Fruits of the Earth (8 page)

“If you asked her. But you send your sister instead. Besides,” she added, rising and trembling with the audacity of what she was going to say, “you could ask me if in other things you treated me as your wife. With strangers one keeps one's word.”

“With strangers?”

“What else am I? I am living alongside of you. What do I know of your dream as Mary calls it? What do you know of me?”

Abe raised his hands and moved to leave the room. “For goodness' sake!” he said. “Don't let's have another scene! If you can't understand, you can't understand. I am doing my best.”

When, that night, Abe had finished such chores as, in the division of labour, fell to his share, he found the dining-room empty, which had never happened before. Ruth had gone to bed.

THE SCHOOL

S
hilloe proved an exceedingly shy but accommodating neighbour who, once propitiated, would have gone to any length to help Nicoll or Abe. He had a large family, but nobody ever saw anything of the children except their backs, when they were running away. His wife seemed to have the gift of making herself invisible.

In the fall of that year Abe went out of his way to secure an old French-Canadian thresherman with his crew, his name being Victor Lafontaine. He lived at St. Cecile, a village along the international highway to the city, sixteen miles north of Somerville. To get there, Abe went east over trackless prairie. Twice the man was out; but, being determined, Abe made a third trip. Shilloe was always in the field when he passed, laboriously breaking land with a hand-plough drawn by two pinto ponies much too light for the work. Abe had the queer feeling that eyes were peering at him from behind corners or through the curtains veiling the diminutive windows of the clay-plastered house.

But on the last of his trips he saw, on the prairie north of Shilloe's claim, a man who, in outline, resembled his onetime
neighbour, Hall. An old plough horse, a dirty blanket on his back, was grazing near the ditch. At sight of Abe the stranger made for the trail; and Abe stopped his horses. It was a bright, crisp morning of the early fall.

The man who approached, medium-sized, pot-bellied, spindle-legged, with a dirt-grey moustache dividing his face, was clad in a multitude of successive ragged coats which increased the bulk of his upper body and made him look even more disproportioned than he was.

“You Spalding?” he asked when within speaking distance.

“Spalding's my name.”

“I've filed on this yere homestead. Filed on it yesterday. Name's Hartley. You don't happen to have some second-hand lumber to sell?”

“No I haven't.”

“Nor a horse or two?”

“I have some colts.”

“No good,” Hartley said. “What I want is nags, gentle and aged. And I want them cheap and on time.”

“No,” Abe said. “I have nothing in that line.”

“What's the name of the feller there at the corner?”

“Nicoll.”

“How 'bout him?”

“I don't think so. He keeps only four horses.”

“Hm….”

“Well,” Abe said, none too favourably impressed with the stranger, “if there is nothing else I can give you information on–”

The man eyed him in a curious way. Then, “Don't think so. However, seeing as I'm going to move in here, I guess I'll meet you again.”

Abe nodded and moved on.

During the next few weeks he often saw a one-horse team drawing a little spring wagon along the road from Morley. On top of a load of old boards and joists, among boxes and packing crates, perched that grotesque figure of a man who had spoken to him.

On these drives Abe found that there was, nearer the highway, between his trail and the Somerville Line, at least one other settlement, and a rather compact and considerable one. He could count a dozen farmsteads, while from the Somerville Line only two or three could be seen. He began to be interested in municipal affairs; and the councillor representing Ward Six–the ward in which Abe lived–a man called Davis, had his domicile in that district which went by the name of Britannia.

On one occasion Abe turned farther north. A cluster of grain elevators came into view in line with Morley. That was the town of Arkwright, twelve miles west of St. Cecile where a railway branched off from the main line, running via Arkwright and other towns to Torquay, to describe a loop there and to return via Ferney, Morley, and Somerville; from Morley one could go to the city by starting either east or west. Why was there no settlement south of the Arkwright Line? Some three miles north of Nicoll's Corner the slope of the land began to change, towards a tributary of the river which bounded the prairie in the east. Large stretches of country, there, consisted of an impenetrable swamp which could be crossed in winter only. Thus, by the mere chance of his having gone east for a thresherman instead of south, Abe's horizon was suddenly widened.

