Chapter 11. The Edmonton Trail

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_ CHAPTER XI. THE EDMONTON TRAIL

Straight across the country, winding over plains, around sleughs, threading its way through bluffs, over prairie undulations, fording streams and crossing rivers, and so making its course northwest from Winnipeg for nine hundred miles, runs the Edmonton trail.

Macmillan was the last of that far-famed and adventurous body of men who were known all through the western country for their skill, their courage, their endurance in their profession of freighters from Winnipeg to the far outpost of Edmonton and beyond into the Peace River and Mackenzie River districts. The building of railroads cut largely into their work, and gradually the freighters faded from the trails. Old Sam Macmillan was among the last of his tribe left upon the Edmonton trail. He was a master in his profession. In the packing of his goods with their almost infinite variety, in the making up of his load, he was possessed of marvellous skill, while on the trail itself he was easily king of them all.

Macmillan was a big silent Irishman, raw boned, hardy, and with a highly developed genius for handling ox or horse teams of any size in a difficult bit of road, and possessing as well a unique command of picturesque and varied profanity. These gifts he considered as necessarily related, and the exercise of each was always in conjunction with the other, for no man ever heard Macmillan swear in ordinary conversation or on commonplace occasions. But when his team became involved in a sleugh, it was always a point of doubt whether he aroused more respect and admiration in his attendants by his rare ability to get the last ounce of hauling power out of his team or by the artistic vividness and force of the profanity expended in producing this desired result. It is related that on an occasion when he had as part of his load the worldly effects of an Anglican Bishop en route to his heroic mission to the far North, the good Bishop, much grieved at Macmillan's profanity, urged upon him the unnecessary character of this particular form of encouragement.

"Is it swearing Your Riverence objects to?" said Macmillan, whose vocabulary still retained a slight flavour of the Old Land. "I do assure you that they won't pull a pound without it."

But the Bishop could not be persuaded of this, and urged upon Macmillan the necessity of eliminating this part of his persuasion.

"Just as you say, Your Riverence. I ain't hurried this trip and we'll do our best."

The next bad sleugh brought opportunity to make experiment of the new system. The team stuck fast in the black muck, and every effort to extricate them served only to imbed them more hopelessly in the sticky gumbo. Time passed on. A dark and lowering night was imminent. The Bishop grew anxious. Macmillan, with whip and voice, encouraged his team, but all in vain. The Bishop's anxiety increased with the approach of a threatening storm.

"It is growing late, Mr. Macmillan, and it looks like rain. Something must be done."

"It does that, Your Lordship, but the brutes won't pull half their own weight without I speak to them in the way they are used to."

The good man was in a sore strait. Another half hour passed, and still with no result. It was imperative that his goods should be brought under cover before the storm should break. Again the good Bishop urged Macmillan to more strenuous effort.

"We can't stay here all night, sir," he said. "Surely something can be done."

"Well, I'll tell Your Lordship, it's one of two things, stick or swear, and there's nothing else for it."

"Well, well, Mr. Macmillan," said the Bishop resignedly, "we must get on. Do as you think best, but I take no responsibility in the matter." At which Pilate's counsel he retired from the scene, leaving Macmillan an untrammelled course.

Macmillan seized the reins from the ground, and walking up and down the length of his six-horse team, began to address them singly and in the mass in terms so sulphurously descriptive of their ancestry, their habits, and their physical and psychological characteristics, that when he gave the word in a mighty culminating roar of blasphemous excitation, each of the bemired beasts seemed to be inspired with a special demon, and so exerted itself to the utmost limit of its powers that in a single minute the load stood high and dry on solid ground.

One other characteristic made Macmillan one of the most trusted of the freighters upon the trail. While in charge of his caravan he was an absolute teetotaler, making up, however, for this abstinence at the end of the trip by a spree whose duration was limited only by the extent of his credit.

It was to Mr. Macmillan's care that Mrs. French had committed Kalman with many and anxious injunctions, and it is Macmillan's due to say that every moment of that four weeks' journey was one of undiluted delight to the boy, although it is to be feared that not the least enjoyable moments in that eventful journey were those when he stood lost in admiration while his host, with the free use of his sulphurously psychological lever, pried his team out of the frequent sleughs that harassed the trail. And before Macmillan had delivered up his charge, his pork and hard tack, aided by the ardent suns and sweeping winds of the prairie, had done their work, so that it was a brown and thoroughly hardy looking lad that was handed over to Jimmy Green at the Crossing.

"Here is Jack French's boy," said Macmillan. "And it's him that's got the ear for music. In another trip he'll dust them horses out of a hole with any of us. Swear! Well, I should smile! By the powers! he makes me feel queer."

