ain't that right down lucky !
And the wind driving it along too ! Seemed sure
thing."

" Can't come back on you now, anyway. You're

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 373

safe enough. But I never see closer thing to a
burn-out. Sure thing ! Sure thing ! "

I went forward in the wake of my beasts, who
with unerring intuition were making for the fireproof
seed-bed, or the sloughs which were as islands set in
the midst of the blood-red sea of flame which was
devouring all that lay in its way to the south-
east.

When I got back the little gathering had dis-
persed, all save the teamster and his family.

" Guess the missus and the children best stay
along with you while your brother and me should
go along and see if they wants any help over yonder,"
said Roddy McMahon, with his eyes following the
danger to which his heart was evidently in tow.

In the gratitude of the moment I guessed the
missus and the children might stay for ever.

Towards sunset I walked across the outskirts of
the land and from the distance gazed upon my
farmstead, a strangely isolated irregular patch of
life and colour set in the black and lifeless waste.
At the gate of the fence I met Guy Mazey.

" My ! Things looked bad for you this morning
though ! I was coming across, but I had to plough
up my own guard a bit ; and then there was Roland
Dennison. The fire seemed every bit like coming
in on him, an' he away down at the Fort. And so
you lost that good granary. Say now ! Too bad ! "

I gratefully murmured that I had lost nothing.

" But I see the granary in the twenty-five-acre
patch yesterday forenoon," he replied incredulously.

" But not yesterday afternoon," I explained, and
was conscious of the first faint symptom of returning
self-respect.

374 WHEAT AND WOMAN

" My ! But I guess you struck it lucky that time
all right ! "

I think the escape from the threat of grave loss
and danger did me much good at the time. There
is always a temptation to put off the duty of to-day
until to-morrow on a Canadian farm, not altogether
through sloth but through over-work, aggravated
by lack of method. The fire-guards around the
buildings and the granaries would have taken but
half a day of fall-ploughing, and not only would
one have been secure against loss through fire, but
in the event of such a fire rushing over the land
one could have reaped the benefit of its passing
with very little tax in the way of loss. It would
have burnt off the stubble — always a day's work —
cleaned out old sloughs, making clear way for
young and tender herb, and in the shortest space
of time replaced the dusky hue of the prairie with
a coat of emerald green. Fire has always been
welcome to the well-prepared as an excellent time-
saver in the seeding month ; yet danger there is
and always will be as long as the unprepared are
among the others ; and it is good for the country
that the danger of prairie fire in completely settled
districts has almost passed away. At the time of
the danger which beset me I was almost completely
surrounded by unbroken prairie. Nearly all the
land of the neighbourhood is now under cultivation,
and there is no fire-guard or exterminator of superior
efficiency to a stretch of ploughed land.

The fire was followed by the last snowstorm of
the season ; it checked seeding for six days, and then
spring really came. After finishing the big field
we sowed the newly broken twenty-five acres, then

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 375

burned off the stubble of the preceding year's
breaking crop and sowed that. Wheat-seeding was
then finished. Afterwards we ploughed eighteen
acres of stubble belonging to the summer-fallow
crop of the preceding year, and sowed oats. Rain
arrived to delay the barley-seeding, and it was not
in the land until June 15, which, in spite of all
proverbs, is fully ten days too late unless one is
prepared for a very grave risk of frozen grain.

In the last week of April, on a day of snow and
wind and my birthday, Nancy brought me the
dearest of gifts in the form of a second colt, whom I
named Jupiter, because in spite of all orthodox
arrangements for his paternity he had selected his
sire by some means or another, and it always
remained a mystery. He was a beautiful bay colt,
and took two first prizes on his only appearance in
the show-ring. Felicity nearly lost her self-pos-
session between delight and jealousy at his coming.
When I half dragged, half carried him into the
stable from the huge snow-covered straw-pile where
he had come into the world, she came too, and when
shut out from the place which sheltered mother and
son she returned at regular intervals to kick in
impatient and jealous anger at their door. All
through the summer she insisted on sharing the
milk, and one had to be always most tactful about
giving her the largest and first share of attention.
But left alone they were devoted friends, and
Jupiter grew up with all the dear ways of Ricky
and a quite unaccountable likeness to him, and
every beast of every species seemed to find in him a
prince of playmates.

The three steers and Julia had thriven well

376 WHEAT AND WOMAN

during the winter, and so had the small steer who
arrived in the middle of a grain-field in the pre-
ceding August. Blacky, his mother, was the cow
who drank her own milk, and her efforts to steal her
own calf were amazingly original. Mr. Wilton, after
having tried every device to secure her milk for the
household, had eventually decided that she might
reserve for her offspring what she stole from her
owner, and let them run together. This probably
accounted for the unusual size and strength of her
young steer. John McLeay always allowed his
calves to have all the milk until they ran dry ; and
undoubtedly in cattle-raising, quite apart from the
toil and profit of dairy-farming, this is the best
method of raising good beasts for food.

The only disappointment in connexion with
Mr. Wilton's charge was the pigs. Out of thirty-
three born in April only three survived, and the
other three sows did not farrow until June, too late
for November markets. It is possible, with excel-
lent feeding, to sell April sows at a good profit in
the fall of the year ; but one ought not to have to
keep spring-born pigs through the winter, and it
is only wise to encourage the coming of the second
family where winter accommodation is perfect.
But at the end of the seeding month of 1908 the
stock and grain had an air of promise. There was
very little work to be done. Under thirty acres to
plough, and the hay to make, which in one of
Canada's brilliant working seasons is neither a hard
nor a lengthy business. I had to buy seed-oats
and barley as my own were not sufficiently clean,
but the clouds were clearing off, and I had leisure
to read and to do a great deal of writing ; and

ik

SEED— PASSING OF A PRAIRIE FIRE 377

although I had no saddle-horse, as Nancy was far
too busy in the nursery except for an occasional
jaunt to Fort Qu'Appelle in search of things indis-
pensable, yet the nursery had its own particular
attraction for one's hours of leisure, and already in
the lovely limbs of Felicity was the promise of the
lightness and brightness and pace of an ideal saddle-
mare.

P

II

THE BLADE— THE EAR— THE FULL

CORN

It was on the twenty-second day from sowing that
I paused in some gardening one evening to notice
that my summer-fallow field was flecked with bright
green wheat-blades ; then came early rain, and it
raced ahead. Only here and there the regular lines
were inclined to run out of form — in places it was
strangely over-luxuriant.

" Your wheat is well forward," said my neighbour,
" but very over-thick here and there. It seems to
me that the seeder has been playing you false. It
looks as though it had become choked, and then
discharged the blocked seed with a flush directly
the tube was clear. That, or other seed sprouting
which wasn't sown this year."

