Settlers of the Marsh (17 page)

From the south-west, Niels' little herd came slowly home, a cow stopping and lowing for water through the dusk that rose over the Marsh.

“Where's your cow-lot?” Nelson asked.

“In the bluff.”

“You don't mean to say they've got to go over the yard?”

“I don't see what else we can do …”

“Man alive, they'll tear them to pieces.”

“Take the fence down outside,” Hahn advised.

So the three men ran to pull each a fence-post out of the ground. The herd was driven through the gap, and the posts replaced as best it could be done.

“Well, you scamp,” Nelson called at sight of Bobby when they went to the house. “So this is where you keep yourself instead of helping your brother-in-law?”

Bobby grinned. “I get real wages here.”

“Sure, sure,” Nelson agreed noisily. “Lindstedt's a rich man. What's that I hear?”—Turning to Niels.—“You've got full-blooded Percherons they say?”

“Yes, four.”

“Let's see.” And he, Hahn, and Niels went out again.

The steers were quieting down. But the horses were all the more excited by the unusual noise. With flashing eyes the gelding looked at the intruders; the fillies were racing about, their heads raised, and nickering in their babyish voices.

“Isn't he a beauty?” Nelson said as he looked at Jock by the light of a lantern.

“Yea,” Hahn drawled. “That's the kind to have.”

“W
HAT'S THE MATTER
with you?” Nelson asked as they sat at the supper table. “Why don't you ask how Olga is and what we're doing in our backwoods country?”

“Well,” said Niels, “what are you doing?”

“Increasing the population.” Nelson laughed boisterously. “Doing our dooty by the country. Hahn here's got twins. I've got a boy. You know about the girl that was born before old man Lund disappeared. That's doing better than you are doing.”

“Any new breaking?” Niels asked wearily.

“You bet,” Nelson replied. “A little every year. But cattle, that's my real business. Tomorrow I'll have twelve hundred dollars in my pocket. Then I'll pay off the loan. And there'll still be sixty head of them left in the bush. Any crop's profit.”

“Yea,” Hahn drawled, “there's money in cattle if you can put them in the bush. But it's too much work in winter. When summer's over, I want to rest …”

“Say,” Nelson asked after a while, “how about the gay widow? Ever seen her again?”

“Once,” Niels replied monosyllabically.

“Well, I'm astonished she hasn't netted you yet …”

They stayed till ten o'clock. At night the road would be free of traffic.

The gate was opened; the two men waited on horseback, outside; and the bellowing herd charged away into the moon-lit Marsh …

S
ETTLERS WERE MOVING
into the district, Canadians, Americans, chiefly Germans …

Kelm was going to clear an enormous tract north of the creek; to provide work for himself and Bobby during the winter, Niels contracted for a piece of it: he was to get no wages, but the wood instead: he longed to be driving, driving …

Heirs had turned up and claimed old man Sigurdsen's property. Niels had harvested the crop on shares …

L
IFE WAS USELESS
; there was no meaning in it … no justification …

Niels became more and more prosperous. But the farm owned him; not he the farm … It grew according to laws of its own …

Niels hauled his wheat …

On the second trip out he had a revelation …

The very first farm to which he came in the Minor belt was owned by a German of fifteen years' standing.

It was a mild, spring-like day in November, with snow on the ground …

As he neared that farm, a strong, full-bosomed girl came from the house and walked across the yard to the pump which stood close to the road, in the corner between barn and fence. With an absent-minded look he noticed that she was peering out for him as he approached.

She was rocking herself on quivering hips as she went. With a few quick strokes of the handle she filled the wooden bucket and then stood, looking at Niels.

In a perverse impulse he stopped his horses right in front of the gate to rest them.

The girl wore shoes; but her legs were bare.

As he stopped, she turned, picked her bucket up, and laughed at him. With her free hand she reached around and raised her skirt, so that her bare legs showed behind to above her knees; and then she walked off, rocking herself on her hips and throwing provocative glances over her shoulder at him where he stood by the side of his load.

