15 Selkirk interlude
It must have been about the time that our new baby was six or eight months old that papa experienced one of his many lapses from common sense. He was fed up with ‘The Saddlery’! He was so utterly sick of the soulless grind that he warned us in a loud voice he was done with such drudgery for ever. He had made up his mind we should all be better off on a patch of land near Selkirk. It was ridiculous to go on shivering and sneezing, never warm enough, and half-fed, in a dirty prairie town, when we might be basking in sunshine and fresh air, and eating the produce of our own fields. He was done with such foolishness, and let no one imagine his mind could be altered.
Mamma said nothing. She seemed always to understand when opposition to papa’s dreams was futile, and, to reconcile herself to the scheme in hand with exactly the same inescapable forbearance one has for an act of God. Papa was like that, so what could you do about it? This admirable acceptance did not, however, extend to whole-hearted co-operation, for mamma had not a flexible mind in matters concerning the practical issues of life. She was, despite her romantic marriage, too much the daughter of a family whose habits and behaviour were fixed as the bounds of the sea, and which bounds of sensible behaviour nothing less than a major catastrophe could induce them to disregard. It was part of their tradition of loyalty that mamma should, as a matter of course, bow to the periodic folly of her husband, without in the least lending moral support to such silly aberrations.
When I was a baby she had followed papa to Minnesota, where they were no sooner settled and the owners of a neat little house, than the wanderlust struck again. This time it was the sheep ranch in Dakota that lured my poor father from the path of virtue. Once again she had followed without complaint, and now that I realize how incomprehensible these vagrant ways must have been to my dear mother I marvel at her generosity in so seldom referring, in other than a half-humorous vein, to these wretched experiments. Yet I sometimes suspect that papa’s failure in these ventures was foredoomed by the powerful undercurrent of her unexpressed displeasure. There was always an unconscious contest of wills between them. If mamma appeared to bend and obey in any given circumstance, I quickly came to realize that the ultimate humiliation would be father’s.
Now it was tacitly agreed upon that a piece of land on the outskirts of Selkirk was to be the pleasant solution of our tiresome penury. Almost at once the exodus began. First of all brother Minty was sent ahead with the cow—for believe it or not we now had such an animal. This seemingly simple chore proved an onerous business. The cow, true to her sex, quickly revealed an amazingly recalcitrant and mischievous nature.
On the face of it, naturally, that twenty-five mile pilgrimage through a primitive country struck my light-hearted brother as a most thrilling possibility. There was no telling what dark dangers lurked in the leafy bend of the old Red River road! So many ragged half-breeds wandering the countryside lent themselves so handily to the tricks of imagination … For of course every one knew that the devil himself could not predict what a red man full of whisky might do! Fortunately considering the brave hazards, brother had an equally high-hearted friend who readily agreed to lay down his life if need be for our darling Bossy.
With ample lunches of rolled pancakes and brown bread done up in bundles attached to stout sticks, the barefoot heroes started off at dawn with the fat red cow bawling behind them. All went merrily for the first five or six miles. Then Bossy developed temperament. Her real nature came to the fore. With astonishing caprice she rebelled against the promised land, resisting all endearments, urgencies, and arguments. Switches and prods and high-handed tyranny had some effect, it is true, but the upshot was that Dame Bossy lay down, militant resolution in every fold of her thick red hide. Hot and disgruntled, her frustrated champions made camp.
