The Journey of the Shadow Bairns

by Margaret J. Anderson

  It was Rebecca who knew the way. When Rachel pushed the door open, she stood there for a moment, bewildered at the sight of the three men. Before she had time to say anything, Rebecca called out, “Rachel, they are here! They are looking for Mr. Barr.”

  Rachel caught Rebecca’s eye, and a flicker of understanding passed between them.

  “They are looking for Mr. Barr,” she repeated in a low voice.

  Don’t overdo it, Elspeth pleaded silently. But the men were diverted by the sudden appearance of a second little girl exactly like the first.

  “We’d better stay off the bottle,” one of the men joked. “I’m seeing double!”

  “Was Mr. Barr riding a horse?” Rachel asked, and the men forgot their jokes and turned their full attention on the child. Elspeth felt sick and reached for the back of a chair to support herself.

  “When we were looking for the cows, I saw a man riding over that way in the next section.”

  “When was this?” one of the men asked.

  “Maybe an hour ago. Maybe not that long.”

  Turning to Elspeth, the man said, “Give us the food and we’ll be on our way!”

  Elspeth hoped they wouldn’t notice her shaking hands as she gave them some bread and corned beef they could ill spare. Matthew followed them to the door and watched them mount and ride off to the east. Then he said he was going off to do the milking.

  “Matthew, don’t go yet,” Elspeth begged. “Just wait a few minutes more.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “I don’t want us to be in the house by ourselves till those men are well out of sight.”

  “Don’t be daft! They’ve gone and they won’t be back till they’ve found Barr.”

  “Are you going to tell him about the horse?” Rachel asked, bursting with curiosity.

  “What horse?” Matthew asked.

  “The one in Bessie’s stall in the barn.”

  By the time Matthew understood that Isaac Barr was actually hiding under their floor, and that his horse was calmly eating oats in the barn, the men were too far away to call back. Which was just as well, because that is exactly what Matthew wanted to do. But he did admit that he didn’t trust the men looking for Barr any more than he trusted Barr himself.

  “It’s just as well they didn’t meet here,” he said seriously. “Did you notice that one of the men had a gun. They mean business.”

  When Isaac Barr crawled out from the root cellar, his glasses crooked and his clothes covered with dirt, he looked more shaken than ever. He had been waiting to be found any moment, trapped in his hole like a rabbit by a stoat. When the children filled him in on all that had been said, he was embarrassingly grateful, calling them blessed in the eyes of the Lord.

  Elspeth tried to stop his flow of words by asking,” What will you do now?”

  “I am turning my back on my people,” he said. “For they have turned against me. I led them to the Promised Land, and now no one listens to me. They have chosen George Exton Lloyd to lead them. They cannot see that I took risks too, and should be rewarded. Am I not entitled to some profit from this enterprise? Am I supposed to turn everything over to them, when it was I who had the vision that made the whole venture possible?”

  “What are you going to do now?” Elspeth asked again.

  “I’ll wait here for a bit, if I may,” Mr. Barr said, forgetting his pulpit voice. “Once it’s dark, I’ll try to get down to Battleford. I still have a few friends there I can trust.”

  “It’s like playing Shadow Bairns, only for real,” Rebecca said. “Riding through the dark with them looking for you.”

  “So you know about Shadow Bairns too,” Mr. Barr said to Rebecca in surprise.

  “How do you know about them?” Elspeth broke in, before Rebecca had time to answer.

  “I heard about Shadow Bairns from a little boy, just a week or two ago. He took me for one of them!”

  “A little boy with blond curls?” Elspeth asked in a breathless whisper. “About four years old!”

  “That’s the lad,” Isaac Barr answered. “A lad called Robbie!”

  Chapter 14

  “Success”

  JULY 29-30, 1903

  There was a moment of complete silence as Elspeth, Matthew, and the twins grasped the meaning of Mr. Barr’s words. Robbie was alive. Mr. Barr had seen him. They were close to finding him at last.

  “Where is he?” Elspeth asked breathlessly. “He’s my little brother. I lost him three months ago.”

  “He’s with some people who have a quarter section down on the south boundary of the colony. Good land, they’ve got.”