Guy Mazey passed by : " The wheat's coming
up fine," he said, " but some of it has been sowed
too thick I guess. I always have one or two of my
youngsters walk behind the seeder all the time.
Then if a tube gets choked we clean it straight
away."

I was trying to work the farm with as little help
as possible that year ; all the land was sown, there
were only about thirty acres of summer-fallow land
to plough, which would not take Roddy McMahon

378

THE BLADE 379

more than ten days. This I disced and harrowed
for all surface seed to spring, and it was settled that
it should not be ploughed until it was well up. He
came along one day to see how things were going,
and I anxiously inquired his opinion concerning the
wheat in the blade.

" The seeder don't ever clog," he assured me.
" I see that everything is clear at the end of each
furrow and I look in the seed-box pretty frequent,
and get off to see what's wrong if the seed don't
appear to be shrinking even like. None's perfect
I guess. But 'twould take a better man than any
round these parts to learn me my work on the land.
And your wheat is the best about, way ahead of any
other."

" It's the most forward," I allowed. " But you
can't deny that those over-thick patches are out of
order. I was hoping you might be able to explain
them away with some irregularity of the seeder. As
you can't we may just as well look the only explana-
tion in the eyes — wild oats ! "

" Well, maybe. That field can stand a few."

" There is no wheat-tract in any country that
can stand wild oats, and you know it," I replied.
" It is not only that they can cause excellent wheat
to be rejected from its own grade, but sooner or later
it is annihilation to the wheat. It is of no use
attempting to cross your bridge before you come to
it, but it is foolish to deny the existence of a bridge
which is already within sight."

" Wild oats have been in that patch this ten years
and they've got them all round in these parts. It's
shame that the fellows you had to plough last year
didn't know their work better. 'Twould have

38o WHEAT AND WOMAN

been a good act to plough twice, it would have got
the best part of the weeds under and the oats too
I guess. The breakin' and stubble is comin' along
fine. Guess you'll be having a sight better harvest

than any of the rest, anyway "

" The comparative degree is the refuge of the
second-rate," I replied bitterly.
" What's that you said ? " said he.
By the end of June I saw clearly that my beautiful
field, which was the picture of health and coming
wealth to the untrained eye, was to let me down
badly. In the preceding season an additional
thirty-foot patch had been broken at the skirt of
the field nearest the house bringing the field right
up to the garden-fence. Within the patch of newly
broken land the wheat was perfectly clean and
luxuriant and beautiful beyond description ; and
I was not only spared much criticism and con-
dolence, but congratulations were showered upon
me, which I accepted graciously and found soothing
in spite of my own complete knowledge of the
inner leaves and chapters of the field with the
lovely margin. After all one should enjoy every-
thing possible in this world. In the nature of
things those who scoff at castles in the air, and the
pleasure of anticipation, and the fool's paradise,
can never gauge the sum of the dweller's debt to the
dreamer in this world. A pleasure anticipated
is pleasure still. I got all the pleasure possible
out of the margin of joy, but by July i I saw
that it was absolutely necessary to make hay
of many acres behind it on the south-west side
of the field, which had the appearance of a patch
of degenerate oats with a wheat-ear here and there.

i

THE BLADE 381

Nor was the affliction confined to the outskirts
of the field ; one couldn't walk a hundred feet
anjovhere without coming across yards and even
roods of them. A good way out of the problem
would have been to make hay of the whole field,
bar the margin ; but the best way would have been
to have waited until the sap had dried right out, and,
like Mr. George Robb, of Springbrook, to have
ploughed a good fire-guard, and made a cleansing
bonfire of the lot. But I was in the place where one
cannot choose, the place of a great responsibility.
I was bound on one side of the Atlantic with another's
capital, and on the other with a big land payment
still to make in the future, of which at least a
thousand dollars plus the interest of the whole
would certainly have to be met in the fall ; there
was still a much overdrawn banking account ;
wages and the housekeeping account were being
kept down, but in time the threshing bill would have
to be met. On the other hand stock was growing
into money. The two steers I had bought of my
predecessor were ready for prompt sale in emergency,
or, if harvest turned out well, we could afford to
reserve one-half for household use, and sell the other
to a neighbour at a cent or so above the price one
would obtain from the butcher. I had hoped to
make at least three hundred dollars in pigs, but I
saw that little more than a hundred could be anti-
cipated owing to the bad luck in the birthday month.
For years I had argued loftily that poverty should
never be permitted to matter ; it threw down
j the glove to me again and again in fighting my way
through the proposition of farming three hundred
and twenty acres of land on the Canadian prairie

382 WHEAT AND WOMAN

with insufficient capital and only a growing expe-
rience, which always seemed to arrive at the spot
just too late to be of use. Whether it was that I
had to think hard for thirty-five cents to sharpen
a ploughshare or to think hard for a hundred and
thirty-five dollars to settle indisputable claims for
indispensable service of horse or implement or man,
I had to think hard all the time. But the little
bunch of cattle was growing. Molly was at the time
mother of two steers and two heifers, and the
eldest steer was certainly worth the price I
paid for him and herself together — forty-five
dollars. Blacky had also placed two steers to my
credit, and there was the other big steer who had
hailed from " the hard cow." Best of all, there
was always in view cheering me on to " the heights
of one's heart " Nancy with Felicity and Jupiter
in tow.

That year too I had a lovely garden. Countess
Spencer sweet peas, the seed of which had hailed
from Covent Garden, and masses of Shirley poppy
brought a mass of lovely colour to the flower-beds
which I had dug in 1906, and when colour had
basely deserted at the earliest attacks of Jack Frost,
mignonette, and love-in-a-mist, which had lain
almost concealed among the poppies, lived on
fighting the frost-fiend with the last breath of
fragrance and kindness. None can tell how much a
garden contributes to the joy of life on the prairie.
The season of flowers is so short, and toil is so long
that the place of dolce far 7iiente often smiled
with me over the old dream of sweet idleness, but it
never mocked, and the refreshment of the lovely
flash and fragrance of that flower-bed perhaps

-=sammmmmmammmmm^mmmmmmA

THE EAR

383

could only be truly appreciated by a very tired
person.

Every year the Agricultural Show is held at
Fort Qu'Appelle. It is quite an event because the
very smallest excuse is always sufficient to summon
the whole world and his wife to the town between
the lovely lakes. I was intending to show Nancy
and Jupiter. Mr. Ray Dale and Kelsdon were to
be my guests overnight. Mr. Ray Dale is one of
the men to whom quite a wide area of Saskatchewan
owes an uncommon debt. A great lover of horses
he gave all his time and energy and every cent he
earned to the improvement of horse-breeding in
the Qu'Appelle neighbourhood. His horse Kelsdon
had taken medals and prizes and championships
from coast to coast. I made the best preparations
possible for my distinguished guest. We cleaned
out the coolest and lightest end of the log-stable
and got up a load of the mintiest hay, but Kelsdon
brought his own oats and seemed quite pleased and
content with his surroundings. The next day he
and Nancy and little Jupiter were brushed and
polished, and prepared for the show-ring. Of course
Kelsdon carried off everything that lay in his way,
but Jupiter to my surprise and delight took off
first prize in both the classes in which he was shown
and a kind word and compliment from the judge
to boot. No pen can paint the pleasure for which
those two first-prize certificates stand.

