by Larry Stuart
‘Don’t you leave me again,’ sobbed Catherine against his shoulder. ‘I missed you so
much. I didn’t know whether you were alive or dead until yesterday when I got your
telegram.’
Cameron laid his cheek on top of her head, as Catherine continued to sniff and weep. Then, easing her away, he placed his arm around her shoulders.
‘Come on, Cath. Let’s go home.’
He’d barely had time to kick the cabin door shut, before Catherine threw her arms around his neck, pulling his head down to smother his lips. Cameron felt the tightness in his stomach edging upwards as his hands grasped her hips. When their mouths parted, he picked her up, carrying her to the bedroom and throwing her on the bed. Standing over her, he tore off his clothes. And then lying down beside her, hurriedly unbuttoned her tunic and blouse, while at the same time lovingly running his tongue around her ear and down her neck. For a few minutes his fingers circled her breast, and then gradually wandered further down.
They made love furiously. And when it was over they started again, only this time slower and with tenderness. Sometime later, when the world outside their home was dark and hushed, the two lovers fell asleep – their lust satisfied.
At midday the following day, they stood at the entrance to the stable yard alongside the river near Donald Street.
‘What are we doing here, Cameron?’
‘Well, you said not to leave you behind again. So, if you’re going to come next year, you’ve got a lot to learn.’
A tall, moustachioed man wearing an ankle-length leather coat walked out of the office.
‘You must be Mr Stuart…I got your telegram yesterday and everything’s ready for you. Just follow me.’
Thirty minutes later, they were headed for home with Catherine desperately trying to get to grips with driving a buckboard. Cameron stood behind her, balancing on the balls of his feet while holding onto the back of the seat. They hurtled down Cumberland Avenue, pulled by a beautiful brown and white pony that had made up its mind he was in charge.
‘Aren’t there any brakes on this thing?’ screamed Catherine.
People who, only moments before had been sedately crossing the street, madly scattered. Mothers with young children gathered them in their arms and ran for safety, while men who were about to step off the sidewalk suddenly had second thoughts – and then raised their fists as the couple sped by. Cameron laughed, and then reached passed Catherine’s body from behind and gripped her hands while slowly applying rearward pressure to the reins.
‘You’ve got to let the horse know who is boss,’ he yelled. ‘If you hold the reins too loosely, and give ’em their head, they’ll assume they’re in charge and take off.’
That evening, after Catherine had stopped shaking and Cameron had stopped chuckling, he finished telling Catherine about George and their life on the prairies.
By the time he’d finished, she began to realise that following her husband into the wilderness was probably not quite as simple as she had thought. In fact, she now began to wonder if maybe she was being just a little foolhardy. But then, it couldn’t be all that hard, she thought, after all, hundreds of women settlers were doing it every day.
Christmas came, and with it winter set in. The streets were now constantly covered with snow and ice, and Winnipeg’s two main rivers were once more frozen over. Cameron swapped their rig for a sleigh, allowing them to go much further afield. Now on Sundays, assuming the weather was good, they would pack a lunch and head out into the woods north of the city. Soon, Catherine became quite adept at handling their new form of transport, and seemed to enjoy taking on board some of her husband’s newly discovered bush craft skills. By the end of January, she was already a competent marksman, and her bread baked in an iron pot over an open fire, was becoming legendary – well, in the Stuart household at least.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The day was remarkable on account of two events – both natural – but nevertheless important to people who had grown weary of the misery of winter.
The first passed unnoticed by all but a few learned people who made it their business to record such phenomena. The sun as usual rose in the east and set in the west. But what made this day noteworthy was that the length of daylight hours equally matched those of darkness. Throughout history many cultures celebrated this day by giving thanks to whichever God they believed made this possible. But in these more modern times, if it was noticed at all, it was only given credit as the official, first day of spring.
The second event, beheld by all but the deaf, occurred when, with an almighty crack like the explosion of a canon, the ice in the Red River began to break up.
In Winnipeg, there was no cheering or celebrating, in fact quite the opposite. Most faces took on a more serious look, and throughout the city everyone now seemed in a hurry to get from place to place. Each morning, worried managers of river-front businesses could be seen carefully studying the water before opening their front doors, while at the same time, queues built up on both sides of the pontoon bridge, as most drivers felt the need to approach the crossing with much greater care.
It seemed most inhabitants of Winnipeg were aware that in 1826, the combined mass of ice and water in the Assiniboine and Red Rivers had raised its level until it had burst its banks, destroying the town. And since then, flooding to a greater or lesser extent had occurred at least every ten years.
That morning Cameron’s eyes flew open, and for a moment his arms froze at his side. His heart quickened, and then as his memory also awakened, he recalled hearing a similar explosion one year before.
‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ murmured a sleepy Catherine, before rolling over and staring at her husband with her half-opened eyes.
