Читать книгу The Flying Years - Frederick Niven - Страница 14

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So there he was, a mere satellite for the time being, it seemed, of Sam Douglas, that young man of far-seeing plans, aware of little but the misery of farewells and that it was too late to change his mind.

The horses (it had pleased Sam to hear, while Angus was busy on the packing, that they could be sold at Red River with profit) stepped out briskly. Soon, as the ocean encompasses a ship, land dropping astern, the rolling country received them and that Backbone of the World, the Rockies, was dwindling down the sky to west. Their route was to be southeast, toward the great plain across which, picking up the loom of the Eagle Hills like a guiding pharos, they would pass on by the elbow of Battle River to the old Fort Garry-Fort Edmonton cart-trail.

Like Lot’s wife was Angus that first day out, constantly slewing in the saddle, hand on his horse’s haunch, to watch the sinking of the mountains. These undulating belts, the colour of smoke, along the foothills he had ridden through. He knew them for what they were. Always in this land there was an impression, whether on flat prairie, rolling foothills, or among the mountains, of immensity. It was not due merely to the scope of the immediate view, for in the forests were often narrow gulches in which one could only see, between tree trunks, trees on the further slope set precipitately and densely. Nor was it the result of studying maps of the continent. The prairie wind whispered of space and space again beyond where the blue crystal cupola rested lightly on the horizon; and in the ranges there was the consciousness, in every dell where a creek shouted under debris of fallen trees and moss hung in tassels on the branches of living ones, that there were a million such dells, scented so of cedar or of balsam, on and on, terrain of the deer, the bear, the beaver.

Angus recalled, when they came to the headwaters of Red Deer River, queer legends that Minota had to tell. Away down there near where Red Deer River flows into the South Saskatchewan, she had said, there were strange stone animals of enormous size, huge lizards of rock that were sometimes partially exposed after a gale that sifted the sand from them, or a cut-bank crumbled. Odd the inventions of les sauvages, he had thought—and would remember those stories of hers on a day to come, hearing of the discoveries of geologists there. At the time, memory of her talks about those queer creatures merely added, to the sense of spaciousness, that of mystery, as they rode on, drawing near to the swerve of land called High Butte.

They had been advised at the Mountain House to swing to the north of the butte, coasting round its base, but Angus sent the pack horses up athwart its southern slope, looking back as he followed them to see the Rockies bobbing upward again. Near the summit in the thin whistle of the wind he halted for some moments.

Sam Douglas, no doubt, realized the cause of his companion’s meditative silence there.

“It’s no place for a woman,” Douglas suddenly declared. It was a statement beyond question by his tone.

Angus was about to reply, “You mean a white woman?” but that would have been foolish. Obviously that was what was meant by Douglas, who then plunged into a rambling dissertation on the life of the forts where he had been, and of the settlements in their neighbourhood. There was no law, or if there were law there was no one to enforce it. Up at Edmonton murderers had been pointed out to him, murderers free and unconcerned, said he. There was a Cree there, for example, who had slain two Sarcees that had been visiting his family. They had fallen in love with his daughter—— “Or his sister, was it?” rumbled Sam. “Anyhow, the fellow’s name was Tahakooch, and when these Sarcees prepared to leave he went out on the trail with them, dropped behind, shot them both, and came back to brag of it, swagger of it before whites as well as before Indians.”

Then there was a raid he had heard of in which a band of one tribe of Indians had killed one entire band of another, men, women, and children, except one or two young women whom they had carried off. And the prospectors who were washing for gold-dust on the Saskatchewan headwaters, and even over by the Peace River, when they came in—“Well, some of them,” said he, and paused. “I like a dram whiles. I can tak’ a dram. But drinking! Hech, sirs! I’ve seen drinking now. No, no place for a woman——” he paused again, “yet,” he added, “but twenty years to come—you mark my words.”

“Uh-hu,” said Angus, and turned his back on the scene for which he had deflected the horses upward there. With lowered heads the string went dropping down the eastern slope of High Butte.

They passed on into that sea of grass in which for days on end, in a phrase of the plainsmen, they were out of sight of land, no lone butte even raising far off a purple knob in the immensity. Angus had a mental image: a great hand was dropped in water and made a wide gesture in air, flicking down the drops of Fort Ellice, Fort Pelly, Touchwood Hills Post, Fort Carlton, Fort Pitt, Fort Edmonton, with three sprayed residual drops at the end, of St. Ann’s, Jasper, and the Mountain House—in a sweep across a thousand miles.

