Over Prairie Trails (6 page)

Truly, this was very much like lying down in the sleeping-car of an overland train. You recline and act as if nothing unusual were going on; and meanwhile a force that has something irresistible about it and is indeed largely beyond your control, wafts you over mile after mile of fabled distance; now and then the rumble of car on rail will stop, the quiet awakens you, lights flash their piercing darts, a voice calls out; it is a well known stop on your journey and then the rumbling resumes, you doze again, to be awakened again, and so on. And when you get up in the morning – there she lies, the goal of your dreams the resplendent city….

My goal was my “home,” and mildly startling, at least one such mid-nightly awakening came. I had kept peering about for a landmark, a light. Somewhere here in those
farmhouses which I saw with my mind’s eye, people were sitting around their fireside, chatting or reading. Lamps shed their homely light; roof and wall kept the fog-spook securely out: nothing as comfortable then as to listen to stories of being lost on the marsh, or to tell them…. But between those people and myself the curtain had fallen – no sign of their presence, no faintest gleam of their light and warmth! They did not know of the stranger passing outside, his whole being a-yearn with the desire for wife and child. I listened intently – no sound of man or beast, no soughing of wind in stems or rustling of the very last leaves that were now fast falling…. And then the startling neighing of Dan, my horse! This was the third trip he made with me, and I might have known and expected it, but it always came as a surprise. Whenever we passed that second farm, he stopped and raising his head, with a sideways motion, neighed a loud and piercing call. And now he had stopped and done it again. He knew where we were. I lowered my whip and patted his rump. How did he know? And why did he do it? Was there a horse on this farmstead which he had known in former life? Or was it a man? Or did he merely feel that it was about time to put in for the night? I enquired later on, but failed to discover any reason for his behaviour.

Now came that angling road past the “White Range Line House.” I relied on the horses entirely. This “Range Line House” was inhabited now – a settler was putting in winter-residence so he might not lose his claim. He had taken down the clapboards that closed the windows, and always had I so far seen a light in the house.

It seemed to me that in this corner of the marsh the fog was less dense than it had been farther south, and the horses, once started, were swinging along, though in a leisurely way, yet without hesitation. Another half hour passed.
Once, at a bend in the trail, the rays from the powerful tractor searchlight, sweeping sideways past the horses, struck a wetly glistening, greyish stone to the right of the road. I knew that stone. Yes, surely the fog must be thinning, or I could not have seen it. I could now also dimly make out the horses’ heads, as they nodded up and down….

And then, like a phantom, way up in the mist, I made out a blacker black in the black – the majestic poplars north of the “Range Line House.” Not that I could really see them or pick out the slightest detail – no! But it seemed to my searching eyes as if there was a quiet pool in the slow flow of the fog – as the water in a slow flowing stream will come to rest when it strikes the stems of a willow submerged at its margin. I was trying even at the time to decide how much of what I seemed to divine rather than to perceive was imagination and how much reality. And I was just about ready to contend that I also saw to the north something like the faintest possible suggestion of an eddy, such as would form in the flowing water below a pillar or a rock – when I was rudely shaken up and jolted.

Trap, trap, I heard the horses’ feet on the culvert. Crash! And Peter went stumbling down. Then a violent lurch of the buggy, I holding on – Peter rallied, and then, before I had time to get a firmer grasp on the lines, both horses bolted again. It took me some time to realize what had happened. It was the culvert, of course; it had broken down, and lucky I was that the ditch underneath was shallow. Only much later, when reflecting upon the incident, did I see that this accident was really the best verification of what I was nearly inclined to regard as the product of my imagination. The trees must indeed have stood where I had seemed to see that quiet reach in the fog and that eddy….

We tore along. I spoke to the horses and quietly and evenly pulled at the lines. I think it must have been several minutes before I had them under control again. And then – in this night of weird things – the weirdest sight of them all showed ahead.