Well, that was fun after a fashion. Until the night came down in a rush of mantling sable. Then how quickly were the youngsters disillusioned! The ‘stilly night’ tenderly depicted in rustic verse was, it seemed, nothing of the sort. Sheer deception, that’s what it was! No sooner was the dusk settled about them than a million mysterious noises leaped up from every crook and hollow. Worse still, something at first only felt in the bones, which may well have been the rhythmic snoring of overburdened Mamma-nature, assumed distressing audibility. Louder than Gabriel’s Trump, it sounded sharp warning: Look here, my lads, this is no time for napping; the hounds of mischief must have their run now and then. Oh very plainly it was a time for extreme discretion, to say the least. Even the frivolous wind had folded its wings and, done with capers, crept through the land on cautious feet. The river sobbed in its long brown beard as it slipped past the shuddering red willows …
Quickly the boys built a shelter of green boughs which, alas! was no meet cover in such dire stress. Nodding in the midst of a gory yarn, down came a knotted branch with the explosive crack of a pistol shot! Oh, say what you will, grey ghosts were abroad that night. Nor they alone. Things that sniffed and snuffled scurried by. Rabbits, said Reason … But then in such a wild place might it not have been bears? Indeed there were awful moments when the boys wondered if a werwolf wasn’t hanging about waiting for the first sound of their helpless slumber. However, even the most ghost-ridden night comes to an end and all her dark hounds are chained to the farthest star. The gayest sun came bounding up over the tree-tops; birds sailed into the yellow air, singing at the tops of their voices; the wind, freshened with dew, went scampering among the leaves, pinching their small green faces and babbling nonsense in their little ears. Everything was drenched in goodwill. Even Dame Bossy showed a change of heart and jogged along, patient as a lamb, and only now and again breaking out into hoarse and melancholy mooing.
That same morning mamma, baby, and I set off by train. Father for whom this rendezvous with nature was to have been a source of healing inspiration, remained in Winnipeg. Oh, it wouldn’t be for long, said he, gaily kissing us good-bye, and feeling really thrilled to be bundling us off on a real journey. Just a few more months of the old grind and with careful saving he’d be able to add to our dozen chickens, lay in groceries for the house and feed for the cow. That done he would stamp the Winnipeg gumbo off his feet for ever, and happy as a harper come and join us in good time to cut the winter’s wood and bring in a nice fat Christmas tree. Poor papa! His face beamed with joy as these jolly plans came tumbling from his lips. In his grey eyes there shone a happy light that oddly enough made me want to cry. But of course one did not cry on a fine train full of strangers with bundles and babies and bags of food. So we all kissed papa the second time and I at least hoped his dream would come true … Oh well, he did join us for the occasional weekend—which is perhaps all that dreamers deserve in a world such as this.
By nightfall we had reached our patch of land and were scarcely through inspecting the house when the bellowing of the cow announced the safe arrival of the weary pilgrims. It was a pleasant spot papa had chosen. The house, though bleak and grey and forlorn as a spinster in its patch of prairie, was far better than mamma had expected. Soap and water and our united energy would soon put it into fine shape. The first thing to do was to get the stove up and the kettle on for coffee …
Except for mamma’s incurable aversion for the country, I think we might have been truly happy there—fared more decently than was possible in the city. To me it was a delicious interlude. Here at last was a green field I might have for my own—wide and free and unsaddened by cavalcades of crosses as was that other in which I once had longed to try my feet. Here I might wander at will, wheeling the big yellow baby carriage, with my old grey tomcat for company. Gráni was a haughty creature who sometimes paced along with the dignified mien of a stout grey friar absorbed in metaphysical abstractions. At other times he stalked the tall grass low-bellied as a hungry tiger, and fierce as the jungle killer leaped sidewise, hissing furiously, as with unsheathed claws he pounced upon some unsuspecting prairie flower. Bless his bold heart! It was a rare game for the mighty hunter, and not infrequently I sat down by the mangled corpse with kitty on my lap while each of us in his own way sang a proper dirge. With so much that was new and delightful all about me I had no difficulty finding amusement. Neither then, nor ever, have I been lonely, except in crowds, where the tangled moods of humanity press in like jungle creepers. I can still recapture with a pleasant glow the effects of those long-gone Selkirk sunsets; how they transformed the low marshes in the foreground, turning every rusty blade of coarse grass to spears of gold; the little pools of bog-water to shields of polished bronze. Best of all were the bullfrogs. How I loved them! How eagerly I waited for the sound of the first hoarse voices that heralded the tireless chorus of unbroken passion to follow.
