Over Prairie Trails | Page 6

the very
next corner, I was seventeen miles from my starting point, seventeen
miles from "home."
Beyond, stretches of the real wilderness began, the pioneer country,
where farms, except along occasional highroads, were still three, four
miles apart, where the breaking on few homesteads had reached the
thirty-acre mark, and where a real, "honest-to-goodness" cash dollar
bill was often as scarce as a well-to-do teacher in the prairie country.
The sun went down, a ball of molten gold--two hours from "town," as I
called it. It was past six o'clock. There were no rosy-fingered clouds;
just a paling of the blue into white; then a greying of the western sky;

and lastly the blue again, only this time dark. A friendly crescent still
showed trail and landmarks after even the dusk had died away. Four
miles, or a little more, and I should be in familiar land again. Four
miles, that I longed to make, before the last light failed...
The road angled to the northeast. I was by no means very sure of it. I
knew which general direction to hold, but trails that often became mere
cattle-paths crossed and criss-crossed repeatedly. It was too dark by this
time to see very far. I did not know the smaller landmarks. But I knew,
if I drove my horse pretty briskly, I must within little more than half an
hour strike a black wall of the densest primeval forest fringing a
creek--and, skirting this creek, I must find an old, weather-beaten
lumber bridge. When I had crossed that bridge, I should know the
landmarks again.
Underbrush everywhere, mostly symphoricarpus, I thought. Large
trunks loomed up, charred with forest fires; here and there a round,
white or light-grey stone, ghostly in the waning light, knee-high, I
should judge. Once I passed the skeleton of a stable--the remnant of the
buildings put up by a pioneer settler who had to give in after having
wasted effort and substance and worn his knuckles to the bones. The
wilderness uses human material up...
A breeze from the north sprang up, and it turned strangely chilly I
started to talk to Peter, the loneliness seemed so oppressive. I told him
that he should have a walk, a real walk, as soon as we had crossed the
creek. I told him we were on the homeward half--that I had a bag of
oats in the box, and that my wife would have a pail of water ready...
And Peter trotted along.
Something loomed up in front. Dark and sinister it looked. Still there
was enough light to recognize even that which I did not know. A large
bluff of poplars rustled, the wind soughing through the stems with a
wailing note. The brush grew higher to the right. I suddenly noticed
that I was driving along a broken-down fence between the brush and
myself. The brush became a grove of boles which next seemed to shoot
up to the full height of the bluff. Then, unexpectedly, startlingly, a vista
opened. Between the silent grove to the south and the large; whispering,
wailing bluff to the north there stood in a little clearing a snow white
log house, uncannily white in the paling moonlight. I could still
distinctly see that its upper windows were nailed shut with boards--and

yes, its lower ones, too. And yet, the moment I passed it, I saw through
one unclosed window on the northside light. Unreasonably I shuddered.
This house, too, became a much-looked-for landmark to me on my
future drives. I learned that it stood on the range line and called it the
"White Range Line House." There hangs a story by this house. Maybe I
shall one day tell it...
Beyond the great and awe-inspiring poplar-bluff the trail took a sharp
turn eastward. From the southwest another rut-road joined it at the bend.
I could only just make it out in the dark, for even moonlight was fading
fast now. The sudden, reverberating tramp of the horse's feet betrayed
that I was crossing a culvert. I had been absorbed in getting my
bearings, and so it came as a surprise. It had not been mentioned in the
elaborate directions which I had received with regard to the road to
follow. For a moment, therefore, I thought I must be on the wrong trail.
But just then the dim view, which had been obstructed by copses and
thickets, cleared ahead in the last glimmer of the moon, and I made out
the back cliff of forest darkly looming in the north--that forest I knew.
Behind a narrow ribbon of bush the ground sloped down to the bed of
the creek--a creek that filled in spring and became a torrent, but now
was sluggish and slow where it ran at all. In places it