I was just beginning to wonder, whether after all we had not lost the road again, when the faintest of all faint glimmers began to define itself somewhere in front. And … was I right? Yes, a small, thin voice came out of the fog that incessantly floated into my cone of light and was left behind in eddies. What did it mean? …

The glimmer was now defining itself more clearly. Somewhere, not very far ahead and slightly to the left, a globe of the faintest iridescent luminosity seemed suspended in the brewing and waving mist. The horses turned at right angles on to the bridge, the glimmer swinging round to the other side of the buggy. Their hoofs struck wood, and both beasts snorted and stopped.

In a flash a thought came. I had just broken through a culvert – the bridge, too, must have broken down, and somebody had put a light there to warn the chance traveller who might stray along on a night like this! I was on the point of getting out of my wraps, when a thinner wave in the mist permitted me to see the flames of three lanterns hung to the side-rails of the bridge. And that very moment a thin, piping voice came out of the darkness beyond. “Daddy, is that you?” I did not know the child’s voice, but I sang out as cheerily as I could. “I am a daddy all right, but I am afraid, not yours. Is the bridge broken down, sonny? Anything wrong?” “No, Sir,” the answer came, “nothing wrong.” So I pulled up to the lanterns, and there I saw, dimly enough, God wot, a small, ten-year old boy standing and shivering by the signal which
he had rigged up. He was barefooted and bareheaded, in shirt and torn knee-trousers. I pointed to the lanterns with my whip. “What’s the meaning of this, my boy?” I asked in as friendly a voice as I could muster. “Daddy went to town this morning,” he said rather haltingly, “and he must have got caught in the fog. We were afraid he might not find the bridge.” “Well, cheer up, son,” I said, “he is not the only one as you see; his horses will know the road. Where did he go?” The boy named the town – it was to the west, not half the distance away that I had come. “Don’t worry,” I said; “I don’t think he has started out at all. The fog caught me about sixteen miles south of here. It’s nine o’clock now. If he had started before the fog got there, he would be here by now.” I sat and thought for a moment. Should I say anything about the broken culvert? “Which way would your daddy come, along the creek or across the marsh?” “Along the creek.” All right then, no use in saying anything further. “Well, as I said,” I sang out and clicked my tongue to the horses, “don’t worry; better go home; he will come to-morrow.” “I guess so,” replied the boy the moment I lost sight of him and the lanterns.

I made the turn to the southeast and walked my horses. Here, where the trail wound along through the chasm of the bush, the light from my cone would, over the horses’ backs, strike twigs and leaves now and then. Everything seemed to drip and to weep. All nature was weeping. I walked the horses for ten minutes more. Then I stopped. It must have been just at the point where the grade began; but I do not know for sure.

I fumbled a long while for my shoes; but at last I found them and put them on over my dry woollens. When I had shaken myself out of my robes, I jumped to the ground. There was, here, too, a film of mud on top, but otherwise the road was firm enough. I quickly threw the blankets over the horses’
backs, dropped the traces, took the bits out of their mouths, and slipped the feed-bags over their heads. I looked at my watch, for it was my custom to let them eat for just ten minutes, then to hook them up again and walk them for another ten before trotting. I had found that that refreshed them enough to make the remainder of the trip in excellent shape.

While I was waiting, I stood between the wheels of the buggy, leaning against the box and staring into the light. It was with something akin to a start that I realized the direction from which the fog rolled by: it came from the south! I had, of course, seen that already, but it had so far not entered my consciousness as a definite observation. It was this fact that later set me to thinking about the origin of the fog along the lines which I have indicated above. Again I marvelled at the density of the mist which somehow seemed greater while we were standing than while we were driving. I had repeatedly been in the clouds, on mountainsides, but they seemed light and thin as compared with this. Finland, Northern Sweden, Canada – no other country which I knew had anything resembling it. The famous London fogs are different altogether. These mists, like the mist pools, need the swamp as their mother, I suppose, and the ice-cool summer night for their nurse….

