"We'll make camp, if you like; I don't feel very fresh," Blake replied.
"Not here," snapped Harding, "Where I stop I sleep, and I've no use for sheltering under the cart. Last time we tried it the pony stampeded and the wheel went over my foot. The tent's no good; you'd want a chain to stop its blowing away. We'll go on until we bring up to lee of a big, solid bluff."
"Very well," Blake agreed. "I daresay we ought to find one in the hollow we got a glimpse of from the last rise, but we haven't had to put up with much discomfort yet."
"It's a matter of opinion; you haven't limped forty miles on a bad foot, but I'm not complaining," Harding rejoined, "In fact, I've most been happy since we left the depot. It's something to feel that you have started; doing nothing takes the sand out of me."
Blake had once or twice suggested that his comrade should ride, but the pony was overburdened and Harding refused. He explained that they could not expect to sell it in a worn-out condition, but his partner suspected him of sympathy for the patient beast.
They crossed the ridge and seeing a wavy line of trees in the wide hollow, quickened their pace. The soil was firmer, the scrub the wheels crushed through was short, and the trail led smoothly down a slight descent. This was comforting, because half the sky was barred with leaden cloud and the parched grass gleamed beneath it lividly white, while the light that struck a ridge-top here and there had a sinister luridness. It was getting cold and the wind was dropping, which was not a favourable sign.
Pushing the cart through the softer places, dragging the jaded pony by the head, they hurried on and at length plunged through a creek with the trees close in front. A few minutes later they tethered the pony to lee of the cart and set up their tent. Then, while Blake was rummaging out provisions and Harding searching the bluff for dry sticks, they heard a beat of hoofs and a man rode up, leading a second horse. He got down and throwing a bundle off his saddle hobbled the beasts before he turned to Blake.
"From the south? You're for Sweetwater?" he said.
Blake told him he had guessed correctly, and asked how far they had still to go.
"You ought to make it in a day and a half," said the other. "I'll ride in with you; run a store and hotel there, but feel I want to get out on the prairie now and then, and as a horse was missing I went after him. A looker, isn't he?"
Blake admired the animal, and suggested that the stranger had better join them instead of cooking a separate supper. The fellow, who told them that his name was Gardner, had a good-humoured, sunburned face and an honest look. The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf, but when Harding came out of the bluff with a load of wood a puff of icy wind suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the wood, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while the men crouched inside the straining tent and a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. By and by the thunder died away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent. This lasted some minutes, after which the rain ceased suddenly and a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass from the huge sinking sun. Harding, who had brought the wood into the tent, took it out and with the stranger's help soon made a fire.
It was getting dark, though a band of transcendental green still burned upon the prairie's western edge when they finished supper and, sitting round the fire, took out their pipes. The hobbled horses were quietly grazing near them.
"That's undoubtedly a fine animal," Blake remarked. "Is it yours?"
"No; it belongs to Clarke's Englishman."
"Who's he? It's a curious way to speak of a fellow."
"It fits him," said the other. "Guess he's Clarke's, hide and bones, and that's all there'll be when the doctor has done with him. He's a sucker the doctor taught farming and then sold land to."
"Then who's the doctor?" Harding inquired.
"That's not so easy to answer, but he's a man you want to be friends with if you stay near the settlement. Teaches farming to tenderfoot young Englishmen and Americans; finds them land and stock to start with, and makes a mighty good thing out of it. Goes to Montreal now and then, but whether it's to look up fresh suckers or on the jag is more than I know."
"We met a fellow called Clarke at the Windsor not long since. What's he like?"
Gardner described him and Harding said, "That's the man."
"Then I can't see what he was doing at the Windsor; an opium joint would have been more in his line."
"Does the fellow live at Sweetwater?" Blake asked.
"Has a farm, and runs it well, about three miles back, but he's away pretty often in the North and at a settlement on the edge of the bush country. Don't know what he does there, and they're a curious crowd; Dubokars, Russians of sorts, I guess."
Blake had seen the Dubokars in other parts of Canada and had found them an industrious people, leading, from religious convictions, a remarkably primitive life. There were, however, fanatics among them, and he understood that these now and then led their followers into outbreaks of emotional extravagance.
"They make good settlers, as a rule," he said. "But, as they don't speak English, how does the fellow get on with them?"
"Told me he was a philologist, when I asked him; then he allowed two or three of them were mystics and he was something in that line. He was a doctor once and got fired out of England for something he shouldn't have done. Anyhow, the Dubokars are like the rest of us, good, bad, and pretty mixed, and the crowd back of Sweetwater belong to the last. At first some of them didn't believe it was right to work horses and made the women drag the plough, and they'd one or two other habits that brought the North-West Police down on them. After that they've given no trouble, but they get on a jag of some kind now and then."
Blake nodded. He knew that the fanatic with untrained and unbalanced mind is liable under the influence of excitement to indulge in crude debauchery; but it was strange that a man of culture, such as Clarke appeared to be, should take a part in these excesses. He had, however, no interest in the fellow and turned the talk on to other matters, and when it got cold they went to sleep.
Starting early next morning, they reached Sweetwater after an uneventful journey and found it by no means an attractive place. South of it rolling prairie ran back, greyish white with withered grass, to the skyline; to the north straggling poplar bluffs and scattered Jack-pines crowned the summits of the ridges. A lake gleamed in a hollow, a slow creek wound across the foreground in a deep ravine, and here and there in the distance one could see an outlying farm. A row of houses followed the crest of the ravine, the side of which formed a dumping ground for domestic refuse. Some were built of small logs, and some of shiplap lumber which had cracked with exposure to the sun, but all had a neglected and poverty-stricken air. The land was poor and the settlement located too far from a market. With leaden thunderclouds hanging over it, the place looked as desolate as the sad-coloured waste.
Following the deeply-rutted street, which had a narrow, plank sidewalk, they reached the Imperial hotel; a somewhat pretentious, double-storeyed building of unpainted wood, with a verandah in front of it. Here Gardner took the pony from them and gave them a room which had no furniture except a chair and two rickety iron beds. Before he went out he indicated a printed list of the things they were not allowed to do. Harding studied it with a sardonic smile.
"I don't see much use in prohibiting folks from washing their clothes in the bedrooms when they don't give you any water," he remarked. "This place must be about the limit in the way of cheap hotels."
"It isn't cheap," said Blake; "I've seen the tariff, but on the whole I like the fellow who keeps it."
They found their supper better than they had reason to expect, and afterwards sat out on the verandah with the proprietor and one or two of the settlers who boarded at the hotel.