A trifle. What troubled him in retrospection was that his first impulse had been to call to her or to run after her. Worse: whenever he pictured that scene to himself—and in spite of all endeavours he did so, often—a wave of hot blood ran through him: he wished for a recurrence of the incident …

Then he took himself in hand, started his horses, and muttered, “I am going to the dogs …”

O
NCE HE FELL
in with Hahn. Hahn, too, was hauling wheat to Minor, in spite of the fact that he had an elevator closer by. “I've got a friend in Minor,” he said in explanation.

He came up with Niels when the latter was resting his horses. He tied his own team behind and climbed on to Niels' load …

Niels sat in silence; Hahn talked.

“There's one thing about you, Lindstedt,” he said after a while, “which I can't understand. You're getting to be pretty prosperous. Nelson and you are the two most successful fellows among the new settlers. Nelson's married. You haven't even got a woman on the place …”

Niels' laugh was bitter; but he said nothing.

“Doesn't it bother you?” Hahn asked.

Niels looked his non-comprehension. “What?”

Hahn laughed, embarrassed. “Well … a man needs a woman, doesn't he?”

“Perhaps he does.”

“Look here,” Hahn exclaimed, “I'm butting into things that are none of my business. But I'd like to know. Do you go to the town or the city?”

“I've never been to the city,” Niels said. “I go to town when I've got business there …”

“You mean to say you never see a woman …?”

“I see them …”

“But you don't … you don't …”

Niels frowned. “I don't see what you mean …”

Hahn laughed and slapped his thigh. “Say,” he exclaimed, “you're a corker! I like you for that … Do you mean to say you've never touched a woman? …”

“You know,” Niels said after a while, “I'm unmarried.”

Hahn laughed as if in expostulation to the sky …

I
N TOWN
, Hahn stayed with Niels. It was evening. Dusk was rising fast.

A short distance beyond the hotel they met three ladies who were still more conspicuously powdered and painted than the ordinary young ladies of western towns. They were dressed in aggressively fashionable style; and they smiled at the two men as they passed them.

“By gosh,” Hahn whispered. “Let's hook in, Lindstedt.”

“What do you mean?” Niels asked, reddening.

“Let's turn and go after them.”

“What for?”

“By
jingo
,” Hahn laughed. “You're as innocent as a new-born babe. They're from the city; they're … I don't know enough English to find a word that's decent enough for your tender ears … One of them'll be your wife … for an hour or so …”

“Do you mean,” Niels hesitated, “they're whores?”

“Yes,” Hahn said, greatly relieved, “that's it.”

“I don't intend to marry a whore.”

“Man alive!” Hahn fairly shouted. “Ock! What's the use!” And he turned on his heels and left him.

O
N THE WAY HOME
, during the night, Niels brought the topic up. “Hahn,” he said, “is the friend you have in town a woman?”

Hahn laughed. “Of course,” he said.

“But you're married …”

“Well,” Hahn explained, “I'm young and strong. I need something younger and fresher … So long as the wife doesn't know, it doesn't hurt her. That's why I go to town and not to the Hefter woman …”

“Who's that?” Niels asked brusquely.

“Don't you know? Two and a half miles west of my corner … Plenty of customers, nothing to worry about. Amundsen used to go there. Baker. Smith. The boys from the English settlement. That's where Bobby spends most of his Sundays …”

Niels sat up as if stung by a needle. “Bobby?”

“What I don't understand,” Hahn went on, “is that you should have lived here for years and never seen anything of it. There's one like that Hefter woman in every district. If there weren't, the boys wouldn't leave the girls alone. There's one in yours …”

Bobby! Niels felt responsible for the boy.

T
HE NEXT TIME
Bobby asked for the loan of a horse Niels refused it. “Not if you want to go to bad places,” he said. “Whenever you want to see your mother, you can have it.”