There were days when they saw—as far as eye could reach—humped dots moving slowly by the hundred all in the one direction, and they even rode through these herds of buffalo without creating a stampede. There were days when they travelled, with a flirt-flirt and frou-frou of saddle leather, between western sky and eastern sky and at night looked not only up but forth at the stars as do sailors at sea. Once or twice they came upon parties of the buffalo-runners from Red River and Qu’Appelle, Scots and French half-breeds. Once or twice they came to camps of Cree Indians upon their summer hunt, the tents all set up like white candle extinguishers in the long wrinkle of some coulee, the horses grazing round about—bays and buckskins (with or without the prized black streak down the spine), blue horses (the kind called smokies), pintos (skewbald and piebald), horses glossy black and horses silver-gray. Or they met bands on trek, travelling villages jogging along with trailing travois raising the dust. These encounters were the chief interest of the traverse for Angus.

For Sam Douglas the most interesting episode had to do not with any met or overtaken on the way, but with a cloud. No bigger than a man’s hand it seemed at first, sailing serene, how near or how far hard to compute, ahead of them one blazing day.

“An odd cloud that,” he remarked, “different from the others.”

A long gaggle of geese served to show that it was far off, for these distant pin-points in none of their divagations disappeared into that cloud. What they were about it was difficult to conjecture. They appeared to be but exercising their wings above that segment of the world. Now they showed as an immense arrow, moving definitely to north, then suddenly they changed to a mere thread wavering irresponsibly in the ether. They were not travelling anywhere, had either risen in alarm or but for the pleasure of flight. The thread undulated in another direction, was again arrow-shaped; and always, beyond, was that cloud, the hue of which differed from that of others adrift and, by reason of the difference, seemed ominous.

It dipped to the prairie’s edge and there it broke in a glittering descent, a thousand flashing points of light. They talked about it in their camp that night; and in their camp next day they talked again of it, having come to an area of the plain where the grass was beaten into the earth. Arrived at Fort Ellice, chatting of their experiences with the factor, Mackay, and Chantelaine of Fort Pitt (who was there for a night on his way back after a visit to Fort Garry), Douglas spoke of that region of bruised and beaten land.

“That was hail,” said Mackay.

“There must have been a midsummer hail-cloud emptying itself there,” said Chantelaine.

Douglas turned to Angus.

“That was yon cloud!” said he solemnly.

He had many questions to ask regarding these hailstorms on blazing August days.

“I have heard of the stones,” said Chantelaine, “as big as marbles, even as big as bantams’ eggs.”

“It would hurt to get a crack on the head with one!” observed Douglas. “Do they happen often?”

Not often, he was told, and both men were of opinion that only certain districts were thus afflicted.

“Lots of people in the country for years have never seen one.” said Chantelaine.

“Well, that’s good hearing,” declared Sam. “I suppose the buffaloes’ shaggy foreparts protect them if they don’t know the weather signs and clear away. But their hindquarters are not so well covered. I should think ordinary cattle——”

“They don’t last long,” said Mackay. “It is just a cloudburst of hail and over.”

“But look what one storm can do in the time! Suppose hail came down like that in a wheat-field——”

“There are no wheat-fields here,” said Chantelaine.

The subject was in Sam’s mind next day as they rode on by Snake Creek toward Bird Tail Creek.

“Hail insurance,” he suddenly boomed.

“What’s that?” asked Angus. “What are you talking about?”

“I was just thinking that some day all these plains will be what they call smiling farms! Look at how the land has been manured through ages by the buffalo. Look at the grand, growing soil, man. It’s too good for cattle, I’m thinking, a grand country like this. And when that day comes an insurance against damage to crops by hail—the way they have marine insurance and life insurance—would be a good thing. No doubt lots of people would say they would take the risk without paying insurance. These men back there said the midsummer storms are localized and don’t happen often. But a fright or two, here and there, for one or another of the smiling farmers, would make them listen to a man of a persuasive turn. Aye, that’s far ahead, however, but to be taken a brief of in the notebook, so to speak.”

“You are jumping ahead again,” remarked Angus.

“Yes, a jump or two—as always. But those days are not so far off as some might imagine. I’m going to tell you something between ourselves. Last year there was a man—by the name of Hector—a civil engineer—away back there in the mountains looking for a way through for a railway. And the winter before there was another man, Palliser by name, who spent the whole winter (and he must have his courage) with the Blackfeet Indians, so that they could become friends and he could move about through their country at his ease—and he was on the same job. All last year he was at it, looking for a route for a railway.”

“We heard rumours to that effect at the Mountain House,” Angus began, “but——”

“But! Oh, yes, there will be but upon but for awhile, I have no doubt, but it’s coming. You and me, Angus, if we live, are going to see changes in these parts.”