Meantime the ears of wheat arrived to share the
outlook, and the centres and east-end acres of
growing grain fanned the inextinguishable spark of
hope. There was a very little smut in the stubble
crop, but the wheat itself was buoyant in spite of

384 WHEAT AND WOMAN

the fact that we looked in vain for our usual thunder-
showers, and rain was badly needed. I missed the
croak and criticism of my neighbour that year, and
I missed his kindness too. His people arrived from
England ; there were tents and disorder around the
peaceful shack, and presently a kind of miniature
elevator towered on its other side ; and when the
disorder of the process of new buildings had cleared
off, where peace had reigned order ruled. Not that
the shack had ever been set in anything but the pink
of neatness, and the fields of my neighbour's
homestead were deep ploughed and clean, but
capital and labour can accomplish so much more
in a short time than just the land and the man —
and very soon the little shack was the picturesque
old friend rather than the centre of a model farm
on which everything was just as my neighbour and
critic and friend had always grumbled that it ought
to be, and he was farming miles away on the far
side of the valley.

It had been a glorious summer with the only
drawback of a lack of July showers. On August 12
we awoke to a steady downpour of rain which
ceased at midday, when the swollen clouds made
way for the August sun. But at eventime the
clouds had floated all too far away, and the sun went
down in royal scarlet. In Canada we make everyday
use of our senses — the sun is my clock, my body a
faithful thermometer. Before dawn it had regis-
tered freezing-point ; at sunrise I saw Jack Frost had
called and left his mark. However, my poppies
and sweet peas reassured me ; they seemed even
fresher and more lovely than before, but a line of
potatoes on the south of the garden and on a line

riL.

THE EAR 385

with the wheat drooped and blackened at the ordeal
of the sun, although a quarter of an acre of a branch
of their family fifty yards north escaped unscathed.
I had arranged to go that day to visit the experi-
mental farm run by the Government at Indian
Head, and was glad of the drive as a means of dis-
traction, and also as an opportunity of examining
how far the frost might affect the harvest.

The horses caught the whiff of Jack Frost in the
air. Tossing head and heel they flew across the
prairie, jubilant no doubt in the consciousness that
the day of their tormenting enemy the mosquito
had fled once more, and good pasture would again
be an undisturbed delight. On my way I passed a
man driving a hayrack.

" Four degrees only," was the reply to my question ;
but the next moment in passing a garden I noticed
that the vegetable -marrow plants had gone under,
and not a solitary potato plant had escaped.
Onward we raced across the prairie trail towards
Wideawake, where to the left started those wonderful
miles of wheat plain. Here, in the wheat season,
miles and miles of unfenced grain line the trail on
either side, unbroken save for the road allowance
and an occasional patch of summer-fallow land,
and through the avenue of standing grain one drives
to the very border of the main street of the wheat
town of Indian Head. Had the frost worked
mischief ? I asked myself the question many times
during the eighteen-mile drive. The oats denied
injury. The dusky tint of many a square-mile
patch already invited the binder. I noticed that
the wisdom of old-timers had decided to save on
oats after the lesson of 1907, and bitterly I regretted

2B

386 WHEAT AND WOMAN

that I had not been strong enough to live down to
my own theory in this matter, for in my judgment
the wheat would not be ready for the binder full
ten days and their complement of treacherous
nights.

I found that only two degrees had been registered
at the experimental farm and at South Qu'Appelle.
All the grain crops at the farm were harvest-ripe,
and there was not the slightest fear of injury. I
drove home determined to hope for the best.

The rain of August 12 brought more rain,
but the sun was on the side of the wheat and
shone with all its glorious might between the
storms, and the green wheat-fields quickly turned to
gold. The summer-fallow crop is usually the last to
ripen, and therefore the newly broken frill of my
summer-fallow patch led me to believe that it was
ripe before the entire field was ready. My old
neighbour John McLeay warned me against cutting
too early. A well-known scientific farmer wrote a
special article to the Manitoba Free Press urging the
farmer to wait the full time in spite of the frost
scare. Generally speaking, he considered the crop
was sufficiently advanced to hold its own. He argued
that if cut on the green side the grain was sure to
shrink, and he maintained that in its very near
degree towards maturity, loss on weight would
exceed loss on grade, and injure the harvest more
deeply than even a touch of frost.

On Sunday Roddy McMahon came along with
the news that David Chambers had decided not to
waste binder-twine nor harvest labour on his
biggest field of wheat.

" The frost cut right up through Springbrook,

THE EAR 387

but Dave Chambers he would have been all right
if he hadn't been late getting in his seed. His
nephews came out from the Old Country. I guess
he put them on the seeder before they had time
to know much, and he was a bit short-handed and
nigh three weeks behind in getting it in. The frost
has knocked one or two about, but we were in
good and early, and I guess you're all right."

I could only remember that in the preceding year
a neighbour in Springbrook and the son of an old-
timer had cut his wheat absolutely green three days
before the fatal frost. He had built it into huge
stooks and let it ripen in the sheaf. It graded No. 2
Northern, and sold at seventy-five cents when all
the wheat in the neighbourhood was fetching
between twenty-five and thirty-five cents. Every
night the thermometer fell almost to freezing-
point. The anxiety was too keen. I resolved to cut,
and cut about four days too soon, and undoubtedly
lost some bushels by weight in so doing. The crop
of 1908 was altogether a different problem from the
crop of 1907. Frost hardly touches harvest-ripe
grain, but for every grain that it stands on the near
side of harvest-ripe so much the nearer it is to the
destroying power of the frost, and in an average year
three parts of the battle with the frost may be
fought in early seeding. Here the service of Roddy
McMahon stood by me so strongly. " None is
perfect I guess," was one of his most frequent
sayings, but truly at seed-time and harvest and
threshing this man of the land would be hard to beat.
Strength and speed were his strong points, and
at all times and seasons he was full of resource.
Much ill-fortune I might have avoided had he

388 WHEAT AND WOMAN

worked for me right through the season of 1907,
and much that was excellent in the harvests of
1908 and 1 9 10 I owed to his insistence of " getting
it in good and quick all right."

