by Ruth Glover
The wagon rolled down the road, a road on which the grasses flourished almost as freely as across the unbroken prairie beside and around it, and Tierney, between bounces, tried to concentrate on the miraculous properties of this blood builder and cleanser.
“It says it will cure scrofulia,” Tierney reported cautiously, uncertain what scrofulia might be but not liking the sound of it, “and cancer. And rheumatism, especially that arising from mercurial poisoning. It cures eczema and other skin diseases that arise from the impurity of the blood. And nasal catarrh—ol’ Fenway, back home in Binkiebrae, could hae used some o’ this!—and acne or pimples, chronic ulcers, carbuncles, boils. It is a ‘true specific for syphilis’—” Tierney stopped abruptly.
“Well, anyway,” she continued faintly, “it’s . . . it’s a powerful remedy, and listen to this—it says it’s ‘purely vegetable.’ I never knew,” she finished thoughtfully, thinking of all the tatties and neeps she had consumed across the years, “that all those healthy things were in vegetables.”
Buster, who had been squirming for the past five minutes, obviously wanted down. With one hand his father lowered him from the wagon seat, and the small boy made his tottering way toward the boxes at the rear.
“There are both ginger wafers and lemon wafers back there, and he knows it. Son,” Will Ketchum called, twisting on the seat, “see that tin box with the pretty lady on it? Bring that here; Miss Caulder will open it for you. Take some for yourself, Miss Caulder, and hand me two or three, if you please.”
Nibbling the crisp, sugared cookies, they jolted along in companionable fashion. Buster, sitting on the wagon bottom, clutching a cookie in one hand and, in the other, a small, wooden toy wagon—much like the one in which they rode—was nodding his head sleepily and seemed destined for a nap, whether he wanted one or not.
“Back to our Fielding store,” Will Ketchum said, reverting to their earlier topic of conversation. “We’re fortunate to have it, I guess. Other settlers have to go much farther for much less in the way of supplies. Not to mention the post office—what a blessing that is. One disappointment of this trip is that we aren’t going by Fielding, and Lavinia will miss having mail from her family.
“Yes, we manage to keep body and soul together, with the flour, sugar, tea, oatmeal, and such as that which the Fielding store carries. When the railroad finally reaches us—right now there’s only the main line through to Prince Albert, and it doesn’t branch off—we’ll be much better fixed. Town should grow, too. In the meantime we make do or get friends to bring things for us when they go to Saskatoon. We simply have to go once in a while, though it ends up being a two-day trip.”
Tierney immediately thought of Anne. But would she, a domestic, be given the privilege of taking two days off to go to Saskatoon? She doubted it; Anne would have to survive by herself.
“Did you,” Tierney asked, “coom into Saskatoon yesterday?” It would seem so, the amount of shopping he had done.
“Yes, yesterday, late. It’s hard, almost impossible, to be at the station exactly when a train arrives—it can be delayed by so many things—and so we didn’t make the proper connections with you. I’m sorry about that. Then, I wasn’t sure where you’d be, and I knew we couldn’t start back until today, so I did the buying. This morning I tried to locate you at the Madeleine, and when you weren’t there, checked the hostel. Both are near the railway station and many newcomers or overnighters stay at one or the other.”
“An’ of course, that’s where we were—the hostel.” No mention of Pearly and her trek yesterday, much like this one, to an unknown destination. Where was she now? As lost, in the swirling grasses, as a single grasshopper.
“So I concentrated on the supplies. We try to keep a pantry that’s well stocked. Some homesteaders,” Will flicked the reins on the backs of the plodding team, hurrying their gait, “aren’t as blessed as we are—as soon as we got the chicken investment under way, buildings erected, stock in and all, we were productive. Others have to live on little or nothing for a while, until a crop is harvested. Often they make do on what the land has to offer.”
