“Will they get through?” I asked a tall man in fur robes with whom I had chatted.
“Oh, yes, you just bet they will,” he answered cheerfully. “Jim Grant and Number Sixty are a very bad pair to beat; he’ll either jump the track or rush her through it. He’s backing her out now for the first lead.”
With a clang of the bell to warn us off the line, the coupled engines slowly shoved the long train back the way they had come. Then the roar of blown-off steam grew still, and with loud blasts from the funnels that rapidly quickened they swept again down the slight grade like snorting giants, the huge head-lamp casting a blaze of radiance before them. It went out suddenly; I heard the thud of a soft but heavy shock, and long waves of whiteness curled up, while above it there was a hurling aloft of red sparks from the twin funnels. Then the tail-light glimmered more brightly as it returned again, and we looked into the steep hollow with rammed-back slopes out of which the engines backed slowly.
“She’ll do it sure next time,” said the passenger. “Grant’s going right back to Winnipeg to get on speed enough;” and under an eddying blast of steam the massive locomotives charged past us once more, while I felt a thrill as I watched them, and envied Grant, the engineer. It was something to hold that power in the hollow of one’s hand. Thick white powder whirled aloft like smoke before them, a filmy wavy mass that seemed alive rolled aside, while presently the whistle boomed in triumph, and there was an exultant shout from the passengers, for steam had vanquished the snow, and the road lay open before us. Blundering down the gap they had made I climbed on board the train, colder than ever. As my new friend seemed a native of the neighborhood, I asked him whether he knew the farmer to whom I was going to offer my services.
He laughed as he answered: “I ought to. Beat me badly over a deal in stock he did. Old Coombs is a Britisher, and a precious low-grade specimen. Dare say he’ll take you, but stick him for half as much again as he offers you, and bargain ex harvest – you’ll get double wages anywhere then – see? How does this great country strike you – don’t think much of it? – well, go slow and steady and it will grow on you. It’s good enough for me, and I was raised on the best land in Ontario.”
This was not encouraging, but I knew that most beginnings are unpleasant, and I went shivering to sleep until in the gray twilight of what might have been a mid-winter dawn a blast of the whistle awakened me and the brakes began to scream. The train ran slowly past an edifice resembling a sod stable with one light in it, stopped, and the conductor strode into the car. Even now the Western railroad conductor is a personage, but he might have been an emperor then, and this particular specimen had lorded it over the Colonist passengers in a manner that for several days had made me long to rebuke him. It was foolish, of course, but I was as yet new to the ways of the country, and I fear we were always a somewhat combative family.
“Any one for Elktail? Jump off; we can’t wait all night with the west-bound mail,” he said. “Say you,” looking at me, “you had an Elktail ticket. Why aren’t you getting off?”
“It’s Vermont I am bound for,” I answered sleepily. “You will see it on my ticket if you look in your wallet;” but this, of course, the magnate refused to do, and when another hoot of the whistle announced the engineer’s impatience he called a brakeman, saying:
“You are bound for Elktail, and we’ve no time for fooling. Won’t get off? Well, we’ll soon put you,” and, grasping my shoulder, he hustled me toward the platform of the car.
Now, though Martin Lorimer sometimes gave way to outbreaks of indignation, he was fond of impressing the fact on me that if forced into a quarrel one should take the first steps deliberately. Also, even then I remembered that Coombs’ homestead lay almost as near Elktail, and a happy thought struck me. So I offered but little resistance until, as we stood on the platform, the brakeman or some one waved a lantern; then, while with a shock of couplings the cars commenced to move, I gripped the guard-rail with one hand and held the other ready, for I had determined if I left that train before I reached Vermont the conductor should certainly leave it too.
“Off with you!” he shouted, and shook me by the shoulder; but I seized him by the waist – the cars were moving faster now – and then flung myself off backward into the snow. I fell softly for as it happened the conductor fell under me, and, profiting by experience hardly earned in several colliery disputes, I took the precaution of sitting on him before he could get up.
“It won’t be my fault if you get hurt because you don’t keep still,” I said.
Then there was a roar of laughter close by, and staring breathless down the track I saw the tail-light of the train grow dimmer across the prairie until it stopped and came swinging toward us again.
“I’d rather have lost five dollars than missed that,” said my new friend, rubbing his hands. “Not bad for a raw Britisher – put the boss conductor off his own train and held up the Vancouver mail! Say, what are you going to do with him, sonny?”
“He can get up, and learn to be civil,” I answered grimly; and when the man did so, sullenly, the other said:
“Well, I don’t want any mess-up with the brakeman, so we may as well walk out now that they’re coming back for him. Only one man in this shanty, and he wouldn’t turn out unless it were a director. Leave your baggage where they dumped it – can’t move it until daylight – and come along with me!”
I did so somewhat regretfully, for I felt just then that if this was the way they welcomed the emigrant in that country it would be a relief to do battle with the whole of them. Afterward I learned that when one understands his ways, which is difficult to do at first, there are many good qualities in the Western railroad-man. Still, I always wondered why the friendless newcomer should be considered a fair mark for petty hostility, especially by those who formerly were poor themselves – all of which applies only to city-bred men who hold some small office, for those who live by hard labor in forest and prairie would share their last crust with the stranger.
We trudged away from the station, with a square block of wooden houses rising nakedly in front of us from the prairie, and two gaunt elevators flanking it to left and right beside the track, which is one’s usual first impression of a Western town. The rambling wooden building which combined the callings of general store and hotel was all in darkness, for the owner expected no guests just then, and would not have got up for any one but my companion if he had. So, after pounding long on the door, a drowsy voice demanded, with many and vivid expletives, who was there, and then added:
“Oh, it’s you, Jasper; what in the name of thunder are you making all that row about? And what are you doing waking up a man this time o’ night! Hold on! You’re an obstinate man, and I guess you’ll bust my door unless I let you in.”
The speaker did so, and when he had ushered us into a long bare room with a stove still twinkling in the midst of it, he explained that his subordinates would not serve an ambassador before the regulation breakfast hour, and lighting a kerosene lamp immediately withdrew. Jasper, however, took it all as a matter of course, and when, rolled in his long coat, he stretched himself on a settee and went to sleep, I followed suit. Still they gave us a good breakfast – porridge, steak, potatoes, corn-cakes and molasses – at which I wondered, because I had not discovered as yet that there is no difference on the prairie between any of the three meals of the day.
When it was finished, my companion, who gave me directions as to how to find Coombs’ homestead, added:
“Remember what I told you about harvest, and, if you strike nothing better, when the wheat is ripe come straight