It was fated to be a difficult year. I had some
trouble in getting in the threshers, my corner having
relied on the return of Alan Redcliffe's outfit, but he
failed us. Then Danny McLeay secured an awfully
good outfit which had agreed to take him and John
McLeay in its line on the way to David Chambers.
John McLeay felt sure Mr. Chambers would stand
aside another day that I might be included in the
grace, but although I begged hard he wouldn't give
an inch. But two years later he most kindly
allowed another outfit to come to me first, and the
bad end of that good turn left him with his grain
in stook through the winter, for the snow fell early,
and threshing became difficult and indeed
impossible.

However the kindness of 191 1 cannot possibly be
foreseen through the resolution of 1908, and I
felt that he was ungenerous and almost unjust
about excluding me from the grace to which he
admitted John and Danny McLeay ; because
although many an outfit would have crossed a mile
or so to do our triple job, either alone was no par-
ticular catch. In my dilemma I drove straight to
Guy Mazey, and he promised to help me out of the
difficulty and to come in directly his own job was
over.

On the following Saturday evening I heard the
engine puffing along its way through the stooks.
It was a steel-bright night, and I hadn't a shadow
of regret for the loss of my day of rest, but just

THE FULL CORN 389

hugged to myself the consolation that the last act of
1908 would soon be over. In the morning the rain
poured down in torrents and for twenty-four hours
on end.

It hadn't been too profitable a threshing season
for the men on the gangs. Wages are high, but when
they cannot work they are not paid, and also when
they are not working they are liable to discontent.
The weather was growing cold, the men up for the
harvest job from the east were anxious to get home,
and inclined to kick at the smallest delay. I heard
their sentiments freely expressed through Sunday,
and knew that Guy Mazey would have his work
cut ovit to hold them over a prolonged wait, but I
was absolutely determined that not one bushel of
my grain should be threshed until it was bone-dry.
On the stubble and breaking crops the wheat was
of fine grade, and perfectly clean and free from any
kind of weed, but there was a tiny touch of smut
here and there. To have threshed it on the finest
shade of the damp side would have been a grave
risk of tagged grain. I knew Guy Mazey was far
too good a farmer to thresh before grain was
thoroughly dry as a rule, but it would take an iron
will to hold his gang together, and he couldn't
thresh without his men.

Mabel rode over on Monday morning, she had
promised to help me over my household chores.

" But it is utterly impossible to thresh to-day,"
I said to her as we watched the soaked land steaming
in the sun.

" I guess they'll be able to start up at noon,"
she said. " Father vdll be round by then all right."

I walked out to the granary directly I saw that

390 WHEAT AND \^^OMAN

Guy Mazey had arrived. " Did you think of starting
to-day ? " I inquired.

" Well, I guess we may be able to start up after
dinner."

" It's out of the question," I said. " That grain
looks perfectly clean at sight, but there is smut
here and there, and to thresh it to-day or even
to-morrow without the strongest wind and sun
to dry it out would be fatal. I know your gang
are kicking badly, and I am afraid they are going to
be harder to hold than you think. I'll keep the
outfit round gladly if I have to keep them a month,
but I won't have a solitary stook threshed until
it is absolutely fit and dry. It's the first sound good
crop I have raised. I am not going to take any
chances."

" The men are very hard to hold indeed," he
agreed, " and I should be glad to pay them all off.
But what shall you do ? You see the others round
are threshed out, and maybe you would find it
difficult to get an outfit to put in for one small
crop."

" I must risk that. I met Mr. Redcliffe and he
said he would come in on his way home ; it will
probably be late, but anything is better than a crop
spoiled after harvest. You think it over and if
you can't hold the men I shall understand, and any
expenses concerned with the incoming of course
I will pay."

Fort Qu'Appelle, like all small towns, has a tendency
to gossip. The different reports that got on to the
four winds and other tongues concerning the entrance
and rapid exit of Guy Mazey's threshing outfit from
my threshing job that year were many, varied, and

THE FULL CORN 391

unflattering to both of us. But I had always
found him one of the very best of my friends and
neighbours. I knew none who worked so quickly
and quietly and with such dogged, splendid deter-
mination. He took reverse in silence and good
fortune thankfully, and he was always ready to help
a lame dog over a stile. He knew about wheat, too,
and how I felt about that particular crop, and if I
stretched reason taut it was good reason, and I am
sure he forgave me. It is certain he did not send
in a bill for coming over with the engine and
separator in vain.

After I left him I went down to the Fort to get
provisions, and when I got back every vestige of
the threshing outfit had vanished.

The hired man, who had been stooking and had
remained on for fall-ploughing, met me at the
gate speechful with amazement.

" A pretty thing you have done ! Never have I
seen such a thing as a threshing outfit sent off a
place before, and not a stook threshed. And a
woman too ! You'll be keeping Christmas with your
stooks."

" That needn't concern you, since your wages
will be paid in any case. Get back to your own
business on the plough," I said, without a sign of
the anger that was blazing in my heart. The man
was very valuable, quiet with horses, thorough in
his ploughing, and he knew his work.

Every day I sought threshers in vain, but on
Friday I found the gang on which Roddy McMahon
was working.

" David Chambers ought to have let them come
on to you I guess. It wouldn't have put him out

392 WHEAT AND WOMAN

none either. 'Twasn't like him neither. Guess
this outfit will come on and thresh you out all
right soon as we've finished up here. About Monday-
night I guess."

Roddy McMahon has always a pull with a thresh-
ing outfit. The boss values him because he can
put in the work of two without getting disagreeable.
Through threshing he works in the same sort of
spirit in which Englishmen put in every minute
of a hunting run, so that all the gang like him too,
even pitchers who rest so frequently upon their
fork. He is never too tired to see that the women
in the house have plenty of water and wood to
engineer those three heavy meals, and whilst half
a dozen are bewailing the chore of milking, or having
a lively discussion as to whose turn it is not to milk,
he has planted the milk upon the kitchen table
and driven the cows back to pasture. Roddy
McMahon at his best is a good type of Canada's
most valuable specimen of the man on the land,
and as he is always in his best form through threshing
I knew I should get threshed out all right while
such a friend remained at court.

" 'Twould be a good act if you were to see the boss
and get it fixed right now I guess," he said ; and
I rode across to the place where the manager was
talking to Sandy Stuart, whom I hadn't met before,
only we both claimed Mr. Brodie as a mutual
friend.

" Too bad of David not to have let them come
on to you from John McLeay," he said. " You
should have come to me."

Too bad it might have been, but it was quite
right all the same, as he proved when he gave way

THE FULL CORN 393

for others and blocked his own passage In 191 1. It is
a concession that should not be required of any
neighbour after the first week in October. The
point is to hustle round and make your threshing
arrangements the moment the binder comes in from
the harvest-field.

