Читать книгу Clearing in the West. My Own Story - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 7

Table of Contents

One day the whole question of emigration to the far away Red River was suddenly decided. The vapor of argument and opinion suddenly lifted and blew away, and before us stretched a straight hard road, from which there could be no turning back.

The spring plowing was going on this bright windy day in May; and because of the high wind and eddying dust I was playing in the kitchen; I had just come over to the long table to watch mother kneading her bread, which squeaked as the air-bubbles broke. All in a moment the door flew open and Will came in, with a gust of wind.

He must have made a dramatic entry, for I can remember that his face was white and his eyes had turned strangely black. Mother turned around from the table and stood without speaking. Will threw his hat on the floor and every sound in the house suddenly ceased.

“I am done!” he said, and his voice shook with rage. “I am quitting right here! I’ll never put another plow into the soil of Grey County, I’ll go west, if I have to walk!”

Mother went to him and helped him to the sofa.

“You are hurt Willie,” she said anxiously. “Did the plow hit a stone?”

Will nodded. “It knocked my wind out,” he said; “a hidden stone—there’s no end to them, but I’m done. I’ve quit!”

There was no argument. Will would go at once and if he liked it we would all go in a year.

The day Will left I cried bitter tears. I think every one cried but my mother. She said there was no need of tears, we should be glad we had a brother brave enough to go out West and find land for us, and we would all be together soon, and there would be plenty to do in the year getting ready for the big move, and there would be need of every one, even to the youngest. I knew that meant I would have to go on watering the leach.

We all walked out to the road with Will and waited for the stage, which would take him to Owen Sound, and he would get on the Francis Smith, the boat which sailed that night. He wore a pale grey shirt, with a blue tie caught in a gold ring, and had a new grey felt hat and carried the only valise we owned. I knew he would conquer the world.

The next night came the storm which beat the Francis Smith upon the rocks. The gale came suddenly in the night and wakened me with great flashes of lightning followed by peals of thunder that shook the world. First a flash and then a burst of thunder and pelting rain in one deafening confusion. I turned my face into the pillow, but could still see the flashes. Then the rumbles began to come from farther away and the rain slackened too. Suddenly I thought of the boat and sat up! Would the storm be on the Lakes? A flash of lightning showed me mother kneeling by her bedside in her nightgown, her long dark hair hanging down her back in two braids; and through the dark I heard her praying: “Thou, who didst walk the waters on the Sea of Galilee,” she pleaded, “walk it again on Lake Superior and save the Francis Smith; O, still the waves and let the passengers be saved, even if the vessel is smashed to pieces on the rocks, stoop, O Saviour, stoop and save.”

I prayed too, but my petition was a simple one. I made a little tent of my hands before my face and whispered in the dark: “Dear God, take care of Will—he’s my biggest brother and he’s going to find good land for us. He’s a good fellow, and if he should get drowned we can’t go West. Amen.”

Having thus delivered myself I went to sleep again and slept till morning. I knew it would be all right. God would not go back on mother. My father must have felt the same way, for he slept the night through. At daylight mother wakened him and they drove into Owen Sound and found that all the passengers had been taken off the ship, and a few days later we got Will’s letter, telling us about the storm.

After that Will’s letters became the great events of our lives. He had joined a surveying party and was lucky to get on it. Now he would see the country and be able to choose the best land; he wouldn’t forget to have a running stream on the farm and there would be good black loam. He was well and happy and letting his whiskers grow. . . .

He found a place near the Souris River. . . . We would write to Grand View now and he would get it some time. We must not be anxious if we did not hear from him, and would we give this letter to Annie Stephenson to read? He had only one stamp. . . . He would draw a map of the township for us. . . .

He was going to camp in the bush with a man called Macdonald, and cut logs for the house when the cold weather came. Maybe he would get a chance to send a letter out, anyway he would be all right in the camp—there was plenty of firewood and they had a tin stove and lots of pork and beans, and rabbits were plentiful. He hoped we could sell the farm. There was plenty of good land there lying waste. He would come to Winnipeg to meet us in May. . . .

In May, 1880, we all sailed on the City of Owen Sound, I remember taking leave of the old home which had been bought by a man named Crawford. I was dressed in my best dress, the day we left, for I was going to have my picture taken in Owen Sound. It was a black and white farmer’s satin, second mourning for my grandmother who had died the year before. I had white cotton stockings, knit in a feather pattern, and high laced boots.

The neighbors helped us to draw our stuff into Owen Sound. Hannah and I rode with Caleb Morgan, Mr. Conger’s hired man. It was a bleak windy day, with light clouds rolling, but we were warmly wrapped in a blanket and sat on the high spring seat with Caleb. He confided to us as we rattled along that he fully intended to get out West himself sometime, but what could a man do with his mother and two sisters to support?

Mother and father rode in our own wagon ahead, driven by Mr. Crawford, who had bought the horses and wagon, and was helping us now to get our stuff on the boat.

We stopped in Chatsworth and went into the cemetery. On grandmother’s grave mother put a wreath of paper flowers, in a little box with a glass lid, which Arabella Cresine had made for her. There was a new white stone with her name, “Margaret Fullerton McCurdy.” There was a little grave beside grandmother’s with a white lamb at the head and this was where the little brother, John Wesley, whom I had never seen, was laid. I had been there before and knew about this little fellow, who was the smartest, best child of us all, and one Sunday he had come home from Sunday-school with his Berean Leaf and said his verse, “Let not your heart be troubled,” and he was dead at noon on Tuesday. I tried to feel sad when I looked at the little stone. . . . mother cried when she knelt beside the little mound and said, “We’re not leaving you Johnny, for you’re safe in heaven, and I carry your memory in my heart and always will . . . and when the other children all grow up and leave me, I’ll still have my wee bairn. . . . And when my time comes you will be the angel sent out to meet me, and you will say your verse to me then. . . .”

