Neighbours Part 6

Jake threw a querying stress on the word _sisters_, but it was against all nature to be offended at him. Had we resented his remark he would have laughed our seriousness out of court. But we decided to see some of the adjoining sections.

Sixteen appealed to Jack. We could have taken the west half, and so, working together, we would have had a mile furrow. The gully also touched sixteen, and would have given us the same advantages as Jake claimed for the sections he had recommended. However, we found him very fixed in his preference for Fourteen and Twenty-two, and finally we accepted his arguments, and set out to make a more detailed survey of the land. The gully angled between the two quarters, taking scarce an acre off either of them. A jolly stream, brown with the gra.s.s of its banks, gurgled along its bed.

I knelt down to try the water; there was the taste of snow, but there was also the harder, sharper note of spring water mingled with it.

"Runnin' water like that is worth a thousand dollars on any man's farm," Jake declared. "An' come up this way. Wait till I show you somethin'."

The "something" proved to be a widening in the valley, where was a considerable growth of small willows and poplars. "Fence posts and fire wood," said Jake, "an' on railroad land too, that won't be sold fer years. You'll have 'em all cut down before then. That timber's worth another thousand, or half that, anyway."

I thought of the great pine back on the old farm in Ontario, and the "timber" looked to me like gads and switches. None of it was tall enough to reach out of the little valley and show a green tip to the bald surface of the prairies. But we were not in Ontario now; we were in a land where even a three-inch tree was not to be despised.

"An' here's somethin' more," he said, setting an example for us by walking stealthily on his pudgy legs through the clumps of willows. At the other end of the wooded s.p.a.ce we found a little pond opening out, and a score of wild ducks drowsing placidly on its smooth surface. The bright colorings of the drakes, the beautiful archings of their necks, and their graceful movements on the water held us for a moment in silent admiration.

"An Englishman," Jake remarked, when we had turned back, "would take this farm fer the duck pond alone. They're the dangdest people ever was fer wantin' to kill somethin'. He don' care if his farm is all sand or wallows, 's long as there's somethin' to shoot, the Englishman don't.

But fer a Yankee it mus' be every acre wheat land. He don' care fer nothin' but the long green." Jake paused as though to think over these national characteristics.

"I dunno which is the worst," he said at length. "I reckon us Canadjuns is about right, with a little o' both."

"It has been said that a Canadian is half Englishman and half Yankee," I remarked. "What do you make of it?"

"Nothin' to it," was Jake's emphatic answer. "When a Canadjun is enjoyin' an argyment with a Yankee he's all English, an' when he's pullin' off a deal with an Englishman he's all Yankee, an'----"

"He gets the sixty pounds," said Jack.

Jake braced himself on his short, stout legs, and made a gesture that might have been interpreted as a belligerent att.i.tude. He ended it by flapping his arms in imitation of flying, and emitting a series of caws.

Jack was duly suppressed. "Let's get to business," he said. "Explain this soil. Will it grow anything, and if so, what?"

"Let's find a badger-hole," said Jake, and we had little trouble in locating one. "Now look at this. This hole goes down five, six, seven feet, maybe more, in the ground. Look what his nibs has kicked out.

Fine, loamy, sandy soil, not too light an' not too sticky, all the way down. That goes plumb to Kingdom Come. Course, the top is a little darker, on account o' the gra.s.s roots, but it's all soil. None o' yer down-east three inches-o'-muck-an'-a-rock-bottom to that."

Jake took a fresh chew of tobacco and looked out over the greenish-brown prairie. It certainly was a picture to kindle the imagination. Almost as level as a floor, one could have seen a jack-rabbit jump anywhere within a mile. The little gully was quite lost in the vista; you would not dream of its existence until you came right upon it. In no direction was there a sign of life, but far on the horizon a whiff of smoke hung like a fading pennant in the still sky.

"I have it figgered out like this," Jake continued, "an' my figgers is right; this land is worth more than any gold mine between h.e.l.l an'

Whoop-up. When you take the gold out o' a mine you ain't got nothin'

left, but you can take gold out o' this mine next year, an' the year after, an' the year after, fer ever an' ever, an' there's still as much there as when you started--if you farm it right."

Our inspection satisfied us in every particular. Jake explained, as we already knew, that we would have to build separate shacks on the two quarters, to comply with the law about sleeping on the land claimed.

"But you can build one stable in the gully fer the live stock," he added; "the Gov'ment don' care where _they_ sleep, jus' so's the homesteader himself is sufficiently oncomfort'ble."

We smiled over his interpretation of regulations which, as we knew, were necessary to prevent the wholesale blanketing of the free lands by people who had no intention of living on them.

"Now we better pick a second an' a third choice, jus' in case some one slips in ahead o' us on this," said Jake, and we spent the afternoon driving about and making fresh locations. Much of the land was already taken up, Jake told us, and although there were as yet no signs of settlement we would see a great change by fall.

Jack spoke of the disadvantage of the alternate sections of railroad land, which were not given away free, but which had to be bought. "They are an obstacle to close settlement," he said, "and I guess loneliness is about the worst thing there is to contend with on these prairies."

"Perhaps," said Jake, "but they're an advantage, too. They give the homesteader a lot of free pasture an' hay land, fer instance. An' in a few years, when you have had some good crops an' caught the bug fer big farmin', you'll be mighty glad o' the chance to buy Fifteen or Twenty-three."

