Neighbours Part 12

"That is just what you, personally, didn't do," Jack reminded him. "It was your bonfire, not ours."

It was almost sundown when Spoof for the seventh time absolved us from all blame in the matter, and we started on our trek homeward across the green prairie. Jack offered to go to town the next day and negotiate a deal for a new wagon, but Spoof would not hear of it. He himself would go, and no other.

"I have to pick up some new language, anyway," he insisted. "The bullocks are growing very tired of the monotony of my remarks."

Spoof evidently left the next morning, for when Jack and I went over to Two about the middle of the forenoon the place was deserted. We set to work in his hay field, and by Wednesday night we had harvested more hay than Spoof would have put up in a week. That was our atonement.

Affairs now began to move with some rapidity in our little settlement.

Until now we had had the world, as far as the eye could carry, to ourselves, but Spoof proved only the advance guard of a stream of neighbours which, from its source in a dozen different springs of humanity, was to pour in upon us during the next few months. Wednesday night we came back from Spoof's, as we had a little shyness about being overtaken in our good works, and the next morning, while I was gulping great draughts of ozone in front of the shack before breakfast, Marjorie called over my shoulder,

"What's that, away to the east, Frank?"

Sure enough, there was a little white pyramid outlined against the horizon; another tent pitched against the front trenches of civilization.

"Neighbours, Marjorie; neighbours!" I said. "We're getting to be quite a community. Do you ever think of the day when all this wilderness of prairie will be plowed, every foot of it; all bearing something for the world's needs, with prosperous farm houses at every corner, schools, churches----"

"I smell the porridge!" Marjorie exclaimed, rus.h.i.+ng into the shack. She had a way of cutting off my rhapsodies like that.

Jack had seen the tent, too, and he and Jean came over at noon to discuss it. We decided to knock off work early that evening and all drive over to make the acquaintance of the new-comers.

We found that the tent was pitched on Eighteen, in the next towns.h.i.+p to the east. As we came up we were greeted by a fine collie dog, who seemed to be suffering from the conflicting emotions of his natural good humor and a sense that we had no business on Eighteen. His rush upon us with great barking and show of ferocity ended in much amiable tail-wagging.

Evidently we measured up to his requirements, which we took to be no mean compliment.

A team of ponies were tethered on the prairie not far away, and a democrat stood beside the tent, with some of its burden still to be unloaded. A woman of slender build and rather striking beauty stood at the door. There was surprise, and, as I thought, a suggestion of fear in her eyes. More remarkable was the sudden and unmistakable relief which sprang into her expression when she had seen us clearly.

I am not a detective, even of the amateur kind, but I found myself instantly gripped by a conclusion. "The woman is afraid," I said to myself, "and yet she is no coward, she has no fear of strangers, but she is afraid of someone--afraid of someone she knows. She was relieved when she saw we were strangers." The thought was one which was to recur to me from many angles during the next few months.

She seemed to hesitate about greeting us, and Jean, always the quick-witted one of our quartette, was the first to break a rather stupid silence. She sprang lightly from the wagon and went forward with arms outstretched.

"We are your neighbours, from Fourteen and Twenty-two," she explained.

"We saw your tent, and thought we would welcome you to prairie-land."

"That is good of you," said a well modulated English voice, but some way the voice seemed to break just there, and the lips of the new-comer went all a-tremble. The next we knew she and Jean had their arms about each other. . . .

"Oh, how horribly stupid of me!" the stranger exclaimed, in a moment or two, disengaging herself and dabbing her eyes with a little lump of handkerchief. "One gets a bit--a bit lonely, in spite of everything. You will think I am rather a bad pioneer. My name is Mrs. Alton, and I'm _so_ glad you came, Miss--Miss----"

Jean introduced herself and the others of our party, and then we clambered down out of the wagon.

"Gerald and I have been very much alone," Mrs. Alton explained. "Gerald doesn't seem to mind it a bit--rather glories in it, I think. Already he has made some great explorations, but always under Sandy's watchful eye. Sandy is a great comfort. Aren't you, sir?"

She turned to the dog, who sedately held up one paw in acknowledgment of her remark.

"Gerald, I should have told you, has just turned three. I am a widow,"

Mrs. Alton rattled on, as though not wis.h.i.+ng to stress the point--"and Gerald and I have our way to make in the world. He is tired now, and asleep after a great day's roaming, but I shall wake him before you go."

"Oh, please don't!" Jean entreated. "Let us see him as he sleeps," and without waiting for an invitation she gently made her way into the little tent.

"Don't you think me clever?" Mrs. Alton asked, when we had at last discovered it.

