The engine was placed at right angles to what wind there was, to lessen the danger of sparks being blown into the ever-growing strawstack. The breeze being from the north, Abe could not see the trails. Throughout the field, bundle wagons were scattered among the stooks.
Victor, small, mouse-eyed, sixty years old, kept crawling and climbing about, under and over his antediluvian engine, oil-can in hand. Abe was fond of the man who, year after year, substituted sons of his own for one or two of his hired helpers.
At the feeding platform, two empty wagons were being replaced by fresh ones. Abe was leaning against a front wheel of his tank; but, seeing that the wheat had reached the height of the spout, he lifted himself on the hub of the wheel and shovelled the grain to the rear.
At that moment he became aware of a slight commotion. The drivers on their loads ceased work and looked to the south; and so did Victor Lafontaine who stood poised on the boiler of the engine.
Suddenly Victor exclaimed, “Oh, oh, oh!” disapprovingly.
Abe dropped to the ground and circled the engine.
Harry Stobarn was returning from town with an empty wagon. Apparently something had gone wrong in the harness; for he had jumped to the ground and run to the head of the horses where he was cruelly tearing at their bridles. The horses reared, trying to back away. He jumped aside and aimed a vicious kick at the flank of one of the Clydes. The horse, beside himself, plunged and, carrying his mate away, was off at a gallop. Stobarn, shouting and waving his arms, started in pursuit. All this at a distance of half a mile.
Abe and such of the Frenchmen as were near ran to head the horses off. Abe was the first to reach them. As soon as he laid hold of their bridles, they stopped, breathing heavily.
Harry came running, the picture of spitting fury. “The doggone–” he shouted, on the point of having another go at the horses.
But Abe stepped in. “Get off my place!” he said sharply.
“What?” shouted Harry. “Gimme my wages, you bully; then I’ll go.”
“Get off my place,” Abe repeated. Insult made him quiet. “You’ll find the cheque in your mail to-morrow. I don’t carry cash about in the field.” He turned back to the horses, stroking their noses.
Harry looked from one to the other; but the young Frenchmen took their cue from Victor who gave no encouragement. Pushing his hat back from a beady brow, Stobarn said, “Don’t ask me to work for you again.”
“Small chance.”
Harry turned away, performing antics to cover his retreat.
The French lads ran; and Abe took the horses to the engine and left them; they were willing enough to stand.
Meanwhile the separator had run idle; but the work was resumed as though nothing had happened. Horanski was returning from the yard with his empty tank. When Abe’s load was full, he swung the spout over to Harry’s empty wagon. Horanski drove into place behind. Abe fastened the triple box which Stobarn would have taken to his tank and drove away. He had seemed quiet enough; but only now did he master his anger. Too bad! They had just been able to keep pace with the machine; now they would have to thresh on the ground–an undesirable proceeding in open weather. Part of the grain was sure to spoil.
As he neared the first gate of the pasture, Nicoll came from the yard. Leaving their gates open, they passed each other in silence.
When Abe had unloaded by shovelling the grain back into the hopper whence the elevator raised it to the trap in the roof of the granary, he entered the east half of the new barn to fetch a tarpaulin to take to the field. Movable granaries of corrugated iron, that was what he needed. Well, another year…But when he had left the yard and was crossing the pasture, a new thought struck him. Charlie had driven horses; most settlers allowed even smaller and younger boys to take loads to town. At the worst, it was a matter of two loads for the day. It was Saturday; the boy was at home. If he gave him the old team, the greys which Hilmer was driving, surely the boy could manage?
Horanski was coming to meet him; another load was going out to the west; that must be Henry or Shilloe; a third team was coming empty from town. Abe stopped. “Go to the house,” he said to the Ukrainian. “Tell Charlie I want him. Let him have lunch and come along with you.”
“All right,” Horanski replied and drove on.