"Swear," echoed a thick voice from behind the speaker, "who's swearing?"

"Hello! Jack," said Macmillan quietly. "Got a jag on, eh?"

"Attend to your own business, sir," said Jack French, whose dignity grew and whose temper shortened with every bottle. "Answer my question, sir. Who is swearing?"

"Oh, there's nothing to it, Jack," said Macmillan. "I was telling Jimmy here that that's a mighty smart boy of yours, and with a great tongue for language."

"I'll break his back," growled Jack French, his face distorted with a scowl. "Look here, boy," he continued, whirling fiercely upon the lad, "you are sent to me by the best woman on earth to make a man of you, and I'll have no swearing on my ranch," delivering himself of which sentiment punctuated by a _feu de joie_ of muddled oaths, he lurched away into the back shop and fell into a drunken sleep, leaving the boy astonished and for some minutes speechless.

"Is that her brother?" he asked at length, when he had found voice.

"Whose brother?" said Jimmy Green.

"Yes, boy, that's her brother," said Macmillan. "But that is not himself any more than a mad dog. Jimmy here has been filling him up," shaking his finger at the culprit, "which he had no right to do, knowing Jack French as he does, by the same token."

"Oh, come on, Mac," said Jimmy apologetically. "You know Jack French, and when he gets a-goin' could I stop him? No, nor you."

Next morning when Kalman came forth from the loft which served Jimmy Green as store room for his marvellously varied merchandise, he found that Macmillan had long since taken the trail and was by this time miles on his journey toward Edmonton. The boy was lonely and sick at heart. Macmillan had been a friend to him, and had constituted the last link that held him to the life he had left behind in the city. It was to Macmillan that the little white-faced lady who was to the boy the symbol of all that was high and holy in character, had entrusted him for safe deliverance to her brother Jack French. Kalman had spent an unhappy night, his sleep being broken by the recurring vision of the fierce and bloated face of the man who had cursed him and threatened him on the previous evening. The boy had not yet recovered from the horror and surprise of his discovery that this drunken and brutalized creature was the noble-hearted brother into whose keeping his friend and benefactress had given him. That a man should drink himself drunk was nothing to his discredit in Kalman's eyes, but that Mrs. French's brother, the loved and honoured gentleman whom she had taught him to regard as the ideal of all manly excellence, should turn out to be this bloated and foul-mouthed bully, shocked him inexpressibly. From these depressing thoughts he was aroused by a cheery voice.

"Hello! my boy, had breakfast?"

He turned quickly and beheld a tall, strongly made and handsome man of middle age, clean shaven, neatly groomed, and with a fine open cheery face.

"No, sir," he stammered, with unusual politeness in his tone, and staring with all his eyes.

It was Jack French who addressed him, but this handsome, kindly, well groomed man was so different from the man who had reeled over him and poured forth upon him his abusive profanity the night before, that his mind refused to associate the one with the other.

"Well, boy," said Jack French, "you must be hungry. Jimmy, anything left for the boy?"

"Lots, Jack," said Jimmy eagerly, as if relieved to see him clothed again and in his right mind. "The very best. Here, boy, set in here." He opened a door which led into a side room where the remains of breakfast were disclosed upon the table. "Bacon and eggs, my boy, eggs! mind you, and Hudson's Bay biscuit and black strap. How's that?"

The boy, still lost in wonder, fell to with a great access of good cheer, and made a hearty meal, while outside he could hear Jack French's clear, cheery, commanding voice directing the packing of his buckboard.

The packing of the buckboard was a business calling for some skill. In the box seat were stowed away groceries and small parcels for the ranch and for settlers along the trail. Upon the boards behind the seat were loaded and roped securely, sides of pork, a sack of flour, and various articles for domestic use. Last of all, and with great care, French disposed a mysterious case packed with straw, the contents of which were perfectly well known to the boy.

The buckboard packed, there followed the process of hitching up, --a process at once spectacular and full of exciting incident, for the trip to the Crossing was to the bronchos, unbroken even to the halter, their first experience in the ways of civilized man. Wild, timid and fiercely vicious, they were brought in from their night pickets on a rope, holding back hard, plunging, snorting, in terror, and were tied up securely in an out shed. There was no time spent in gentle persuasion. French took a collar and without hesitation, but without haste, walked quietly to the side of one of the shuddering ponies, a buckskin, and paying no heed to its frantic plunging, slipped it over his neck, keeping close to the pony's side and crowding it hard against the wall. The rest of the harness offered more difficulty. The pony went wild at every approach of the trailing straps and buckles. Kalman looked on in admiration while French, without loss of temper, without oath or objurgation, went on quietly with his work.