  “Who are they? What’s their name?”

  “Beattie. Jim and Janet Beattie.”

  Mrs. Beattie! Elspeth closed her eyes and was suddenly back in her dream in the hotel room in Battleford. Her limbs were heavy, her bones aching. She could hear Robbie’s plaintive, insistent voice. “I’m hungry, Elspeth! Talk to me!” Then there had been another voice. “We’ll take the wee lad with us. You’re in no state to cope. The land agent will tell you where we’ve settled. Do you understand? Check with the land agent.” Elspeth had opened her eyes and seen the shadows of two figures on the wall across the room. Two distorted shadows—a small boy and a tall woman—the tall shadow reached right up to the roof and bent across the ceiling. It had grown bigger and bigger until the whole room turned dark, and then she slept again.

  Mrs. Beattie had taken Robbie and she had told her how to find him!

  Isaac Barr was still talking. “Now that I think about it, they said something about the lad not being theirs. Their own wee boy died of diphtheria a year ago, so they decided to leave Scotland with all its sad associations, and start over again in a new land.”

  “So they stole Robbie because they’d lost their own child,” Matthew said.

  “I don’t think that’s the way of it,” Mr. Barr said. “They spoke quite openly about him not being their son.”

  “To you, maybe, but not to Dr. Wallace,” Elspeth said. “Mrs. Beattie didn’t tell Dr. Wallace that Robbie was there when he asked her.”

  “We can worry about that later,” Matthew said. “What we have to do now is find out where the Beatties’ section is so we can get Robbie back.”

  “If it’s south of here, you could take me there, Mr. Barr,” Elspeth said eagerly. “You’re going that way and you know where their claim is. I could go with you!”

  “Don’t be silly!” Matthew said impatiently. “You can’t go, not when armed men are looking for him. You don’t want to get mixed up in that. And he isn’t going to shorten his odds of escaping by taking you along to find Robbie. Wait till Pa gets home.”

  “We don’t know when that will be,” Elspeth said. “Do you think I can wait two days, three days, not knowing for certain?”

  “You’ve waited all summer,” Matthew pointed out.

  “But it's different now that I know where to look.”

  “She’s right, Matthew,” Rebecca said. “She can’t wait more than a day now.”

  “And Pa might not want to go looking for Robbie as soon as he gets back here,” Rachel added.

  “They’re looking after the boy well,” Mr. Barr said. “The Beatties are good, God-fearing people.”

  “Mr. Barr, sir,” Elspeth said, crossing the room and standing directly in front of him. “All the way here, even when things were really bad, like in the Immigration Building in Saskatoon, I always knew that if I could find you, you’d help me. You see, I remembered you saying on the boat how you were responsible for us, for all of us, so I knew you’d help me. And I was right! You’ve told me where to find Robbie, when no one else helped. So, please, take me there. You don’t need to stop or anything—just show me the way.”

  Elspeth could have reminded Barr that he owed her his life, but she didn’t even think of that. Perhaps it was just as well. Barr didn’t have much of a record for honoring bargains. Instead, her words recalled the high hopes he once had for al
l these people he was leading to a better land. He squared his shoulders, and a little color crept back into his ashen face. “I’ll take you to your brother,” he said steadily. “But maybe the horse and I should rest for a few hours first. And I could do with a bite to eat. If we leave around midnight, we’ll reach the Beatties’ place by dawn.”

  After Barr had eaten, he lay down on Matthew’s bed in a corner of the kitchen. While he slept, Matthew tried to persuade Elspeth to wait till his father came home, telling her she was a fool to go with Barr.

  “He’s only taking you for his own safety,” Matthew said. “He thinks those men won’t shoot if he has a girl along with him. You’re nothing better than a hostage. Those men are liable to shoot first and be sorry afterward.”

  “They’re miles from here by now,” Elspeth argued. “Anyway, they went east, not south.”

  “You can’t trust Isaac Barr, Elspeth! Robbie may not even be there.”

  “Don’t you see that why I have to go?” Elspeth said. “I can’t rest till I know for sure.”

  “Then let me go,” Matthew suggested.

