A Trip To Manitoba Part 5

When the winter roads became pa.s.sable, they took him into Winnipeg, and laid him in the Roman Catholic cemetery there--alone, away from all he loved, without a kindly hand to tend his last resting-place. His death cast a gloom over all our party. Though grieving for him and missing him continually, we could never realize that he was really dead. And the knowledge that it was so even to us made our hearts fill with sympathy for one far away, to whom the sad tidings would have more than the bitterness of death.

Our great excitement after winter had set in in earnest was the arrival of the first dog-train. Hearing the shrill "Marsh-sha" (Marcha) of the driver, we all rushed to the window to see the pretty beasts, in their gaily-worked saddle-cloths and merry bells, come down the hill; then, when a halt was called, to watch them sit down on their haunches and look proudly about them, as if quite aware of the interest they excited. The taboggans they drew were not heavily laden, and as far as I can judge from my limited experience, the dogs are invariably kindly treated by their drivers; all looked well fed and in good condition. During the summer, and sometimes in the winter, when the poor Indians themselves are more than half-starved, it is little wonder that the dogs fare as badly as their masters, and look lean and miserable.

The winter of 1878 was mild and open, more so than had been known in the North-west for thirty years. The snow had vanished almost completely from the portages, and water covered the ice on many of the lakes. When, at Christmas, the staff accepted Mrs. C----'s invitation to spend the day at Inver, the question was whether they would come with dogs or canoes?

Neither, however, were practicable, and they had to walk--some of them eighteen miles.

We amused ourselves icing the cake, inventing devices, with the aid of sc.r.a.ps of telegraph wire, as supports for the upper decorations, decorating the house with cedar and balsam wreaths, and providing as good a dinner as it was possible to obtain in the woods. With the exception of having nothing for our guests to drink, we succeeded tolerably well.

Being within the limits of prohibitory laws, it was necessary to ask the Lieutenant-governor of Manitoba for an especial "permit" to have wine sent out; and we were answered that, "if the men had to do without whisky, the gentlemen might do without wine." So we had to content ourselves with half a gla.s.s of sherry each, the remains of some smuggled out with our luggage in the spring.

We soon had proof that the men rebelled against the prohibitory law. The presence of whisky being suspected in a neighbouring camp, a constable who had been but recently appointed, and was anxious to show his zeal, never rested until he had discovered the smuggler and brought him to justice; the clause that the informer was ent.i.tled to half the fine of fifty dollars not diminis.h.i.+ng his ardour.

To a lawyer the proceedings would have been amusing, for all parties concerned were novices in their respective _roles_. The justice of the peace, with a great idea of his own importance, the majesty of the law, and the necessity for carrying it out to the letter, had obtained several manuals for the guidance of county justices of the peace and stipendiary magistrates, over the technicalities of which he spent many a sleepless hour. No sooner had he mastered the drift of one act, than the next repealed so many of its clauses that the poor man became hopelessly bewildered. Handcuffs there were none, neither was there a lock-up, and the constable spent his time in keeping guard over the prisoner, being paid two dollars a day for the service. The latter was fed and housed, and, not having been overburdened with work or wages for some time, did not object to the incarceration.

Ultimately he was tried, found guilty, and fined fifty dollars or a month in jail. Many arguments arose between magistrate and constable, as the latter, having served in the United States, and there learned a smattering of Yankee law, was resolved to make his voice heard in the case. The inability of the prisoner to pay the fine of course made it necessary to fall back upon the alternative--thirty days in jail, which jail was a hundred and odd miles off. There was no conveyance to take him thither; and no roads even if there had been; and the man refused to walk.

"If I had the money I'd pay the fifty and have done with it," he said; "but, not having it, I can't do it. If I am to go to jail, all right--take me; but whoever heard of a man walking there of his own accord?" and he whittled away at the stick in his hand feeling that he was master of the situation. Being remanded until the next day, to keep up some semblance of proper procedure, he went away quite contentedly, only to return the next day and the next to repeat the same farce. At last both magistrate and constable began to look rather tired, while the prisoner, on the contrary, was quite at his ease. The wire was down between us and Winnipeg, and no advice could be obtained. So at last the constable, agreeing to forfeit his share of the fine, and the magistrate to take a time-bill on the contractor for the next section of the railway for the remaining twenty-five dollars, they let the man go, neither of them, I am sure, seeing him depart with regret.