"Have to put a hitch on him, Jimmy, I guess," said French after he had failed in repeated attempts.

Jimmy took a thin strong line of rope, put a running noose around the pony's jaw, threw the end over its neck and back through the noose again, thus making a most cruel bridle, and gave the rope a single sharp jerk. The broncho fell back upon its haunches, and before it had recovered from its pain and surprise, French had the harness on its back and buckled into place.

The second pony, a piebald or pinto, needed no "Commache hitch," but submitted to the harnessing process without any great protest.

"Bring him along, Jimmy," said French, leading out the pinto.

But this was easier said than done, for the buckskin after being faced toward the door, set his feet firmly in front of him and refused to budge an inch.

"Touch him up behind, boy," said Green to Kalman, who stood by eager to assist.

Kalman sprang forward with a stick in his hand, dodged under the poles which formed the sides of the stall, and laid a resounding whack upon the pony's flank. There was a flash of heels, a bang on the shed wall, a plunge forward, and the pony was found clear of the shed and Kalman senseless on the ground.

"Jimmy, you eternal fool!" cried French, "hold this rope!" He ran to the boy and picked him up in his arms. "The boy is killed, and there'll be the very deuce to pay."

He laid the insensible lad on the grass, ran for a pail of water and dashed a portion of it in his face. In a few moments the boy opened his eyes with a long deep sigh, and closed them again as if in contented slumber. French took a flask from his pocket, opened the boy's mouth, and poured some of its contents between his lips. At once Kalman began to cough, sat up, and gazed around in a stupid manner upon the ponies and the men.

"He's out," he said at length, with his eyes upon the pinto.

"Out? Who's out?" cried French.

"Judas priest!" exclaimed Jimmy, using his favourite oath. "He means the broncho."

"By Jove! he _is_ out, boy," said French, "and you are as near out as you are likely to be for some time to come. What in great Caesar's name were you trying to do?"

"He wouldn't move," said the boy simply, "and I hit him."

"Listen here, boy," said Jimmy Green solemnly, "when you go to hit a broncho again, don't take anything short of a ten-foot pole, unless you're on top of him."

The boy said nothing in reply, but got up and began to walk about, still pale and dazed.

"Good stuff, eh, Jimmy?" said French, watching him carefully.

"You bet!" said Jimmy, "genuine clay."

"It is exceptionally lucky that you were standing so near the little beast," said French to the boy. "Get into the buckboard here, and sit down."

Kalman climbed in, and from that point of vantage watched the rest of the hitching process. By skillful manoeuvring the two men led, backed, shoved the ponies into position, and while one held them by the heads, the other hitched the traces. Carefully French looked over all straps and buckles, drew the lines free, and then mounting the buckboard seat, said quietly, "Stand clear, Jimmy. Let them go." Which Jimmy promptly did.

For a few moments they stood surprised at their unexpected freedom, and uncertain what to do with it, then they moved off slowly a few steps till the push of the buckboard threw them into a sudden terror, and the fight was on. Plunging, backing, kicking, jibing, they finally bolted, fortunately choosing the trail that led in the right direction.

"Good-by, Jimmy. See you later," sang out French as, with cool head and steady hand, he directed the running ponies.

"Jumpin' cats!" replied Jimmy soberly, "don't look as if you would," as the bronchos tore up the river bank at a terrific gallop.

Before they reached the top French had them in hand, and going more smoothly, though still running at top speed. Kalman sat clinging to the rocking, pitching buckboard, his eyes alight and his face aglow with excitement. There was stirring in the boy's brain a dim and far-away memory of wild rides over the steppes of Southern Russia, and French, glancing now and then at his glowing face, nodded grim approval.

"Afraid, boy?" he shouted over the roar and rattle of the pitching buckboard.

Kalman looked up and smiled, and then with a great oath he cried, "Let them go!"

Jack French was startled. He hauled up the ponies sharply and turned to the boy at his side.

"Boy, where did you learn that?"

"What?" asked the boy in surprise.

"Where did you learn to swear like that?"

"Why," said Kalman, "they all do it."

"Who all?"

"Why, everybody in Winnipeg."

"Does Mrs. French?" said Jack quietly.

The boy's face flushed hotly.

"No, no," he said vehemently, "never her." Then after a pause and an evident struggle, "She wants me to stop, but all the men and the boys do it."

"Kalman," said French solemnly, "no one swears on my ranch."

Kalman was perplexed, remembering the scene of the previous night.

"But you--" he began, and then paused.

"Boy," repeated French with added solemnity, "swearing is a foolish and unnecessary evil. There is no swearing on my ranch. Promise me you will give up this habit."