  “But I still wouldn’t know if Robbie was there,” Elspeth pointed out. “It might be days before you got back. This is something I have to do for myself.”

  In the end, Matthew gave in. He stood in the doorway, in the early hours of the morning, and watched Barr ride away with Elspeth behind him, clinging to his broad back. As they were swallowed up in the darkness, he thought that, even with armed men lurking out there, Elspeth was the lucky one. It was worse staying at home, waiting.

  During the rough ride, Elspeth’s thoughts were centered entirely on Robbie. The howl of a coyote, the looming shapes of stunted bushes, the pattern of light and shadow in the moonlight, all went unnoticed. Her biggest fear was that Robbie wouldn’t be there, that her hopes had been raised only to be smashed again. She knew she couldn’t stand that. Please, please make Robbie be there. The words drummed through her mind to the beat of the horse’s hoofs, eating up the miles, bringing her neared the truth. Please, please make Robbie be there.

  Elspeth had lost all track of time when the sun at last came up over the horizon, bringing with it the promise of another hot day. They could see for miles in every direction. Mr. Barr seemed more relaxed, perhaps because riding in daylight was easier than it had been in the darkness.

  He reined in the horse and spoke to Elspeth over his shoulder. “I had thought of stopping in and asking Jim Beattie if he would lend me another horse, but it’s sometimes hard to know who your friends are these days. I’ll just go on past the bluff and rest, so that means I leave you here. You can see their house behind that clump of cottonwoods about a mile away. That track leads right to it.”

  Mr. Barr dismounted and helped Elspeth down. He seemed reluctant to leave. He was facing the sun, and the light was catching the thick lenses of his glasses.

  “It’s people like you that this land needs,” he said. “Young, adaptable, willing to learn. Do something worthwhile, lass, and I’ll have a part in it too. Make a place for yourself here.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Barr. I’ll do that,” Elspeth said quietly, her eyes brimming with tears. No matter what people said about Mr. Barr, Elspeth knew he hadn’t failed. He had a part in everything the settlers did here, because it had been his dream.

  Mr. Barr mounted his horse clumsily and rode away. Elspeth, stiff from the long ride, walked slowly down the trail that led to the Beatties’ house. Her heart was pounding and her mouth dry. Now that she was so close there was no need to hurry. If Robbie was there, he was likely still asleep. If he wasn’t there, there was no hurry to know.

  The house wasn’t like the rough log and sod cabins that most of the settlers had built. It was made of smooth boards and had a shingle roof. A good house, with glass windows in painted frames and lace curtains. Smoke was curling from the chimney. Someone must be up already. Elspeth covered the last few yards to the door, raised her hand, and knocked.

  The door was opened immediately by Mrs. Beattie. The expression on her passive face changed a fraction when she saw Elspeth standing there. “So you’ve come at last,” she said. “You’d better come inside.”

  Elspeth followed the woman into the room. She looked around, remembering Mrs. Beattie saying that if one stick of her furniture was left behind, then she would stay too. Her threat had paid off! The room was well furnished with pictures on the wall, a painted china oil lamp on a small cane table, and a sewing box on another table. Near it lay a small pair of patched trousers.

  And then Elspeth saw, lying carelessly on a shelf, scrubbed clean and with the missing eye replaced—Pig-Bear! Running across the room, she picked it up and clutched it to her. Turning around, she asked, “Where is he? Where’s Robbie?”

  “Why have you been so long in coming?” Mrs. Beattie asked. “We thought you weren’t going to come at all.”

  “I didn’t know where to come.”

  “The land agent would have told you. I said so the night we found Robbie crying in the hotel.”

  “But I didn’t understand. I was sick, you see.”

  “I knew that. I told the girl Peg that we would look after Robbie till you were better. I told her to get you into your nightgown and fetch the doctor. You needed more care than I could give you.”

  “She got me into a nightgown,” Elspeth said bitterly. “And then she took off with my skirt and the money I’d sewn into the bodice, though no one believed me. And she never called the doctor. It was the next day before Mrs. Morgan found me and fetched Dr. Wallace.”

  “She never called the doctor,” Mrs. Beattie said in dismay. “And you so sick! Maybe we should have done more ourselves, but we anxious to get to the colony. I never thought of you not knowing we had Robbie.”