‘Sorry if I woke you, Cath. The ice on the river has just begun to break up and the noise woke me up.’
A few seconds later, the morning’s tranquillity was once more shattered by a resounding crack, as Cameron’s firm hand landed on Catherine’s bare bottom.
‘Come on sleepy…you’d better get up. I’m going into the office early today, and you have to take me in,’ he said, quickly jumping out of bed, while at the same time narrowly avoiding her retaliatory swing.
When Cameron stepped through the front doors of the C.P.R headquarters, he immediately discovered he wasn’t the only one who’d been rudely awakened, and to his surprise, nearly all the staff were at their desks. Muted conversations and the clicking of the keys on the new Remingtons, greeted him as he strolled down the corridor. Along the way, he responded to the occasional ‘Good morning, Mr Stuart’, with a smile and witty
remark about the “ice”, before finally reaching his assistant’s desk at the far end of the hallway.
While he and his secretary went over his agenda for the day, the hubbub suddenly ceased as through the door marched the General Manager. His heavy-lidded eyes scanned back and forth under the over-hanging brim of his Homburg-style hat, and even he couldn’t disguise the slight look of surprise on his face at the sight of so many of his employees so early in the day.
Midway through the morning, a quick knock sounded on Cameron’s door, and as he looked up in walked Cornelius Van Horne.
‘Please…don’t get up,’ the boss said, when Cameron started to rise. ‘I just wanted to let you know that I’m going to need certain facts and figures for my meeting with the directors this afternoon. So, when you have a moment, would you bring the registers and order books up to my office? I know it’ll take you some time to get them together, so, shall we say in about twenty minutes?’
That spring, in preparation for the building season ahead, Winnipeg had become an enormous supply depot. The railway’s requirements for this year were almost unimaginable. Two main contractors had been signed up, who between them had promised to complete five hundred miles of track before the next winter. They in turn were hiring three thousand men and two thousand horses, as every stick of timber for the bridges, and all the
provisions for a total workforce of some seven thousand men would have to be hauled across the prairies by wagon. Lumber was arriving from eastern Canada and the northern part of the United States, while rails, fishplates, and spikes, were coming by ship from England and Germany.
Nothing could be left to chance, and all of this was being co-ordinated by Cameron and his staff of four men. It was hardly surprising his boss was concerned. If any mistakes were made, or shipments of goods delayed, it could put the whole project in jeopardy, leaving thousands of men sitting around idle while still being paid. Mr Van Horne had made many promises to the C.P.R. board of directors, and no doubt his head was now well and truly on the block.
This was probably the reason why, two weeks before, the General Manager had again stamped his authority on the railway by firing Major Rosser. The chief engineer’s lack of interest in his job, coupled with his burgeoning enthusiasm for real estate, had finally become much too public. Barely a day had gone by in the last month without press speculation concerning the amount of money being made on property by those with inside knowledge of the route of the railway.
‘Please, just take a seat for a moment, Mr Stuart, while I have a quick look through these.’
Cameron’s eyes gazed idly about the room, while his heart pounded noisily in his chest as he awaited his boss’s approval.
‘Well, it appears you and your men have things well in hand. Before you go, though, I’d just like to bring up one small area of concern. Two weeks from now the graders should be able to head out and start preparing the track beds, and a week or so after that the track laying will recommence. As you know, the ice has already started to move. What concerns me is this, if the rivers were to flood again and we subsequently lost any of our bridges, we could end up with half of our construction materials stuck here in Winnipeg.’
To Cameron the solution was simple. At the moment, the marshalling yard in Brandon was underused, and as far as he was concerned with a few modifications could easily be turned into a gigantic supply depot.
Orders were immediately issued, and by the end of the week trains were running twenty-four hours a day until all supplies had been shipped out of danger.
At the end of April a destructive wall of water did move down the Red River from the Northern United States. In its wake, the C.P.R.’s brand new bridge connecting the line from the east into the city, and the pontoon bridge allowing access to the marshalling yard south of the river, were both destroyed. From that day, until a new bridge was completed nine months later, all subsequent goods once more had to be shipped via St. Paul, over a hastily rebuilt pontoon bridge.