“An’ that is—”
“Largely rabbits. And large rabbits. Even gophers. Not so large maybe but plentiful.” Again that flicker of fun in the gray eyes. Tierney had an idea that here would be a man of grace and humor, given a chance. But even now, as short a time as he had been here, the work, the care, and the deprivations—having begun to bow his shoulders—were wearing away his zest for fun and frolic. One didn’t laugh at the inconsequential; one didn’t cry at the inconsequential, either, Tierney felt quite sure. Did one learn to become stoic? Tierney wondered, and dreaded that it should happen to her.
Buster had conquered his moment of drowsiness and had crawled under their feet, turned, and was facing them. He had resumed his unblinking study of Tierney’s face. Finally he asked, “What’s your name?”
“I told you her name is Miss Caulder,” his father said patiently.
“I mean, her name name,” the child pursued.
Will Ketchum cocked an eye at Tierney, awaiting an answer.
“My name is Tierney. It was my gran’mither’s name an’ her gran’mither’s name.”
“I have a grandmother. Her name is Gramma.”
“And does she live with you?”
There was more than casual interest in Tierney’s question. She knew so little about the Ketchums. What she had seen thus far, she liked. Would there also be a grandmother or other relatives on the homestead? Perhaps she was trying to stave off the lurking fear of loneliness, or alone-ness, that the very grasses—in their ceaseless, meaningless motion—conjured up.
“My gramma lives in the bush. She does, doesn’t she, Daddy?” The gray eyes, so like his father’s, swung anxiously from Tierney’s face to Will’s, seeking confirmation of his brave statement.
“Indeed she does.”
Immediately, though her vision was filled with flatness and grass, Tierney’s soul was filled with a longing for bush. Never having seen it, she yearned for it—shrub, lone tree, berry patch, bracken, something other than grass.
“It’s not far—that way,” Will Ketchum said, pointing ahead, northward. “We see no sign of it in Fielding and thereabouts, but it’s about as close as you can get and not be there. It begins rather suddenly. First there are some miles of scattered growth, then it thickens, and before you know it, you are into the heart of it.
“Saskatchewan—or the area that will soon be termed the province of Saskatchewan—has two major geographic areas: the lakes, streams, and bogs of the north, which some people call the Canadian Shield and is mostly covered with forest, and the plains region, where we are located. These areas are sort of spliced across the middle by the bush, or parkland—”
“Why isna there trees here, then?”
“Drying winds—”
Tierney’s hand flew to her cheeks; already it seemed dryer than normal.
“—light rainfall, extremely cold winters—”
Tierney, caught up in the telling, found herself shivering. In the hot morning sun, she shivered.
“—fierce snowstorms late in spring and drought in the summer; those are the reasons. Oh, you’ll find water and green growth here and there, in the coulees. We’ll stop at one for a rest and a lunch.”
“Why,” Tierney couldn’t help interjecting, “would y’ choose the prairie rather than the parkland?” Binkiebrae had not been bush, by any means, but neither had it been flat, stretching, endless. Its braes called to Tierney’s homesick heart. Robbie! Tierney turned her thoughts quickly from the stab of pain the memories evoked.
“It’s a matter of choice, I guess. The prairie is so compelling—accommodating so many people—and is so fertile and productive. In the bush there is all that chopping and removing of trees; even then a farm is riddled with sloughs and such, making the acreage for crops much smaller.
“But that’s where Lavinia’s folks live—in a place called Bliss.”
Bliss,” Tierney murmured. “It sounds heavenly.”
“Not necessarily,” the narrator said decidedly. “Bliss isn’t a description—except perhaps to a fortunate few who have actually found it there—but simply a name chosen by the first settler, in honor of himself. Furtnagler Bliss, I think he was, and folks didn’t want to call the place Furtnagler. Just kidding!” he amended hastily, catching a glimpse of Tierney’s astonished face. She’d heard enough strange names here, it seemed, without adding Furtnagler to the list.
Tierney’s laugh mingled with the sound—almost under their wheels—of a meadowlark, both carefree . . . for the moment. But winter—what would it bring, for the bird, and for the domestic? The one could leave at will, and would. The other—Tierney sobered, knowing she was bound here by contract and by circumstance.