At the engine, Nicoll was filling his second load. Abe did not drive into place behind him; town teams had the precedence. Nicoll went on, and Hilmer took his place. Abe told him to change horses, giving him the team which Stobarn had driven. “You go straight back,” he said, handing him fifty cents. “Get a bite in town and feed at the livery stable.” Hilmer’s team he led to a rack full of fresh hay, brought out for the bundle teams. A dozen boxes were standing on the ground; he poured a measure of oats into two of them.
Hilmer pulling out, Abe filled Stobarn’s wagon before he drove his own tank into place. But he had hardly done so when Bill Crane arrived; and so he let him take Stobarn’s wagon, giving him the same directions which he had given Hilmer. Crane’s wagon he manoeuvred alongside his tank and filled it over the top of the latter. Horanski was approaching on the trail from the yard; and while Abe was waiting for him, he dispatched the first empty bundle wagon to the Ukrainian’s house where Mrs. Horanski, aided by one of the Nicoll girls, had prepared dinner for the crew. The noon intermission was at hand.
Horanski came; another team from town was in sight. Abe made room under the spout by driving ahead.
“Here, Charlie,” he said, for the boy had climbed to the ground. “I want you to take a load to town. Can you do it?”
“Sure, daddy.”
“All right. There it is. Climb up.” And he helped him. “Had your dinner? To elevator one; the first from the crossing. Listen here. While you have the load, you walk the horses. When you drive up the incline, hold your lines tight. On the platform, let the man do the work. On the way home, you can trot half the way.”
The boy nodded and clicked his tongue.
Victor Lafontaine had been watching father and son. As Abe turned back to his load, the Frenchman caught his eye and smiled. “Nice kid,” he said.
Abe looked at his watch. “Fill Horanski’s tank. Then dinner.” And he, too, drove on, separated from Charlie only by a narrow strip; for half a mile the trails hardly diverged. Abe met the hayrack bringing the dinner for the crew. Mrs. Horanski stood, precariously balanced, among baskets of food and boilers of coffee. As she passed him, she nodded with a smile at Charlie who laughed proudly back at her.
Then, just as father and son reached the point where their trails divided sharply, the whistle of the engine blew, giving the signal to stop work. The shrill sound made Charlie jump; and smilingly he looked back at his father, waving his hand; then he disappeared from sight.
Two hours went by. Abe had had his lunch at home and was back in the field filling his tank.
Wheat, wheat, wheat ran from the spout.
Then, just as in the morning, Victor and his lads stared south.
Abe looked up at the old man’s face which he saw in three-quarter profile. He was conscious only of the sunlight playing in the snow-white bristles of the stubble of his beard. Incomprehensibly, a wave of fear invaded him, aroused by the puzzled expression on the man’s face.
Again, as in the morning, Abe dropped to the ground and circled the engine.
On the trail from the yard a dust cloud was trailing along. It took Abe a second or so to make out, at the apex of the fan-shaped cloud, a man on horseback tearing along at a terrific speed. He was riding a draught-horse, which fact was betrayed by the lumbering though furious gallop. He had just crossed the pasture.
“He leapt the gate,” Victor said from behind Abe’s back.
Abe did not answer. Who could it be? Whence did he come? A dull and ever-increasing disquietude took hold of him.
Suddenly he recognized the rider. It was Bill Crane. He should have been back by this time. The horse he was riding was clearly doing its utmost; yet Bill was wildly las
hing it with a long line.
Everybody in the whole field was aware of the rider’s approach; all work had slowed down.
Then, at a distance of a quarter of a mile, the horse stumbled in full career and fell, throwing the rider who rolled over two or three times, to leap up and to fall again, fighting for breath and reeling.
Abe veered on Lafontaine. “For God’s sake, shut that engine off!”
Victor jumped; the hum subsided into silence.
Bill had stopped, struggling for his voice. “Charlie!” he yelled. “Charlie’s got hurt.”
Abe’s knees gave under him. “Where? How?” he shouted.
“Hilmer’s bridge. Load went over him!” Bill was still staggering forward; apparently he had been hurt by his fall.
“Hurt?” Abe asked as if groping for a clue.
“Load went right over him.”
