Ticket to Curlew (2 page)

WHEN SAM CRAWLED
out of the tent the next morning the sky was pink from horizon to horizon. Pa was busy at the little stove, and Sam sat on his heels and watched the pink grow paler and paler as the sun rose. He waited until the sky was a cloudless blue before he splashed some water from the wash bowl onto his face. Pa had already used that water but it wasn't really dirty. They had to be careful with water. Until they had a well, every drop had to be hauled from town.

Breakfast was oatmeal with dried apples cooked in it, and tea with canned milk. There was no chance of fresh milk until the cows arrived.

After they had eaten, Pa said, “I'm going to go into town and get some advice about a well. I'll feel more comfortable when we have water on the place. You had better come with me. You might get lonely out here.”

Sam didn't want to go to town. It would just mean waiting around while Pa talked endlessly with strangers. He looked at the rippling grass spreading all around him and tried to think of a good reason to stay.

“I thought I'd take a walk,” he said. “I've been cooped up for a long time.”

Pa started to shake his head. Sam added quickly, “We're going to live here, Pa. I can't be going with you every time you leave our place.”

“That's true,” said Pa. “I guess we both have to get used to being here on our own. But don't go far, son. Keep the tent in sight. That way I won't have to spend valuable time looking for you.” He grinned and ruffled Sam's hair.

While Pa hitched up the team Sam made himself busy tidying the supplies in the lean-to. He didn't watch Pa drive away but he could hear the empty wagon jouncing over the ruts in the track. He knew if he saw it getting smaller and smaller until it disappeared he would feel too alone. So he went into the tent and wrote a letter to Mama and Josie and Matt. Pa could mail it the next time he went to Curlew.

Sam wanted to say something encouraging. “We're all settled on our place,” he wrote. “At least we're settled in the tent. We haven't met any neighbors yet. There's going to be a school so I guess there are some children around, but I haven't seen any.” He didn't want to mention that any neighbors must be miles and miles away.

He stopped writing. Maybe by the next time Pa went to town he would have something funny to tell them. It was strange to think of Mama and the others in the white frame house in Iowa. They were probably sorting out things to bring to a house that wasn't even built yet.

Sam put the letter paper back in his satchel. He decided to explore. There must be something on their land that he couldn't see from here. He wasn't sure where their two quarter sections ended to the east, but he knew Pa's land extended some distance to the north, so he headed that way.

He didn't need Pa's warning. He found himself turning often to be sure the tent was still in sight. There was no other landmark to guide him, and his steps left no mark on the springy grass. Prairie wool, Chalkey called it. It was dry and matted underneath with light straight grasses rising from the thick base. There were little blue and purple flowers, too.

Studying the prairie wool Sam saw that there were gopher holes everywhere. It wasn't long before a gopher poked its head out and stared at him. “I wonder if you've ever seen a person before,” Sam said to it. The gopher ducked back into the earth.

Now Sam saw that there were faint pathways in the grass that must be the trails of other small animals. Probably rabbits. Maybe Pa would let him shoot a rabbit for dinner sometime. Last night they had had sausage and biscuits. Sausage preserved in lard was the only meat they could bring with them. Already Sam could tell he was going to get pretty tired of it.

He figured he had walked about a mile and the tent was just a little bump far behind him when he saw something white gleaming through the grass up ahead. He couldn't imagine what it was. Pure white and smooth. Bigger than a bucket.

Sam walked faster. Was it a stone? Out here a white stone would seem as strange and foreign as a seashell.

But it wasn't a stone. It was a skull. The huge skull of an animal. An animal with horns. Like a bull, but not quite like a bull.

Suddenly Sam knew. It was a buffalo skull.

Pa had told him about the buffalo, how they used to cover the plains in the thousands and how in recent years they had nearly been killed off by hunters for their skins and tongues. He wondered whether this buffalo had been shot or just died. There was nothing left but the skull.

The buffalo skull made Sam feel like an explorer. He had found something no boy in Iowa had ever found. At least he had never heard of such a thing. He wondered how he would ever find it again. There was no way to mark the place where it lay.

Then he had an idea. “I'll take you back with me,” he said to the skull. It felt right to talk to it. After all, it had been a living creature once.

The skull was not heavy. It had lain out under the sun for so long that the heaviness was baked out of it. It was awkward to carry, but Sam didn't mind. The skull proved that there was more to the prairie than grass and sky. Besides, it was something to show Pa.

