"Never farmed, eh?"
"Never; couldn"t milk a cow."
"Yer don"t say so," grinned the farmer. "Now you"ll do, you will, fine."
Joe was at a loss to understand. It seemed somewhat curious to him to hear that a hand engaged on a farm would do well when it was known that he was utterly ignorant. He explained the difficulty.
"Of course you don"t understand," said Peter, guffawing loudly; for Joe"s open speaking delighted him. "Of course you don"t, "cos back in England a man would be expected to know everything. But I"ll tell you how it is with us. You"re English; wall, now, in past years Englishmen got such a name with us colonials that we wouldn"t employ him if we could help it. Eh? You"d like to know why? That"s easy. Your Englishman would reach here dressed in knickers, perhaps--a regular swell. Us colonials with our old clothing would be fair game for him.
Then he"d know everything. He"d be wanting to do things as he"d done "em back in his own country, and not as we"ve learned they has to be done here. He"d want to teach his master, and grumble--my word, nothing pleased him! Now that"s all getting altered. We find immigrants readier to learn, and you"re one of "em. Mind you, there"s faults with others besides the Englishman who knows everything.
There"s faults with us. There"s a sight of colonials who think they know more than they do, and when they get having advice from a man fresh out to the country--why, they get testy. It makes "em angry.
They ain"t too fair to the newcomer. But guess that"s getting altered, as I"ve said. Anyway, you don"t know anything, ain"t that it?"
"Nothing," laughed Joe; for the open-hearted Peter amused him.
"Then you come along in and see the missus and the children.
Afterwards there"s a job for you."
Joe was introduced to Peter"s family circle, consisting of his wife and four small children. He found the shack to contain three rooms, a somewhat liberal allowance.
"Most of "em has but one or two," explained Peter. "A man who has to be his own house builder can"t afford too much time for fixing rooms.
However, I made two, the kitchen here and the bedroom. Later on I built a lean-to, making an extra room. That"ll be for you. Now we"ll feed. Like beans and bacon?"
"Anything," said Joe heartily. "I"ve had a long tramp and am hungry.
This fine air gives one an appet.i.te."
"It"s jest the healthiest place you could strike anywhere," cried Peter, his face glowing. "We"ve been here this four years. I bought the section from a man who had broken most of it and then got tired.
You see, we"ve prairie all round, save for the settlement close handy.
They say that the railway"ll soon be along here. Anyway, there"s no muskegs (swamps) hereabouts, and therefore no mosquitoes to speak of."
"He don"t know what"s a muskeg," laughed Mrs. Strike. "Tell him."
"It"s a swamp, that"s all," came the answer, "and there"s miles of them in Canada. Often enough they"re covered with low bush and with forests of rotting trees that ain"t worth nothing as timber. But here we"ve open prairie, with plenty of wood, and huge forests at a little distance; so it"s healthy. Now, you come along out and fix this job,"
he said, when Joe had finished the meal and had swallowed a cup of tea.
"I"m so busy I haven"t had time to see to a number of things, specially since my man was taken ill and left. There"s the pigsty, for instance; it wants cleaning out. You jest get in at it."
Joe had long since donned his colonial outfit. He wore a slouch hat, with which no one could find a fault save for its obvious newness. An old pair of trousers covered his legs, and thick, nailed boots were on his feet. His jacket he had carried over his arm, and it was now reposing with his baggage, while a thick brown shirt and a somewhat discoloured red handkerchief completed his apparel. He followed Peter to an outhouse, and found at the back a range of wooden pigsties which might, with truth, be said to be in an extremely unsavoury condition.
There was a fork and a spade near at hand, together with an old tin bucket.
"Right," he said briskly, turning up the ends of his trousers; "I"ll make a job of it. I should say that a chap who had no knowledge of farming could do this as well as any other. I"ll come along when I"ve finished."
Peter stood watching his new hand for some few moments, and then strode off out of sight. Joe turned his sleeves up, climbed into the sty, and set to work with a will.
"Not an overnice job," he told himself, "but then it"s part of farming work. If I turn up my nose at this sort of thing and think myself too good for it--why, that would be a nice sort of beginning! Someone has to clean the sties on a farm. I"m the labourer, and so it"s my job."
His jovial whistle could be heard in the shack as he worked, and brought Mrs. Strike to the door with an infant in her arms.
"Why, it"s the new hand," she told her husband. "He"s whistling, as if he liked the job you"d given him. Now I think that was a little hard.
You can see as Joe"s a better sort of lad. He"s had an education, and I wouldn"t wonder if he was something in the Old Country. And you put him right off to clean out the sty."
She regarded her lord and master with some severity; but the latter only grinned. Peter had a most taking face; in fact, his features were seldom severe, and more often than not wore a smile. He was a tall, burly man, with broad shoulders and long limbs. Possessed of fair hair and of a peaked beard, he was quite a handsome fellow, though wonderfully neglected as to his raiment. Indeed, contrasting Joe and Peter, one would have said offhand that the latter was the labourer and Joe the owner of the property.