Near Inglis Falls we stopped again to say good-bye to the McMickens, who kept the tavern there. Mrs. McMicken was my father’s niece, and Robert her boy, eighteen years old was sick with consumption. He had grown too fast. There were great deers’ heads of the hall, and a cabinet of stuffed birds on the landing of the stairs. We were all taken in to say good-bye to Robert, who lay as white as the pillows on his high bed.

In Owen Sound, Hannah, Lizzie and I stayed at Mary Little’s. Mary had gone from our neighborhood some years ago and set herself up in dressmaking, and had done well. She was a thin darting little woman with a heart-shaped pincushion of red velvet hanging from her leather belt. Across from her house was a great yellow house, whose eaves and windows and verandah were all edged with wooden lace.

At Silver Inlet, we went ashore to see a cousin, who had the name of being a bad housekeeper. She read novels, paper-backed novels, day and night and would neither knit nor sew. Novels were a form of poison. I knew that, but mother spoke well of poor Lucy in spite of her weakness. She was as good-natured a soul as ever lived, and would be a good woman, if she could only leave the cursed novels alone. Maybe she had done better in her new home. Anyway, we would call and see her for the boat stayed two hours.

We trailed up a long hill, with a narrow sidewalk of two boards and houses standing one above another. We found Lucy’s house quite easily. There were no curtains on the windows and boards in the steps were broken, but that was not Lucy’s fault—surely Johnny should have mended the steps, but it seems the novels had got Johnny too, not that he read them, but Lucy didn’t get the right sort of meals and Johnny had lost heart, so he couldn’t be expected to mend the steps. Lucy came to the door in bedroom slippers and a Mother Hubbard wrapper, and her hair was in curl papers, though this was late afternoon. She was very glad to see us, and took us into the little parlor, where the furniture wore grey linen dusters, and the pictures were crooked on the wall. But her house was warm; and from the bare window looking out on the street, we could see the blue waters of the harbor, and our big white boat waiting for us. Lucy made a cup of tea for us and served us biscuits, “boughten biscuits,” but lovely to the taste. Lucy was very sweet and pleasant, and told mother she was late with her housecleaning this Spring, but she was going to get right at it as soon as she finished the book she was reading—such a lovely story about an orphan who was the real heir to her grandfather’s millions. But do you think her uncles would let her have the money?—they had laid traps for her in every way, and now they were plotting with the gypsies to steal her, and her so young and sweet and innocent. Even the old gypsy woman was better than her own uncles, and had come by night to see Dolores—that was the orphan—to tell her not to drink—

Mother interrupted Lucy there just when it was getting interesting, and asked for Johnny, and Lucy said that Johnny was the “same old tuppenny bit.”

I liked Lucy. She had a cat too, a big furry one, black and white, which lay on the top of the sideboard among the newspapers.

We stayed until our boat gave its deep-throated whistle to warn us that one hour had gone, and then mother hurried us out. I wanted to find out about Dolores, the orphan, and what it was she mustn’t drink, but I never knew.

The boat carried us as far as Duluth, and again we climbed a hill—this time to find a store, for we had to carry our own food on the train. I had ten cents of my own too, which was causing me some anxiety. I bought maple sugar with it, and rued my bargain immediately, for there were many other things I would have preferred, but maple sugar was the first thing offered to me, and I did not wish to hurt the clerk’s feelings.

Hannah was indignant with me for letting my money go so easily. “We have better maple sugar than that with us,” she said, “maple sugar is no treat, anyway, when we can make it ourselves.”

“I like this,” I said, “look at the scallops around the edge, and I think it will have a different taste from ours!”

“You haven’t much sense,” Hannah said, and I knew it was true. But I stuck to my bargain and pretended I was satisfied, remembering Aunt Ellen.

The train journey from Duluth to St. Boniface passed like a flash. If there were pullmans on this train, they were not used by us. We slept very comfortably on the seats, for we had pillows and blankets. Our only trouble was that the car was crowded, but I slept very well for a man across the aisle offered to take me, for he was alone in the seat, and made a nice bed for me on his buffalo coat. Mother was afraid he might steal me and so did not close an eye all night, but no such thought kept me from my slumber. I asked him to please waken me when we crossed the Mississippi, and I told him boastfully, I fear, that I could spell “Mississippi,” and proceeded to do so, and having gone thus far in making a contact with the great waterway, it was only natural that I should want to see it. He promised to waken me, if he could stay awake himself. He said we would cross the river in daylight, just about daybreak, but he would find out for sure.

I was pretty drowsy when he gently stirred and called me, and I knew it would be a chance of a lifetime. He told me we would be on the bridge in a minute. It was in the dull gray of a misty Spring morning; discolored snow lined the yellow clay banks, and the great current of water billowed and threshed and churned its way under us, as the train crawled slowly over the bridge. The air was full of its clamoring roar as my friend held me up so I could see through the clear glass in the top half of the window, and I flattened my nose on it, in my eagerness to see all I could of the turmoil below me.

“I know what it is like,” I said, when the train had passed the last trestle, and began to pick up speed on the level track, and I was crawling back into the fur coat.

He expressed his readiness to hear.

“Soft soap,” I said, “when it is just ready to boil over and folding up from the bottom.”

“I have never seen soft soap,” he said, “where did you see it?”

I wanted to tell him about the leach with the black pan under it, but my eyes were heavy with sleep, so I just waved my hand across the aisle. If he wanted information, there was the original soap-maker: she could tell him the story of soap from the beginning.