When Sam got back to the tent he took out the letter again. Now he had some news worth telling. “I found something out on the prairie that you have never seen before. I'm saving it for a surprise. Matt, you will love it. Josie, you will hate it. Mama, you will say it's interesting. I miss you but I'm having a pretty good time. Love, Sam.”

Pa was back in plenty of time to cook a supper of sausage and biscuits. He was pleased with Sam's discovery. “This old fellow had quite a life out here in the old days,” he said, turning the skull over in his hands. “I guess you could say that this land belonged to the buffalo and the Indians back then.”

“How long ago was that?” asked Sam.

“Forty, fifty years,” said Pa. “But now it's ours.”

But, no matter what Pa said, Sam couldn't feel that this land really was theirs. In the long evenings when Pa was busy with his notebook making plans for the house and the fields, Sam would walk on the prairie and think. He thought about thousands and thousands of buffalo and the Indians on their horses. They would fit this big land. He was getting used to the wide sky and the endless prairie wool, but he still felt very small, like a snail making its slow way across an enormous table.

Pa had chosen a spot for the house, just the right distance from the road. He dug a narrow ditch to show the outline of the walls and where the front door would be. When Sam found three more skulls, he added them to his first find, and put two on each side of the doorway-to-be.

“Do you think your mother's going to be pleased to find a pile of bones in her front yard?” said Pa.

“They mark our place,” said Sam. “We can move them later.”

Maybe Pa, casting his eyes around the empty sweep of their land, understood what he meant. At least he didn't object when Sam added more skulls to the pile. Sometimes in the night Sam woke up and peered through the tent flap. He could see the bones gleaming white in the moonlight. The sight pleased him. “Good old buffalo skulls,” he would whisper and go back to sleep.

ONE MORNING, BEFORE
many days had passed, Chalkey drove up in a wagon loaded with metal rods, rough boards and shovels. A gray-haired man as thin and tough-looking as a piece of wire was sitting beside him.

“We've come to find you some water,” said Chalkey. “Eli here knows more about water than anyone else in eastern Alberta. He'll tell you where to dig your well.”

“I'm pleased to meet you,” said Pa. “We don't want to start on the house or the barn until we know where the well is. Tell me, just how do you go about deciding where to dig?”

“Instinct,” said Eli. “Backed by scientific method, of course. I have a feel for water and I have a water-testing auger. Mind you, I can't guarantee that we'll find any water at all. It can be mighty scarce out here, Mr. Ferrier.”

Sam was worried, and he knew Pa must be, too. They had to have water. But Pa didn't say anything and after a long minute of silence, Eli raised an eyebrow and went on. “Your chances are pretty good, I'd say. I'll just take a walk around.”

He paced slowly across the land, starting near the wagon track and zigzagging gradually northward. He walked with his hands clasped behind his back and his head bent, as though he was reading the earth.

Suddenly he flung back his head and raised his right hand high. “I say there is water here!” he exclaimed.

He was standing right in the middle of the very spot where Pa had planned to build the house.

Pa laughed out loud. “Sam,” he said, “after all that effort we're going to have to relocate the house.”

Sam was so relieved that he laughed too. Chalkey and Eli stared at them.

“What house?” asked Chalkey, but they were laughing too hard to explain.

“Well, my instinct feels water exactly here,” said Eli. “Now we test it.” He went over to his wagon and took out some long metal rods. He held one up and said, “It's like a drill, see, and it's hollow at the end. We'll twist it down into the earth at this spot and see whether we bring up anything damp.”

“Very ingenious,” said Pa, looking closely at the device.

Eli fitted a steel bar crosswise into the top of the auger. Then he and Chalkey and Pa took turns pushing the bar around and around. The auger went down and down into the earth. When the cross bar was about two feet from the ground, Eli pulled it out and fitted another rod into the top of the first one. The cross bar slid into place in the new rod and the drilling went on.

Sam saw that they were drilling into the earth just the way he had many times drilled into a board with one of the drills from Great-grandfather's toolbox.

When they had added another rod and were about ten feet into the ground, Eli drew the whole auger up and shook the dirt out of the hollow end. It was dry.

“We're not anywhere deep enough,” he said. “This thing can go twenty-five feet. If we don't get moisture we'll have to try somewhere else. It could take days. But my instinct is strong for this spot.”

They added another rod and drilled deeper. There was no way Sam could help, but something kept him watching. As the auger got longer and longer, the turning got harder.