  “But when I didn’t come to find him, didn’t you wonder then?”

  “Aye, I wondered if maybe you found it easier being on your own. It always seemed a big responsibility for you, so young yourself, having to look after the wee lad. And then we heard that your aunt and uncle were in Manitoba, so it never made sense them meeting you in Battleford. And someone told us you had a job at the hotel.”

  “That must have been Dr. Wallace,” Elspeth said. “Why didn’t you tell him you had Robbie? When he was here, you said you didn’t know anything about Robbie.”

  “Dr. Wallace?” Mrs. Beattie seemed puzzled for a moment. Then she said, “That would be the man who came the day Jim was off buying lumber for the house. I didn’t know he was a doctor. He never said, and I took him for an immigration official, the way he questioned me about the lad. I wasn’t going to hand Robbie over to one of them. The boy’s scared of these immigration people—he’s scared of most strangers, for that matter! He calls himself a Shadow Bairn and hides from them. I thought he was getting over it, but Isaac Barr was here a week or two back, and Rob was as bad as ever.”

  “It was Mr. Barr who told me Robbie was here,” Elspeth said. “Where is he? Is he still asleep?”

  “He’s out at the barn helping Jim with the milking. He loves the animals. Go on out and see him.”

  Elspeth ran out of the house, over to the barn, her heart pounding with excitement. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside the barn, and then she saw him. He was trying to coax a calf to drink milk from a pail. As he looked up, Elspeth saw his small face tense. The pail clattered to the ground and he drew back into one of the stalls.

  “It’s me, Robbie! It’s Elspeth!”

  Cautiously, he peered around the end of the stall, his eyes huge and dark.

  “Don’t you know me, Robbie?” Elspeth asked, trying to keep her voice from rising. “Say something, Robbie! Tell me you’re glad to see me!”

  Then he was in her arms, burying his face in her dress, clinging to her.

  “Come out into the light where I can get a good look at you!”

  He had been well cared for, she could see that. His hair had been trimmed, and he was wearing new boots
and trousers.

  “I thought you would never come,” he said, clinging to her again. “I thought you’d gone away, like Mama and Papa.”

  Then he smiled at her, his old impish smile, yet he didn’t look quite the same. He was tidier and bigger, but it wasn’t that. There was some change in him that he couldn’t put her finger on.

  “Do you want to see the calves?” he asked. “I have a calf of my own now—I call her Elspeth. Do you remember how I was going to call her Jock?”

  Elspeth’s eyes filled with tears. So Robbie had memories, too. But what was it Papa had said—that Robbie accepted what happened and made the best of it.

  She watched as he brought a black and white calf out of the stall. It butted him, nearly bowling him over, but he managed to guide it to Elspeth. “Let her lick your hand, Elspeth. Her tongue feels funny!”

  Elspeth could hear the Beatties’ voices outside. She turned around as Mr. Beattie came into the barn.

  “The boy must be right pleased to see you,” he said. “He wondered why you didn’t come. We all did. I went down to the hotel, you know, and the woman there didn’t seem to remember you.”

  “But I worked there!” Elspeth said. “I worked for Mrs. Morgan for nearly two months.”

  “It was just a week or two ago I was down there. There was always so much to do here, and all the time we were expecting you to show up. When you didn’t come, I finally went down to Battleford to see what had happened to you.”

  “I suppose I’d moved up with the Galbraiths by then, but Mrs. Morgan knew that. She could have told you.”

  “Aye. She wasn’t a talkative woman,’

  “Spiteful’s more the word,” Elspeth said.

  “Well, it’s good you found us. What will you be doing now?”

  What would she do now? Elspeth realized that she hadn’t thought beyond this moment of finding Robbie. The Galbraiths wouldn’t have room for Robbie as well as her, not with the new baby. She didn’t have money to pay their way to Manitoba, even if she wanted to go. She looked helplessly at Jim Beattie.

  “It will break Janet’s heart if you take the lad,” he said slowly. “Our own boy, James, died a bit over a year ago, and she never really got over it. Not till she got to looking after your Robbie.”