Over Prairie Trails

by Frederick Philip Grove

  At half past four we crossed the gap in the bluffs for the second time.

  Words fail me to describe or even to suggest the fury of the blast and of the drift into which we emerged. For a moment I thought the top of the cutter would be blown off. With the twilight that had set in, the wind had increased to a baffling degree. The horses came as near as they ever came, in any weather, to turning on me and refusing to face the gale. And what with my blurred vision, the twisting and dodging about of the horses, and the gathering dusk, I soon did not know any longer where I was. There was ample opportunity to go wrong. Copses, single trees, and burnt stumps which dotted the wilderness had a knack of looming up with startling suddenness in front or on the side, sometimes dangerously close to the cutter. It was impossible to look straight ahead, because the ice crystals which mimicked snow cut right into my eyes and made my lids smart with soreness. Underfoot the rough ground seemed like a heaving sea. The horses would stumble, and the cutter would pitch over from one side to the other in the most alarming way. I saw no remedy. It was useless to try to avoid the obstacles – only once did I do so, and that time I had to back away from a high stump against which my drawbar had brought up. The pitching and rolling of the cutter repeatedly shook me out of my robes, and if, when starting up again from the bluff, I had felt a trifle more comfortable, that increment of consolation was soon lost.

  We wallowed about – there is only this word to suggest the motion. To all intents and purposes I was lost. But still there was one thing, provided it had not changed, to tell me the approximate direction – the wind. It had been coming from the south-southeast. So, by driving along very nearly into its teeth, I could, so I thought, not help emerging on the road to town.

  Repeatedly I wished I had taken the old trail. That fearful drift in the bush beyond the creek, I thought, surely had settled down somewhat in twenty-four hours.* I had had as much or more of unbroken trail to -day as on the day before. On the whole, though, I still believed that the four miles across the corner of the marsh south of the creek had been without a parallel in their demands on the horses’ endurance. And gradually I came to see that after all the horses probably would have given out before this, under the cumulative effect of two days of it, had they not found things somewhat more endurable to-day.

  We wallowed along…. And then we stopped. I shouted to the horses – nothing but a shout could have the slightest effect against the wind. They started to fidget and to dance and to turn this way and that, but they would not go. I wasted three or four minutes before I shook free of my robes and jumped out to investigate. Well, we were in the corner formed by two fences – caught as in a trap. I was dumbfounded. I did not know of any fence in these parts, of none where I thought I should be. And how had we got into it? I had not passed through any gate. There was, of course, no use in conjecturing. If the wind had not veered around completely, one of the fences must run north-south, the other one east-west, and we were in the southeast corner of some farm. Where there was a fence, I was likely to find a farmyard. It could not be to the east, so there remained three guesses. I turned back to the west. I skirted the fence closely, so closely that even in the failing light and in spite of the drifting snow I did not lose sight of it. Soon the going began to be less rough; the choppy motion of the cutter seemed to indicate that we were on fall-ploughed land; and not much later Peter gave a snort. We were apparently nearing a group of buildings. I heard the heavy thump of galloping horses, and a second later I saw a light which moved.

  I hailed the man; and he came over and answered my questions. Yes, the wind had turned somewhat; it came nearly from the east now (so that was what had misled me); I was only half a mile west of my old trail, but still, for all that, nearly twelve miles from town. In this there was good news as well as bad. I remembered the place now; just south of the twelve-mile bridge I had often caught sight of it to the west. Instead of crossing the wild land along its diagonal, I had, deceived by the changed direction of the wind, skirted its northern edge, holding close to the line of poplars. I thought of the fence: yes, the man who answered my questions was renting from the owner of that pure-bred Angus herd; he was hauling wood for him and had taken the fence on the west side down. I had passed between two posts without noticing them. He showed me the south gate and gave me the general direction. He even offered my horses water, which they drank eagerly enough. But he did not offer bed and stable-room for the night; nor did he open the gate for me, as I had hoped he would. I should have declined the night’s accommodation, but I should have been grateful for a helping hand at the gate. I had to get out of my wraps to open it. And meanwhile I had been getting out and in so often, that I did no longer even care to clean my feet of snow; I simply pushed the heater aside so as to prevent it from melting.

  I “bundled in” – that word, borrowed from an angry lady, describes my mood perhaps better than anything else I might say. And yet, though what followed was not exactly pleasure, my troubles were over for the day. The horses, of course, still had a weary, weary time of it, but as soon as we got back to our old trail – which we presently did – they knew the road at least. I saw that the very moment we reached it by the way they turned on to it and stepped out more briskly.

