Читать книгу Clearing in the West. My Own Story - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 12

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When the spring came, Will walked to Portage la Prairie—eighty miles and brought back two red cows, and from these our herd grew. They were just cows; that gave milk and ate grass, chewed their cuds and switched off flies; and in season bore their young, wabbly little sprawlers, but they could not take Lady’s place.

Perhaps, in fairness to the two cows, I should say they were over shadowed by another factor. Will brought home a cat at the same time, a black and white cat, named Philip, a gift from Mrs. Sutcliffe, who had a stopping house on the Portage Plains.

Philip was a full-grown cat, bearing on his portly person, evidence of hardship and struggle, tips of ears were gone, and a crook in his tail gave him a swagger in his walk. But he would purr, when greatly pleased; and he walked abroad in search of gophers. The little dog Watch, who had not seen a cat in his lifetime, let one loud and distressful yelp when he saw Philip and the battle was on.

Hannah and I undertook to allay the ancient grudge between our two pets, trying to reason with them and bring them together amicably. On the dog’s part, there was a desire for reconciliation even after he had been clawed and bitten, but Philip’s only medium of communication with little Watch, continued to be a spit with elevation of back fur! He remained a mean-tempered arrogant old rascal, as long as he lived. But he was furry and soft and would purr, and we bestowed on him a large measure of unrequited affection.

The house, which was to receive a family from Renfrew, stood about three miles from our house, and all that first long winter, it served as an emblem of hope to us, across the snow. It was a square frame house, built by Mr. Naismith and his brother-in-law, Tom Dunfield, who had returned to their home in Renfrew for the winter.

One day we saw wagons arriving and great excitement prevailed. We had neighbors! It wouldn’t be long until we had a school, life had begun. While we speculated and talked and wondered, mother set a batch of bread and took me with her and went over to meet the strangers.

Mrs. Naismith had the loveliest straw-colored hair done in braids around her head, and when she made a cup of tea, she served it in cream china cups with rosebuds. The family were all boys except one little girl, the baby, a very pretty little thing with big blue eyes like her mother, and the same wealth of golden hair. The boys were shy and would not play with me, but Minnie let me sit beside her in a big black rocking chair, which had a log cabin back and cushions, and my heart overflowed with joy to know there were children so near. And I know my mother was never so lonely again. Mrs. Naismith, next to my own mother, will always typify the pioneer woman to me, calm, cheerful, self-reliant, and undaunted.

In 1882 we built our house; logs had been brought for two winters from the bush, squared and made ready and there came a great day when the neighbors gathered, men and women and the house went up, with great good will. The men gave their help freely bringing their own axes, and planes, and saws; and it was an occasion of excitement and pleasure. In Ontario, “barn raisin’s,” were often accompanied by liquor drinking, and sometimes accidents and fights occurred as a result, but there was nothing of this, at ours. My mother was strong in her belief that liquor was one of the devil’s devices for confounding mankind; and anyway there was no liquor in the country at that time.

But there was a long table set in the shadow of the old house; where roast chicken, potatoes, turnips, custard pie, currant buns and big pots of tea, cheered the workers.

I remember the “raisin’,” not only because it was a great event, as a new house must always be, but because it was on this day that we were given one of the good gifts of my childhood. Mr. and Mrs. Naismith, brought us a pup, a lovely black and white pup, half Newfoundland. We knew that their dog had pups, we had seen them, but we had not even hoped to get one, for we had one dog, and pups were so precious and in such great demand, they were not casually asked for. But was this little fellow welcomed? I spent the day of the raising carrying him in a basket, so afraid I was that in the excitement someone might step on him; we called him “Nap,” and he grew to be a beautiful dog, the best loved of any dog I ever owned.

The house was a great joy to us, a clean new lumber-scented house, with a big room downstairs, a bedroom for father and mother, a real stairs, and two bedrooms above, and a large kitchen with two windows and a pantry. It still stands, bent a little by the heaviness of years, but its beams have held and the corners still split the winds. It is a tool house and workshop now on my brother’s farm, but to me it is a storehouse of happy memories.

The first summer, flower beds were made in front of the house, round beds, in which mignonette, portulaca and balsams were planted. The beds were edged with buffalo bones, from the piles which lay along the creek. The buffalo had been gone only a year when we arrived and the bone piles indicated the places where Indians had held their feasts. Arrow-heads of bone, and occasional broken bows with thongs of rawhide rewarded our search. Most magnificent were the beaten paths leading to the water holes, still called “buffalo runs” where the hoof marks were almost as clear as the day they were made.

It was sad to think of the buffalo, and how they had been killed, so wastefully, by the hunters from American cities, and yet, the buffalo had to go if the country were to be opened up for settlers. Some of the people believed the Indians had destroyed the buffalo, killing them, and using only their tongues for food, but that was not true. The Indians could not possibly have exterminated such great herds. The American hunters had done it, selling the hides in Minneapolis, and the meat too. No doubt they considered them their own buffalo, even if they had come to Canada looking for better feeding grounds.

The last buffalo had been seen the year before we arrived, but I held to the hope that I might some day come over the top of a knoll and see the dark brown, curly breasted, heavily set animals, with their great shoulders and small hindquarters, feeding on some grassy meadow.

The Indians still had bags of pemmican, after 1880, which is buffalo meat sun dried, and beaten to a pulp and mixed with berries, probably saskatoon, or cranberries, and pressed into bags; it was a black, hard mass, with bits of hide and hair in it, for the squaws who made the pemmican were not always particular. Still pemmican was hearty fare, and on the prairie in the cold winter, not to be despised.

The buffalo was a fat animal, and in the roasting of their meat, there must have been great supplies of fat, which the Indians allowed to burn in the fires. My mother’s frugal Scotch heart was grieved when she thought of this waste, and she often wondered why the Indians did not use some of the fat to grease the wooden wheels of their carts, and so prolong their usefulness, and end the weird groanings and dismal creakings of the protesting axles. But maybe the creakings and whinings were liked by the red men, and made the music of the trail for them.

In 1884 there was an effort made to gather up the bones for fertilizer, and five dollars a ton was paid for them in Regina, Saskatchewan.