If I could only sing like that! I used to sigh enviously; sing and sing and sing, with never a pause for breath—nor need to wheeze and cough! It was simply impossible to think of sleeping without a stolen rendezvous at the window. Cautious as pussy when he crept upon mamma’s bed, I used to steal across the floor, and safely perched in the window-sill I’d sniff the delicious fragrance of the night and feel my heart contracting with the same joy that rumbled up from the tiny breasts of my little marsh choristers. There were so many of them that not for an instant was there a break in their fervent vocalizing. From breast to breast the rusty music beat, calling, calling, calling—until at last even the brooding Night unfurled her smoky pinions, to weave a stately minuet beneath the smiling stars.
If I tired of the marshes I had only to shift my gaze to the dark bluffs north of the house, where, through the thinning ranks, low stars twinkled like knowing eyes and a baby moon sometimes climbed the sky, branch by branch, the little sweet! and then with a wink at the helpful trees, sprang clear into the blue. As a matter of fact, however, I kept the woods for daytime speculation—their shadows were too long at night. Besides, mamma had given them a dual character. That they were beautiful she did not deny, but in a land like this who could tell what dreadful deeds they harboured?
I should have liked nothing better than to romp through those leafy stretches all day long, for, dreadful deeds or no, I felt at ease with the lovely slender birches, the black poplars, and the friendly maples. Mamma shook her head. I must confine my play to the open fields, where she could keep an eye on me—and where I could wheel the baby.
There was some justification for my mother’s caution. The country was full of restless half-breeds—homeless malcontents who had been overtaken by the evil fate that good Father Lacombe had laboured so long to avert. A new way of life had robbed them of the only livelihood for which their restless souls were fitted. The day of the buffalo hunt and the river brigade was done; Father Lacombe’s attempt to settle ‘his children’ on the land had failed. Now they were derelicts, debauched by the white man’s whisky, enfeebled by the white man’s disease, drifting aimlessly before the deepening storm. These unhappy vagrants were not by nature vicious, but continued drunkenness made them quarrelsome, and their pastimes, more often than not, were wildly orgiastic. I have a vivid recollection of more than one such revelry, for, as we were shortly to discover, the marshes round our house had long been a favourite bivouac of the Metis. There was something uncanny and a little frightening in the way they would suddenly materialize out of the night. One moment the plain was silent and dark and the next filled with noise and confusion and the red glare of leaping fires.
From my bedroom window I had now a very different chorus to follow, with my heart in my ears; a very different scene on which to feed my eyes. Instead of the Night, dancing to the stars, dervish figures swooped and circled round the fires; tossing their arms and writhing like creatures in torment. Their songs, gay at the start, quickly gave place to shouts and shrieks and blasphemies—as their tortured dancing was followed by indescribable obscenities. How glad I was to know that mother always pulled the blinds the moment the noise began and, determined to lend no single thread of consciousness to such ribaldry, retreated to her rocking-chair, book in hand. I know that she always hoped that I had fallen asleep, and she would have been thoroughly ashamed of me had she known that I was happily ensconced on the window-sill. ‘Did you sleep well, my child?’ she often asked over the morning coffee, her own eyes strained from lack of rest. ‘Yes,’ I hastily replied—which was true according to the letter, even though the spirit of honesty was somehow betrayed. I really had slept—but I knew quite well that that was not the root of mamma’s anxiety. She was afraid that such sounds and sights would corrupt me, coarsen the fibres of my mind, and cause me to disgrace the august ancestors.
