Over Prairie Trails | Page 4

walk away without me.
I believe I was whistling when I got back to the buggy seat. I know I
slapped the horse's rump with my lines and sang out, "Get up, Peter, we
still have a matter of nearly thirty miles to make."
The road becomes pretty much a mere trail here, a rut-track, smooth
enough in the rut, where the wheels ran, but rough for the horse's feet in
between.
To the left I found the first untilled land. It stretched far away to the
west, overgrown with shrub-willow, wolf-willow and
symphoricarpus--a combination that is hard to break with the plow. I
am fond of the silver grey, leathery foliage of the wolf-willow which is
so characteristic of our native woods. Cinquefoil, too, the shrubby
variety, I saw in great numbers--another one of our native dwarf shrubs
which, though decried as a weed, should figure as a border plant in my
millionaire's park.
And as if to make my enjoyment of the evening's drive supreme, I saw
the first flocks of my favourite bird, the goldfinch. All over this vast
expanse, which many would have called a waste, there were strings of
them, chasing each other in their wavy flight, twittering on the
downward stretch, darting in among the bushes, turning with incredible
swiftness and sureness of wing the shortest of curves about a branch,
and undulating away again to where they came from.
To the east I had, while pondering over the beautiful wilderness, passed
a fine bluff of stately poplars that stood like green gold in the evening
sun. They sheltered apparently, though at a considerable distance,
another farmhouse; for a road led along their southern edge, lined with
telephone posts. A large flock of sheep was grazing between the bluff
and the trail, the most appropriate kind of stock for this particular
landscape.
While looking back at them, I noticed a curious trifle. The fence along
my road had good cedar posts, placed about fifteen feet apart. But at

one point there were two posts where one would have done. The wire,
in fact, was not fastened at all to the supernumerary one, and yet this
useless post was strongly braced by two stout, slanting poles. A mere
nothing, which I mention only because it was destined to be an
important landmark for me on future drives.
We drove on. At the next mile-corner all signs of human habitation
ceased. I had now on both sides that same virgin ground which I have
described above. Only here it was interspersed with occasional thickets
of young aspen-boles. It was somewhere in this wilderness that I saw a
wolf, a common prairie-wolf with whom I became quite familiar later
on. I made it my custom during the following weeks, on my return trips,
to start at a given point a few miles north of here eating the lunch
which my wife used to put up for me: sandwiches with crisply fried
bacon for a filling. And when I saw that wolf for the second time, I
threw a little piece of bacon overboard. He seemed interested in the
performance and stood and watched me in an averted kind of way from
a distance. I have often noticed that you can never see a wolf from the
front, unless it so happens that he does not see you. If he is aware of
your presence, he will instantly swing around, even though he may stop
and watch you. If he watches, he does so with his head turned back.
That is one of the many precautions the wily fellow has learned, very
likely through generations of bitter experience. After a while I threw
out a second piece, and he started to trot alongside, still half turned
away; he kept at a distance of about two hundred yards to the west
running in a furtive, half guilty-looking way, with his tail down and his
eye on me. After that he became my regular companion, an expected
feature of my return trips, running with me every time for a while and
coming a little bit closer till about the middle of November he
disappeared, never to be seen again. This time I saw him in the
underbrush, about a hundred yards ahead and as many more to the west.
I took him by surprise, as he took me. I was sorry I had not seen him a
few seconds sooner. For, when I focused my eyes on him, he stood in a
curious attitude: as if he was righting himself after having slipped on
his hindfeet in running a sharp curve. At the same moment a rabbit shot
across that part of my field of vision to the east which I saw in a blurred
way only, from the very utmost