We camped on Fourteen that night, and Jack and I were filled with plans for our shacks and our stable. The shacks would be up on the prairie level, on opposite sides of the gully, in full view of each other, and about a hundred yards apart. The stable would be in the gully, close to the road allowance, sheltered from the winds, and convenient to water.

The crossing of the stream was pa.s.sable, but would stand improvement.

Early in the morning we started back, and after three full days in the democrat we found ourselves one evening swinging up the now strangely familiar streets of Regina. The raw prairie city of 1904 already almost seemed like home. We were like travelers returning from strange lands to scenes of old recollections. We had been away just seven days, but in that time we had swung far out into the universe; we had drunk of the air of G.o.d's new creation; we had been strangely conscious of the company of our souls. We arranged with Jake to meet him in the morning, when he would go with us to the land office while we registered our claims, and at the hotel we found a note from the girls giving us their new address. We located them without trouble; I fancy they had not known that seven days could be so long. They had no room for us, so we had to go back to the hotel, but first we sat with them late into the night, recounting our adventures and picturing to them the place that was to be our home; kindling in them, if we could, some fire of the joy of owners.h.i.+p which was already leaping in our b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

In the morning we went with Jake to the land office; Fourteen and Twenty-two in the towns.h.i.+p where we had decided to locate were still open, and we had no difficulty in filing our claims. We returned to the stable with Jake.

"What's the damage?" Jack demanded.

Jake expectorated profusely, spread his feet, and scratched his head.

"Seven times seven is forty-nine; fifty dollars fer locatin' makes ninety-nine; I guess she's ninety-nine, boys; gosh darn it, we might have made it a hundred."

"My word!" said Jack. "Isn't that a bit thick?"

There was a merry twinkle in the guide's half-closed eyes. "An' two girls to go out there with you? Whad'ye expec' fer your money? But I was forgettin' about Sittin' Crow. I'll throw off four dollars fer Sittin'

Crow. It was worth it."

But we paid him the ninety-nine and Jack threw in another. "We'll make it the even hundred," he said. "Come out and see us when you get a chance; we may have a bite of fried coyote for you."

"Oh, I'll be along, I'll be along," said Jake. "I'll blow out there often."

We shook hands with Jake and turned away with a strange feeling of cutting ourselves adrift. We had not known how quickly an attachment may grow--on the prairies.

CHAPTER VI.

If we thought we had finished with Jake it was evidence that we still had much to learn about our guide's business qualities. Jake had a follow-up peculiarly his own, and that afternoon he came steaming into our presence as we sat in the bare lounge-room of the hotel, making a list of necessities on the back on an envelope.

"I been chasin' you fellows all over h.e.l.lan-gone," he announced, with a profuse expectoration to facilitate speech. "I got a fistful o' luck fer you. Chap down at the stables--trouble o' some kind or other--wants to sell his horses; as pretty a team o' bays as ever switched a tail in fly-time, an' I can put you next."

"That's good of you," said Jack, "but we've just figured that we can't afford horses. It's a case of horses and no cow, or oxen and a cow, and the vote at the moment stands unanimous for milk to our porridge, even at the risk of our characters. They tell us that even a good man swears when he drives oxen."

"That's wrong," Jake corrected. "A good man don' drive oxen. He may be good _before_ he drives them, but not _while_ he drives them, nor immedjut afterwards. It's agin human nature. I've seen profanity on some o' the ox trails o' this country so thick it lay jus' like a fog on the prairie. You could jus' see the top tier o' the box," he added, with a touch of artistry. "Oxen has started more fellows on the wrong road than any other critturs--'cept women."

"Well, we're going to take a chance with both," was Jack's answer. "You don't happen to have a hard-up friend who would part with a yoke of oxen, for a consideration, do you?"

Jake scratched his tousled hair meditatively. "Come to think o' it, I believe I do," he said at length. "I jus' recommember a chap who was talkin' o' sellin' his oxen t'other day. As sleek a yoke as ever switched a tail in fly-time; gentle, an' strong, an' speedy as a scairt rabbit. I reckon I could get you a special price on 'em, pretendin' it was meself that was buyin'."

"And a cow," I ventured. "Have you a cow on your bargain list?"

"Jake has everything on his bargain list that we may happen to need,"

said Jack. "Everything from a cow to a cook-stove. It's all right, Jake; we don't mind your little graft so long as you play the game half fairly, and see that we get at least fifty cents' worth on the dollar.

Buying on our own judgment we would probably get less than that."

So it was arranged that Jake was to be our purchasing agent, with a sort of gentleman's understanding that he might cheat us a little in consideration of his services in preventing other people from cheating us a great deal. The arrangement, I believe, worked out to our advantage. Jake undoubtedly bought our supplies for less than we could have bought them, even after providing his secret commissions. Moreover, he knew what was essential and what was not, and he saved us valuable time.

When at last our outfit was complete it presented a picturesque and somewhat pathetic turn-out. On our wagon we had built a temporary box of boards, and on this were piled our trunks and personal effects, a plow, a stove, food supplies, a tent, a crate with hens and another with a young pig, while over all roosted, if I may use the term, the two girls.

The cow we tied behind, while Jack and I walked as a sort of flank guard on either side of the oxen. These two phlegmatic creatures rejoiced in the names of Buck and Bright, and stoically pursued their destiny at a pace of two-and-a-half miles an hour. Their resignation in adversity was sublime; in fact, we soon found it impossible to invent any adversity to which they were not resigned.