Cornelius Van Horne could not understand why Cameron would not accept any recognition for the vital contributions he had made to the success of the Company. Twice, the General Manager had tried to have him presented to the board of directors. First, for his clever inventory system – the likes of which no one had ever seen before – and now for his foresight in moving the supplies from Winnipeg before the floods, which probably saved the railway from financial ruin. Van Horne greatly admired his young surveyor’s conscientiousness and humility, and he was now more determined than ever to see to it that Cameron was properly rewarded once the crossing of the prairies was complete.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Just after sunrise, on the first Wednesday in May, 1882, three red river carts set off from the Brandon depot. Leading the way was Spotted Bear, his wagon full to overflowing with all the equipment needed to make camp for the next six to seven months. Next in line came Catherine. She was the least experienced, and like her husband had only been given minimal instruction on how to control oxen. So, her load was made up of stakes, crosspieces and firewood, which if worse came to worst, could easily be replaced. Last in line was Cameron. Like Spotted Bear, his cart was loaded to the top of its canvass hood, and contained their food supplies, his delicate survey equipment and other necessities such as cooking vessels, guns and ammunition. This time, tools such as shovels, axes and fire tripods were all secured in special racks attached to the outside of the carts; whilst other modifications completed during the winter months included such things as the permanent fixing of water barrels to the rear of the wagons, under seat storage straps and leather encased padding on their seats.
Finally, bringing up the rear of this mini wagon train were three sturdy looking horses, tethered to the back of Cameron’s cart by extended reins.
‘Get up!’ yelled Cameron, followed by the loud crack of his whip as his oxen decided to test his concentration by nearly slowing to a halt.
There were only five commands used to control these steers, all of them normally reinforced with the sound of a hide whip cracking in the animals’ ears. Apart from the command he’d just used there was ‘Whoa!’, which he expected might well become the most important, ‘Gee!’, which was supposed to get the animal to veer to the left, ‘Haw!’, to the right, and finally ‘Back-up!’, which, from what he’d been told, hardly ever worked.
Cameron smiled, as he recalled Catherine’s frustration during their instruction course the week before.
‘It’s no good losing your temper with these boys,’ said John Cuthbert, the teamster who was instructing them. ‘Just remember...they can get more pig-headed than you can. They’re not a unique animal...just a mature one, with an education… and an attitude!’
Cameron’s thoughts drifted away, as he thought about the huge juggernaut now sweeping its way across the prairies. The earth moving teams had moved off the week before, which was why the next ten to fifteen miles should be easy, as all the three of them had to do was stay in the rutted track beside the newly constructed four foot high embankment. Tomorrow the track laying gang would once more embark on their relentless march across the plains, while the bridge building gang had left weeks before, and by now should have nearly completed their first river crossing.
At this moment, Cameron knew where every spike, rail and piece of wood owned by the C.P.R. rested. But as of tomorrow, it would begin to scatter across five hundred miles of plain, and the only thing holding everything together was his system and the men he had trained. If anything had been forgotten it was now irrelevant, because it was too late to stop the inertia of the massive machine that had been set in motion.
Once more a grin creased his face as he contemplated Catherine’s next lesson in
wilderness transportation – namely that of riding a horse. ‘That should produce a few very special moments,’ he muttered to himself. Then suddenly, he was yanked back to the present, as up ahead, Catherine’s rig veered out to the right. Thinking the worst, he drew to a halt, preparing to mount his horse and gallop off to her rescue. To his relief, his ears detected a faint command followed by the crack of a whip; and Catherine’s straying oxen swerved back into line.
Their long first day finally neared its end, when on breasting the top of a small rise their resting place for the night came into view. Below them, spread out over fifty acres, was the campsite of the crews building the track bed. The tents for almost five hundred men were stretched out in ragged clusters in all directions. In a central area was a huge corral for the hundreds of horses and oxen needed to power the wagons and carts, and two massive tents housing the mobile kitchens and serving tables. This camp moved almost daily, and was staffed by permanent wagon-drivers, cooks and labourers, whose sole purpose was to feed and house the men carrying out the all-important track-bed grading.
For the first week, the weather was as fickle as a Scottish summer’s afternoon – warm and sunny one day, chilly and gusty the next. But as they continued westwards, it started to become more welcoming.
The three wagons pushed on for a further ten days following the line staked out by Cameron the previous year. Finally, they arrived at the edge of the escarpment overlooking the wide valley. For a while, all three gazed in wonder at the limitless beauty before them, before George dragged them back to the realities of the present.
‘We fill up wa
ter barrels in river…down in valley…then make camp for night. Tomorrow we travel west two more days…then make big camp.’
So, the routine that Cameron and his companion had instituted the previous year was once more re-established. Of course slight variations had to be made now that Catherine was part of the team. Most days she would remain in camp, while the two men rode out to the survey line. Cameron and George would then stay out on the line until almost dark, happy in the knowledge that when they got back the chores would be done and their meal would be waiting.
The men’s diet improved enormously. No longer was their main staple baked beans, or a stew made with venison or a recently caught rabbit. As long as Catherine had flour, fat, sugar and eggs she would regularly make pies – some with fruit, as a treat, and others with meat served up with potatoes and whatever vegetables were to hand. Once or twice a week, the fatigue the men felt after a long day toiling in the hot sun was instantly forgotten when, a mile or two from camp, their noses would pick up the aroma of freshly baked bread.