Over Prairie Trails | Page 5

corner of my right eye. I did not turn
but kept my eyes glued to the wolf. Nor can I tell whether I had stirred

the rabbit up, or whether the wolf had been chasing or stalking it. I
should have liked to know, for I have never seen a wolf stalking a
rabbit, though I have often seen him stalk fowl. Had he pulled up when
he saw me? As I said, I cannot tell, for now he was standing in the
characteristic wolf-way, half turned, head bent back, tail stretched out
nearly horizontally. The tail sank, the whole beast seemed to shrink,
and suddenly he slunk away with amazing agility. Poor fellow --he did
not know that many a time I had fed some of his brothers in cruel
winters. But he came to know me, as I knew him; for whenever he left
me on later drives, very close to Bell's corner, after I had finished my
lunch, he would start right back on my trail, nose low, and I have no
doubt that he picked up the bits of bacon which I had dropped as tidbits
for him.
I drove and drove. The sun neared the horizon now It was about six
o'clock. The poplar thickets on both sides of the road began to be larger.
In front the trail led towards a gate in a long, long line of towering
cottonwoods. What was beyond?
It proved to be a gate indeed. Beyond the cottonwoods there ran an
eastward grade lined on the north side by a ditch which I had to cross
on a culvert. It will henceforth be known as the "twelve-mile bridge."
Beyond the culvert the road which I followed had likewise been
worked up into a grade. I did not like it, for it was new and rough. But
less did I like the habitation at the end of its short, one-mile career. It
stood to the right, close to the road, and was a veritable hovel.
[Footnote: It might be well to state expressly here that, whatever has
been said in these pages concerning farms and their inhabitants, has
intentionally been so arranged as not to apply to the exact localities at
which they are described. Anybody at all familiar with the district
through which these drives were made will readily identify every
natural landmark. But although I have not consciously introduced any
changes in the landscape as God made it, I have in fairness to the
settlers entirely redrawn the superimposed man-made landscape.] It
was built of logs, but it looked more like a dugout, for stable as well as
dwelling were covered by way of a roof with blower-thrown straw In
the door of the hovel there stood two brats--poor things!
The road was a trail again for a mile or two. It led once more through
the underbrush-wilderness interspersed with poplar bluffs. Then it

became by degrees a real "high-class" Southern Prairie grade. I
wondered, but not for long. Tall cottonwood bluffs, unmistakably
planted trees, betrayed more farms. There were three of them, and,
strange to say, here on the very fringe of civilization I found that
"moneyed" type--a house, so new and up-to-date, that it verily seemed
to turn up its nose to the traveller. I am sure it had a bathroom without a
bathtub and various similar modern inconveniences. The barn was of
the Agricultural-College type--it may be good, scientific, and all that,
but it seems to crush everything else around out of existence; and it
surely is not picturesque--unless it has wings and silos to relieve its
rigid contours. Here it had not.
The other two farms to which I presently came--buildings set back from
the road, but not so far as to give them the air of aloofness--had again
that friendly, old-country expression that I have already mentioned:
here it was somewhat marred, though, by an over-rigidity of the lines.
It is unfortunate that our farmers, when they plant at all, will nearly
always plant in straight lines. The straight line is a flaw where we try to
blend the work of our hands with Nature. They also as a rule neglect
shrubs that would help to furnish a foreground for their trees; and,
worst of all, they are given to importing, instead of utilising our native
forest growth. Not often have I seen, for instance, our high-bush
cranberry planted, although it certainly is one of the most beautiful
shrubs to grow in copses.
These two farms proved to be pretty much the last sign of comfort that
I was to meet on my drives to the north. Though later I learned the
names of their owners and even made their acquaintance, for me they
remained the "halfway farms," for, after I had passed them, at