Seeds of Pine

"'What went ye out into the wilderness to see?' They answered thus, 'So that we might not see the city.'"--SIR WILLIAM BUTLER.

The new steel trail the railway men are laying from Edmonton leads away and away, I cannot say whither. For these many days I have had an anxious desire to follow it and the glories thereof. I am tired of this town and of the electrical devices that appear and re-appear in the darkness like eyes that open and shut--wicked eyes that burn their commercial message into my very soul. I am sick of these saucy, swaggering streets and of sundry of the townspeople. Come you with me and let us travel down the ways through the heart of the summer! We shall have breeze and sun in our eyes, and breeze and sun in our hearts. If you like not the prospect, pray, come no further, for we be contrary the one to the other and no way-fellows.

As we climb on the train this morning, it seems as though our quest for quiet is to be cheated by the wallowing wave of humanity that threatens to submerge us. Who are these close-nudged folk and whither away?

She who runs may read them for hard-headed, white-handed men in search of "prospects"; brown-throated homesteaders; real-estate agents out for talking points and for snap fortunes; mining engineers with dunnage bags--young fellows all in the full force of life--these, and "the gang," who are ill-looking men and rather dirty. The gang fare forth to work on the railway grades. They are always ganging--that is going--for the words are strictly synonymous. The gang going to the city meet the gang coming out. And so in everything they are retroactive, and fight much, and swear, to give weight to their differences of opinion. In one thing only is the gang agreed, no navvy has yet been found who disputed the axiom that the Boss is a yellow canine.

There is a sprinkling of women, too, and we talk to each other in the friendly manner of the country. A couple of them are half-breed girls, with drooping feathers and skirts that have a hiss. Surely their men are industrious Indians. Both are cinched into their clothes like a cayuse into its pack-saddle. Both have skin the colour of brown coffee into which milk has been poured, and always they are fussing with their pinned-on curls. "The judicious Hooker" once watched some women doing this, and he said they were "a-dilling and burling their hair." No one may ever hope to strike out a more apt expression. The younger of the girls has an indiscreet mouth and desirous eyes. I should not be surprised, if one of these times our little brown woman found these to be a mortgage on her soul somewhat difficult of discharge. And the usury, little woman, it troubles me, the usury!

The farmer's wife who shares my seat came to this province ten years ago from the United States. Her husband made entry for a homestead and she built the house, outbuildings, and fences on it, and bought the implements with money she had saved from school-teaching. The first year, their crop was frozen; the second, it was hailed out; and the third, a spark from the threshing-machine burned their wheat stacks. Their horses died and they had to incur debt for others. All this time, the woman supported the household with the returns from her poultry yard and dairy. These last years have been fat ones, thus enabling them to save sufficient money to send two of their sons to the business college in Town. The eldest girl is walking with the young man on the adjoining farm and a wedding is brewing.

To my thinking, this homely, ill-accoutred woman is something like a heroine, and it is a pity the end of her troubles is not yet. Her husband, who appears to be a flabby-spirited fellow, has always wanted to, and has finally decided that he will sell the farm and go to the town to keep a boarding-house. She is opposed to the move and has been in the town endeavouring to protect her interests in the property, but finds she is unable so to do. Because of this she has decided to buy the farm from him and has the agreement ready for his signature. I am astounded by her hardihood. She has the soul of a warrior. If the recalcitrant spouse refuses to sell--no, I won't tell what she intends doing, for I am willing to wager you, even to the half of my kingdom, that he sells.

The woman is proud, I can see, and accordingly careful to enlarge on her man's good qualities, but it takes no acuteness to read through her assurances that he is a pessimist and one who always draws tails in the toss of life.

The readers who have come with me thus far may here swing off key, but, People Dear, you would be wrong; she is not chastising him; she is mothering him. It is a remarkable trait in the make-up of a good woman that she can, in critical junctures, not only be her own mother but may also act in this capacity to the husband of her children. It is this same office the Holy Ghost performs in the Trinity.

The newsy is giving the last call to breakfast. He is a full-lifed young man, with a cock-o'-my-walk air. I would not be surprised if he were hatched out of the egg of a pouter-pigeon. He serves meals as far as Edson, from whence we will be transferred to a construction train and trust to manna being rained down from heaven. His tables are crowded with guests, and we sit close like kernels on an ear of corn. For breakfast, there is tea; there is coffee; there are pork chops, and other fat foods which are made palatable by the sprightly addition of sour pickles. Indeed, you may credit me, this breakfast is not one to be sniffed at. I drink pannikins of tea that is very strong and green, and fearlessly ask for more. If there is a happier woman in the North than myself, I have never heard of her. I quite agree with you; our pouter-pigeon serves the public far more effectually than do the cabineteers, or even the bishops.

