"We"ll have to camp soon," sighed Kate. "I believe around this bluff will be a good place. Oh, Phil, I"m tired--dead tired! My very thoughts are tired. I can"t even think anything funny about the ham.
And yet we"ve got to set up the tent ourselves, and attend to the horses; and we"ll have to sc.r.a.pe some of the mud off this beautiful vehicle."
"We can leave that till the morning," I suggested.
"No, it will be too hard and dry then. Here we are--and here are two tepees of Indians also!"
There they were, right around the bluff. The inmates were standing in a group before them, looking at us as composedly as if we were not at all an unusual sight.
"I"m going to stay here anyhow," said Kate doggedly.
"Oh, don"t," I said in alarm. "They"re such a villainous-looking lot--so dirty--and they"ve got so little clothing on. I wouldn"t sleep a wink near them. Look at that awful old squaw with only one eye.
They"d steal everything we"ve got left, Kate. Remember the ham--oh, pray remember the fate of our beautiful ham."
"I shall never forget that ham," said Kate wearily, "but, Phil, we can"t drive far enough to be out of their reach if they really want to steal our provisions. But I don"t believe they will. I believe they have plenty of food--Indians in tepees mostly have. The men hunt, you know. Their looks are probably the worst of them. Anyhow, you can"t judge Indians by appearances. Peter Crow looked respectable--and he was a whited sepulchre. Now, these Indians look as bad as Indians can look--so they may turn out to be angels in disguise."
"Very much disguised, certainly," I acquiesced satirically. "They seem to me to belong to the cla.s.s of a neighbour of ours down east. Her family is always in rags, because she says, "a hole is an accident, a patch is a disgrace," Set camp here if you like, Kate. But I"ll not sleep a wink with such neighbours."
I cheerfully ate my words later on. Never were appearances more deceptive than in the case of those Stoneys. There is an old saying that many a kind heart beats behind a ragged coat. The Indians had no coats for their hearts to beat behind--nothing but shirts--some of them hadn"t even shirts! But the shirts were certainly ragged enough, and their hearts were kind.
Those Indians were gentlemen. They came forward and unhitched our horses, fed, and watered them; they pitched our tent, and built us a fire, and cut brush for our beds. Kate and I had simply nothing to do except sit on our rugs and tell them what we wanted done. They would have cooked our supper for us if we had allowed it. But, tired as we were, we drew the line at that. Their hearts were pure gold, but their hands! No, Kate and I dragged ourselves up and cooked our own suppers.
And while we ate it, those Indians fell to and cleaned all the mud off our democrat for us. To crown all--it is almost unbelievable but it is true, I solemnly avow--they wouldn"t take a cent of payment for it all, urge them as we might and did.
"Well," said Kate, as we curled up on our brush beds that night, "there certainly is a special Providence for unprotected females. I"d forgive Peter Crow for deserting us for the sake of those Indians, if he hadn"t stolen our lovely ham into the bargain. That was altogether unpardonable."
In the morning the Indians broke camp for us and harnessed our s.h.a.ganappies. We drove off, waving our hands to them, the delightful creatures. We never saw any of them again. I fear their kind is scarce, but as long as I live I shall remember those Stoneys with grat.i.tude.
We got on fairly well that third day, and made about fifteen miles before dinner time. We ate three of the sergeant"s prairie chickens for dinner, and enjoyed them.
"But only think how delicious the ham would have been," said Kate.
Our real troubles began that afternoon. We had not been driving long when the trail swooped down suddenly into a broad depression--a swamp, so full of mud-holes that there didn"t seem to be anything but mud-holes. We pulled through six of them--but in the seventh we stuck, hard and fast. Pull as our ponies could and did, they could not pull us out.
"What are we to do?" I said, becoming horribly frightened all at once.
It seemed to me that our predicament was a dreadful one.
"Keep cool," said Kate. She calmly took off her shoes and stockings, tucked up her skirt, and waded to the horses" heads.
"Can"t I do anything?" I implored.
"Yes, take the whip and spare it not," said Kate. "I"ll encourage them here with sundry tugs and inspiriting words. You urge them behind with a good lambasting."
Accordingly we encouraged and urged, tugged and lambasted, with a right good will, but all to no effect. Our ponies did their best, but they could not pull the democrat out of that slough.
"Oh, what--" I began, and then I stopped. I resolved that I would not ask that question again in that tone in that sc.r.a.pe. I would be cheerful and courageous like Kate--splendid Kate!
"I shall have to unhitch them, tie one of them to that stump, and ride off on the other for help," said Kate.
"Where to?" I asked.
"Till I find it," grinned Kate, who seemed to think the whole disaster a capital joke. "I may have to go clean back to the tepees--and further. For that matter, I don"t believe there were any tepees. Those Indians were too good to be true--they were phantoms of delight--such stuff as dreams are made of. But even if they were real they won"t be there now--they"ll have folded their tents like the Arabs and as silently stolen away. But I"ll find help somewhere."
"I can"t stay here alone. You may be gone for hours," I cried, forgetting all my resolutions of courage and cheerfulness in an access of panic.
"Then ride the other pony and come with me," suggested Kate.
"I can"t ride bareback," I moaned.
"Then you"ll have to stay here," said Kate decidedly. "There"s nothing to hurt you, Phil. Sit in the wagon and keep dry. Eat something if you get hungry. I may not be very long."
I realized that there was nothing else to do; and, rather ashamed of my panic, I resigned myself to the inevitable and saw Kate off with a smile of encouragement. Then I waited. I was tired and frightened--horribly frightened. I sat there and imagined scores of gruesome possibilities. It was no use telling myself to be brave. I couldn"t be brave. I never was in such a blue funk before or since.
Suppose Kate got lost--suppose she couldn"t find me again--suppose something happened to her--suppose she couldn"t get help--suppose it came on night and I there all alone--suppose Indians--not gentlemanly Stoneys or even Peter Crows, but genuine, old-fashioned Indians--should come along--suppose it began to pour rain!
It did begin to rain, the only one of my suppositions which came true.
I hoisted an umbrella and sat there grimly, in that horseless wagon in the mud-hole.
Many a time since have I laughed over the memory of the appearance I must have presented sitting in that mud-hole, but there was nothing in the least funny about it at the time. The worst feature of it all was the uncertainty. I could have waited patiently enough and conquered my fears if I had known that Kate would find help and return within a reasonable time--at least before dark. But everything was doubtful. I was not composed of the stuff out of which heroines are fashioned and I devoutly wished we had never left Arrow Creek.
Shouts--calls--laughter--Kate"s dear voice in an encouraging cry from the hill behind me!
"Halloo, honey! Hold the fort a few minutes longer. Here we are. Bless her, hasn"t she been a brick to stay here all alone like this--and a tenderfoot at that?"
I could have cried with joy. But I saw that there were men with Kate--two men--white men--and I laughed instead. I had not been brave--I had been an arrant little coward, but I vowed that n.o.body, not even Kate, should suspect it. Later on Kate told me how she had fared in her search for a.s.sistance.
"When I left you, Phil, I felt much more anxious than I wanted to let you see. I had no idea where to go. I knew there were no houses along our trail and I might have to go clean back to the tepees--fifteen miles bareback. I didn"t dare try any other trail, for I knew nothing of them and wasn"t sure that there were even tepees on them. But when I had gone about six miles I saw a welcome sight--nothing less than a spiral of blue, homely-looking smoke curling up from the prairie far off to my right. I decided to turn off and investigate. I rode two miles and finally I came to a little log shack. There was a bee-yew-tiful big horse in a corral close by. My heart jumped with joy. But suppose the inmates of the shack were half-breeds! You can"t realize how relieved I felt when the door opened and two white men came out. In a few minutes everything was explained. They knew who I was and what I wanted, and I knew that they were Mr. Lonsdale and Mr.
Hopkins, owners of a big ranch over by Deer Run. They were "shacking out" to put up some hay and Mrs. Hopkins was keeping house for them.
She wanted me to stop and have a cup of tea right off, but I thought of you, Phil, and declined. As soon as they heard of our predicament those lovely men got their two biggest horses and came right with me."
It was not long before our democrat was on solid ground once more, and then our rescuers insisted that we go back to the shack with them for the night. Accordingly we drove back to the shack, attended by our two gallant deliverers on white horses. Mrs. Hopkins was waiting for us, a trim, dark-haired little lady in a very pretty gown, which she had donned in our honour. Kate and I felt like perfect tramps beside her in our muddy old raiment, with our hair dressed by dead reckoning--for we had not included a mirror in our baggage. There was a mirror in the shack, however--small but good--and we quickly made ourselves tidy at least, and Kate even went to the length of curling her bangs--bangs were in style then and Kate had long, thick ones--using the stem of a broken pipe of Mr. Hopkins"s for a curler. I was so tired that my vanity was completely crushed out--for the time being--and I simply pinned my bangs back. Later on, when I discovered that Mr. Lonsdale was really the younger son of an English earl, I wished I had curled them, but it was too late then.
He didn"t look in the least like a scion of aristocracy. He wore a cowboy rig and had a scrubby beard of a week"s growth. But he was very jolly and played the violin beautifully. After tea--and a lovely tea it was, although, as Kate remarked to me later, there was no ham--we had an impromptu concert. Mr. Lonsdale played the violin; Mrs.
Hopkins, who sang, was a graduate of a musical conservatory; Mr.
Hopkins gave a comic recitation and did a Cree war-dance; Kate gave a spirited account of our adventures since leaving home and mother; and I described--with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs--how I felt sitting alone in the democrat in a mud-hole, in a pouring rain on a vast prairie.
Mrs. Hopkins, Kate, and I slept in the one bed the shack boasted, screened off from public view by a calico curtain. Mr. Lonsdale reposed in his accustomed bunk by the stove, but poor Mr. Hopkins had to sleep on the floor. He must have been glad Kate and I stayed only one night.
The fourth morning found us blithely hitting the trail in renewed confidence and spirits. We parted from our kind friends in the shack with mutual regret. Mr. Hopkins gave us a haunch of jumping deer and Mrs. Hopkins gave us a box of home-made cookies. Mr. Lonsdale at first thought he couldn"t give us anything, for he said all he had with him was his pipe and his fiddle; but later on he said he felt so badly to see us go without any token of his good will that he felt constrained to ask us to accept a piece of rope that he had tied his outfit together with.
The fourth day we got on so nicely that it was quite monotonous. The sun shone, the chinook blew, our ponies trotted over the trail gallantly. Kate and I sang, told stories, and laughed immoderately over everything. Even a poor joke seems to have a subtle flavour on the prairie. For the first time I began to think Saskatchewan beautiful, with those far-reaching parklike meadows dotted with the white-stemmed poplars, the distant bluffs bannered with the airiest of purple hazes, and the little blue lakes that sparkled and shimmered in the sunlight on every hand.
The only thing approaching an adventure that day happened in the afternoon when we reached a creek which had to be crossed.
"We must investigate," said Kate decidedly. "It would never do to risk getting mired here, for this country is unsettled and we must be twenty miles from another human being."
Kate again removed her shoes and stockings and puddled about that creek until she found a safe fording place. I am afraid I must admit that I laughed most heartlessly at the spectacle she presented while so employed.