floors in wagons. They have fifty-fox power, these police fellows, although I have heard tell that a gallon or more of whisky has been within roping distance of them and escaped. A bottle that gets by them is worth ten dollars, but the navvies declare whatever it costs it is worth it. But, dear me, there are other liquids for inordinate and uncritical thirsts, such as——"
"Your medicine?" I suggest, whereupon our conversation abruptly ends, for he will be no longer beset by me; and he will not give me a bottle of liniment for "crick" in the back; no, not if I die in Edson, without even a graveyard started wherein to bury me. He supposes Providence knows his business, but how ever woman came to be made is a mystery far beyond his wit's end.
Huh! Huh! I am tingling to scratch this man's eyes out, but I only call him a brown pirate.
Do you think I care so much as a snap of the fingers for the medicine of this spiteful doctor of the countryside? Not a bit of it! One of the navvies will give me a talisman if I cannot find the cordial tree for which I search. It grows in the North, and the fruit gives life to strong people and faintness to the weak. It was Théophile Tremblay who told me about it. He lives always in the woods. Once, he found the tree but he was afraid to eat of it, for how could he know whether he was strong or weak? He has heard tell that, in the tree, there is a wood's-woman and that sometimes she laughs aloud, but he thinks it may be a soul or something like that.
The only drawback to happiness is the peculiar impermanence of its character. Happiness is a large, comely person, but, withal, as elusive as the smallest sprite. Such hours of pain as I spent last night on this wretched sagging bed—I who was so happy only yesterday—with nothing to look at save a little lamp with a flame like a bleary red eye. Truth to tell, it was the eye that looked at me. It stared till I became hypnotized, when by the blessing of God, I fell asleep.
This morning, I am consumed between a desire to get up and one to lie still. In all such crises of the will, it is better to follow the line of least resistance, and so I lie in bed. My hostess brings me an amazingly pungent liniment which she calls "Herr the Doctor's medisome." It came last night, but Daisy, who is a waitress, neglected to deliver it. Perhaps the sarcastic advice which the doctor set down for me under the word "Poison," may have frightened Daisy.
"She a lump is, that Daisy!" says the Frau. "Believe me, Madam, for I know. I tell her a thing to do and she doing it keeps on, till I to stop tell her. Then I to her explain that she is not for ever to stop, nor for ever on to go, and all the time, about everything, I have her so to tell."
The Frau pours on the liniment with generous measure and rubs me till I prickle with it, and feel for all the world like a wet newspaper caught in a wire fence. She rubs me with a used-to-things way until I beg her to desist. I should not be surprised if Herr the Doctor took this means of venting his spitefulness on me.
The Frau tells me she had a vision once. I wish to experience a vision, or a miracle, but nothing comes to me save presentments which have their terrible plain origin on the basis of cause and effect. Her vision was about heaven. She saw heaven quite distinctly and the streets were really made of gold. There were no children there, but only men and women, so that there must be a special Paradise for boys and girls. The Frau believes heaven will be a failure because there is no division of the sexes provided for. How, she would like to know, could a woman enjoy heaven with men there all the time looking at everything she does. It would be an impossible situation.
After awhile, Daisy brings me a meal. There is a tremendous finality about the way she sets down a tray. Daisy, in spite of her name, is not so much a housemaid as what they used to call a stout serving wench. She is courtly neither in figure nor manners. Her hair is puffed out over her ears and drawn down low, till her head looks like the husk of a hazel nut. But what odds? Daisy is splendidly plebeian and really of more value to the community than a writing person who falls downstairs. She cannot see for the life of her how I happened to come out here, and so I am apologetic and find it necessary to explain. She asks permission to try on my hat and tells me she has ordered a new one from Edmonton. It is to have three "ostridge" feathers.
To assure me that the cat I stepped upon is not dead, she descends to the kitchen and returns with it. The cat seems all right except that it sags in the middle, but Daisy says this is because it has just been fed. I am glad I did not kill it, in that I always associate a cat with Diana Bubastis, the Egyptian goddess who presided over childbirth, and who was represented with a feline head. Indeed, Bubastis is said to have transformed herself into a cat when the gods fled from Egypt—a play of gods and women and cats that has continued even to this very day.
After dinner, I am able to go down to the sidewalk where I fribble away the hours agreeably enough. It is a sun-shot afternoon, but the air is cool to one's skin, and grateful after the scorching heat of yesterday.
Some civil engineers who came in on the train with me are playing baseball on the road. These are no æsthetic feeblings, these merry gentlemen, but a sturdy breed, upstanding and handsome, with skin like the colour of well-seasoned saddles and a smell of burnt poplar in their hair. I think the rough clothes they wear throw their good looks into relief. Or it may be that the people are better looking in the North and have better physiques. It must be so, for the South has in all ages drawn upon the northern blood for rejuvenation just as, in these days, they need hard wheat to tone up their softer varieties.
I write of them as merry gentlemen because this fornight agone I had been watching them make ducks and drakes of their savings. When they come to Town, which they do once or twice a year, they cannot be accused of nearness. Each mother's son holds to the amended maxim of this country, "Hard come, easy go." "Jack ashore," I called one the other day. "Possibly so! Possibly," answered the delicious boy, "but I prefer to think of myself as March—in like a lion and out like a lamb."
The whole Town is a foraging pasture for the engineers on vacation. They buy everything they do not need, from gramaphone records and swearing parrots to Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. They yell into the telephones as if it were a lung tester, and it makes their hearts dance like daffodils to hire taxicabs for the day, boxes at the theatre, and to give suppers and dances to all and sundry of their acquaintances. Neither are they laggards in love. They are vastly appreciative of the girls, and I am told go sweethearting with a directness there is no possibility of misunderstanding. It is well the girls do not take them too seriously, for they are roving bachelors all, and would seem to be as faithful as the poet who vows his love for Kate, and Margaret and Betty and Sweet Marie.
Yet, once in a blue moon, an engineer and a girl make decision "to be man and wife together," and to live in a shack on the Residency, much to the annoyance of the townsmen, who dislike the engineers, being inordinately jealous of them.
The game of baseball which the engineers carry forward on the highway is strenuous rather than scientific. Things that are considered important in the league matches have no significance here. As I watch the pitch and toss of the ball, it occurs to me that this game has filtered down the ages from the primeval woods where orang-outangs threw nuts from tree to tree. They pitch them that the young lady 'rangs might admire their cleverness and good form. You may credit me this was the way of it.
A Chinaman and some Indians are also watching the game. The Indians think it fine fun, and fetch and carry the lost balls like spaniels retrieving sticks. I like the Indian men for several reasons, but chiefly because they are shrewd riders; have a sovereign indifference to appearance, and never quarrel over theology.
The game of ball was not completed, the interest of the players being diverted by a blindly vindictive fight between a staghound and a bulldog. I did not see the conclusion of the fight, but the honours lay with the bulldog. "For you must know, Dear Lady," explains one of the engineers, "that all things considered, the grip on the throat is an eminently practical one."
CHAPTER III
TO THE BUILDERS
To