In some way or another I had offended my stooker,
or he visited the gangs stationed round about us,
and began to regret the fact that he had asked to
stay on with me at a dollar a day when other men
were earning two dollars and two-fifty a day on the
outfits. None was more staggered than I at his
suggestion to remain on after stooking. He told
me that my cooking suited him, but that was in the
month of custard and stewed plums; when we
came down to solid joints a change came over the
spirit of his dream, and he didn't hesitate to abuse
even as he had praised ; but he was backsetting
the hill field, which is the most difficult piece of
ploughing on the farm, and every furrow was
perfectly turned and not a horse turned a hair or
ever looked tired.

One Sunday afternoon I was digging potatoes
in preparation for my visitors and he came
across.

*' If my work ain't suiting you any longer, why,
hand out the dollars."

" It suits me perfectly," I answered. " I haven't
the smallest intention of breaking our two months'

contract."

The threshers came in that week and he worked
well enough, but evidently society was distracting
and not exactly elevating. He forsook the armour
of silence and I paid him off, leaving the hill field

394 WHEAT AND WOMAN

for the time being a study in brown and gold, and an
unaccomplished fact as a seed-bed.

" You didn't pay him ? " said Roddy McMahon
hopefully, when I met him on the trail, and told
him that he had gone.

" Of course I paid him," I said. " His work was
excellent, but he refused to go on with it, and I
paid him off."

" He owed me five dollars," he said. " Guess we
shall never see that bird in these parts again."

" It was very foolish of you to lend it at all," I
said, " but why not have told me, and I could have
kept it back for you."

" I guessed the fellow was all right, though he
had some queer ways," he explained.

The outfit had proved to be the quickest and most
satisfactory that had yet threshed out for me, and
to prove that Roddy McMahon's law of " getting
in the seed good and quick all right " is three-
fourths of the battle with the frost, the crop
that year, in spite of the frost of August 12,
was entirely uninjured. The wheat from the
summer-fallow was of perfect quality, very large,
plump, hard, and bright gold. But it was heavily
sprinkled with wild oats although I had mowed
down ten acres, and had cast out the worst sheaves
also from patches of wild oats which had gained
complete possession here and there leaving yield
of wheat practically nil. The wheat from the
breaking was wonderfully good, and came out
far and away above the threshers' estimate in weight,
which is the supreme test. From the stubble crop of
my breaking of 1906 I also got an excellent return of
good grain ; there was some smut, but we had threshed

THE FULL CORN 395

in the best of weather, and being bone-dry there
was no suspicion of tag about it. Eight teams fed
the machine and they finished the business in a day
and three-quarters, and had I put on ten teams the
engine would have kept up to the power, and would
have easily got through in a day and a half. My
threshing bill amounted to a hundred and twenty
dollars including hire of three teams.

My total receipts that year amounted to one
thousand one hundred and ninety-one dollars,
the wages for the year I had kept down to two
hundred and three dollars, seed oats and barley
had cost me fifty dollars. My stores amounted to
a hundred dollars, but I had visitors which increased
the number of my household for some weeks.
Binder-twine, machine-oil, and repairs came out
at about a hundred dollars, giving me a profit of
nearly seven hundred dollars on the year's working.

It was not good, but the profit was made in a
year distinctly below the average in harvest return.
Most farms reckoned that they drew two- thirds
of the average crop that year. Also I was working
down, " lying low," I had not enough horses, not
enough labour, also not enough capital ; I had to
move very gently. It was, however, just possible
to pay the interest of the mortgage, and five hundred
dollars of the capital, and it was enough to prove
to me that farming on the prairie properly done is
farming easily done, and that, worked out on a well-
thought-out plan, it is a practical and should be a
highly profitable means of independence and wealth
for women as it has always proved for men. But
on every side my neighbours had obtained their
land as a gift from the Government, or at least one

396 WHEAT AND WOMAN

hundred and sixty acres of it, and a further hundred
and sixty had been added on the condition of pre-
emption, which is by payment of three dollars an
acre in addition to the performance of the home-
stead duties ; in this way a farm in every way equal
to the one which had cost me five thousand dollars
was to be obtained by any man for nine hundred and
seventy dollars. So that even allowing that a
woman farmer is at a slight disadvantage in working
out a farm proposition, she has the killing weight of
extra payment thrust on her at the very outset.
She may be the best farmer in Canada, she may buy
land, work it, take prizes for seed and stock, but she
is denied the right to claim from the Government
the hundred and sixty acres of land held out as a
bait to every man.

I talked to every man about it, and almost to a
man they said : " Too bad ! "

Ill

SALES, MORTGAGE—" A LARGER
HEAVEN "

Three reasons contributed towards the expensive
mistake I made in again selling " on the street," but
the last weighed down both the others. My crop
was naturally divided into three grades as it was
drawn from new breaking, stubble crop sown on
breaking, and a certain amount from dirty land, so
that it was impossible to fill a carload without mixing.
Secondly, I had omitted to order my car until
there were very many names on the railway list ;
lastly, I had to meet a promissory note for a sum
of over five hundred dollars. I discussed financial
affairs with my friend the bank manager, especially
the matter of obtaining a new loan to make my
land payment if I first settled the note in full.

" Better get through your sales and settle quickly,
wipe off the old account and obtain a new loan,"
was the advice I received, and I am sure it was
given in good faith. So I sold on the street, but
with a sick heart and an uneasy conscience ; I
loathed the smallest offence against the wheat
itself.

My first few loads from the breaking fetched
seventy-seven and seventy-eight cents and graded
No. 2 Northern, I was disappointed at not getting

397

398 WHEAT AND WOMAN

No. I, but it had been cut on the green side, and
the grain was not sufficiently uniform. But when
I heard that Mr. Hockly of Wideawake was getting
the same price net for sHghtly frozen grain grading
No. 4 Northern, which he had shipped to Fort
William via Winnipeg, I sent samples to Thompson
and Co. of Winnipeg, who advised me that its
value was from ninety-five to ninety-seven cents
per bushel — that is, allowing for freight to the
East, eighty-four to eighty-six cents per bushel.
So that, after allowing for freight, elevator storage
and commission, I lost over a hundred dollars on
the sale of thirteen hundred bushels of my cleaner
grain, whilst that infested with wild oats was docked
at the rate of 12 per cent, against the average
standard of 2 per cent.