The time was up. I quickly did what had to be done, and five minutes later we were on the road again. I watched the horses for a while, and suddenly I thought once more of that fleeting impression of an eddy in the lee of the poplar bluff at the “White Range Line House.” It was on the north side of the trees, if it was there at all! The significance of the fact had escaped me at the time. It again confirmed my observation of the flow of the fog in both directions. It came from a common centre. And still there was no breath of air. I had
no doubt any longer; it was not the air that pushed the fog; the floating bubbles, the infinitesimally small ones as well as those that were quite perceptible, simply displaced the lighter atmosphere. I wondered what kept these bubbles apart. Some repellent force with which they were charged? Something, at any rate, must be preventing them from coalescing into rain. Maybe it was merely the perfect evenness of their flow, for they gathered thickly enough on the twigs and the few dried leaves, on any obstacles in their way. And again I thought of the fact that the mist had seemed thinner when I came out on the marsh. This double flow explained it, of course. There were denser and less dense waves in it: like veils hung up one behind the other. So long as I went in a direction opposite to its flow, I had to look through sheet after sheet of the denser waves. Later I could every now and then look along a plane of lesser density….

It was Dan who found the turn off the grade into the bushy glades. I could see distinctly how he pushed Peter over. Here, where again the road was winding, and where the light, therefore, once more frequently struck the twigs and boughs, as they floated into my cone of luminosity, to disappear again behind, a new impression thrust itself upon me. I call it an impression, not an observation. It is very hard to say, what was reality, what fancy on a night like that. In spite of its air of unreality, of improbability even, it has stayed with me as one of my strongest visions. I nearly hesitate to put it in writing.

These boughs and twigs were like fingers held into a stream that carried loose algae, arresting them in their gliding motion. Or again, those wisps of mist were like gossamers as they floated along, and they would bend and fold over on the boughs before they tore; and where they broke, they seemed like comets to trail a thinner tail of themselves behind. There
was tenacity in them, a certain consistency which made them appear as if woven of different things from air and mere moisture. I have often doubted my memory here, and yet I have my very definite notes, and besides there is the picture in my mind. In spite of my own uncertainty I can assure you, that this is only one quarter a poem woven of impressions; the other three quarters are reality. But, while I am trying to set down facts, I am also trying to render moods and images begot by them….

We went on for an hour, and it lengthened out into two. No twigs and boughs any longer, at last. But where I was, I knew not. Much as I listened, I could not make out any difference in the tramp of the horses now. I looked down over the back of my buggy seat, and I seemed to see the yellow or brownish clay of a grade. I went on rather thoughtlessly. Then, about eleven o’clock, I noticed that the road was rough. I had long since, as I said, given myself over to the horses. But now I grew nervous. No doubt, unless we had entirely strayed from our road, we were by this time riding the last dam; for no other trail over which we went was quite so rough. But then I should have heard the rumble on the bridge, and I felt convinced that I had not. It shows to what an extent a man may be hypnotised into insensibility by a constant sameness of view, that I was mistaken. If we were on the dam and missed the turn at the end of it, on to the correction line, we should infallibly go down from the grade, on to muskeg ground, for there was a gap in the dam. At that place I had seen a horse disappear, and many a cow had ended there in the deadly struggle against the downward suck of the swamp….

I pulled the horses back to a walk, and we went on for another half hour. I was by this time sitting on the left hand side of the side, bicycle lantern in my left hand, and bending
over as far as I could to the left, trying, with arm outstretched, to reach the ground with my light. The lantern at the back of the buggy was useless for this. Here and there the drop-laden, glistening tops of the taller grasses and weeds would float into this auxiliary cone of light – but that was all.

Then no weeds appeared any longer, so I must be on the last half-mile of the dam, the only piece of it that was bare and caution extreme was the word. I made up my mind to go on riding for another five minutes and timed myself, for there was hardly enough room for a team and a walking man besides. When the time was up, I pulled in and got out. I took the lines short, laid my right hand on Peter’s back and proceeded. The bicycle lantern was hanging down from my left and showed plainly the clayey gravel of the dam. And so I walked on for maybe ten minutes.