He was beginning to worry about the slowness with which settlers moved into the district, for his children were approaching school age. Already he had been amazed to hear
of the frequent changes of teachers at Morley. These teachers were invariably young girls; and he doubted their ability to handle a school. That was why, when one day he was taking his dinner at the hotel at St. Cecile, he was much interested to find that a bearded old man who sat down at his table proved to be a teacher who, for many years, had been a schoolmaster in various districts near Arkwright. His name was Blaine. Abe was so much interested that he gave the man his exact location and asked him to call.

“I see you ride a bicycle,” he said when the other man rose. For his trousers were held by steel clamps around his ankles.

“I do,” said Mr. Blaine. “But you can't cross from Arkwright except in winter, when the bicycle is useless.”

“Well,” Abe added and rose to shake hands, “the snow may hold off.”

Mr. Blaine was small and slender, with a head disproportionately large for his body, and a sandy beard streaked with grey disproportionately large for his head. When he turned, one was oddly reminded of a lion turning in a cage. He wore a dark suit of heavy cloth, his trousers hanging about his legs like curtains.

Abe heard more of him. He was seventy years old and had come from Ontario; he had been a high-school teacher and had married a pupil of his. For her he had built a small house at Arkwright where he had been teaching at the time; but his married life had been short, his young wife dying in childbirth and taking her baby with her into the grave. He had returned to rural life and now had the distinction of being the teacher with the longest record in the Canadian west.

One day Abe met the local school inspector at his sister's house where he had had dinner; for Morley boasted only a
fifth-rate boarding house. Abe heard high praise of Blaine's work, his only trouble being that, with increasing age, he found it difficult to secure a school. Westerners hold experience and expertness in small esteem; they prefer the young girl who will dance and gad about. “Too bad,” the inspector said. “There isn't a better man to be found for rural work.”

Abe made up his mind there and then that Mr. Blaine was to be the teacher of his children.

But so far there was no school. The district must have at least five settlers before he could move in the matter.

As winter came, Hartley built a two-roomed shack on his claim, of old, half-rotten lumber, some of it mere box-lumber, half an inch thick. He put no foundation under it, but propped the corners up on railway ties placed at an angle. There the structure perched precariously through the winter, the wonder being that the February winds did not blow it over. In the spring of 1907 he covered the outside with tar paper tacked to the walls with a network of lath. He had brought a stove and put a flue-pipe through the roof.

Soon after, Nicoll came to Abe's one day, about seed-oats. Abe and Bill were at work, filling the loft of the barn with hay against the spring work. Nicoll at once climbed up, reached for a fork, and helped for an hour or so.

“Say, Abe,” he said after a while, “I'm going to have a new neighbour.”

Abe, who stood on top of the load, looked up. “Who's that?”

“Fine, upstanding sort of man. Name's Stanley. He's got only one arm; the other was caught by the belt of a threshing machine and torn clean out. They took him twenty miles to the hospital. A wonder he lived. A big fellow, your build, though not so tall.”

“Great news,” Abe said. “Where is he going to locate?”

“A mile north of my line. East of the trail.”

“Any children?”

“Six. One boy, five girls. The boy's thirteen.”

“Nicoll,” Abe said in sudden elation, “we'll get that school!”

“We surely shall.”

Again the blessing did not come singly. East of the new Stanley homestead, where building operations began at once, another Ukrainian settled down, a small, determined man with a reddish-brown moustache on his Slavic face, his name Nawosad. More, two miles south of Nicoll's Corner somebody was building a sod-hut. This proved to be a young Mennonite by name of Hilmer, a quiet, well-built, almost handsome lad, so far unmarried. His clothes were black, down to his shirt. He fenced a small corral for the two oxen with which he started to break land. He lived in complete isolation, though, when spoken to, he answered with a ready courtesy which sat quaintly on his broken English.

At once Nicoll's Corner became the social centre of the settlement. Nicoll had drawn a shallow ditch along the south line of his yard, bridged, in front of his gate, by a culvert. North of the fence, a wind-break was beginning to grow. There, of an evening or a Sunday afternoon, the settlers would assemble, sitting on the culvert, their feet dangling in the ditch; and all affairs that concerned the district were discussed, besides many questions concerning God and the universe. Only two men appeared rarely: Abe Spalding and Jack Hilmer.

And there, in the summer of 1908, the school district was formed.

By that time it was known that Abe planned to buy the section north of his holdings; rumour had it that he was getting
wealthy. He had had a bumper crop last year and was building concrete pig-pens. That Hudson's Bay section, then, must form the north-west corner of the district; which placed the south line at the “first” ditch, half-way between Nicoll's Corner and the Somerville Line. Hilmer's claim would be just within the district. According to law they could include twenty square miles. That brought the east line to a point just beyond Hartley's and Shilloe's claims. It looked as though all these settlers had picked their location with that very thing in view.

What, next, was to be the name of the district? Various more or less far-fetched proposals came from Hartley, who never missed a meeting; but whenever he mentioned some new impossibility; it was greeted by a silence which condemned it.

One evening, late in June, Stanley rose and addressed the others in a brief, formal speech. All except Abe were present: Shilloe and Nawosad were sitting nearest the road, both resting elbows on their knees and looking at the ground. Hartley, a willow-switch which he used as a whip in his hand, sat in the centre of the group. Stanley had had the place next to him; and, nearest the gate, Nicoll was squatting on his heels. Hilmer was standing behind them all, ready to eclipse himself.

It was a warm night, with no stars visible; and a fine haze had overspread the sky: the only sort of night which is ever warm on the prairie, where radiation is swift. A slight breeze wafted the scent of fresh-mown hay from the west: as usual, Abe had been the first to start haying. No doubt that was why he was absent; he was always busy.

“Gentlemen,” Stanley said, “why is the town of Morley called by that name? Where does the name Arkwright come from? I could easily multiply instances. It is a time-honoured custom on these prairies to attach the name of the first permanent settler to town, station, or district.”

“Hear, hear!” Nicoll said without moving. “Just what I had in mind. There's only one name fitting for this school we are going to build. If there's a man among you who hasn't had help or advice from that first permanent settler, he hasn't asked for it, that is all.”

“Well, now,” Hartley began, “I don't see that we should be so doggone obsequious as to bow down before wealth–”

“Gentlemen,” Stanley exclaimed, raising his one arm to impose silence, “are you ready for the question? It has been moved by myself and seconded by Mr. Nicoll that the district be called Spalding School District. I can't see much in the dark; so I'll ask those in favour to stand.”

All but Hartley and Hilmer rose; the latter was standing already.

“Contrary?”

Hilmer squatted down; and Hartley did not rise.

“Carried.”

Nicoll, who helped Abe next day in haying, brought him the news.

Abe listened in silence; but he experienced a thrill. That moment his aspirations underwent an extension which embraced the whole district. He suddenly felt it to be inevitable that, in the long run, he should enter municipal politics and look after the district which bore his name. There was the matter of roads; with increasing traffic the trail to town had become almost impassable; with deep ruts cut into it in spring, it held water till late in summer and remained a mire for months on end; and was it not intolerable that during the flood the district should be cut off from the rest of the world?

Since that spring when he had been confronted with what he considered the necessity of buying the fourth quarter
of his section, Abe had recovered his economic balance. He might have built a house this year. But, having added the fourth room to the old building, he had postponed more ambitious changes till he would be in a position to “do things right.” Ruth's opposition had put him on his mettle; to justify what he had done so far, he must carry out his plans, which were ever extending in scope. He would have to acquire the Hudson's Bay section; nor would it do to wait too long; land values were rising. For that purchase he would have to prepare in other ways: he must have at least one tractor of the most powerful type, to speed up the work in the spring and the fall; perhaps he would have to build another shack for a second man. In spite, then, of his undoubted prosperity, he was as much preoccupied with things to be done as ever; his life lay in the future; for the sake of that future he slaved from dawn till dark. What he had achieved was little compared with what remained to be done.