Neighbours Part 7

Jake saw us off, and we remonstrated with him over the speed, or rather the lack of speed, of which his highly recommended oxen gave evidence.

"You said they had the speed of a scared rabbit," Jack reproached him.

"So they have," said Jake, barefacedly. "When a rabbit's plumb scairt he can't move at all; he jus' humps up an' prays. When Buck an' Bright come to that don' disturb 'em in their devotions; jus' wait fer the spirit to move 'em."

With such an outfit our progress was much slower than it had been with Jake and his "flyin' ants," but it was an experience of unbounded freedom and delight. The days held bright and warm, as it was still too early for the May rains; the nights were cold and starry, with a tang of frost toward morning; the dawns were a rush of color, and the sunsets indescribable. It was an unfolding experience, like the opening of some spring flowers; at times I caught a half wistful, wondering, yearning look in Jean's eyes quite different from anything I had known before. I saw no such glimpse in the eyes of Marjorie, or of Jack; but there it was in Jean's, and, I believe, in mine. Vaguely we two understood; vaguely we felt the stirrings of the soul which refuses to be silenced amid the glories of its Maker. And because we vaguely understood, some fine thread of eternal purpose seemed to wrap itself about our hearts and draw us closer and closer as the days went by.

At nights we pitched the tent and made down blankets for the girls, but Jack and I slept under the stars. We were roughing it, but every muscle in our young bodies was vibrating with the tense new life of the open.

The smell of spring flowers was in our nostrils; the whip of spring winds about our cheeks; the myriad murmurings of the little lives of spring crept up through the silences. When the girls called us to breakfast of fried bacon and potatoes and steaming coffee and milk from our traveling dairy we were more happy and more hungry than anything we had ever known to be possible.

And the girls! We saw them growing browner every day, but with their sunburn they seemed to take on a strange new charm and competence. They treated the whole experience as a high adventure, and after cramped hours on the top of "the ark" they would race like wild things across the prairies, their hair flying in the breeze, and a vagrant wind tossing the skirts about their shapely limbs.

They had taken the precaution to provide themselves with sunbonnets and a better cosmetic than axle-grease, but the prairie sun is an impetuous lover, and their cheeks and lips showed the mark of his caresses. He was a rival who did not pique my jealousy, for in his embrace I saw the woman Jean bursting forth from the bud of girlhood in a beauty that kept my blood a-tingle.

The prairies were a never-ceasing source of delight and wonder. Almost over-night, it seemed, they had blossomed out in myriads of flowers, mauve and yellow, so thick that at places they almost hid the gra.s.s from sight. The girls plucked handfuls of them and arranged the downy stems in the bands of their sunbonnets. Saucy gophers mounted the little dumps of moist earth in front of their burrows and sent their shrill whistle defiantly forth, save when a well-aimed clod from Jack or me brought the note to an end in a sudden sharp crescendo, accompanied by a flicker of a jaunty tail as the owner took refuge underground. In a moment, if we watched, we would see his sharp eyes levelled on us through the gra.s.s at the mouth of his burrow, or perhaps he would appear from another exit and send forth his shrill challenge more saucily than ever. Coyotes we frequently saw; a badger once or twice, and one day figures at a great distance which we took to be antelope. Innumerable ducks flew overhead, and the nights were at times almost sleepless with the clanging of wild geese, wedging their way to the nesting grounds in the north.

There was just one note that bothered me. It was sounded a day or two after we left Regina in some covert remark which Marjorie made about Jean's Mounted Policeman. It seemed that while Jack and I had been away land hunting the girls, too, had been doing a little prospecting. Regina was the headquarters of the Mounted Police, and the fine figures of these young riders of the plains with their scarlet tunics and trim gold ribboned riding trousers and clanking spurs have turned more heads than Jean's before and since. It seems the girls were walking along a business street when they saw a young policeman coming at a short distance, and they happened to stop to admire something in a window while he approached. He also stopped to admire, and Marjorie said something--which Jean would not have done--and a conversation started up, and the policeman seemed to prefer Jean, perhaps because she had not spoken first. At any rate he saw them safely home, and dallied over his responsibility and the gate post until they said they must go in. He called the next night and wanted to take them to a "show", but they would not go; at any rate, Jean would not go.

"But you went walking with him," Marjorie challenged.

"He asked you, too," said Jean, her pretty face colouring. "You started with us, and then went back."

"I saw how the land lay, or the wind blew, or whatever it was. I had nothing to do at home, but I knew I would be busier there than out walking with you and your policeman."

"Marjorie! How _can_ you----"

"And he told her he would call on her after we were settled."

"He did no such thing! He asked me where we were going to settle, and I told him I didn't know, and he said he hoped he would be patrolling there. He's going to be sent out from barracks soon, and he said it would be safer for me--for us--if someone were patrolling our district."

"Not for you, dear," said Marjorie, meaningly, and there was a little sting in her words which brought me into action.

"I believe you're jealous, Marjorie," I said, in tones intended to be severe.

"And aren't you?" she retorted. "You ought to be."

