Harold Bindloss - Lorimer of the Northwest

“You are bound for Elktail, and we’ve no time for fooling. Won’t get off? Well, we’ll soon put you,” and, grasping my shoulder, he hustled me toward the platform of the car.

Now, though Martin Lorimer sometimes gave way to outbreaks of indignation, he was fond of impressing the fact on me that if forced into a quarrel one should take the first steps deliberately. Also, even then I remembered that Coombs’ homestead lay almost as near Elktail, and a happy thought struck me. So I offered but little resistance until, as we stood on the platform, the brakeman or some one waved a lantern; then, while with a shock of couplings the cars commenced to move, I gripped the guard-rail with one hand and held the other ready, for I had determined if I left that train before I reached Vermont the conductor should certainly leave it too.

“Off with you!” he shouted, and shook me by the shoulder; but I seized him by the waist – the cars were moving faster now – and then flung myself off backward into the snow. I fell softly for as it happened the conductor fell under me, and, profiting by experience hardly earned in several colliery disputes, I took the precaution of sitting on him before he could get up.

“It won’t be my fault if you get hurt because you don’t keep still,” I said.

Then there was a roar of laughter close by, and staring breathless down the track I saw the tail-light of the train grow dimmer across the prairie until it stopped and came swinging toward us again.

“I’d rather have lost five dollars than missed that,” said my new friend, rubbing his hands. “Not bad for a raw Britisher – put the boss conductor off his own train and held up the Vancouver mail! Say, what are you going to do with him, sonny?”

“He can get up, and learn to be civil,” I answered grimly; and when the man did so, sullenly, the other said:

“Well, I don’t want any mess-up with the brakeman, so we may as well walk out now that they’re coming back for him. Only one man in this shanty, and he wouldn’t turn out unless it were a director. Leave your baggage where they dumped it – can’t move it until daylight – and come along with me!”

I did so somewhat regretfully, for I felt just then that if this was the way they welcomed the emigrant in that country it would be a relief to do battle with the whole of them. Afterward I learned that when one understands his ways, which is difficult to do at first, there are many good qualities in the Western railroad-man. Still, I always wondered why the friendless newcomer should be considered a fair mark for petty hostility, especially by those who formerly were poor themselves – all of which applies only to city-bred men who hold some small office, for those who live by hard labor in forest and prairie would share their last crust with the stranger.

We trudged away from the station, with a square block of wooden houses rising nakedly in front of us from the prairie, and two gaunt elevators flanking it to left and right beside the track, which is one’s usual first impression of a Western town. The rambling wooden building which combined the callings of general store and hotel was all in darkness, for the owner expected no guests just then, and would not have got up for any one but my companion if he had. So, after pounding long on the door, a drowsy voice demanded, with many and vivid expletives, who was there, and then added:

“Oh, it’s you, Jasper; what in the name of thunder are you making all that row about? And what are you doing waking up a man this time o’ night! Hold on! You’re an obstinate man, and I guess you’ll bust my door unless I let you in.”

The speaker did so, and when he had ushered us into a long bare room with a stove still twinkling in the midst of it, he explained that his subordinates would not serve an ambassador before the regulation breakfast hour, and lighting a kerosene lamp immediately withdrew. Jasper, however, took it all as a matter of course, and when, rolled in his long coat, he stretched himself on a settee and went to sleep, I followed suit. Still they gave us a good breakfast – porridge, steak, potatoes, corn-cakes and molasses – at which I wondered, because I had not discovered as yet that there is no difference on the prairie between any of the three meals of the day.

When it was finished, my companion, who gave me directions as to how to find Coombs’ homestead, added:

“Remember what I told you about harvest, and, if you strike nothing better, when the wheat is ripe come straight back to me. I’m Long Jasper of Willow Creek, and every one knows me. I like your looks, and I’ll give you double whatever Coombs pays you. Guess he’ll have taught you something, and I’m not speculating much when I stake on that. You’ll fetch Jackson’s crossing on the flat; go in and borrow a horse from him. Tell him Jasper sent you. Your baggage? When the station agent feels energetic he’ll dump it into his shed, but I guess there’s nothing that would hurry him until he does. Now strike out; it’s only thirty miles, and if you go on as you’ve begun you’ll soon feel at home in this great country!”

I thanked him sincerely and departed; and, as I passed the station, I saw that the agent evidently had not felt energetic yet, for my two boxes lay just where they had been flung out beside the track. As a preliminary experience it was all somewhat daunting, and the country forbidding, raw, even more unfinished than smoke-blackened Lancashire, and very cold; but I had found that every one seemed contented, and many of them proud of that new land, and I could see no reason why I too should not grow fond of it. At least I had not seen a hungry or a ragged person since I landed in Canada. Besides, Carrington Manor was less than fifty miles away, though it was evident now that a great gulf lay between Ralph Lorimer, the emigrant seeking an opportunity to learn his business as farm-servant, and the heiress of Carrington.

By this time the sun was high, and, fastening the skin coat round my shoulders with a piece of string, I trudged on, rejoicing in the first warmth and brightness I had so far found in Canada. But it had its disadvantages, for the snow became unpleasantly soft, and it was a relief to find that the breeze had stripped the much thinner covering from the first of the swelling rises that rolled back toward the north. Here I halted a few minutes and surveyed my adopted country.

Behind lay the roofs of Elktail, some of them tin-covered and flashing like a heliograph; in front a desolate wilderness where the gray-white of frost-bleached grasses was streaked by the incandescent brightness of sloppy snow. There was neither smoke nor sign of human presence in all its borders – only a few dusky patches of willows to break the vast monotony of white and blue. And somewhere out on those endless levels, thirty miles to the north, lay the homestead of the man who might not give me employment even if I could find the place, which, remembering Jasper’s directions, seemed by no means certain. However, the first landmark at least was visible, a sinuous line of dwarfed trees low down on the horizon; and gathering my sinking courage I struck out for it. Slowly the miles were left behind – straggling copse, white plateau, and winding ravine – until it was a relief to find an erection of sod and birch-poles nestling in a hollow. The man who greeted me in the doorway was bronzed to coffee color by the sun-blink on snow, and his first words were: “Walk right in, and make yourself at home!”

He was thin, hard, and wiry; the gray slouch hat and tattered deerskin jacket became him; while, if he had not the solidity of our field laborers, he evidently had nothing of their slowness, and with natural curiosity I surveyed him. There were many in Lancashire and Yorkshire who might beat him at a heavy lift, but few who could do so in a steady race against time from dawn to dusk, I thought. Then somewhat awkwardly I explained my business, and, mentioning Jasper, asked if he would lend me a horse, whereupon he called to the cheerful, neatly-dressed woman bustling about the stove: