“Let’s take a look around before it gets dark, Robbie,” Elspeth said, taking him by the hand. She led him between the tents back to the railway track, where they stood unnoticed on the fringe of the activity. Some men were still claiming luggage from the station, while others were asking where to get wagons and carts and supplies. A few lucky ones, with enough ready cash, had already bought wagons and horses and were loading up their belongings. Elspeth wondered if she and Rob could stow away among the bundles, but watching how the boxes and supplies were jammed into the carts, she gave up on that idea.
Maybe, if she could find a job in a store, the immigration man would let them stay. She and Robbie walked back to the main street, but the storekeeper was so gruff and busy that Elspeth didn’t have the courage to speak to him. Disconsolately, the two of them trailed their way back to the tent city. Beyond the tents they could see the road that led north across the endless prairie. It wasn’t really a road—just two wheel marks that met at a point in the distance. Not a trail for Shadow Bairns. There was no place to hide.
The big empty tent now seemed as lonely as the vast prairie. Robbie’s teeth were chattering, so Elspeth wrapped him in a blanket and began to divide out the food for their supper. Outside, she could hear voices. As she listened, she realized the voices belonged to the Whitcomb brothers from across the aisle in the train. They were still arguing about money.
“That was our last seventy-five dollars, Geoffrey! Even if he holds the pony and cart for us for a day, there’s no way we can get more money by then.”
“I could pick up fifty dollars at a card game tonight.”
“No one’s interested in cards right now,” Arthur answered. “They’re all in too much of a hurry to head north. I’m tired of your surefire ways of making money. Look where it has landed us!”
The discouragement in Arthur’s voice gave Elspeth a daring idea. “You stay here, Robbie!” she whispered. “I’m going to talk to the men outside. The ones from the train.”
She gave Robbie a piece of the conductor’s barley sugar to comfort him. Slipping out of the tent, she walked right up to the two men, but was left standing there while they continued to argue, completely ignoring her.
“I can pay good money if you’ll give me and my brother a ride to Battleford,” she finally broke in, trying not to sound nervous.
“What was that you said?” Geoffrey asked.
“We want to get to Battleford. I’ll give you fifty dollars if you’ll give us a ride.”
“It’s one of those children from the train,” Arthur said to Geoffrey. Then he turned to Elspeth, asking, “What are you doing traveling alone, anyway? And why the hurry to get to Battleford?”
“We’re on our way to stay with our aunt and uncle,” Elspeth explained. She thought of telling them the whole story, but they would only say there was no place for them in Canada. And she knew that mentioning Mr. Barr’s name wouldn’t help either.
“You have an aunt and uncle in Battleford?”
“If my uncle didn’t get down here to meet us, like he hoped he would, we were going to ride up with the Galbraiths. They were our friends on the boat. But the man in the Immigration Building says we have to go back to St. John because no one signed papers for us. That’s not fair because we paid for our tickets to come here,” Elspeth finished breathlessly.
She wasn’t sure her story made sense, but Geoffrey seemed to be more interested in her troubles with the immigration officer than in her uncle. “Was it that bald, red-faced fellow with shoulders like a bull?” he asked. “Is he the one who says you have to go back?”
Elspeth nodded.
“He’s the one who won’t let you file a claim because you’re six weeks short of eighteen, Arthur!” Turning back to Elspeth, Geoffrey explained, “He says Arthur can’t file till his birthday and by then there won’t be two adjoining sections of decent land left.”
“If you take us, I’ll pay you fifty dollars,” Elspeth persisted.
“Let’s take them, Arthur,” Geoffrey said. “We’ll spite old Bullface. He’ll never suspect us, and with fifty dollars we can pay for the pony and cart.”
“Suppose this uncle isn’t waiting in Battleford,” Arthur, the more cautious of the two, worried.
“If he’s not there, I’ll stay in the hotel till he comes,” Elspeth said quickly. “I have enough money for that.”
“What about food for the journey?” Arthur asked. “We’ve hardly enough for ourselves.”
“Let’s see their money before we worry about that,” Geoffrey said. “She doesn’t look like she has fifty dollars.”
Elspeth didn’t wait to hear more. She ducked back inside the tent. It was almost too dark to see. With trembling fingers, she unpicked the stitches that held the money hidden in the bodice of her skirt. After giving Robbie another piece of barley sugar, she went outside.
Geoffrey and Arthur were arguing again, their voices pitched too low for her to hear. She counted the money into Geoffrey’s hand. “Fifty-five dollars. The extra is for our food.”
“Five dollars for food!” Geoffrey snorted. “How much will that buy? It’s going to take us more than four or five days to get up there, and do you know what they’re asking for bread in this place?”
Four or five days! Elspeth hadn’t thought of Battleford being so far away, but she hid her surprise. “We don’t eat much,” she said. “Get some oatmeal and I’ll make porridge.”
“Maybe we’ll be glad to have a cook along!” Geoffrey said with a laugh.
“We need to get away early,” Elspeth told him.
“We’ll leave early,” he assured her. “We don’t want to get caught smuggling you out of Saskatoon any more than you do.”
They walked off, leaving Elspeth empty handed. When they vanished behind the next tent, she wondered if she would see them again. Maybe she and Robbie would be on the train tomorrow, fifty-five dollars poorer, while the Whitcomb brothers headed north, pleased to have come by the cash they needed so easily.
Back in the tent, she shared out the sausage, bread and milk. It was the best supper they’d had for days, and there was some left for breakfast. Elspeth felt cheered as she lay down on the floor to sleep, but the floor soon felt hard and cold. The night was full of unexpected noises, the bark of a dog, the moaning of the wind, and the constant flapping of a piece of loose canvas. Robbie fell asleep, snuffling slightly, but Elspeth lay wide awake. A fragment of a hymn they sang on the boat ran through her mind. I do not ask to see the distant scene—one step enough for me. She’d worry about what they’d do in Battleford when they got there.
Chapter 8
“On the surface of the soil”
APRIL 18-19, 1903
Elspeth was awakened by the sound of someone outside the tent. Please don’t let it be the immigration man come to take us to the station, she prayed silently, as she slipped out of her blankets and peered through the tent opening. It was still dark, but she could make out two shadowy figures. Beside them stood a pony and a cart piled high with their belongings. The Whitcomb brothers had not let her down.
“We got it,” Arthur said softly. “This is Sea Gull.” The pony tossed its head as if greeting her. “I hope you don’t have much stuff. There isn’t much room.”
Elspeth ducked back into the tent and came out dragging the traveling bag and blankets. Robbie, not quite awake, clung to her skirt whimpering.
“Hush up, Robbie!” Elspeth said. “You’re going to ride on a pony.”
“Oh no, he’s not!” Geoffrey said. “We’re not taking him with us!”
“You promised to take me and my brother,” Elspeth said sharply.
“You didn’t say he’s just a baby!”
“He’s not a baby! And you saw him on the train.” Turning to Robbie she told him to hush.
“He didn’t seem so little then.”
“You should be glad he’s little with all that stuff you’ve got and only a small pony to pull it. He won’t take up mu
ch room.”
Geoffrey couldn’t dispute this. “You’ll have to keep him quiet,” he said, and that was all.
Elspeth pulled the bag of barley sugar out of her pocket, and Robbie immediately stopped fussing. With each passing minute the darkness was ebbing, and the tents now stood out clearly around them. It was light enough now that anyone watching would see them leave.
As if reading Elspeth’s thoughts, Geoffrey swung Robbie up onto the cart and set him in a galvanized iron bathtub, saying, “The lad can sit in there. He looks like he needs a bath anyway. Get up beside him, and I’ll throw a blanket over both of you. When we’re away from the town, you can take the blanket off.”
Relieved that Geoffrey was no longer raising objections, Elspeth clambered up and pulled the blanket over her. Her heart pounded as she listened to the protesting creaks and groans when the cart passed between the tents, heading for the trail that led out across the prairie. Other people were awake now, and the smells of coffee and frying bacon made Elspeth hungry. She was digging around in a corner of their bag, trying to find where she’d put the remains of last night’s supper, when the cart jolted to a stop, nearly jerking her off the back. Robbie gave a squeak of protest.
“You lads are early on the trail,” boomed a loud voice.
The immigration man! Elspeth huddled under the blanket, closing her eyes as if that would make her less visible. Shadow Bairns are quiet, she said over and over again in her mind, willing Robbie not to talk and give them away.
“You’d be smarter to wait for a few other wagons so as not to be alone on the trail. There are sloughs to cross.”
“We’re not afraid of being alone,” Geoffrey answered. “We don’t expect much in the way of company where we’re heading. We may as well get used to being on our own now.”
“You won’t make it across Eagle Creek with that outfit without help,” the man warned them.
“We’ll deal with that when we get there,” Geoffrey answered.
Elspeth let out a long breath of relief when the cart lurched forward. Arthur started to sing, slightly off key, covering a burst of coughing from Robbie.
“All right, back there?” he asked, some time later. “You can come out now.”
Elspeth threw back the blanket and found that Robbie had already wriggled his way out. He was sitting up looking around. She gave him a piece of bread and sausage, and he munched away happily
The sun was climbing up the blue sky—a wider sky than Elspeth had ever seen—dotted with fleecy white clouds that were scraped flat across the bottom as if they had touched the flat prairie. The wind tugged at the dead, brown grass, newly exposed by melting snow, and rippled through tender green grass that was bursting out of the earth. The wind was everywhere, pushing them back, pulling them forward. Elspeth shook out her braids, letting it tug at her long, dark hair. She could taste the wind, smell the wind, and hear it tell of faraway places.
Behind them lay Saskatoon. The government building that had been so big and forbidding yesterday was now no bigger than a toy. The bald man inside would be so small he didn’t matter anymore. She felt a sudden surge of confidence. She loved this spacious land.
“Can we get down too?” she asked Geoffrey, who was walking beside the cart.
“We won’t wait if you fall behind,” he warned her.
By now Elspeth had discovered that Geoffrey wasn’t as unfriendly as his sharp answers made him seem.
She jumped out of the cart and helped Robbie down. After so many days of sitting on the hard, slatted seat in the stuffy train it felt wonderful to feel the springy turf under her feet. They walked carefully, trying not to step on the early crocuses, and watched gophers scurry into their holes. The prairie wasn’t nearly as flat as it had looked from the window of the train. The track led over humps and hollows. Far ahead they could see a great stretch of dazzling green. When Robbie grew tired, Geoffrey lifted him onto Sea Gull’s back, but Elspeth kept on walking until they came to the edge of the bright green. It was just grass, but lush because it was growing in standing water. Here and there they could see clumps of rushes. Several mallards exploded into the air, disturbed by their arrival.
Arthur pulled Sea Gull to a stop, gazing anxiously at the indistinct trail ahead. The marsh grass was broken and flattened by wagons that had gone before, but then the wheel marks were lost in patches of water, ruffled by the wind and shimmering in the sunlight.
“This must be one of these sloughs they talked about,” he said. “Maybe we should go around it.”
“It looks like others have made it through,” Geoffrey said. “Let me handle the horse. Elspeth, get back up in the cart and hang on to your brother for all your worth.”
When Elspeth and Robbie were firmly wedged in the back of the cart, Geoffrey raised the whip and brought it down on poor Sea Gull’s sagging back. He flinched and then strained forward, but before he reached firm ground, the heavy alkali mud dragging against the wheels proved too much for Sea Gull. Geoffrey tried coaxing, and then the whip again, but finally had to admit defeat.
They started to unload the cart, carrying the boxes and bundles to the other side of the slough. The heavy mud sucked at their feet. It was slippery too, and their muscles ached from the effort of keeping their balance. At last the load was light enough so that Sea Gull could drag the cart through. Then began the weary job of repacking. Nothing fit quite as well as it had before. Geoffrey was determined to make up for lost time when they started out again, and they rattled and jolted over the rough ground, boxes and bundles sliding and shifting in the cart. Even so, progress was slow. By nightfall they hadn’t reached the first of the tents that had been set up by government officials at points along the trail. “We’ve got our own tent,” Arthur said to Elspeth. “We can rig a tarpaulin between the cart and the ground for you and the lad. But first, let’s have supper.”