The next whisky seizure that occurred in the neighbourhood was a small two-gallon keg, found in the middle of a barrel of sugar. The load was owned by one man and driven by another, whose consternation at finding he was a holder of contraband goods was so genuine that the authorities thought emptying the whisky on the snow was sufficient punishment, and--possibly dreading a repet.i.tion of the last trial--let the man go.

Soon afterwards several kegs of whisky were found on an island in the Lake of the Woods. The owner gave himself up, and entered the service of the contractor as especial whisky detective, and such was his vigilance, that no whisky ever pa.s.sed him. He was quite impartial, not letting even our mail bags go unquestioned, and so was not disliked. During his term the line was quiet and orderly; but, unfortunately, he went into Winnipeg on leave, shot a youth belonging to one of the river steamers in a drunken frolic, and was convicted of the murder.

One day, hearing a very peremptory-sounding knock at the door--a knock at any time being an event--I opened it in haste, to see a short, jaunty-looking man, red-haired and red-faced, clad in long stockings drawn well over his trousers and moca.s.sins, a short skin coat tied round his waist with a red sash, and on his head a long red _toque_.

"Good mornin', miss," said this odd apparition. "I'm come for Mr. K----'s legs." Seeing that I had not the faintest idea of what he meant, he touched his forehead again. "Please, 'm, Mr. K---- sent me for his legs.

He said I'd find them in the office;" and the little fellow, who seemed all on springs, craned his neck round to see into the room. Fairly puzzled, I stood aside to let him pa.s.s; so in he went, returning instantly with a tripod on his shoulder.

"Here they are, miss," he said cheerfully. "Much obliged. Fine day, miss;" and was off to the lake before I had recovered my surprise at his amazing request and his general absurdity.

CHAPTER XII.

Birds of Pa.s.sage--An Independent Swede--By Sleigh to Ostersund--A Son of the Forest--Burnt out--A Brave Canadian Girl--Roughing it in the Shanty--The Kitchen-tent--Blasting the Rock--The Perils of Nitro-glycerine--Bitter Jests.

We had plenty of strange visitors; almost every day men pa.s.sing along the line came in, either to inquire the distance to the next shanty, or to ask for a meal or drink of milk. Some showed a friendly disposition, and would entertain us with their full family history. Others, with many professions of grat.i.tude for our kindness, would eat enough to last them a week, one would suppose, and go on their way. Others, more taciturn and independent, took their refreshment in silence, and offered to pay for what they received. One in particular, a tall, slight man, rather advanced in years, came in one morning, and made us understand by signs that he was hungry. When a meal was put before him, he sat down, took his hat off--this was something unusual--and upon every offer of more edibles bowed his thanks with much dignity. He could speak neither English nor French, and looked like a Swede. When his repast was finished, he offered by signs to mend shoes as payment. Thinking that he was begging for shoes, we screamed, as every one so oddly does to foreigners--as if it made our language any more intelligible to them--that we had none for him. Seeing we did not understand him, he sat down and went through the pantomime of mending shoes. Still shaking our heads, as we had no shoes to be mended, he, after fumbling in his pockets, produced a quarter, which he pressed us all in turn to take. In vain we tried to make him understand that his breakfast was a gift; going away a step or two, he came back again and again, still offering the quarter. At last, out of all patience, Mr. C---- ordered him off the premises. The stranger went up the hill, but lingered until the coast was clear, to put the quarter on the ice at the door. Then, thinking perhaps that it might not be seen there by the right people, he stuck it into a crevice between two logs in the shed, and went away whistling merrily, his pride relieved of his obligation, as well as his pocket of his money.