For a moment it looked as if Abe were going to ask more questions. Then he turned and ran for the lead team of his grain tank. Feverishly he unhooked one of the horses, a Percheron colt, and, gathering the long line into loops, vaulted on his back. Lashing the heavy horse into a gallop, he shot past the engine out on the trail. Everywhere the bundle drivers were unhooking their horses. Abe’s mind was singularly lucid. He noticed a number of things which, in the light of the tragedy with which he seemed to be threatened only so far, as though it might still be averted by speed, were mere trifles. Thus Bill lay motionless on the ground; the horse, a Clyde, was breathing but foundered. “That horse,” Abe said to himself, “will never get up again.” From the south-west, two teams were returning…. Precious time would be lost in the yard; for the colt he was riding could not stand the pace. With his eyes, Abe searched for the gate of the pasture; the trail was winding; he wanted to strike a straight line.
Nicoll and Horanski were in the pasture. What in the world were they doing? Then he understood. Bill had shouted to them in passing; they were catching Old Sire for him. Old Sire was an ancient racehorse, a hard and fast rider, recently acquired for a debt which Blake had owed him, an old loafer at Morley who attended all municipal race-meets.
Now they had him; and Nicoll was running for the gate to open it. Abe neither veered nor stopped. The moment he passed through the gate, he vaulted off the colt and ran on with the gathered momentum. In half a dozen bounds he reached Old Sire, the bony iron-grey, and was on his back. Horanski, with a swing of his arm, threw the halter-shank aloft; and, the horse already gripping the ground, the line hit Abe across his face like a whip. In less than a minute the horse doubled his speed. Never before had Abe asked a horse to give him the very last of his strength; but Old Sire caught the infection as though memories of the racetrack had returned to him. The far gate of the pasture was open; but Abe held the horse at right angles to the fence which he took at a leap.
Straight on, over barley stubble, till they reached Abe’s east line. Again Old Sire took the fence; and they were on the prairie. In five minutes they made Nicoll’s Corner. Then south over the culvert.
Everything seemed quiet and peaceful. The sun seemed to stand still over the plain, his heatless rays bronzed even here. Chaff and dust from many threshing fields had spread over all this world.
Ahead, at Hilmer’s Corner, there was a congestion. North of the bridge stood a wagon or two; between the road and Hilmer’s yard half a dozen horses were grazing. From the yard, an old woman stared dully at the man who came tearing along. Beyond, one wagon on the bridge; three, four farther on. To the west, a car in the ditch.
A moment later, Abe saw it all. Pole and neck-yoke of the wagon on the bridge were trailing; the horses had been unhitched. Beyond, Bill’s empty wagon barred the road. The load north of the bridge was Nawosad’s; and as Abe vaulted to the ground, the Ukrainian stepped aside. Abe ran past him.
On the culvert, a group of men were crouching or kneeling to the right of the wagon. The first was Anderson; on the far side was Hilmer, looking strangely stern. Between them, Dr. Vanbruik, on his knees, bending over the motionless body of Abe’s child which lay between the wheels, for it had not been moved. Below the bare ribs of the chest was a horrible depression, discoloured; even the doctor averted his eyes as he applied the stethoscope.
Abe felt, saw, heard nothing. Yet he asked a question.
Without looking up, Dr. Vanbruik shrugged a shoulder.
Mechanically Abe repeated his question. “Dead, you say?”
The doctor gave him a brief, direct look and bent down again.
Abe, feeling the ground giving way beneath him, walked blindly on to the end of the culvert, staggered through the ditch, took a few steps over the open prairie, and fell forward on his face….
An hour later, Charlie’s body was taken home in Bill’s wagon. The lads from the field who had arrived followed on horseback. The load which the boy was to have taken to town was pushed to the side of the road. At a word from the doctor, Anderson had returned to town to fetch Mrs. Vanbruik. At Nicoll’s Corner his car caught up with the procession and passed it in silence.