Bobby was as red as blood. “I'll stay at home,” he said, slinking off.

From that day on Niels owned the boy body and soul.

A
GAIN BLIZZARDS BLEW
; snow enveloped the world; blinding winter suns threw an ineffectual glare, over Marsh and bush; a new year ticked off its hours, days, and weeks.

Bobby and Niels worked in the bush, clearing land for Kelm.

Driving, driving …

N
IELS HAD COME
to think without bitterness of Ellen; but he felt he could never see her again …

When he glimpsed at his old dream, a lump rose in his throat. His muscles tightened when he turned his thoughts away …

This gradual negation of his old dream had a curious effect on others: it gave him such an air of superiority over his environment that the few words which he still had to speak were listened to almost with deference. They seemed to come out of vast hidden caverns of meaning. His face, scored and lined so that it sometimes seemed outright ugly, held all in awe, some in terror. Once he heard a man say to Bobby, “I shouldn't care to work for that fellow. I'd be scared of him.”

The truth was, lightning flashes of pain sometimes went through his look, giving him the appearance of one insane; or of one who communed with different worlds …

A new dream rose: a longing to leave and to go to the very margin of civilisation, there to clear a new place and when it was cleared and people began to settle about it, to move on once more, again to the very edge of pioneerdom, and to start it all over anew … That way his enormous strength would still have a meaning. Woman would have no place in his life.

He looked upon himself as belonging to a special race—a race not comprised in any limited nation, but on that crossed-sectioned all nations: a race doomed to everlasting extinction and yet recruited out of the wastage of all other nations …

But, of course, it was only the dream of the slave who dreams of freedom …

O
NCE MORE
the thaw-up came. The roads were a morass, the fields a mire …

Niels had to go to town for repairs to some of his implements. A blind chance happening, a breakage on his wagon, forced him to stay in town overnight.

He walked the streets. It was warm, almost summer-like: a night that made you feel tired; a night to relax in; a night to stretch, to saunter and linger about …

From the hotel he went east, in the direction of the little park in the bend of the river …

One store-window still showed light: that of the drugstore. Aimlessly Niels stopped in front of it, looking at the display of soaps, face-powders, and similar toilet goods …

Something within him stirred, something hidden, shameful … He turned.

That very moment the door opened, and out stepped a lady. She was on the point of passing him by with a casual glance; but she stood arrested.

Out of a dream, a dismal dream, almost forgotten, sunk in the past, a voice accosted him as he touched his cap.

“Well,” the voice said, “if it isn't Niels, of all people! Why, this is nice. I came in from the city to-day, on business regarding my place. I am waiting for the midnight train. Were you out for a walk?”

“Oh, I don't know …” There was nothing of his ancient hostility against the woman in his voice.

“Well,” she smiled up at him, “let's have that walk anyway. Or are you going out again to-night?”

“No … I am staying at the
boarding house
…”

“Good,” she exclaimed; and without hesitation she put her hand in his arm and led him along. “How are things?”

“Pretty much as ever …”

She laughed: that old, light, silvery laugh of hers; she had not changed.

At the touch of her hand a warm, exciting and yet benumbing current seemed to flow from his arm through his body: a current which slowly wore down resistance …

They came to the end of the street.

“How about the park?” she asked. “Is it dry enough to go in?”

“It's dry enough, I think …”

So she led him on, crossed the road and entered a foot-path.

There, in the darkness, it seemed that the touch of the hand became a touch of a body. Her head brushed his shoulder …

The path wound about, hardly visible in the moonless night. To the left the trees opened up where the river flowed, starlight dimly reflected from its surface; slight, gurgling sounds came up from the margin where there was still a ledge of snow-covered ice …

The hold on his arm relaxed; the woman stood in front of him, her head bent back, her face raised to his.

Intensely whispered came the words, “Kiss me!”

Not knowing what he did, he bent down and kissed her; and then, in a paroxysm of passion, he crushed her against his body, released her, and ran off into the night …