Towards the end of the winter, the sleighing being a little better on the portages, we drove to Ostersund, the nearest house east of us. It was Sunday, the 3rd of March, and a bright, clear, cold day. Our conveyance was a sort of combination arrangement of a long, low platform, with one seat, on two bob-sleighs, which platform turned on a pivot independent of the sleighs. This was supposed to be an invention that lessened the b.u.mps and swings experienced by the traveller, who was jolted over the hills and hollows of the rough roads. Rough, indeed, they were--up and down steep hills, among and over huge boulders thrown out by the blasts in adjacent cuttings, along the edge of narrow rocks, where Carriere had to hold on to the sleigh on one side, to keep it from swinging round, and down the face of the jagged cliff, into such deep gullies, that it was a wonder we were not tipped over on the horse's back, or left behind, when he went up the ascent. The problem that chiefly occupied me during this wild huntsman-like ride was: If the combination sleigh were indeed a success, what would my sensations have been without it?

On the lakes the road was smooth and delightful, and our old broken-down steed supplied by the Government, derisively dubbed "Pegasus" by Mrs.

C----, achieved something approaching a trot. Poor thing! its hide had become so hardened by former cruel treatment, that there was no spot on which the whip had the least effect. We were accompanied by the usual number of dogs, who ran yelping after the rabbits in all directions. On one of the portages we pa.s.sed an old Indian, clad in a long blue blanket coat, with a red sash round his waist, and beaded leggings, and moca.s.sins; his long hair was tied back, and a red silk handkerchief was loosely knotted round his brow. He leant upon his old brown gun, and the tall trees, through whose leafless branches the suns.h.i.+ne fell in long streaks on the snow and moss, formed a fitting background for his gaunt figure. Unheeding the hoa.r.s.e barking of the dogs, he replied to Carriere's "Bon jour" with a guttural "Bon jour, nitchee;" but until we were out of sight remained in the same att.i.tude.

On the 26th of March, an event happened which startled us all out of the even tenor of our lives. Between ten and eleven in the morning, the roof of our house caught fire from the kitchen chimney, and having no engine or fire-extinguisher about the premises, we were houseless, with scarcely anything to call our own, in half an hour. The moment we discovered the fire, we ran to the nearest cutting, where there were twenty men, to ask their a.s.sistance. After vainly attempting to get at the fire by chopping away the roof, they could do nothing but save as much property as possible. Mrs. C---- was at Kalmar, and being too excited to remain inactive, I deposited the children in the contractor's shanty, persuading them to stay there until I returned, and went back to the house to save what I could. I had plenty of a.s.sistance. Never did men work better. I have seen many a fire in crowded cities, where engines and hundreds of people were at hand, without half the proportionate amount of goods being saved; and what was rescued from the flames was not destroyed by rough handling.

The house was built of logs, the crevices being stuffed with moss, and lined with thick brown paper, the seams of the latter covered with a narrow beading of pine. The roof was lined with tar-paper, which made a dense and blinding smoke. It had been built a year, and was so dry that it burnt like a tinder-box.

The cook, a bright, pretty Canadian girl, in her anxiety to save her kitchen utensils, was caught by the flames, getting her eyebrows and hair singed while making a final dash for the boiler; and in the long weeks that followed before it could be replaced she never ceased to lament her failure. She was worth ten men, and saved many things which we did not think of at the time, but should have found it difficult to do without afterwards.

We were a motley group, sitting and standing on the hill above the creek to watch our house burn to the ground. Navvies of every nation; tall, brawny Scotchmen; jolly-looking Irishmen, their faces a mixture of pity for our misfortune and enjoyment of the "fun;" stumpy little French Canadians; solemn, stupid-looking Icelanders and Mennonites. Carriere was there on his crutches. Poor fellow! standing knee-deep in the lake to cut ice out had brought on such a severe attack of rheumatism, that it was with difficulty he moved about at all. We were surrounded by a heterogeneous ma.s.s of household goods: here a pile of bedding, surmounted by a looking-gla.s.s, there a basket of crockery, gla.s.s, and china; here a dismantled stove, with the fire yet burning in it, there a clothes-horse, still covered with clean clothes ironed that morning. A heap of wearing apparel, taken out of some cupboard, lay close beside one of the stove-pipes. All round the house were trophies of household furniture, just as they had been carried out--the baby's cradle full of books from the drawing-room table, china vases underneath a heap of dinner plates, and rolls of plans from the office, blown into every corner of the fences.