"I will not," said the boy promptly, "for I would break my word. Don't you swear?"

French hesitated, and then as if forming a sudden resolution he replied, "When you hear me swear you can begin. And if you don't mean to quit, don't promise. A gentleman always keeps his word."

The boy looked him steadily in the eye and then said, as if pondering this remark, "I remember. I know. My father said so."

French forbore to press the matter further, but for both man and boy an attempt at a new habit of speech began that day.

Once clear of the Saskatchewan River, the trail led over rolling prairie, set out with numerous "bluffs" of western maple and poplar, and diversified with sleughs and lakes of varying size, a country as richly fertile and as fair to look upon as is given the eyes of man to behold anywhere in God's good world. In the dullest weather this rolling, tree-decked, sleugh-gemmed prairie presents a succession of scenes surpassingly beautiful, but with a westering sun upon it, and on a May day, it offers such a picture as at once entrances the soul and lives forever in the memory. The waving lines, the rounded hills, the changing colour, the chasing shadows on grass and bluff and shimmering water, all combine to make in the soul high music unto God.

For an hour and more the buckboard hummed along the trail smooth and winding, the bronchos pulling hard on the lines without a sign of weariness, till the bluffs began to grow thicker and gradually to close into a solid belt of timber. Beyond this belt of timber lay the Ruthenian Colony but newly placed. The first intimation of the proximity of this colony came in quite an unexpected way. Swinging down a sharp hill through a bluff, the bronchos came upon a man with a yoke of oxen hauling a load of hay. Before their course could be checked the ponies had pitched heavily into the slow moving and terrified oxen, and so disconcerted them that they swerved from the trail and upset the load. Immediately there rose a volley of shrill execrations in the Galician tongue.

"Whoa, buck! Steady there!" cried Jack French cheerily as he steered his team past the wreck. "Too bad that, we must go back and help to repair damages."

He tied the bronchos securely to a tree and went back to offer aid. The Galician, a heavily-built man, was standing on the trail with a stout stake in his hand, viewing the ruins of his load and expressing his emotions in voluble Galician profanity with a bad mixture of halting and broken English. Kalman stood beside French with wrath growing in his face.

"He is calling you very bad names!" he burst out at length.

French glanced down at the boy's angry face and smiled.

"Oh, well, it will do him good. He will feel better when he gets it all out. And besides, he has rather good reason to be angry."

"He says he is going to kill you," said Kalman in a low voice, keeping close to French's side.

"Oh! indeed," said French cheerfully, walking straight upon the man. "That is awkward. But perhaps he will change his mind."

This calm and cheerful front produced its impression upon the excited Galician.

"Too bad, neighbour," said French in a loud, cheerful tone as he drew near.

The Galician, who had recovered something of his fury, damped to a certain extent by French's calm and cheerful demeanour, began to gesticulate with his stake. French turned his back upon him and proceeded to ascertain the extent of the wreck, and to advise a plan for its repair. As he stooped to examine the wagon for breakages, the wrathful Galician suddenly swung his club in the air, but before the blow fell, Kalman shrieked out in the Galician tongue, "You villain! Stop!"

This unexpected cry in his own speech served at once to disconcert the Galician's aim, and to warn his intended victim. French, springing quickly aside, avoided the blow and with one stride he was upon the Galician, wrenched the stake from his grasp, and, taking him by the back of the neck, faced him toward the front wheels of the wagon, saying, as he did so, "Here, you idiot! take hold and pull."

The strength of that grip on his neck produced a salutary effect upon the excited Galician. He stood a few moments dazed, looking this way and that way, as if uncertain how to act.

"Tell the fool," said French to Kalman quietly, "to get hold of those front wheels and pull."

The boy stood amazed.

"Ain't you going to lick him?" he said.

"Haven't time just now," said French cheerfully.

"But he might have killed you."

"Would have if you hadn't yelled. I'll remember that too, my boy. But he didn't, and he won't get another chance. Tell him to take hold and pull."

Kalman turned to the subdued and uncertain Galician, and poured forth a volume of angry abuse while he directed him as to his present duty. Humbly enough the Galician took hold, and soon the wagon was put to rights, and after half an hour's work, was loaded again and ready for its further journey.

By this time the man had quite recovered his temper and stood for some time after all was ready, silent and embarrassed. Then he began to earnestly address French, with eager gesticulations.

"What is it?" said French.

"He says he is very sorry, and feels very bad here," said Kalman, pointing to his heart, "and he wants to do something for you."

"Tell him," said French cheerfully, "only a fool loses his temper, and only a cad uses a club or a knife when he fights."

Kalman looked puzzled.