The truth is, I was. Jean had always belonged to me so absolutely that I had never thought of the possibility of a rival. Even now I did not think of such a thing seriously. It was true that there was no engagement between us, unless the word of a man of six and a woman of four can be taken as binding, but I looked on Jean as mine, nevertheless, and I resented the action of the Mounted Policeman in seeking her acquaintance. I resented, too, the fact that she had gone walking with him, and I told her so at the first opportunity.

It came that afternoon. Jean said she was tired riding, and got down to walk, on my side of the wagon. We trudged along for some distance in silence, save for my occasional words of rebuke and exhortation to the oxen.

"You're cross at me," she said at length.

"I'm not." Why I said that I can't imagine, I was, and I wanted her to know it.

"I didn't mean to offend you," she went on. "Marjorie was just a little bit--spiteful."

"I know she was," I agreed. "But you shouldn't have gone walking with him."

"Why?"

"He was a stranger. You didn't even know his name."

"I do now. It's Harold Brook. Besides, in this country, you don't have to know people's names. You just speak anyway."

"Oh, do you?" I said, sarcastically. "So I see."

"Don't be cross," she coaxed. "See, I can beat you to that badger-hole.

One--two--three--"

She was off like the wind. For a moment I hesitated, then joined in the race. But she had too much start, and besides, she was almost a match for me. She reached the little mound first, and as she turned she swerved a little from her course, and I happened to plunge into her. To save herself from falling she seized me about the neck, and her hair brushed against my face. . . . . . .

We walked back slowly, arm in arm, and I had a sense of being very much of a brute. . . Jean had wound me around her little finger.

So the days and nights went by. The sun was almost setting on the eighth day, and the prairie, now gorgeous in its spring fluffery of anemones, had taken on its evening richness of green when we at length drew up close to the bank of the gully on Fourteen. For an hour or more we had been straining our eyes for a glimpse of the promised land, but as it looked exactly the same as all the other land for miles around we could not be sure of Fourteen until the gully came into view. Then we threw up our hats and rushed ahead, leaving the oxen to come as they chose. They chose not to come at all, and Buck actually lay down in the road.

There are certain thrills of accomplishment, certain epochs of development, which come only once in a life-time. One of these is when a young man writes his first cheque, or first turns his key in his own door, or first sees his name on an office signboard. But the greatest is when he first looks upon land he can call his own. True, this land was not yet ours, but it was pledged to us if we carried out our part of a very simple agreement, and already we had a proprietary interest in it.

We showed it to the girls with the pride of a mother displaying her first born. We were desperately anxious that our choice should be justified.

We waited for their verdict, but neither spoke. "Well, what do you think of it?" Jack asked at length.

"It looks all right," said Marjorie. "I suppose it is as good as any.

But I don't see how you are going to tell it from other people's land.

It's all alike."

"What do you say, Jean?"

But Jean was looking at the sunset, where the Master Artist was splas.h.i.+ng pastels of bronze and copper against a background of silver and champagne. "Wonderful, wonderful!" she murmured.

"Fourteen is Frank's and Twenty-two is mine," Jack explained. "We'll pitch the tent for the girls here, and Frank may do as he likes, but I'm going to cross the gully and sleep to-night under my own vine and fig-tree, so to speak. My six months' residence begins to-night!"

"Fig-tree!" Marjorie exclaimed. "The trees around here are just about high enough to tickle your ear--when you're lying down."

"You haven't seen the trees yet," said Jack, knowingly. "Now, let's pitch camp."

We went back to the wagon, but Buck positively refused to be disturbed.

Neither coaxing, nor proddings, nor pullings, nor pus.h.i.+ngs, were of any avail; get up he would not.

"He's a squatter," said Jack. "A genuine squatter, and he refuses to be dispossessed. We must work around him." So we unhitched Bright, and by great effort unharnessed Buck, and left him until the spirit should move him. We dragged the tent close to the brow of the gully and pitched it on the spot where we had planned that my shack should be. We also unloaded part of our equipment so that we could make use of it in the housekeeping operations. It was with great zest that we carried our cookstove to the door of the tent and strung up two or three lengths of pipe. In a few minutes Jack appeared from somewhere with an armful of bits of wood, and as the darkness settled down we gathered about a fire on our own farms, for the first time in our lives.

The girls unpacked some of the supplies, and I was commissioned to milk our cow, and presently Marjorie was flip-flapping pancakes on the "spider" with the art of a mature housewife. "We should have sour milk for these," she protested, as she served the first helping.

"If that cow had been much longer on the road I think she would have been able to supply you," I ventured. "She has been looking sadder every day."

"She's a great inst.i.tution. Henceforth I consider a cow as necessary a part of travel equipment as a suit-case."

And so we chattered on, saying nothing of moment, but feeling the great joy of possession welling in our hearts. It was a day and a night to be lived over many a time in memory. For the first time in our lives we were drinking of the wells of possession,--the enchanted streams which draw men and women into the wilderness to live and die on the outposts of civilization.

We had finished supper, and the grey gloom of twilight was crawling slowly up from the east when a sharp, whistling rustle almost above us brought the girls to their feet with a start.