We are yet in the wheat belt and the wheat is at flood-tide. When I see a large stand of grain that is breast-high I say, "Well done, Good Fellows!" and "Haste to the in-gathering!" The field hears my salutation to the sowers and bows a million heads to me. And it says, shibboleth! shibboleth! (If you would pick up the talk of the fields you must be still and listen.)

The Hebrews, with ears a-tilt, caught this whisper, and so their word for an ear of wheat was "shibboleth." It was this word the Ephraimites lisped and so betrayed themselves to Jephthah. The difference was only one of an aspirate. What they said was sibboleth.

Now, while one can tell the sound of ripe wheat, no word is exactly descriptive of the odour thereof. When I am not tired my pen almost catches it. The odour is an intangible something between dryness and colour, and the sign that expresses it can only be revealed.

It is the mental habit of people to think of wheat as only so many bushels of inert matter that is bought and sold on margins by half-mad men, whereas, in all the world, wheat is the thing most richly alive. It won't die, not for thousands of years. We would put jars of wheat in the corner-stones of our state buildings, even as the Egyptians buried it in tombs of rock. It is the only food we could pass down the centuries to posterity, and apart from its scientific value, there is little doubt posterity would appreciate the gift infinitely more than those stupid name-lists of still stupider people. The grain should be of the highest grade, with the name of the grower and the exact location of his farm added thereto.

Yes! let us tuck away these northern wheat grains till England becomes a republic; the United States a kingdom; and until the yellow peril has turned white. Let us lay them safely aside for that day when labour and capital have become one, or till a still later epoch when instead of sex in soul, there shall be soul in sex. Then take them out, Posterity, and crush them into a sacramental wafer that all the world may eat of it as a loving pledge from the twentieth century.

If you think this too long to wait, perhaps you will recall that while the seven sleepers slept, Caesar was superseded by Christ. Now, the time they slept was for the lives of three men.

In handling wheat, you have doubtless noticed that it is not only alive but possesses a markedly developed will-power. It is ever resisting conquest. They tell me that in the part of the exchange called the pit, you cannot beat back wheat. Some men have succeeded for a while, but always it has rolled in and smothered its erstwhile victors. Try to hold a handful and the task is well-nigh impossible. It slides through your fingers and causes your palm to open involuntarily. It wearies a man to hold wheat tightly for long. Oats may be held and other cereals, but not wheat. Its tendency is to fall to the ground and reproduce. Thus, it is age-old but still eternally young. It is the true Isis and no one has lifted its veil. I tell you men, there is something uncanny and almost wicked about a thing that refuses to die, and it so small as a grain of wheat.

As a whole, this country is not beautiful, but now and then, there come striking pictures. Here are pleasing lakelets a-flush with ducks; tall cotton-woods which I name the maidens because of their fluffy hair--these, and lush meadows, over which range regiments of asters, sunflowers, and yarrow. It is a magic lantern fantasia with an occasional muskeg to represent the waits between views. On the muskegs the trees are so thin and straight they fairly scratch your eyes.

Oh! but it is hot this day, and every leaf seems a green tongue thrust out with thirst. The sun is making amends for his insulting reticence of last winter. The Indians call him Great Grandfather Sun, but why, I do not know.

The houses of the homesteaders are built of poplar lumber, weather-stained and ugly. Others are of logs chinsed with mud and moss. All are small and favourable neither for hospitality nor reproduction. Some day, when a large acreage is under crop, pretty bungalows with brave red paint, will edit the scene as in the older and more settled districts of the north.

At every station, land seekers get out and disappear into the trees as if the country ate them up, and, indeed, I am not so sure but it does.

A baby gets off too--a new baby that has come from the city hospital is being brought home. You would fancy a baby was a miracle the way the men look at it and ask questions. Her name is Annette. She was born on duck-day. Her father works in a saw-mill. We crowd to the window to watch him meet Annette, for we would see the gladness on his face. He is an admirably strong man, with the hard sinews of a wolf. He has surely gone through the mill to some effect. I think he likes Annette, but he looks most at the small mother and he has the mate tone in his voice.

The women ask me concerning my husband, and I say, "Oh yes! I have a husband up here, somewhere--a big, fair man--I wonder if you have seen him."

They are discreetly silent, but I can see they are hoping I'll catch him. This is not a case of duplicity on my part but rather of kindness. It is one's stoutest duty to convey colour and snippets of gossip of women, who, for the long winter months to come, are to remain in these wilds. You must understand that gossip is not wicked up North. Besides, this word actually means a sponsor at baptism--an office recognized by all the world as one of unimpeachable respectability.