But that is just the curious part of things outside the settlements in Canada. The more patched a man"s garments, the more probable it is that he is successful. A colonist is not there judged by his fellows because of his clothing. He is judged by results--results of his labours on the soil or his astuteness in business. Compare this with England, where fine clothes make fine birds, where appearance is of so much importance, and do not let us sneer at either people. Custom has brought either condition about, and no doubt with good reason.
As for Peter, he was grinning widely as his wife turned somewhat sharply upon him.
"You"ve given him right off the nastiest job, and he quite green," she said.
"And I"ve done so with a reason," laughed Peter. "There"s men I have hired before who had obviously seen something better back where they came from. They would have kicked at doing that sty. They would have forgotten that their old life was nothing to me, and that they were seeking their living in this country. Their old pride would be too much for "em, and I would have to suffer. Now a chap who comes out here has to drop pride. If he"s ignorant, he oughtn"t to be above starting right at the bottom. I like hearing that lad whistling; he ain"t too proud to earn an honest living, even if the job is what it is."
"Hallo!" he called, coming over to Joe some half-hour later and looking into the sty. "How"re you doing?"
"Fine," said our hero, borrowing an expression somewhat common in the Dominion. "Almost finished."
"Then you"ve been mighty slippy," admitted Peter, his eyes opening when he saw that our hero had indeed almost finished the task. "This lad"ll do for me," Peter said to himself. "He works, he does. He"s the kind of fellow who likes to get ahead, whether he"s working for another or for himself. My, if he ain"t washing the place down now!"
Evidently his new hand was cleanly also, and that was pleasing. Peter began to think that in gaining Joe"s services he had made quite a bargain.
"That"ll fix it right, lad," he sang out. "You"ve made a fine job of it. Jest you hop out now, and put the fork and spade back where you found "em. It"s yer first lesson in farming and in other things."
Joe looked up smiling. "Eh?" he said.
"Yes," went on Peter, "Mrs. Strike"s been pitching into me for giving you such a job first off; but I wanted to see for meself whether you"d kick, or whether you meant to get on whatever came along. Reckon you"ll do--now come along in and feed the hosses."
When a month had pa.s.sed, Joe found another ten dollars added to the fifty he had kept by him; also he had settled down wonderfully with the Strikes, and was already getting along with his farm work.
"He"s a treasure is that lad," admitted Mrs. Strike warmly, when she and her husband were alone one evening. "It don"t matter what it is that"s wanted, he"ll do it. If it"s one of the children to mind, he"ll smile and wink at the bairn. If it"s water for the shack, he"s willing. And if it"s a log for the stove, he jest takes the saw and goes off whistling. That lad"ll get along in the world."
"He"s fine," agreed Peter. "He"s the sort we want out from the Old Country."
Whether he was or not, Joe had taken kindly to the new life, without a shadow of doubt. His attentive mind was constantly absorbing details from the garrulous Peter or from his neighbours, and the end of that month"s service on the farm had taught him quite a smattering of the profession he was to follow. As for being lonely, that he certainly was not; he was almost too busy even to have time for thinking of such a matter. Then, too, there were neighbours, while each shack actually possessed a telephone. However, if there were monotony in the life he was living, it was not long before an exciting incident occurred that would have aroused anyone even more lethargic than our hero.
CHAPTER VI
A Canadian Bad Man
"You jest put the hosses into the rig and make along to Hurley"s," said Peter, Joe"s employer, one early morning when the land was already ploughed, harrowed, and sown, and there was little to do but tend the animals and await the growth of the wheat crop, upon which Peter antic.i.p.ated so much. "And don"t stop longer than you need, lad. He"s a bad man is Hurley, one of England"s ne"er-do-weels, who came out years ago, and has now taken to farming. I"ve lent him a seeder this two seasons, and he hasn"t returned it. Jest hitch it on to the back of the rig and bring it along."
"And you can take something from me along to Mrs. Hurley," said Peter"s wife, who was one of those kind-hearted colonists one so often meets.
"She"s a poor, down-trodden thing, and most like she doesn"t have too many of the good things. Here"s b.u.t.ter for her, and eggs, and a leg of pork."
Joe was by now quite an adept at the management of the rig, and soon had his horses harnessed in, an operation of which he had been supremely ignorant before his arrival. He mounted into the cart, having placed Mrs. Strike"s basket there already, cracked the whip, and went off across the prairie track between the ploughed acres already sprouting into greenness.
Hurley"s quarter section was a matter of four miles away, and Joe had met the man only once before. But already something of his reputation had reached his ears, and Joe had gathered that amongst a farming cla.s.s of industrious fellows this Hurley was looked at askance.
"He"s a bully, and a sullen bully with it all," Peter had said once before. "He don"t keep a hand more"n a month, as a general rule, while I reckon the boy as he has apprenticed to him has none too good a time.
Hurley"s a man I don"t take to."