Over Prairie Trails | Page 8

there were plenty of schools in the thickly settled districts
waiting for them? I knew of one who had come to this very school in a
car and turned right back when she saw that she was expected to live as
a boarder on a comfortless homestead and walk quite a distance and
teach mostly foreign-born children. It had been the money with her!
Unfortunately it is not the woman--nor the man either, for that
matter--who drives around in a car, that will buckle down and do this
nation's work! I also knew there were others like myself who think this
backwoods bushland God's own earth and second only to Paradise--but
few! And these young girls that quake at their loneliness and yet go for
a pittance and fill a mission! But was not my wife of their very
number?
I started up. Peter was walking along. But here, somewhere, there led a
trail off the grade, down through the ditch, and to the northeast into the
bush which swallows it up and closes behind it. This trail needs to be
looked for even in daytime, and I was to find it at night! But by this
time starlight began to aid. Vega stood nearly straight overhead, and
Deneb and Altair, the great autumnal triangle in our skies. The Bear,
too, stood out boldly, and Cassiopeia opposite.
I drew in and got out of the buggy; and walking up to the horse's head,
got ahold of the bridle and led him, meanwhile scrutinizing the ground
over which I stepped. At that I came near missing the trail. It was just a
darkening of the ground, a suggestion of black on the brown of the
grade, at the point where poles and logs had been pulled across with the
logging chain. I sprang down into the ditch and climbed up beyond and
felt with my foot for the dent worn into the edge of the slope, to make
sure that I was where I should be. It was right, so I led the horse across.
At once he stood on three legs again, left hindleg drawn up, and rested.

"Well, Peter," I said, "I suppose I have made it easy enough for you:
We have another twelve miles to make. You'll have to get up." But
Peter this time did not stir till I touched him a flick with my whip.
The trail winds around, for it is a logging trail, leading up to the best
bluffs, which are ruthlessly cut down by the fuel-hunters. Only dead
and half decayed trees are spared. But still young boles spring up in
astonishing numbers. Aspen and Balm predominate, though there is
some ash and oak left here and there, with a conifer as the rarest treat
for the lover of trees. It is a pitiful thing to see a Nation's heritage go
into the discard. In France or in England it would be tended as
something infinitely precious. The face of our country as yet shows the
youth of infancy, but we make it prematurely old. The settler who
should regard the trees as his greatest pride, to be cut into as sparingly
as is compatible with the exigencies of his struggle for life--he regards
them as a nuisance to be burned down by setting wholesale fires to
them. Already there is a scarcity of fuel-wood in these parts.
Where the fires as yet have not penetrated too badly, the cutting, which
leaves only what is worthless, determines the impression the forest
makes. At night this impression is distinctly uncanny. Like gigantic
brooms, with their handles stuck into the ground, the dead wood stands
up; the underbrush crowds against it, so dense that it lies like huge
black cushions under the stars. The inner recesses form an almost
impenetrable mass of young boles of shivering aspen and scented balm.
This mass slopes down to thickets of alder, red dogwood, haw,
highbush cranberry, and honeysuckle, with wide beds of goldenrod or
purple asters shading off into the spangled meadows wherever the
copses open up into grassy glades.
Through this bush, and skirting its meadows, I drove for an hour. There
was another fork in the trail, and again I had to get out and walk on the
side, to feel with my foot for the rut where it branched to the north.
And then, after a while, the landscape opened up, the brush receded. At
last I became conscious of a succession of posts to the right, and a few
minutes later I emerged on the second east-west grade. Another mile to
the east along this grade, and I should come to the last, homeward
stretch.
Again I began to talk to the horse. "Only five miles now, Peter, and
then the night's rest. A