  From this point on we had about eleven miles to make, and every step of it was made at a walk. I cannot, of course, say much about the road. There was nothing for me to do except as best I could to fight the wind. I got my tarpaulin out from under the seat and spread it over myself. I verily believe I nodded repeatedly. It did not matter. I knew that the horses would take me home, and since it was absolutely dark, I could not have helped it had they lost their way. A few times, thinking that I noticed an improvement in the road, I tried to speed the horses up; but when Dan at last, in an attempt to respond, went down on his knees, I gave it up. Sometimes we pitched and rolled again for a space, but mostly things went quietly enough. The wind made a curious sound, something between an infuriated whistle and the sibilant noise a man makes when he draws his breath in sharply between his teeth.

  I do not know how long we may have been going that way. But I remember how at last suddenly and gradually I realized that there was a change in our motion. Suddenly, I say – for the realization of the change came as a surprise; probably I had been nodding, and I started up. Gradually – for I believe it took me quite an appreciable time before I awoke to the fact that the horses at last were trotting. It was a weary, slow, jogging trot – but it electrified me, for I knew at once that we were on our very last mile. I strained my eyesight, but I could see no light ahead. In fact, we were crossing the bridge before I saw the first light of the town.

  The livery stable was deserted. I had to open the doors, to drive in, to unhitch, to unharness, and to feed the horses myself. And then I went home to my cold and lonesome house.

  It was a cheerless night.

  * Yes; I looked it up. See the “Pastoral Bees” in “Locusts and Wild Honey.”

  * As a matter of fact I was to see it once more before the winter was over, and I found it settled down to about one third its original height. This was partly the result of superficial thawing. But still even then, shortly before the final thaw-up, it looked formidable enough.

  “… they scattered away from the trail on our approach.”

  A CALL FOR SPEED

  I held the horses in at the start. Somehow they realized that a new kind of test was ahead. They caught the infection of speed from my voice, I suppose, or from my impatience. They had not been harnessed by the hostler either. When I came to the stable – it was in the forenoon, too, at an hour when they had never been taken out before – the hostler had been away hauling feed. The boys whom I had pressed into service had pulled the cutter out into the street; it was there we hitched up. Everything, then, had been different from the way they had been used to. So, when at last I clicked my tongue, they bounded off as if they were out for a sprint of a few miles only.

  I held them in and pulled t
hem down to a trot; for of all days to-day was it of the utmost importance that neither one of them should play out. At half past twelve a telephone message had reached me, after having passed through three different channels, that my little girl was sick; and over the wire it had a sinister, lugubrious, reticent sound, as if the worst was held back. Details had not come through, so I was told. My wife was sending a call for me to come home as quickly as I possibly could; nothing else. It was Thursday. The Sunday before I had left wife and child in perfect health. But scarlatina and diphtheria were stalking the plains. The message had been such a shock to me that I had acted with automatic precision. I had notified the school-board and asked the inspector to substitute for me; and twenty minutes after word had reached me I crossed the bridge on the road to the north.

  The going was heavy but not too bad. Two nights ago there had been a rather bad snowstorm and a blow, and during the last night an exceedingly slight and quiet fall had followed it. Just now I had no eye for its beauty, though.

  I was bent on speed, and that meant watching the horses closely; they must not be allowed to follow their own bent. There was no way of communicating with my wife; so that, whatever I could do, was left entirely to my divination. I had picked up a few things at the drug store – things which had occurred to me on the spur of the moment as likely to be needed; but now I started a process of analysis and elimination. Pneumonia, diphtheria, scarlatina and measles – all these were among the more obvious possibilities. I was enough of a doctor to trust my ability to diagnose. I knew that my wife would in that respect rather rely on me than on the average country-town practitioner. All the greater was my responsibility.

  Since the horses had not been fed for their midday-meal, I had in any case to put in at the one-third-way town. It had a drug store; so there was my last chance of getting what might possibly be needed. I made a list of remedies and rehearsed it mentally till I felt sure I should not omit anything of which I had thought.

  Then I caught myself at driving the horses into a gallop. It was hard to hold in. I must confess that I thought but little of the little girl’s side of it; more of my wife’s; most of all of my own. That seems selfish. But ever since the little girl was born, there had been only one desire which filled my life. Where I had failed, she was to succeed. Where I had squandered my energies and opportunities, she was to use them to some purpose. What I might have done but had not done, she was to do. She was to redeem me. I was her natural teacher. Teaching her became henceforth my life-work. When I bought a book, I carefully considered whether it would help her one day or not before I spent the money. Deprived of her, I myself came to a definite and peremptory end. With her to continue my life, there was still some purpose in things, some justification for existence.