At least she wouldn’t be in a soddy! They were passing the sagging remnants of one, deserted and forsaken, and it looked bleak beyond believing. Accustomed as she was to small crofts, often thatched with straw, still the soddy seemed unbearably crude, a hovel of a place.
“Poor folks. Froze out the first winter, I understand,” Will was explaining. “The man tried to get to town for supplies, couldn’t make it, turned back, and they nearly starved to death before a chinook, and a reprieve, rescued them. They lit out for civilization—Saskatoon, that is—before winter closed in again.”
“Are they doin’ a’ reet, then?”
“To my knowledge, they are. As many folks leave as stay, it seems, or at least go to town. There they become good Canadians, opening stores, taking jobs at whatever comes along, helping in one way or another to build the nation. Some, a minority, are desperate enough to go back where they came from.
“By the way,” he said, as though he hadn’t thought to mention it before, “did I tell you I took eggs to town yesterday? We have thousands of chickens, you know, and they are laying well right now. I’m a little foolish, maybe, insisting on a chicken farm, being so far from the railroad; but I’m not the greatest farmer, don’t feel drawn to it. We raise enough for our own flour and grain to feed the chickens and animals. I don’t count on much of an income from the eggs, just enough to keep us going. What will make us cash money is when it’s time to butcher. I like to wait until frost, so they won’t spoil before I get them to the depot—send them off in time for the holiday markets. How are you at butchering?”
“Weel, of course I’ve . . . that is, ducks and geese, and occasionally a hen—” Tierney remembered those offerings brought in by Anne from time to time, and her heart gave a lonely pang.
Will Ketchum grinned. “Don’t worry about it. When that time comes, I hire help.”
And so the morning passed, Tierney learning about the new land to which she had come and to which she had, willingly and by her own decision, committed herself, Will Ketchum a ready narrator. He seemed to have a balanced opinion: seeing the problems but still enamored of the possibilities.
Noon came and with it a stop at a coulee in order that the horses might be watered and graze on the grasses by the stream that still flowed quite freely in its shady depths. After unhitching the animals, Will removed one of the boxes from the wagon, dug around in it, and handed Tierney a tin cup.
“Here. Get yourself a good drink and give one to Buster. We’ll not build a fire and wait for tea, I think. The cool water will be refreshing. As soon as the horses are rested a bit, we’ll go on.”
He produced a box of crackers and a slab of cheese. “Ever make cheese?” he asked, quirking an eyebrow in Tierney’s direction. “Well, you’ll learn; Mrs. Ketchum learned and is quite proud of her success.”
Other than cheese and crackers, there was only another helping of cookies, the tin box growing lighter by the bite. With the last one, Will turned the box upside down, shook out the last crumbs for the ants, and handed it to his son.
“He’s a great gatherer of frogs,” he warned. “Sadly, they don’t live long when he gets them home, but they’re a change from grasshoppers.”
“He plays with . . . grasshoppers?”
“Watch.” Will waited until an especially fat grasshopper settled on a blade of grass nearby, snatched it up, closed his fist around it, and commanded, “Spit tobacco, spit tobacco, spit!”
He opened his hand; the grasshopper leaped away. In his palm was a brown stain.
“What . . . is . . . that?” Tierney asked in a strained voice.
“Well, it ain’t tobacco juice!”
Tierney grimaced, and Will threw back his head and laughed. Buster, watching, laughed, too.
“You do it, Miss Caulder; you do it!” the child demanded.
Tierney cast a desperate look at the father, but Will was blind to her plea. “It won’t hurt you,” he said. “Kids have been performing this minor miracle as long as kids and grasshoppers have coexisted on the prairie.”
At last the ghastly performance was over. Tierney, none the worse for it, felt, actually, a small sense of accomplishment. Certainly she’d never be afraid of grasshoppers again. But she wiped her palm on the grasses on which she was sitting, later washing it thoroughly in the stream, and didn’t feel free of grasshopper “spit” until she did so.