The farmer — the producer — is the indispensable
factor in the development of Canada, but he is at
the mercy of every wave of every ill-tide. There
are times and seasons when the beginner, or the
farmer without a sufficient margin of capital for
defence, must sell on the street. Even if she or he
has sufficient grain to fill a car, there may be a
blockade at the elevators, or cars may run short,
and in any case, when living at a distance of over
ten miles from a railway-station, it is by far the
easier matter to take in a load at one's convenience
and dump it into an elevator than to haul in twenty
loads within twenty days when wheat may be daily
dropping in the market. It is to be remembered
that the small farmer is invariably pressed for small
money. The load goes in and the elevator man
knows that it has to be sold ; it is a case of leave it
at the price or take it back. Wherever an elevator

SALES, MORTGAGE 399

marks a wheat town the Government scale and
the Government grader should be in the centre of
its market-place. Whenever a charter is granted
to a Bank it should be on the condition that a certain
sum of money is to be kept strictly for the service
of the producer at a fair and acceptable degree of
interest. Much has lately been written against
freight charges. I lived for some months twenty-
six miles from the nearest bi-weekly railway service,
and then through four years found it necessary to
haul grain fifteen miles to the nearest railway-
station ; but since the coming of the Grand Trunk
Pacific Railway from Winnipeg to Regina via Fort
Qu'Appelle, within four and a half miles of my farm,
I can appreciate the blessing of being able to fill
a car within forty-eight hours, or even twenty-four
if necessary. Many of my neighbours this year
threshed their grain into the wagon and hauled
directly to the railway-car, which was loaded and
dispatched within twelve hours, and two-thirds
of its value was obtainable on sight if dispatched
through the elevator at Fort Qu'Appelle. For
this inestimable boon one paid exactly the same
freight charge as in the pioneer days, when it
sometimes meant a three weeks' journey to sell a
wagon-load, or in the days of my own experience,
when it took from fifteen to twenty days to fill a
car. Yet it is the farmers within the belt of con-
venience who kick at the freight charge, not those
who are still depending on the railway development
to make life easier. Of the freight charges I can
only speak as a grain farmer. There seems to be
some just ground for complaint of lack of organiza-
tion between the producer and the would-be con-

400 WHEAT AND WOMAN

sumer of fruit and vegetables in Canada ; but,
given justice in weight and grade, I can well afford
to pay ten cents a bushel for the transport of my
grain, and I know that if I pay less it will not be
at the cost of shareholders' profits, but at the cost
of the inconvenience and delayed prosperity of
the pioneer and the homesteader, whose experience
I have endured.

To return to my story, I paid the Bank since it
was too late to draw back, but there was no further
loan forthcoming. The chasm between the receipts
of 1908 and the accumulated payments of 1907
and 1908 had to be bridged. At this critical moment
my predecessor appeared on the scene to announce
that it was necessary to apply not only for the
deferred payment of 1907, but the payment of the
current year in addition — two thousand dollars
plus one year's interest at 7 per cent. My pre-
decessor and I had become the best of friends, but
it appeared that a near relative was in great financial
distress, and there was nothing for it but to demand
my land payments ; so we resolved to do the best
we could for each other on the cheapest possible
terms.

I turned at once to the banker who had advanced
me money when the Union Bank had refused it
in 1907. In difhculty it is wise to place one's
confidence in brain. Donald H. Macdonald, the
second son of the last of the chief factors of the
Hudson Bay Company, has the reputation of being
one of the shrewdest as well as one of the wealthiest
men in Western Canada, and he never failed to
help me when I went to him for counsel or financial
service. In affairs he is not to be described as hard

SALES, MORTGAGE 401

or lenient — the moment he gets inside a business
proposition every fact jumps to its proper place,
and not the smallest attendant detail is permitted
to remain in the shadow. A financial service is
none the less in Canada because you pay a higher
rate of interest than in England. At the particular
time I went to him every one was wanting money,
and almost at any price. He arranged to pay off
my predecessor and replace the mortgage. I had,
of course, to pay the current rate of interest, 8
per cent., and all expenses incidental to the charge,
and insurance against fire. I paid five hundred
dollars off the original mortgage, and it was arranged
that I should pay off that amount yearly and not
attempt to make the greater payment of a thousand
dollars. He advanced a minor and temporary loan
for the settlement of various payments, and pushed
my ship into smoother waters, so that I left in
peace, if not in plenty, for England via Ottawa,
where I had been promised an interview with the
Hon. Frank Oliver, Minister of the Interior in the
last Liberal Government, concerning the claim of
Woman to her fair share in the homestead lands
of Canada.

Manual labour gives one time for thought. I
had an intimate knowledge of the life of the educated
working woman in Germany, Paris, and in England.
I knew that marriage was accepted by many women
as the sole resource against labour in a world
governed by laws made by men for men, where
there is but the scantest justice and scant wages
for the labour of women, because I had lived with
and amongst women-workers who had also to wake

2 c

402 WHEAT AND WOMAN

up from their dream of resource and set to work
for the living of two or three more in place of the
original one ; but I also knew that, happily for the
race, there is another and increasing group of women
who, if they cannot have marriage as an inspiration
in their lives, refuse it as a mere resource. I met
women forced by circumstance into business or
industrial life the monotony and routine of which
starved those very faculties which would have found
full scope in the care of grateful animals and the
varied labours on the land, and, having arrived
myself at the place where I knew how to succeed,
through having learned what to avoid, in farming
on the prairie, it seemed to me that, through the
untidy gap I had made in scrambling through a
blind fence to get that knowledge, others would
make a gate if they once realized that what men
had done for themselves in agricultural pursuits
on the prairie, women could also do for themselves.
Woman can earn for herself independence and in
time wealth. The minimum sum of independence
I defined then, as now, in the sum of ;£5ooo, and
I consider that a woman should be able to command
that amount at least after twenty years' work on
the land, providing she has a fair start.

It is impossible in a world practically governed
by " the symbol of C^sar " to avoid individual
registration of one's direct relation to money. If
you cannot control it it will control you. In the
past it is an open secret that conditions have driven
Woman into the bondage of money ; the symbol
must be forced to serve, or sooner or later it rules,
and it rules with a rod of red-hot iron. The
strongest point pressing forward the coming of

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" A LARGER HEAVEN " 403

Women's Suffrage lies in one of the remarkably
few indiscretions among laws made hy men for
men — Woman's compulsory contribution of money
towards the support of the State, because it is a
definite acknowledgment of Woman's direct relation
to money, which, always the chief factor, has become,
through the power of laws tainted with the self-
interest of the wealth-possessed sex, the ruling force
of civilization. The solid argument which delays
equal suffrage is the fact that man has the full
force of wealth on his side of the scale.

The colossal fortunes of a handful of American
women arrived at a crisis to bestow a new lease of
life upon the superb condition of our English life,
which was just then threatened with decay, if not
extinction ; but the sum of the private fortune
of every wealthy woman in our land would hardly
make any impression towards bringing the weight
of wealth to that poise which would mark the
control of the law of equity between the sexes. To
bring about this condition woman must make
wealth ; she cannot afford to ignore its force, and
only by means of combination and co-operation
can she hope to control it. The opportunities for
wealth-making are greater than they have ever been
before ; from every colony they beckon to the
woman capitalist as well as the woman labourer,
and in the Colonies a combination of capital and
labour is a wealth-compelling power.