She need not have been troubled. I was totally unaware of any sinister or sinful significance in those savage antics. To me they were simply part of the deep mysterious night. I accepted the noisy clamour as simply as I accepted the rolling thunder, and the white lightning stroke which splits the heavens apart. Yet I think there was a sense in which these midnight revellers deeply affected my growing perception of life. Their strange behaviour made me see normal folk in clearer light by reason of the sharp contrast. It made me prick up my ears more avidly than before when some gossip dropped in for a cheering cup. Which was natural enough when you stop to think of it. For, I said to myself, if the drab, lifeless half-breeds who squatted for hours in the village street were suddenly transformed into howling dervishes defying God and man, why, who could tell what sort of demon might not lie curled in the breast of even the mildest mortal? At any rate it was a charming speculation to which I owe many an amusing vignette that leaps to mind at the slightest provocation. For instance, whenever any one uses the silly phrase, ‘a fallen woman,’ I am instantly reminded of a dark-browed young woman, furiously sweeping a cottage floor with a bright new broom. Another paradox, you see. Whatever I had expected as the true and proper occupation of such a sinner it was certainly not wielding a broom. But that’s what my Magdalene was doing, and not in the best of tempers, either, the day that mamma and I came to visit the old people. ‘God pity their wretchedness!’ our only neighbour groaned, in telling the story. Ella was not the first daughter to fall by the wayside; there was another who had scarcely doffed her confirmation veil and laid aside the catechism than she forgot that man is a miserable worm not to be trusted by a Christian female. ‘Well, picture to yourself what it means to be the parents of two fallen women!’ our neighbour exclaimed in such a tearful chesty tone that I was not at all surprised when mamma, who rarely visited any one, said with a sigh that she guessed it was her duty to visit the poor old souls.
As we trudged along the rutted lane, pushing the baby buggy by turns, I kept wondering what kind of disease made one a fallen woman. Was it a blight, like Issi’s hare-lip, that gave his honest face a dishonest leer? Or was it a misery in the bones, such as old Yes-mam complained of, and which bent you double as a bowstring in a robber’s ready fist? Reasonable assumptions, yet I somehow felt that neither one fitted the case. Our eagleeyed neighbour would not have given a second glance to Issi. Plainly here was something too deep for superficial discernment and the simple mind of a child.
‘Mamma, what’s a fallen woman?’ I finally demanded breathlessly, and, knowing my parent, resolutely added while yet there was time: ‘Is that what made Ella a ruined character?’
Mother was always a bluntly truthful woman, averse from all hypocrisy and dilly-dallying. Nevertheless, for a wavering moment, she was obviously tempted to forswear her good angel. Then she said:
‘That’s a hard thing to say of any one, dear child. Remember that. And remember this, as well: if Ella is ruined, she has herself to thank for it. She ought to have known better than to trust a man. Now the poor creature will have a baby on her hands, and not a penny to her name!’
Here was a pretty puzzle, forsooth! So there were babies and babies! The harmless sort, referred to in whispers as just another mouth to feed, and this other kind that made one a fallen woman. Dear me! It was all very difficult. One of those queerer than queer vexations that big folk appeared to hug to their breasts as jealously as jewels. All I could do about it was to study Ella. But that also failed in any way to enlighten my darkness. Ella still remained just a woman with a broom. A tall, angry, awkward figure, sweeping out the kitchen, as no doubt, she would have liked to sweep away the ugly past. She was so fierce about it. Something sticky evaded the broom—it looked suspiciously like a crushed raisin. ‘Papa, you might watch where you step!’ cried my Magdalene, attacking the offending object with broad toe. Then she reddened and laughed, a chilly ripple of sound that reminded me of hail, and, seizing the broom more firmly, swept and swept and swept.
Thinking it over, that night, as I hung out of the window, harking to my frogs, I reached the conclusion that a fallen woman was nothing but a girl who had lost her laugh—as I had once lost my voice—and made such ugly noises to ease the fright in her heart.
Other, more pleasant, fancies, dated back to the Selkirk scene. It was there I heard my first light opera. I suspect that the amateur performers were neither good nor beautiful. They were all like angels to me! Brilliant beings, whose every gesture and burst of song lifted my heart a little nearer the gates of a glorious heaven. The theme, ever popular with Scandinavian scribes, depicted the amours and adventures of a pair of wandering students on the trail of romance. In his everyday existence one of the heroes was the village baker, but, striding the stage, dressed in spotless white and with a flowing cravat under his chin, I thought the archangels would have to look to their harps and haloes when he applied for a role in the celestial choir. Many fine singers have shattered my ear-drums since then, and not one of them can hold a fig to my little baker, who keeps right on carolling on some tiny stage tucked away in the cockles of my heart.
