Ranching for Sylvia Part 43

Then he glanced at the prairie, which ran west, streaked with ochre stubble in the foreground, then white and silvery gray, with neutral smears of poplar bluffs, to the blaze of crimson where it cut the sky.

It was vast and lonely; at first sight a hard, forbidding land that broke down the slack of purpose and drove out the sybarite. He had sometimes shrunk from it, but it was slowly fastening its hold on him, and he now understood how it molded the nature of its inhabitants. For the most part, they were far from effusive; some of their ways were primitive and perhaps slightly barbarous, but there was vigor and staunchness in them. They stuck to the friends they had tried and were admirable in action; it was when, as they said, they were up against it that one learned most about the strong hearts of these men and women.

"Lansing will be away some days," Grant said presently. "What are you going to do next week?"

"Put up the new fence, most likely. The land's a little soft for plowing yet."

"That's so. As you'll have no use for the teams, it would be a good time to haul in some of the seed wheat. I've a carload coming out."

"A carload!" exclaimed Edgar in surprise, remembering the large carrying capacity of the Canadian freight-cars. "At the price they've been asking, it must have cost you a pile."

"It did," said Grant. "I generally try to get down to bed-rock figure, but I don't mind paying it. The fellow who worked up that wheat deserves his money."

"You mean the seed's worth its price if the crop escapes the frost?"

"That wasn't quite all I meant. I'm willing to pay the man for the work he has put into it. Try to figure the cross fertilizations he must have made, the varieties he's tried and cut out, and remember it takes time to get a permanent strain, and wheat makes only one crop a year. If the stuff's as good as it seems, the fellow's done something he'll never be paid for. Anyway, he's welcome to my share."

"There's no doubt about your admiration for hard work," declared Edgar.

"As it happens, you have found putting it into practise profitable, which may have had some effect."

Grant's eyes twinkled.

"Now you have got hold of the wrong idea. You have raised a different point."

"Then, for instance, would you expect a hired man who had no interest in the crop to work as hard as you would?"

"Yes," Grant answered rather grimly; "I'd see he did. Though I don't often pay more than I can help, I wouldn't blame him for s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up his wages to the last cent he could get; but if it was only half the proper rate, he'd have to do his share. A man's responsible to the country he's living in, not to his employer; the latter's only an agent, and if he gets too big a commission, it doesn't affect the case."

"It affects the workman seriously."

"He and his master must settle that point between them," Grant paused and spread out his hands forcibly. "You have heard what the country west of old Fort Garby--it's Winnipeg now--was like thirty years ago.

Do you suppose all the men who made it what it is got paid for what they did? Canada couldn't raise the money, and quite a few of them got frozen to death."

It struck Edgar as a rather stern doctrine, but he admitted the truth of it; what was more, he felt that George and this farmer had many views in common. Grant, however, changed the subject.

"You had better take your two heavy teams in to the b.u.t.te on Monday; I've ordered my freight there until the sandy trails get loose again.

Bring a couple of spare horses along. We'll load you up and you can come in again."

"Two Clover-leaf wagons will haul a large lot of seed in a double journey."

"It's quite likely you'll have to make a third. Don't you think you ought to get this hauling done before Lansing comes home?"

A light broke in on Edgar. Grant was, with some reason, occasionally called hard; but he was always just, and it was evident that he could be generous. He meant to make his gift complete before George could protest.

"Yes," acquiesced Edgar; "it would be better, because George might want the teams, and for other reasons."

The farmer nodded.

"That's fixed. The agent has instructions to deliver."

Edgar left the homestead an hour later and spent the Sunday resting, because he knew that he would need all of his energy during the next few days. At dawn on the following morning he and Grierson started for Sage b.u.t.te, and on their arrival loaded the wagons and put up their horses for the night. They set out again before sunrise and were glad of the spare team when they came to places where all the horses could scarcely haul one wagon through the soft black soil. There were other spots where the graded road sloped steeply to the hollow out of which it had been dug, and with the lower wheels sinking they had to hold up the side of the vehicle. Great clods clung to the wheels; the men, plodding at the horses' heads, could scarcely pull their feet out of the mire, and they were thankful when they left the fences behind and could seek a slightly sounder surface on the gra.s.s.