The faithful chronicle of one's own difficulties
may at first thought appear but a poor foundation
for one's hope and firm belief that agriculture
vdll prove to be the high-road and foundation of
wealth and independence for Woman, but the

404 WHEAT AND WOMAN

strength of a chain is in its weakest link. To
command complete and uninterrupted success for
an agricultural experiment on the Canadian prairie
or anywhere else, a certain amount of training in
the theory and practice of agriculture is necessary,
and also some knowledge of stock-raising, capital
in adequate relation to one's proposition whether it
is to be worked out on five or five hundred acres of
land, a commercial instinct and a true vocation for
life on the land, an innate love and understanding
of animal and vegetable life. I had no training,
inadequate capital, and my commercial instinct,
though strong in theory, is weak in practice — I fail
to hold my own in buying or selling, and should
never discuss price except on paper. But in spite
of this, and the fact that I am still behind my
conviction that three hundred and twenty acres of
good land in Canada can be worked to produce a
net profit of £500 per annum to its owner, my
weak link is very much stronger than at the time I
set out for Ottawa to claim the right of women to
their share in the homestead land of Canada.

On my way from the West I gathered news and
considerable encouragement from the press-women
of Winnipeg and Fort William. At Winnipeg I
met Miss Cora Hine, who is the editor of the
commercial page of the most powerful organ of
Western Canada — the Manitoba Free Press. To
her is entrusted the responsibility of first voice in
the opinion, and report and publication of informa-
tion which concerns the agricultural side of the
industrial development of that section of the British
Empire which attracts the interest of the world.
It is hardly necessary to add that she has no parlia-

" A LARGER HEAVEN " 405

mentary vote. The strongest weapon she holds
in her professional equipment is her instinct for the
weak link in the chain, and this is backed by excellent
mental balance, wide experience, and impregnable
honesty. I found her enthusiastic about everything
connected with the expansion of resource for
women, and kindly and deeply interested in the
prospect of agriculture, in which she was theoreti-
cally well up.

From her and Mrs. LiHan Graham, and Mrs.
Sherk of Fort William, I learned that Canadian
women had already taken up the matter of Home-
steads for Women with a deep sense of the injustice
of a law which, whilst seeking to secure the pros-
perity of the country in enriching the stranger,
ignores the claim of the sex which bore the brunt
of the battle in those early and difficult days when
every inch of our great wheat-garden of the North-
West had to be won with courage and held with
endurance. No pen can depict the fine part that
Woman played in the spade work of expansion in
Canada, although history throws many a search-
light over the past, which discovers her claim to an
equal share in the land which over a hundred years
ago she helped to win by travail and hold by toil.

It is still among the pleasing traits of Canada
that " men in great place " are easy of access ;
throughout the Dominion there rules between man
and man a common respect for Time. When I
reached Ottawa Mr. Scott, the Commissioner of
Immigration, received me at once, told me his
full mind on some facts and conditions of immi-
grants and immigration, and listened to all I had
to say about women-farmers and homestead land.

4o6 WHEAT AND WOMAN

I learned with regret that the Hon. Frank OHver
had left Ottawa that day for the Christmas recess,
but Mr. Scott advised me to see the Deputy-
Minister — Mr. Cory, with whom he fixed an
appointment for the following morning.

Mr. Cory was kind and wore the anxious-to- please
air of the professional politician which is always
soothing, but I think he knew rather less of the
practical side of agriculture than I of Blue books,
and, just as I had anticipated, firstly, lastly, and all
the time came the argument, " She can't." How-
ever, there was also a promise to place the matter
before the Minister of the Interior on his return.
But I never discussed the matter personally with
Mr. Oliver. Not long before the fall of the Liberal
party I heard that Miss Cora Hine had seen him
on the matter, and that he had arrived at a decision
to refuse to recommend the expansion of the home-
stead law in order to permit women to homestead
because he considered it would be against the main
interest of the country. He argued that the object
of granting the land-gift to men is to induce them
to make home on the prairie — home in the centre
of their agricultural pursuit. He held the first
requirement of the genuine home-maker to be a
wife : he marries, he has a family, etc. etc. Women,
he assumes, are already averse to marriage, and he
considered that to admit them to the opportunities
of the land-grant would be to make them more
independent of marriage than ever. The reason
was at least flattering to the Woman-Farmer if it
was unpromising for the race ; but the birth-rate
of Canada is not nearly as high as it should be, so
perhaps Maeterlinck's "Blue-Bird" has warned the

" A LARGER HEAVEN " 407

myriad of " winged thoughts " eagerly awaiting
their human moment against the trap of the
" homesteader's requirement."

Since there was not the smallest hope of official
encouragement, the only way of going on seemed
to lie in refusing to give up, so I did what I could
alone and very imperfectly. I had neither sufficient
capital nor experience to carry out my "women and
wheat " experiment in any other way than by teaching
my would-be women-farmers what to avoid, and to
give them the opportunity of learning by actually
working with the horses and implements on the
land. The double responsibility naturally needed
even more knowledge and training and patience
and endurance than the chronicled end of my
experiment, but over and over again I recognized
the splendid qualities I had always believed to be
in women, and I don't think a woman ever worked
on my wheat-land without discovering a finer
energy and a stronger and more independent Self
than she dreamed she possessed.

But what is really wanted is such an experiment
in complete form : the average farm-plot, the
average farm-buildings of the prosperous farmer
with sufficient capital to prove the result of sugges-
tion, worked out on the best possible m^ethod of
increase ; the proof that, given sufficient capital,
^500 net profit can be made by any qualified woman-
farmer on three hundred and twenty acres of land
through demonstrating inch by inch and dollar
by dollar how it is made on one particular half-
section. It is easy to work out propositions on
paper, although if more were sketched out care-
fully in this manner finer results would be obtained

4o8 WHEAT AND WOMAN

from the land and the man and the woman. For
instance, it is easy, but it is also inspiring, to demon-
strate on paper that, against the average power of
increase of ^^loo to ;£200 in the space of twenty-
years, the power of increase of ^^loo invested in
cattle on the present scale of commercial value
will reach ;£5645 in twenty years, after allowing for
natural death and then striking off 25 per cent,
from the full sum of result to allow for unnatural
death or disaster ; but it would also be possible
and convincing to demonstrate the experiment in
action at any period of its development — so many
cows, so many calves, yearlings, heifers and steers,
and so many butcher's receipts standing for that
original ;^ioo. In the same way, through adequate
capital and careful experiment one should be able
to foretell approximately what ;£ioo invested in
poultry, pigs, cattle, sheep, horses, may be expected
to yield to the owner of so many acres of land in
five, ten, or twenty years. What is needed is an
experimental farm which is a commercial success,
where women may learn by doing and know by
seeing that through agriculture the farmer may
arrive at independence and wealth. In such a
proposition there should be no room for philan-
thropy except in the foundation, and even that
should always be reclaimable. Any business propo-
sition that is not a commercial success is practically
a failure. The experimental training farm must
produce a net profit : of this a portion should be
set aside for depreciation and development, a
portion should go towards a fund to assist women-
farmers of true vocation but insufficient capital to
make a fair start, and a portion should be placed

" A LARGER HEAVEN " 409

to the fund for the repayment of initial capital in
whatever form of advance it was obtained. Nothing
can cancel the grace of giving, none can repay an
act of generosity, but the law " Unto Caesar the
things that are Caesar's " is only second to its better
half. Besides, the philanthropic fund of the world
is wanted in so many different corners of the world,
and it should be kept moving.