Another sort of play affected me profoundly. The terrifying dream world of the mad. How I came to be picking flowers in the field outside the insane asylum I cannot remember. Even the children who took me there are misty and unreal. All except their voices.
‘That’s the crazy house!’ some one bawled, pointing to a huge building enclosed by a high iron fence. ‘Where they put the people with no sense in their heads.’
Followed then the hair-raising tale of the lunatic who tried to make a soup of his doctor. Huddled in the high prairie grass, with tiger-lilies like flaming swords at our backs, we listened to the story.
‘You see it was this way,’ Tommy began, swelling with importance, as became one whose aunt worked in such a dangerous place. ‘This here man wasn’t crazy, except in spots. That’s the kind that works round the kitchen and laundry and such. But shucks! Aunty says you can’t ever tell when they’ll go off like a rocket. Anyway, this here guy sees the doctor coming into the kitchen, looking for some one, just as he was filling a big pot with boiling water. Just like that, it happened. The luny looks at the doctor, and back at the pot. “See here,” he said, “there’s gotta be better soup. The stuff we’ve been getting has no flavour—no delicate flavour!” That’s exactly what he said,’ Tommy interrupted himself to assure us. ‘You can ask Aunt Sigga if it isn’t. Well, I guess it was worse, because the doctor was kind of fat. “Ha! ha! ha!” laughed the crazy man, “I see you’re a bright fellow, and understand the situation. Be so good as to climb on a chair. I don’t want to be rough. Would you rather be peppered or salted?'”
It would, it seems, have been useless to appeal for help to the only other inmate of the kitchen—a feeble-minded woman whom the least excitement sent into fits. The doctor used his nimble wits.
‘The idea is splendid!’ he approved. ‘Absolutely remarkable!’ And he cheerfully agreed that, very likely, his plumpish person would flavour the soup to a king’s taste. There was one thing against it, however, a really serious thing, which, if not remedied, would easily spoil the broth. He reeked of medicine! Nor was it just his clothes. The nasty stuff had penetrated to his skin. The only safe and sensible thing was to tub himself thoroughly from top to toe in a special solution which he kept in the bathroom.
The lunatic heard him gravely. ‘You won’t run away, I suppose?’ he suggested, a worried gleam in his eye. ‘It’s time we had some decent soup, you know.’
‘That’s why we must make sure,’ the doctor attested impressively, and thus made his escape.
Skin a-prickle, we crept to the fence, hoping to witness some untoward happening in that topsyturvy domain, while Tommy regaled us with still other astonishing incidents.
‘What makes you crazy?’ a shrill, girlish treble inquired, after we had shuddered to hear how a woman had leaped from an upper window because she thought she could fly. ‘What makes you crazy, Tommy?’
Tommy answered with pious scorn. ‘Huh! There’s things you shouldn’t understand—especially girls!’ said he. “Tain’t good for you, see?’
No, I did not see! What possible benefit could any one derive from the existence of things forbidden to the understanding? Tommy was a little fool I thought, little guessing how often, in the years to come other pious souls were to express a similar predilection for a spineless moral code. I was cross with poor Tommy for taking such a lofty stand—he was just a silly boy showing off! Yet I found myself thinking of his infuriating logic, when, some weeks later I saw a child with hideously crippled feet, and overheard a woman speaking of the infirmity as ‘an affliction of God, too deep for human understanding.’
Selkirk was not destined to contribute much more to my slowly growing store of understanding. Like every other attempt to transplant us to the land, it was never more than an abortive effort. Two disagreeable incidents which happened in quick succession hastened our departure. One afternoon, when mother was winding a skein of wool from my unwilling wrists, we were startled by the sound of angry voices. Hurrying to the window, we saw that four men were thrashing about in the marsh, filling the peaceful air with shouts and curses. A drunken brawl, thought mamma, and, telling me to hold out my arms, went on winding the yarn. A brawl it certainly was, but as the minutes passed it began to assume a more serious aspect. It began to look like the assault of three determined brigands upon an innocent wayfarer. Mamma was horrified.