And all the time the house blazed on. Then the fire spread, and ran up the hill at the back, burning the old ice-house and a large tree, which fell to the ground with a crash the moment after the roof fell in. At the same moment a stock of cartridges exploded, and a volley of musketry formed the fitting finale to our fire.

The poor children, who had hitherto been wonderfully good and patient, now became so nervous and frightened that we could scarcely pacify them.

Our old friend, the contractor's superintendent, coming back to his shanty shortly after the disaster, with his usual unselfish kindness insisted on giving it up to us, and going himself into a wretched lean-to behind the store, until the house could be rebuilt. It would be difficult to describe the discomfort of the next few days.

Mrs. C---- came home immediately, and we were all busy sorting out the salvage, retaining what was necessary to furnish the shanty, and storing the remainder in a log-house used as a workshop. How we raked amongst the still hot embers in the hope of picking up a relic, or with regretful interest traced the shape of some favourite object in the ashes! As my room was the first burned, I saved nothing but a few clothes, most of which were comparatively useless, silk dresses and a log shanty not being harmonious combinations. All my books, pictures, jewellery, and those odds and ends which, though of little money value, had grown priceless to me from a.s.sociation, were destroyed; and my desk also, containing my notes of dates and places, so that in these pages I have had to trust entirely to memory.

In dry weather the shanty we now occupied was a very tolerable one, built of rough logs, their crevices filled with mud both inside and out; the roof was of logs also, but cut in halves, scooped out, and ingeniously interlaced--thus, [Ill.u.s.tration], to allow the water to run off. During the cold weather these logs had been filled with moss, and when the spring rains began the water settled in places, rotted them, and came through.

The shanty was divided into three by a part.i.tion reaching half-way to the roof. In the first room stood one bunk bed filled with straw, in the second were two narrow ones, so close together that two people could not get out of bed at the same time. One small window, halfway between each room, gave light to both. There was no door into the outer room, only a vacant s.p.a.ce in the part.i.tion. In the centre was an iron stove set in a box of sand. There were two narrow windows on each side, and the only door led into the outer world. When we had made it as comfortable as we could, the outer room had to be telegraph office (the instrument keeping up such a continual ticking that we blessed an odd day when the wire was down) as well as dining-room. The big table filled up half the width of the room, and the sideboard a quarter, leaving the remainder for the sofa, small tables--under which were stored boxes and trunks of various sizes--safe, and chairs. We covered the walls with pictures, nails whereon to hang everything that would hang, and small shelves. The matting saved from the hall covered what was otherwise unoccupied of the shanty floor. In fine weather it was not at all unpleasant, as the children and I almost lived out of doors, and even when in the shanty kept our hats on, ready to go out again the moment our office was called on the line; as it was impossible to impress children, aged two and five years respectively, with the fact that their merry chatter and a telegraphic message in course of transition were incompatible.

In wet weather, cooped up as we were, with the roof dripping in a dozen places, their number increasing after every storm; with all our tin pans called into requisition to catch the falling drops, and the children feeling it a duty they owed to society to empty their contents on the floor the moment our backs were turned; with the instrument at work, and the current bad, I was often made desperate by the utter impossibility of keeping the children quiet. Rolling them in a shawl, I would rush out to a tent pitched about ten feet from the shanty door, and used as a kitchen, rather than endure any longer the strain upon my nerves in the shanty. This kitchen-tent had a few rough, heavy planks for floor, and a stove at one end, with the pipe up through the canvas, and the ridge pole and uprights studded with nails, whereon hung cups, jugs, pans, and tins.

Two tables stood under the slanting roof, with rows of nails beneath to hold irons and everything else with a handle. There was a small cupboard in one corner, and the others were filled with boxes, barrels, and the maid's trunk. The tent had been used as a cook-house so often that it was perforated by small holes made by flying sparks, and to touch the canvas with one's head was to invoke a shower-bath. Soaking in wet weather and broiling in fine, it was anything but a paradise of cooks, yet it was wonderful how well the maid managed in it, and how neat and tidy she kept it.

We were always intensely interested in the blasting of the cutting about three hundred feet from us. At the sound of the horn we were on the watch to see the men ran off behind the rock. Then the smoke curled up, and the report followed, sending the flying stones well into the air, and in a second we could hear them rattle down all round us, on the roof of the shanty and far out into the lake. Hearing the horn one day when quite five hundred feet from the cutting, I turned to watch, believing myself at a safe distance; and as I saw the stones falling, and thought it a heavier charge than usual, I heard the hiss of one fast approaching.

