Читать книгу Clearing in the West. My Own Story - Nellie Letitia McClung - Страница 8

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We arrived in St. Boniface at night, a close hot May night with no moon. There seemed to be no place to stay, so we crossed the river in a row-boat. Timoleon Tait’s ferry did not start to run until later in the season. The seven of us, with our hand baggage were packed in the boat, and I remember trailing my hands in the cold water, which seemed very nearly up to the edge of the boat. We found a hotel that would take us in and let us spread our bedding on the floor, every bed being occupied, and here, sleepy and tired we lay down. But when daylight came, and my mother saw what sort of a place we were in we made a hurried exit. She must have been greatly shaken at the sight, for she imparted to each of us a great desire to get out. I think it was probably her first sight of old and unashamed dirt. The bill was fifteen dollars.

Our next place of sojourn was a delightful one—a tent on the river bank, where all day we could see the activities of both the Red and Assiniboine, for our camping-ground was at the junction of these two rivers. Many other settlers were camped there, and we were welcomed by the older residents and every assistance was given to us. Before three days had gone by we had a floored tent, with a stove, home-made table, a clothesline and bunks around the sides of the tent, and knew all the other families. My mother set to work to wash the bedding, bit by bit, for the memory of that one night in the Browse Hotel had to be purged away by soap and water and the high bright sunshine of the river bank.

We were not overlooked by the purveyors of Winnipeg. A butcher’s cart came down to us twice a week with beefsteak at seventy-five cents a pound, and an enterprising dairyman led two cows through the encampment and sold milk at thirty cents a quart, cafeteria style. Land agents with pockets bulging with documents swarmed about us.

Our great excitement was the river boats passing on both rivers; some side-wheelers and some with the propeller behind, great red and white boats churning the muddy water of the river into creamy foam. The landings were made by throwing out a cable, when the boat had come as near to the shore as the water allowed and letting off the deckhands called “Roosters,” who tugged at the cables and drew the boat to shore. The landings were accomplished in torrents of profanity, directed toward the Roosters who worked away patiently and without resentment; one of our tent-neighbors said the captains seemed to be even-tempered men, always in a rage.

We were three days in the tent when Will came with our cousin John Clarke, a young man about Will’s age, who looked like him too, and when these two sunburned young fellows in their high boots, with whiskers on their faces came in, and hailed us as their own and we knew that we were all together again, our happiness was complete. Now let the hurricane roar, we were here! We had reached the Red River and the world was ours!

I remember lying in bed in the tent trying to keep awake when Will was telling about the time he had spent at the Junction of the Assiniboine and Souris, that terrible winter of ’79-80 when the frost split the trees wide open, and they cracked like pistol-shots, and the northern lights pink and gold, and green, waved and fluttered in the sky like curtains hung on a clothesline on a windy day. The stove was kept red-hot but even so his back was freezing while his face burned. And the wolves circled and howled, and snapped their hungry jaws outside the tent, some so near to him that he never ceased to be frightened they would get an ear or a toe, and the two ponies died, although they had made a shelter of logs for them, and covered it with spruce boughs, but they had breathed the frost into their lungs. . . . After that no one spoke for so long that I fell asleep.

But most of all we wanted to hear of the land Will had taken for us—a half-section for himself and one for father, and a quarter for George, all together. Ours was section 20, township 7, range 16, and Will drew a diagram to show us how the sections were laid out, drawing in the running stream that cut through our farm, and circled to make a perfect building site.

Oxen had to be bought now, and two wagons and some place had to be found for us to live. Will’s plan was for the family to stay in Winnipeg while he and father and George would take part of the furniture and drive the hundred-and-eighty miles, build a house with the logs he and Macdonald had cut down and dressed, and then come back for us in September, before the cold weather came.

Mother wanted to keep us all together and go on. We could live in the tent while the house was being built, but Will was afraid of the mosquitoes, lack of good water and the general discouragement which might fall upon us. So a house was found, five miles from Winnipeg at Saint James. It was a big, old house with a smoking chimney and a tragic history. Its owner had been shot through one of the windows and the mystery had never been cleared up. The great attraction for us was the fine garden, already ploughed and ready for planting, and this was set with seeds before the men left for their long journey.

Beside us was Sir Donald A. Smith’s house, “Silver Heights,” a beautiful manor house, surrounded by lawns and flowers and white trellised arbors, with long gabled stables at the back of the grounds. Often in the evening many carriages turned in at the gates, phaetons with wide fenders, covered carriages with lamps on the dash-boards carrying brilliantly dressed people to dance in the great ballroom on the second floor, and on these nights Hannah and I, who went to bed early, would hang half-way out of our room window, listening to the ribbony notes of the violins playing the Blue Danube Waltz and watching the swaying figures of the dancers. We named them and wove romances around them giving them as happy destinies as we thought they deserved. They drew better fortunes from us on the nights they forgot to draw the blue velvet hangings, thus preserving for us a good view of the enchanted ballroom. Sometimes we fancied that proposals of marriage transpired before our eyes in the alcove, and we rehearsed the scene with words of our own making. “Lorelie—may I call you Lorelie? Your loveliness has haunted me since first you crossed my path—and not one peaceful hour have I known since then, so now I must, and will know my fate. Is there a spark of hope that you might grow to love a rough warrior? Nay do not shrink!”

To which I, as Lorelie, made reply with downcast eyes and blushes mantling my snowy brow, “How do I know—I am so young—so ignorant of the world—Sir Hector, I have so lately left my lessons.”