Leaving Ellice, they went by the valley of the Assiniboine which flows into the Red River at Fort Garry, and so anon came to that small settlement to which, two years before, Daniel Munro, Kate and Angus had driven in the spring, the mud dragged up by the wheels and plip-plopping behind as the horses squelched on the way—passed near the settlement (the hoofs of their horses leaving a pennant of dust that day), coasted the slough where the unexpected gulls had been too much for Mrs. Munro. On the traverse they had, as was easy enough, lost track of a day, neither of them sure as they rode down the Assiniboine valley whether here was Saturday or Sunday. When houses began to show ahead, rectangular scrabblings on the low skyline, the sound of a kirk bell came to them on a light wind out of the east.

“So it is the Sabbath Day,” said Douglas. “I wish I had taken a bet on’t!”

Together they rode to the Fort to discover when the International was to go up the river. Hearing that she was not expected down for two days, Douglas remained there with the officer in charge (to whom had been one of his letters of introduction), while Angus started out upon the road for the Frasers’.

It was growing dark by Red River, scents and sounds stronger than the visible, but along the road day lingered as though the dust held it. Lights were beginning to show in windows and stars in the sky when he came to the old place. He had the impression as of having been dreaming, lying out under a tree somewhere, or in a haystack—a strange dream of broad prairies, of boat-building by a distant river, of the singing of an Indian girl in a cabin there—as a voice came out to him, Ian in the porch tapping the beat with a stick:

“A vine from Egypt thou hast brought,

Thy free love made it thine;

And drov’st out nations, proud and haut,

To plant this lovely vine.

“Thou didst prepare for it a place,

And root it deep and fast,

Then it began to grow apace,

And filled the land at last.

“With her green shade that cover’d all,

The hills were——”

The singing and the tapping ceased as Mr. Fraser rose to meet the tall shadowy form that advanced. A light from within shone on Angus’s face.

“Well, well, it’s Angus Munro! Come and see who’s here!”

There they all were again, Mrs. Fraser unchanged, in the pleasure of the meeting gathering him to her and kissing him as though he were a son.

“How you young folks do grow!” exclaimed Angus, but twenty himself. “Fiona, Fiona! If you go on like this they’ll have to train you to a bean-pole! Let me see, how old are you now?”

“Nine.”

“Not too old for me to kiss?”

She leapt to him in her lithe, quick way, kissed him, then linked her hands over one of his shoulders while Flora embraced him and hung, and swung, to the other side.

They passed indoors to the remembered twinkle of the homemade candles shining on the plates in their racks. At that Hector came in.

“Here’s Hector,” said Mr. Fraser. “He’s the foreman now! That’s what his mother calls him, whatever.”

“Oh, yes, they are shooting up. Let me see, it is just two years since you’ve been gone.”

“Just two years,” replied Angus as they sat down—and marvelled at how much had been in his life in that time, back here at this little settlement that looked out on the curve of western sky and the plains as the shore-side villages look out to sea. He had been to the end of it and was back again.

His eyes rested on Fiona, blindly it seemed, as the thought came to him how far away was Rocky Mountain House. Where, he wondered, was Minota then, as the dusk which had deepened to night here at Red River ran beyond Assiniboia, Saskatchewan—and on.

“You must have a lot to tell us of where you’ve been and what brings you back,” said Mrs. Fraser.

One thing, he considered, he could not tell. There were unions of white with red folk round them there to be sure. Even the tallow of the candles lighting this scene came to them from the half-breed buffalo hunters. And yet—he imagined himself talking about Minota: a shadow would come in Mrs. Fraser’s eyes and she would turn to her husband while he, to hide his stare of regret or unbelief, would look at the floor. There would be a silence broken only by Ian’s unconscious whistling, or hissing between his teeth, of some ballad or psalm tune, in a way he had when pondering something sad, calamitous, beyond mending.

Next day Angus took an opportunity to slip away alone to the kirkyard of Kildonan to see the stone that (as he had arranged before going west) had been set up for his father and mother—a melancholy occasion. Standing there he felt again a deep loneliness—and thought of Minota. Voices had a way of haunting him, and hers was with him then, singing one of her short repetitive chants, about the grass sprouting, the geese and the ducks flying over—all day and even at night. There rose in him—there rose in him—a wish that he had for wife one of his own race. Little more than a month ago he had left her, loving her, yet here came this thought surging up and angering him with its shabby disloyalty.

“It seems he has something on his mind,” Mrs. Fraser said to her husband that night.

“He went out this afternoon to the kirk where his father and mother lie,” answered Ian.

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said she.