Eli stopped to wipe sweat from his face with a blue bandanna. “At least we haven't hit a rock,” he said. “That's one thing that stops this auger cold.”

On and on they drilled. Sam was beginning to think that Eli's instinct was wrong. He noticed that they were using the last rod. But this time when they drew up the auger, the earth in the hollow end was damp.

“You'll get a well here,” said Eli with satisfaction. “You'll hit water at twenty-two feet.”

“This calls for a celebration,” said Pa. “Sam and I have been saving some pickles and a jar of peaches for a special occasion. And then we've got a nice soft piece of prairie for you to spread your bedrolls on. Tomorrow we dig.”

Sam didn't actually do any digging. There was always a danger that the walls of the well might collapse, even though they were reinforced with boards. Pa built a wheel with a rope and a bucket attached. The man in the hole would load the bucket with earth, and Sam took his turn slowly cranking the filled buckets to the top.

That was hard work in itself. His arms ached after the first day, but the hole was over fifteen feet deep. On the second day Sam figured that each bucket of earth represented about one inch of well. He cranked and thought that he would appreciate water forever after this.

The day went very slowly. About three o'clock Pa was down digging and Sam was cranking, when a small chunk of damp mud flew out of the hole and hit him square in the middle of the forehead.

“Feel that, Sam?” Pa yelled out. “We've got water!”

That night Sam and Pa sat in contented silence eating their biscuit and sausage. Sam thought he could almost hear the well filling with water. He was beginning to believe that they really could live here where the wind always blew and there was nothing to stop the sun. At least they had water.

Pa stretched. “We've done good work, Sam. And now we know just where to put the house and the barn. Tomorrow I'll plow a fire-break around the home place. We don't want to build a house and then lose it in a grass fire.”

Sam nodded. He knew that if a broad strip of grass around the buildings was turned under, a prairie fire would turn aside because it had nothing to burn. But he wondered what his next job would be. He could manage Pete and Goldie just fine, but guiding the plow while it cut through the tough sod took more strength than he had.

Pa knew what he was thinking. “There's plenty for you to do, Sam. We need a camp cook, for one thing. You can make our daily bread.”

That was biscuit, of course. Pa taught Sam to mix up flour and baking soda and lard with a little water and salt and bake it in the little oven that sat on top of the camp stove.

Sam's first batch of biscuits were chewy. That was a polite way of describing them. “I think you used too much muscle,” said Pa. “Biscuits need a light touch. But your next job will need all the muscle you have. You're going to dig us a cellar.”

Together they used pegs and string to make the shape of the house on the prairie sod. Then Sam set to digging with a sharp spade that cut through the matted grass roots. In a few days he had made a clear rectangle of bare dirt. Then he began digging down to make a cellar hole. Pa dug, too, once the fire-break was finished.

The cellar would be used for storing food, so it had to be deep enough for Pa to stand up in. That took a lot of digging. When it was finished, Sam couldn't believe how small the hole looked.

“It's supposed to be the beginning of our house,” he said to Pa, “but it just doesn't look big enough.”

“Don't worry,” said Pa. “Everything human-sized looks small out here. Our house will suit us just fine.”

But Sam knew the house would be small. All lumber came in by railroad and it was very expensive. Pa planned carefully so that nothing would be wasted. He showed Sam his drawing and paced the rooms off on the sod.

The house would be divided in half lengthwise by a wall. The front half would be the kitchen and sitting-room combined. The back half would be divided into two bedrooms, one for Pa and Mama and one for the boys. Josie would have a bed in the kitchen.

“Josie won't like that,” said Sam.

“We'll build her a room as soon as we can,” said Pa. “At least she'll be sleeping near the stove.”

Sam thought of their house in Iowa. It had a front room and a big kitchen and three bedrooms upstairs. There was a porch to sit on in the summer. He wished for a porch on the new house, but he knew there was no chance. They had to start with the necessities, and a porch was not a necessity. Three rooms with a roof would be sufficient for the family. The next necessity would be a shelter for the animals.

The day Pa went to town to get the lumber, he came back with more than the wagon-load of boards. He had good news.

“We have neighbors to the south,” he said. “A man from England and his two grown sons. We've agreed to help each other with house building.”

That was good news for sure. Pa could build a house by himself, Sam knew, and he could do a lot to help. But three more men would make the job go fast.

Mr. Martingale and his two sons, Adam and John, arrived the next day in a buggy. They wore tweed trousers and vests and spoke as Sam imagined English gentlemen might speak. They looked strong, though, and they were ready to start building immediately.