‘God help us, what can we do?’ she cried. ‘They are beating the man to death …’
Whether dead or stunned, it was a nasty sight to see the poor creature dragged away into the bush by his erstwhile companions. Yet I think mamma would have dismissed the whole thing as just another Indian roughhouse if, fifteen to twenty minutes later, she had not seen the same three men emerge from the woods and rush pell-mell down the road.
Brother was working in the village; there was nothing for it but to trail baby and me to our next neighbour in the hope that that eccentric mortal might for once eschew his own peccadillos and go fetch the proper authorities. It was a vain hope. Flushed and excited, we arrived at the farmhouse just as another bitter conflict was approaching stalemate. Mr. and Mrs. Farmer were not on speaking terms. The house was in a state of siege, with madam loudly declaiming that God-so-witness she was done with male oppression and evil tantrums. Never in the world would she appeal to that creature she had married for anything whatsoever. Not though the blessed Queen herself were being strangled would she ask that toad for assistance. Not she! Moreover, mamma would find that all human appeals were unavailing in that quarter.
The prospect was cloudy, to say the least! No less determined than his fiery spouse, the farmer had retired to the hay-loft with his trusty pipe, resolved upon the first sit-down strike in the Dominion. If his wife refused to behave as a Christian woman should towards her lord and master, he had no intention of earning her bread in the sweat of his brow! That was the gist of the battle, or so we gathered from the angry lady. ‘You needn’t expect help from that mule,’ she concluded her tirade with a sniff. ‘He’ll set in that barn till his stomach hits his teeth, so he will, the creature!’
Sharp humour lighted mamma’s eyes. ‘Jaja! That may be so, but on the other hand John may welcome a turn with the sheriff. Anyway now I’m here he may as well be told.’
So down to the barn we trekked, led by the militant housewife, whose shrill voice muttered anathemas upon God’s masterpiece. The ill-conditioned hulks of passion! Well, she had warned us. If we came to shame begging help of that stubborn brute it was not her doing—she had warned us thrice three times!
‘John! John!’ mamma called, making her voice as cheerful and ingratiating as possible, ‘I’d like a word with you friend. It is important and no doubt you will help me.’ Long seconds passed with neither sound nor sign of life from the loft. The baby cheeped and pulled at mamma’s hair and mamma, stifling inward laughter, tried again: ‘John, John, are you there?’
‘Ha-ha! what did I tell you?’ sneered the husfru, scooping up a handful of pebbles, which she flung with fierce delight against the gable. ‘Now listen up there!’ she shouted, ‘I’m not asking you to talk, you cockroach. It’s Mrs. Goodman, with a tale of murder—you might act like a man, not a jackass, to a neighbour!’
A red, angry face, crowned with upstanding mouse-coloured hair to which bits of hay imparted a comical aspect, appeared in the opening above us. ‘I ain’t aiming to truck with no females!’ roared the master. ‘Murder or no murder —which ain’t likely to be murder anyhow—I’m setting where I be. That’s for any one to understand as has ears to hear.’
‘But, John, a man was beaten into insensibility before my own eyes,’ mamma appealed. ‘Even if he isn’t dead he was dragged into the bush and left there helpless. Surely something should be done about it. At least it ought to be reported to the sheriff,’ she tried to reason with the human hornet.
‘Master in my own house, that’s what I’ll be—no more, no less,’ was his retort, ‘you can tell that where you like, Mrs. Goodman, MASTER in my OWN house …’
Obviously there was no appealing to Caesar, so mamma decided to search the woods herself. The farmer’s wife, who had broken into almost tender chuckles while her husband roared out his lungs, instantly pronounced herself ready to assist. But first we must have coffee, and the precious little baby a mash of sweetened bread! Of course we must … If the man was dead he’d still be dead—if he wasn’t, God would keep him safe if life was to be the poor creature’s portion. Coffee we must have, and then she’d help carry the blessed infant. ‘Ja, that I will,’ she attested, ‘for it ain’t pants that make a man, nor a loud roar that gives heart to a mouse,’ she finished, tossing the challenge like a brick back over her shoulder as the three of us made for the house.