  Most serious-minded men at my age, I believe, become profoundly impressed with the futility of “it all.” Unless we throw ourselves into something outside of our own personality, life is apt to impress us as a great mockery. I am afraid that at the bottom of it there lies the recognition of the fact that we ourselves were not worthwhile, that we did not amount to what we had thought we should amount to; that we did not measure up to the exigencies of eternities to come. Children are among the most effective means devised by Nature to delude us into living on. Modern civilization has, on the whole, deprived us of the ability for the enjoyment of the moment. It raises our expectations too high – realization is bound to fall short, no matter what we do. We live in an artificial atmosphere. So we submerge ourselves in business, profession, or superficial amusement. We live for something – do not merely live. The wage-slave lives for the evening’s liberty, the business man for his wealth, the preacher for his church. I used to live for my school. Then a moment like the one I was living through arrives. Nature strips down our pretences with a relentless finger, and we stand, bare of disguises, as helpless failures. We have lost the childlike power of living without conscious aims. Sometimes, when the aims have faded already in the gathering dusk, we still go on by the momentum acquired. Inertia carries us over the dead points – till a cog breaks somewhere, and our whole machinery of life comes to with a jar. If no such awakening supervenes, since we never live in the present, we are always looking forward to what never comes; and so life slips by, unlived.

  If my child was taken from me, it meant that my future was made meaningless. I felt that I might just as well lie down and die.

  There was injustice in this, I know. I was reasoning, as it were, in a phantom world. Actualities, outlooks, retrospections – my view of them had been jarred and distorted by an unexpected, stunning blow. For that it did not really matter how things actually were up north. I had never yet faced such possibilities; they opened up like an abyss which I had skirted in the dark, unknowingly. True, my wife was something like a child to me. I was old enough to be her father, older even in mind than in actual years. But she, too, by marrying an aging man, had limited her own development, as it were, by mine. Nor was she I, after all. My child was. The outlook without her was night. Such a life was not to be lived.

  There was the lash of a scourge in these thoughts, so that I became nervous, impatient, and unjust – even to the horses. Peter stumbled, and I came near punishing him with my whip. But I caught myself just before I yielded to the impulse. I was doing exactly what I should not do. If Peter stumbled, it was more my own fault than his. I should have watched the road more carefully instead of giving in to the trend of my thoughts. A stumble every five minutes, and over a drive of forty-five miles: that might mean a delay of half an hour – it might mean the difference between “in time” and “too late.” I did not know what waited at the other end of the road. It was my business to find out, not to indulge in mere surmises and forebodings.

  So, with an effort, I forced my attention to revert to the things around. And Nature, with her utter lack of sentiment, is after all the only real soother of anguished nerves. With my mind in the state it was in, the drive would indeed have been nothing less than torture, had I not felt, sometimes even against my will, mostly without at any rate consciously yielding to it, the influence of that merriest of all winter sights which surrounded me.

  The fresh fall of snow, which had come over night, was exceedingly slight. It had come down softly, floatingly, with all the winds of the prairies hushed, every flake consisting of one or two large, flat crystals only, which, on account of the nearly saturated air, had gone on growing by condensation till they touched the ground. Such a condition of the atmosphere never holds out in a prolonged snowfall, may it come down ever so soft-footedly; the first half hour exhausts the moisture content of the air. After that the crystals are the ordinary, small, six-armed “stars” which bunch together into flakes. But if the snowfall is very slight, the moisture content of the lower air sometimes is not exhausted before it stops; those large crystals remain at the surface and are not buried out of sight by the later fall. These large, coarse, slablike crystals reflect as well as refract the light of the sun. There is not merely the sparkle and glitter, but also the colour play. Facing north, you see only glittering points of white light; but, facing the sun, you see every colour of the rainbow, and you see it with that coquettish, sudden flash which snow shares only with the most precious of stones.

  Through such a landscape covered with the thinnest possible sheet of the white glitter we sped. A few times, in heavier snow, the horses were inclined to fall into a walk; but a touch of the whip sent them into line again. I began to view the whole situation more quietly. Considering that we had forty-five miles to go, we were doing very well indeed. We made Bell’s corner in forty minutes, and still I was saving the horses’ strength.

  On to the wild land we turned, where the snow underfoot was soft and free from those hard clods that cause the horses’ feet to stumble. I beguiled the time by watching the distance through the surrounding brush. Everybody, of course, has noticed how the open landscape seems to turn when you speed along. The distance seems to stand still,
while the foreground rushes past you. The whole countryside seems to become a revolving, horizontal wheel with its hub at the horizon. It is different when you travel fast through half open bush, so that the eye on its way to the edge of the visible world looks past trees and shrubs. In that case there are two points which speed along: you yourself, and with you, engaged, as it were, in a race with you, the distance. You can go many miles before your horizon changes. But between it and yourself the foreground is rushed back like a ribbon. There is no impression of wheeling; there is no depth to that ribbon which moves backward and past. You are also more distinctly aware that it is not the objects near you which move, but you yourself. Only a short distance from you trees and objects seem rather to move with you, though more slowly; and faster and faster all things seem to be moving in the same direction with you, the farther away they are, till at last the utmost distance rushes along at an equal speed, behind all the stems of the shrubs and the trees, and keeps up with you.

  So is it truly in life. My childhood seems as near to me now as it was when I was twenty – nearer, I sometimes think; but the years of my early manhood have rushed by like that ribbon and are half swallowed by oblivion.