A Lover in Homespun Part 11

The mocking refrain seemed to have been shouted into his ears; he started as though he had been struck, seized the reins, and dashed into the gathering storm.

A Perilous Encounter.

It is not because I am unduly sensitive of my altered appearance that I have told so few the story of the ugly scar that disfigures my face, but on account of the horror that I yet experience when recalling the terrible incidents that led to my receiving it. How many lives were saved by that wound I shall never know.

The great Canadian Pacific Railway, which to-day connects the Atlantic Ocean with the Pacific, was in the year 1882 built only about two hundred miles west of Winnipeg, leaving a huge gap of several hundred miles of untouched prairie before one of the world's wonders, the famed Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, was reached.

Such was the rapidity with which the rails were laid and telegraph offices erected, that when winter set in, fifty telegraph operators were needed to take charge of the empty stations.

The management found it hard to induce men to go out and bury themselves for the winter in the vast prairie, which was only then being opened up. To-day, men are only too happy to make homes in this wonderful country, which has very aptly been termed the future granary of the world.

Money is a loadstone that few men can resist, and when I heard that $80 a month was being paid out there for operators, I resigned my position in Montreal, and with $20 and a pa.s.s in my pocket started for Manitoba.

On reaching Winnipeg, I was at once sent out to Elkhorn, a bit of a station 150 miles farther west. When I took charge, in November, four inches of snow already hid the earth, which did not see the sun again till March.

Two pa.s.senger trains a day, and an occasional construction train, formed the only break in the monotonous life which I led. It was a dreadfully solitary existence. I was alone in the station, and as December began to wane, and the dread blizzards commenced their wild revelry, heaping the snow into such huge mounds on the tracks that the trains were delayed for days, I got as homesick and nervous as a girl of fourteen instead of a young man of twenty.

Christmas eve ushered in bitter weather. All day it had been snowing and storming. At 1 a.m. the gla.s.s showed twenty-two below zero. The storm had risen and risen until it was blowing a perfect blizzard from the west. The riotous wind, as it swept along the vast prairie, un.o.bstructed for scores of miles by houses or trees, caught up the newly-fallen snow in its mad embrace, and drove it with amazing force against the little telegraph office which sheltered me from its deathly embrace, as though enraged against this earnest of approaching civilization. So fierce, at times, was the onslaught that the tense telegraph wires could be heard humming even above the demoniacal glee of the storm.

I knew it was unmanly, but I could not help it: the tears would start to my eyes. It was Christmas, and I was spending it in such a queer manner! My thoughts had been with mother and dear old London, where I had left her two years before to try my fortune in Montreal. I knew she was thinking of her eldest born.

"Christians, awake, salute the happy morn."

All I had to do was to close my eyes, and I could hear my companions singing that grand old hymn in the greatest city in the world.

It was a relief to hear the telegraph instrument, which had been quiet for hours, call my office. Both pa.s.senger trains were nearly ten hours late, and were slowly struggling towards my station. It was just 2 a.m. when I received the order from the dispatcher at Winnipeg to detain the east-bound train at my station when she arrived, till the west-bound express crossed her--double tracks are yet unknown out there.

I replied back that I understood the order, and was just about to let the red lantern swing round from the station and face the track, when I was startled by hearing a tremendous kicking and howling at the door. In my surprise, I forgot to turn the lamp which was to signal the engineer to stop at the station for orders.

Little wonder I was agitated. The nearest house was seven miles away, and no white man could have walked a tenth of that distance in such a blizzard and have lived. Had the shouting and kicking been less imperative, I might have been superst.i.tious. With trembling hands I drew the bolt. Before I could step aside the door was thrown violently open, and to my dismay two stalwart Cree Indians burst into the little office. It was the manner of the savages in entering that made me feel nervous. It was no uncommon thing for me to have Indians drop into the station at night, and to see roaming bands of them pa.s.s the station at all hours; but two drunken Cree Indians, even a native scout might have been pardoned for fearing had he been unarmed and placed in my position.

Without appearing to notice me, the braves walked over to the glowing wood stove and began to warm themselves. I wanted to show that I trusted them, and brought two chairs and asked them to be seated. As I spoke they both turned their wicked, black eyes on me, but did not deign to speak. Kicking the chairs to one side they began taking off their great skin-coats and caps and red-and-white blankets.

As the taller of the two petulantly threw his wraps down, something hard struck the floor heavily. He gave a cry of greedy exultation, felt in the pocket of the coat, drew out a bottle of whiskey, and proceeded without delay to break off the neck on the stove. It was contrary to the law to sell liquor to Indians, but that did not matter much, they always managed to get it.

Just as he was about to raise the ragged mouth of the bottle to his lips, the telegraph instrument began to work. It had the effect that I feared. Both the Indians, with superst.i.tious dread in their eyes, involuntarily took a couple of steps back toward the wall, where I was sitting, devoutly hoping they would wrap themselves up in their blankets and go off to sleep. No such good fortune.

The room was about ten feet wide and fifteen feet long. In the centre was the stove, and near the door, about six feet to the right, was the instrument. I was sitting facing the door at the opposite side of the room. Pretending that I thought they were going to back up against me, I rose and calmly began to walk toward the instrument.

I had not pa.s.sed them two feet when they both caught me violently by the shoulders, and in excited, guttural tones, began in a threatening manner to say something to me. Seeing that I did not understand, the tall brave, pointing the bottle, which he still tightly clutched in his left hand, at the talkative instrument, said fiercely, "No go there! no go there!"

I quickly understood what they meant; the Indian's fear of telegraph instruments, and his inability to understand electricity, were known to every operator west of Winnipeg.