“Sam,” said Pa, “I want you to take charge of Grandpa's toolbox. You know every tool in it. Make sure we have the ones we need and that they get put back properly.”

This job kept Sam busy. He also helped carry boards and hold them in place as the men drove in the nails. He was surprised how fast the house went up.

“A house is just a box, really,” he said to himself. The Iowa house had peaked roofs and porches and bits of trim so you didn't notice that it was a box. But this prairie house looked like a box. A small wooden box stuck on that vast flat table of land.

Still, it was solid and it had a good shingle roof. The wooden floor rang with the sound of their boots. The windows — two facing north and two facing south — put frames around the prairie landscape.

Of course, the house was practically empty. Pa and Sam moved their bedrolls and satchels inside, but they still cooked outside on the little tin stove. The kitchen stove and the tin chimney would come with the Settler's Effects. The house waited for the rest of the family and all their things to turn it from a box into a home.

Now Pa and Sam spent three days helping the Martingales build their house just down the wagon track. Sam could see it when he looked out the front windows of the new house. The prairie didn't seem so empty now.

The next big job was to build the Ferriers' barn. Once again Sam helped while Pa and the Martingales built. It was wonderful how much less lonely the house looked with the barn beside it.

Sam moved his buffalo skulls to the south side of the barn where they showed up nicely to anyone riding past. He had nine skulls now. He liked the idea that they were together, a herd of skulls, instead of each one alone.

Sam was becoming an expert skull-finder. He had a system. He asked Pa to bring him a compass from the store in Curlew. Nearly every evening after supper he set out in a new direction. He could use the house as his center point now. He started by going straight north, the next time north-northwest, then northwest. He could go in a straight line in any direction. No one cared if he crossed their land. Mr. Martingale just said, “If you come across any bodies of water on my land, let me know.”

But Sam did not expect to find any bodies of water. How could there be ponds where the land was as flat as a pancake?

He was finding more to see now as he tramped through the prairie wool. Birds' nests and grasshoppers, wild roses and garter snakes. Sometimes by the time he remembered to look back, the house looked so small that he had the feeling it was being pulled away from him. When that happened he always turned around and went back. Even with the compass in his pocket he felt that he might never find the house again if he lost sight of it.

Just when Sam was thinking that he had discovered everything the prairie had to offer, he found something new. He came upon it so suddenly that he nearly fell into it.

It was a hollow in the land, perfectly round and about eight feet across. It looked as though someone had pressed the back of a giant spoon into the earth and turned it round and round.

The sides were smooth and quite steep. Sam ran down the little slope and sat on the ground at the bottom of the hollow. He could see nothing but the rim of grass at the level of his head and the darkening evening sky above him. He felt as if he was in the very center of the earth.

He stayed there for a long time. He could tell by the light that it was time he headed home, but it was hard to leave that place. Sam noted in his mind that the hollow was directly northwest of the house by his compass. He wanted to be able to find it again.

When he got back to the house, Pa said, “You've been gone a long time. Did you find something interesting?”

“Yes, I did,” said Sam, and he told Pa about the little hollow.

Pa nodded. “That must be a buffalo wallow,” he said. “I've heard of them. The buffalo liked to roll in the dust. The hollows they wore out with their rolling and turning are called wallows.”

“Do you think they came back to them again and again?” asked Sam.

“If it's as big and deep as you say, I suppose they must have.”

Sam went out later to look at his buffalo skulls. He tried to imagine the great beasts that could leave dents in the earth with their wallowing. They had made marks on the land that would be there for a long, long time.

He wished he could see the buffalo themselves. On his walks he had seen rabbits and prairie chickens and a lot of gophers but nothing that even came up to his knee. He had never seen the buffalo, but he missed them.

That night Pa and Sam took a few leftover boards and made a rough table. They sat on wooden boxes and ate their supper in the house for the first time.

“We're getting well settled, Sam,” said Pa. “We have water and shelter and good neighbors. I'm beginning to feel as if I belong here.”

Sam looked around him. The house was empty and bare, but he knew every nail and board. It was his house. When it grew dark he crawled into his bedroll in his own room and fell asleep quickly.

He dreamed that he looked out the window and saw a great brown buffalo standing in the moonlight watching Sam with his small shining eyes. Sam wanted to go out and touch him. But in his dream he knew that the buffalo was only a painting.

Sam opened his eyes. It was dark. The house was around him, and through the window he could see nothing but a million stars.