Over Prairie Trails | Page 3

with the worst of consciences, gallop away at breakneck
speed, and slow down only when he was sure the whip was safe in its
socket. When we met a team and pulled out on the side of the road, he
would take it for granted that I desired to make conversation. He
stopped instantly, drew one hindleg up, stood on three legs, and
drooped his head as if he had come from the ends of the world. Oh yes,
he knew how to spare himself. But on the other hand, when it came to a
tight place, where only an extraordinary effort would do, I had never
driven a horse on which I could more confidently rely. What any horse
could do, he did.
About two miles beyond I came again to a cluster of buildings, close to
the corner of the crossroads, sheltered, homelike, inviting in a large
natural bluff of tall, dark-green poplars. Those first two houses had had
an aristocratic aloofness--I should not have liked to turn in there for
shelter or for help. But this was prosperous, open-handed, well-to-do
middle class; not that conspicuous "moneyedness" that we so often find
in our new west when people have made their success; but the solid,
friendly, everyday liberality that for generations has not had to pinch
itself and therefore has mellowed down to taking the necessities and a
certain amount of give and take for granted. I was glad when on closer
approach I noticed a school embedded in the shady green of the corner.
I thought with pleasure of children being so close to people with whom

I should freely have exchanged a friendly greeting and considered it a
privilege. In my mental vision I saw beeches and elms and walnut trees
around a squire's place in the old country.
The road began to be lined with thickets of shrubs here: choke cherry
bushes, with some ripe, dried-up black berries left on the branches,
with iron-black bark, and with wiry stems, in the background; in front
of them, closer to the driveway, hawthorn, rich with red fruit;
rosebushes with scarlet leaves reaching down to nearly underfoot. It is
one of the most pleasing characteristics of our native thickets that they
never rise abruptly Always they shade off through cushionlike copses
of smaller growth into the level ground around.
The sun was sinking. I knew a mile or less further north I should have
to turn west in order to avoid rough roads straight ahead. That meant
doubling up, because some fifteen miles or so north I should have to
turn east again, my goal being east of my starting place. These fifteen
or sixteen miles of the northward road I did not know; so I was anxious
to make them while I could see. I looked at the moon--I could count on
some light from her for an hour or so after sundown. But although I
knew the last ten or twelve miles of my drive fairly well, I was also
aware of the fact that there were in it tricky spots--forkings of mere
trails in muskeg bush--where leaving the beaten log-track might mean
as much as being lost. So I looked at my watch again and shook the
lines over Peter's back. The first six miles had taken me nearly fifty
minutes. I looked at the sun again, rather anxiously I could count on
him for another hour and a quarter--well and good then!
There was the turn. Just north of it, far back from both roads, another
farmyard. Behind it--to the north, stretched out, a long windbreak of
poplars, with a gap or a vista in its centre. Barn and outbuildings were
unpainted, the house white; a not unpleasing group, but something
slovenly about it. I saw with my mind's eye numerous children, rather
neglected, uncared for, an overworked, sickly woman, a man who was
bossy and harsh.
The road angles here. Bell's farm consists of three quartersections; the
southwest quarter lends its diagonal for the trail. I had hardly made the
turn, however, when a car came to meet me. It stopped. The
school-inspector of the district looked out. I drew in and returned his
greeting, half annoyed at being thus delayed. But his very next word

made me sit up. He had that morning inspected my wife's school and
seen her and my little girl; they were both as well as they could be. I
felt so glad that I got out of my buggy to hand him my pouch of
tobacco, the which he took readily enough. He praised my wife's work,
as no doubt he had reason to do, and I should have given him a friendly
slap on the shoulder, had not just then my horse taken it into his head to