Then we had another scene where Lorelie wept and confessed she loved another, one of humble birth, and Sir Hector promised to seek out the handsome herd-boy and make him his heir; so her father’s objections would be removed. Whereupon Lorelie fell at his feet and embraced his knees and cried until Sir Hector, although a little stiff in the back, stooped and lifted her and wiped her tears with his own bandana handkerchief, drawn from the tail of his coat with a crack like a whip-lash. Hannah had invented this scene, to show off her trick of snapping a handkerchief.

Our first intimation of the evil character of the house was brought in by Jack, who said the boys he played with wouldn’t come in for there was a curse on the house, and a ghost in the attic that moaned in the night.

Mother did not seem to be worried over either the curse or the ghost. Hannah and I were greatly thrilled to be living in a house that had a ghost—that was something surely and we were not afraid, not at the moment for night was a long way off and the sun was shining. Anyway, Mother said a person who had a good conscience need not be afraid of ghosts, even if there were ghosts, which she did not believe.

But one night there came a storm. The wind came down on us, with sudden fury, bending the poplar trees across the windows, and shaking every loose window in our house. We used only two rooms downstairs and two upstairs, for, having sent all the furniture we could do without, on the wagons, we were managing with the scant necessities.

We were all downstairs when the gale struck, and at first we watched the tossing trees and the rolling clouds from the front windows. Suddenly the whole house burst into groans, rolling higher and higher and then dying into agonized whispers. We turned from the window in a panic of fear. Mother stood up and listened with her brows drawn down and every sense alert. Then she shook her head and went out into the hall. The sounds certainly were coming from upstairs. We were sure it was the ghost, or a collection of ghosts, but not a word was spoken until mother announced her intention of finding out. We formed a procession, Jack walking ahead carrying the lamp. Mother followed with an ax. Lizzie, Hannah and I fell in. I did not want to go, but it would be worse to stay behind.

The moans did not belong to the first floor but came from the attic, rising and falling with every gust. A blaze of lightning blotted out the yellow lamplight, leaving us almost blinded. There was a door to the attic, always locked, but mother had all the keys with her. She found the key, unlocked the door and opened it. A rush of wind put out the light.

“I think I know what the trouble is,” she said; “there’s no ghost.”

“I’ll go down and get the matches,” Jack volunteered, and I thought it was very brave of him. But mother did not need a light.

“Never mind, I’ll go up and close the windows, the lightning will show the way. Don’t be afraid, it’s nothing!”

We stayed below and heard her steps on the bare floor. There were continuous flashes of lightning. In a few minutes we heard her coming and her voice had a note of victory. “Nothing at all,” she said, “just bottles in the windows with their necks turned out, and when the wind blew it roared in and out. I let the windows down, so we’ll hear no more groans.”

We went down the stairs and back to the kitchen, where a cheerful fire burned in the stove and the lamplight never looked more welcome. “I think I’ll have a cup of tea, and you may have hot milk,” mother said, “and we’ll sit down a while and read our book. It’s not late yet and we don’t feel like sleeping.”

The storm went on but the sounds in the house had settled down to what night sounds should be when the rain pours down, and the wind is riding the trees. And we had a fine long evening following the fortunes of the “Scottish Chiefs.”

Before the men of the family had left for the West, a farm for sale was offered to us, Louis Pruden’s farm on the river-bank—four chains wide, as all the farms were, and four miles long—laid out in this way to provide river frontage for everyone and to make it possible for the houses to be close together. The price was sixteen hundred dollars, which was about all we had after the oxen, waggons and supplies were bought. We could buy it on easy terms, and Will saw possibilities in the venture.

“We could sell it in a year and double our money,” Will said.

“This land will be sold for town lots in ten years,” father said, who was favorable to the project. “Winnipeg will be one of the great cities of Canada, and nothing can prevent it.”

But mother stood firm. “Let us go on,” she said. “Let us go to an all-white settlement. There are too many jet black eyes and high cheek-bones here. I like them very well when they belong to the neighbors’ children, but I would not like them in my grand-children. We came here, John, for the children’s sake, not ours, and we’ll do our best for them every way.”

I couldn’t see why she objected. Indian Tommy was the nicest boy we played with, and the McMullen children were all right too. Indian Tommy’s mother worked in the kitchen of Silver Heights, so quite often he came over and played with us. He could whistle like a meadowlark and climb any tree on the place, and after he lost his two front teeth, he could spit right through a knot-hole in the fence.

Indian Tommy’s mother did not like another woman, called Mrs. Baggs, because Mrs. Baggs said Indian Tommy’s mother had never been drunk in her life and she had been roaring drunk once in Winnipeg. This started the quarrel, and when they fought on the river bank, Tommy took me over to see it, and all would have been well if I had not brought home the news, but unfortunately, I did. Naturally I was glad to see my friend’s mother win and chase her enemy, almost into the river. Something told me, though, as I went on with my story that I was not “getting my audience.” From then on, I was not allowed to go out of our own grounds unless Hannah or Lizzie was with me.

But there was good fun in playing inside, when Hannah would play with me. We climbed the poplar trees which were just the right size for a lovely game that Hannah invented. We had two trees that were near enough to strike when we got them teetering and then the game was to see who could first knock the other one down. It was a lovely game and its name was, “Biting the Dust.”

Mother and Jack attended to the garden and it responded with a prodigality of growth which must have warmed their hearts. Rich black soil for a seed-bed, with plenty of rain and warm sunshine, made the plants grow with great vigor, and I believe this kept mother’s spirits high that summer more than anything else, for she must have had her times of loneliness. The mosquitoes were like all the plagues of the Old Testament but no matter, the hoeing and weeding went on, for these rows of carrots, beets, onions and potatoes would all be needed in the long winter that lay ahead.