Before I could decide whether to run or not it whizzed past--so close to my ear that I could feel the wind it made--and buried itself in the sand not two feet behind me; while another fell within a few inches of my feet in front. s.n.a.t.c.hing the child who was with me up in my arms, I took care to get some distance further up the hill before the next charge exploded.

One of the engineers told me he had seen stones thrown thirteen hundred feet from a cutting. They use nitro-glycerine, and have had several serious accidents while handling it. One poor lad who was carrying a can weighing fifty pounds up the dump, tripped, and was blown to atoms; part of one foot, stuck in the fork of a tree about a hundred feet off, being all that was found of him. A man lost his sight and one arm from merely striking a rock where some of the horrid stuff had been spilt. Often have I watched the long train of packers coming down the hill, each with a can of glycerine on his back, and wondered how they dared carry it over the rough roads, knowing that one false step would cost them their lives.

Once when I was out with the children, the dogs barked furiously at one of these poor men. Calling them off, I seized the opportunity to make some remark about his load. "Ay, miss!" he said, sadly and bitterly; "'tis a main mean load fur any man to ha' to carry." Yet, in spite of the danger and the many accidents, I have heard these packers chaffing each other when pa.s.sing. "It's a warm day," says one. "That's so; but maybe ye'll be warmer 'fore ye're to camp tonight," is the reply. "That's so.

D'ye want any word taken to the divil?" Then again, "Where are ye bound for, Jack?" "To h---, I guess." "Take the other train, and keep a berth for me, man!" "Is it ye're coffin ye're carryin', Pat?" asks another.

"Faith, ye're right, an a coroner's inquest into the bargain, Jim!" Yet the wretched expression of these very men proved that they felt the bitterness of death to be in their jests.

CHAPTER XIII.

We lose our Cows--Cahill promoted--Gardening on a New Principle--Onions in Hot-houses--Cahill is hoaxed--Martin the Builder--How the Navvies lived--Sunday in Camp--The Cook's Leap--That "Beautiful Skunk!"--Wild Fruits--Parting.

A few weeks after the fire, the C----s had another loss, in the sudden death of two cows. No cause could be a.s.signed for it; unless there might have been poison in the wild hay which they ate, put there by the Indians to kill the foxes. The difficulty of supplying their place on the line in the spring made the loss considerable, especially with children in the house, and no fresh meat attainable.

Carriere had been so completely laid up with rheumatism that he had resigned his post, giving place for our old friend Cahill, who immediately undertook the charge of the garden, which he said he understood thoroughly. Looking one day into the hot-beds, which he seemed to have taken much pride in, I found he had filled more than half the s.p.a.ce with different varieties of onions, and another part with carraway seeds! When I asked why he put them in there, he said--

"Shure, ye couldn't have anything betther nor inions. Many's the thousand I've raised in Ireland, when I was with Kurnel Kitchener in Limerick."

After the cress had gone to seed, Mrs. C---- told him, to take it out, and sow other things in its place. A little while afterwards, I saw the old fellow transplanting something very carefully, which proved upon investigation to be the cress. When I told him it was not worth the trouble, he looked up and said, in a very indignant tone--

"Throw it away, is it? Shure, if I'd known that was all the good it was, it's meself wouldn't have filled me hot-beds wid it! The thras.h.!.+"

One day he received a very long, narrow parcel and note through the mail.

Early next morning, I saw the old fellow sitting on a stump in the garden, carefully spelling over the letter, which did not seem a long one. When Harry ran up to him, Cahill brought the child back to me, and looking all about to see that no one else was near, said, in a mysterious tone--

"See here, Miss F----. I got a parcel be the mail-man yesterday, an'

here's the spicification that came wid it. Would you read it, miss, and till me who ye think would send it? I think meself it's a trick, an' I'll be even wid thim yit." And he handed me a crumpled piece of paper about four inches square, on which I read--

"To Michael Cahill, Esq, Office of the Civil Engineer, Lake Diception

"Sirs,