In the yard, they were met by Ruth, Mary Vanbruik, and the three children. The girls were crying; Jim stood pale and silent, awed by the fact that never again would he tease Charlie, nor Charlie him.
Ruth did not cry; but her face was tragically set and hollow when Anderson carried the body past her, up the steps, through the hall, and into the great living-room of the house where he placed it on the chesterfield. Nobody was in a condition to say anything. Nobody even asked how the thing had happened till many days later.
In the field, Nicoll took charge. Abe sat about as though his mind were affected. Dr. Vanbruik went to Somerville to attend to the formalities. Old Mrs. Crane was sent for to lay the body out.
Mary Vanbruik stayed with Ruth. All neighbours who had not already been working for Abe came to help, even Wheeldon; and it was from the threshing field that the doctor finally pieced the story together.
Charlie and Bill had been approaching Hilmer’s culvert at the same time, Charlie from the north, Bill from the south, with Bill a trifle nearer to it than Charlie. But the culvert could be crossed by only one wagon at a time; and the boy, seeing that Bill, with his empty wagon had the advantage over him, had, half in jest, urged his horses into a brisker pace, swinging the loose ends of their lines over their backs. Bill, wishing to let the boy win the race, had held his horses in. But at both ends of the culvert the many haulings had worn away the earth; so that a vehicle going at any speed was bound to hit the timbers of the bridge with a jolt; and the horses, knowing that, with the boy urging them on, had taken the incline at a bound. When the jolt came, the child had been thrown up into the air; and, the wagon below him being retarded, he had lost his seat and fallen between horses and wagon. Bill, from the far end of the culvert, had been yelling frantically, “Whoa, whoa, there!” And the horses, knowing his voice and seeing him blocking the road, had stopped; but not till the front wheels had passed over Charlie’s body, just below the ribs.
Death, Dr. Vanbruik said when he had been called by Hilmer, had been instantaneous.
PART TWO
THE DISTRICT
THE PRAIRIE
The years went by.
Abe had been stunned; but it did not show in his work. It was true that he pursued it in a grim and cheerless way, unaffected by the things stirring every one else to his depths: the events of the war.
For a while he had been inclined to do as Ruth had wished him to do: to give everything up and to go away; it was Ruth who had kept him from following the impulse. Then he had voiced an intention of withdrawing at least from his public duties; that step, Dr. Vanbruik had dissuaded him from taking. At last, as if driven by a force which lashed him on, he had resumed his work at a pace which appalled his neighbours. He had bought a threshing machine and added more labour to the load he was carrying already; but he had soon found that the thresherman’s trade and the farmer’s business were incompatible. While he threshed others’ crops, his own fall-ploughin
g remained undone; in spring, the work was gone through in a rush; nothing was done as it should have been done. In the third year of the war, he showed a return of his old shrewdness by selling his outfit at peak price and realizing a profit.
Incidentally he had begun to read. One of the things which make up the fundamental web of life–that background of life which no so-called progress can change–had bidden him halt on his way; and as he realized that, his old preoccupations had suddenly seemed futile. When all a man’s gifts have been bent on the realization of material and realizable ends, the time is bound to come, unless he fails, when he will turn his spiritual powers against himself and scoff at his own achievements.
If, at one time, he had thought that machines were going to bring the millennium, he came to see now that the machine itself is nothing; what is needed is the mechanical mentality; and that he did not have. The use of machines might “pay” in a money sense; it did not pay in terms of human life. The thing done is nothing: the doing everything. He began to formulate such things to himself; he tried to find how he felt about things and to put that feeling into words.
He also listened more patiently to others, trying to get their point of view. He became intimate with his brother-in-law. Often he went to town to talk to him though he never stayed long. Perhaps it was partly because Mary and Ruth had found a way of getting along with each other.
Every time a new contingent went overseas from the municipality, Abe saw them off, not with a speech as might have been expected from the reeve; but a look here, a pressure of the hand there were worth more than a speech. Throughout the municipality there were people now who, when Abe was attacked–as he often was, for he carried things with a high hand–rallied to his defence and silenced his opponents.
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