Even here, progress was difficult. The stalks were tough and tangled and mixed with stiff, dwarf scrub, which grew in some spots almost to one's waist. There were little rises, and hollows into which the wagons jolted violently, and here and there they must skirt a bluff or strike back into the cut-up trail which traversed it. Toward noon they reached a larger wood, where the trees crowded thick upon the track.

When Edgar floundered into it, there appeared to be no bottom. Getting back to the gra.s.s, he surveyed the scene with strong disgust; he had not quite got over his English fastidiousness.

Leafless branches met above the trail, and little bays strewn with trampled brush which showed where somebody had tried to force a drier route, indented the ranks of slender trunks. Except for these, the strip of sloppy black gumbo led straight through the wood, interspersed with gleaming pools. Having seen enough, Edgar beckoned Grierson and climbed a low hillock. The bluff was narrow where the road pierced it, but it was long and the ground was rough and covered with a smaller growth for some distance on its flanks.

"There's no way of getting round," he said. "I suppose six horses ought to haul one wagon through that sloo."

"It looks a bit doubtful," Grierson objected. "We mightn't be able to pull her out if she got in very deep. We could dump half the load and come back for it."

"And make four journeys? It's not to be thought of; two's a good deal too many."

They yoked the three teams to the first wagon, which promptly sank a long way up its high wheels, and while the men waded nearly knee-deep at their heads, the straining horses made thirty or forty yards. Then Edgar sank over the top of his long boots and the hub of one wheel got ominously low.

"They've done more than one could have expected; I hate to use the whip, but we must get out of this before she goes in altogether," he said.

Grierson nodded. He was fond of his horses, which were obviously distressed, and flecked with spume and lather where the traces chafed their wet flanks; but to be merciful would only increase their task.

The whip-cracks rang out like pistol-shots; and, splashing, snorting, struggling, amid showers of mire, they drew the wagon out of its sticky bed. They made another dozen yards; and then Grierson turned the horses into one of the embayments where there was brush that would support the wheels. Edgar sat down, breathless, upon a fallen trunk.

"People at home have two quite unfounded ideas about this country," he said disgustedly. "The first is that money is easily picked up here--which doesn't seem to need any remark; the second is that they have only to send over the slackers and slouchers to reform them. In my opinion, a few doses of this kind of thing would be enough to fill them with a horror of work." He replaced the pipe he had taken out.

"It's a pity, Grierson, but we can't sit here and smoke."

They went on and nearly capsized the wagon in a pool, the bottom of which was too soft to give them foothold while they held up the vehicle, but they got through it and one or two others, and presently came out, dripping from the waist down, on to the drier prairie. Then Edgar turned and viewed their track.

"It won't bear much looking at; we had better unyoke," he said. "If anybody had told me in England that I'd ever flounder through a place like that, I'd--"

He paused, seeking for words to express himself fittingly.

"You'd have called him a liar," Grierson suggested.

"That hardly strikes me as strong enough," Edgar laughed.

They had spent two hours in the bluff when they brought the last load through, and sitting down in a patch of scrub they took out their lunch. After a while Edgar flung off his badly splashed hat and jacket and lay down in the sunshine.

"The thing's done; the pity is it must be done again to-morrow," he remarked, "In the meanwhile, we'll forget it; I'll draw a veil over my feelings."

They had finished lunch and lighted their pipes when a buggy appeared from behind a projecting dump of trees and soon afterward Flora Grant pulled up her horse near by. Edgar rose and stood beside the vehicle bareheaded, looking slender and handsome in his loose yellow shirt, duck overalls, and long boots, though the marks of the journey were freely scattered about him. Flora glanced at the jaded teams and the miry wagons and smiled at the lad. She had a good idea of the difficulties he had overcome.

"The trail must have been pretty bad," she said. "I struck off to the east by the creek, but I don't think you could get through with a load."

"It was quite bad enough," Edgar a.s.sured her. Flora looked thoughtful.

"You have only two wagons; we must try to send you another, though our teams are busy. Didn't you say Mr. Lansing would be back in a day or two?"

"I did, but I got a note this morning saying he thought he had better go on to Winnipeg, if I could get along all right. I told him to go and stop as long as he likes. Considering the state of the trails, I thought that was wise."

Flora smiled. She knew what he meant, since they had agreed that all the seed must be hauled in before his comrade's return.