In their drunken fear they imagined that if I got possession of the wires I would have it in my power to do them an injury.

As easily as I could have lifted an infant, the great savage with his unengaged hand swung me from my feet, and contemptuously dropped me on my chair again, after which he took a long draught out of the bottle, and then handed it to his companion. The effect of the liquor upon their savage natures showed itself almost immediately; they began to yell and shout, and putting their hands around their mouths uttered cries like prairie wolves. I shrank closer to the wall.

In ten minutes they had finished the bottle, and were become nothing better than howling maniacs. They joined hands and capered round the stove, stamping the floor viciously with their moccasined feet. Again, they would wave their long arms about their heads in the most grotesque manner, uttering at the same time the most blood-curdling war-whoops.

In their eyes was the baleful light of the wild beast. The coal-oil light, which but dimly lit up the room, threw a yellow shade upon their dark, brutal faces, making them look like emissaries from the evil one, dancing in fiendish glee over some evil deed. The storm, as though in sympathy with the savage scene, had risen to a hurricane, shrieking like a mad thing, and through the cas.e.m.e.nt and ill-constructed door piled up miniature snow-banks.

Every moment I expected my unwelcome visitors would seize me, and in their insane glee practise upon me some savage torture. Would they never cease? For nearly thirty minutes I sat still as death, where they had flung me. Safety lay in not attracting their attention; but a dreadful ordeal was in store for me.

The instrument, which had been silent for a time, again awoke to life.

The dispatcher was calling my office. Like a flash the order to detain the down express that he had sent came back to my memory, and with a thrill of horror I remembered that I had omitted to turn the red lamp.

The dispatcher, I knew, wanted to ask me if the train had arrived.

Involuntarily I started to my feet.

The only sounds now to be heard were the ticking of the instrument and the ceaseless cries of the storm. The Indians, the instant they heard the former, ceased their uncivilized mirth, again looked apprehensively at the mysterious instrument, and hurriedly glanced at me. Their treacherous, suspicious natures were thoroughly aroused on seeing me looking eagerly toward the instrument. I knew not how near the train might be; act I must. I thought of the fearful loss of life which would surely occur unless I could reach the cord that hung above the instrument, and with one pull swing round the red lamp and let it beam across the track. I had received the order to expose the light, and unless I did so I knew full well the Company would hold me responsible for any accident that might occur. I had written the order in the order-book when receiving it.

All this pa.s.sed through my mind like a flash. I did not dread the Company, but I could not let scores of lives be sacrificed in order to save my own. I had always thought I was not the stuff brave men are made of, but when put to the test I gloried in finding that I was not a coward.

I was quite calm as I began carelessly to walk over to the instrument.

The drunken savages were upon me almost immediately. As they felled me to the floor, my ears caught the distant rumbling of the east-bound locomotive. The Indians also had heard the noise, and as they turned to listen I once more sprang to my feet and dashed past them. One of them I pa.s.sed in safety, but as I dodged the big brave he struck viciously at me with the broken bottle.

His aim was but too true; the ragged mouth of the bottle opened my face like a conical bullet. I had only a few more steps to go. Before I fell I knew that I had turned the light.

The conductor put me on the train and took me to Winnipeg, where I remained in the hospital for three weeks.

The Indians had gone when he entered the station. He had seen the order in the book, and had waited the arrival of the west-bound express, which arrived five minutes later. Had he not seen the red light he would have gone on, and the trains would have met about two miles east of the station.

The detectives tried to trace the two brutal savages, but did not succeed.

Yes, as long as I live I shall remember that Christmas when I was employed in the far west by the great Canadian Pacific Railway.

Le Loup-Garou.

The fear of it is killing me, Baptiste, for it is on my mind all the time. Think of it: for seven long years he has neither been to confession nor partaken of the blessed sacrament, and he is drinking and growing wickeder every day. This is the last night of the seventh year, and the curse may fall upon him now at any moment. She buried her wrinkled, fear-stricken face in her thin trembling hands, and wept as though her heart was breaking. "O Marie, blessed Virgin!" she whispered, "save our son, our Pierre; let not the fate of the loup-garou fall upon him." A thin stream of light shone through an ancient crack in the old-fashioned box-stove, and fell caressingly across the bowed head, making its silvery hair look pathetically thin.

The bent shoulders of the sorrowing mother shook convulsively.

Baptiste gazed with a troubled look at the bar of light on his wife's head, and his heart went out to her as only a husband's can to a wife who for half a century has borne with him the joys and trials of the pa.s.sing years. As he looked at the thin white hair, memory drifted back to the time when it was as black as a raven's wing, and fell in great glossy folds far below her waist. A tender smile stole into his face as he remembered how, on account of the waywardness of the beautiful hair and its rebellion against imprisonment, he had more than once heard her chide it; yes, and at times when more than usually arrogant, threaten to use the shears upon it. He observed, too, how round her shoulders had grown, and noted many other signs of old age which the glow from the stove made so cruelly apparent. It had taken sixty years of life just to streak her hair with grey; but the past seven years had remorselessly thinned and whitened it, and now not even one black hair was to be seen. All these things and many more he thought of as he gazed upon his sorrowing wife.

Distressfully the old man put his hand to his forehead, and then thought reverted to himself, and he recalled the days when his head was subject to his will and did not, with painful persistency, nod and tremble the long day through. The infirmity of age was strong upon him; seventy years is a long time to have lived and toiled as French-Canadian farmers toil in eastern Canada. He thought, too, how much he had aged the last seven years, and of the one who had caused those years to be fraught with so much suffering to them both. He realized, indeed, that sorrow ages more quickly than years!