Among the green growth at the edge of the stream a certain small plant grew, catching her attention. None taller than a foot in height, amid its grasslike leaves bloomed a small, clustered, blue-violet flower; its six petal-like segments were star-shaped, with yellow centers and sharply pointed tips. It was beautiful in its daintiness. It was brave in its choice of bed, with the intimidating prairie grasses above and all around.
“What are they?” Tierney asked, enthralled.
“Actually they’re not grass, though the leaves look grassy, but a member of the iris family,” Will explained, taking a handful of them from Buster, who had laid aside his frog tin in favor of other pursuits.
“Put some water in your cup, son,” Will suggested, “and we’ll take the flowers home to Mama. They might live,” he said in an aside to Tierney, “and they might not. But, fresh or wilted, Lavinia will appreciate the effort. She loves beauty.” A spasm crossed his face, a face unremarkable except for its unremarkableness. “And she loves coulees . . . we visit them far too infrequently. Sometimes she goes with me when I go for wood, or, in earlier days, water. Though we’ve got a well now and water is sufficient for the first time since we came, we used to take barrels to the nearest coulee, fill them, lug them home—for drinking, washing, everything.”
Comfortable they might now be, Tierney realized, but the Ketchums had paid a price not figured in dollars and cents. First the soddy . . . then the lack of water . . . whatever else they had been called upon to endure. Tierney was devoutly glad that it was in the past and she would reap the benefits of their sacrifices.
“Now this,” Will said, pointing to a foot-high plant with a lovely greenish shaft of small, spiky flowers, “if I’m not mistaken, is camas. See,” he said, pulling one, “it has a bulbous root. People who don’t know, sometimes mistake it for the prairie onion and eat it to their own harm. It’s definitely poisononous. But,” he thrust the bulb near Tierney’s face, “it doesn’t smell like an onion. That’s the clue.”
“I’m sure I shan’t be eating prairie onions,” Tierney said decidedly. “Or . . . will I?”
Will gave a shout of laughter. The little side trip down into the depths of the coulee was good for him; he seemed to have left his troubles above, on the prairie.
“You never can tell,” he warned. “Now this looks like the coneflower. The Indians make great use of many of these plants . . . they make a tea from the leaves and centers of the flower of this particular one.
“Well, enough nature study,” he said, rising from his knees in the grassy growth. “Actually, I’ve imparted to you just about all I know; it’s too late in the season for buttercups and too early for goldenrod.”
It was just a matter of minutes on Will’s part to hitch the horses, while Tierney gathered up the
remnants of their lunch, packed the box and put it in the wagon, and rounded up the reluctant Buster with his tin of frogs and his cup of flowers. Climbing in, she clung to the seat while Will maneuvered the wagon up the steep bank, away from the small “oasis” and up onto the windswept “desert” again.
But it was no desert. Southeastern Saskatchewan and Alberta did indeed have their semiarid areas and were dominated by short grasses and sages, their shallow, spreading roots readily absorbing the little rainfall and their small leaves helping to conserve moisture despite the scorching sun and drying winds. But here, as in most of Canada’s grassland, rainfall, though light, was not insignificant, and the grass grew to about four feet.
Tierney looked at Buster, intent on play in the bottom of the wagon, and shuddered, realizing his small stature would be completely enveloped by grass if he should roam away. Once surrounded by grass, losing all sense of direction, what hope was there? More than one story of lost children had seeped out to sober prospective settlers; only the desperation of their situation drove them to come ahead anyway, no matter the cost, taking a chance on the very lives of their little ones. The grasses in summer, the blizzards in winter—it was a fearsome place, especially for children who might be lost in them forever.
The prairie was demanding too much of her attention! But what else was there? For miles and miles, in all directions, it stretched, even, it seemed, to infinity. What a relief it was, almost a hysterical relief, to see another wagon approaching. Tierney watched it come as one would watch for Christmas or for the dawn, her attention focused solely on it until it pulled up alongside.
“Hello there,” the unknown driver called, having first hollered, “Whoa!” To have passed without stopping and drawing together in some sort of camaraderie was unthinkable; Tierney could see that.
“Hello, yourself,” Will called jovially. “Name’s Will Ketchum, from over Fielding way.”