"A cat?"

"No, a cad. Don't you know what a cad is? Well, a cad is--hanged if I know how to put it--you know what a gentleman is?"

Kalman nodded.

"Well, the other thing is a cad."

The Galician listened attentively while Kalman explained, and made humble and deprecating reply.

"He says," interpreted Kalman, "that he is very sorry, but he wants to know what you fight with. You can't hurt a man with your hands."

"Can't, eh?" said French. "Tell him to stand up here to me."

The Galician came up smiling, and French proceeded to give him his first lesson in the manly art, Kalman interpreting his directions.

"Put up your hands so. Now I am going to tap your forehead."

Tap, tap, went French's open knuckles upon the Galician's forehead.

"Look out, man."

Tap, tap, tap, the knuckles went rapping on the man's forehead, despite his flying arms.

"Now," said French, "hit me."

The Galician made a feeble attempt.

"Oh, don't be afraid. Hit me hard."

The Galician lunged forward, but met rigid arms.

"Come, come," said French, reaching him sharply on the cheek with his open hand, "try better than that."

Again the Galician struck heavily with his huge fists, and again French, easily parrying, tapped him once, twice, thrice, where he would, drawing tears to the man's eyes. The Galician paused with a scornful exclamation.

"He says that's nothing," interpreted Kalman. "You can't hurt a man that way."

"Can't, eh? Tell him to come on, but to look out."

Again the Galician came forward, evidently determined to land one blow at least. But French, taking the blow on his guard, replied with a heavy left-hander fair on the Galician's chest, lifted him clear off his feet and hurled him breathless against his load of hay. The man recovered himself, grinning sheepishly, nodding his head vigorously and talking rapidly.

"That is enough. He says he would like to learn how to do that. That is better than a club," interpreted Kalman.

"Tell him that his people must learn to fight without club or knife. We won't stand that in this country. It lands them in prison or on the gallows."

Kalman translated, his own face fiery red meanwhile, and his own appearance one of humiliation. He was wondering how much of his own history this man knew.

"Good-by," said French, holding out his hand to the Galician.

The man took it and raised it to his lips.

"He says he thanks you very much, and he wishes you to forget his badness."

"All right, old man," said French cheerfully. "See you again some day."

And so they parted, Kalman carrying with him an uncomfortable sense of having been at various times in his life something of a cad, and a fear lest this painful fact should be known to his new master and friend.

"Well, youngster," said French, noticing his glum face, "you did me a good turn that time. That beggar had me foul then, sure enough, and I won't forget it."

Kalman brightened up under his words, and without further speech, each busy with himself, they sped along the trail till the day faded toward the evening.

But the Edmonton trail that day set its mark on the lives of boy and man,--a mark that was never obliterated. To Kalman the day brought a new image of manhood. Of all the men whom he knew there was none who could command his loyalty and enthral his imagination. It is true, his father had been such a man, but now his father moved in dim shadow across the horizon of his memory. Here was a man within touch of his hand who illustrated in himself those qualities that to a boy's heart and mind combine to make a hero. With what ease and courage and patience and perfect self-command he had handled those plunging bronchos! The same qualities too, in a higher degree, had marked his interview with the wrathful and murderous Galician, and, in addition, all that day Kalman had been conscious of a consideration and a quickness of sympathy in his moods that revealed in this man of rugged strength and forceful courage a subtle something that marks the finer temper and nobler spirit, the temper and the spirit of the gentleman. Not that Kalman could name this thing, but to his sensitive soul it was this in the man that made appeal and that called forth his loyal homage.

To French, too, the day had brought thoughts and emotions that had not stirred within him since those days of younger manhood twenty years ago when the world was still a place of dreams and life a tourney where glory might be won. The boy's face, still with its spiritual remembrances in spite of all the sordidness of his past, the utter and obvious surrender of soul that shone from his eyes, made the man almost shudder with a new horror of the foulness that twenty years of wild license upon the plains had flung upon him. A fierce hate of what he had become, an appalling vision of what he was expected to be, grew upon him as the day drew to a close. Gladly would he have refused the awful charge of this young soul as yet unruined that so plainly exalted him to a place among the gods, but for a vision that he carried ever in his heart of a face sad and sweet and eloquent with trustful love.

"No, by Jove!" he said to himself between his shut teeth, "I can't funk it. I'd be a cad if I did."

And with these visions and these resolvings they, boy and man, swung off from the Edmonton trail black and well worn, and into the half-beaten track that led to Wakota, the centre of the Galician colony. _

Read next: Chapter 12. The Making Of A Man

Read previous: Chapter 10. Jack French Of The Night Hawk Ranch

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