Elspeth hummed quietly to herself as she stirred a pot of beans over the camp stove. By the time they started eating, the stars were beginning to show in the darkened sky to the east, while the afterglow of the sun stained the western sky red. “This is the best meal we’ve had since we left England,” Arthur said, helping himself to more beans. Elspeth glowed with pleasure, even though she knew that the meal owed more to appetites sharpened by a long day in the fresh air than to her cooking.
“And this has been my best day,” Robbie said with a happy sigh. “I hope Uncle Donald has a pony just like Sea Gull.”
The next morning they had only covered a few miles when one of the front wheels struck a rock and the cart lurched to a stop.
“A hundred and twenty-five dollars and the wheel breaks the first time it hits a stone,” Geoffrey said, kicking the two broken spokes in disgust.
It was by no means the first stone, but Elspeth didn’t point that out. Instead, she offered Geoffrey a piece of barley sugar. He still made her feel nervous, but he needed cheering up, and she didn’t have to save the candy to keep Robbie quiet out here on the prairie.
Arthur began to fashion two new spokes out of oak boards from the lid of a packing case, cutting and whittling with surprising skill and patience. One or two wagons overtook them while they were stopped. As each one drew up beside them to offer advice, or just to give a friendly greeting, Elspeth worried that it might be the immigration official, but Geoffrey laughed at her.
“You’re not that important!” he said. “Besides, with four more trains due from St. John, and Isaac Barr to deal with, they can’t spare anyone to stalk Shadow Bairns!”
Robbie had told Geoffrey and Arthur about playing Shadow Bairns on the boat. He also talked about what he was going to do at Uncle Donald’s home—about the calf he was going to have, and how he would play with his cousins, Mary and Charlie and Donald, and their dog, Jock. He told them that the house was white and the door was blue. Elspeth felt a cold chill as she listened to Robbie talk with such certainty about their destination, but at least Arthur no longer had doubts about Uncle Donald’s exist
ence.
When the wheel was finally repaired, Geoffrey drove more cautiously. Late in the afternoon, they came to another slough and once again became mired. This time the slough was much bigger. They carried boxes back to the side they’d started from until the cart was light enough for Sea Gull to drag it back to firm ground. After they had loaded up again, they wondered what they should do. The swamp seemed to stretch for miles to the east and the west. They were unable to go straight ahead, but were reluctant to branch out from the trail they’d been following. The country was so vast and lonely, so unlike anything they were used to, that they needed the reassurance of the wheel marks telling them that people had traveled this way before.
“We're not getting anywhere just sitting here,” Geoffrey said.
“Look!” shouted Robbie. “More horses!”
They eventually counted eight wagons forming a straggling train back down the trail.
When the first wagon pulled up beside them, the driver, a big burly man, leaned down and said, “William Reed’s the name. How deep is this one?”
“About six inches of water, but heavy mud under that,” Arthur answered. “We couldn’t get through.”
“I reckon I can make it,” Reed said confidently. “I’ll give it a try anyway.” His wagon was pulled by two plodding horses with great feet and rippling muscles. They lumbered forward, keeping a steady pace, and pulled the wagon through without any trouble.
The second wagon, top heavy with boxes, crates, and furniture drew level with them. Sitting on the high seat in the front of the wagon were a man and woman. The woman didn’t even glance down, but stared straight ahead into the prairie wind, her face carved out of stone.
“It’s that Mrs. Beattie from the boat,” Elspeth whispered to Robbie. “You remember her, don’t you? She looked after you when you were sick that night.”
Robbie was more interested in the calf tethered to their wagon. He wanted to pet it, but Elspeth wouldn’t let him.
The Journey of the Shadow Bairns Page 7