Our search of the wood was not successful. We came upon a man’s badly torn coat and battered hat, but no sign of the man himself. This was added confirmation that something really serious had taken place, so mamma thought.
As soon as brother had finished his supper that night she sent him post-haste back to the village to notify the sheriff. That worthy dismissed the whole affair as a lot of silly women’s chatter. Besides, every one ought to know that half-breed squabbles didn’t warrant troubling the Queen’s Constabulary—they were common as fleas on a cur’s back and no more important!
The second incident to hasten our flight was of a more personal implication. It happened on a drizzly afternoon some few days later. Mother, for once not occupied with some task, was sitting in the kitchen, which formed an ‘ell’ that gave out upon a long veranda. She had the baby in her lap and everything was peaceful and serene. Suddenly a heavy stumbling step was heard and simultaneously a cry from mamma brought me to my feet. Glancing from her blanching face to the open door, on which her startled gaze was riveted, I beheld a really terrifying sight. A tall, drunken half-breed, with a cudgel and a coil of rope in his hands, stood on the veranda steps, and as it seemed to me, completely blotted out the golden light of the setting sun with his huge menacing bulk. Fortunately for us, he appeared to waver uncertainly, as though he were wondering how he had come to this strange place and what to do about it.
‘Lock the door!’ Mamma’s voice fell like a whip behind me. ‘Quickly! do you hear?’ I was accustomed to obedience—I would have jumped headlong into the bottomless pit at that sharp command. On legs that shook like jelly I streaked to the yawning door and just managed to shoot the bolt as the hideous creature pounced upon the screen, yanked the hook loose, and cursing blue rivers began a thunder of blows that threatened to rend the worm-eaten panels.
It was not a pleasant moment, yet I doubt whether it would have frightened me so badly if mamma’s obvious terror had not turned my blood to ice. Never had I seen such a look of fear in her eyes or known her to sit in helpless inactivity. She was like a dead person endowed with frightening speech. I flew about at her behest, shoving knives into windows, barricading all the flimsy doors. All of which would have been useless if our visitor had been less drunk. As it was he went raging and roaring round the house, using fists and feet in blind anger, but mercifully never thought of breaking the unscreened windows. It must have been upwards of an hour before he wearied of his pastime, and muttering darkly staggered away into the bush, leaving us to a peace that henceforward would never be rid of his shadow.
This experience, which to my hardy pioneering aunts would have occasioned little or no distress, was so disturbing to mamma that it put an effectual end to father’s utopian dream of Selkirk.
That same evening she wrote a letter which must have been a sharp decisive ultimatum. At any rate, the packing began in the morning, and I overheard mamma telling brother that she meant to leave so soon as the last cup was safely wrapped! Which we did—leaving the stuff to be watched through the night by Uncle Jacob. It seemed a rather silly and headlong flight, and yet it so happened that mamma’s nervous foreboding was not altogether unfounded. Whether or not it was the same half-breed, with his cronies, who returned to rob the house, we had no way of telling. But the fact remains that Uncle Jacob, a huge amiable giant of a man whose wits were slow but his fists formidable, was roused from sleep by the shrieking noise of splintering wood. Uncle jumped to his feet and, seizing an iron crowbar which he had taken for a bedfellow, prepared to lay about him. Five exulting savages burst into the room, little dreaming that anything save welcome loot awaited their pleasure. ‘Ja, well, I don’t like to be cruel,’ Uncle Jacob excused himself, ‘that crowbar he hits pretty hard, I guess. In the dark you can’t be so careful if heads get in the way. Ja, well, I dragged the poor critters out on the porch. Then I yust pull the stove in front of the door and sleep some more … ‘