It consisted of a trunk, with the lid turned back, and about half the contents removed. In this she had laid a little mattress, and on the mattress slept a beautiful boy, his face still ruddy from his wrestle with the prairie winds; his lips cherry red and slightly parted; his little arms thrown jauntily above his head. Jean leaned and touched the breathing lips with hers, and so did Marjorie, and a little later I saw tears on the cheeks of both. It was then I remembered that these girls had not seen a child since we left Regina in the spring, and the mothering instinct in them, pent up through all those lonely months, now burst forth in sweet silent tears. I began to realize that Gerald Alton was to be one of the important members of the community.

"Isn't he lovely--lovely?" Jean was murmuring as though unable to tear herself from his side. "Mrs. Alton, I am sure you have placed us all under a debt of grat.i.tude. This community simply had to have a baby."

After that, conversation came easier, and we found ourselves talking about farm life, and the problems of the homesteader. Mrs. Alton drank in every word with avidity; she was eager for information on the most casual affairs.

"I am so frightfully stupid!" she exclaimed. "You see, I know nothing about farming, and I suppose it was a very wild notion that I should take a homestead. I did it on Gerald's account. I shall manage some way, and in three years--by the time he must start to school--the farm will be mine. Then I shall sell it or mortgage it to give him an education."

Here was pluck for you. It was apparent from her language that she was a woman of some refinement; possibly a woman who had never known hard work or privation. A turn in the wheel of fortune, and she was without the money for the education of her boy. A free farm in Canada offered the solution, and the wilds of the West could not deter her.

"By that time we may have a school next door," I suggested. "People will flow in here in crowds, once they make a start. Have you plans for carrying on the work of the farm?"

"I have two men following with boards to build a house; just a very tiny house, in keeping with my purse. Then I hope to hire a neighbor to do some plowing, and I will plant some corn next spring. I shall raise chickens, and have a great garden--I know all about gardening," she added, naively, with a sudden return of confidence. "You should have seen my English roses!"

We had not the heart to tell her that there lay a great gulf between English roses and a Canadian cabbage patch, and she rattled on, evidently glad of some one to watch with sympathy the mirage castles which she was building on her horizon.

"For myself, I am quite penniless," she confessed, thrusting her upturned palms towards us with a little impulsive gesture. "Gerald is my resource, as well as my responsibility. He has a hundred pounds a year.

We shall invest it in this farm. I am sure we are going to prosper wonderfully.

"All the world seems to circle around Gerald," she added, as though it were an after-thought.

She made Jean and Marjorie sit down on a box on which she had spread a steamer rug. Jack and I stood at the door of the tent, where the setting sun blazoned our wind-tanned faces a ruddy red.

"How healthy you men are!" she exclaimed, clasping her fingers in a nervous grip. "If only Gerald will grow up like that!"

"We will come over when the men bring the lumber, and help them build your house," Jack volunteered.

"The lumber--what lumber? Oh, the boards! Oh, how good of you!"

The regard in which she held us appeared to rise another degree.

"And are you carpenters, as well as farmers?" she asked. "How wonderfully clever your men are, here. I had to go to a doctor in Regina--Gerald had a rash, or something--it was in the evening and I found him at his house, building a chicken-coop. Jolly wonderful, isn't it?"

As the shadow of the democrat filled the tent door we spoke of leaving.

"Not until you have had tea," she insisted. "We shall have tea with biscuits and jam. I bought an oil stove in Regina--a most wonderful machine. We shall have it ready in a moment."

While she started her oil stove she asked, casually enough, "And am I the only new-comer in all this big prairie which you have been having to yourselves?"

"No; you are the second," I answered. "We already have one neighbour, a countryman of yours, down on section Two. Spoof, he calls himself, although that is not his real name."

She was working over the stove, with her back toward us, and perhaps she dallied longer than there was any need for, but I took no notice of the matter at the time.

"What a strange name," she said, after a while. . . . "Is he there now--I mean, have you seen him lately? A countryman of mine; you know, I must be interested in him," she added, brightly, turning her face to us again.

Then we told of Spoof's unfortunate attempt to apply a Western corrective to his balky oxen. But she seemed to lose interest in the theme, and changed the conversation to some other topic. Suddenly she remembered her promise that we should see Gerald awake, and, disregarding our protests, she stirred him out of his sleep. His big, blue eyes blinked for a moment at the lamp which she had lighted; then slowly took in his visitors. When he had subjected us to a careful scrutiny he turned to his mother.

"Dem Injuns," he remarked.

"Oh, no, dear, these are not Indians. I am afraid I have let him think that all the people in this country are Indians," Mrs. Alton explained.