At present the nearest approach to such a pro-
position in action is Mr. Kingsley Fairbridge's
experiment in Western Australia, which, of course,
for many years must mainly depend on philan-
thropic contributions. Mr. Fairbridge has been
aptly named a practical ideaHst. On a reclaimed
fruit-farm he makes home for a certain number
of destitute and forsaken children and instructs
them in mental culture and manual labour until
they reach the age of sixteen. The experiment is
only in the second year of its development. The
increase from the produce of the land has risen from
less than ^20 to nearly ^^80 in its first year, and
a fund is to be established in connexion with the
work to provide boys and girls with a dot towards
their first start on leaving home. Mr. Fairbridge
is a Rhodes scholar hailing from South Africa.
He conceived the idea during his sojourn at Exeter
College, Oxford, and it is significant that he has
planted it, not in the wonderful country of his
birth, not in the nearer and matchless country of
Canada, but far off in Western Australia, where
women are honoured in deed as well as in word,
where a voice is given them in the selection of their
law-makers, and the opportunity of the land-grant
is open to them.

410 WHEAT AND WOMAN

If there had been no pause in the amazing develop-
ment of Canada I cannot think there would have
been any hope for the extension of the land-grant
to women, although I believe that had the Province
of Saskatchewan been given that administration of
her own natural resources, for which Mr. Haultain
fought without ceasing, in Saskatchewan the land-
grant would have been extended to women, and
that both the Liberal and Conservative Govern-
ments would have been of one mind in wiping out
the shame of this injustice from their home province,
which is destined to become the richest and the
most powerful in the Dominion. But to-day the
fact that Canada is in vital need of the producer
may inspire the Dominion Government to seek a
virtue in necessity.

Industrial development has selected the great
cities of the North-West. A great population is
gathering in those centres ; the land and the farmer
should have been ready to supply their great demand
for food, but in the rapid development of the last
few years the producer — starved at seed-time and
squeezed at harvest, through lack of foresight in
the financial administration of the country — has
failed to keep up. For a moment under-production
has thrown a veil over the face of Canadian pros-
perity, and has already proved to the investor that
production alone can support the development
which production compelled.

Canada's food-bill is enormous. The most fertile
pasture and food-producing country in the world .
is buying everything she should be selling but
wheat. Demand for food even to feed the present
population is years ahead of supply. For Christmas

"UNTO C^SAR"

Indians assembled to receive treaty-payment, Fort
Qu'Appelle district, 1913

" A LARGER HEAVEN " 411

season of 191 2 Pat Burns, the big supply merchant
of Calgary, imported thirty-eight carloads of eggs,
13,500 dozen to a car, from the United States, for
which he had to pay duty at the rate of three cents
per dozen. Vancouver is at the gate of the richest
dairy country in the world. During the late finan-
cial depression she found it difficult to meet the
weekly wages bill in connexion with local develop-
ment, yet between September 191 2 and May 191 3
she contracted for seventy million pounds of butter
from New Zealand, the value being three milHon
dollars. Calgary also feeds from New Zealand, and
sent to Minneapohs eight thousand dollars for eggs
in one month. Potatoes of the value of ^1,000,000
sterling were sent last year from Britain to Canada
and the United States. Meantime the housekeepers
of Canada are very justly in revolt against the high
price of food. As they have been trained to limit
their consideration to the point of view of their
ovm kitchen table, they can hardly be expected to
remember that a fall in the tariff means a fall in
the revenue of their country ; so the consumer is
loud in demand for the outward heahng of the
complaint which can only be truly healed from
within, by the increase of production, through
State aid and encouragement to the producer —
man or woman.

The first consideration of the woman-farmer
contemplating the business of farming in order to
contribute to the supply of the demand for farm
produce should be the relation of her place of
produce to her market. She should study the map
and digest statistics, especially as to population and
industrial development. It is well to remember

412 WHEAT AND WOMAN

that there is no more desirable customer than the
workman and his family, and that in countries of
great natural resources the place which labour
selects to-day is the industrial centre of to-morrow,
and in such places land-values are sound and certain
to increase. The Prairie Provinces, Vancouver
Island, and the twin cities of Fort William and
Port Arthur mark the chief industrial districts in
Canada. Stock, meat, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables,
flowers and fruit of the berry order may all be
produced with a little trouble within a reasonable
feeling distance of many of the chief centres in
these districts of Canada, and sold at a highly
remunerative price. It is true that the winter is
severe in the Prairie Provinces, but the commercial
farmer should bear in mind that, although in a
very few years her commercial farm should yield
her a pleasure farm, it must be long waiting before
the pleasure-farm could yield her the value of the
commercial undertaking.

Never has the opening for the woman on the
land in Canada been so easy or so full or promise
as just now in the hour that Canada, in spite of all
her gifts, is shining through the film of a breath of
suspicion, which no more emanates from her pure
and splendid self than the burst of noisy enthusiasm
that preceded it. Neither one nor the other can
affect the value of her matchless natural resources.
Whichever way one tests her values Canada is rock-
bottom. If she can hit hard, she strikes to urge
and wounds to heal. True daughter of a new day,
she has the energy and will-power of health and
strength and self-knowledge. Less tender yet
passionately loving is this virgin side of the Great

I

" A LARGER HEAVEN " 413

Mother. Living much, giving much, she asks
much. " This new land with vibrations in the
air that stir up every particle in those who breathe
it " demands of its nation — character. Out of
the heart of her virgin soil, new life ; but from the
children who would claim her mother, courage
and kindness, swiftness and patience, strength and
sympathy, unflinching purpose, unfailing energy,
untiring philosophy.

She yields the milk, but all her mind
Is vowed to thresh j or stouter stock
EartV s -passion jor old giant kind
That scaled the mounts upheaved the rock
Devolves on them who read aright
Her meaning and devoutly serve.

PRINTED AT

THE BALLANTYNE PRESS

LONDON

S 417 .B55 A34 1914
SMC

Binnie-Clark, Georgina,

1871-1955.
Wheat & woman.

AIE-8297 (rabsk)